chapter01 · 023-ep23

Episode 23: "Togakushi's Gloom"

When resignation letters arrive in a stack, you hear them before you feel their weight.

The stack Nagumo from strategic planning placed on the desk landed with the sound of a dictionary.

"Twenty-six resignations this week. Half are instructors and researchers from the training wing. We've confirmed seven clans recruiting them. ...Apparently they're signing before they even hear the terms."

Eight days had passed since the recording leaked.

"Of the three sponsors who were 'verifying the facts,' two have notified us they're terminating their contracts. The third won't renew. Genbu stock finally saw a trade today, but—the figure isn't one I'd care to say aloud."

Togakushi Gen stood looking out the window, unmoving.

"And one more thing." Nagumo's voice dropped a little. "Have you seen this morning's announcement from the Dungeon Agency?"

"Formal Consideration Begins on Designing 'Explorer Training Instructor' Qualification System. Private-Sector Specialist to Oversee Curriculum"

The overseer's name was withheld. Whether there was any point withholding it was another matter. Retreat criteria. The habit of keeping records. How to teach people not to die. Everyone in the industry knew whose theory would form the bones of the regulations.

"...Chairman. Could you at least give us a policy for our PR response?"

"Leave."

"Chairman—"

"Don't let anyone else in today."

Nagumo bowed and left. Just before the door closed, he looked back once. The chairman's back, standing by the window, seemed a size smaller than it had eight days ago.

◇

That night, Togakushi entered the training wing alone.

He switched on the lights. The polished training floor threw back a harsh white glare. Eight years ago, this place had been packed with young people waiting their turn. There'd been more than thirty applicants for every place, and parents with children from out of town had lined the halls.

Now his own footsteps echoed against the ceiling.

One line in the research team's final report before they disbanded had stayed with him.

"At least seventy percent of the course's content matches proposals previously drafted and rejected within the company."

He hadn't intended to check. Yet here he was, descending the stairs to the second basement level. The records room. Where the originals of approval requests slept, filed by year.

He searched under "Hiiragi" and found the box immediately.

◇

The first: "On Systematizing the Fundamentals Curriculum." Eight years ago.

He remembered this one. The only proposal the man had ever brought to his office himself. Teaching materials built from observation records to reduce deaths among lower-ranked explorers. Without reading it, I'd told him it wouldn't make money. Why spend S-rank training effort to save E-ranks?

The second: "Proposal to Standardize Retreat Criteria Clan-Wide." Seven years ago. Rejected.

The third: "System for Sharing Near-Miss Reports." Six years ago. Rejected. In the margin, a thick scrawl by the person who'd signed it off: "Bring me numbers." —My handwriting.

The fourth, turning fatality cases into teaching material. The fifth, free courses for lower ranks. The sixth, a ranking system for instructors.

There were sixteen.

He'd brought only the first to the chairman's office in person. Even after being turned away, that man had quietly added proposals to the approval queue, year after year, for eight years. Knowing they'd be rejected.

Togakushi stared for a long time at the sixth file. "Ranking System for Instructors." Recognize teaching skill with a rank; give it a form others could trust. Its basic outline was—almost identical to what the state had announced this morning.

The state had picked up what I'd thrown away because it wouldn't make money.

If that were all, it could still be written off as a bad business decision. He'd made plenty of those. He'd built this company on a mountain of casualties.

The problem was that there was one more volume at the bottom of the box.

◇

It wasn't an approval request. It was an expedition log from before Genbu existed—from when Togakushi was still active and led dives under the name "Togakushi's squad." He'd moved it here with everything else when he founded the clan and never opened it again.

"Joint Selection of New Recruits—Observer's Notes"

Dated twenty-five years earlier. At the end was space for the observer's findings. Young handwriting, sharper-edged than his own at fifty-five. His handwriting at thirty.

"Hiiragi Shinichi, seventeen. Ordinary physique. Ordinary reflexes. Unlikely to rise far."

"But his eyes are too good. He watches the movements of older explorers and rewrites them as words in his notebook. Asked why, he says, 'I can't learn by feel.' You don't see eyes like that even once in a hundred people. —Interesting young man. Remember him."

Remember him.

I'd written that twenty-five years ago.

Togakushi slowly sank to the floor and dredged the bottom of his memory. The corner of a joint training session. A skinny boy who only ever watched the feet of the older explorers. His questions had been so precise the instructor couldn't always answer them. Was that him? That was—the same man?

Eight years ago, when the paperwork to hire a retired B-rank as a coach crossed my desk, I'd looked only at the numbers in his history and signed off. B-rank. Cheap labor. That was all. I'd never noticed he was the same young man I'd marked as someone who would turn into something extraordinary twenty-five years earlier.

I was the one who forgot.

At thirty, I'd seen it. I'd clearly seen value that didn't show in rank, kill count, or money. That was why Togakushi's squad had been strong back then. Then I'd founded a clan and made myself a ruler. How many S-ranks had I produced? How much sponsorship had I brought in? For twenty years I'd measured people against that ruler—and one by one, I'd stopped seeing anything it couldn't measure.

And then, what did I call him?

A parasite. The very seed I'd discovered. The man my organization had never once recognized for twenty-five years, then thrown away with a single sheet of paper.

The world called me "the chairman who fired the man who raised five of humanity's strongest."

No. It was worse.

I'd written "Remember him" myself—and then crushed him myself.

The lights in the records room stayed on until dawn. A security guard making his rounds found the chairman sitting in a sea of documents in the basement, but he didn't look like a man anyone could speak to. The fifty-five-year-old was reading the sixteen rejected proposals again, starting with the first.

Twenty years' worth of checking the answers.

◇

"Good evening, this is Shin. If anyone's new, here's the usual: this is a course for beginners. No flashy techniques. No talk about the strongest gear. It's dull. Probably shockingly dull."

【We know】

【Business as usual】

【Sensei, which fundamental is it today?】

"Lesson forty-two: 'How to Measure Growth.' No tools or techniques today. We're talking about rulers."

The world's rulers were well made, I said first. Ranks. Standings. Records. There was nothing wrong with any of them.

"But every ruler has things it can't measure. 'I fell down less than I did yesterday,' for example. You won't find that on any rank chart. But it's real all the same. ...So here's one way to measure it: don't compare yourself with someone else. Compare yourself with who you were yesterday. If you moved forward even half a step, that's a win for the day. Please don't treat what the ranks fail to measure as if it isn't there."

【That hits】

【This is supposed to be about explorers, but it's hitting Monday-me hard】

【Sensei's course occasionally lands a stray hit on the rest of my life】

The usual classroom. At the end, we had question time.

"Sensei, why did you become a coach? I heard you were B-rank when you were active."

I set down my teacup.

Honestly, I'd figured that question would come someday. The comments quieted a little.

"...That'll be a long story."

【I want to hear it】

【Please tell us】

【S-Sensei...! I want to hear it, too...!】

Well, if even Hina-chan was asking.

"Next week, then. I'll give it a whole lesson. —Why I became a coach. It's nothing much. The story of a man who never became anybody. But maybe that's the story this classroom needs most."

See you next time, I said, and ended the stream.

Before bed, I wrote just two lines in my notebook.

【Lesson forty-two, complete. I promised them next week.】

【The oldest box in the closet. Get out the nameless notebook.】