Aside from Yumichika and Isshin Shiba, who had come to see Aoto for official business, nearly everyone else who visited him was hoping to get closer to him before he officially became a captain.
Although they were a little late, late was still better than never.
A fair number of them were lower-ranking nobles who had once been under Captain Ukitake's protection.
Aoto wasn't a noble, but they hoped that once Captain Hyakume took office, their families' interests wouldn't suffer too much.
Of course, if Aoto wanted to become a noble, many of them would be happy to marry off their daughters to him.
He could even take more than one. It just wouldn't be very respectable.
But Aoto had turned down even the Shiba House. Why would he accept their offer?
Aoto simply told them that as long as they hadn't done anything wrong, they wouldn't be affected too much.
After all, Captain Ukitake had willingly stepped down and passed his position on to him. Aoto would honor that goodwill.
Still, the 13th Division had already been expanding, and its work in the World of the Living had changed as well. Aoto couldn't promise that their interests wouldn't be affected.
That promise was enough for them. They all vowed to cooperate with Captain Hyakume's work as much as they had with Captain Ukitake—or, rather, even more than before.
Aoto nodded his thanks, then personally saw each of them out.
Of course, he could take those verbal assurances with a grain of salt. What mattered was what they did afterward.
Otherwise, with each new ruler came a new court. If Aoto made changes, no one would be able to hold him accountable.
After seeing them off, Aoto went out too.
He went to Captain Ukitake's house again.
No, Blue Oni had been there last time. This was Aoto's first visit.
"I'm surprised you had time to come here. I hear the visitors have practically worn down your doorstep!"
Perhaps because he'd decided to put down the burden of being a captain, Captain Ukitake looked much healthier than before.
"That's why I came to hide out at your place, Captain!" Aoto said with a laugh. "I also came to learn more about how the 13th Division works. A lot has changed since I was in the division."
Fifty years ago, before joining the 11th Division, Aoto had risen to the rank of 8th Seat in the 13th Division.
Because his Zanpakuto was Garaku Kairo, the credit he'd earned by using Bankai to save a great many of their Soul Reapers had been downplayed. Still, his later assignment to the 11th Division as 4th Seat had surely been related to it.
In fifty years, even Seireitei had changed a great deal.
"Actually, not much has changed!" Ukitake Jushiro said. To him, fifty years had passed in the blink of an eye. "I only made a few changes to clear the way for Kaien. Now you get to benefit from them."
Well, thanks for that!
Now that they were alone, Aoto didn't have to make a special expression whenever Kaien came up.
But as Captain Ukitake talked about what had changed over the past fifty years, Aoto still had to take out a notebook and write it all down.
This wasn't much?
It was way more than there was to know about the 11th Division!
The World of the Living.
In just a few days, Shiba Kaien had found work as a translator.
The assignment was important, as it involved foreign trade orders, so after Kaien completed it successfully, he received a handsome payment.
It was enough to make Kaien admit that Aoto really did know the World of the Living better than he did.
But after taking on several jobs, Kaien learned what Aoto meant by "con artists."
They were con artists in the literal sense.
Some people had even tried to get him to join them in a scam.
They all deserved to fall into Hell...
Kaien also saw a Hollow in the World of the Living.
But since there weren't many Soul Reapers stationed nearby yet, none arrived right away.
Just as Kaien was about to intervene, a Reishi arrow shot in from somewhere far away and pinned the Hollow to the ground.
Could that be... a Quincy?
Kaien had taken part in the war against the Quincy in the World of the Living a hundred years ago, so he recognized their style of attack.
He hadn't been a lieutenant at the time, but a Third Seat, and he'd still been one of the commanders.
It had been a war in which both sides believed they were fighting for justice. The Soul Reapers had won in the end, but the battle had been brutal.
Many of Kaien's comrades had been killed by the Quincy, and he had killed many Quincy himself.
Kaien instinctively started to summon Nejibana, then suddenly remembered that he was no longer only a Soul Reaper.
Besides, the war with the Quincy had ended a hundred years ago. All the hardliners had been killed, leaving only a small number who had agreed to the Soul Reapers' proposal. In a way, the goal of "wiping out the Quincy" had been achieved.
The arrow made it clear: if the Quincy who fired it had wanted to, he could easily have killed the Hollow with a single shot.
Instead, he'd pinned it to the ground to stop it from hurting anyone else. That way, when the Soul Reapers arrived, they could easily "purify" it with their Zanpakuto.
The Quincy had been exterminated by the Soul Reapers because they completely destroyed Hollows, reducing the number of souls that should have entered the cycle of Reishi.
The Quincy who still remained seemed to have truly changed their views. Even after defeating a Hollow, they left the final blow to the Soul Reapers.
Kaien still held a grudge against the Quincy, but he couldn't bring himself to hate one like this.
After thinking it over for a while, Kaien was about to leave when a middle-aged man dressed unmistakably as a Quincy appeared in front of him.
Ishida Sogen had rushed over after sensing the power of a Soul Reaper.
But when he arrived, all he saw was a young man in a suit. The man had no spiritual power at all, and there were no red Soul Reaper pathways among the spiritual pathways on his body.
Had he come to the wrong place?
Ishida Sogen was puzzled.
As for Kaien, he didn't even look at Ishida Sogen, whose outfit was quite strange. He checked his watch, shouted, and ran off in a certain direction.
Kaien hadn't done that because he hated the Quincy. He knew that Seireitei was constantly monitoring Quincy like this.
There might already be someone from the Twelfth Division watching the Quincy's every move.
The features of Kaien's Gigai had been subtly adjusted by Aoto, so it didn't look exactly like him. But that didn't stop him from worrying that someone in the Twelfth Division might recognize him based on some tiny detail.
Especially since the Twelfth Division's captain was that weirdo, Kurotsuchi Mayuri.
Kaien didn't like Kurotsuchi Mayuri at all. Urahara Kisuke had already been strange enough, and his successor, Kurotsuchi Mayuri, was even stranger.
Even so, Kaien had to admit that Kurotsuchi Mayuri was the Soul Reaper who most thoroughly embodied the duty of the Gotei 13.
Though his methods were the complete opposite of Kaien's!