Bright Queen
By: Eva Grimm
Chapter One: Body, Soul, and Other Body

"We think a flower on a cliff is beautiful
because we stop our feet at the cliff's edge,
unable to step out into the sky
like that fearless flower."

Tite Kubo, Bleach, vol. 12

This chapter of Bright Queen is dedicated to my one-year-old kitten, Ichigo. Somehow, despite being orange and white, you always keep me on my toes. Thank you for reminding me to always be ready for anything.

Chapter Summary: The eldest Kurosaki child has been addicted to the sensation of being a disembodied soul ever since the night she became a shinigami, so Rukia hatches a plan to convince her to stay in a body.

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Bleach. Bright Queen is a fan-based work and not sold for profit.

***SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers for any Bleach book — they're going to happen. You've been warned.

"Ichirou ("one son"; 一郎), it's late. Even Kon's asleep. You should get back in your body and rest."

"Not yet," the orange haired girl says, an undercurrent of desperation in her voice. She hugs her legs to her chest and savors the feeling of her knees pressing against her breast. Her eyes carefully look anywhere in his sparsely decorated room that doesn't include one Rukia Kuchiki, avoiding the disapproving expression she knows is on the shinigami's face. The ravenette has made her opinion regarding the teen's newest pastime quite clear on multiple occasions, but this feeling… She just can't give it up. How could she reasonably be expected to after being deprived of it for the past fifteen years?

"Hn," the shinigami grunts. The ravenette is probably frowning, but the youth doesn't look to check. She just wants to bask in the feel of her body for these last precious moments before she has to go back. "This isn't healthy, Ichirou… You nee—"

"Please don't call me that," the girl cuts in with a scowl.

"I've already told you I have to call you something."

"And I've already told you that's his name." One of the teen's hands abandons its position on her leg and grabs at some of her wild orange hair's long locks, idly twisting it around her finger like she'd seen girls at school doing countless times before.

"This is really unhealthy, Ichi—" The shinigami abruptly stops before she can commit the faux paus they had just talked about.

The girl curled up on the floor releases a sigh practically oozing with resignation. "I… I know it is, Rukia," she mutters. "You really think I don't? A soul being outside of its body typically means death. Just because you're knocking my soul out with your freaky glove doesn't make it healthy."

The shinigami sputters. "If you know it's unhealthy, then why are you spending every free moment disembodied? The only reason I got the gokkon tekkou was so you could perform my shinigami duties while I'm recovering my powers!"

"You wouldn't understand," the teen hisses in anger. "You said yourself after I killed that first hollow that you'd never seen a female soul in a male (She spits the word out with a level of vehemence one would ordinarily save for swearing) body. I…" She trails off for a moment, her face twisting as she wrestles with how to phrase what she's trying to say. It's difficult because she's been so introverted since her mother's death, but she eventually resumes speaking, her tone an odd mixture of glum and excited. "When I'm out of that body I feel so alive, so right."

"And you're certain you aren't feeling that way because of your shinigami powers?" Rukia hesitantly asks.

"Yes," she answers, her tone brooking no argument because she knows in her heart it's true. Even if she hadn't wanted to be a girl all her life — which she had, at least for as long as she can remember — it's obvious that what she's feeling is tied to her soul's female anatomy. Touching her hips sends a thrill coursing through her. Her soprano voice is the sweetest sound she's ever heard before. Just thinking about having breasts and a vagina makes her heart sing! "This is my soul… This is who I am, not that body on my bed."

Silence follows and stretches on for several minutes. The orangette is just beginning to hope Rukia's given up trying to convince her when the shinigami finally speaks up again, her tone deadly serious. "What would you give to stay this way?"

"Anything," comes the answer without hesitation.

"Even giving up your old life? Abandoning your old body for one that's… fake?"

