The morning air of the Seireitei was clean in a way Ethan still hadn't gotten used to—crisp, cool, and almost humming with spiritual pressure. The Shin'ō Academy gates towered ahead like a polished monument, red lacquered wood shining beneath the sunlight.
This is real, he thought. I'm actually here.
Rukia walked beside him, adjusting her uniform collar with mild annoyance.
"Relax," she said without looking at him. "You're too tense."
"Is it that obvious?" Ethan asked.
"Yes. You look like you're about to challenge the gate to a duel."
He laughed, nerves dissolving a bit.
Rukia wasn't exactly warm, but she wasn't cold either—not to him. More like a big sister who tried not to show she cared.
They stepped through the main archway, and immediately Ethan felt it—a subtle vibration inside his chest.
The Panel shifted.
A slight flicker across his senses. A low hum.
Nothing visible. Nothing anyone could detect.
But he knew.
—Taming Protocol now available for field use— the Panel whispered silently through instinct, not words.
A new icon settled into his awareness, dormant but glowing like an ember.
His remaining PP displayed faintly:
115 PP
Ethan forced his expression to remain neutral.
This wasn't something anyone in Soul Society needed to know about.
Especially since the ability wasn't limited to hollows.
He could bind anything—shinigami, spirits, beasts, even Zanpakutō entities—so long as they mentally accepted the bond.
And mindless creatures…
They'd fall into Taming Space as long as they didn't resist.
Yeah. Definitely best if nobody finds out.
"Oi, Ethan," Rukia snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. "Spacing out on your first day won't look good."
"Sorry," he said quickly. "Just… excited."
"Good. Stay excited. The Academy's hard, and the instructors don't go easy on new students."
They reached the main courtyard. Students gathered, chatting, stretching, sizing each other up.
Some radiated so much spirit pressure the air around them shimmered.
Ethan swallowed.
These were just students?
Rukia nudged him. "Go on. Introduce yourself when they start roll call."
"You're not staying?"
"I'm already in Class A. I'm just showing you the way."
Then, softer, she added, "Don't fall behind."
Before he could respond, she was already walking away.
---
Orientation
Instructor Jinrō stood on the raised platform, a stern man with a shaved head and eyes like polished stone.
"Welcome, incoming students!" he bellowed. "This year's enrollment is exceptionally large. As such, we will sort you based on your performance in the introductory sparring evaluation."
Ethan blinked. Sparring? Today?
A few students groaned. One fainted on the spot.
Ethan just exhaled shakily.
This place really didn't play around.
"Before we begin," Jinrō continued, "any of you without basic reiryoku control will be removed immediately."
Ethan quietly tested his spiritual flow, letting the Panel's passive systems guide him.
The energy inside him shifted cleanly, forming a steady loop.
He was safe.
---
The Whisper Again
While the instructor spoke, Ethan felt it:
A strange, hollow presence drifting near the training grounds. Weak. Wandering.
A lost spirit? No… it's degraded.
Something in between a hollow and a ghost. A proto-hollow.
Barely aware. Barely alive.
And the Taming Protocol warmed in response, like a hand tapping his shoulder.
—Valid target detected. No resistance sensed. Taming possible—
Ethan stiffened.
Not here. Not in front of everyone.
He mentally shoved the prompt back: Not now.
The Panel dimmed obediently.
No one noticed.
No one could.
He hoped.
---
Sparring Begins
Students were called up pair by pair.
Some were good. Some were hopeless.
Some were terrifying.
When Ethan's name was called, a few students turned to look at him curiously.
He stepped forward, wooden practice sword in hand, heart racing.
His opponent was a tall student with dyed-red hair and too much confidence.
"This'll be quick," the guy smirked.
Ethan raised his sword.
He didn't plan on losing.
Rukia was watching from the edge of the yard, arms folded.
Okay Ethan… don't embarrass yourself.
The instructor's hand dropped.
"Begin!"
