Hajime woke to the damp taste of sleep in his mouth and the faint ache of unfamiliar muscles. He'd dozed off in the truck and then slept like a rock — which meant now he couldn't fall back asleep. His head buzzed with the night's events and the weight of what the manager had said. A whole week to prove himself. An instructor waiting. Freya's shadow still lingered behind his eyelids.
A folded note slid under the door whispered against the tatami.
Prepare. Training starts in one hour. —H.T.
He stared at the paper a second too long, then hauled himself up.
He thought about the setting outside — the thick, silent trees, moonlight slicing between branches, the old gate that read VALHALLA in heavy kanji. It felt like a place meant for hard things: prayer, duels, dying and rising. For a man of forty, the idea of learning something physical felt absurd. Aren't I too old to be learning martial arts now? he thought. Still, the thought of being able to move like those fighters in manga — fast, efficient, ridiculous-looking cool — tugged at him. It was childish and stupid and, for some reason, exactly what he wanted.
After a quick shower and the careful cropping of last night's stubble, he opened the wardrobe in the small room the dorm had given him. He hunted for something that read "trainee" rather than "castoff delivery guy."
He settled on practical training gear: a plain white fitted tee, charcoal training hakama—loose, pleated pants that sat low on the hips but didn't get in the way of kicks—and a pair of dark tabi-style training shoes with rubber soles. He slipped on a simple black belt (no rank insignia — not yet) and took a long look at his reflection. For the first time since the incident, he felt a small, ridiculous flicker of pride.
Downstairs, the dormitory looked like someone had tried to stitch together a Norse longhouse and a Shinto temple. Exposed timber beams arched overhead, their grain polished by years of wind. Shoji panels slid across mahogany frames; runes were carved into the pillars, painted over with careful calligraphy that somehow read both like an old saga and a monk's chant. Fur rugs lay beside tatami mats. Lanterns hummed with a low, bluish light. It was ceremonial and practical at once.
His little smugness vanished when Haruka's eyes found him across the breakfast space. She wasn't wearing the imagined black gi or armored trainer gear he'd pictured up all night. Instead she had on sweatpants, a plain tee, and sneakers — the casual uniform of someone who woke up to work and meant business.
He braced for ridicule. "Yeah, you can laugh if you want," he muttered, trying to sound braver than he felt.
She did laugh — a short, approving sound that cut the tension, then she filled his bowl with rice and pointed a spoon at him. "You look like you raided a tourist shop," she said. "But whatever. Don't overthink it."
During breakfast she laid out the plan with the clipped clarity of someone who had taught more recruits than they cared to count. "Today is about your skill — Analyze," she said, pausing to see how he'd react. "How much do you actually know about it?"
"Umm…" Hajime sifted for words. "It's great. One of the three legendary Isekai skills, yeah? It… gives me info sometimes. Stats, feelings, little thoughts. Mostly random. Compared to Stealth and Masquerade, it feels… normal. Average." He gave a sheepish laugh.
Haruka's face went flat, like a hand slapping a tray. "So you basically know nothing."
Her bluntness landed like a rock. He didn't argue.
Outside, beneath the pines, she started him with questions. Not tests, not drills — questions.
"Skills," she said, "aren't just powers you wear. They're extensions of your body. Each skill links to physical or mental parts — a feature — and the better that part, the stronger the skill."
She used an example. "If a drag racer joined ITA, their power would be something like 'Slip' — it's tied to reaction time, situational awareness, and precision vehicle control. It's not magic in a vacuum; it's muscle memory, nerves, and focus shaped into something usable."
Hajime nodded, feeling like a student again.
"Now — Analyze," she said. "What do you think its components are?"
He thought out loud. "Well. It's about what I look at, so… eyes. And it gives me info, sometimes from nowhere, so maybe the mind — memory, pattern recognition. And… the urge to know why. Curiosity?"
"Good." Haruka tapped a mental checklist. "Eyes. A curious mind. The desire to know — motivation. Those are your three pillars."
She drew the plan with the precision of a drill sergeant. First: sharpen the eyes — not just literal sight but noticing micro-expressions, micro-movements, changes in breathing. Exercises would be about visual acuity under stress. Second: train the mind — puzzles under time pressure, memory drills, learning to pull facts without panicking. Third: ignite the desire — motivation training, endurance, pushing until the mind wants to know more, always.
"Only when those components are in order will Analyze become something you can call. The goal is to use it on command, not by accident. When that happens, you'll be able to utilize it efficiently — especially in the fight coming up."
He swallowed. "Fight?"
She nodded. "Yes. You'll understand why soon enough."
The first drills were simple and humiliating in their own way: focus on a single falling leaf, then a pair, then a pattern of birds flapping. If your eye jerked, you stopped and started again. Next, she had him memorize a set of faces on wooden cards, then walk a short course while a second instructor — a stocky man with a gravelly laugh — fired whistles from behind screens. Noise, distraction, pressure. The idea was to simulate the chaos of a mission and force the mind to pull clear facts.
Everything was calibrated to be slightly harder than he thought possible. He stumbled. He cursed. He breathed wrong.
When they paused, chest heaving, Haruka took a long look at him. "You think this is about speed," she said. "It's not. It's about precision under fatigue. It's about taking what's messy and making it useful."
As the day wore on, Hajime had small wins. He caught a micro-expression on the instructor's face that revealed irritation before the whistle blew. He managed to note three details of a layout without looking back. Each tiny gain felt ridiculous and enormous at the same time.
At dusk, they walked back toward the dorm. Haruka's silence slipped into something like approval. He didn't know how much progress he'd made. He only knew the soreness in his shoulders meant he had done work that morning.
Meanwhile, deep in the ITA network, the manager's voice was a low, urgent murmur to Rin, who had retreated to the shadows and watched with those unreadable eyes.
"We have to be ready," the manager said. "There are too many moving parts. Make sure you're where you need to be."
Rin's reply was short. "I will."
When Hajime finally collapsed onto the narrow dorm futon that night, his thoughts didn't stop. Bright flashes of faces, a dozen tiny facts he'd learned, Freya's silhouette, Haruka's blunt smile. He realized he had been given something dangerous and beautiful, and for the first time since the crash, the idea of being useful felt less like a sentence and more like a shape he could work with.
Tomorrow, the training continued. The week had only begun.