Chapter 11
That spark had begun quietly smoldering somewhere beyond Shin's knowledge.
The Explorers category of a major anonymous bulletin board.
'【Verification】 The Case of the Mysterious Account "There from the Start" in Shin-sensei's Likes Section'
The thread starter's argument went like this. Ever since the Intrusion, the analysts' attention had shifted to whether the other four students were watching the course too. So they compared the public likes on every archive, and one strange account stood out.
The account name: "m_0."
・The account was registered the day after Lesson One.
・It had zero posts, zero comments, and followed only the course channel.
・It had no profile icon. A completely silent account.
・And yet, it had liked every lesson from the first to the latest.
・Furthermore, every like had been made, as far as they could confirm, sometime during the four o'clock hour.
【Just an early-rising fan, right?】
【Wait. m_0. M and zero. ...Couldn't that be read as "Mio"?】
【Huh?】
【Hidō Mio. The "Witch of Dawn." You know—the one who's been seen training alone at daybreak over and over?】
【That's a hell of a leap... though, yeah, that registration date...】
The thread grew explosively overnight, and the matter would be brought up on the next day's livestream.
◇
"All right, then. To wrap things up, it's time for the usual Q&A."
The livestream was now on its twenty-second broadcast. Picking up a few viewer questions at the end had been a tradition since around the third.
"'Between solo exploration and party exploration, which should beginners start with?'—Good question. The answer is party exploration. But not because it's 'safer.' A beginner exploring solo has no way to notice their own mistakes. A mistake only becomes a mistake when someone beside you is watching. ...Though, well, that's what I used to do for a living."
【He says it so casually, but that's heavy】
【That's the core of the whole course】
"Next. 'I watch Teacher's course while sitting in seiza.' That's not a question. Make yourself comfortable. You'll have trouble on the third level if you ruin your knees. All right, next—"
I had started reading it aloud when my hand paused for just a moment.
'Question. People are saying that the account "m_0," which has liked every archive, might belong to Hidō Mio-san. Does that ring any bells, Teacher?'
The comments visibly began to race faster.
【Here it comes】
【You're really going to ask that?】
【Don't bring the doxxing crowd's worst habits in here】
【But I was curious】
Now, I had no way of knowing whether it was her. I truly had no way of knowing—but the instant I saw the line about the four o'clock hour, nostalgia came before any answer.
"As for whether it's her... only the person in question can know that."
I think I was probably smiling a little.
"Mio-chan was the kind of girl who liked reviewing at dawn. If she's still doing that, that would make me happy."
【Oh.】
【Aaaaaah—】
【Teacher, isn't that basically confirmation!?】
"That girl never used what she'd been taught that same day. She let it sit overnight, then went over it by herself once more at dawn. Without anyone teaching her, she found the most effective way to review. So all I taught her was how to borrow the key to the training ground at dawn. That's more or less what being a coach is."
【If she heard this, she'd cry】
【What if she's watching?】
【She is watching, isn't she? (looking at the likes section)】
【Wait, am I taking the same course as Hidō Mio-san...?】
"Hina-chan, do your assignment. ...Well, if you're someone else, my apologies. m_0-san, thank you for all the likes. Whoever you are, reviewing at dawn is a good practice. The air is quiet, and things sink in well."
◇
She was watching.
More than that, Hidō Mio had been waiting, as usual, in a darkened room with her breath held from thirty seconds before the livestream began.
'Mio-chan was the kind of girl who liked reviewing at dawn.'
The device slipped from her hand.
On the screen lying on the carpet, the stream continued as though nothing had happened. Mio crouched there, unable to pick up the fallen device. Her heartbeat was deafening. Even during the final stage of her S-rank certification exam, it had never sounded like this.
—He knows.
No, he hadn't figured it out. Teacher hadn't confirmed anything. He hadn't—but the way he'd said it. That voice.
'If she's still doing that, that would make me happy.'
"Mmmmm—"
A sound escaped her that wasn't a voice. At twenty-three, Hidō Mio—the strongest mage in humanity, the woman who had rewritten modern magical theory three times—had hazy memories of what followed. Before she knew it, she was on her bed with the futon pulled over her head, her feet kicking wildly. Her reason was telling her to stop. Her feet refused to stop. Magic control: S. Foot control: E.
Sixteen-year-old Hidō Mio had been a child who couldn't speak to anyone.
Endless diagrams of magical theory spread through her mind, but when she tried to put them into words, not a single line got through. She couldn't join the circles of her peers, her instructor's assessment read "No cooperative skills," and the empty training ground before dawn was the only place where she could breathe.
One morning before dawn, an unremarkable middle-aged man was standing in that training ground.
"Oh, sorry. I don't mean to get in your way," the middle-aged man said. "It's just... you reworked the spell formula from yesterday's lesson, didn't you? It was better than the one in the lesson. Could you write down the reasoning in your notebook sometime? You don't have to say it aloud. Just write it."
You don't have to say it aloud.
I doubt that man even now knows how much those words meant.
For the next two years, she wrote, and that man read. Without anything resembling a conversation, the exchange of notebooks transformed a taciturn underachiever into humanity's strongest mage. On the morning of her first high-difficulty mission, that man handed her an awkward little hand-sewn pouch. "A good-luck charm. Just something to put your mind at ease." Inside was a single scrap torn from that man's notebook.
'Hidō Mio's strength lies not in being bad with words, but in the sincerity that more than makes up for it. She alone doesn't know that.'
The pouch, with that paper still inside, was in the top drawer of her desk even now.
Under the futon, Mio pulled the device toward her. There was a thread she'd opened and closed hundreds of times over the past two days: a mass message from Rei—the first in two years.
【Teacher is alone. How long are you guys going to keep pretending not to notice?】
She marked it as read within a minute. She happened to be looking at the screen that night, too. As for replying—she still couldn't. She hadn't been pretending not to notice. She noticed every morning at four. She simply still couldn't write a single line to tell him, even after all these years.
On the eleven-second call she'd made with her number hidden, she hung up the moment he said her name.
She still couldn't write the words. She couldn't call, either.
But.
Mio extended only one arm from beneath the futon and opened the settings screen for her alt account. Then she opened the desk drawer and photographed the old hand-sewn pouch with the utmost care.
◇
At noon the next day, a screenshot was posted to that verification thread.
【Hey】
【Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa】
【"m_0" has a profile icon now】
An image had been set in the gray circle that had remained at its default setting. It was a photograph of an ordinary, awkward little hand-sewn pouch. It was old, its corners worn smooth, but the photograph made it clear that it had been carefully treasured.
No one in the doxxing crowd could figure out what it was.
The only certain thing was that the silent account, which had remained silent since Lesson One, had communicated something for the first time.
【What do you suppose this is?】
【I don't know, but somehow I get it】
【Don't touch this. It's progress. Just watch quietly】
【By the way, there are about three other suspicious accounts in the likes section that have stayed silent the whole time】
◇
That same week, at the Dungeon Agency's Safety Statistics Division in Kasumigaseki.
A young employee preparing the monthly report was frowning at a graph.
The dungeon death and injury rate for mid-level explorers—those in the C- to B-rank range—had clearly fallen since the previous month. There had been no revision to the equipment standards. No major clearing strategy had been discovered. Suspecting a tabulation error, the employee reran the calculations three times, but the line still sloped downward at exactly the same angle.
"...What is this number?"
An unexplained phenomenon in which people stopped dying.
No one had yet noticed that the date on which the line had begun to slope downward coincided with the launch of a certain beginner's course.