Chapter 14
The preview was posted the night before.
In the announcement section of the stream page, there was just one line: —'Next Time, Episode 28: "How to Walk Through a Snow-Mountain-Type Dungeon."'
An hour later, a thread appeared on the Explorers' board of an anonymous bulletin board.
'【Preview】 Shin's Course Finally Reaches Snow-Mountain Type'
【That's the one that had the most votes in the request box, right?】
【People die in that type even in summer, let alone winter. There's nothing but demand for it.】
【Hey. Speaking of snow-mountain type...】
【Don't say it.】
【There's only one person in recorded history who has cleared the deep levels of a snow-mountain-type dungeon solo, right?】
【I said don't say it.】
【"The Witch of Dawn," Hidō Mio. Shin-sensei's second student.】
【And there's that silent account that only becomes active at four in the morning in the course's likes section.】
【m_0-san, are you watching? Tomorrow's your specialty.】
◇
As for me, it was another peaceful day.
I cooked rice, leafed through my notebook, and prepared for the night's stream. I stopped counting the days of my wholesome unemployed life sometime after twenty. The viewers had chewed me out for appearing on the worldwide trends list while unemployed.
The snow-mountain volume sat on my desk. That notebook, dated six years ago.
That night, when I pressed the stream-start button, the viewer count passed 【400,000】 within the first minute. All that from a one-line preview.
"Good evening, I'm Shin. If there are any first-time viewers, let me give the usual spiel. This is a course for beginners. I won't be covering flashy techniques or talking about the strongest gear. It's dull. Probably shockingly dull."
【We know.】
【But I have a feeling it won't be possible to keep things dull today.】
"Episode Twenty-Eight: 'How to Walk Through a Snow-Mountain-Type Dungeon.' ...But before that, there's something I need to make clear at the start today."
I set down my teacup and gave the camera a small bow.
"Snow-mountain type isn't my specialty."
【Huh?】
【There's something outside your specialty?】
【The man who rewrote twenty years of accepted wisdom is saying this?】
"My own record in snow-mountain type only goes as far as the third level. I don't know the deep levels from personal experience. Pretending to know something I don't is the one thing this course must never do, so I wanted to say that first. —So what am I talking about today? An observation record."
I turned the notebook's cover toward the camera.
"There is one mage in all of humanity who has cleared the deep levels of a snow-mountain-type dungeon alone. Six years ago, I was allowed to observe that person's training continuously at the training ground before dawn. Today's lesson is a notebook in which I put those observations into words. As for the person's permission... well, let's call it past the statute of limitations."
【You mean...】
【Don't say the rest.】
【He said "the training ground before dawn," you guys.】
【Look at the likes section. She's already here tonight.】
"Now, to the main subject. First, I'll talk about the order in which people die in snow-mountain type. When you hear 'snow mountain,' you probably think of falling or freezing to death. But the leading cause of death is something else. —'Sensory cutoff.'"
Snow takes away your vision. It swallows sound. And—it wipes out the information from the soles of your feet.
"You normally read the ground through the soles of your feet: its slope, hardness, and vibrations. Even when you aren't consciously aware of it. Snow wraps around all of that like a blanket and erases it. A person whose eyes, ears, and soles are blocked at once will lose their posture to their own fear before a monster ever appears. So this is the first line of snow-mountain fundamentals: —Keep the sensation in the soles of your feet."
Grip the floor with your toes inside your shoes. It was the same old fundamental, one I'd repeated more times than I could count in this course.
"You really need that on snow. And one more thing. It's July right now, but inside snow-mountain-type dungeons, there's a blizzard year-round. An uncomfortably large number of summer accident reports say, 'It was hot outside, so I lightened my cold-weather gear.' The seasons outside are for outside. Inside, there is only the season inside."
【That hits close to home.】
【Stop talking about what happened to me last week (snow-mountain type, immediately turned back).】
"And one bit of administrative news. I've submitted Hina-chan's recommendation paperwork for her B-rank promotion exam. The exam is the week after next. She should be completely buried in assignments right now. ...Though when it's a snow-mountain lesson, I have a feeling she'll come watch at the expense of her homework."
【Already B-rank!?】
【She hasn't even been C-rank for a month yet!】
【There isn't anyone left in this world who can object to Teacher's assessment of her, is there?】
"Next, I'll talk about the cold air. ...And here we have this."
I tapped a page in the notebook with my finger. In the margins was a note that had caught my eye every time I'd opened it over the past six years: 【Forgot to ask where the cold air comes from.】
"I'll be honest. From here on, we're beyond what I was able to reach through observation alone. As for where the cold air in the deep levels comes from, I can only form a hypothesis based on what I saw from outside. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry. —My hypothesis is that the cold air comes not from above, but..."
That was when I stopped mid-sentence.
A blue verification badge slipped smoothly into the flood of comments.
【Hidō Mio—Official】'Addendum. The cold air below the fourth level doesn't come from the ceiling. It wells up from cracks in the floor. Explorers who have a habit of reading the wind with their faces are the first to die. What Teacher said about keeping the sensation in the soles of your feet is the highest priority in snow-mountain type.'
The comments stopped.
Three seconds of silence in a classroom of half a million people. And then—it was an avalanche.
【!?!?】
【Official!? With a verification badge!?】
【Hidō Mio is hereeeee!】
【The actual snow-mountain specialist came to the snow-mountain episode!】
【Is there really a way to open with "Addendum"?】
【She didn't come as m_0. She came on the official account. Do you understand what this means?】
As for me, I read that one line twice, then laughed despite myself.
"...Ah, so it really does come from below. I've been forgetting to ask you that for six years."
