REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!
Chapter 042: Situation What It Is — Collect the CG
"Where's Aizen-sensei?"
"No idea... hasn't he always shown up early? What's going on today?"
"He would have sent someone ahead if something came up. That's what happened last time."
With finals approaching, the turnout for an elective like Aizen's calligraphy class had thinned considerably. Credit systems being what they were, anyone who had already hit their attendance threshold had stopped showing up weeks ago. The room had somewhere around a third of its original population left.
Class time came and went. No sign of him.
So where was he?
Matsushita Yusuke thought it through, stood up, and headed toward the faculty office.
He remembered something from their last conversation. Aizen had mentioned something about this week. Worth checking.
He hadn't made it halfway to the office when he spotted a figure in the corridor, carrying a stack of documents taller than their own torso, moving in short, unsteady steps because the stack was blocking their line of sight entirely, requiring them to stop every few meters just to confirm they were still heading the right direction.
Matsushita Yusuke watched this for a moment.
That was Aizen Sosuke.
Which made sense, now that he thought about it. Aizen had mentioned something last week about a finals assessment this session. The documents were presumably the test papers, already printed, already gathered, just apparently more of them than expected.
Not a logistics failure. A staffing one.
Matsushita Yusuke picked up his pace, crossed the remaining distance, and took half the stack without being asked.
"Aizen-sensei. Why didn't you go to the classroom and ask someone to help?"
Aizen adjusted his glasses with the one free hand he had left, expression noticeably less composed than usual.
"Matsushita-kun? Ah, thank you. I simply didn't expect this many. I misjudged the volume."
The slight disarray on his face read as genuine. Not performance. The kind of small admission that came from having actually miscalculated something.
"We haven't had a finals assessment for this class before, so I had no frame of reference for how much paper it would produce. Ha, I suppose you're never too old to learn something new."
"You make it sound like you're ancient, Aizen-sensei."
"I am several hundred years old. By your standard, that's fairly ancient."
"Comparing yourself to me isn't much of a benchmark."
Easy back-and-forth. The kind that happened without effort.
Matsushita Yusuke let out a quiet breath and looked sideways as they walked.
He was, admittedly, having a feeling.
Seeing Aizen like that just now, slightly disheveled, papers listing, navigating a corridor alone, the image that had come to mind, unbidden, was something like a man who had been living by himself for a very long time.
And that wasn't entirely wrong, was it.
Compared to Urahara Kisuke's situation, work that engaged him, people around him, a life with actual texture, Aizen's daily existence was stark by comparison. Sparse. The kind of quiet that wasn't chosen so much as accumulated.
Isolation had always been the baseline for this man.
Which was possibly part of what made the two of them so specifically incompatible. Urahara's life was full in every direction Aizen's wasn't. That wasn't an observation without weight.
So. The choice.
He's already most of the way to becoming a lone widower. I can't let that continue.
That was the sentimental version. There was a more rational version underneath it, and it arrived at the same place.
The Hogyoku fragment.
That reward was the one thing in the original Aizen quest that genuinely had no ceiling. A wish-granting object, imprecise, unreliable, but with an upper limit on what it could produce that Matsushita Yusuke had not yet identified. Rule +50 was a massive number. But the Hogyoku was a different kind of reward entirely. The kind where what you got out of it was bounded by what you could ask of it.
Urahara's rewards were real and immediate. The Hogyoku's potential was undefined and possibly larger than any fixed reward number could express.
A fragment, yes. He'd already made his peace with receiving the reduced version.
But even a reduced version of something in that category was still something in that category. The latest model, limited storage, still the latest model.
He had his answer.
"Aizen-sensei, buy me a drink sometime?"
"...Why?"
"Just a feeling that you owe me something. Or are you not interested?"
He had his answer, but that didn't mean he wasn't allowed to feel the weight of what he was passing up. Rule plus fifty. Sitting right there. Walked away from.
The least he could do was collect one more Aizen-drunk CG before the drinking quest window was fully gone.
"That's fine, though I'd need to check Tosen's schedule first. I'll reach out once we've sorted the timing."
"Works for me."
The atmosphere between them was easy in a way that felt, to an outside observer, like nothing in particular. But Aizen himself had caught it: in these exchanges with Matsushita Yusuke, something in his mood tended to lift without him deciding to let it.
Having someone to talk to.
It turned out to be a genuinely pleasant thing.
The two of them moved into the classroom. Matsushita Yusuke helped distribute the test papers.
"My apologies to everyone. I was delayed getting here. I've taken up some of your time."
The apology landed, but some visible irritation remained in the room regardless. Aizen considered the situation briefly, then made a decision.
"Everyone who showed up today, simply writing your name on the paper will earn you a B by default. If you complete the full assessment, an A is perfectly achievable."
"AIZEN SOSUKE, LONG MAY HE LIVE—"
The person who shouted that is either from the future or from Hueco Mundo. No other explanation for that level of instinct.
Matsushita Yusuke filed the thought away, answered the paper, and let the class period run its course.
Papers collected.
"We're coming up on the year-end break. You'll have around a month and a half. I hope everyone comes back in the new year stronger, and finds their way to wherever they're hoping to go."
He paused.
"Until next year, everyone."
And then, in Matsushita Yusuke's vision, something familiar appeared.
[Quest complete... Rewards acquired]
"...??"
What quest?
He hadn't registered anything active going into today. He'd checked specifically, because it was a test session. He'd made his peace with a blank farming day.
So where had this come from?
He pulled his attention inward and looked more carefully. The notification had something different about it.
[You completed Aizen Sosuke's calligraphy course with a perfect full-year attendance record.]
[Achievement reward unlocked: Technique -- Grit]
[Technique: Grit]
[You have demonstrated unusual patience and persistence through sustained effort. Through study and repeated engagement, you can now compress the time required to work through difficult academic or training processes.]
An achievement reward.
Those existed too.
This was a genuinely good find.
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