The girl on the floor slowly turns her chocolate brown eyes up to Rukia and finds the raven haired woman's amethyst eyes boring into her with incredible intensity. She takes a minute to ponder how to phrase her answer, knowing that to answer any quicker would cause the shinigami to doubt her sincerity. "I'm not sure what you mean by a 'fake' body, but I hold no love for the one on my bed. And I would do my best to preserve what I can of my old life," she eventually responds, "but if I couldn't do it…"

Images of her family flash through her mind's eye. Her crazy father Isshin trying in vain to mock fight her, his peculiar way of expressing his love, but never managing to land a blow and eventually giving up in favor of telling the picture of her mom on the wall a sob story about how his… son is too distant and needs to accept… his dad's love. Her younger sister Yuzu always greeting her big… brother obvious love and affection and helping… him with the housework that their dad never manages to get around to because he's too busy running the clinic. Her other younger sister Karin feigning indifference around the rest of the family but secretly checking on how her big… brother is doing and doing her best to coax… him out of… his funk. More images join the rest as thoughts of her strange group of friends flit through her mind. The ever quirky Orihime, the stalwart Chad, the protective Tatsuki, the slacker Keigo, and the level-headed Mizuiro. Last, she thinks of Uryuu, the quiet and solitary boy she's had a crush on since the beginning of the school year when she first saw him in homeroom. Despite being a sulky loner since before junior high, she's managed to acquire a large collection of people whom she cares about and who care about her. Even though none of them know she's a she, she knows they would understand her risking never seeing them again for the sake of finally finding happiness.

"They would understand," she finishes.

Indecision wars in the shinigami's eyes for a long time. The silence drags on for so long the orange haired teen completely loses track of time.

Someone knocks on the door. "Ichirou?" says the soft voice of Yuzu. "Are you still awake?"

Shit! the teen inwardly cries as she hastily pulls herself to her feet and throws herself into the awful shell of a body lying under the covers while Rukia quickly and quietly scrambles over to the closet and slips the door shut.

"Ichirou? I'm coming in," Yuzu announces.

As her sister slips the door open, she commands the fifteen-year-old shell she was born in to stir, like it's just waking up. Tonight, more than ever, she feels like a passenger in the body rather than its owner. 'Sleepy' chocolate brown eyes find the dark brown of her younger sister as the body utters, "Hm? Sorry, Yuzu. I must have dozed off with the light on." The sound of the body's voice causes her to shudder, which she quickly plays off by pulling the blanket up a little further.

"Okay!" her sister replies with a smile tinged with a bit of concern. "If you're cold, I can get you an extra blanket…"

"I'm fine. Thank you, Yuzu."

The younger girl smiles a bit more fully at that. "I'll get the light for you," she says as she flips the light switch and slowly pulls the door shut. "Good night, Big Brother."

The door clicks shut, cutting off all light but the thin ray slipping through the crack under the door. Eventually, even that light disappears as the rest of the Kurosaki family settle in for the night. The darkness of the room now absolute, the teen whispers, "Rukia? I… Please use the gokkon tekkou on me again." She's already itching to shed her false image once more, to become that true reflection of herself that she can only be when her soul is freed from its prison.

A sigh escapes the closet, so soft she can barely hear it. A moment later, the door quietly slides open, and the floor creaks slightly as her companion crosses the room. Thank heavens. I thought for sure she'd turn me down now that I'm back in this body again.

The faint creaking reaches her bedside, but jarring feeling of her soul being released from its male prison doesn't come. Instead, the ravenette whispers to her, "I may know a solution, but it's got drawbacks. We'll discuss it tomorrow after school, no sooner. Now sleep." The last word comes out sounding strange, but she has no chance to reflect on it as she abruptly falls asleep.

The next day is nothing short of torture for the orange haired teen. True to her word, Rukia absolutely refuses to talk about the matter she teased before using kidou to put the teen to sleep. The day moves by at a dreadfully slow pace, and all of her teachers' lectures pass over her like a haze. Worst of all, the sensation of being trapped in an ill-fitting body grows stronger with every passing second as the promised discussion approaches. By the time the final class bell rings, the sensation is entirely unbearable, and she practically sprints out of the classroom down to the shoeboxes.

