When they found him "unconscious" on the school roof, they had dragged his inert body to the nurse's office. That had been a spectacle - tough guy Kurosaki Ichigo passed out for no particular reason. Mizuiro mentioned something about the truck ramming the house and the nurse decided that it was a delayed reaction to the shock, while Ichigo (in his shinigami form) had spluttered in protest. He had had to pretend to wake up and then feign confusion over what happened, all the while trying to reassure everyone he was all right.
It had been rather awkward.
He was greeted with an attempted kick to his solar plexus when he arrived home (he hadn't expected anything less), and his old man immediately got rapped sharply on the head with the ladle Yuzu was holding. He then crumpled to the ground with a sob, bewailing his fate to his absent wife. "Daddy, don't do that," Yuzu said. "It's bad enough that brother's collapsed at school, and you're still trying to attack him when he comes home." She was looking at Ichigo with wide, worried eyes. Karin was staring at him as well, but she just seemed puzzled.
He dumped his bag on the floor and slumped into a chair. "Nah, I'm fine. Not sure what happened - I guess I was just tired?" He thought of Rukia and her strange demands, and damned her to Soul Society and back. How was he supposed to go around fighting Hollows without his physical body suddenly going limp at absurd moments? What if it was in class? Or during dinner? What if his family was attacked again, and she wasn't around and he couldn't change into a shinigami fast enough? He couldn't let that happen again. He thought of Karin's gasping breath the night before, the gladness in her eyes that he was safe even if she wasn't; Yuzu in the grasp of the Hollow, her body small and doll-like; and the blood seeping from his father's wound, staining the floor. He was glad Rukia had done whatever it was she had done to erase everyone's memories and make them forget, but-
"Ichi-nii? You're drifting off."
He blinked at Karin, who was now giving him a worried look as well. His father's expression had changed as well - he had that Dr Kurosaki look he had when examining patients at the clinic. Ichigo half thought that his father would pull out a stethoscope from somewhere and insist he should be examined and he was scrambling for excuses when his father announced, "I think . . . this is about a girl!" and Ichigo thought he should be stripped of all of his medical qualifications and pronounced a hack.
Yuzu relaxed, raising a hand to smother her giggles. Karin's eyebrows climbed to her hairline, but she lost her worried look. "You know, son, I could give advice if-"
"No! God, no, please. Let's just have dinner." He'll have to ask Rukia to think of something if she still insisted he helped her with her shinigami work. It didn't seem worth worrying Yuzu and Karin, and he certainly didn't want advice about girls from his father.
They'd get through to tomorrow just fine.
