chapter01 · 029-ep29

Episode 29: "The Saint Bows to the Ground"

Even after being named by the state, my morning still began with washing rice.

"Hiiragi Shinichi Formally Named Abyss Chief Operation Commander; Response Pending"

"Agency Director: 'We'll Wait Until the Deadline.' Unusual Appointment Draws Divided Reactions"

"A Day After Four S-Ranks' Press Conference, Public Polls—"

I read three headlines and turned my terminal face down. The world was noisy again this morning. My six-mat room was quiet again. You'd think they'd try to strike a balance.

I messed up washing the rice three times. A new record.

The envelope on my desk looked exactly the same as yesterday. Seven days until the deadline.

One message from Hina-chan.

"Sensei! They say heavy rain in the south this evening. Do your shopping early!"

Now she was managing my weather, too. I replied, "Thanks. Watch your step too, Hina-chan," and looked out the window. The summer sky was still white, holding the promise of an evening downpour.

◇

The night before. The last seat on the overnight train leaving the northern city.

Kokoro Shirose tightened her grip on the terminal in her lap yet again.

The five-person thread. Her last message remained "Hope you're all well," from two years ago. Since then, she'd written fifty-one drafts. Some began with greetings, others with apologies. All stopped on the second line.

The fifty-second never became a draft. She typed it, closed her eyes, and pressed Send before she could reread it.

【Kokoro Shirose】"Please tell me where Sensei lives."

In less than a minute, all four read receipts appeared.

【Rei Kenjo】The address. Directions from the nearest station. Even a warning: "The right side of the outside stairs is slippery. Take the left."

【Shishiomaru】"About time! Don't bring a gift. Just bring yourself."

【Mio Hyodo】"Additional note. Rain in the south this evening. Umbrella."

Then, one last line.

【Yagarasu】"If you managed to send the fifty-second, that's good enough."

—How do you even know the number?

She began to type it, then stopped. That was the kind of person he was. The lights of the northern city receded beyond the window. She'd thought she'd used up all her tears last night, but apparently there were some left.

◇

Twelve minutes on foot from the station, according to Rei's directions.

Kokoro Shirose walked those twelve minutes that morning.

She recognized the thirty-two-year-old apartment building immediately. She'd seen the color of those thin walls hundreds of times on the stream. The corner room on the second floor was the most famous six-mat room in the world. She reached the bottom of the outside stairs and lifted her foot toward the first step—but couldn't set it down.

She walked a loop. Through the shopping street, around a small park, then back. A second loop. A third. As she walked, she lined up what she needed to say. Put her apology in order. Every time she had it, it fell apart at the foot of the stairs.

(I don't have the right to come home like the others. So I've come to apologize. I'm not here to come home.)

She confirmed that much to herself and went around again.

On the seventh loop, the rain came.

Mio had been right. She had an umbrella, but she stood beneath the streetlamp with it hanging from her hand, as if she'd forgotten how to open it. She didn't know how someone without the right to come home could stand there without getting wet.

◇

Past eight that night, the rain grew louder.

Nights without a stream are long. I stopped turning pages and glanced outside through a gap in the curtain.

A white cloak stood under the streetlamp.

It had been there half an hour ago, too.

She held an umbrella but hadn't opened it. Hood down, head lowered, she stood letting herself get soaked. ...The girl I'd raised to lift her head and look more directly at a patient than anyone else looked at no one now, only the ground.

After eight years of watching someone, I wasn't going to mistake her for anyone else.

I grabbed two umbrellas and went out. I descended on the left side of the outside stairs. The right had always been slippery.

"—Kokoro-chan."

The white cloak's head jerked up.

Her face was a mess of rain and, probably, other things. The fifth student I hadn't seen in two years opened her mouth, tried to say something, failed—and then started to kneel on the wet asphalt.

Both hands reached for the ground. Her forehead began to follow.

"Stop that!"

It might have been the loudest I'd spoken to a student in twenty years.

I caught her arm and pulled her back up. Her legs were already soaked with muddy water below the knees. Still she shrank into my grip as if searching for the ground, and spoke in broken fragments.

"Sensei... I... have something I have to apologize for..."

"All right. I'll listen. For however many hours it takes. —But first, I'm adding a rule to this classroom."

I opened an umbrella over her head.

"No bowing to the ground. Asphalt gets cold, and that cloak is your work clothes—the ones you've worn while treating hundreds of people in the northern city, right? Cloth like that doesn't belong on the ground. ...Come on, inside. I'll make tea."

◇

The six-mat room was much smaller than it looked on the stream. And much warmer.

Kokoro Shirose borrowed a towel, came inside, and sat seiza in a corner. Sensei asked nothing. He put the kettle on, poured tea into a cheap teacup, and placed it in front of her. It had the same pattern as the cups she'd seen back in the training wing.

Four cardboard boxes sat against the wall.

There were a hundred notebooks in those boxes. Rei-san's footwork. Mio-san's breathing. Maru-san's soles. ...My eyeline.

When the teacup's warmth had finally returned to her fingertips, she managed to say the first line aloud. The beginning of the fifty-first draft, the one she'd left unfinished on its second line.

"Sensei. I hear I'm... bad at lying."

Sensei smiled a little.

"Yeah. The worst in the world."

The floodgates opened.

"That press conference... When I said I'd 'reached the limits of your teaching.' Those weren't my words. The night before, the adults in PR handed me a sheet of paper... They said they needed 'a story.' The image of a Saint who'd outgrown her old mentor. I couldn't argue. I was nineteen, and I couldn't say anything... So I kept looking at the cue card, three times, while I..."

"I know," Sensei said quietly. "I watched it live. Three times. ...I thought you did well to finish reading it."

"I didn't finish it because I was being brave...!"

Her voice broke.

"That article's kept working ever since. Every time people attack you, they use it as their final proof. 'His own student said so.' Rei-san barged in, Mio-san added notes, Maru-san came home... and 'but the fifth student says otherwise' stopped it all. My name is engraved on the blade they use to cut you down. I let them engrave it. And for two years all I did was write fifty-one drafts and never send one. In the northern city, whenever I treated a child saved by your course on a stretcher, I'd smile and say, 'He's a very good teacher'..."

The tea rippled in her cup. Her hands were shaking.

"I watched yesterday's conference, too. All four of them were so sure of themselves. They proved your worth with technical facts. ...I had no right to sit in that seat. Rei-san, Mio-san, Maru-san, Yagarasu-san—they didn't do anything to hurt you. They just didn't realize what was happening. I'm different. I'm the only one who... who hurt you. So I don't have any right to come home like they did. I had to apologize, at least, and then—"

And then what?

Only as she spoke did she realize she hadn't thought that far. She'd walked seven loops at the bottom of the stairs and never once managed to plan what came after the apology.

Sensei didn't interrupt her once.

In the six-mat room filled with nothing but rain, he poured a second cup into her empty teacup, then slowly shook his head.

"—That's not right, Kokoro-chan."

It wasn't a voice of reproach. It was the voice tens of thousands had heard on the course, the voice he used when he was about to report an observation.

"You've been carrying a pretty heavy calculation for two years. But there's a mistake in its very first line. ...It'll be quicker to show you than to tell you."

Sensei stood and went to the boxes by the wall. He opened the oldest one and pulled a notebook from the stack without hesitating.

It was old, but carefully kept.

On the cover he held out, in handwriting she knew well, were these words:

—"Kokoro Shirose — Graduation Record."