"C'mon, Rukia," she mutters while anxiously waiting by the school gate for the shinigami masquerading as a high school girl to catch up. Before long, she grows too restless and in an effort to calm down, she reaches into her school bag and wraps her hand around an object inside it: A strawberry hairclip she nicked from her sister awhile back. Taking the hairclip wasn't out of the ordinary, even though she does feel bad for having stolen from her sister, since she's always had a habit of picking up discarded or lost feminine objects that no guy her age would dare be caught with. Lip gloss, hair ties, and hairclips are just some of the objects she keeps carefully hidden beneath the loose floorboard under her bed. What is out of the ordinary, however, is the soothing effect this particular treasure always elicits in her. None of the other items she's taken from Yuzu or Karin make her feel the same way, so that's not the reason behind the effect, that much she knows.

"Strawberry… Ichigo…" she mutters to herself under her breath as she thinks on the hair ornament's design. Something about that word calls to her. That is why simply holding the hairclip soothes her so. Why it calls to her is still a mystery, but what isn't a mystery in her life? Why she was born a girl trapped in a boy's body, why she can see pluses and hollows stronger than anyone else in her family, why her mother died all those years ago… Her life is one giant mystery wrapped up in a mystery, or so it's always seemed to her.

"Who's Ichigo?"

The teen squeaks in surprise before clapping her hands over her mouth in mortification. Standing not a few feet away is Uryuu Ishida, looking genuinely surprised to have seen the 'delinquent' Ichirou react in such a feminine way. After a moment, the surprise passes and is replaced with a searching expression. Clearly her classmate won't be so easily swayed from his curiosity.

"I, ah… She's…" The orangette winces abruptly at the strange slip of the tongue? 'She'? What on Earth am I even talking about right now?

The raven haired young man says nothing as his dark blue eyes remain trained on her, watching like a hawk.

Before the substitute shinigami can dig herself into an even deeper hole, Rukia finally arrives and saves the day. "Sorry about the wait. Are you ready to go?"

"Of course!" the teen chirps before laughing awkwardly, the timbre of her male body's laughter causing more dysphoria than usual while standing in front of her crush. "Gotta go do that thing we've been planning to do!" She quickly hooks her arm through Rukia's and starts to drag the disguised shinigami off before Uryuu comments on how strange she's acting. Funnily enough, she doesn't even realize she's fleeing with Rukia in the same way she's watched countless girls her age likewise escape awkward situations with their friends. "Is he following us?" she quietly asks after putting some distance between them and the school gate.

The ravenette glances over her shoulder before confirming, "No, he's not. Mind telling me what that was all about?"

"Well," the teen murmurs in discomfort as her companion steers them in a different direction, "it's… ah, it's kind of… awkward."

"Yes, that much was obvious even to me," she replies, referencing her own social awkwardness from being an over a hundred year old soul masquerading as a modern teenager. Understanding abruptly dawns on her face and she whirls around to face her orange-haired companion with a knowing gleam in her amethyst eyes. "You like him, don't you?"

"No!" she denies far too quickly, a faint and damning blush settling into place on her male body's cheeks. "This is why learning 'modern language' from reading manga isn't a good idea, Rukia!"

"Mhm," the shinigami counters, clearly unconvinced. "Is that why you want to be a girl so bad? Because he only likes girls?"

"Rukia!" the teen cries in mortification, nervously and futilely checking to see if anyone nearby heard her friend. "That's not it," she quietly hisses through clenched teeth. "How many times do I have to tell you? I've wanted to be a girl for as long as I can remember. I didn't meet Uryuu until this school year started. When are you going to believe that I'm being sincere?"

The ravenette quietly watches as her blushing companion nervously brings her hands together in front of her waist as if she's preparing to bow, the girl's way, and trains her eyes on the ground. The orange-haired youth's mannerisms had slowly but surely begun to grow more feminine during the weeks following her first experience as a substitute shinigami, and the usually alert Rukia hadn't missed the change. At first she had suspected the transfer of her powers had somehow forcefully imprinted her own soul's femininity and mannerisms onto Ichirou's soul, but the evidence didn't precisely support that conclusion. Ichirou wasn't acting like Rukia but rather an ordinary, if awkwardly shy, teenage girl. Moreover, Ichirou had been insisting that she had always felt this way, and the idea of a soul imprint is farfetched enough without the added notion of the substitute shinigami's memories being rewritten as well.

