After Jun emerged from that profoundly mysterious state, Instructor Hanazawa began teaching him about absorbing Reishi. His words were obscure and difficult to understand, but fortunately, Jun had some grounding in classical Chinese. After picking them apart word by word and sentence by sentence, he more or less understood. Put plainly, it came down to this.
Sensing Reishi was a necessary step toward becoming a Soul Reaper. Once Reishi was sensed, it would activate. The process of sensing Reishi was called Reishi Sense.
The soul body, itself composed of Reishi, would also activate once the Reishi did, but this took time. The process was called Reishi Quality.
Further sensing during this process was beneficial, though how much it helped varied from person to person.
Once the soul body was fully activated—that was, once Reishi Quality was complete—the total amount of Reishi in the soul body was called Basic Spiritual Power. Its amount had a certain effect on Shikai, though the effect was not particularly severe. Because people had different levels of talent, the time it took them to achieve Shikai would ultimately be prolonged to different degrees.
As for Shikai, normally, unless something unexpected happened, every Soul Reaper could achieve it. But Soul Reapers had always suffered a fairly high casualty rate, so Shikai improved their chances of survival, while those who could not achieve it had a higher mortality rate. It was very much a race against time.
The problem was even more pronounced for Jun. He was too young, so his Basic Spiritual Power would be relatively low, which meant he might achieve Shikai even later. Instructor Hanazawa had made this clear to Jun, and Jun now had a general idea of where he stood.
The last point was aptitude. The time it took to go from sensing Reishi to full activation was essentially a person's rate of Spiritual Power absorption. That was aptitude.
Once he had explained everything, and with Senior Yuzu there to help Jun as someone who had been through it herself, Instructor Hanazawa let them go without even holding the afternoon lesson.
Jun was going into seclusion as soon as he got back.
Going into seclusion was actually very simple: all he had to do was shut himself in his room and stay put.
Jun already understood the nature of a Soul Reaper. A soul body was a soul. It certainly wasn't true that it had no survival needs whatsoever, but it didn't have the same needs as a living person. Hunger and thirst could be ignored entirely; it had a built-in ability to go without food. That meant there was no real physical difficulty to going into seclusion.
The only quality left to consider was mental fortitude! How far could he take the idea of racing against time? Could he avoid wasting even a second before achieving full activation?
That required extreme concentration. In his previous life, Jun had worked many jobs and drifted through a good part of his life. In the end, he had become a second- or third-rate screenwriter, living on his dreams while ghostwriting and submitting work wherever he could to make ends meet. Everything in his previous life had taught him how hard it was to get by. Rushing to meet deadlines had been commonplace while he was making a living, and so the pressures of life had forced him to develop formidable powers of concentration. Congratulations were in order?
Jun had not yet faced direct pressure to survive in Soul Society, but it had always weighed on his mind. And just now, a veteran member of the Kidō Corps who had already become a Soul Reaper had told him outright that Soul Reapers had a rather high mortality rate. That had put pressure on Jun in another way.
People were driven to achieve things by necessity. Those words were an absolute truth! At a time like this, when his own aptitude was being determined, everything told Jun to give it his all. As an adult, he was no longer a child; he couldn't waste this opportunity playing around as he had when he was a student in his previous life. Faced with this opportunity, Jun was ready this time.
And so another five days passed.
A muffled thump came from the room.
"Jun-chan!?" Senior Yuzu, who had been keeping watch at the door the whole time, called out when she heard it. "Jun-chan, do you need anything?"
Jun was a little dazed in his room. He had just fallen out of bed. A person would know in their own consciousness when their soul had fully activated, and Jun knew he had succeeded. He had moved, and promptly fallen out of bed.
When Senior Yuzu got no response, she rushed straight in and scooped Jun up from the floor. "Jun-chan~ how are you?"
Jun's spirits lifted: his face happened to be pressed against something soft, and the faint fragrance was lovely too. He was still very dizzy, though. "I'm all right, just a little dizzy. Senior, I think I'll be fine if I get some sleep."
"Mm." Senior Yuzu had been through this herself. As she put Jun back in bed, she said, "Don't push yourself so hard~ Even if your body can take it, your mind can't. This process takes a long time, so don't rush~~"
Jun had wanted to tell his senior that he had succeeded, but this new information made him keep it to himself. Instead, he asked, "How long did it take you seniors to complete this step?"
"Huh!?" Senior Yuzu was a little surprised, but she immediately figured out why Jun had asked. She gently pinched the tip of his nose. "Honestly~ You aren't allowed to ask other people that, you know? But you didn't know, so I'll let you off this time."
"Is that so? Thank you, Senior~" Jun was truly exhausted. He smiled at Senior Yuzu and prepared to sleep.
But before leaving, Yuzu turned back playfully. "Still~ you and I aren't strangers, Jun-chan, so I'll tell you how long it took me. It wasn't a very good result: twenty-three days. I heard that a senior from the Ukitake family once did it in only five days. That was really, really fast~ There~ now you know what you wanted to know, so hurry up and sleep~"
"Okay~ thank you, Senior. Good night~" Jun obediently closed his eyes, but his mind was turning over the information he had just received.
