Chapter 027: Not So Different After All
Before anything else, there was the other reward to look at.
[Skill: Solitary Heart]
He'd been curious about this one.
Everything connected to Aizen so far had been worth having, no exceptions. One skill tied directly to the man's internal world had no business being anything less than useful. Matsushita Yusuke opened the description with high expectations.
[Skill: Solitary Heart]
[You have learned to break down and reconstruct Kido. Through study and your own understanding, you can attempt to modify incantations -- incorporating your own interpretation into their structure to a degree.]
He stared at it.
Then the full picture landed and his expression went from blank to lit up.
This was good. This was actually very good.
Kido had been the most productive investment of his time since arriving in Soul Society, and for obvious reasons: it was the one area where having a genuine understanding of the mechanics gave you compounding returns. Learn it systematically, and you covered attack, control, and recovery in a single discipline. Most Shinigami who genuinely mastered high-level Kido were considered extraordinary by definition. The Kido Corps didn't exist as a separate organization because the skill was common.
And now he could modify the incantations themselves.
He tried it immediately.
The first thing he learned was that he could not reconstruct Hado #1.
Not yet. Not even close.
What actually happened when he attempted a modification was a cascade of unintended consequences. Best case: the reishi he'd gathered simply collapsed mid-formation, dispersing without producing anything. Frustrating, but harmless.
Worst case was considerably more interesting.
The reishi cluster detonated.
The resulting flash and pressure wave was less controlled explosion and more surprised explosion, the kind that didn't warn you before it rearranged the room. His dormitory took enough of the blast that the residential supervisor came running from two floors down, fully convinced there had been a gas fire.
Matsushita Yusuke kept his mouth shut, nodded at all the right moments during the subsequent investigation, and contributed nothing useful to resolving what would become one of the dormitory's more persistent unsolved mysteries.
After a full day of careful, quiet testing, he arrived at a conclusion.
This skill was not something he could use yet.
Each Kido was a complete structure at its core, like a sequence that had been locked in during its original design. Every element interlocked with every other element. Modifying one part without understanding all the downstream effects wasn't optimization. It was introducing a flaw into something that had been stable.
[Every Kido was designed as a finished system. Like a sequence in a fixed chain -- change one part without accounting for the rest, and the whole thing breaks down.]
What the skill represented was a long-term project. Something that would require patient, incremental work over a significant period of time before it yielded anything reliable.
He filed it under future investment and moved on.
The practical ceiling was already becoming clear anyway. Running Sokatsui and Geki simultaneously had pushed him to absolute empty. In single-technique terms, he was probably looking at somewhere around Hado #50 as his current realistic limit; anything above that and he'd be burning through reserves he didn't have yet.
Going back to the original story: Aizen throwing out a Hado #90 Kurohitsugi like it was nothing.
The gap was real. Progress was being made. Both of those things could be true at once.
Wait until the Kido stat hit somewhere between 40 and 50. Then revisit this.
With that settled, he stopped thinking about it.
The next afternoon arrived. He'd put in the request to leave early, and the Academy had processed it without incident. Matsushita Yusuke made his way to the front gate and waited.
He didn't wait long.
"Sorry to keep you, Matsushita-kun."
"Not at all, I just got here myself. And—"
He stopped.
Because Aizen had not arrived alone.
Someone was with him. Shinigami uniform, the full formal version, not student issue. An active member with an actual posting, by the look of it.
Why was there a third person?
Then he got a proper look at the face.
Protective goggles. Dark complexion. Hair in thick, distinctive locs.
Matsushita Yusuke's brain made the connection immediately.
Tosen Kaname.
Later Squad 9 captain, one of the three core members of Aizen's defection, a character whose initial appearances in the original story were fairly thin but who had become significantly more three-dimensional once his actual convictions and their limits were put under pressure.
Spending time around Aizen apparently did things for a person's presence.
But what was he doing here?
Matsushita Yusuke ran the timeline in his head, started to reach a conclusion, then stopped.
Wait.
The original quest. The first thing the System had ever shown him about Aizen.
[Quest: Join his quirky little team. Become Club Member #003]
003.
Number 001 had to be Aizen himself. So who was 002?
And given when this quest was issued, given what he now knew about how Aizen operated, someone had already been recruited before Matsushita Yusuke arrived. Someone who had been in this arrangement for long enough that it was simply part of the background.
Tosen Kaname was Club Member 002.
"Allow me to introduce myself."
Tosen stepped forward, voice quiet and precise.
"My name is Tosen Kaname."
Matsushita Yusuke answered quickly, dipping his head.
"Matsushita Yusuke. Good to meet you."
Aizen watched the exchange from a step back, expression warm in a relaxed, unhurried way.
"Matsushita-kun, Tosen is also a Shin'o Academy graduate, though a few years ahead of you. No need to be too formal — just be yourself."
A gentle nudge in the subtext: 002 hasn't been in the picture that much longer than you. Don't let the seniority put distance where there doesn't need to be any.
A brief exchange, introductions complete.
With Aizen organizing everything, as was apparently standard, the afternoon's agenda was also his to set.
"It's a rare occasion. Let's find somewhere to sit and have a proper drink. We all deserve a break."
Even Aizen Sosuke, in his off-hours, apparently wanted nothing more complicated than a quiet table with people he could actually talk to.
You could say what you wanted about the man. In this one respect at least, he was exactly like everyone else.