The only reasonable explanation is that he… she honestly feels this way, the shinigami concludes, her resolve to help the girl trapped in a boy's body renewed. "Come with me," she firmly says, grabbing the orangette's hand and dragging her off once more. "We'll talk about the solution I mentioned last night while we're on our way there."

As the two of them rush off in bodies ill-fitting their true selves, a girl with long, dark orange hair steps out of the side street from where she had frozen in place upon hearing Rukia declare that Ichirou wants to be a girl. She hadn't meant to eavesdrop, but she couldn't bring herself to move until the pair had left, and consequently heard everything. "Ichirou…" Orihime Inoue murmurs softly to herself, still thrown by what she's learned. "Oh, Ichirou…"

"Do you understand, Miss Kurosaki?" the strange proprietor of Urahara Shop, whom Rukia introduced as Urahara Kisuke, asks the orange-haired soul standing before him clad in her shihakushou with a zanpakutou as long as she is tall strapped to her back. Rukia stands nearby waiting anxiously for the substitute shinigami's reply. Kon, who Rukia brought along especially for this meeting, is sits cross-legged on the floor next to her in the body of 'Ichirou,' and he too is nervously awaiting the girl's response.

"Yes," she replies without hesitation, a small smile playing across her lips from being called 'Miss.' He looks like a creeper, but he's been so respectful this whole time. "If I choose to live in one of your gigai, then it will reshape to match my soul's, rather than my original body's, appearance. My soul will still be anchored to my original body through my soul chain, so whatever happens to it happens to my soul. As it grows older, I'll grow older, and so will the gigai. If it dies… then I die."

"Just so!" he declares, hiding his face behind his fan as he does so, leaving only his piercing gray eyes visible in the gap between the fan and the brim of his green and white hat. "Kon can live in your original body, but you can never escape that body's fate. How you choose to integrate your new body into your old life, if you choose to do it at all, is a matter I leave entirely in your hands." He pauses for a moment, giving the soul a moment to grasp the weight of his words, then finally asks, "Knowing all of this, Miss Kurosaki, are you certain you wish to go through with it?"

Just as she did the previous night, the orangette gives the matter a few minutes' honest consideration, her gaze falling to the floor as she thinks. Eventually, her chocolate brown eyes rise and stare into Urahara's with determination as the smile on her lips grows larger. "Yes. My fate's tied to my original body either way, so when it comes down to it, it's a question of whether I'm willing to risk my old life for the sake of being me — the real me. And like I told Rukia last night… I know everyone I care about would understand. Besides, as you said, doing this also means that Kon will get to live in a real body instead of a stuffed lion, so 'Ichirou Kurosaki' doesn't have to die. Please… give me the gigai."

Kon's delight at the girl's answer is palatable, but Rukia is a mixture of resigned and pleased as Urahara silently disappears into the recesses of his shop to retrieve the requested items. If someone had told her what would happen in Karakura Town before she left Soul Society to hunt down the hollow that attacked the Kurosaki family, she honestly would have thought that someone was crazy. Now that it had all come to pass, now that she was a part of it all… She feels like she's the crazy one. Nothing short of craziness would have led to me suggesting this to her, this unnatural way of living, the shinigami thinks. And yet… I can't help being happy for her. Shinigami exist to preserve the balance. To not offer this girl the chance to live in a body that matches her soul… wouldn't that fly in the face of my duty as a shinigami?

"Rukia," the girl says, drawing the shinigami's attention. The orangette's smile is still firmly in place, and Rukia belatedly remembers that when she first saw the girl she was sulking on the bed with a frown and that she hadn't smiled until after she had cut down the hollow and realized that her shinigami form, her true soul's reflection, was female. "Thank you for this."

The girl's words elicit a small, true smile from the much older and ordinarily very serious shinigami. "You're welcome," she simply replies as the panel door separating the main store area from the back slides open.

Urahara steps through the open door with a folded set of clothes in his arms. A large bespectacled man with a handlebar mustache and cornrows leading into a single braid follows him as far as the door, and slung over his shoulder is a body made entirely of muscle — the blank gigai. Behind them are two children, one a black haired girl and the other a red haired boy, just barely poking their heads around the door, trying to spy on the proceedings and utterly failing at remaining out of sight. The orangette has met them all before, back when they came to try and take back Kon, but she was only ever introduced to Urahara, so she's unable to greet the newcomers.

