Chapter 030: One for Me, One for Me...
Birdsong came through the gap in the window frame, thin, persistent, needling its way into his brain until Matsushita Yusuke's eyes dragged themselves open.
He sat up.
He was in his dormitory. Pajamas on. Ceiling familiar. He looked around, then down, and spent a few seconds working through what had happened.
Then he made a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a laugh.
"I blacked out."
He pressed both hands over his face and let the fragments reassemble.
Memory was patchy. He had to go through it in order.
What had yesterday involved?
Drinking contest with Aizen. Back and forth, one each, keeping pace. Then another round. Still keeping pace. Then —
One for me, one for me, one for me, one for me...
"...Wait."
He sat up properly.
That wasn't right.
He could see it now. Early on, they'd been matched. He remembered Aizen with a furrowed brow, expression strained, looking like a man being pushed past his comfortable limit. By any reasonable reading of the situation that was a boss entering a second phase, and Matsushita Yusuke had been feeling fine. Victory had been in sight.
And then somehow it had become him drinking alone.
His last clear image was Aizen's face. That specific expression. The one that wasn't quite a smile and wasn't quite not one.
He put it together.
Kyoka Suigetsu.
He'd been tricked.
The ability that had reshaped the history of Soul Society, leveraged in a drinking contest at a corner table of an izakaya. That was genuinely infuriating. The man had absolutely cheated. But it hadn't been an equal contest to begin with, and getting beaten by someone playing outside the rules was still getting beaten. The only rational response was to accept the loss and move on.
At least Aizen had shown some restraint.
He hadn't let Matsushita Yusuke drink himself unconscious on the spot. He'd apparently released the ability before things got to that point. The last fragment of memory was Tosen walking him back to the Academy, and then Matsushita Yusuke himself somehow navigating back to his room on autopilot, apparently managing to wash up before passing out, which said something about the stubbornness of deeply ingrained personal habits.
He pressed two fingers to his temple and sat with it.
So. Last night.
Did the quest actually count?
[Quest complete... Rewards acquired]
The familiar text surfaced, and whatever low-level anxiety had been sitting in the background dissolved instantly.
The evaluation criteria were apparently more generous than he'd expected. And thinking about it, Aizen himself probably knew that using Kyoka Suigetsu on the question was not exactly sporting. The fact that the reward had come through anyway suggested even the System had an opinion on that.
Messy process. Reward collected. That was fine.
Matsushita Yusuke pulled up his full panel.
[Reiatsu Level: 4] (Current cap: 20)
[Zanjutsu: 15 / Hakuda: 14 / Hoho: 10 / Kido: 23] (Total: 100)
[Additional Skills: Basic Master, Solitary Heart]
The numbers included gains from the drinking quest and a few smaller pickups from other things running in parallel. Consistent upward trend. Nothing dramatic, but the direction was right.
[Overall Assessment: Lower-ranked seated officer]
Matsushita Yusuke blinked.
The overall assessment field had appeared before, but sporadically; it wasn't something he checked regularly because it usually hadn't changed. Now it had.
Lower-ranked seated officer.
He thought through what that actually meant. Squad structure ran to twenty seats per squad, with the seated officers representing the sharper end of the general pool. Not leadership, but the people below leadership who were still better than average. In the original story, the two who'd made moves on Orihime in Hueco Mundo, who Sado had dealt with in about four seconds, were roughly that tier.
Not exactly flattering as a comparison point.
But Matsushita Yusuke didn't find it particularly deflating either. There was a long road ahead and this was an early reading on it. What mattered more was understanding what was driving the assessment.
The stat values hadn't moved dramatically. His Zanpakuto was still well below release threshold. The only new variable was the additional skills.
[Skills affect combat effectiveness, which changes the overall assessment. That's the logic.]
He filed it and moved on to the Zanpakuto panel.
[Physical: 3]
[Elemental: 1]
[Kido: 6]
[Biological: 3]
[Rule: 1]
The slowest-moving part of the whole system. Looking at those numbers always gave him the feeling of playing a game without a monthly subscription, just daily login rewards and patience, slowly accumulating resources toward something that kept feeling like it was still far away.
Nothing to be done about it. Shikai was the threshold. Everything before that was groundwork.
He got up.
And immediately noticed something was wrong with the light.
He stood at the window and pulled the curtain. The brightness outside hit him with the quality of late afternoon, not morning, not midday. He opened his mouth.
What time was it?
...
"So after the drinking session, you slept through an entire day and night and missed several classes. And the only reason you're not in real trouble is that your attendance record was good enough coming in to absorb the absence?"
Aizen's expression was doing the thing where it wasn't quite a smile but it was definitely enjoying itself. Matsushita Yusuke felt his hands go tight under the desk.
If you hadn't cheated none of this would have happened.
This was the next week's calligraphy session. Afterward, the usual route to the faculty office, the usual tea, the usual conversation, except with an additional layer of recent history sitting over all of it.
"That said, I'll acknowledge some fault on my end."
Aizen raised both hands briefly in a loose, theatrical gesture of surrender.
Then lowered them.
"But using unconventional methods in a drinking contest is hardly something worth making a formal complaint about. Winner takes all. Accept it gracefully, Matsushita-kun."
Fine. Take the trophy. You earned it by cheating.
"I'll let that go. There's actually something else I wanted to ask you about today, Aizen-sensei."
"Oh?" Aizen set down his teacup, turned to face him properly. "What is it?"
The drinking contest had done something to the register between them. There was a little less distance in it now, not dramatically less, but perceptibly. Something about the whole absurd evening had knocked the interaction sideways in a way that stuck.
"The invitation from Yoruichi-sama. The personal unit. I wanted to know what you think."
Had to ask.
Because tomorrow was the next field rotation.
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