The Man They Called a Parasite Coach

"Your training theory is nothing but parasitism."

At the headquarters of the major clan Genbu, in a conference room on the top floor, Chairman Togakushi Gen declared it flatly from across the polished long table.

He was fifty-five. During his active years, he had made a name for himself as an A-rank attacker, and after retiring, he had built the industry's largest clan from the ground up in a single generation. His voice had the flatness of something already decided.

"Kenjo Rei. Hido Mio. Shishiomaru. Yogarasu. Shirase Kokoro. —Five S-rank explorers. It's true, Hiiragi-san, you were the personal coach for all five of them. I acknowledge that."

"I see."

"But it's been two years since the last one went independent. All five of them. You have no one left in your care."

Togakushi tapped the table once with his thick finger.

"Think about it. Anyone with enough talent to become S-rank will reach it even if left alone. You merely stood beside them and pretended you'd raised them. ...It's parasitism, Hiiragi-san. Parasitizing talent."

A sheet of paper slid across the table. A notice terminating the contract. A sticky note had even been thoughtfully attached to the signature field so I wouldn't sign in the wrong place.

I had grounds for a rebuttal.

Three years spent shaving 0.2 seconds off Rei's initial step. 1,400 hours rebuilding Mio's breathing during incantations. The foot-load distribution that underpinned Maru's toughness. Yogarasu's dark-adaptation training procedure. Gaze guidance that doubled Kokoro's healing range. It was all recorded in my notebooks.

But—I couldn't prove it.

The results of training become the trainee's own the moment they are complete. Rei's speed belongs to Rei, and Mio's magic belongs to Mio. That's only natural, and how it should be, and I raised them wanting that too.

In other words, the proof that I'd raised them vanished the moment they graduated.

I've been doing that kind of work for eight years—or twenty, if I count the years represented by the notebooks piled up.

"Yeah... I suppose so."

I folded the notice in half and slipped it into the inner pocket of my jacket.

"None of the five will die without me now. Then my work is done. —Thank you for everything over the years."

I bowed and left the conference room. I saw the momentary look of deflation on Togakushi's face. He must have expected me to cry or make a scene.

At forty-two, I no longer had the energy for that.

When I got off the elevator, the new receptionist smiled and said, "Good work, Hiiragi-san." She still didn't know I wouldn't be coming back tomorrow.

"Yeah, good work."

I left the Genbu headquarters building. The June evening sky was clear enough to be almost spiteful.

◇

I lived in a thirty-two-year-old apartment that cost 58,000 yen a month. Four cardboard boxes were stacked against the wall of the six-tatami room.

They contained notebooks. A little over a hundred of them.

Each cover had a date and a name written on it: 'Kenjo Rei—Footwork,' 'Hido Mio—Breathing,' 'Shishiomaru—Weight'—and at the bottom of the oldest box were several dozen nameless notebooks. Those were from my own days as an active explorer.

My evaluation as an explorer had been B-rank for my entire career.

I hit my ceiling at twenty-two. My reflexes were slow. My mana capacity was average. My physical output was mediocre. In the face of the unreasonable nature of dungeons, effort couldn't make up for a lack of talent.

Still, there was one thing I could keep doing longer than anyone else.

Observation, and putting things into words.

I watched the movements that strong people performed by "feel," broke them down, and put them into words. Why does placing your feet that way keep you from dying? Why does breathing that way keep your mana from leaking? I gave names, one after another, to the things everyone called "sense" and no one ever explained.

It was too late to make myself strong. But at thirty-four, after I retired from active duty and became a coach, a seventeen-year-old apprentice swordsman with nowhere to go found his way to me.

—That was Rei. The first thing I drilled into Rei was the "basic stuff" no one had ever taught Rei.

Eight years since then. I trained five people, all five graduated, and today the world no longer needed my work.

"Well then..."

There was no point staring at the boxes forever in that humid six-tatami room.

I pulled out something I'd bought on impulse last week and then left untouched: a secondhand streaming setup costing 30,000 yen. When the clerk at the secondhand shop asked, "Are you going to start streaming?" I'd answered, "To kill time."

It was meant as a joke. But, come to think of it...

The contents of twenty years' worth of notebooks weren't exclusive to S-rankers. Quite the opposite. Everything I'd put into words was "the basics for staying alive even without talent." They were words for someone like me, who had less talent than anyone.

And now, the people who needed them most were—beginners I didn't even know, somewhere out there.

I plugged in the cables and set up the cheap microphone. The camera's preview showed a weary middle-aged man in worn glasses. Even I had to admit it was a spectacularly unglamorous image. After hesitating for a moment, I named the streaming account 'Shin.' I didn't have the nerve to use my real name.

The channel name was 'Shin-san's Beginner Dungeon Course.'

My finger paused for just a moment over the start-streaming button.

"...Well, nobody's going to watch, right?"

I pressed it.

In the corner of the screen, the viewer count read 【0】.

I laughed, thinking, Of course, and addressed the empty comment section. Strangely, my voice came out calm.

"Good evening. I'll be giving a dungeon-clearing course for beginners. I'm Shin. I used to be a training coach. ...Used to be."

No one laughed. Naturally. There was no one there.

"First, let me make one thing clear about this course. —Nine out of ten explorer deaths occur below the fourth floor. Most people die by the third floor."

This wasn't a matter of statistics. It was the firsthand impression of someone who had spent twenty years reading death reports on the fringes of the industry.

"And society dismisses it as 'they just didn't have the talent.' But as far as I've seen, the movements of those who died almost always have the same thing missing. —No one ever taught them the basics in words."

Those who could do things by feel couldn't teach them. Those who couldn't do them had no words. So the industry's "basics" had remained hollow all this time.

"In this course, we'll cover only those basics. No flashy techniques, and no talk of the strongest gear. It's dull. Probably shockingly dull. —But you won't die."

The viewer count was 【0】. The comment section was silent.

Even so, I opened the first notebook. The first line I'd written twenty years ago so I wouldn't die.

"Lesson One. 'Before we talk about equipment, let me talk about how to stand.'"

In an empty classroom, the course that would rewrite humanity's common sense about clearing dungeons began—quietly.

◇

It was the morning of the third day of streaming.

The archive's view count hadn't even reached double digits, and today I cooked rice, leafed through my notebooks, and prepared for the night's stream. It was a remarkably wholesome life for an unemployed man.

That night, as usual, I pressed the start-streaming button and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the viewer count.

【1】.

"...Oh."

My first actual viewer. I instinctively straightened up, then looked at the displayed name—and froze.

It was a familiar name: that of an E-rank explorer who had failed the promotion exam four times in a row and was famous throughout the industry as a hopeless washout—the butt of jokes about how they should just quit.