"The Journal Hall, is this the place?"
The Journal Hall stood at the southernmost corner of the dormitory area, making it easy to find. Nor was it some classified, vital location. It was really just a place to store students' notes, and finding any martial arts secrets in those journals would have been like finding a needle in a haystack.
Naturally, a place like this received little attention. It was essentially a warehouse. To compare its importance to the academy with something in a game, it was a dungeon with complicated mechanics, a huge time investment, and extremely poor rewards.
Anyone who played games knew nobody would want to visit a dungeon like that. Some people would look it up on a guide site, see the terrible ratings from veteran players, and steer clear. Others would be curious enough to try it once or twice, only to find the rewards were just as bad as the guides said. They would curse, "Fuck this," and never come back.
But some people didn't play games to build empires and stand above everyone else. Jun was one of them. In his previous life, there had been a game called Blade & Soul. Who knew how many people had played it? Jun had joined as soon as it came out. It was a game that charged by the hour, yet once Jun had leveled up enough to move around freely, he had gone sightseeing all over the world—in a game that charged by the hour.
Jun had a job at the time, so he didn't actually have much time to play. Among games of its era, that one arguably had the best graphics, and movement around its maps was very free. From the start, Jun's purpose in playing had been to relax, run around looking at the scenery, and watch other players work themselves to exhaustion, because the game wasn't his main focus.
To Jun, the Journal Hall was much like that game. It certainly wasn't his main focus, but coming here to read the journals of his predecessors in his spare time between training sessions was also a wonderful way to unwind.
What did these journals contain? What had their authors been feeling when they wrote them? What kind of personalities had those predecessors had? What secrets had they recorded? That was the pleasure of reading.
With those thoughts in mind, Jun pushed open the wooden door. No dust fell. He glanced down and saw that, though the threshold was a little dirty, not much dust had settled on it. That meant people came here often.
There was no one here at the moment, though. Jun directed his spiritual power into the spirit candle on the wall, and it lit up. That was one of the conveniences of being a Soul Reaper. In Soul Society, where everything was made of and activated by Reishi, Soul Reapers who could release Reishi effectively had the ability to use every tool.
Once inside the Journal Hall, he could tell at a glance what the academy and its students thought of these journals. Some had been thrown messily onto the floor, while more had simply been sealed away in large boxes. There were many boxes, some of which had been opened, but even more had never had their seals broken.
"There's so much here~. I wonder if I'll ever finish reading it all."
Jun was rather pleased to see so many journals. It meant he had a place to pass the time. Since nobody else valued the place, Jun claimed it as his own private garden.
"Well then~. Let's tidy up first. First~~"
Jun gave some thought to what would happen later. If he found useful or interesting journals worth rereading, he would need to put them somewhere easy to find. So he emptied two boxes and carved "interesting" on one and "useful" on the other.
Since there were interesting and useful ones, there was naturally boring and useless trash too. Jun made a trash box as well. After thinking it over, he made another box for information, so he wouldn't have nowhere to put journals that might contain information about historical events.
With five empty boxes set out together, Jun began sorting the journals scattered on the floor and those he had dumped out. The boxes were very large, and a journal was really just one sheet of paper or a few sheets folded together, so they weren't big. Each box could hold three to five hundred, and Jun now had nearly two thousand to sort. It was a tremendous amount of work.
It took Jun quite a while to finish sorting them. He went outside and glanced at the spirit dial on the administration building. The thing was the clock currently used in Soul Society, and it was already noon.
"That took the whole morning? All right, I'll eat and come back to read."
After lunch, Jun returned to the Journal Hall. Speaking of eating, hadn't Instructor Hanazawa said before that Soul Reapers no longer needed to eat? But he had also said that, for Soul Reapers, eating was much like calligraphy or flower arranging. In Jun's view, eating was actually a way of taking in Reishi. Incidentally, there were no toilets in Soul Society. They really weren't needed.
As soon as Jun pushed the door open, he met the gaze of the person inside.
"Uh, hello~," Jun said, a tiny bit startled.
"Hello~. Did you sort these?"
The person had a pleasant voice and was a man. He stood in the shadow directly beneath the candle, so Jun couldn't see him clearly.
"Yeah~," Jun answered as he walked in. "Um, are you the person who comes here often?"
"Huh? Why do you think there's only one person?" the man asked, puzzled.
Jun smiled. "Because most people stop coming after a few visits. I thought maybe only weirdos like me would come here often."
"A weirdo? Hehe, I didn't expect Shimizu, the number one genius, to call himself a weirdo."
"You know me, huh~~? Everyone knows me." Jun was utterly speechless. His defining trait was so conspicuous that he couldn't possibly go unrecognized.
