Chapter 4

Haruto looked at Munechika with a helpless expression.

"You come from a distinguished noble family in the Seireitei, while I'm a commoner from the Rukongai who doesn't even have a surname."

Haruto knew exactly how to make the most of public opinion.

Although he had earned all his reputation points with the girls in his class, those words instantly struck a chord with quite a few of the boys.

"By rights, I shouldn't challenge your authority."

"But!"

Haruto's words remained mild, but his tone had grown heavier without anyone noticing.

"So I won't put Teacher Mutsuki in a difficult position..."

At just the right moment, Haruto glanced back at Mutsuki Shōkaku.

Unfortunately, Mutsuki had been Haruto's teacher for five whole years. She knew him too well

and knew exactly what he was up to. As far as Mutsuki was concerned, this sort of attempt to earn favor would only fool a young girl from the Ise Clan.

"Today, I can give you what you want."

Seeing that his show of loyalty had failed, Haruto calmly turned his gaze back to Munechika.

"What did you say?"

The excitement Munechika couldn't suppress betrayed the confusion he had put on his face.

"A Live-Blade Match—"

"Haven't you always wanted to spar with me?"

Haruto had the edge over Munechika in grades, but he had kept the gap very subtle. At Shin'ō Academy, where students were judged using only four grades—A, B, C, and D—the difference was far too vague.

Shigekuni Yamamoto's original idea in establishing this grading system had probably been to prevent students from becoming too competitive with one another.

After all, the Gotei 13 had only recently been established at the time. Having just transformed from an organization of killers, it had certainly needed a little more harmony.

But if Shinigami, whose profession kept them constantly in the company of death, lost their competitive spirit, how could they survive fighting Hollows?

Shigekuni Yamamoto only wanted to avoid pointless losses. When the need arose, students still had to defend their dignity and interests with the swords in their hands.

At Shin'ō Academy, such conduct was known as:

A Live-Blade Match.

Previous volume: 003, a real blade

A Live-Blade Match.

As the name suggested, it was a contest fought with real blades, and injuries were commonplace.

Since it was a match held within Shin'ō Academy, however, its intensity was kept under control. A Seated Officer of the Gotei 13 served as referee, while Shinigami proficient in Kaidō stood by outside the arena.

The chance of dying was low.

Even so, Haruto had little interest in Live-Blade Matches precisely because of that.

He wasn't worried about getting hurt or damaging his reputation. To him, the contest was simply no different from children playing house.

Live-Blade Matches focused on the use of the "sword," so for Shinigami, they naturally became contests centered on Zanpakuto.

However, the "Asauchi" in the students' hands were still weapons temporarily loaned to them by Shin'ō Academy. They would only be formally granted one after becoming Shinigami.

At their current stage,

the real blades they held could only be used for ordinary slashes.

It wasn't that Haruto neglected the fundamentals of swordsmanship. If anything, he trained harder at them than anyone else. It was simply that, at present, the "real blade" played too small a part in the "match"—so small that he would rather spend his time on Kidō.

Of swordsmanship, hand-to-hand combat, movement, and Kidō, only Kidō was best suited to students.

The more imposing-sounding name "Shinigami Academy" had never caught on. Instead,

Central Spiritual Arts Academy had become the name of the academy founded on the basis of the Genji Academy. “Spiritual arts” carried a great deal of weight in that name.

Munechika had thought it through.

Haruto did have the edge over Munechika in grades, but deciding which of them was stronger in a fight was not so clear-cut.

Haruto's kendo fundamentals were inferior to Munechika's, who had trained with his family since childhood. Haruto also came from the Rukongai, and his physical constitution was weaker than that of an ordinary student, let alone Munechika, who had grown up in comfort.

Kidō was the only thing Haruto was better at than Munechika.

Yet Haruto's talent in Kidō alone had allowed his grades to easily match or even surpass Munechika's other strong subjects. It was only natural that Munechika resented it—anyone would have found it hard to bear constantly eating someone else's dust and carrying the title of eternal runner-up.

Normally,

Munechika, who knew there wasn't much of a gap between them, wouldn't have been so impulsive. Today, however, was a little different.

Although she had hidden herself well, Haruto had still spotted the girl behind Munechika. Her name was Juzu Izumi. She wasn't tall, but she was cute and spoke sweetly, making her popular among her fellow students, specifically the boys.

Unfortunately,

although Haruto considered himself broad-minded, when it came to a tea girl who spoke in a coy, sugary voice, he was helpless to help her from the bottom of his heart.

After Haruto had cleanly rejected her public confession on the grounds that he needed to focus on his studies, Juzu Izumi had developed just a tiny little grudge against him:

That included, but was not limited to, launching attacks on his reputation through the opposite sex.

It had to be said that Miss Juzu's assistance had played a major part in Haruto's current poor reputation.

Those little things didn't affect Haruto much, though.

Otherwise, given that his capacity for tolerance was barely larger than his eyes, he would certainly have shown no mercy when it came time to strike from the shadows. Haruto had earned a great deal of reputation among the girls at Shin'ō Academy, and before Juzu Izumi confessed to him, he had already known about the bet between her and her best friend over "how long it would take to win him over."

Now, a few troublesome matters had come together to make a small problem.

At the training ground just now, Juzu Izumi had happened to be the student whose grade had been affected by his Byakurai, and as her new boyfriend, Mikazuki Munechika naturally had to shoulder the burden of standing up for her.

Both had their own little schemes: one wanted to latch onto a noble boyfriend, while the other wanted to carry out a software-hardening project without a hitch.

