Hi everyone. This is a little Bleach oneshot I did when I really should have been working on I Do Recall. Good news is I only need to do a couple more chapters of the next book before it's ready for me to edit and publish. Bad news is that I'm easily distractable.
So have this. Non canon compliant, a Winter War-ish AU aftermath..
Also, I'm only up to the early 200s in episodes, so pretty please don't spoil me.
The seniors were always real obvious at my school.
See, there'd been some big car accident or something the summer before this school year. That's what everyone said, anyway.
It was most obvious with Sado, of the worst off, anyway. He would be obvious no matter what, as a tall dark boy in a school full of pale Japanese teens, but the missing arm made it hard not to stare.
He rarely left Ishida and Inoue's sides. Ishida, now, there was one of the less obvious, if only because he kept his head ducked low and didn't talk much besides to his friends. People tell me he used to be in the sewing club, and to wear glasses. I can believe it. There's something about his mannerisms. He's constantly reaching for something that's no longer there. And his outfits have some of the most interesting textures I've ever seen a man wearing.
He, Sado, and Inoue are near constantly touching, little touches like they're making sure the others are still there. People like to joke about a nerd like Ishida or a foreigner like Sado being lucky to get Inoue, depending on which one is more touchy-feely that day, but the joke's on them. I saw Inoue kissing Kurosaki behind the school and she's not the sort to cheat on a man with only one arm, nor a blind man.
Inoue herself appears normal, but she's never alone. Friday at lunch I saw why. There was a crowd about her as she lay in the grass. Sado, Ishida, even Asano kept people back as Arinawsa knelt beside her, talking to her softly but calmly, always so calmly. "You're in Karakura Town, and it's Friday, November twelfth, noon. Everyone's here but Ichigo and Ikkaku, and they're safe too, alright? It's okay. Everything's okay."
I could see enough to recognize the seizure. It ended quickly, but still the only one Sado and the others let through was Kurosaki, who rushed to Inoue's side.
Kurosaki confused me, to be honest. Despite how close he seemed to the others, he was almost never there, regularly sprinting off to god only knows where. Still… the others seemed to love him, but there was an undercurrent of something poisonous. I couldn't quite tell if it was resentment or fear or something else.
He was the only one of that group of friends without an injury. I'd noticed how Ishida flinched when startled by his touch, how Arinawsa watches him when no one else is looking. Rumor has it he was the other driver in the fateful car accident, with the guilty way he stares at the others, but I don't think that explains it fully. After all, that car accident destroyed the others so fully. How could he have gotten out without being injured?
I… well. They intrigued me. So I sought out the old yearbooks in the library, from before that fateful summer. Yes, there was Ishida with glasses, and Sado with both arms, and Inoue without that perpetual shadow of defeat behind her beaming smile. But there were also the missing, which I hadn't expected.
Toshiro Hitsugaya, this elementary school aged kid with silver hair who must of been some kind of genius to be a junior in high school. Rukia Kuckki, a girl with dark hair and a solemn gaze. Rangiku Matsumoto, a woman who made Inoue look like a preteen. Mizuiro Kojima, who was taking a selfie in his school picture, and Yumichika Ayasegwa, who could be his hot gay cousin.
I hoped they'd simply moved away, because I'd eventually looked at the accident report, which said no one died. But our school was small. A school our size, five people leaving over the summer would only happen if the principal got caught doing drugs in his office.
The accident report mentioned Ishida, Sado, and Inoue, along with a few others I hadn't realized were affected- it was a big car. Abarai, this redhead guy with lots of tats, who now that I thought about it, walked with a heavy limp. Madarame, who was missing half his teeth. Arinawsa, who bore a dark scar down one cheek, and Asano, who was missing his pinky on his left hand.
Kurosaki wasn't mentioned at all. The other driver was a man named Soseke Aizen, who suffered no injuries. Surely a man couldn't hit a car full of teenagers, permanently scar all of them, and walk away without a scratch.
But according to the report, Aizen had done just that.
The situation grew curiouser the day after I read the article. A blond man, with a striped hat and wooden clogs, stopped me on my walk home from school. "You aren't what I expected," he said. I blinked. "You should leave the kids alone. It's none of your business what happened."
I stared at him. "Or what?" He didn't look particularly scary, though how he'd found out about my snooping I didn't know.
He laughed. "It's been a long time since anyone asked me that." Shrugging, he said, "I suppose you expect me to say then I'll have to kill you, like a mob movie, no?"
I didn't answer, but he'd struck right to the heart of the matter. "I'm sorry to disappoint you. All that I'll do if you don't give this up is stand by."
"Stand by?" I repeated quizzically.
He fanned himself. "Yeah. Stand by as you get sucked into a world that chewed these kids up and spat them out like little insects. I'll let you join a world where people are far less nice than I am." He smiled a little half smile just a hair on the wrong side of sanity, and my skin crawled. "And to tell you the truth, I'm not that nice."
He started to walk away. "Wait!" I called after him. "What happened to Hitsugaya?"
He stopped. I continued, emboldened. "And Kuchki, Matsumoto, Kojima, and Ayasegwa."
