Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 116 - Shin'ō Academy

"Big brother, you're checking on the watermelon field again? Shiro-chan's watermelons aren't that fragile — you don't need to come look after them every single day!"

A month had slipped by. Wayne had grown accustomed to life in Rukongai. Over that month, he'd only gone two places: Momo Hinamori's house and the Hitsugaya family's watermelon field.

It wasn't that Wayne had any particular passion for tending Shiro-chan's crop. He'd simply noticed that the Reishi concentration in that melon-growing soil far outstripped anything he sensed inside Momo's home. Watermelons themselves were a product that replenished Reishi, which meant sitting in that field let his body absorb Reiryoku faster than usual. So he showed up at Shiro-chan's every day, using the excuse of looking after the field to freeload off the Reishi drifting from those melons.

"It's fine, Momo. I like it here." Beneath the shade of a tree, Wayne tilted his head slightly in her direction.

To adapt more quickly to the blind man's identity, Wayne had made himself a Blindfold out of finely woven cloth and tied it across his eyes. That seemingly unnecessary accessory traced its origins back about two weeks.

Because she knew her big brother couldn't see, Momo paid little mind to her appearance at home. On one occasion, ready to bathe, she'd undressed right there in the bedroom, giving Wayne an unobstructed view. It left him more than a little embarrassed. He'd spent a lifetime as a Hollow and had largely severed himself from such concerns, but Wayne had been human across two lives. When a girl of sixteen or seventeen suddenly appeared bare before him, all he could do was force calm and pretend he'd seen nothing, but the slight quickening of his breath betrayed him completely.

After that, Wayne used the excuse of not wanting people on the street to misunderstand his eyes and cause unnecessary trouble. He had Momo find a strip of thin cloth, which he fashioned into a Blindfold, so anyone could tell at a glance that he was blind.

Blindfold or not, Wayne could still see the whole world through the semi-transparent fibers. The difference was that whenever he didn't wish to appear to be looking, he could quietly shut his eyes at any moment. And as his Reiryoku had grown over the past month, he'd also begun developing a certain degree of perception.

Even though the pathways of Reishi circulation differed, Hollows and Soul Reapers weren't fundamentally different in how certain techniques were applied. With Wayne's current range of Reiatsu perception, covering the entirety of Shiro-chan's watermelon field was no problem. Even with his eyes closed, he could use Reiatsu perception to survey and understand the terrain around him, as though a transparent map had opened inside his mind. This gave him a foundation for dealing with Kyokasuigetsu in the future. Back when he was a Vasto Lorde, he'd considered the same approach, but by then he'd long since grown accustomed to fighting with his eyes and couldn't rapidly switch to perception alone. On top of that, Aizen's Reiatsu was overwhelmingly powerful, closing one's eyes in front of it wasn't much different from choosing to die outright.

"Big brother, honestly. You already built that contraption to make watering quick and easy — why do you still sit here every single day?" Momo couldn't understand it. Over the course of that month, Wayne had used knowledge from his previous life to craft a simple irrigation device out of bamboo and clay. Someone like Timd would have done a far better job with such things, but circumstances left Wayne no choice but to do it himself.

It took roughly three days. Wayne hung a row of bamboo nodes he'd converted into shower heads along the top of the field. Without blocking sunlight, all one had to do was pour water into a wooden bucket and use a pressure valve to draw out the air, and the water would travel up into the bamboo frame, semi-automatic irrigation. The little invention delighted Shiro-chan and Momo for a very long time. They no longer had to spend the better half of a day laboring over watering. The workload was now so light that even Shiro-chan's grandmother could handle it with ease.

"The air here is good. I like the smell of the soil." Wayne made up a casual lie, though the words weren't entirely false. With so much Reishi gathered here, even the scent of the earth seemed noticeably fresher than elsewhere.

"Honestly..." Momo planted her hands on her hips and looked at her big brother with a helpless expression.

"Oh, right — big brother Tsukishiro, I found out what you asked about. When Shin'ō Academy enrolls students, and what term they're on." Momo recalled the task her big brother had assigned her some time ago.

"Oh? Tell me." Wayne tilted his head to listen.

"The Shin'ō Academy selection for Soul Reapers begins in September. We still have more than three months before the next application period opens. As for the term... it should be the 2066th." Momo tapped her lips with a finger, thinking.

