Chapter 070: Save Me, Aizen-sensei!
Matsushita Yusuke's expression had gone very serious.
His brow was tight. The hands resting on his knees had closed into fists without him noticing.
Someone was dead.
Honestly, this was a development he hadn't seen coming at all.
In his understanding of how things worked, Miasa Susumu wasn't the kind of person who should have been easy to kill.
"He was..."
"You were going to say: he was a squad member. An officially registered part of the Gotei 13. Right?"
Aizen Sosuke picked up the thread without waiting for a response, and continued in the same even tone.
"The Gotei 13, along with all affiliated organizations. Total active personnel somewhere between a few hundred and a little over a thousand. That figure is in the basic records kept at the Academy."
The foundation of how the world worked. Everything else built on top of it.
"But Matsushita-kun. Do you know how many of those people die in the line of duty every year?"
Matsushita Yusuke blinked.
He barely knew where the edges of this world were. How would he know that?
"I... don't."
"Roughly one in ten."
Aizen delivered the number without any change in tone.
"Combat losses against Hollows. Casualties sustained during classified operations. Various incidents in the Rukongai that get recorded as accidents."
A brief pause, enough space to let the weight of it settle.
"Because these are organizations that operate at the front line, every squad has developed a very particular kind of tolerance for casualties."
Which meant.
"For someone who has become inconvenient, or simply unnecessary: sending them into the Rukongai on a mission is the cleanest way to make a problem disappear. The numbers absorb it."
Matsushita Yusuke raised one hand and pressed it against his temple.
He didn't say anything.
He understood the logic. It tracked with what he already knew: the Gotei 13 had never been a clean organization. Nobody in it was particularly good. Even Urahara's Hogyoku research had run on a body count that didn't bear examining too closely. As long as the losses came in gradually, spread across enough time and enough different incidents, even internal oversight wouldn't flag it. Squad 11's behavior fit neatly into the same pattern.
But that wasn't actually the problem in front of him right now.
"Why did Miasa have to die?"
Matsushita Yusuke was genuinely lost on this one.
His actual impression of Miasa had been, if he was honest, a good one.
Capable fighter. Knew when to push, knew when to stop. Lost cleanly and didn't say anything ugly about it afterward. Someone like that, given enough time, might have released their Zanpakuto. Might have become someone a squad actually relied on.
That was a person worth something.
Compared to the ones who were just taking up space and waiting for something to happen, Miasa was the kind who actually did the work.
Matsushita Yusuke couldn't find the right words for what he was feeling, but Aizen seemed to read it without needing them.
"You can't make sense of why he had to die, can you."
A beat. Then a cautious nod.
He was well past his own frame of reference at this point.
"It's simple. He embarrassed Kijishi Kenpachi."
Aizen poured a cup of hot tea and set it in front of Matsushita Yusuke. His tone remained exactly what it had been: steady, no particular surprise in it anywhere.
"I mentioned before that Squad 11 operates under a unique structure. Because they have a significant degree of autonomy, even when things go wrong on the messier side, the Commander-General's office tends to find a way to contain it."
The reason was straightforward enough.
"A captain is the center of everything a squad is. Their values, their thinking, the way they handle people: all of it flows through the unit.
Kijishi Kenpachi's thinking is simple. He only really cares about the things that fall within his own frame of concern. And someone like Miasa, who made him lose face in front of everyone..."
That was, in the most literal sense, a failure of duty as Kijishi defined it.
"Other people might consider it a minor thing. But for someone with Kijishi's background, that kind of thing may carry more weight than survival itself. Though I'll stop there: I'm speculating."
The bottom line.
"This needs to be resolved before it gets any larger."
What would larger look like?
Matsushita Yusuke sketched through it in his head.
If Kijishi actually operated by his own logic all the way down, the man was probably capable of showing up at the Academy directly. And with Squad 11's institutional privileges behind him, a regular student had no real recourse on any official level.
Bullying a student? By any normal standard, yes.
But the people in this world who had actual names and actual ranks were not people who lost sleep over that kind of thing.
He hadn't built a strong enough network yet. In a situation like this, that was genuinely starting to cost him.
The problem needed solving, and sooner was better than later.
He hadn't said any of that out loud, but his hands had tightened again. Aizen caught it, turned his head slightly, and let a small, unreadable smile appear.
"Nervous, Matsushita-kun?"
"A... little, yeah."
"Don't be too hard on yourself. Having a captain's attention on you is the kind of thing that would keep even me up at night."
That joke was a little too dry for the current situation.
He wanted to say so. But his head was already too full, and he didn't have the energy for commentary.
Right. Focus on what matters.
"Aizen-sensei. Is there any way out if I just surrender?"
"Hard to say."
Aizen tilted his head, considered it with what looked like genuine thought, then shook his head slowly with a small smile.
"There's a chance it might work. But Matsushita-kun. Putting your life in the hands of someone like that: does that actually seem like a good idea to you?"
Obviously not.
The problem was that his development was still so far behind where it needed to be.
Even if he had to fight this man eventually, he needed to be further along first. At minimum, actually ready.
Otherwise, the only option was to find a way to accelerate his combat ability in the short term.
Was there a way to do that?
Matsushita Yusuke's eyes drifted sideways.
There was.
Complete the faction quest. Collect the rewards.
Back to chapter one, essentially.
"Aizen-sensei!"
He said it louder than he meant to. Aizen, mid-sip, choked on his tea.
"Pfftâ—cough, cough, cough. Yes? What is it, Matsushita-kun?"
"I know this is presumptuous. But is there any chance you could help me?"
Save me, Aizen-sensei!
The atmosphere shifted into something harder to read. Aizen didn't answer immediately. He let his gaze drop, his expression moving into something thoughtful.
A few seconds passed.
Then, as if a decision had been made:
"I understand."
Wait, that worked?
"Come out tomorrow evening. I'll take you somewhere, and I'll think about what I can do. How does that sound?"
Matsushita Yusuke blinked. Then a look of genuine relief spread across his face.
A secret after-hours session with the most dangerous man in three worlds?
This was the hidden tutorial. The one that didn't appear on the map.
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