"Please follow Tessai and me, Miss Kurosaki. We'll get you set up in a private room where you can enter your gigai and get dressed."

The orange-haired soul takes a step forward before pausing, a contemplative look crossing her face. "One second," she says as she turns on her heel and strides over to Kon. "Ko— Ichirou, would you please hand me my school bag?"

The mod-soul's surprise morphs into a wide smile as he hands the girl the requested bag. "I'm really am going to be Ichirou from now on, aren't I?"

She laughs as she takes the bag and turns to follow Urahara and Tessai. "Yeah… Yeah, I guess you are." And with those words, she truly sheds the identity 'Ichirou Kurosaki' and leaves it in the mod-soul's care, walking through the door into the back and into the new life that awaits her there.

A minute later, the two oldest employees of Urahara Shop return to the main room, ushering the two children in front of them before shutting the door to the back. "We wouldn't want to spoil Miss Kurosaki's big reveal, would we, Ururu? Jinta?" He adjusts his hat with a grin, his serious side once more abandoned in favor of his typical laid-back attitude. The group of six waits in silence — well, relative silence, since Jinta is currently poking and prodding Ichirou, who is slowly developing a tick while grumbling about stupid kids — for the door to open once more.

When the door finally slides open, dragging Ichirou and Jinta's attention back to it, the sight that greets the group is both expected and unexpected. There in the door is a teenage girl with long orange hair dressed in a simple long-sleeved, white blouse with orange trim, a skirt that matches her eyes, white knee high socks, loafers that also match her eyes, and her school bag slung over her shoulder. Where Ichirou is 174 centimeters tall, she is only 158, and where he is all hard angles, she is soft curves. All of that is expected, but what isn't is her hair is pulled back into a low, loose ponytail with a red hair tie, and her bangs are held back from falling into her chocolate brown eyes by a strawberry hairclip.

The girl shyly smiles and bows with her hands clasped in front of her, the traditional way for girls to bow in Japan, while saying in a soprano, "Hello. My name's Ichigo ("bright queen"; 矞后) — Ichigo Kurosaki. I'm pleased to meet you all."

"Are you sure you're okay with this, Rukia?" Ichigo asks in a worried tone as she, Ichirou, and Rukia take one of the last turns on the way to the Kurosaki Clinic. "You won't get in trouble with Soul Society if I reveal your existence to my family?"

"There's no law against revealing our presence to humans," the shinigami calmly replies. "If there were, then we'd get in trouble on the rare occasion that we come across a human with reiryoku high enough to see us. This isn't the same situation, but the point stands there's no law that applies here."

The orangette gives her shorter companion a dubious look. "Then why didn't you tell them before? You can't tell me you liked living in my closet."

Ichirou snorts in amusement, but Rukia just smiles faintly and replies, "Because even though I didn't like living in your closet, I didn't feel that justified taking the risk of telling your family and having them try to talk you out of being a substitute shinigami. Now I know you better and know you won't back down from doing what's right."

Ichigo opens her mouth to reply as they approach the front door of the clinic but is cut short when the door slams open and Isshin rockets out in a flying kick aimed straight at her while shouting, "You're laaaaaate!"

She easily side-steps him out of habit and before she can stop herself, she calls out, "I'm home!"

"Hm? Who is that?" Yuzu says as she steps into the entryway a moment later, a puzzled look on her face that's matched by Isshin when he lands in the middle of the street. Silence falls over the group as Isshin and Yuzu stare at Ichigo in confusion and Ichigo, Ichirou, and Rukia flounder over how to start explaining.

The moment is broken when Karin, last but not least, finally pokes her head around the corner, takes in the situation for a moment, then casually returns to whatever she was doing, calling out behind her, "Whoever she is, can we figure it out inside? Dinner's getting cold."

"I, uh…" Ichigo awkwardly begins, turning from Yuzu to Isshin, the latter of whom is staring at her so intensely that she starts to fidget. "May we — that is, Rukia and me — join you for dinner?"

