Chapter 133: Time to Move
A few days later, Matsushita Yusuke sat in the empty dojo.
Posture settled, eyes half-closed, the quality of stillness around him was a specific kind: deliberately cultivated, not incidental.
Soifon came to the doorway holding a stack of documents. She glanced through the open window at the scene inside, paused, then turned and left without a word.
Nothing in that stack was urgent enough to interrupt this. It could wait.
The squad captain's development, on the other hand, was a hard requirement.
Not going to be the one to get in the way of that.
'She didn't come in. Soifon's been making progress.'
He let the posture ease, opened his eyes, and let the small look of appreciation sit on his face for a moment.
What he'd been working on lately was a meditation technique he'd picked up from Unohana. Concentrate the mind, let the noise fall away, and enter a state where any technique you reached for arrived without friction. That sounded like something out of a legend, but in practice it was simply: clear your head and focus.
Why did it produce that effortless quality?
Cut people for a thousand years without dying and you'd probably reach that level of ease too.
Either way: through Unohana's instruction over these past weeks, he'd gotten some rewards out of it. The System side of things was one benefit. The technique itself, which he'd probably never use in its intended form, was another matter entirely.
His next sparring appointment with her was tomorrow night. He was going to have to convince her he'd been practicing.
He'd manage. She didn't mind repeating herself.
With that resolved, Matsushita Yusuke rose and started toward the office.
Squad 11 was notably empty.
Recruitment hadn't been opened publicly yet. The building was finished, the structure was in place, but Yusuke was holding out. His standard: right quality, not just any warm body. One slot, one decision. Like a garden plot with limited space: you choose what you plant carefully, because whatever goes in takes the space.
The squad's capacity had a ceiling. He wasn't going to fill it with the first available options.
He pushed the office door open. Soifon was at her desk with a set of documents.
"Soifon. The partnership application with Shin'o Academy. What's the current status?"
She looked up and slid the relevant papers across to him.
"I was about to bring this up actually. Sasakibe's office has reviewed it. No objections on their end. It's ready to go up to the Captain-Commander."
Matsushita Yusuke's expression brightened visibly.
"Really?"
The reaction was more obvious than usual, and understandably so.
The plan: establish a formal recruitment pipeline through the Academy. Graduation season, open recruitment, same as every other squad. Written tests, interviews, composite scoring, confirmed placements.
The reasoning was practical. Soul Society's social structure was feudal in every meaningful sense. Literacy rates among the Rukongai population ranged from reasonable to something that gave him a headache. Quality was wildly inconsistent. Going out and screening individuals one by one from Rukongai would have been an enormous time investment for uncertain returns.
The Academy was a filter that already existed. Use it.
Yamamoto had built the right institution for the right reasons. Foresight, that.
Yusuke flipped through the documents as these thoughts ran in the background, nodding and marking as he went. He'd gotten reasonably comfortable with the routine by now.
Soifon had no strong objections to the overall approach, but as she handed the papers over she did add:
"I probably shouldn't be the one saying this, but. Isn't this going to be slow? The squad is empty right now. You'd be sitting on your hands until graduation season."
She had a point.
"I'm putting in a separate request to bring in a motivated batch next month as a stopgap. Accelerated intake."
He didn't look up from the papers.
"That said, urgent or not, quality stays the standard. The squad's caliber doesn't get compromised."
Soifon was quiet for a moment.
The previous captain had just grabbed people directly from Rukongai.
But.
Taking it seriously was better than not caring at all.
"Was there something you were about to say?"
Soifon closed her eyes briefly, turned away, and buried her face in the nearest stack of documents.
"Nothing! Do your job. Captain."
That back-and-forth had become familiar. The adjustment was happening gradually, on both sides.
And as Matsushita Yusuke found himself acknowledging that, the wind chimes hanging at the window ledge caught a breeze and rang.
Ding-ling-ling...
Soifon surfaced from the document pile.
"Wind's picking up. Should I close the window?"
Matsushita Yusuke reached over and pressed lightly on her shoulder.
"Leave it. I'm heading to Squad 1 now with these documents. I'll probably stay there tonight, so don't wait up. Just eat whatever at the cafeteria."
He turned for the door, reached out, and pulled his captain's haori off the hook.
At the threshold, he paused.
He turned his head partway back.
"Get some sleep tonight. Don't wander around outside."
Then he was gone.
"...??"
Soifon stared after him with a mildly baffled expression.
What was that about? Since leaving the Stealth Force she barely went outside at night anyway. The daytime workload was exhausting enough on its own.
The two of them didn't have a chance to say anything more, and Matsushita Yusuke, once through the Squad 11 gate, turned and walked in the exact opposite direction from Squad 1.
About three minutes later.
He stopped in front of a low, plain building, raised his hand, and knocked.
Three times.
The door opened. Tosen Kaname stood inside. His expression was extremely grave.
Suzumushi's ability allowed him to vibrate the air, generating specific sound frequencies. Through practice, Matsushita Yusuke had learned to recognize these faint, particular signals from a distance.
"What is it, Tosen."
"Aizen-sama has given the order. Tonight."
A pause.
"We move."