Chapter One
"Any change, even a change for the better
is always accompanied by
drawbacks and discomforts."
-Arnold Bennet
"Michi-chan?"The familiar call of her name makes the girl look up on impulse to see the frowning face of her senior. "Are you even listening to me?"
"Oh-uh sorry, Yamato-senpai." The girl flushes red from her lapse and the head of the track team can only sigh.
"I said to don't forget that we're going to go a little more late than usual tomorrow, so you can tell that little boyfriend of yours he doesn't have to wait." Once again, the track team's captain frowns seeing her little joke went through Hamasaki Michelle's right ear before going through the other since the girl didn't react to the joke. Her hazel colored eyes has a far away look to them that made the older girl worry.
"Hey, Michi-chan, are you alright?" To make sure that she had heard, the brunette places a hand on Michelle's shoulder. "You seem to be a little bit of it today." To most persons' eyes Michelle's performance today in her running was as usual outstanding but to Yamato Mei, she could see the slight lapse and how distracted the young girl was today in practice. Michelle is definitely troubled over something.
"What? I-I'm fine, Yamato-senpai. Just a bit tired that's all." Michelle gives Mei a reassuring smile as she pulls her dreaded brown hair into a ponytail, leaving a few dreads to frame her face as usual.
"You sure?" Mei raises an eyebrow, awaiting her teammate's answer while she crosses her hands across her chest.
"Yes, senpai. It's nothing you need to worry about." Once again Mei sighs and closes the door to her locker before turning back to Michelle, her brown eyes soft.
"Alright... I'm gonna leave you to lock up. Say hi to your boyfriend for me, would ya?" Mei swings around with a smirk quickly leaving the ladies' changing room, but not before hearing Michelle's loud yell of 'He's not my boyfriend!'.
Her slight irritation disappears as she shuts her own locker closed but Michelle's hands do not remove from the rusting metal door. Her eyes once again seem to go off in thought. An image of what seems to be a monster appears in her mind and Michelle instinctively shivers at the picture.
Sure Michelle would confide in Mei. She is her senpai after all and also a friend to the girl ever since she started high school. But Michelle knows that the senior would never believe her if she had said that she saw a monster last night.
And boy, it wasn't any ordinary monster either. The creepy looking creature had been lurking around her home that night. It's body looked like it was made of some black substance and it seemed to have a bone like mask as a face. But that wasn't the worst. The scream that it let out was what rattled Michelle's bones. The sound was what had made Michelle decide that what she was seeing was real. No made up thing in her mind could give off such a sound. She couldn't have made it up. She just couldn't have.
Releasing a sigh, Michelle slips on the grey blazer of her uniform before picking up her bagand heading for the exit of the room. It didn't take long to lock up the changing room and soon Michelle finds herself heading for the front gates of Karakura High School.
Michelle feels the normal teasing smirk appearing on her face when she sees the sole figure leaning against the school's gate with his usual scowl and orange hair that has always to Michelle seem to make him look like a delinquent.
"Been waiting long, strawberry?" As if he was in deep thought, Kurosaki Ichigo's head snaps up and turns his head in Michelle's direction.
"Would you not call me that?" The teenager glares at the still teasingly smiling girl.
"Why would I do that when it riles you up like this?"
Looking down at her he sees that she awaits an answer but Ichigo can only roll his eyes before looking away. "Just don't call me that."
"Fine." A slight pout to her lips, Michelle walks past the orange haired teen onto the sidewalk where they lapse into a comfortable silence while they make their way home.
Ever since Michelle had moved her to Karakura Town about ten years ago the two were inseparable. Michelle's family knowing the Kurosaki's family was likely why they became best friends. So you could say Ichigo has known Michelle for almost all her life. So that shouldn't have been surprised her when he had suddenly asked-
"Why are you so quiet?" Michelle looks up to the boy -who is a good five inches taller than her- with an eyebrow raised.
"What's that supposed to mean?" She asks him, not taking her eyes off the boy.
"I mean usually you stat complaining about practice and how you want to join the relay team but you have to wait another year before you do, how Orihime tried to force her home-cooked food down your throat or how you're running out of tactics other than beating Keigo up for all the advances he tried on you today." Ichigo's mouth turns downward slightly into a frown, hating the idea of talking so much. "You're just so... quiet that it unnerves me."