"Sure you can, Ichir-go! Ichigo, I mean," Ichirou abruptly chips trying to pretend nothing is wrong despite stumbling over her name. "That's not a problem, right Dad?"

Isshin turns his piercing gaze to Ichirou, and the boy shivers under its intensity. The older man continues to stare at him for a moment longer, as if he can tell just by looking at Ichirou that he's not the same Ichirou who left for school that morning. "Of course!" the man suddenly replies in his usual tone of voice as if nothing is wrong, his serious side vanishing in an instant. "Yuzu, do we have enough food for two guests to join us?"

"I, I can get out some of the leftovers from yesterday," the young brunette answers, still obviously confused but recovering enough to rush off to the kitchen to prepare the extra food.

Soon enough, the group of six adds two chairs to the dinner table and crams in around it, and Isshin declares a Kurosaki family meeting but insists that everyone eat first while the food is warm. Isshin and Ichirou promptly dig into the food with gusto as if nothing is amiss, Karin begins to eat at her typical pace, and the rest of the girls soon follow suit with a tad more reluctance. Ichigo in particular barely eats anything, her stomach so full of butterflies that she can barely stomach eating anything at all. After a few minutes of mostly shuffling around what little food she put on her plate, the orangette sets down her chopsticks and pushes the plate away.

"Not hungry, Miss Ichigo?" Yuzu asks, glancing at the practically untouched plate with concern.

"Not really, sorry," she replies awkwardly, not quite certain how to act around her younger sister just yet.

"Did you not like it? I can make you something else!"

"No, no!" Ichigo says, shaking her head. "It was very good. My stomach just isn't feeling well right now." She rises from her seat as she adds, "I'll just go grab some anti-nausea medicine from the clinic."

"Oh?" Isshin cuts in. "You know where that is then?"

The teenager freezes mid-step. "Err… N-no, of course not, since this is absolutely the first time I've ever been here." She turns around but keeps her eyes trained on the ground, studiously avoiding the curious glances of Karin and Yuzu and the knowing eyes of Isshin. "W-would one of you mind going to get it for me?"

Karin sets down her chopsticks and rises from her seat. "I'm done, so I'll grab it."

"Thank you, Karin," Ichigo replies before realizing she's slipped up again.

The ravenette casually asks, "Oh? Did Ichirou mention my name? I know Dad and Yuzu didn't," as she starts towards the hallway that leads to the clinic.

"Yeah… Yeah, something like that," the orange haired girl mutters before returning to her own chair. Somehow, she manages to resist the urge to put her face in her hands.

By the time Karin returns with the requested pills, Yuzu has begun putting the dishes in the sink to be washed. Knowing the time is at hand, Ichigo swallows the medicine and silently prays to whatever deity is listening (Considering what she's learned about Soul Society so far, she's honestly no longer sure what to believe.), begging for the coming conversation to go well.

"So Ichigo," Isshin says, signaling the beginning of the inquisition. "Would you like to tell us about yourself?"

The teen blanches as everyone's eyes, including Rukia's and Ichirou's, all turn to look at her. She turns her eyes down to the table as the butterflies in her stomach begin to swarm twice as hard, and she's suddenly glad that she didn't eat much. I know I told everyone at Urahara Shop that my family would understand, but it's a lot more difficult actually being in front of them and needing to explain… Still, she had thought about how to do this on the way over, and even though she has never been in a situation this awkward before, she has been in situations where she had to swallow down her anxiety and just plow ahead. Take for example… "S-so I'm sure you all remember how the clinic was hit by a truck recently?" She could wait for one of her family members to say 'yes' or nod, but she plows ahead, knowing that if she hesitates at all, then she'll sputter out and be unable to resume. "Well, that was a lie, and though what I'm about to tell you is farfetched, it's the truth. You see, there's a type of monster called a 'hollow' that only people who are spiritually aware can see, and there are also shinigami, people with powers who hunt down hollows and help regular ghosts. That night, one of those monsters attacked the clinic trying to get to m— to Ichirou, and a shinigami named Rukia arrived to kill it before it could hurt anybody." Yuzu and Karin both turn to look at Rukia, but as before, Ichigo continues to plow ahead with her explanation. "What happened exactly is a bit of a long story, but what it boils down to is I…" This time, she's so caught up in her rambling explanation that she doesn't bother to correct her mistake. "…did something really stupid and got Rukia hurt because of it. Rukia tried to transfer half of her shinigami power to me because we were out of options, but something went wrong, and I took all of her power. I managed to kill the hollow, and Rukia knows people who can cover up hollow attacks, so none of you knew. And since then, I've been helping Rukia by being a substitute shinigami because she couldn't get her powers back and because someone had to stop those monsters from hurting people, and also because… b-because of something else too."

