chapter01 · 030-ep30

Episode 30: "Graduation Certificate"

Kokoro Shirose took the notebook I held out in both hands.

For a long time, she couldn't open it. She stared at the familiar handwriting on its cover as if it were a verdict.

"Go on, read it," I said. "That record's much more accurate than the heavy calculation you've been carrying around for two years."

The first page turned to the sound of rain.

◇

【Day one. Kokoro Shirose, fourteen. Healing range: palm-sized. The cause isn't magic reserves or spell formulas, but her eyeline. She watches her own hands throughout treatment. —She's scared. She's scared of the right thing.】

【Day twelve. She says, "If I make a mistake, they'll die." Most sensible thing I've heard in the training wing this year. Don't take the fear away. Only change where it's pointed.】

【Day thirty-seven. For the first time, she looked a patient in the face while healing. Only today, her range doubled. It will probably take six months to make it stick. She hasn't noticed yet. I can wait a little longer to tell her.】

With every page she turned, her fourteen-year-old self was there.

The day she broke the measuring device and huddled in a hallway corner, certain she'd be scolded. Her knees that wouldn't stop shaking the first time she was entrusted with a badly injured patient. 【Her healing feels less like "fixing" someone and more like "going to meet them." I haven't found the right word yet. Homework.】 Years later, an answer had been added in different ink beside it. 【Found it. "Refusing to see them off." She raises her head because she refuses to watch anyone die.】

Further in, there were more and more clippings. Association promotion records. An article about her S-rank certification. And in the second half—newspaper articles about Hakujikai relief efforts, tucked neatly between pages in date order.

Every one was dated after her transfer.

Graduation hadn't ended his observation.

"...Sensei. These..."

"Oh, that's the rest of your record. Clipping articles about graduates is one of the few pleasures a coach gets."

She reached the last page.

Only there was it not an observation report.

【Graduation approved. Kokoro Shirose. As a healer and as a person, beyond reproach. I have nothing left to teach her. Go with your head held high.】

She saw the date and stopped breathing.

"...A week before the press conference..."

"Yeah. I'd written it the night Hakujikai approached you," Sensei said. "You see, Kokoro-chan, your graduation was decided long before anyone made you read anything at that conference. 'What she says at a press conference' wasn't a criterion for graduation. —So what they made you say didn't matter to me. Your graduation was something I was proud of."

◇

"But..."

Her teacup made a small sound against the tatami.

"But for two years, that article's been a blade they use against you... and my name is on it..."

"All right. One observation to report."

I decided to correct the calculation that had apparently grown so heavy over two years, starting with its first line. The same work I'd done for twenty years.

"There isn't a single person in this room who was hurt by that press conference. There was only a nineteen-year-old made to read from a cue card she looked down at three times. ...You're the worst liar in the world. The way you read it told me everything. That press conference always sounded like the world's most awkward apology letter, addressed to me. You've been apologizing for two years. You're the only one who didn't know it."

"...!"

"And one thing, just between us. —I'm almost grateful for that article."

Kokoro-chan looked up. Her swollen eyes had taken on the shape of "That makes no sense."

"Think about it. Because of that article, Genbu could fire me without worrying about it. Getting fired left me with time on my hands. And with time to kill, I started a stream. ...Without that article, this classroom wouldn't exist. By now Hina-chan would—no, I won't finish that. It's tempting fate. The point is—"

I poured a third cup into her empty teacup.

"The burden you've carried for two years was never shaped like a burden in the first place. It's not even that you can put it down. It was never there. —End of observation report."

The fifth student held the notebook against her chest and sat frozen like a statue for a while.

Then the dam broke.

The woman worshipped as the Saint in the northern city, the greatest healer alive, sat on the tatami and sobbed. I'd never heard her cry like that even in the training wing. She sounded younger than her age. She never managed to form the words, and perhaps she didn't need to anymore.

The rain began to ease.

When she'd finally stopped crying, she straightened her back and placed both hands on the tatami, eyes still red. Her forehead didn't touch it. She'd followed the classroom rule.