The man smiled too and pointed to the useful box Jun had made. "I'm sorry I used that box first. I've been coming here for a while and sorted out some useful things. You happened to make this, so I went ahead and used it. If you think anything doesn't belong, you can deal with it yourself. After all, you made the box."
"You don't have to be so polite," Jun said, thinking the man was far too courteous. As the two gradually drew closer, Jun prepared to introduce himself, but then—
"Senior."
"Hmm?" The man stepped out on his own. Rather than ask why Jun had stopped speaking, he first bowed slightly and said, "You're too polite, Shimizu. I'm no senior. I'm Sōsuke Aizen. It's a pleasure to meet you~."
"Ah!" Jun was, after all, an adult with real-world experience. If this man hadn't been Aizen, Jun couldn't possibly have lost his composure like this. When he had first met Kyōraku, hadn't he merely stared at him a few times? Besides, Jun's age could cover for a lot, so he immediately thought of an answer. "Senior Aizen! I've heard so much about you!"
"Heard so much about me? How could that be?"
"It's true. My senior, ahem, I'm under my senior's care. You know that, right, Senior Aizen?"
"There's no need to call me senior. As for you, Shimizu, I do know about your situation."
"No, no, I have to call you senior. You were the fastest person in nearly a hundred years to complete spiritual awakening. Yuzu, ahem, Senior Samidare told me about it."
But Jun regretted it as soon as he said it. Aizen smiled. "You only just broke that record yourself, Shimizu~. Hehe, you must be joking."
"I'm really sorry~," Jun immediately apologized.
Aizen stepped closer and put a hand on Jun's shoulder, preventing him from bowing. Smiling, he said, "Please don't apologize, Shimizu. Your breaking the record was actually a good thing for me. I've carried the title of the fastest in a hundred years for thirty-five years now, yet I still haven't graduated. That title has become a burden to me. By breaking the record, you've lifted that burden from my shoulders. If anything, I should be thanking you."
The gentle smile, the refined manner, the way being around him felt like a spring breeze—at that moment, Jun was certain. The man before him, who still looked young, was the genuine Sōsuke Aizen: the man whose true self was forceful, domineering, hypocritical, and nearly invincible.
Jun scratched the back of his head and lowered it as though embarrassed, hiding his expression. Awkwardly, he said, "You're joking, Senior Aizen."
"Oh my~. You're really keeping me at arm's length, Shimizu. I'm truly not a senior."
By now, Jun had settled his emotions. He looked up and pretended to be angry. "In that case, you're doing the same thing, Senior Aizen, always calling me Shimizu."
The two looked at each other, then laughed together.
"Hahaha~~~"
After laughing, they felt closer when they looked at each other. In his previous life, Jun had been an editor working with words, and he had a scholarly air about him. Aizen had a refined air as well. Their temperaments were somewhat similar, so they felt comfortable in each other's company.
Aizen said, "Then how about this, Shimizu—no, may I call you Jun? And you can call me Sōsuke."
"How could I? You can just call me Jun, Senior. You don't need an honorific. But I can't be disrespectful to you, so I have to call you senior!"
Jun had learned about Japanese naming etiquette, so he insisted on keeping things as they were. His assertive manner made Aizen laugh again. "Haha, all right, all right. If you insist, Jun, you can call me that while we're at the academy. We don't know which of us will graduate first, so when the time comes, we won't necessarily know who the senior is."
Jun had wanted to say that, at Aizen's level, there was no way he could graduate later than Jun. But in an instant, he thought, how could someone at Aizen's level have gone thirty-five years without graduating? Clearly, Aizen had done it deliberately. So Jun lowered his head and shyly agreed to the arrangement.
After exchanging pleasantries for so long, the two finally returned to the matter at hand. Both were literary-minded young men. Aizen gestured for Jun to go ahead, and after Jun returned the gesture, they each went about their own business.
Aizen went back and casually pulled a journal from the mountain Jun had sorted and began reading. Jun went over to the useful box. He saw a stack of journals beside it, while the box itself was completely empty. In other words, Aizen had said he had used the box first, but he had actually only put the ones he considered useful in front of it, waiting for Jun to assess them again.
Jun couldn't help admiring that level of courtesy and conduct. There was a reason Aizen had lived among the people of Soul Society without anyone seeing through him before he became a boss. With details like these, even if Aizen's Zanpakuto hadn't been Kyōka Suigetsu, and someone in Soul Society had suddenly suggested one day that a captain might be an enemy, Aizen would absolutely have been the least likely to be picked. He was a man like a spring breeze, and being around him was especially comfortable.
Jun sat down and picked up the journals Aizen had sorted. Since Aizen had shown him such consideration, Jun would read them carefully. That was the least respect he could show.
And so, the connection between Jun and Aizen was established at their first meeting.