She takes a deep shuddering breath, her eyes still trained on the table, before continuing. "See, shinigami, like hollows, normally can't be seen by people because they're just spirits, so whenever I needed to be a shinigami, I had to have my soul knocked out of my body. A-and the thing is, my soul is d-different than most people because… because…" Something convinces her to look up at that moment, and as her chocolate brown eyes look to Karin and Yuzu she finds dawning understanding and, for Isshin, a strange half smile that causes the a single tear to slip free and begin rolling down her cheek. The words begin to slip out unbidden. "Because mine is f-female. I've known it my whole life, and I was… I was afraid of what you'd think of me if I told you I'd always wanted to be a girl. Afraid of what my friends would think, of what people at school might do, of what admitting I was a girl in a guy's body would do to me. But I couldn't hide from it anymore. Even if I'd refused to be a substitute shinigami, I had already experienced being female the night Rukia gave me her powers, and I couldn't deny how right it had made me feel. Being in my original body quickly began to feel more and more unbearable because it wasn't me. I kept coming up with excuses to get out of it, to just stay in my soul form. Rukia tried to tell me that what I was doing wasn't healthy, that I couldn't abandon my body, but I was just getting worse and worse. After a few weeks, I had reached the point where I was spending every moment I could out of my body." Yuzu is crying freely, having realized why her older sibling had been so distant recently, and it took all of Ichigo's willpower to not start crying herself. "Rukia finally came up with an idea of how to help me last night. See, the reason you can see her is because she's using a fake body that shinigami use to interact with normal humans, and she told me she could get me one — get me a body that actually feels right. My soul's still chained to that body…" She shakily points at Ichirou. "But I don't care because now I… I can f-finally be 'Ichigo' instead of 'Ichirou.' I can finally be me." Her eyes fall to the table again, and she clenches them shut. "S-so now you know the truth. I… I u-understand if you want to d-disown me."

Yuzu moves to Ichigo's side so quickly the younger girl's chair falls over backwards, and she wraps her arms around the older girl and hugs her tightly. "Oh, Ichigo… We could never do that to you, Big Sister!" she cries into her shoulder.

"B-b-but I lied to you!" the flabbergasted orangette replies, her eyes now wide open in shock.

"So what?" Karin cuts in, her expression soft instead of its usual indifference. "You were scared. We all do dumb things when we're scared sometimes. If you agree to just come to us the next time you're struggling with something this big, then I think you getting dish duty for the next month should make everything square."

The older girl laughs at that, her voice watery as she finally hugs Yuzu back, her arms lightly trembling. "I… I don't know what to say."

"Waaaah!" Isshin wails as he dashes over to the large picture of the girls' mother that he keeps on the wall. "Masaki, how am I supposed to take care of three daughters without you?! They're growing up too faaaaast!"

"Dad…" Ichigo whispers, a few more tears escaping as the realization that all of her family accepts her truly begins to settle in. A warm feeling begins to grow in her chest, and she hugs her little sister even tighter. "All of you…" Her chocolate brown eyes turn to Rukia, who is watching the scene before her with a soft smile and joy alight in her amethyst eyes. "Thank you."

They all stay that way for a while, Ichigo and Yuzu tightly hugging each other, Isshin crying to the picture of Masaki, and Karin and Rukia sitting back and watching it all with affectionate looks on their faces.

Ichirou wisely elects to just stay quiet until somebody else realizes that nobody's discussed why Ichigo's old body is just moving around on its own.