In Class

At the same time, a very different scene was unfolding in the Kendo hall of Shin'ō Academy.

The Kendo hall stood on the west side of the main building. Its interior was three times larger than an ordinary classroom, and its wooden floor had been polished smooth enough to accommodate sixty people and give them room to move.

Three classes were attending, sixty students in all. Each carried an Asauchi and a wooden sword. The Asauchi had been distributed to everyone on the third day after school began, while the wooden swords were for sparring.

The atmosphere was completely different from Kidō class.

Of the sixty students, at least forty had handled blades in Rukongai, of every variety of Reishi weapon.

And Rukongai's rules for survival were simple: either you were stronger than others, crueler than others, or faster than others.

Those who had trained with blades carried a natural unruliness about them. Their kneeling postures were far more casual than those in the neighboring Kidō class. Some sat cross-legged, some stretched out one leg, and some whispered quietly to each other.

Then Nobutsuna Shigyo pushed open the door and entered.

"I am Nobutsuna Shigyo, captain of the Seventh Division."

His voice was not loud, yet the wooden floor trembled faintly beneath it. "Starting today, I will be teaching your Kendo classes."

Silence.

His gaze swept from the first row to the last. It was not scrutiny, but evaluation.

"I heard that some of you learned Kendo in Rukongai?"

Among the kneeling students, several straightened their backs. Nobutsuna's eyes lit up, and his mouth split into a grin that showed a row of teeth. It was exactly like the grin of those hooligans scraping by in Rukongai—the sort of grin only possessed by those who had seen blood, killed people, and survived to the end.

"Come!" He crooked a finger at the crowd.

"Those who learned it! Step forward!"

No one moved.

Nobutsuna's smile did not change. "Where did your courage from Rukongai go?"

The words were like throwing a ladleful of water into boiling oil.

A tall male student stood up. He was half a head taller than those around him, with thick knuckles. "North District Twenty-Nine. Three years of training."

The second stood. "North District Fifteen. Five years."

The third said, "South District Thirty-Three. Four years."

The fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh...

They stood one after another. Nobutsuna looked at them. "I know Rukongai Kendo."

Nobutsuna lowered his voice slightly. "Some of what you learned came from scraps passed down by wandering Soul Reapers. Some of it was folk killing techniques. It isn't wrong, but it isn't entirely right either."

He smiled.

"Show me what you've got."

Not "Please instruct us," but "Show me what you've got."

The seven exchanged glances.

"Come at me together," Nobutsuna said.

The tall student moved first. Holding his wooden sword, he slashed diagonally at Nobutsuna's left shoulder.

Nobutsuna did not even draw his sword. He shifted slightly, and the tall student's blade passed less than an inch in front of his shoulder. Nobutsuna extended a hand, and the student's wrist slammed into his palm.

[Advanced Hakuda]

The student was sent flying at once, his wooden sword slipping from his hand as he crashed into the wall.

The remaining six charged at the same time.

Nobutsuna used the wooden sword that had been knocked away.

In the next instant, all six froze. Their wooden swords hung suspended in midair, then all snapped apart.

He looked at the broken pieces scattered across the floor, then at the seven students.

His voice carried boundless contempt. "Your Kendo isn't even fourth-rate."

Within Soul Society's known Kendo rankings, he was third.

"The first lesson in Kendo isn't holding a sword. It's getting beaten. Who's next?!"

At the same time, inside Shin'ō Academy's combat arena.

It was the most brutal sight of the day.

Sixty students lay scattered all over the field, sprawled, curled up, and collapsed in every imaginable pose.

Some clutched their stomachs. Some hugged their knees. Some lay on their sides with both hands over their faces, letting out broken groans. Some stared up at the ceiling and gasped for air, their ribs hurting with every breath. After confirming nothing was broken, they kept breathing. No one stood up. No one even tried to.

All sixty were down on the ground.

Shihōin Qianri stood in the center of the arena.

He had not broken a sweat. His breathing was steady, and his expression was as calm as if he had just finished a cup of tea. He had not even rolled up his sleeves. Today's lesson had not officially begun yet; this had merely been a "warm-up."

All sixty students had been beaten down during the warm-up.

"Don't think being able to throw a punch means you know Hakuda."

His voice was not loud, and his tone was not harsh, but every word reached the ears of everyone present with perfect clarity.

"You are nothing."

The sixty students lay on the ground. Some were still groaning, some clenched their teeth in silence, and some buried their faces in their arms, their expressions hidden.

No one argued.

