Orihime opened her eyes, her eyebrows drawing downward just slightly in confusion. She rolled over in her bed, looking out the window at the slowly drifting snow, sparkling in the moonlight.
It was Christmas, and she had gone to visit her grandmother in an isolated little town far from Karakura. As such, the last thing she expected to feel in the middle of the night was the reiatsu of her Shinigami friend Rangiku.
Orihime slipped out of bed, putting on her robe and slippers, then poked her head out of the window. Rangiku was up above her… on the roof, probably. Orihime hesitated for a second, then grabbed one of her blankets from her bed and slipped out of the window, clambering up the drainpipe to reach the roof.
Rangiku was sitting on the peek of the roof, knees drawn up to her chin, arms hugging her legs. Her pink scarf was the only thing she wearing besides the usual garb of the Shinigami.
"Rangiku-san, what are you doing?" Orihime exclaimed, hurrying up next to her friend. "You're going to freeze in this weather!"
"He didn't come," came the response, and only then did Orihime realize that Rangiku was crying. "We were supposed to come every year, and every single time I came he was already here waiting for me. Even when it was snowing…"
Orihime sat down next to Rangiku, silently putting the blanket around her shoulders. "I-Ichimaru-san?" she asked hesitantly, having heard of Rangiku's childhood friendship with the former captain from Rukia. Rangiku hiccuped through her tears, drawing the blanket tighter around her shoulders.
"He… he never missed a year. I thought… somehow…"
Orihime knew herself well enough that any attempts to say something comforting to Rangiku would fail miserably, so she took a page out of Rangiku's own book and merely put her arms around her tearful friend's shoulders. Rangiku returned the hug, dropping her head onto Orihime's shoulders and sobbing silently, tears running down her cheeks onto Orihime's robe.
...
On a hill, not far away, there stood a white bench someone had draped in holly for Christmas. Rangiku's footsteps were gradually filling with snow, the place she had sat almost completely covered again.
A snowy-white fox ran through the snow, stopping for a moment beside the bench. Its dark nose twitched as it investigated the footprints. A moment later its head shot up, beady eyes darting. Snow crunched under a foot and the fox took off, streaking across the white field and disappearing into an almost invisible hole.
A pale hand came to rest gently on the back of the bench, the snow undisturbed by its feather touch. The slightest breath of a sigh might have been heard, but no breath could be seen in the frigid air.
I was late this time. Gomen.
Sayōnara, Rangiku-chan.
