i found this little draft in my old external. lately i've been finding lots of treasures inside my old pen-drives and such. :P

Anyway, read on, lovelies! :)

I couldn't help grin at the picture. They looked so happy.

The four people in the picture looked at ease, peaceful, content.

Well, I had said content, not happy with big smiles plastered on their faces. But even so, an idiot could tell that they were happy campers.

And then my fingers brushed over to where his face was.

It was close to being a scowl but he had managed the most decent grin for the picture. His eyes were still the warm ambers I had so frequently stared at and his hair was still a wild mass of crazy orange. His lanky arms were draped around his twin sisters, wrapping them in a protective manner and I couldn't help but feel a rush of pride in myself, despite not having any form of relation towards the picture. It had been a while since I had seen him. I had to admit that I was missing them greatly. Four... or was it five years? I hadn't seen them in five very long years and that was saying something since I was well over a hundred years old.

His face had changed. Somehow, it was more... masculine, and bold. He had grown... into a man. He was twenty three, or so I think... and the years had done him good. His lean muscles were visible underneath the shirt he was wearing and his toned arms and legs sent shivers down my spine.

Truly, being a shinigami had shaped him up. I averted my eyes away from him and looked at his other family members.

The sisters, Karin and Yuzu stood there, with smiles on their faces. Yuzu was looking sweet as always, portraying a beautiful pink sundress with roses on the hems and her hands neatly folded on her torso. Her brown hair was pinned up smartly with, I realised with a jolt, the butterfly pins I gave her years back. She'd grown too... and she looked so much like her mother.

Next to her was Karin, her twin. Though they were born on the very same day, they were different in mostly every aspect. Karin's midnight coloured tresses had grown just slightly below her shoulders and it shook, long and wild in the wind. Her childlike face had grown and she seemed more mature-looking and older compared to her sister who despite being born first, still retained her babyish beauty. Karin, I noticed, had ditched her simple t-shirt and shorts wearing ritual and gone for more eye-catching clothes. She still had on casual jeans but her clothes had miraculously turned into sweet, punkish blouses.

I missed them. I looked at their father who had on a perfectly decent smile, beaming in the camera with his arms around his children. He was the only one who was grinning and I couldn't imagine why he wouldn't. He had such nice children... he'll manage when he's older because he knows that they're there for him... no matter what. His love was always unconditionally strong. Though he pulled some stupid stunts towards his lovely son, secretly he knew it was helping his wimpy son toughen up.

Of course, I still remembered when I asked Ichigo why he tolerated his father's constant surprise attacks.

Che. I put up with it because I just do.

And that was it. I laughed. He knew it was for his own good and I do too.

Then I pushed the picture away from my scrutinizing eyes and looked at the photo as a whole.

And I wished I could be in the picture too, looking as happy as them, with Ichigo's arms wrapped around my shoulders protectively – a trait he developed right after the Winter War.

I wished I could remain there in their lives, fussing over trivial matters daily.

I wish I could still help Kurosaki-San around the clinic, obeying his requests and watching attentively as he treated his patients with medical appliances which were far beyond confusing and very intriguing.

I wish I could run in the big soccer field with Karin, her teaching me soccer and us playing a good amount of times until my knees would give way out of exhaustion.

I wish I could have one of the hugs Yuzu would always give me when Ichigo and I came home from a long day of school or when I was feeling put off by something, probably by Ichigo's constant insults. I missed her cooking and her extra unique ways of teaching me how to make a simple meal.

I wish... I could still fight with him. We have been fighting side by side for a good three years. Every time I encounter a simple Hollow, I wish with all my heart that he would show up beside me and finish the lowly creature off, shouting rude comments about how reckless I was being. I wish he was still there with me with his warm honey eyes and his ridiculous lopsided smiles and his cocky stances whenever he caught me doing something stupid; just standing there, watching me... of course later on he would go over and give me an annoying insult before he would pat my head and clean up the mess I had created. I wish I could...

But I couldn't.

Love was such a fickle thing. I fell in love with his family a long time ago and I fell in love with him long since before I met him. The feeling was there, we were just too human to see it.

I felt something trickle down my cheek and I wiped the salty teardrop hastily. I sighed. Really, this wasn't worth crying for. It was over; I was ordered to go back and there would be a possibility that I would never be assigned there again.

After the terrible Winter War had ended, Hollows and disturbances have been decreasing rapidly all over the world, even in Karakura. Some required shinigami were ordered home to settle for another mission and so on...

I was one of them. the news was sad enough but somehow, out-of-the-ordinarily, we have managed to stay in touch through either Urahara, who was here some of the time, trying to find a way to reverse the process of the Hogyoku while he first created it, or Yoruichi, who had taken a liking in Unohana Taichou's 'death-glare method'.

But even so, I couldn't help feeling empty, deprived of something important, lacking something precious. I've never told anyone of this but secretly, I liked staying in the real world, it made me experience things I've never tried before. I still remembered the first time Ichigo treated me to ice cream. The taste was heaven itself.

Looking at this photograph, I couldn't help but laugh. It brought back such sweet memories and now, I knew deep inside, I won't ever get to relive those memories again.