There are several brothels in Seireitei.
The carnal needs of Shinigami vary greatly, but it's a fact that any normal man would take a pleasure in something else than fighting. Or not necessarily.
Kira Izuru, the Vice-Captain of the Third Division, is a man - although he despises the fighting and admits it aloud. (If someone would bother to ask him about it, but hardly any does.) He is, as well, a patron of a certain house of joy in the Court of Pure Souls, neither the best nor the worst one. Like most Shinigami men, he visits this place with his own frequency, and there's nothing to it worth dwelling on.
Only one thing differentiates him from others: Kira always pays for the same silver-haired girl.
He doesn't even know her name, for it couldn't interest him less. He doesn't even know her face since he forbade her to look at his face. He doesn't even know her voice because he ordered her to stay silent.
When he takes her, he sees only the fair hair on her neck. When he lets her please him, he sees only the fair hair on her forehead. When he slides his hand in this hair, he doesn't know if its softness should enrapture or disappoint him. He doesn't know.
Sometimes, when he gives his body to her hands, behind the shut eye-lids he imagines someone else's tender touch. Sometimes, when her mouth moves up his chest, he imagines someone else's lips, smiling and so close. Sometimes he calls her a name that isn't her name although it could be.
But she is only a poor substitute for silver.
He doesn't delude himself into believing that he can possess a real thing. He knows he will never deserve better than this.
Still, a moonlight dream belongs only to him.
Once again he left - and once again he will return here. He always returns: to slide his hands into my hair, to lose himself in the touch of my hands and lips - until they become someone else's hands and someone else's lips... To call me by the name that doesn't belong to me, nor to any other woman.
Lately, he's been coming here more often. We do not ask questions - nobody expects us to do so; after all, it is not why the men come here. But such news reach even us.
My hair is silver, and that's enough for him. I'm a substitute and I agree to this; it s but one role I play every night. Actually, he also seems to realize it and yet he keeps coming back, like a moth drawn to a flame. Even if he understands that the light of a lamp cannot replace the moonlight.
He has never told me his name; I haven't seen his face either. And yet... I know who he is. I know - oh the irony! - from the one whom he so stubbornly wants to see in me, from the tales told during these rare nights that man came here only to drink and tell jokes. He used to sit with us until dawn, and the morning always found him lost in thought, his hand caressing the golden hair of a girl sleeping in his lap.
I could tell him about all this - but it's not what he expects, paying for me every night when he comes here. He wants to see the moonlight in me, though I can be only its reflection in the water. He wants me to be the real silver - even if I can only be a cheap imitation.
He knows it as well as I do, and yet he keeps returning and looking for his silver path. Even if all I can offer him is a dream about moonlight.
Even if I can be only a substitute for Ichimaru Gin.
That is something both of us know as well.