Without so much as turning his head to look at me, he said, his voice low, "Where did you hear those names?"
"The yearbook from last year." Awkward silence. "The one with pictures of everyone in the school?"
For just a moment, I thought he muttered under his breath, "Stupid human customs." Raising his voice, he said, "Look, they moved away, got it? Just leave well enough alone." Before I could press him for details he crossed the street. A car passed between us, and in the spot where before he'd stood, now there was nothing at all.
Honestly, I had hoped the blond man would give me some sort of clue, because I didn't know where to search next, and this story grew stranger by the minute. Eventually, I resorted to the internet.
I wasn't surprised when most of the missing had no online presence. If this was a coverup, as seemed increasingly likely, the blond man and his allies would have covered every route they could think of. What did surprise me was finding Mizuiro Kojima's facebook page.
The last post was from July; the last post of multiple times a day updates. Did I really want to read it?
Hi, guys. I love all of you. You've been with me through the good times and the bad, so I just want to let you know I'll be away for a while. I won't have internet or phone. You know how the Peace Corps can send you to a place where there's no running water but you don't care because you're saving people? It's kind of like that. Anyway, love you all and I miss you already.
Underneath the post was an outpouring of support that gradually tapered off before ending completely. Mizuiro had posted this in July. It was now December, but no one was asking when he would come back.
I remembered the blond man's words as a chill ran down my spine. A world that chewed these kids up and spat them out like insects. Mizuiro Kojima's posts were mostly typical of a teen's profile. Complaints about cafeteria food, pictures with his friends (including Kurosaki and Asano), stupid quizzes. But there were a few that made me pause.
I've been having nightmares of late where I see holes and chains and masks painted white. I wonder if they're symbolic.
I seem to have a tendency to stumble upon gas explosions and natural disasters lately.
I met a little girl today in the street who was searching for her mother, and tried to help her when no one else would. Even the police officer told me to go away when I asked him. It was like she was invisible to them, but we eventually found her parents.
Such posts correlated with an increasing appearance of the disabled members of the senior class in his photos. Kojima had gotten involved in something dangerous and simply disappeared.
I couldn't ask one of the injured what happened to Kojima. They were clearly involved too. But there were seniors who as far as I could tell, weren't part of the conspiracy, such as Chizuru. While I wasn't her type, I knew just the bribe to get her attention.
While Chizuru appreciated the magazines full of half-dressed women just as much as I thought she would, I ran into a small problem concerning my investigation. "Mizuiro Kojima?" she said, blinking. "Never heard of him."
"You're joking, right?" Please be joking.
She wasn't. As far as Chizuro was aware, she'd never known a Mizuiro Kojima. "But he's in the yearbook," I said desperately, before dragging her to the library.
Where the yearbook had disappeared. I stared at the empty space on the shelf where I'd found it. "It was here, I swear… Do you have one?"
She huffed. "What a silly question!"
"Well, sorry, I-"
"Of course I have one, so I can look at the pale imitation of my Orihime when she's not around! I carry it with me everywhere," she said haughtily, setting her backpack on the nearest table and rifling through it.
I closed my eyes. "Well, that's sane," I muttered.
She grew increasingly more frantic. "It's not in here! It's always in here! Who would steal a yearbook and leave my phone and wallet behind?"
I… I'd told the blond man he and his people missed the information in the yearbooks, I realized with a jolt. The yearbooks which were now missing from the library, Chizuru's backpack, and probably teenagers' bedrooms. How far did his reach go?
Chizuru clenched and unclenched her fists. "Well, if you can't find this Mizuiro person, I'll go home to enjoy my magazine and tear my house apart looking for my darling Orihime's pictures."
"Wait! Mizuiro has Facebook," I said, diving across the room to get the last computer before anyone else could take it. Please work… I'd checked it just at lunch, fuel for my growing obsession. It had to work.
"I don't see what's the point of pulling up a random facebook profile," Chizuru complained.
"It's not some random kid. You knew him, I swear." I scrolled down to a photo of Mizuiro and Chizuru standing over a plate of something that could only be called food by the most generous of beings. The caption read, Chizuu offered me some of what Orihime calls food. I have now undertaken a mission to introduce Orihime to a new recipe each week in the hopes of educating her tastebuds. Wish me luck.
Chizuru stared. "I guess I did know him," she said, her voice strangely flat. My breath caught in my throat. "Strange, though. I'd think I'd remember him at least a little, but… there's nothing." Her voice strained with anxiety. "He must have been really boring," she said, wistfully.
"He must have," I agreed, as my last hope of figuring this whole mess out withered before me.
A week later, it all became a certain kind of complicated when an orange-haired girl fell in step with me in the hallway. "So I heard you talked to Chizuru about Mizuiro. Hey, that kind of rhymes." She giggled.
Orihime Inoue was known as a bubbly airhead, but I knew the act was just that. Otherwise she wouldn't be on track for salutatorian, right behind Ishida's valedictorian. So it was with caution that I said, "Yes, I was."
"I miss him so much," she said, and I froze. She didn't notice. "And Toshiro, Rangiku, even Yumichika, though he visits when he can. And Rukia. Especially Rukia." She smiled, a smile of glass, fragile and brittle yet so utterly clear and undeceiving I couldn't step away. "We were close."
