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Chapter 023: Excellence Is Its Own Justification
That was fine. People grew. Given enough time, Matsushita Yusuke would get there too.
But right now —
Time to count the loot.
First, the life skills from Kishinoshin.
The man might not have been particularly impressive in raw combat terms, but when it came to reading rooms and managing people, he was operating at a level that bordered on unfair. Less than five minutes of conversation had produced more usable output than roughly two weeks of sitting through classroom lectures.
This was why you kept company with people who were actually good at things.
Play bad chess with bad chess players and your game gets worse. That was just how it worked.
Satisfied with that thought, Matsushita Yusuke noticed that several of the new skills had already consolidated into merged entries. Life skills with no combat application, but genuinely useful for navigating daily interactions with actual people.
The skill panel had no cap on entries anyway.
He kept them all.
With that settled, he turned his attention to the bigger reward, the one he'd been looking forward to since the quest first appeared.
The mission under Squad 2's supervision.
[Quest: Run a cleanup mission under Squad 2's supervision]
[Profile: First time working alongside actual Gotei 13 members. Not a bad opportunity to let them see what you're capable of, is it?]
[Rewards: Reiatsu Level +3, Shunpo +2, Master a Shihoin clan secret technique (random draw)]
The Reiatsu Level bump hit first, and Matsushita Yusuke felt it land like someone had just handed him three levels in one go.
[Reiatsu Level: 6]
He stared at that number and grinned.
Then the Shunpo gains registered. His Hoho, the short leg of the four disciplines, sitting at a stubborn 7 for longer than he liked, had jumped to 9.
Still not at the level of the other three. But closing the gap always felt better than it had any right to. Something satisfying about shoring up a weakness, even incrementally.
And then there was the Shihoin clan secret technique.
Just the label alone made it hard not to get excited. In a society built the way Soul Society was, a technique passed down within a noble family and kept deliberately out of reach was the kind of thing that invited unreasonable expectations.
Like finding a legendary skill manual in a game after forty hours of grinding for it.
So. What did I actually pull?
[Random Skill: Shadow Step]
[Decompose reishi, then reassemble it. Applied at the feet, this technique enables rapid movement to any point within roughly one hundred meters -- fast enough that opponents believe you have dissolved into your own shadow.]
That was genuinely strong.
The urge to test it immediately was there. Matsushita Yusuke acknowledged the urge and set it aside. He wasn't a kid.
He looked at the entry more carefully and noticed something odd. This skill wasn't slotting in alongside his other techniques. After a few moments of poking at it, he worked out why.
It was behaving more like a stat value than a technique.
The description laid out exactly how it worked, and the mechanics were straightforward enough that the System seemed to have classified it as learnable knowledge rather than a locked-in ability. Which probably meant the technique itself wasn't especially difficult to master. The reason it was a Shihoin family secret wasn't that it was hard to learn. It was that getting access to it in the first place was virtually impossible for anyone outside the family.
If the information were made available, a motivated Academy student could probably work it out with enough effort.
The Shihoin family almost certainly had techniques with a much steeper learning curve. He'd just happened to draw one of the more accessible ones on the random pull.
Fair enough. Still useful.
Matsushita Yusuke tidied up his internal accounting, and lay back down.
Kishinoshin had mentioned on his way out that this was a Squad 2 rest facility. Staying until he'd recovered enough to move properly wasn't asking too much.
He gave himself the afternoon.
Then he went straight back to the Academy.
Because he was extremely dedicated to attending every class. Not a single one skipped if he could help it.
Especially since Aizen's calligraphy session was tonight.
Weekly farming schedule. Non-negotiable.
Matsushita Yusuke showed up, sat through class, and afterward the two of them made their way to the faculty office as usual. He gave Aizen a straightforward account of the internship: what had happened, what he'd done.
Two Hollows dealt with simultaneously. A dual chant. Hado #33.
Aizen's eyebrows rose. He looked at Matsushita Yusuke with an expression that was genuinely taken aback.
"I have to say... hearing that one of my students pulled off a technique at that level is quite something."
"Honestly, it might have just been a fluke. I'm not sure I could repeat it right now."
Modest. But also, in its own way, honest.
Matsushita Yusuke had no intention of hiding his abilities from Aizen Sosuke.
For someone like Aizen, proud, perceptive, operating several layers above everyone around him, deliberate self-concealment was not a winning strategy. It would read immediately and the impression it left wouldn't be a good one. Tosen Kaname was probably the most instructive case study on that front.
The smarter play was simple. Be genuinely good. Let Aizen see it. Keep being impressive at a rate that sustained his interest.
The founder of the Standing Above Everyone Else Club, as the System had so eloquently labeled him, tended to take notice of people who gave him real things to pay attention to.
Keep providing those real things and, given enough time...
The hair gel enthusiast might eventually feel like being candid.
"Quite humble, Matsushita-kun."
Aizen poured a cup of warm tea and slid it across the desk without looking up.
"Though I'd suggest keeping that particular habit in check."
He didn't look at Matsushita Yusuke. His gaze had dropped, settled somewhere on the surface of the desk in front of him, and when he spoke again his voice had shifted into something quieter. More inward.
"Wanting to seem less exceptional. Wanting to give people room to get comfortable around you. It's an understandable impulse." A pause. "But if you make a habit of it, you start to lose track of who you actually are."
The words came out low and even, and then seemed to catch him by surprise. Aizen blinked, sat with it for a moment, and when he looked back up at Matsushita Yusuke there was something almost sheepish in the expression, a rare crack in the composure.
"Sorry. That got away from me a little."
"Not at all, Aizen-sensei. I understood it perfectly."
"Mm." He considered. "Let me put it more simply."
A short pause. Then, unhurried, one word at a time:
"There is nothing wrong with being exceptional. Excellence is its own justification. Nothing more needs to be said."
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