I drew a line through the note in the margin and wrote the answer beside it. One piece of six-year-old homework had finally been cleared away.
"Mio-chan, long time no see. ...Can I keep going while you add your notes?"
There was a three-second pause.
【Hidō Mio—Official】'Go ahead.'
【That's not the point! (crying)】
【Their first conversation in two years is "Go ahead"?】
【No, this is probably the correct form of conversation for this teacher and student.】
Even now, I don't quite know what to call the hour that followed.
I talked about what could be seen from outside. She supplemented it with the reasoning from inside.
We talked about whiteouts. "It looked to me as though she shortened her incantations in the blizzard—"
【Hidō Mio—Official】'Correction. I didn't shorten them. I divided them into sections. Under hypothermia, the circulation of magic drops by thirty percent in a single breath. Dividing an incantation into three sections lets you make up the loss through your breathing.'
【The correction is here.】
【There was a human being who could correct Teacher.】
【The Correction Mage.】
【It's a full lesson disguised as a correction, isn't it?】
Then we talked about magical residue on snow. The moment I explained how to read it, there was another line.
【Hidō Mio—Official】'Addendum. Residue remains three times as long on fresh snow. It can be used for tracking, but it can also be used to track you. If you want to erase your trail, erase the residue before the footprints. Doing it in the opposite order is pointless.'
【I-I'm taking a class in the same classroom as Hidō Mio-san...! My notes can't keep up...!】
【Hidō Mio—Official】'Amaha-san. Stop writing and listen. It will stay with you better. The recording won't disappear.'
【She even started teaching her junior.】
【This classroom's faculty is ridiculously impressive.】
"—Well, all that aside..."
After we'd gone on for a while, I picked up my teacup and, without thinking, let something slip.
"Mio-chan, you really are diligent about studying. ...Did you all know? This girl's notebooks were incredible. I'd write down my observations and hand them to her, right? By the next morning, they'd come back with three times as much verification written in the margins. Tonight feels a little like we're continuing those old notebooks. —Teacher's a little happy."
The flow of the comments changed.
【Hey.】
【Teacher, do you realize what you just said?】
【We're watching a live broadcast of an exchange of notebooks, aren't we?】
【The "Addendum" is standing in for the phone call she couldn't make for two years.】
【All the "thank yous" represented by her four-in-the-morning likes on every archive have finally become words tonight.】
【She could only choose to say it as an addendum. She doesn't know any other way to talk to people.】
【Don't cry.】
【As if that's possible.】
The verification badge did not appear again for a while.
Eventually, one line.
【Hidō Mio—Official】'...That is all for the addendum.'
After a beat, one more line.
【Hidō Mio—Official】'I'm sorry it took me so long to answer your question from six years ago.'
"No."
I shook my head toward the student on the other side of the screen, not even knowing where she was now.
"A single lesson just took six years to finish. —Thank you. Tonight's was a good notebook."
The night's concurrent viewer count set a record second only to the interruption stream. The clip was titled 'The Snow-Mountain Correction Mage,' and by then no one was surprised by how quickly its views climbed.
The top pinned comment on the clip read:
【We just saw the world's most awkward "I'm home" and its gentlest "Welcome home."】
◇
After watching the stream-end button get pressed, Hidō Mio set her device on the carpet and gazed up at the ceiling of her unlit room.
Her heart was still pounding.
There were forty-one unsent drafts in the memo app on her device. Some began with 'Long time no see.' Others began with 'About what happened that day.' Every one of them stopped at the second line, and she couldn't delete a single one. It had been that way for two years.
Tonight, she understood something for the first time.
She couldn't write a greeting. She still couldn't write her thanks or her apology. But—she could write an addendum. If all she had to do was place what she knew beside that man's words, she could do it. It was what she had been doing since she was sixteen, at the training ground before dawn.
(...Even after two years, we could still exchange notebooks.)
Mio sat up and went to her desk. She glanced once at the hand-sewn pouch in the top drawer, then began typing a long direct message with the speed she used for reports.
To: Shin-sensei. Addendum to tonight's addendum. A diagram of the procedure for erasing magical residue from snow surfaces. Measured data on the decline in circulation under hypothermia. A hand-drawn map of the crack distribution on the sixth level. The writing style was exactly the same as a report submitted to the Association—businesslike, precise, and entirely free of personal feeling: a perfect document.
She finished it, read it over, and added just one line at the end.
It looked like a continuation of the document, but it wasn't part of the document. It was an unverified rumor she'd picked up three days ago through contacts from her old circle. There was no proof. None—but her junior was in that classroom now.
Mio hesitated for ten seconds, then pressed Send.
◇
By the time I finished cleaning up, my device vibrated once.
A direct message. When I saw the sender's name, I straightened a little.
It was long. An addendum to tonight's addendum. Diagrams. Measured data. A hand-drawn distribution map. The style of the report itself. I laughed aloud after reading it once. She was meticulous even about the spacing of the margins. Not a thing had changed in six years.
"...Still a good notebook, as ever."
I started typing a reply to thank her—but my scrolling finger stopped at the final line.
That line alone didn't have the face of a document.
'I've heard a rumor that Genbu may make a move at Amaha-san's B-rank exam. Be careful.'
I set down my device and stared at that line for a while.
I'd spent twenty years making a life of observing people. You could tell things from their wording, too. This wasn't something written by someone merely passing along an unconfirmed rumor. It was something written by someone who couldn't bear to leave it unsaid, even without proof.
I opened a fresh page in my notebook and wrote just two lines.
【Amaha Hina—B-rank exam. Preparations unchanged. Fundamentals only.】
【But—the "outside" of the exam is my job.】