"2066?" Wayne held his breath slightly. Wasn't that the same term Momo Hinamori enrolled in? That would put it roughly fifty-five years before the main storyline, year 1964 of the Soul Society calendar. The timeline could now be pinpointed exactly. From where he stood right now, Wayne still had plenty of time to grow. Momo would join Shin'ō Academy, and Shiro-chan would follow several years later. No shortage of time to develop.

"Big brother, three months from now — I want to apply to Shin'ō Academy." After some hesitation, Momo finally voiced what she'd been thinking. In her view, even though they lived in the first district of Rukongai, the closest to Seireitei, the one with the best public order, it wasn't enough to make her happy. Not compared to her longing to become a Soul Reaper.

"Of course. That's perfectly fine, Momo." Wayne raised no objection, nodding to encourage her. "Just go take the exam. With how sharp you are, a mere entrance exam won't stop you."

"Hehe, yes!" Momo laughed happily, but very quickly a trace of worry surfaced on her face.

"Your Reiatsu fluctuated slightly. What's wrong, Momo?" Ever since Wayne had developed the ability to sense Reiatsu, he'd naturally shared the fact with Momo Hinamori and the others. That way, he could live like any normal person and provide cover whenever he instinctively looked in someone's direction.

"If I go take the Academy exam... then what about big brother? If you're here alone..." Worry crossed Momo's face. Though they'd only been siblings for a month, from the very beginning Momo had treated Wayne as family. If she went to take the Soul Reaper exam, what would happen to her big brother and Shiro-chan?

"If my Reiryoku can reach the assessment standard within three months, perhaps I'll apply too." Wayne's gaze didn't shift, yet it was as though he were looking directly at Momo Hinamori. "After all, I possess Reiatsu. I can try to become a Soul Reaper. As long as I train my Reiatsu perception well enough, I believe my blindness won't pose too great an obstacle in the future. And from what I've heard, after joining Shin'ō Academy, we'd receive better resources than we have now — more food, and faster Reiryoku growth."

"Yes, yes — I've heard that from the Academy's teachers too, and it really is the case. On top of that, every student who applies gets a set of the Academy uniform, so we won't have to wear these rough linen clothes anymore." Momo nodded excitedly.

"Big brother, you have to work hard, three months. Momo believes you can definitely do it!"

"Ha ha, don't worry. Big brother will put in the effort too." Wayne reached out and patted Momo on the head.

In truth, Wayne's Reiryoku was already more than sufficient to clear the most basic assessment threshold. Over a month of absorbing Reishi, he'd gradually worked out how the Reiatsu circulation of Soul Reapers functioned and could now gather Reishi and manifest it outside his body. For the Shin'ō Academy assessment, one of the items tested was Reiatsu and Reiryoku control. On both counts, Wayne already met at least an above-average standard. All he needed to do next was make good use of the three months ahead, and passing the initial test would come naturally.

"Oh, right, big brother, to help us pass the exam as well as we can, I was thinking of going to the forest outside the district tomorrow to gather some wild fruit and mountain produce."

"Hmm?" Having spent a month in Soul Society, Wayne had not set foot outside Rukongai even once. Mizujun-an was the first district, the safest area in all of Rukongai. It had never occurred to him that there might be something like mountain produce beyond its borders.

"There's plenty of wild game in the mountain fields outside the district, and fish in the streams too. Big brother, for the sake of raising our Reiryoku quickly, maybe we could find a lot of good resources if we went and had a look."

"If there's such a good thing out there, why don't others go hunting outside?" Wayne thought it over and asked. If what Momo said was true, then the people in Rukongai who possessed Reiryoku should have already stripped the nearby resources bare long ago. The district should have expanded as well, at the very least, land where fruits and vegetables grew shouldn't have too low a concentration of Reishi in the soil. So why had nobody gone to cultivate it?

"Because..." Momo hesitated, stopping herself mid-sentence. "Because, outside the district, Hollows occasionally appear."

"Is that so?" Wayne thought about it, fair enough. Soul Society leaving Hollows outside the district unmanaged also served as a form of tempering for the souls who lived there, and for the Academy's students as well. It was also a way of keeping souls from over-exploiting the resources.

"That makes it rather dangerous, doesn't it?" Wayne continued. "Momo, if there's any danger involved, it's better if we don't go."