Either way,

since the two of them had set their sights on him, Haruto decided it would be best to teach them a little lesson.

Mutsuki Shōkaku pinched her empty sleeve.

When Haruto proposed a Live-Blade Match, she had originally intended to speak up and stop him.

As the person about to take charge of Year Six, Class One, she had nothing to gain and everything to lose from a Live-Blade Match between Haruto and Munechika.

That was especially true for Haruto.

Win or lose, he would probably have a hard time over the coming year, and even after graduating from Shin'ō Academy.

Losing would be a severe blow to his confidence. Mutsuki knew her student's temperament well: although he seemed even-tempered and easy to get along with, he was actually quite proud. For a student his age, such a setback could very well leave him unable to recover. Among the students Mutsuki had taught, there had been geniuses who suffered similar setbacks and faded into mediocrity.

If he won...

Actually, win or lose, the Mikazuki Clan wouldn't let Haruto off. The only difference would probably be the methods they used against him.

The best solution Mutsuki could think of was for Haruto to join a noble family and be granted a surname. As an outstanding graduate of Shin'ō Academy, a "nameless" person from the Rukongai would be eligible for that.

Her own Mutsuki Clan, for example, had rigid family traditions and had fallen on hard times, but it was at least still counted among the middle-ranking nobility.

At that thought, Mutsuki Shōkaku couldn't help blushing. Being granted a noble surname wasn't so simple. The only way Mutsuki could think of at present was for him to marry into the family, and as for the women of marriageable age in the Mutsuki Clan, which was short of capable people...

"Ahem."

Mutsuki Shōkaku cleared her throat twice, shook the unrealistic thoughts from her head, and withdrew the glance she had just cast at Haruto.

That boy Haruto wasn't exactly handsome; there were plenty of better-looking people at Shin'ō Academy. Yet the self-assured air she normally hated seeing was strangely attractive on him. No wonder so many young girls were interested in him.

Aside from that,

he could either be accepted by a great noble family or join the Fifth Division like her. Given the captain's personality, the captain would surely be able to protect Haruto from the nobles.

Both options required Haruto to achieve sufficiently dazzling results during his time at the academy.

But whether it was the Kuchiki Clan or the Fifth Division, Haruto's current performance was not quite enough to earn him a place. If he was only a household servant or an ordinary division member, the people at the top wouldn't spare him a glance.

When Mutsuki joined the Fifth Division, she had gone straight into the Eighth Seat.

Although Haruto had shown talent in Kidō, the spells he excelled at were numbered far too low. In Mutsuki's experience, students should try to master as many types of Kidō as possible to deal with different combat situations, rather than specialize in just one.

Specialization was something to consider after hitting a bottleneck... In any case, Mutsuki believed she still hadn't reached that point.

So,

for Haruto, a Live-Blade Match was a rare opportunity.

If Haruto could seize it and put on a brilliant match, then even if his grades at graduation were a little lacking, he could at least leave a fairly deep impression on the important people visiting Shin'yō Spiritual Arts Academy.

"All right."

Mutsuki Shōkaku ignored the many gazes directed at her.

After confirming that Munechika had no intention of refusing, she readily agreed to Haruto's request to hold a Live-Blade Match.

"I agree!"

Shin'ō Grand Training Ground.

The grounds, right next to the grand assembly hall, were where Live-Blade Matches were held. Since nothing of the sort had happened at Shin'ō Academy for several years, the place was being used today for the sixth-year graduates' Hakuda assessment.

For Shin'ō Academy graduates, both their assessments and their employment choices had to be completed in a single day.

As a warm-up before the all-important Kidō assessment, the Hakuda assessment clearly didn't require much effort. The graduates only had to go through the prescribed combat movements in order. As for actual Hakuda techniques that required an infusion of spiritual pressure...

There were none.

Yet even this assessment, with a pass rate of over ninety-nine percent, had left several students whose graduation results were already on a knife's edge—

Ding!

A bell rang out in the grand training ground, and the students in the center, who had barely managed to keep their movements from faltering, were visibly startled by the sudden sound.

"C grade!"

"C grade, failed!"

The teacher serving as referee announced their grades without mercy.

It wasn't that the referee disregarded the bond between teacher and student. Rather, the grounds were right next to the Shin'ō Grand Assembly Hall. If a referee made any questionable move, the captains and lieutenants of the divisions inside might see it—and even if they didn't, the other Shinigami teachers wouldn't pass up such a perfect chance to stir up a scandal.

And so—

"No!"

"Teacher, please give me another chance!"

Even as wails rose one after another throughout the grounds, the Shinigami referee remained utterly impartial.

Before the graduation exams, Shin'ō Academy roughly ranked its students based on their performance during "Soul Burial practice," mainly to save the Kidō Corps and the Gotei 13 time when selecting recruits. As for the Punishment Force, due to the Shihoin Clan's actions in recent years, its selection process had essentially merged with that of the Second Division. Higher-ranked students took their assessments earlier, a considerable difference from the completely random exam order in the fifth year.

The students in the grand training ground were the second-to-last group.

Even if they were given a break on their Hakuda grades, it was hard to say whether they could make a breakthrough in the more important Kidō assessment. More importantly, even if these graduates joined the Gotei 13, their future achievements would be very limited.

For the referee, the choice couldn't have been clearer.

However,

although the referee looked quite calm, he too had been startled by the rather sudden bell just now.

When he turned his gaze toward the entrance to the grand training ground—

"Those two..."

The referee carefully recalled what the two looked like.

"The Mikazuki Clan kid shouldn't be that capable. Haruto's grades are good, but he should still be a little way from graduating."