It was not that they did not want to. They could not. Forget arguing—most of them had not even recovered enough strength to lift their heads.

"Before I teach you Hakuda, I have decided that you should first learn how to take a beating."

The combat arena fell quiet for a moment, then someone let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a laugh choked with tears.

"Rest for half an hour. Then we continue."

The bodies of all sixty students nearly stiffened at once.

Outside the combat arena, several Shin'ō Academy instructors with no classes stood watching from afar. Some shook their heads, some sighed, and some simply watched without any expression.

No one said, "That's too much," and no one said, "This is a good way to teach."

Shin'ō Academy's Shunpo training ground.

The atmosphere there was completely different from the other two places.

There were no screams, no groans, no one lying on the ground unable to rise, and no one clutching some part of their body while wondering whether their ribs had broken.

Sixty students stood on the training ground in six rows of ten.

Their formation was somewhat loose, with some standing farther forward and others farther back. But no one yawned, no one whispered to their neighbor, and no one wore that expression of, "I already knew this in Rukongai."

Because Shunpo was something that truly could not be learned in Rukongai.

Zanjutsu could be practiced alone. Take a sword and swing it every day; after enough swings, you would eventually gain some feel for it.

Hakuda could be practiced alone. Punch sandbags, walls, trees—after enough punches, you would eventually gain some strength.

Kidō at least had fragments of Reishi Arts to study. They might be unstable, but there was at least something there.

Shunpo was different. Shunpo required precise Reiatsu control and instantaneous shifts in one's center of gravity. In Rukongai, there was no way to teach oneself either of those things.

There were no teachers, no textbooks, and no examples to follow. Before entering Shin'ō Academy, someone from Rukongai might never even have heard the word "Shunpo."

Chikiri Shijima stood before the formation.

"Shunpo." Chikiri spoke, his voice neither loud nor soft, neither fast nor slow, like he was reciting a passage he had read countless times before.

"It is a technique that concentrates Reiatsu at the soles of the feet and releases it in an instant, producing explosive movement. The principle is not complicated, and neither is doing it."

He looked at the sixty blank faces before him.

"Begin."

There was no demonstration, no breakdown of the movements, no "I'll do it once first, then you watch."

He simply said, "Begin," then stood there without moving.

The sixty students looked at each other. An instructor had taught them a little before, and they had expected a captain to teach them something profound first. That was it?

Still, some tried to send their Reiatsu to the soles of their feet. Then their feet flashed once, but they did not move, because their Reiatsu control was also a blank slate.

Some stood there straining until their faces turned red, yet failed to even spark a flicker of Reiatsu against the blue-brick ground.

Chikiri watched them without urging or correcting them. His face showed no expression. He was neither impatient nor angry nor disappointed.

At last, one student vanished from his spot. Strictly speaking, he had not vanished—he staggered forward two steps, his feet slipped, and he nearly fell. Then he realized he had moved about an arm's length ahead.

Even he was startled. He glanced back at where he had been standing, then looked down at his feet as though confirming whether those two legs truly belonged to him. The students nearby watched him with undisguised envy in their eyes.

Chikiri glanced at the student. "Mm. That's it. Keep going."

That's it. Those three words were like a needle, gently pricking the student's joy before it had time to swell. Not too much, not too little—just enough to keep him practicing.

More people began to try.

Some fell. Some remained rooted in place.

Sixty people, sixty different rates of progress. Some were already trying to move twice in a row, though their bodies tilted like drunks when they landed the second step. Others were still agonizing over whether they should push off the ground at the same time as they sent their Reiatsu to their feet.

Some could not even send their Reiatsu to the soles of their feet. They stood there, pressing spiritual power downward again and again. The blue bricks beneath their feet heated under the Reiatsu and gave off faint wisps of white smoke, but they did not move an inch.

Chikiri walked slowly along the edge of the field. He did not correct anyone's movements or provide individual instruction to anyone.

It was not that he did not care. The time had simply not come yet.

When it came to Shunpo, it was normal not to understand it at the beginning. Not "it was normal for some people not to understand," but "everyone failed to understand it at the beginning."

That was the rule, just like a baby learning to walk. No baby learned to walk because someone told them, "You should move your left foot first, then shift your center of gravity."

They simply fell, fell many times, and then one day stopped falling. Then one day they could walk. Then one day they could run.

So Chikiri did not teach. He merely watched from the side, occasionally saying, "Don't rush," "Take it slowly," or "Try again."

The other classes each had their own scenes as well.

An indescribable tension filled the theory classroom.

Entetsu Kumenoi sat in a chair behind the lectern.