"But..." Momo hesitated. What she actually wanted to say was that she hoped to gather some mountain produce and hunt some game for her big brother, to boost his Reiryoku as much as possible over these three months. What she had no way of knowing was that at this moment, because Wayne was inwardly compressing and restraining his Reiryoku, the amount of Reiatsu he appeared to have wasn't particularly high, yet the quality of every individual unit of his Reiryoku was several times greater than the quality of Momo's Reiatsu.

After all, in his previous life as a Hollow, Wayne's ability to compress Reishi was no small matter.

"Momo, before we have the ability to protect ourselves, it's better not to take risks. Even though Hollows aren't especially common in Soul Society, if we happened to run into one and got injured, that would be a problem." Wayne persuaded her once more.

"Hmm... alright. But I've already arranged to go with Shiro-chan tomorrow to catch fish by the stream outside the district. That place should be safe. Big brother Tsukishiro, will you come with us tomorrow?"

"I won't be going." Hearing that the stream held no danger, Wayne felt no particular need to involve himself. Sitting right here in the watermelon field absorbing Reishi was far more worthwhile than catching fish by a stream.

"Eh... why not?" Momo had been hoping that, with his Reiatsu perception ability, her big brother might want to go outside and see more of the world, just like any normal person. But Momo also knew that even with the perception ability, the image it formed in one's mind was very blurry, so blurry that even the outlines of a person couldn't be made out clearly. She herself possessed Reiatsu and Reiryoku perception, but she was well aware that she wasn't yet capable of expanding her perception wide enough to make out a person's contours.

"Tomorrow you and Shiro-chan go together. I'll stay here and look after grandmother and these watermelons."

"Hmm... alright." Momo was a little dejected, but she agreed all the same.

Watching Momo pout as she picked up the broom and began sweeping the courtyard, trimming branches and leaves, Wayne couldn't help but find it amusing.

"There's wild game outside that can replenish Reiryoku, there should also be fruits and vegetables worth bringing home to grow, right? At the very least, maybe bring back some soil rich in Reishi? Try turning over the land in our own courtyard?" Wayne sat in his chair at the edge of the watermelon field and began to think about whether there might be an opportunity to hunt some prey. It wasn't that Wayne was unwilling to go to the stream with Momo and the others, it was that he didn't want to expose his current level of strength. For a blind man, aside from that old schemer Tōsen, how many people could close their eyes and still deliver one precise strike after another?

"How does it feel like my devouring-and-leveling-up path is turning into a farming-and-growing path all of a sudden?" Wayne quipped to himself inwardly. From human, to Hollow, and now to soul, Wayne had lived through many tangled stories. Every lifetime had a different way of living. What would he ultimately become? Wayne himself didn't know.

With plans for the future turning over in his mind, that leisurely yet busy day passed just like that.

Night fell. Momo went to bed early, it seemed she was preparing herself for tomorrow's outing with Shiro-chan. Wayne, for his part, went to grandmother and asked for some rice, cooked it, and shaped it into rice balls to pack for Shiro-chan and Momo to eat on the road the next day.

"Making rice balls, I don't think I ever did something like this even in my human lifetime." Wayne, Blindfold removed, let a trace of amusement settle in his pale violet eyes. But as the smile lingered, his thoughts quickly drifted to his time as a Hollow in his previous life. He thought of the one who, right until the very end, had refused to give up on him.

A life as easy and warm as this, Nel would probably have loved it, wouldn't she?

Mountain paths, city streets, simple meals and greens. Whether the bustle of a city or the quiet ease of the countryside, Nel was likely the type to long for all of it.

At that thought, Wayne's hands paused for just a moment. He turned to look back at Momo, already fast asleep. Wayne could only let out a quiet sigh.

The thing called bonds, this was exactly what made them so frightening. Though the word "tragedy" wasn't quite right, someday in the future, Wayne would inevitably have to face different bonds under whichever identity he ultimately chose. When that day came, what kind of choice would he make?

"Ah..."

With a long sigh, Wayne placed the last rice ball into the lunch box. He blew out the candle beside him, rose, and walked out of the living room into the courtyard.

Standing in the yard, Wayne lifted his head and looked up at the sky. That round, bright moon, attended by drifting clusters of colored cloud, in this moment it seemed so familiar, and yet so distant.

➤ Next: Terror by the Stream