Wood struck wood in a crisp, hollow rhythm. The red-haired student lunged with a flurry—too many moves, all momentum and show. Ethan kept his blade low, eyes on the smaller patterns beneath the flash: the way the attacker shifted weight before a faux strike, the tiny beat in his breath when he committed. Exam Reflexes whispered timing cues; Alpha Sense painted the trajectory of his opponent's center of mass like a faint line.
Ethan didn't try to out-power. He redirected. A soft step, a turn of the wrist, the practice sword slipped past the other's guard and tapped a shoulder with enough force to unbalance but not to hurt. The crowd made a small, surprised sound.
The red-head stumbled, then grinned—more surprised that the student he'd expected to topple had steadied him. The instructor barked an order about discipline and economy. Ethan bowed; the movement was clean. He'd won without drawing attention to anything unusual. That was the point.
Rukia's face in the sidelines was small and unreadable for a moment, then she gave him a quick upward tilt of her chin—the smallest of approvals.
The rest of the morning blurred into drills: stance patterns, breath syncing, basic kido seals without power. Ethan kept his focus narrow. He let the Panel handle the background math—small calibrations to his balance, a quiet nudging of limb timing—while he practiced making his body speak the academy's language.
Between drills his panel nudged a private note: Target reappearance — shrine fringe sector C. Hollow cluster count: 2 (low output). The notice was cavery, discreet. He could have left it, ignored it, run back to the dorms to study. But the hollow had been a spot-check in his mind since morning; he'd felt the presence like a fingernail on a page.
There was a window between the noon roll call and the advanced technique lecture: twenty minutes of slack when instructors let the grounds breathe. Ethan used it.
"Headed out for a quick walk," he told Rukia. She shrugged. "Bring back a page of notes. Don't do anything stupid."
He smiled and moved away, feet finding the path the trainees didn't use—the narrow lane where prayer flags snapped and the air thinned. The academy's geometry favored people who knew how to keep to the edges. He folded his awareness down, kept the Taming Suite untouched inside the Panel like a thought he wasn't ready to speak.
Near the shrine stones the hollow waited. It was smaller than the mind's hollows in legends—one of the kind the academy used for live practice sometimes, bred for trouble and not for terror. It paced in small, jerking movements, mouth agape, mask cracked at the edge. The thing made no real noise; it smelled faintly of stale cold and old grief.
Ethan could have called an instructor, let them deal with it. He thought of the reward line that always ran in his head now—how the Panel paid for kills, how the math sang like a small temptation. But this place was about learning; removing a problem loudly would make headlines, and headlines were the last thing he wanted. The Suite existed so he didn't have to make that choice.
He stepped to the margin and activated. The mental gesture was private and small—a way of thinking the Panel had taught him when the bind procedures were installed. The Taming Suite folded open inside his perception: not a room you could see but a private dampened field that pulled spiritual noise into a soft bowl. Detection drifted down twenty-plus percent; reiatsu leaked into the Suite like water into a sponge.
Personal Taming Suite — active.
Detection delta: −25%.
Target: Hollow#C-2 (low output). Capacity Scan: NO coherent mindstream detected. Bind path: Common — permitted.
He breathed slow. The suite's dampeners made the hollow's jittering edges feel manageable, like an animal under a net. No mental assent was required—this was by design. Mindless things bound; that had been the rule Ethan chose to live with.
He stepped from shadow to shadow, close enough to feel the hollow's breath. The Panel offered the bind sequence like a scalpel slid across a bank counter: gentle, clinical. He reached out with the ribbon and let it knot around the hollow's unstable reishi—the Panel rewrote its pattern into a simpler loop. Hunt and follow became hunt, follow, return.
The bind finished in a whisper. The hollow's wild trembling eased into a small tetheredness. It tilted its head at him, like an animal learning the face of safety.
Bind successful.
New Familiar: active (temporary name: Suzu).
PP: 115.
