Chapter 2
The viewer count: 【1】.
I stared at the displayed name—【Amaha Hina】—for a while.
Amaha Hina, an E-rank explorer. Four straight failures of the D-rank promotion exam.
After spending twenty years in a corner of the industry, devouring death reports and exam records, there were names I couldn't help but remember. Hers was famous for all the wrong reasons. “A hard worker, but hopelessly lacking in aptitude.” “Failing four times is a problem that comes before talent.” It was the kind of name that became the subject of jokes in a guild waiting room.
Why was that girl taking my course?
“...Well, I suppose I do the same thing no matter who's watching.”
That night, she didn't say a word during the stream. The viewer count 【1】 stayed at 【1】 until the moment I pressed the end-stream button.
I noticed something strange only after ending the stream.
The archives of the first two streams. Although no one should have seen them, the comment sections were packed with questions.
【12:34 You mentioned “don't put too much weight on your heels” when talking about stance, but is putting too much weight on your toes bad too?】
【23:05 How can I fix my habit of dropping the shoulder on the side holding my shield?】
【41:50 When you say “don't hold your breath,” does that include the moment you're attacked?】
Twenty-three of them, all with timestamps.
I read one and instinctively straightened my back. ...Those were good questions. Every one of them was the kind of question only someone who had actually tried the course would ask. It was only the third day of streaming, and she was already putting it into practice.
I forgot to cook rice as I wrote replies to all twenty-three questions. Several hundred words per question. By the time I noticed, it was morning.
It wasn't enthusiasm or anything. Answering questions was my job, something I'd been doing for twenty years—in other words, routine work.
...That was how it was supposed to be.
◇
On the fourth night, the viewer count rose to 【1】 as soon as the stream began.
【Good evening. Thank you for answering my questions in the archive. I read all your replies three times】
“No problem. Three times is a bit much, though.”
【Um, I have something I'd like to ask you】
After a brief pause, a URL appeared. It was an official recording from the Explorers' Association—candidate number seventeen in last month's D-rank promotion exam. A record of Amaha Hina failing for the fourth time.
【This is a recording of my exam. Could you watch it and tell me what I did wrong? The guild instructor told me, “Everything.”】
So she went with “everything,” huh.
“I'll play it.”
In the mock-battle area, she was unable to deflect a thrust from the examiner that could hardly be called fast, and went tumbling out of bounds forty seconds after the start. I see. It was awful. Anyone watching from the side would have wanted to say, “Everything is wrong,” after seeing a breakdown like that.
But there is no such thing as someone who is bad at everything. Every breakdown has a first piece.
I rewound the footage and stopped it three seconds after the start.
“Yeah, I see it.”
【Huh?】
“Your center of gravity rises at the very start of your step. Before you take your first step, your heel is already leaving the floor too soon. So your upper body moves first, and your gaze wavers every time. Since your gaze wavers, you can't see your opponent's initial movement. Since you can't see it, you're always reacting late. At this rate, you'll die on the third floor.”
The comment section went quiet for a few seconds.
【What? How can you tell!?】
“No, it's right there in the footage.”
【The first three seconds of a forty-second video!? None of the guild instructors ever said anything like that—】
“The instructor isn't at fault. People who can do things by feel simply can't see the logic behind why someone can't. ...Want to try fixing it?”
【I will.】
“The hallway at home will do. Before you step forward, grip the floor once with your toes. Like making a fist inside your shoe. Keep your heel on the floor until the very end. Then step. ...That's all.”
【That's all?】
“That's all. Pretty plain, right? Probably shockingly plain. —But you'll stop dying.”
It was a basic exercise I'd done a thousand times twenty years ago so I wouldn't die. It was written on the first page of my third notebook.
I wasn't teaching her anything special.
At the time, I truly thought so.
◇
—It was anything but merely plain.
Amaha Hina was seventeen. In the hallway of her apartment in the dead of night, she had one hand against the wall.
(Grab the floor with my toes...)
Honestly, she was only half convinced. Four years, four failures. Her instructors had given up on her, all her peers had advanced before her, and her mother had made her promise to quit if she didn't show any promise by the time she graduated high school.
Could everything wrong with her really come down to a single habit? That was impossible.
Even so, she did it simply because she had nothing else left to cling to.
A hundred repetitions. All she felt was discomfort.
Three hundred repetitions. She suddenly noticed that her vision wasn't shaking after she stepped.
By the time she'd passed a thousand repetitions, the hallway window was beginning to pale.
After a few hours of sleep, that afternoon, she descended to the second floor as usual. It was the absolute limit of an E-rank explorer's solo range. Her goal was to gather medicinal herbs and engage in what was practically an excuse to herself for “real combat training.”
At a corner in the passage, she encountered a Gray Hound.
A standard second-floor monster, a dog-like creature that pounced from a low stance. Hina was terrible at fighting it. She could never see the moment it leaped, and it always sent her flying, shield and all, leaving her to roll away and run. It had been that way for four years.
The Gray Hound growled. Hina gripped the floor with her toes.
—The world changed.
It wasn't that everything had gone into slow motion. It wasn't a Skill or magic. Her gaze simply wasn't wavering. That alone let her “see” for the first time in her life. Right before the Gray Hound leaped, its hind legs sank down hard—that initial movement.
(...I can see it.)
A half-step forward and to the left was all it took; the Gray Hound bit at the air where she had been and exposed its unguarded flank. Her descending sword struck it accurately, following the exact same trajectory as a practice swing.
As she watched the monster dissolve into motes of light, Hina sank to the floor. The hand gripping her sword was trembling. It wasn't from fear.
The way the world looked—something she hadn't understood despite four years, hundreds of brushes with death, and all the ridicule—had become clear with a single sentence.
All from curling her toes a thousand times in a hallway.
“...What is this...?”
After roughly wiping away the tears running down her cheeks, she failed to notice that, farther down the passage, a camera belonging to a party of streamers returning from the third floor had accidentally captured the whole scene in the corner of its frame.
◇
That night's stream. The viewer count: 【1】.
The moment it began, the comment section flooded with messages.
【Teacher】
【I can see it now】
【I saw the Gray Hound's initial movement. For the first time in my life, I dodged it and slashed it】
【Teacher, please teach me more】
I was silent for a moment in front of the microphone.
...I see. You saw it.
“I'd rather you didn't call me ‘Teacher.’ ...But, sure.”
I opened my second notebook. In the classroom that had once been empty, one student was now sitting there.
“Then today, I'll talk about how not to die after dodging. Lesson Five—‘Where You Put Your First Step Determines Your Second Strike.’”
What I'd taught her was just the basics. The basics I'd written in my notebooks over the past twenty years—things that had never been put into words for anyone, though anyone could do them.
At the time, I still had no idea that it could somehow change the world.
◇
That same night, as midnight approached and the date changed.
A comment appeared on the exploration archive of a mid-level streamer called “Gamma.”
【1:22:08 Look at the far left of the screen】
【What's with this girl's dodging? Didn't she dodge the Gray Hound's leap after seeing it?】
【And this gear is E-rank, right? ...Wait. Isn't this the girl with those four straight failures?】
At two in the morning, someone clipped those twelve seconds.