"...I'm home, Sensei."

"Welcome home. That was a long expedition."

That night, the fifth student came home.

◇

Kokoro-chan had three more cups of tea. Then she noticed the envelope on my desk.

The one with the national crest.

"...Are you going to accept?"

"I can't decide," I said honestly. "This time, one bad call from me could cost lives. The lives of the five people I least want to see die in the world, no less."

She set down her teacup. Then she raised her head.

They were the eyes that had gone to meet hundreds of people in the northern city.

"Sensei. I have one correction."

"...Go ahead."

"We're going to the Abyss. Whether you accept or not. If we leave it alone, it'll reach the northern city, and this one too. The state will eventually send S-ranks in one after another. Ask Rei-san and the others; I think they'll tell you the same thing."

"So what you get to choose isn't whether we go. It's whether you'll be beside us on that day, observing."

At some point, the rain had stopped.

The thoughts that had circled the same spot so meticulously these past days—stopped.

I'd been asking the wrong question from the start. The five on paper wouldn't die. But the real five wouldn't stay on paper. Whether I accepted or refused, they'd go to the Abyss. There had only ever been one number I could change. —Whether there'd be someone beside them to observe that day, or not.

"...You've got me."

Instead of waving a white flag, I took off my glasses.

"You've beaten my argument with reasoning I don't remember teaching you."

"You did teach me," the fifth said, smiling a little through her swollen eyes. "Observe, put it into words, arrange them in an order where they fit together. —The fundamentals of Sensei's classroom."

It was past ten at night, but I called anyway. The statistician answered on the first ring.

"Sorry to call so late. This is Hiiragi. —About that request. I accept."

There are two kinds of silence over the phone. The kind that comes from searching for words, and the kind that comes from someone lining them up before speaking. What I heard then was a third kind, probably absent from eighteen years of statistics.

"...Formally acknowledged." I faintly heard him adjust his glasses. "Hiiragi-san. For eighteen years I've heard nothing but bad numbers, but—that was the best answer I've ever heard."

After the call, I posted a one-line announcement on the course page. "Tomorrow morning at eight: extra stream. I have something to report."

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

【Kokoro Shirose, returned. All five faces are together now.】

【Accepted the command. The job hasn't changed. Observe, put it into words, arrange them in an order where they fit together. —The classroom's just going a little deeper.】

◇

Eight the next morning.

Despite only one night's notice, the waiting count for the extra stream had grown to more digits than I'd ever seen on the display.

Incidentally, the other four had invited themselves over before dawn. Apparently a locked door was just decoration to someone in Yagarasu's line of work. I ought to devote a lesson to why we lock doors.

"Good morning, this is Shin. If anyone's new, here's the usual—actually, today's not a lesson for newcomers."

I pulled the camera back a little.

The six-mat room was cramped.

Rei Kenjo stood behind me. Mio Hyodo sat holding a stack of documents. Shishiomaru's head nearly touched the lintel. Yagarasu was failing to disappear against the wall, and Kokoro Shirose sat seiza with a teacup in both hands. We only had two cushions.

【!?!?!?】

【They're all there】

【Five of them. The fifth one is there!!】

【Humanity's last line of defense is crammed into a six-mat room】

【Saint-samaaaaa you came home... thank goodness, really...】

【S-Sensei...! I'm in the middle of breakfast, and my miso soup... I can't stop spilling it...!】

"I have one report and one announcement. —The report first. Last night, I formally accepted the position of chief operation commander for the Abyss."

The comments became a flood. I couldn't read them all, so I went on.

"The announcement: I'm canceling the course break. For a while, though, the content will change. There may be more lessons that are hard to call 'for beginners'... but the work is the same as always. Observe, put it into words, put things in order. As usual, it'll be shockingly dull."

I set down my teacup.

"Now, then—starting today, this is a strategy meeting."

Behind me, I sensed all five nod.

"—We're going to clear the Abyss."