No PP changed—taming was zero cost. The suite recorded the event in a private ledger only Ethan could see. It kept the timestamp, the reishi snapshot, the fold's dampening factor. The Panel's ethics filter was quiet; the canon filter—a small line of rules that suppressed attempts on named or plot-critical entities—did not trip. This hollow was a background figure, window dressing. That was the only kind he bound.
Suzu nestled at Ethan's feet, mask tapping the stone like a bell. He crouched and let the thing sniff his hand. It had no warmth beyond the faint residue of lingering hunger; it had, now, a tether to him. He fed it a scrap of rice from his pocket—an offered gesture—and Suzu accepted it with a small, absurd sound.
Behind them, a patrol step echoed. Ethan folded the suite closed with the same private thought. The dampening loosened and the sanctum slid away. He stood, breath even, and walked back toward the practice fields as if he'd been gone only a moment.
When he came up the path the advanced technique lecture had started. A senior took the platform and demonstrated a simple shikai readiness drill: posture, a controlled discharge of presence, the first tidy gestures that marked the difference between raw reiatsu and someone who knew how to hold it.
Rukia caught his eye as he slid into the line and offered a pointed look—half question, half warning. Ethan gave a small shake of the head that said everything: nothing to see. She accepted it.
Suzu stayed invisible in the suite's shadow—stored in the fold, waiting. When Ethan needed it the Panel would pull the familiar into the visible world with a quiet nudging of reishi. For now it was custody, secret and small.
After the lecture the instructor asked for volunteers for a voluntary night sweep: a simple perimeter check of the outer lots, designed to give trainees practice in non-combat reconnaissance. Ethan signed up without raising his hand too high. The instructors liked eager trainees who stayed inconspicuous afterward; it made the whole group look better.
He had a plan: use the sweep to test Suzu's scouting, map the shrine fringe routes, and keep the academy's edges tidy without anyone making a note about another "mysterious trainee" who collected bodies. The Panel pinged a little, approving the plan in strictly private language.
As dusk slid over the roofs, Ethan donned a neutral cloak and met the small group at the gate. The sweep was mundane, methodical—move, listen, mark, report. Suzu slipped from the fold like a shadow skimming the ground, small as a folded poem. The familiar's Trailmark—an ability the Panel had given when he'd evolved its instincts in the Suite—left faint glyphs on his private map only he could see. It marked hollows' breaths and weak nests and a trail of discarded mask shards that meant a larger cluster had passed through two nights ago.
They cleared three stray hollows quietly: distractions, not fights. Ethan let Suzu draw one into a safe pocket behind a stone altar; he guided its motion with the simplest of mental cues the Panel translated. No swings. No screams. The patrol's senior clipped a note about "efficient sweep" and praised the line for quiet discipline. No one looked at Ethan the way people look at men who perform miracles.
Back in the dorms that night, after latrine calls and study, Ethan put his hand on the wood of the bunk and let the day fold over him. In the privacy of his berth he opened the Panel and looked at the ledger.
Bindings: 1 (Suzu — Common Familiar)
PP: 115
Personal Taming Suite: active (sleeping)
Talent Progression: nominal increase
He could have spent his points—evolved Suzu to Rank II, bought a Scout Wisp, anything. But he kept his PP where it was. Evolution would change the signature; it would make Suzu more visible. For now, quiet utility was the point.
He shut the ribbon and lay back, listening to the building breathe. The academy taught them how to wield power, and the world taught him how to hide it in the small, useful things that let people pass through the day safer. He'd made a small, secret choice: to be a background hand, not the trumpet. That felt like enough—for now.
Outside, a lantern threw a slice of light across the courtyard. Inside the Panel, a tiny bell chimed as Suzu shifted in its fold, settling like a promise.
Tomorrow would bring more drills, new corrections, and the risk that someone might notice things done too neatly. Ethan closed his eyes and turned the quiet over like a map. He had one familiar. One secret. One ledger of choices that would add up over time.
And he had 115 PP sitting like intent in his account—enough to change something if he needed to. For now he would keep practicing, keep learning, and keep the Suite a closed room in his head.