Welcome to Chapter 1 of I'll Always be Her !
This is a short story I thought up a while ago and figured I should share it with the rest of the HitsuHina community.
PS: While this story does have some one-sided HitsuKarin, the story is purely HitsuHina. So while it may seem more HitsuKarin like at first, it'll definetly have a HitsuHina ending. Also, since I'm not a fan of Karin bashing, I'm going to avoid that in my story.
Please Enjoy!
Chapter 1:
Anxious. If Karin had to describe the white haired captain sitting in class next to her in one word, it would be anxious. He had been like this ever since he abruptly left their training session a few days ago. Everything was perfectly fine and normal until then.
He had been training her in the shinigami arts for the last six months in the hopes of turning her into a substitute shinigami like her brother. Ever since the end of the quincy invasion, the Seireitei was in desperate need of shinigami because so many had died in combat. As a result, the new captain commander thought it would be a good idea to train the Kurosaki sisters in the shinigami arts to see if they had even a fraction of their brother's potential.
Therefore, ever since he first got to the world of the living, Hitsugaya had been training the Kurosaki sisters with the help of his vice-captain. They soon found out that Karin had much more potential than her sister, so they decided to focus their attention on her rather than on her sister.
Karin had really grown to love their daily training sessions. She loved learning new techniques and fighting moves. There was just always something new and fun to learn. Karin loved pushing and surpassing her previous limits. She felt a strong sense of pride whenever her teachers would announce that she had master a technique well enough to be able to move on to another, more difficult one.
Plus, she also secretly felt herself developing a crush on her white haired teacher. Since the tenth division captain and vice-captain had been going to school with her as a pretense for finding more possible substitute shinigami, Karin had pretty much been spending all her time with them ever since they had first arrived. She found herself getting along with them well. She especially got along well with the tenth division captain. The two of them had more or less become friends since he started training her. While he seemed content to maintain the relationship they currently had, Karin wanted more. She hoped that with time he would eventually return her feelings.
In any event, the white haired captain hadn't been himself since he ended their training session short a few days ago. They had been right in the middle of training when a hell butterfly appeared with a message for him. Once he heard it, he immediately announced that they were finished for the day and took off without another word.
The next time she saw him after that, he had been extremely anxious. He had gotten very fidgety and would sometimes even lose himself in thought in the middle of their training session. This was very unusual for the normally calm and level-headed captain. Worried about him, Karin had asked his vice-captain to see if she knew what was troubling him. But Matsumoto would only smirked in response while saying that the younger Kurosaki shouldn't worry too much about it.
While Matsumoto had told her to not worry about the matter, Karin still did anyway. It especially didn't help that her white haired friend was getting more and more anxious as the days flew by. In fact, she had even heard him muttering to himself every now and again. He would keep repeating four more days, four more days one day, and then the next day it would be three more days, three more days and so on and so forth. Karin desperately wanted to know what he was counting down to, but he would always say it was nothing whenever she would ask him what was bothering him. However, his actions betrayed his words. She knew something was bothering him, somthing big, regardless of what he said.
And today was no different. It wasn't even noon yet and Hitsugaya already seemed desperate to leave. His behaviour was much worse than it had been the day before. For the last hour or so, he had been staring out the window while anxiously tapping his desk with his finger. He would simply ignore the annoyed looks he was getting for disturbing the quiet environment of the classroom and would continue to gaze out the window.
Since Karin was sitting in the desk next to him, she couldn't bring herself to pay attention to the lecture while Hitsugaya was behaving in such a way. She would keep shooting him looks in the hopes of catching his eye, but it didn't work. Hitsugaya never once looked her way.
"One more day…" she heard him mutter as his gaze focused on something in the distance. "Just one more day…"
Karin frowned. She was really starting to get sick of his constant fidgeting. She then tried once again to focus her attention on the teacher's lecture, but failed miserably. So, she decided to just give up as she resumed her attention on Hitsugaya. After all, she could always just get the lecture notes from one of her friends later.
Ordinarily, she never would have so boldly stared at the tenth division captain. However, she knew his attention lied with whatever was on his mind, so there was no way he would notice her staring at him. While a part of her wished that he would just turn around and truly look at her, she knew deep down that he wouldn't. As much as Karin tried to deny it, she knew that whatever was on his mind was more important to him than she currently was. But that was alright. As long as it was something and not someone, there was nothing to worry about.
As though to break her from her thoughts, a large amount of spiritual pressure could suddenly be felt coming from the distance. Yet, it only lasted for a moment since it shortly disappeared nearly as abruptly as it appeared. Just as she was about to ask whether or not he had also felt it, Hitsugaya suddenly stood up.
Karin heard him mutter a single word to himself as the entire class turned to him with annoyed expressions on their faces. The tenth division captain then made his way towards the classroom door without any regard for the lecture currently taking place.
"Oi, Hitsugaya-san, now where on earth do you think you're going!?" the teacher angrily yelled as he stormed off towards Hitsugaya and out his hand on his shoulder. "We are currently in class! I may have ignored your misconduct in the past few days, but this is going too-"
The teacher was suddenly interrupted by the menacing aura erupting from the tenth division captain. Although the teacher couldn't sense spiritual pressure, his instincts were screaming at him at him to let go of his student and get as far away from him as he possibly could.
"Let go of me…" Hitsugaya growled as his spiritual pressure intensified. The teacher immediately obeyed and let go of the tenth division captain's shoulder. Without another word, Hitsugaya left the room.
Meanwhile, Karin sat frozen in shock as she stared at the place her white haired friend had been just a second before. She had never seen him so... so desperate before. The only clue she had to his sudden outburst was what he had muttered just before he left the room. All she had was a single name to go off of.
"Who's Hinamori…?" she whispered to herself in disbelief. Little did she know, a certain voluptuous vice-captain was smirking to herself behind her.