"Well excuse me for not being as talkative as I surely am from what you explained today." Michelle scowls upwards but it fades seeing that the boy is serious.
"I'm serious. What's bothering you anyway?" At that, the dread haired girl sobers up and looks away, eyes trained on the smooth concrete sidewalk they were walking on at the moment.
"It's nothing." Michelle didn't need to look up to see Ichigo's face expression. She already knows that his scowl has deepened at her answer.
"You know you can tell me anything, right?" Ichigo sighs after a moment seeing that Michelle hasn't made a move to tell him whats wrong and instead seems to walk a little faster. "I guess you'll tell me when you're ready then."
Michelle bites her lip and peeks a glance at Ichigo to see the boy had regained his neutral scowl and is looking ahead.
She should tell him. She knows it. If he could tell her that he can see ghosts then how bad can her seeing a creepy creature last night be any different?
Taking a deep breath, Michelle is about to tell Ichigo what was going on when an urgent voice stops her from uttering a word.
"Ichigo, where have you been? I've been looking for you. Something urgent has come up again." Stopping in their tracks, the two turn to see a girl a few inches shorter than Michelle with shoulder length black hair that has some hanging just between her big indigo eyes. Michelle's left eyebrow raises at the sight of the familiar girl, but Ichigo's groan makes her look away from the girl.
"Not this again, Rukia."
"Come along." Kuchiki Rukia grabs Ichigo by the arm and precedes to drag him away but Michelle speaks up.
"What's going?" Suspicion is clear in her voice as she glances first at Ichigo before looking to Rukia. Rukia blinks in surprise as she hadn't recognized that there was someone else there and a blush appears on her face.
"How rude of me. Good evening, Hamasaki-san." Michelle gives her a nod with a quiet 'good evening' also before she continues to stare at the two, awaiting an answer.
"Well, you see uh... I have to help Rukia with... uh... her home-work!" Ichigo can't meet Michelle eyes as of yet and instead looks over it while he lands his right fist into the palm of his right hand as if just remembering something. "Yeah her home-work. Since you know, she only transferred here this week and she needs someone to help her and all..."
Ichigo begins to sweat as he finally looks at Michelle to see her face has become blank. Knowing the girl, she might have seen through his lie. But the orange haired boy is surprised when a wide smile spreads across Michelle's face making her eyes close.
"If that's all then you should've said so, Ichigo." Michelle says. "Go on ahead, I can get home by myself."
"But-" Ichigo is interrupted by Rukia's seemingly beeping phone which makes Rukia once again apologize to the smiling dreadlocks girl before pulling Ichigo away once more in the opposite direction from where Michelle and Ichigo were headed earlier on. Ichigo can only stare dumbly at the girl before all he can see is her small figure before she all but vanishes as Rukia leads him around a corner.
As Ichigo and Rukia disappear around the corner, the smile immediately drops from Michelle's face.
"So much for walking me home, Ichigo." She says before sighing and then continuing her walk. The sun that had long ago dropped from the sky, left it's pale tint of orange color that spreads across the sky. Michelle could even see the darkening clouds of night at the edges already forming.
The sight fascinated her so much that she forgets the slight twinge in her gut at being alone and the weird monster from last night, but her concentration doesn't waver while walking. She of course didn't want to hit a post or something.
Soon, the familiar view of her home just up ahead makes Michelle quicken her pace. She smiles seeing a silhouette just on the porch tot he two story house.
"Where's Ichigo?" comes the voice of Hamasaki Itori, a slim and tall woman with light brown hair and brown eyes, from the porch.
"He's busy." Michelle slightly frowns at the reminder of her missing best friend while she closes the metal gate behind her before turning back her gaze to the woman. "So... what's for dinner?"
"Please don't be mad, but I cooked curry." Itori winces slightly seeing Michelle rolls her eye while muttering the word 'again?' under her breath. It seems the woman hears her as she grabs the girl under headlock and begins to rub her knuckles into the brown hair of Michelle who begins flail.
