Been off Bleach for years. Then I end up listening to some Bleach openings and for no discernible reasons, these two - completely off my radar when I was actively into Bleach - got hold of me. And now I have to reread all those chapters.
"...and you'll live under her thumb for the rest of your life."
"Hey, what kind of fortune is that?"
"Yours."
The young shinigami's frown deepened to a scowl as his companion guffawed.
"Ye're damn lucky there's some gal willing to put up with ya. For the rest of yer life, no less. Ma sympathies're with the gal,"
Had their stern superior seen the two youths right now, their respective rears wouldn't have escaped the wrath of his equally stern boot. He had sent out his underlings - miserable runts that they were - for patrol, he'd bellow, not to dally around some run-down stall like a couple of gossiping old maids!
As it were, the two shinigami fully knew their superior wouldn't be caught dead in such a dingy corner street of Rukongai - lest it soil his shiny boots and his social upstanding, largely imaginary as the latter was. The routine patrol had been more like a stroll. The two had been in a state of near sleep when they spotted the stall with the sign that proclaimed: Fortune Telling: Career Paths / Money Problems / Future Love. *Cash Up Front*.
Just to alleviate boredom, they had approached the stall and saw, instead of an old crone they expected, a young girl of their age. The pleasant surprise immediately convinced them that having their fortunes told wouldn't be such a waste of their time and money. They'd chosen 'future love' because the other two hit a bit too close to home while the last seemed sufficiently far away to be innocuous.
Another expectation broken was that if the girl was playing - as they suspected - the part of the seer, she took it seriously.
"...I like quiet and demure types. Anything on that? Not even a little?"
"You cannot bargain your fortune."
"Will she have big b... I mean, big... um... a big... heart?"
The girl somehow communicated her contempt through her impassive face.
"She'll have a sharp tongue, a quick hand, and a sturdy foot to silence your nonsense."
There was another bout of laughter, another glare to match it.
"Okay, but... we'll happy together?"
Looking from his friend's eager visage and to the porcelain-doll face of the fortuneteller, the light-haired shinigami fancied he saw the girl's eyes soften a little.
"Yes, you two will be very happy."
A moment's hesitation, and she spoke again.
"She'll be your life."
Although unsatisfied with the cryptic answer, the young shinigami huffed and leaned back.
"Well, that's what counts, I guess. Your turn, Shinji."
"Ya sure ya wanna hear about ma future romances? Ya might turn green with envy."
The light-haired shinigami held out a coin and was impressed at the way it magically disappeared - switching places with a hand that now held his. Enjoying its softness, the young shinigami gave his most winning smile but the girl kept her gaze on his palm.
Both the hold and the gaze went on for longer than comfortable.
When the shinigmai fidgeted, the fortuneteller snatched her hand away as if burnt. The abruptness surprised all three of them.
"I-I'm sorry, I, I... can't see,"
The girl's pale cheeks were now painfully flushed, as if someone had cruelly slapped the porcelain doll into unwilling life.
"I'm so sorry, I can't see anything," the fortuneteller repeated, now sounding more like a girl than a seer. "Here-"
The magic trick happened in reverse as a coin was thrust back into the shinigami's palm.
"Your money back,"
"Oh-well, it's okay, just keep it - "
"NO."
The girl shoved the coin with such force that it nearly made the shinigami stumble.
"And it's my break time, goodbye."
Small, frantic hands grabbed the straw curtains and yanked them together, with a final mutter of "I'm sorry."
The two shinigami were left blinking at the closed-off stall.
"What was THAT all 'bout?"
"Huh, maybe she saw such a TOAD in your future that she didn't have the heart to tell you."
The youth clapped a light blow to his friend's head for the gibe, and the rest of their patrol was whiled away with bickering.
In the end, they laughed the whole thing off. After all, what else could they do?
But the last look they'd seen just before the straw curtains closed would haunt them. A look full of fear and underneath... something else.
Years after, one of them would define it as pity.
To Hirako Shinji, that event would prove a small but lasting stain. When he made a seat in his division, when he discovered music from the Human World, when he was drinking with his comrades under the flurry of cherry blossoms during the Spring Festival - the memory would be a smidgen of darkness that kept all such moments from being just perfect.
There came a time when his friend moved to a different division, and when he wouldn't stop talking about how he couldn't stand a certain stuck-up fellow shinigami who always chided him. To no-one's surprise, it soon led to a wedding. Then he constantly complained of his jailer of a wife, yet never stayed out for late-night drinks.
And during those times, that stain of a memory gradually solidified into knowledge inside Hirako Shinji.
When disease took his friend's wife, Shinji stood beside his friend during the rainy funeral. Shinji wasn't surprised to hear that his friend passed away only a handful of days later. It was during a simple Hollow hunt. He just stood there, his colleagues said, as the Hollow shot up and poured down on him, all jaws. It was as if he couldn't even see it.
Of course he couldn't see anything, Shinji knew. there was nothing in that body to do the seeing. The Hollow must have gone hungry for all its efforts, for what it had devoured was just an empty husk. His friend's life had been taken days ago, along with his wife's. Shinji did not attend the funeral. He knew his friend's true funeral had been with his wife.
(Not that he didn't seek out the said Hollow in his next hunt. Not that he didn't hack it to unrecognizable pieces until its shrieks died only when all those bits dissipated into oblivion. For there was such a thing as obligation.)
Through it all, the knowledge settled and pulsated in the innermost recess of his being.
Something terrible awaits me.
Something inescapable and inevitable.
Something so unspeakable that it was deserving of such fear and pity.
"Hey, will ya look at that weirdo,"
"But I'm already looking at you,"
"Haha. Very funny, Kensei, I mean - "
"Will you keep it down? You planning to scare the unsuspecting students?"
"I think your hair has already done the job, Love,"
"ANYWAYS, I'm talkin' 'bout that four-eyes over there,"
"What about him? He looks attentive."
"EXACTLY. Ya've been through that class back in the day, haven't ya, Kensei?"
"Make it waaaaaay back in the day - this is why I don't like visiting the academy, makes one feel one's age -"
"- and it's IMPOSSIBLE to be attentive in that class, let alone be alive. Look at the rest, they be all dead. He's the only one sittin' straight. Unnatural, that is,"
He also knew that small spot of darkness was only a prelude to the much bigger darkness to come.
"Maybe he actually finds the class interesting."
"Freak,"
Of course, just knowing would not help him.
Not at all.