chapter01 · 024-ep24
Episode 24: "Sensei's Setback"
A few things happened that morning for the first time since I'd begun streaming.
I messed up washing the rice twice. That was one.
Hina-chan messaged, "Sensei, you're nervous." That was two. I replied that there was no way she could know before the stream, and she answered, "I could tell from your voice when you announced it last week." Why did my students always get so good at observing things?
Third: tonight would be the first time since starting the course that I had nothing to teach.
On the desk sat a single nameless notebook I'd taken from the bottom of the oldest box. The same one I'd opened on the night of the first lesson. The blank cover wasn't laziness. Back then, I didn't have a name to put on it. The job of writing someone else's name on a cover came much later.
◇
"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】
【We know, but today's special】
【The promised episode】
【Apparently the waiting count broke its record】
"Lesson forty-three. ...No assignment today. No techniques, either. I promised last week to spend a whole lesson on why I became a coach. I said it wasn't much of a story, but let me correct one thing: I've never told it to anyone, not in all these years."
I put down my teacup. Rested my hand on the notebook's cover once.
"I registered as an explorer at seventeen. My reason was... well, I saw the footwork of the person ranked number one back then on a broadcast, and I thought it looked cool."
【Surprisingly normal!?】
【Sensei had a fanboy phase】
【Young Sensei joined up for his favorite explorer's footwork】
"But I found out right after I registered that I can't learn by feel. What other people can pick up by 'watching and copying,' I have to turn into words before my body understands it. So I kept notebooks from my first days as a recruit. I watched the older explorers move from behind and wrote down in words why they didn't die. ...At a joint selection, an important-looking observer asked why I was always taking notes. I told him, 'Because I can't learn by feel.' He gave me the strangest look. At the time, I thought I'd offended him."
"At twenty-two, I hit my ceiling."
I tried to keep the same tone of voice.
"Slow reflexes. Average magic reserves. Ordinary output. A clean sweep of mediocrity, and I stopped at B-rank. My peers kept growing, while I stopped. At promotion parties, the nicer people were, the more careful they were around me. 'Hiiragi works hard. He'll get there someday.' ...That gets to you. Much more than being told straight out you don't have talent."
【I know that feeling】
【Stop, you're hitting Monday-me dead on】
【Someone said that exact thing to me at last week's party】
"The years after that were dark, to be honest. All that grew was my stack of notebooks. They were supposed to be notes to make me stronger, but somewhere along the way they turned into analyses of death reports. Who died on which layer, and what mistake had killed them? ...I guess studying why people fall suited me better than counting all the reasons I couldn't climb higher. I thought it was a pretty morbid hobby myself."
"Then, not long before I turned thirty, I said one thing to a junior I'd been on an expedition with—a shield-bearer much more talented than I was. 'Put your heel down before you take the hit. Your heel always lifts right as the impact comes.' I'd watched him from behind for three months. By then I could practically see inside his shoes."
"The next month, he made A-rank."
The comments slowed a little.
"On the way home, I went looking for resentment. I figured I'd stored up ten years' worth. ...There wasn't any. Instead, all I could think about was this: if someone had said that one thing to him ten years earlier, would he have that old injury in his left shoulder? And the people who'd died beside me—could someone have told them something, too?"
I opened the nameless notebook. Young handwriting filled the pages, doing its desperate best.
"I never became the strongest. I know that more clearly than anyone; it's my life. But that night, I thought: I can't become the strongest. —Maybe I can figure out how to make someone the strongest, though. And for the first time, that felt like enough. It was the first night in my life I could see a use for everything I'd accumulated."
"I retired from active exploration at thirty-four and became a coach. My first student was a swordsman with wildly inconsistent form and nowhere to go... Well, you all know the rest better than I do."
【We know】
【You bet we do】
"Finally, why I spent a whole lesson on this."
I looked into the camera.
"I think there are a lot of people in this classroom who are where I was then. People who've hit their ceiling. People their peers have left behind. People who think they never became anybody. —I have one observation to report to you. My notebooks didn't make me strong. Not once in twenty years. But not a single one of those years was wasted. What you've built up is still there. Maybe you just couldn't use it for yourself. Sometimes its purpose comes along later. ...So please don't laugh at the things you've built up. End of report. See you next time."
◇
For the last few seconds before I ended the stream, the comments stopped completely.
I nearly checked my equipment, thinking the connection had gone down.
Then they began to move. Slower than ever before, with the longest messages I'd ever seen.
【Twenty-two years in accounting. I've spent my life thinking I never became anybody. 'What you've built up is still there'—I can't see the screen anymore】
【Teaching juniors is the only thing anyone praises me for. I used to laugh at myself because that was all I was good at. ...I won't laugh anymore】
【Sensei, B-rank is way above the clouds to ordinary people like us. It's not fair, hearing someone like that speak as one of the ones who 'didn't make it'】
【No clips of this episode. It needs to be watched whole】
【S-Sensei...! I'm glad I'm your student...!】
Hina-chan's comment was the shortest. The usual classroom.
...The time I spent wiping my glasses after I turned the stream off happened off-camera.
◇
In her lodgings in the northern city, Kokoro Shirose watched the course live for the first time.
"Please don't laugh at the things you've built up."
—Sensei. What I've built up in these two years is my name on the blade that cuts you. Does that still count?
That night, her fifty-first draft reached a second line for the first time. It didn't start with a greeting or an apology. "Sensei. I hear I'm bad at lying." ...She still couldn't send it.
That same night, in Genbu's deserted basement records room, Togakushi Gen finished watching the stream with the observer's notes from twenty-five years ago on his knees.
"An important-looking observer asked me—and gave me the strangest look."
Not a strange look. It was the face I'd made at thirty when I found a rare talent. What I asked, what he answered, what I wrote about him—it was all here on my knees. The only one who'd forgotten was the man who'd written it.
The fifty-five-year-old sat for a long time at the bottom of that sea of documents without moving.
◇
I washed my teacup, laid out my bedding, and opened my notebook before bed.
【Lesson forty-three, complete. Leave the nameless notebook on the desk instead of putting it back in the box.】
I was about to write the second line when my terminal rang.
There were only so many people I knew who would call at this hour. The display read—Dungeon Agency, Makabe.
"Sorry to call so late. I watched the stream. ...But this is about something else. I'll be brief."
His voice was as level as when he read out statistics.
"They've decided to go public with that matter. —The operation to clear the 'Abyss' is moving forward."