On the night when the ambush on Byakuya and his retinue was planned, Hisana did not go out in the street, but she did climb onto her roof and, from there, watched bursts of light and flashes of magic as fighting broke out on the New Road. It happened on the edge of Seventy-ninth and Eightieth. It was all over in minutes. And a cold wind rolled in off the mountains, snatching at Hisana's hair.
"I know you're there," she said after a moment.
"How? How do you know?"
"I can feel you."
"You sense reiatsu."
"I don't know. I can feel you though." She turned. He was standing on the narrowest part of the roof, perfectly balanced, the long black robes of a shinigami poised in the wind. On his hip, he carried a sword.
Disappointed, Hisana turned away.
"I came to tell you that they're dead. They can't hurt you anymore," he said.
"I understand."
"Most of them had low spiritual pressure. One was powerful; his body burnt up shortly after he died."
"Hm." She shivered: "And now that they're gone, where do you think they are, Kuchiki-sama?"
"Please call me Byakuya."
"Byakuya-sama," she amended: "Because is it possible that there's another world beyond this one? With other shinigami to take away their souls? Does it just go on forever?"
"I don't know," he said, but she could hear that it was only half the truth, and she waited. "I don't think so," he admitted at length.
"Then what do you think?" She turned towards him: "Does it end here? Like this? Without any answers?"
"What questions did you have?"
"I just want to know whether you believe that this is the last world? The end of it all?"
He frowned:
"Those who live out their lives here will return to the cycle of rebirth in the human world."
"If they live for their full term."
"Yes."
"But what about the ones who die early, who are murdered, who become sick? What about them? What about the men you killed today?"
"They are no longer a part of the cycle."
These were facts, she realised: not guesswork or even faith. He knew.
"That's what your father meant," she whispered, turning back again to the lights of Rukongai and, beyond it, the sereitei. Suddenly, they seemed streaked, smudged like a painting, and she realised she was crying: "I always wondered why he said that we were already condemned and now I know. Because people die out here every day. They die early. We're the ones who won't be reborn, Byakuya-sama. We're the ones you don't need to save."
"I don't believe that."
"You don't need to." She brushed away tears with the ball of her hand. The sereitei looked so beacutiful from here, its crystalline towers ablaze with lights and yet she could not forgive the shinigami for bringing her here. She had been alone now for nearly a century, but never lonely until now.
Byakuya did not answer. She suspected that he had no answers. Facts, yes, but not answers. The air whispered as he left the rooftop. She didn't need to turn to know he was gone, but she did, to stare at the empty patch of sky where he had been standing.