Yoji slowly lowered his index finger and looked down at Sarugaki Hiyori, who was still fighting to push herself up off the ground.
"The Kidō I just used carried less than half your reiatsu output," he said evenly. "And it still put you down. Do you know why?"
Hiyori got her hands under her and forced herself into a sitting position, glaring up at him with everything she had left.
"That's not how it's supposed to work!" Her voice came out fierce but unsteady. "Aokawa said it himself — a shinigami's fight is a fight of reiatsu! When your reiatsu is strong enough, no technique, no special ability, no trick will matter against it!"
The anger was still on her face. The certainty behind it was already starting to crack.
The name hit Yoji like a bucket of cold water to the face.
Aokawa.
His eye twitched before he could stop it. His gaze shot sideways on pure instinct, finding Aizen Sosuke standing quietly at the edge of the training ground. Aizen's head was tilted slightly downward. His expression was completely unreadable.
That's my line. That is word for word the line I gave Aokawa when he talked down a senior officer after beating him in a training match.
Yoji's mouth twitched. He dragged his eyes back to Hiyori.
Wait. Is this girl a fan of my book?
...I just beat up one of my own readers.
If this gets out, my reputation is finished.
He stepped forward quickly, crouched down to her level, and extended a hand. His tone shifted.
"That line isn't wrong," he said.
"Then why did I lose?!" Hiyori stared at his outstretched hand, clearly debating with herself, then put her hand in his anyway.
He pulled her to her feet without making a thing of it. Her legs were still unsteady, but she found her footing and immediately yanked her hand away.
Yoji let it go and kept talking.
"Because at the exact point where my Kidō connected, the density of my reiatsu was significantly higher than the density of your defense at that location. That's all it was."
Hiyori tilted her head. Her expression said this had not cleared anything up.
Yoji settled into the explanation with the patience of someone who actually enjoyed this part.
"Think of it this way. Say your total reiatsu output in that moment was ten. When you came down at me, you pushed roughly six of that into your hands and your blade — maximum attack power, instinctively. The remaining four spread across your body as a baseline defense layer. Most shinigami aren't even aware that layer exists, let alone able to control it."
He glanced past Hiyori at the line of graduates, nearly all of whom had quietly stopped moving and were listening with varying degrees of intensity. Something settled pleasantly in his chest.
"But that four doesn't distribute evenly. Your body automatically concentrates more reiatsu around the critical points."
He moved his finger briefly toward her chest, her neck.
"Here. Here. The places where a hit ends you. Your instincts protect those first."
"Which means I hit your outer thigh." He indicated the spot. "At that exact moment, the defense sitting there was probably closer to one. My Kidō was carrying about two, focused entirely into a single point. Two beats one. That's all it took." He let the silence sit for a second. "The raw total doesn't matter if I'm stronger at the point of contact. Do you follow?"
Hiyori was quiet. Her fingers had found the hem of her uniform and were working at it without her noticing.
Yoji watched her and felt something in the back of his mind slot into place.
She came at me to get my attention. The Aokawa quote, the aggression, the whole thing. This is how she introduced herself.
I really hope I didn't hit her too hard. Losing a paying subscriber would be a genuine tragedy.
After a moment, Hiyori's head dropped just slightly, her voice dropping with it — grudging, barely above a mumble, not looking at him.
"...I get it."
Yoji quietly let out a breath.
Good. We're fine. She's still a reader.
He smiled — the version he privately considered his most natural and charming — and turned his palm upward toward her.
"If you happen to have this week's Seireitei Bulletin on you... I could sign it. Under my pen name, obviously."
Hiyori's head snapped up. She found herself suddenly much closer to a face wearing a lazy, entirely too comfortable smile, and something rushed up from her chest into her face all at once with the force of a flash step.
She slapped his hand away.
"Sign something when you've actually published a volume, why don't you — you BALDY!"
She turned and dove behind Captain Ōtoribashi's considerable frame, disappearing from view entirely.
Yoji stood there with his hand still extended, smile fully petrified.
Baldy. Again. BALDY.
I have a ponytail. A full, healthy, well-maintained ponytail. Is she not able to see it? Does she need glasses?
He lowered his hand slowly.
It's fine. She's a reader. Readers are allowed. This is affection. This is deep and genuine literary appreciation expressing itself in the only language she knows.
He repeated this to himself several times.
The atmosphere in the training ground had shifted. The earlier tension had burned off and left something warmer behind — graduates talking quietly among themselves, working through what they'd just seen, rethinking assumptions about reiatsu they'd held since their first year.
Yadōmaru Lisa was still standing where she'd been, one finger resting against the bridge of her glasses, her eyes focused somewhere slightly past the present moment.
"That level of precision... you can actually control reiatsu to that degree?"
She was already running the geometry of it in her head — mapping her own distribution patterns, identifying the gaps, building the training regimen.
Kyōraku's hand came to rest lightly on her shoulder.
"Don't go too deep down that road yet, Lisa-chan," he said, low enough that it didn't carry far. "The method itself isn't wrong, but concentrating that much reiatsu into a single attack means you've essentially abandoned your own defense. That's a very specific kind of dangerous." A pause. "And getting to that point means overcoming two things: your body's instincts, and the fear that comes with leaving yourself open. Neither of those happens quickly."
Lisa looked up at him. She pushed her glasses up. The lenses caught the light with a flat, even gleam.
"Captain. Could you remove your hand, please. I would prefer not to have to file a workplace misconduct report with the Central 46."
Kyōraku yanked his hand back as though the contact had burned him.
"Lisa-chan! That's a misunderstanding! A complete misunderstanding! This is purely captainly concern for a subordinate's wellbeing!"
Two of the three top graduates had made their choices.
That left the one who had been standing quietly at the edge of the field this entire time, top marks in Kidō, a warm smile that hadn't moved once through everything that had just happened.
Aizen Sosuke walked out to the center of the training ground and stopped in front of Yoji.
Yoji's face assembled itself into something composed and senior. His hands, clasped behind his back, were doing something slightly different — opening, closing, opening again. His palms were damp.
Please. Please no. I am begging you not to choose the Ninth Division.
The Fifth Division is right there. Hirako is right there. The two of you can play multi-layered strategic mind games with each other and it won't be my problem. That is the correct narrative outcome. Go there.
I am a mid-tier character in an ongoing story. I am not equipped for whatever you would bring into my workplace. Please.
His feet had apparently not received any of this and remained completely stationary.
Aizen's expression was as warm and easy as it always was.
"Fifth Seat Yoji. Actually, I—"
"Hey. Aizen Sosuke."
The voice came from the side — a particular kind of unhurried authority that didn't need volume to land.
Yoji turned so fast he almost lost his footing.
Hirako Shinji was walking over with both hands in his pockets, dead-fish eyes moving from Aizen to Yoji and back again, his expression doing something Yoji couldn't fully read. Then he looked directly at Aizen.
"Come to the Fifth Division."