Chapter 10
One in the morning. The room on the forty-second floor was too quiet.
In the darkened living room, Kenjo Rei played the archive of the stream that had ended several hours earlier again from the beginning.
'Shin-san's Beginner Dungeon Course: Lesson Twenty—How to Tie a Rope'
'Explorers are more likely to die because they can't untie a rope than because they can't tie one.'
On the screen, Teacher was demonstrating a quick-release knot. He didn't look at his hands. The same procedure, the same tone as eight years ago. The world was beginning to learn that he was the sort of person who talked about rope the day after reaching number one on the worldwide trends list.
A training rope had somehow found its way into Rei's hands. He could tie it without looking. It would not loosen under load, and pulling the end let him undo it one-handed in five seconds. When Rei had been left dangling in midair by a collapse at eighteen, it was this knot—not swordsmanship—that had literally kept him alive.
...Back then, I hadn't understood even half the value of this lesson.
The world was receiving it for free now.
Rei glanced toward the edge of the screen. Behind Teacher was the six-tatami room. Four cardboard boxes were stacked against the wall. Inside them slept a hundred books on how to make Humanity's Strongest.
He stopped the playback. Only the sound of his own breathing remained in the quiet room.
It was time to think about what he had spent so long trying not to think about.
◇
As a child, Kenjo Rei had been called a genius.
A six-year-old who knocked the adults at the dojo sprawling with a wooden sword. A ten-year-old who could copy a form after seeing it once. "He'll be Humanity's Strongest someday," the adults around him joked.
Only Rei couldn't laugh.
When people asked him, "How did you do that just now?" he had never once been able to answer.
His body moved on its own. Before he knew it, he had won. He didn't know why, either. Strength he couldn't explain couldn't be reproduced. Strength that couldn't be reproduced might be gone when he woke up one morning.
Every time he was called a genius, Rei was afraid. Afraid that his strength had no name.
That fear became reality as he grew older. On days when his instincts clicked into place, Rei was unstoppable; on days they didn't, he was knocked down to E-rank. And his promotion exams always fell on the latter kind of day. Examiners watched his recordings, wrote "Rough," "Sloppy," and "Self-taught," then stamped him with a failing mark. No dojo or clan would take in a swordsman so inconsistent.
At seventeen, in a corner of Genbu's training building where he had washed up with nowhere to go, an unassuming middle-aged coach stopped the recording of Rei's exam after three seconds.
"Your center of gravity floats at the start of your step. At that rate, you'll die on the third layer."
Then the middle-aged man looked Rei in the eyes instead of looking at the screen.
"...And one more thing. You're not afraid of failing the exam, are you? You're afraid that you don't know why there are days when you can win."
No sound came out.
A man he'd met three minutes ago had seen straight through a fear that neither his parents nor any instructor had discovered in ten years.
"It's all right," the man said with a smile. "Every sensation can be given a name. Give me three years. I'll make it so you can explain your own strength. Then you'll never be afraid again."
For three years, Teacher didn't teach him a single technique.
How to stand. How to retreat. Center of gravity. Breathing. Where to look. Clenching his toes inside his shoes. Teacher watched from beside him to see what happened in Rei's body on days his instincts clicked, turned it into words one piece at a time, and wrote it all in notebooks. "That wasn't luck just now. The toes of your rear foot were gripping the floor. Let's give it a name." —The genius's instincts became language, one by one.
A strength given a name does not disappear. The days when it didn't click began to disappear.
That winter, the year they met, Rei became the first person in history to pass a promotion exam by jumping from E-rank to C-rank. The recommender field read, "Recommendation by an individual certified coach." When someone brought up putting his name down, Teacher laughed it off. "My name isn't marketable."
Starting in the fourth year, Teacher gradually taught less. Instead, he became the one who asked questions. "What would you name that movement?" —Rei was the one who answered. The days when Teacher did nothing but nod gradually became more frequent.
He could explain it. He could reproduce it. So he wasn't afraid.