"You remember them?" I asked. "But… how? Chizuru doesn't," I said by way of explanation.
She shrugged. "Most people would say I remember because I'm quite mad." She tilted her head. "Are you mad, too? Can you see the soul-fires and the masked monsters and the ghosts? I hope not. You seem very kind, and…" She fell silent, stared at me intently.
I squeaked, wondering if she'd let me run away. Probably not, not with that clever focus in her gaze. "I'm so sorry, I was burdening you. What do I know? Ignore my silly rambling. Chizuru's right- Mizuiro was just a sweet, tech obsessed boy who moved away over the summer." She reached into her pocket, and I tensed instinctively. "Would you like a biscuit? They're chocolate, tomato, and pineapple."
"No, thank you," I replied, while trying not to vomit just from imagining that flavor combo. Did she have any taste buds at all?
"No one ever does, except Rangiku," she agreed cheerfully, before smiling benignly at a small group of students pushing through the crowded halls. "They do so worry about me." And she walked off to join Arinawsa, Madarame, and Kurosaki, the last of which shot me an appraising look. I shrank back.
Who were these people? I… I needed to stop. I was clearly getting involved in something dangerous. In whatever world gave Arinawsa that scar and knocked out Madarame's teeth. In whatever world took Keigo's pinky and gave Abarai a limp. In whatever world blinded Ishida, disabled Sado, and did whatever it did to Inoue.
In the world that disappeared Kojima, Hitsugaya, Kuchki, Matsumoto, and Ayasegwa so throughly that only people already embroiled in the conspiracy remembered them. I needed to stop, to save myself, before the conspiracy claimed me too.
In the end, it turned out I'd simply taken everyone's advice a little too late. That January on a bitterly cold but sunny day, I was walking to the arcade, when the monster jumped down from a rooftop in front of me. I froze. It had a white, bone spiked mask, a hole in a heavily furred chest, and glowing yellow eyes. "Hungry, hungry," it muttered, then smiled at me and licked its lips.
I did the sensible thing. I ran away.
About a kilometer later, I slammed full body into Ichigo Kurosaki, who was wearing a strange black uniform and carrying a large sword. He didn't even look at me when he cut the monster down in one stroke. He walked away like it was nothing.
To him, it probably was.
No one else had reacted. I considered the idea that maybe, just maybe, I really needed psychiatric help.
On the way to school the next day, I saw ghosts, ghosts I spoke to no one else saw. One old lady confronted me. "Why are you talking to yourself, child?"
I didn't answer. I walked through school that day in a fugue state, half convinced I'd been drugged.
Because now I could even see the fires. Some people, most notably the injured seniors, burned. Like Arinawsa, or Asano, who were candles, sparks in the darkness around them. Or Madarame, who was a campfire. I even felt warmer when I saw him. Then there were Ishida, Inoue, and Sado, who hurt to look at because their stars shone so brightly.
When I saw Kurosaki, I had to hide in the bathroom until my vision returned and I could convince myself my skin wasn't on fire.
Ishida found me when I left. I don't know how. He's blind, after all, and I didn't say anything, but still he fell in besides me. Now that I thought about it, he rarely had trouble not bumping into people, but then he'd walk face first into a wall if a friend wasn't guiding him. "You can sense spiritual pressure now, can't you?" There wasn't a hint of mockery in his voice.
I considered not admitting I could see the fires, but maybe he could explain. "Is that why my skin feels like it's burning?"
The sensation reduced abruptly, to more of a warm blanket than a roaring blaze. "Sorry," he said. "I'd grown accustomed to not shielding it. Kurosaki has the spiritual senses of a baby and panics if he can't feel any of our spiritual pressure." Despite the acerbic tone, his smile held just a hint of fondness, and I suspected the panicking probably went both ways.
"What in the world are you?" I had to ask.
He reached up to adjust glasses no longer present. "Me? Well, I'm a Quincy."
"That doesn't answer much," I said peevishly.
"I know." Ishida walked alongside me in silence for a long minute before saying, "There's a candy shop in town, run by Kisuke. Kisuke Urahara. He can give you answers to your questions. Most of the stories aren't mine to tell. They aren't his, either, but unlike me he doesn't care." I stifled a laugh.
"I… I saw Kurosaki fighting a monster the other day. Did…" I trailed off. Asking if a monster like that blinded Ishida seemed incredibly crass.
"Did a Hollow, that's what they're called, blind me, you wanted to ask. There was a war, between us and them. They would have destroyed everything. Not just Karakura town, though it would have started there. Hollows hunt people like you and I, people with high spiritual pressure."
I stared at my hands. "Me? I have high spirit whatsit?"
Annoyed, he corrected me. "Spiritual pressure. You have to, to see the hollows, and the ghosts. Besides, I can see it in you. Nothing spectacular, but it's there. But back to my point. There was a war, and we won, but it cost us all a lot."
I gulped. "What if I don't want to get involved in all this?"
Ishida laughed. "I'll let you in on a little secret. You can see spiritual pressure now. Face it, you're already involved."