"Alright, I'm sorry!" By now the two had already moved into the home and stand in the small hall that leads directly tot eh three main parts of the house- the living room, kitchen and stairs that lead to upper part of the house. Taking the second option, Itori leads Michelle into the surprisingly large kitchen where a table for four sits in the corner of the room.
"You're father will be home late so he called and said to eat without him." Michelle only nods before dropping her bag and quickly taking a seat. A quick 'itadakimasu' and the young teenager scarfs down the food at a rapid pace.
"At least try to eat properly, Michi." Itori scolds before sighing seeing that the girl didn't even look up. Amusement enters the woman's eyes as she watchers her daughter eat. Shaking her head, Itori also take a seat. "Itadakimasu to you too, Michi."
"So, how was school?" After dinner, Michelle had taken a bath ad now the two were in living room with Michelle on the floor and Itori on the sofa, her hands moving through the slightly rough locks of her daughter's hair.
"It was alright, I guess. Was a little distracted so I was a little slow in practice." Michelle answers, eyes closed in pure bliss as her mother runs her fingers through her hair. Itori's hands stop a moment and Michelle looks up curiously from her place on the floor to find her mother frowning.
"What's wrong?"
"They're not still teasing you, are they?" Seeing Michelle's confused expression, Itori elaborates further. "The students, I mean."
"About what? My hair, my nationality or that I'm younger than them?" Michelle's tone makes the woman's frown deepen.
'She's getting irritated already.'
"All three." Itori says, after trying to read the expression on her daughter's face, but before she can decipher it, Michelle snorts before returning her gaze to the red fluffy carpet beneath her.
"Not as much as when I first started high school. They seem to notice that teasing me gets them nowhere." Michelle smirks. "They'll have to do more than that to rally me up, Kaa-chan. So don't you worry."
Ever since she was adopted by Itori and her husband- Mikoto- Michelle knew how different they were from her. From her darker skin to her dread lock hair that she already told them she was never gonna cut off because it reminded her of home, to even her first language that even at times the two never understood what she said. Michelle knew she was different and knew people would not like that once she moved to Japan. She had already accepted that fact.
So when the children of her age group started to tease her about her 'weird way of talking' to the weird way that her name was pronounced, she wasn't -still isn't- rallied up by it. But she has noticed that it was different in high school.
Not only was she different from the others, she was also younger than them even if it was only a year.
"Are you and Ichigo fighting?" The question breaks Michelle out of her thoughts and she once again whirls around to face her mother.
"What? No. What gave you that idea? He's just kinda busy these past few days." Michelle denies, eyebrows pulling together as her lips pull down in a frown.
The orange haired teen has been acting strangely ever since the starting of this week, which was three days ago. Michelle was becoming suspicious not only of her best friend but the certain petite dark haired girl that seems to be everywhere Ichigo was ever since she started school yesterday. They even seem to know each other better than classmates that only met one day.
"Is something wrong, Michi-chan?" Michelle is just about to reply the same way that she had with her senpai and Ichigo, bt looking to the woman she sees the worry in her mother's eyes which makes the girl change her mind.
"Kaa-chan, last night... I saw a monster." Seeing her mother raise an eyebrow in question, Michelle raises her to stop the lady from talking. "I know what I saw and this... thing -whatever it was- it gave me the chills, Kaa-chan."
Knowing her daughter to not make such jokes, the woman pulls the girl up onto the couch and hugs her to herself.
"I'm not saying I don't believe you, and you seem pretty shaken up over it, want to tell me more about this monster, Michi-chan?" After stiffening slightly at being embraced so suddenly, Michelle relaxes into the hold her mother has around her and sighs for what seems like the hundredth time that day.
"Okay." And so, very reluctantly, Michelle begins to explain what had transpired that day.
So, a bleach fanfic ^_^ Who would've guessed that?
Anyway, as there are hardly any good bleach fanfics involving OC's I decided to put up mine XD
Want to clear one thing up... MICHELLE WILL NOT BE PAIRED WITH ICHIGO! No matter the begging or whatever, no. She will be EVENTUALLY be paired with someone -which I won't be telling you :p- so... No :/
And Michelle is as you see adopted. Her birth country will be revealed later on but you can make your guesses :)
That's all for now so just go and REVIEW! :*