Twenty-three days isn't a very good result? Probably not. Judging by the three girls' abilities... ah~ I still know too little to judge. No point thinking about that.
I know I took first place in the number of days it took to sense Reishi, even beating the record holder, Shunsui Kyōraku. Does that mean I'm really amazing? Probably not. Sensing Reishi seems to require a kind of enlightenment, not hard numbers. I'll drop that too; it can't serve as proof of aptitude.
But that fellow student Aizen who Yuzu mentioned has me a little curious. Aizen shouldn't be a common surname, should it?
The speed at which I completed activation can be used to judge aptitude, though. I don't want people finding out too much about that. I don't need a title like genius. But is that Ukitake Jūshirō Ukitake?
He took five days, and so did I. Considering how young I am and how low my total is, maybe my aptitude is a little lower than Ukitake's? Still, I'd better extend it to ten days. That gives me the next few days to think carefully about what to do from here. OK, sleep. I'm really, really tired.
Over the next few days, Jun actually thought of only one course of action: find that student Aizen. There was still a year until the next graduation season, so there was no way Aizen could get away. But if this man really was Sōsuke Aizen, Jun absolutely could not let him know someone was asking about him, even if Aizen was still just a student.
Thinking back on everything about Aizen in the original story, Jun recalled that before the man became a boss, he had always been perfectly ordinary, without a single striking trait.
Take his looks: back when he wore glasses, Big Boss Aizen really wasn't all that handsome. Once he went to Hueco Mundo, he was practically a different person.
As for strength, when Aizen became a captain, his Shikai, Kyōka Suigetsu, was understood to be an ordinary water-type Zanpakuto. Its release was also the result of his hypnotizing everyone. He had shown nothing exceptional in Kidō either. All in all, his strength was average.
His background was ordinary too. He was the descendant of an ordinary Soul Reaper, neither a noble nor someone from Rukongai. His time at the Spiritual Arts Academy was unremarkable as well. The ones who broke the record for fastest graduation were Gin Ichimaru and Tōshirō Hitsugaya; Sōsuke Aizen was nowhere among them. So he hadn't stood out.
Thus, after a long climb through the ranks, Aizen had eventually become a captain. His path to promotion in Soul Society had been so ordinary that the only appraisal he ultimately received was "efficient at getting things done." He was very steady.
It had to be said, he really had hidden himself well.
And Aizen's path was the one Jun wanted to copy. In a dangerous world like Soul Society, where incidents broke out from time to time, only by quietly making a fortune could one gain the greatest rewards. Nothing wrong with that.
By rights, getting close to Aizen was by no means a good choice. It even ran counter to the path Jun had planned. But Jun couldn't accept simply giving up an opportunity so close at hand, his only chance to get to know Aizen at the very start of his career.
What a dilemma~ Life really is nothing but choices.
But only children make choices. As an adult, I want them all!
Having made his decision, Jun felt a surge of excitement. He really couldn't stand sitting around doing nothing anymore. He had genuinely pushed himself to the limit during the first five days, but the last five had bored him to death. So Jun took the opportunity to open his door and end his seclusion.
"How did it go!?"
Senior Yuzu really was a good friend; she had been keeping watch at the door the whole time. Jun went up and hugged the beautiful girl, looking up with a happy smile.
"I did it, Senior~"
"That's wonderful!~"
Yuzu picked Jun up and spun him around to her heart's content. Even that wasn't enough to release her excitement. She pressed Jun tightly against herself and kept jumping up and down.
No matter how good it felt, this was too much. With all that jumping around, Jun couldn't focus on enjoying the girl's charms at all.
"Senior," Jun managed with difficulty.
Only then did Yuzu put the boy down. The girl was still excited, however, and her eyes shone as she said to Jun, "Jun-chan~ you're amazing~! Only nine days! Nine days! It's the first time I've ever seen someone complete Reishi Quality in nine days! You're really, really amazing!!"
"Nine days?" Jun suddenly realized that the day he had completed Reishi Sense might not have been counted. But no matter how he looked at it, nine days seemed to be the number that had been settled on. "Is that impressive?"
"Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm~~" The girl nodded repeatedly. "It's more than impressive! You don't know, Jun-chan! You might be the fastest person in the academy's history to complete both Reishi Sense and Reishi Quality~ Tell me yourself, isn't that impressive!?"
The boy shook his head. "That can't be right, Senior. Didn't you say Captain Kyōraku achieved Reishi Sense in seven days?"
The girl nodded. "Mm, and Captain Kyōraku took longer than you to complete Reishi Quality too."
The boy panicked a little. "But didn't Senior Ukitake take only five days for Reishi Quality!?"
The girl nodded even more happily. "Mm! But Senior Ukitake took longer than you to achieve Reishi Sense."
Masaka.
"Mm-hmm~" The more the girl spoke, the more excited she became. "Jun-chan, you're first! If you add the two together, you're definitely first, Jun-chan!"
The boy was once again swept into the girl's arms, but Jun's mind was full of his plans.
They've fallen apart before I even started~ Huh??