Urgh… I just feel like writing this, even though probably close to no one will read it so… here we go.
Tatsuki Arisawa, naturally, didn't really have any fears. Maybe the odd clown freaked her out a bit, and she really didn't like spiders, but no, she really didn't have any real fears. Except for one.
This fear concerned a certain idiot named Ichigo Kurosaki. It went way back to the days of when they were… oh, maybe 9 years old. The days when Ichigo wouldn't come to school, wouldn't rest, wouldn't interact with the world of the living by losing the precious person in his life. His mother.
She had found him, hunched over himself, looking haggard and distant. Distinctly, she felt a pang, but ignored it; instead, stomping over to him and yelling at him for skipping school, telling all the things that he had missed, bopping on the head for making everybody worry, and finally, quietly, muttering that she had missed him, and that he should never do something like that again. (She had never been good at all of this sappy stuff.)
He, in response, had glanced up at her, eyes in a different place for the most part of her lecture. At the end, he vaguely nodded, gave a half-smile and wandered off again.
The next day, he was in school again. But he was never the same. Cold, distant-it was as if a stranger had taken his place. Once cheerful, goofy grins turned into cynical frowns.
He had eventually gotten close again, but every once in a while Tatsuki was sure that was just her imagination, that in a blink of an eye, he would slip away again. And that was her greatest fear. Because she loved him, even if he didn't know, even if he loved Orihime or Rukia more. And because, she thought, in his mind, she would always be bold, brash Tatsuki-just an old friend. So she waited, and she worried, and she loved, all for the sake of one pig-headed Kurosaki Ichigo.
Thanks for the comment, xStalkerx! I kinda forgot... it's been a long time since I've read the beginning manga, or watched the first episodes.