On the day he was promoted to S-rank, Kenjo Rei's sword was swung from the least frightening place in the world.
◇
It was the night two years and sixteen days ago.
When Rei came to report his promotion, Teacher served him tea in a cheap teacup and smiled. "Congratulations." Thinking back, that man had never smiled about himself even once, so that had been his deepest smile.
Rei bowed his head and asked.
"Please remain my coach from now on. I'll arrange an exclusive contract or anything else you want. I'll pay you myself."
Teacher set down his teacup and was silent for a moment.
"I have to decline."
It was almost an immediate answer.
"...Why?"
"If I stay by your side, from now on, every time you lose your way, you'll start looking for my answer. That means, Rei-kun, making your ceiling as high as I am."
"If your height is the limit, then I—"
"I'm B-rank," Teacher said with a laugh. "I'm not high enough to be Humanity's Strongest's ceiling."
"It's true that there's nothing left for me to teach you. From here on, there's no one anywhere on Earth who can add anything to your sword. It's your turn to name your own sensations. ...You can do it. I've given you everything, including how to do it."
Then Teacher took a bundle of envelopes from the desk drawer.
They contained everything: documents summarizing the requirements for establishing an independent clan, a draft recommendation letter to the Association, procedures for leaving Genbu without making trouble, even the order in which to visit the departments that had looked after him. He had everything ready. Rei couldn't ask how long he'd been preparing it.
"Congratulations on graduating. Oh, and—even after going independent, keep making that fist with your toes inside your shoes. That one will serve you for life."
"Can I see you again?"
"If you run into trouble, come see me. Though I doubt you'll ever be in trouble again."
That was the last night Rei saw Teacher—until two days ago, when he bowed in the exterior corridor of the thirty-two-year-old apartment building.
The world said he'd been betrayed and left behind when his students went independent. Apparently, that was what people said even inside Genbu.
The opposite was true.
We hadn't abandoned him, and he hadn't abandoned us. Teacher had designed all five of our graduations, one by one, in that drawer. He had done it so that his students' ceilings would not be limited by his own height.
◇
Rei looked out the dark window.
It had been two years and sixteen days since that night. He'd counted them, absurdly precisely—the days until their reunion. He had done nothing but count.
Hundreds of times, his finger had stopped over the phonebook, but he had never managed to call because someone who had received a perfect diploma had no excuse to return to the classroom. Teacher's design had been perfect, and Rei had become the perfect graduate.
But, Teacher.
There was one thing missing from your blueprint.
The blueprint for you, after sending all five of us out into the world.
Once all five students had graduated, Teacher was the only one left in the classroom. Then Genbu branded the coach with no students a "parasite" and cast him aside. Our graduations—the five diplomas that should have been Teacher's medals—had been used as an excuse to drive him out.
If he'd wanted to investigate, he could have done it anytime. With the authority of the number-one-ranked explorer, it would have taken one phone call.
He hadn't. He had hidden behind the beautiful word "graduation" and pretended not to notice for two years.
A six-tatami room with ¥58,000 rent. Secondhand equipment costing ¥30,000. Even the way Teacher held his teacup hadn't changed. Two days ago, all Rei could think to do was bring him tea leaves worth about a month's food budget. He quietly felt ashamed of himself.
What was missing wasn't tea leaves.
There was a student named Hina in the classroom now. One day, she'd become Teacher's new source of pride. But—the five who had graduated and never once returned to the classroom were a separate matter.
Rei picked up his terminal and opened the group thread for the five of them, which had barely been active since his independence. Hidō Mio. Shishiōmaru. Yagarasu. Shirose Kokoro. The last post was two years ago—the thread had ended with Kokoro's "Hope you're all doing well," the last of them to leave the classroom.
Tonight, his finger did not stop.
【Teacher is alone. How long are you guys going to keep pretending not to notice?】
Sent.
The notification at one in the morning must have lit up four screens somewhere in the world simultaneously.
――Before even a minute had passed, one read receipt appeared.