He simply sat there, with a handout spread before him. Occasionally he lowered his head to look at it; occasionally he raised it and said a few words. His voice was not loud, his pace was not fast, and there was nothing unusual about the material.

Yet not a single one of the sixty students lost focus.

No one yawned. No one whispered to a neighbor. No one doodled little figures in their notebook. No one secretly looked out the window at the scenery. They did not even dare shift from formal kneeling into a slightly more comfortable cross-legged posture.

Sixty people, sixty formal kneeling postures, sixty pairs of eyes fixed on the lectern, sixty pairs of ears perked higher than rabbits'.

Entetsu Kumenoi's face.

The features of his entire face were not exactly "fierce" or "evil," yet they instinctively made strangers want to back away.

He was like a gang boss—the sort who sat at the far end of a dimly lit room. You could not see his face clearly, but you knew he was watching you. You would rather face a Menos Grande that had gone hungry for three days than be alone in a room with him.

Entetsu Kumenoi sat quietly above them and taught.

His voice was steady, unhurried, and could even be called patient. What he taught was clear, organized, and easy to understand. It was obvious he had prepared seriously for the lesson.

But there was an enormous and unsettling disconnect between his face and his voice. His voice said, "Relax," while his face said, "Go on, try it."

The students below remained afraid.

It was not the fear of being scolded by a teacher, but something more primal, something impossible to clearly explain.

The way Entetsu Kumenoi sat there was more frightening than every villain they had ever seen. Not because Kumenoi did anything, but because he did nothing. He merely sat there, and you knew he was not someone you could provoke. That kind of intimidation, requiring no proof, was more terrifying than any threat.

The atmosphere in the arts class was an entirely different world from that of the theory classroom.

Bakuzan Katori stood at the front of the classroom.

Her features were gentle, a smile in her eyes and brows. Her voice was neither high nor low, carrying a warmth that made people want to draw closer.

"Today, we are doing flower arrangement."

The flower arrangement course was not meant to make the students truly become flower arrangers. It was meant to teach them how to settle down, and settling down was a required lesson for Sword Meditation.

Katori took a bamboo basket from behind the lectern. Inside were the flowers for the day: several wild chrysanthemums, several bellflowers, several unknown white blooms, and green leaves in varying shades.

Sixty low tables had been set up in the classroom. On each table sat a ceramic vase, a pair of flower shears, and a kenzan.

The students sat around the low tables. The empty vases before them shone with the simple earthen color of clay beneath the sunlight.

Katori stood at the front and began explaining the basic composition of flower arrangement: the positional relationships of the main branch, secondary branch, and guest branch; the varying heights of the flowers; the color combinations; and the use of empty space.

Her voice was gentle, her pace soothing, every word as clean as though washed in water.

By all rights, this should have been the easiest and least stressful course of all.

There was no Reiatsu control, no risk of failed chants, no pain of being beaten down, no fear of facing a gang boss. There were only flowers, scissors, vases, and a gentle teacher.

Yet the sixty students simply could not settle down.

It was not that they were causing trouble. They were simply unused to it.

These students came from Rukongai. There was no such thing as flower arrangement in Rukongai. In Rukongai, flowers came in only two kinds: edible and inedible.

Putting flowers in a vase to look at? People from Rukongai had neither the leisure nor the time for that.

So when they sat at the low tables for flower arrangement class, facing ceramic vases, flower shears, and kenzan—tools they had never touched before—they did not show disinterest. Instead, they showed an awkward, helpless excitement.

Some placed the main branch too high, making the entire vase look like a utility pole.

Some stuffed in too many flowers, making the ceramic vase look like a hedgehog covered in blooms.

Some placed the kenzan crookedly, and after inserting the stems, the entire arrangement tilted left as though blown sideways by the wind. Some cut the stems too short, leaving them too short to reach the kenzan. They looked at the cut flowers in their hands, unable to put them back together, and could only secretly shove them under the table.

Katori walked slowly around the classroom, looking at them one by one and quietly offering guidance one by one.

"Lower the main branch a little more."

"The secondary branch can be angled a little wider."

"Try moving this bellflower to the right." Her voice remained gentle throughout. There was no blame, no impatience, not even a trace of fatigue from seeing the same mistakes repeated across sixty students.

But the students could not settle down. It was not that they did not want to; they simply could not.

Their hands were accustomed to gripping swords, throwing punches, and searching ruins for food. They were not accustomed to holding a flower for half a day, measuring it, then carefully inserting it into a kenzan. Of course, the most important reason was Katori herself.