This is going to be the weirdest sounding thing ever but...I actually dreamed up this plot monkey. It took me a while to find a name that matches my OC before I scoured google and looked it up. The theme is dark before it gets happy and also, since I'm rewriting my other Bleach fic duology to make it more Hichi-centric, I figured my favorite strawberry needs him a -centric fic of his own. In case you're wondering about the meanings on my OC's name:

Mutsuko : nothing child

Nanashi: no name

That's the translation I got from the site I was on, so if I'm off somewhere in the name meanings, let me know.


Cold, like liquid ice.

If that's how he would describe the falling rain from the thunderous grey sky, that'd be it. However, there were other types of cold. One that he experienced as a shot of adrenaline, ice through his blood that should have frozen him in place, but he couldn't just look away. He couldn't just walk away. Not from this.

He didn't even know the girl. She was a stranger, an anonymous blur, but she stood out to him from the sea of people-but not from her appearance.

It was where she was standing that sent him into a panic, mentally screaming at how is no one seeing her.

Her hands were gripping the rail stops, curtain of dark hair hiding her face, her body almost angled in a position of defeat. She didn't move, even with the signals blaring that a train was coming, that she needed to get out of the way. Only when her fingers uncurled, ready to release her anchor, did he jump to action. He didn't even care if this girl was a ghost, reliving her last moments over and over; he couldn't stand by and watch.

He ran, ignoring the calls of his friends, to her, that girl who was about to make an irreparable mistake. His heart was pounding so loudly, the noise deafening him, as his focus was to reach her, to stop her from doing this.

When his hand shot out to seize her thin, fragile wrist, his fingers dug into the soft flesh and he was shocked to find a pulse.

She's not a ghost. He yanked her back, over the railing before the train would come and send her body hurtling through the air. His free arm wrapped around her waist, his mind working into overdrive, as he held onto her. But she wasn't fighting him, like he'd have expected. She was as still as death, her clothes soaked through that he was sure she had to have been freezing.

"Ichigo!" Rukia's voice broke through the humming of blood through his veins and Ichigo's eyes flickered over to the raven-haired Soul Reaper. Orihime, Chad, and Uryu were right behind her, panting heavily from chasing after him. Orihime's grey eyes scanned down to the girl Ichigo currently had in his grip and she clapped her hand over her mouth. "Oh!"

"Orihime, what's wrong?" Uryu asked, looking at the orange-haired female with concern etched on his features.

"Mutsuko-chan!" Orihime gasped, trying to catch the girl's eye, only to have her own fill with tears. "Oh, Mutsuko-chan..."

Ichigo looked down at the girl, who slowly raised her head up, the trance she was enraptured in falling away. Soaked, brown hair clung to an extremely pale face, the right cheek devastatingly marred by a large, ugly bruise and eyes as black as death met his. Her lips trembled, as though she wanted to say something, but no sound came out. She snatched her arm from his grip, the sleeve from her hoodie falling only slightly atop of what looked to be another bruise on her arm. She tried to move back, her steps clumsy, before she fell onto her knees.

"Orihime, who's..." Ichigo began, but Orihime shook her head. Her expression was twisted with sorrow as she knelt down before the girl she called Mutsuko, who was trembling with tears streaming down her face. Orihime wrapped her arms around the trembling girl, before she looked up toward Ichigo. "Can we take her to your house since it's closer, Ichigo? Maybe your dad can patch her up?" she murmured.

Ichigo frowned. He just saved this girl, but something weighed heavily in his chest about this situation. "Sure."

Orihime carefully moved to help Mutsuko to her feet and that's when Ichigo noticed.

Mutsuko's leg was trembling, trying to keep her upright, but Ichigo could sense that her leg was injured some way or another. "Let me help, Orihime."

Orihime nodded before speaking to Mutsuko. "Ichigo's just going to help, okay, Mutsuko-chan? You're going to be all right now," she murmured in a voice meant to be reassuring, but no one was sure if Mutsuko even heard Orihime, much less understood, even as Orihime gently pulled the soaked hood atop of her head. Ichigo knelt down and Orihime gently urged Mutsuko to get onto his back. While Ichigo never cared about what others thought of him before, it may follow him down the road about giving a nearly catatonic girl a piggyback ride.

"Orihime, who is that girl?" asked Rukia, frowning softly at her friend.

"How do you know her?" Uryu added, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"W-Well..." Orihime stammered, her eyes bouncing from her friends to the girl Ichigo carried on his back. "The thing is...Mutsuko-chan...she doesn't go to our school. To be honest, I don't know if she ever did, she hardly speaks to anyone. The only thing I ever got out of her was her full name: Nanashi Mutsuko."

"Why is that?" asked Chad.

At this, Orihime lowered her gaze to the rain-slicked pavement and a heavy silence fell over the group. The mere notion of Orihime not explaining her connection to this Mutsuko caused a yawning pit of nervousness to open inside of Ichigo, made larger by the weight of him carrying the lifeless girl. It begged the question now, more than ever. Was she someone's daughter? Are they searching for her? Did they even care she was gone?

Did someone even miss her?