At night, when the house was asleep, the orange-haired boy's reiatsu steadied to a slow pulse, I pushed open the closet door, hoping it wouldn't squeak.
He lay on his back, chest barely rising and falling with quiet, almost timid breaths. His face, so ugly with his daytime scowl, was relaxed as though he had, along with his misanthropic image, shed all the worries that had haunted him in his waking hours. Without that frown, he was almost beautiful in his peacefulness.
He was not good looking, not really. His was too skinny for my taste, with an idiotic, glaring hair color and plain brown eyes. On top of that, he was more than a hundred years my junior, and whatever age I may look like, he was still a kid to me, physically as well as mentally. And yet, he awoke in me a longing that not even Renji's muscles or Byakuya's calm beauty could enkindle.
It couldn't be his personality, it just couldn't. He was impossible. He was disdainful of everything, and had to do everything his own goddamn way. He was rude to his father, to his friends, and with fierce enthusiasm, to me. He ridiculed me, treated me like a stupid child. How much of a masochist did I have to be to like this moron of a boy?
But somehow, you couldn't see a shred of his vile disposition as he slept. He looked innocent and defenseless, the contours of his muscles only emphasizing his slenderness. His skin looked milky and smooth; I recalled our handshake, the only time he initiated a touch that wasn't meant to inflict physical damage on me. My fingers had grown cold and clammy, sweating in the sheer realism of Urahara's gigai. I did not need my fake body that lifelike.
Yet Ichigo's fingers had been just as cool. He had made his decision without much reluctance, at least without the amounts of it I would expect, but he had been nervous voicing it, stating it to me and to the world. But his palm had rubbed against mine, mixing out minute droplets of perspiration together, and his contract had been sealed. He was to work with me.
But I wanted more.