The three of them came through the door together, and Aki assured Ed at once that they had only come in to thank and pay their respects to their lord and saviour. Then she informed Yashiro, happily, that they had not been able to secure his payment yet. In the meantime, she was giving him her monthly tuition.
That did not sit well with him at all. He tried to get all three of them out of his sight immediately, and Aki countered by announcing that they were ready to undergo strict training under him.
While he was still attempting to get his rejection through Aki's thick skull, Yukina apologised for her absurd behaviour during the mission — and then, in the same breath, began seriously considering challenging him to a fight right there in the bar. Fortunately for everyone in the building, Sarah turned out to be the most level-headed of the two buffoons, despite her odd appearance, as Yashiro put it. That irritated Sarah considerably. She still apologised for dragging him into so much trouble.
All three of them, as it happened, were on the verge of being kicked out of the academy. Yashiro remained entirely unfazed by this.
Disappointed, Sarah decided to hand him her phone. Yashiro was reluctant. He took the call anyway.
On the other end, her father addressed him as the Grim Reaper, for reasons Yashiro did not care to explore, and began expressing his gratitude — which Yashiro cut off by informing him that his manners were trash, along with several other things.
Having borne all of that with patience, the man introduced himself: Arthur Pendragon, director of the Japanese branch of the academy. He acknowledged Yashiro's achievement during the BFE conflict two years ago. He addressed him as the outstanding brave who had eliminated Lord Radiant Serpent.
Yashiro, already off balance, asked why a man in that position had never intervened to save his own daughter. Because, Arthur said, he could not afford to abuse his powers.
Yashiro then argued the obvious point: Sarah was not fit to be a brave. Arthur agreed with him — and added that his daughter, and her two friends, all had issues in their heads that made braves of them. Since Arthur could not afford to make changes inside the academy on his own, he was glad to learn that the trio trusted Yashiro with their lives.
Yashiro tried to argue his way out of that as well, and Arthur stopped him in his tracks by pointing out that this would be a stable job — which was more than could be said for collecting twenty million yen from minors.
If that were not mortifying enough, Joe and Ishino, being the true friends that they were, spent the rest of the call mocking him in front of the schoolgirls, only to find that Aki still insisted on having him as her teacher.
Yashiro asked Ed for another drink.
The night was still young, so Aki decided to introduce herself properly, which Yashiro argued against. He wanted the girls gone at once. Joe and Ishino encouraged them to stay instead, cheering them on and feeding them. When Yashiro saw Ishino hand Sarah his contact card, he finally snapped.
By the time he had finished his own drink, the girls were ready to leave — but not before being told, clearly, that he wanted no disciples at all.
The next day, Yashiro woke up in his peaceful apartment and went through his usual routine until he discovered that he had no food in it. The moment he stepped out to buy some, he found Yukina waiting for him outside, because Ishino, being a true friend, had given his address to all three of them.
Over breakfast, Yashiro refused every offer she made to take him on as a tutor, repeating that he was not in this for the money. He went as far as to refuse to let her buy him food.
For Yukina, life was comfortable enough. The academy paid her, and her residence at the dormitory was free.
Yashiro, by contrast, had several places where he could always sleep, which he offered as an explanation of why he could not settle down anywhere and work properly. Yukina assumed from this that he was jobless. That was not the case. Being a high-level brave had simply never brought him anything except more attention — from dark lords increasingly interested in taking him down, and from excitable people who wanted to recruit him.
To his surprise, Yukina had learned about that from his four-eyed friend as well.
Hearing that, and taking note of a suspicious figure outside the restaurant window, Yashiro advised Yukina to quit being a brave, since her eventual reliance on E3 would get her killed one day. On the way out, he made a point of telling her that he still had no interest in being her master.
Yukina did not answer that. Both of them were entirely aware that they were being followed.
So they turned into a dark alley, injected themselves with E3, and let it happen. What came in around them were the Harumi siblings, led by a man called the Wedge of Both Hands, who was particularly eager to take his revenge after Yashiro had disrespected his lord.
Wedge would have liked to eliminate him. His orders were to bring Yashiro to his lord alive.
Yashiro rejected the offer out of hand. He considered Wedge's lord — the demon king — a serious pain to deal with, precisely because the man refused to stop trying to recruit him. And even if they did kidnap him, the thugs had any number of ways to force him to work for them once they had.
Then Yashiro guessed at Wedge's bounty and got it lower than it actually was, which was enough to make Wedge pull out his daggers.
More thugs came out of the dark. Yashiro made the obvious complaint — that Wedge had a nerve calling this a fair fight — and Wedge pointed out that Yashiro had brought a subordinate of his own, and was visibly taken aback when Yashiro denied that she was any such thing. Wedge followed it with a crack about Yashiro being too old to be running around with a girl like that, which angered Yashiro and Yukina in roughly equal measure, and both of them drew.
Yashiro approved of Yukina's desire to eliminate Wedge. He allowed it only on his signal, because Wedge was a formidable opponent.
Wedge made the first move. Yashiro slid into that slowed-down place the substance gave him and considered his options.
Once his mind was made up, he eliminated three of his attackers, and then a fourth while covering Yukina. He was still aware that the weight of numbers would wear the two of them down eventually. So he used his manipulation of time to deflect every incoming attack away from her, eliminated more of them as he went, repelled the rest, and found the breath to mock Wedge again while doing it.
Livid at the display, Wedge intensified his attacks — and was appalled when Yashiro destroyed the remote hand that had been guiding the daggers at the Grim Reaper all this time.
Yashiro gave Yukina the signal. She was on Wedge instantly. The Harumi siblings saved him, and Wedge managed the rest of the saving himself, and then decided it was best to get out of a fight he had clearly lost.
His men scattered in every direction. Yashiro stood over the two of them who were too injured to run and set Yukina to binding them with zip ties until the authorities came to collect them. That did not stop him from looting the detainees while she worked.
Yukina was disappointed by the whole outcome, but relieved to learn that she had been of some use to him — which he acknowledged, while insisting again that he was not going to be her instructor.