au.

i will bring you happy flowers from the mountain & rustic baskets of kisses

by appleschan

Ichigo has gone out of his car to pull flowers along the road. He never buys. He picks them out of huddles of growing weeds and flowers shrubs and wild trees lining a cracked pavement en route to the remotest, remotest house in the outskirts of Karakura. He pulls the bluebells and some early-blooming hazels.

He lingers on that sidewalk stretch while haphazardly rearranging the blues and the yellows and then tying the stems with a string to make a decent offering. But he frowns at his own sloppy handiwork.

She was some sort of a noble clan princess from three centuries ago. The thought weighs heavily, surely that in itself warranted knowledge in ikebana design principles.

So he walks around and picks up the prettiest-looking dead and coarse twigs he could find and sticks them onto his makeshift bouquet beside the bright, blooming flowers - life and death or the cycle of life, she'd like the symbolism or some shit like that.

Now ready, Ichigo walks back to his car and drives a bit faster.

He regularly goes out on official business trip - as official and as business as it gets. Ichigo is a manga writer - not an illustrator, somebody does that for him. His friend, Chad, who is also part of Japanese-Mexican band, does that for him. Ichigo is only doing the research and writes the story. Another friend, Ishida Uryuu, who is too stuck-up for a medical resident, agrees to be the editor - only because he said his supremely high intelligence would allow him to see plotholes, "and there are astoundingly many," he said too many times. Ishida would always end his smug tirade with his mandatory reminder, "it's charity work, Kurosaki, be grateful I'm lending you my time," which earns a "yeah great, fuck you, too" from Ichigo.

More specifically, Ichigo writes in the action and feudal history genre and readers dig their work. Acclaimed and all, serialized, consistently ranked high with a large following, and nearing completion.

Chad makes a good work of designing characters and Ishida suggests strong and clashing characterizations and good on vital subplots, and Ichigo creates the story, themes, characters, hides the lyrical symbols, and composes the poetry.

He's a novelist, too, but he's far from being finished, and very often, he gets rid of unruly ghosts by threatening them - which comes really handy when needs to put a stop to ghosts fooling around in his younger sisters' apartment.

There's a peculiar fourth member in their team, and she's a ghost who once lived in the Feudal Era.

She's functions as a ghost consultant to him, confirming his researches on political events and figures. She was a clan princess who once sat in her family council to play surrogate to her brother during wartime, a civil uprising hundreds of years ago. She was badass, a legitimate one. She even showed him where her katana was.

Only that: she never revealed her name to him.

But Ichigo had a glimpse of her clan's insignia - camelia and snowdrop flowers, and he already came across it several times but did not research further to respect her wish. He lets her be.

Ichigo visits her twice a month to consult with her, and two more times to do practically nothing but hang out - also in the same month. He enjoys it.

So today, Ichigo comes devoid of his work materials and notebooks and inflammatory editor's notes from Ishida and gushing fan mails he reads to her when he visits (not Ishida's notes). Ichigo comes to spend time with her.

The ghost resides in the remotest, remotest old house from the city, on a swath of land clearing surrounded by thick greeneries. She resides near - between - the foot of a mountain and the seashore.

Ichigo reaches the end of the cracked and bumpy road - nobody goes this way, really, except for random security checks, so there is no need to continually conduct road yearly. He turns the engine off, draws his car keys and gets out of his modest black car.

Ichigo brings his makeshift ikebana offering and leather satchel bag with him, he enters the forest and hikes.

Above him, the sky reflects the blueness of summertime - even if it is not - and the clouds are wispy white and they stretch wide. To his left, between the tree gaps, he could see the ocean, an expanse of sparkling blue-green, and the trees around him - deeply green and dark brown. There are many bright little flower shrubs. It's a good day - splashed in spring colors. Ichigo keeps on walking.

Technically, he is trespassing: this area is protected and preserved by the government. The house where she resides is well over 500 years - she told him. It was not, however, the seat of her clan's power centuries ago. It did not even belonged to her family, she said.

But spirits have ties, he believes, they return to those important to them, people or objects.

He always wondered what appeal the place held for her; why she is constantly returning to this place, or better yet, why won't she simply cross over if such a thing is possible.

Ichigo knows his way all too well. He knows how the sunshine dapples the forest floor on different times during the day, and he avoids uneven, moss-covered rocks and fallen tree trunks very well. Many times, he and the ghost take would walks outside - in her case, she floats, but she likes to mimic walking.

Soon, Ichigo reaches a clearing and emerges from the back of her place. Like any 500-year old structure, the house is huge and sprawling and dilapidated, it's fusuma cutaway and the wooden columns blackish, but it maintained most of its form still - from the renovation they did when they moved - she said, and that's how Ichigo knew she once lived here. There is, of course, no sign of human inhabitation. Ichigo rounds on a corner, walking until he passes an old well and rocks and a destroyed concrete wall.

The sun is mildly warm on his back and he feels the cool wind pass him as he makes his way to the front.

Ichigo finds her sitting on the engawa of the front house. Dilapidation and oldness and time behind her.

He stops walking and clears his throat, "yo, how's death?" he tells the white, misty form of a woman sitting so poised on the wooden flooring outside the house in greetings.

"How is...failing at life, then?" The ghost answers him, her voice is barely above a murmur, like wind chimes only quiet and matured, and Ichigo hears a silent laughter there. It is hello.

Sometimes, Ichigo wonders if he hears her on his head, or this is just one of those things science needs to account for.

Nevertheless, Ichigo pauses, his face is slowly breaking into a smirk, pleased at her adaptation to modernities, "I'm not failing..." he mutters, stepping forward. He is holding his flower offering on one hand.

The ghost stands and walks towards him slowly, the hem of her long kosode drags behind her (or floats) as with her front-tied long obi sash. Even from being of the dead, there is nothing threatening or dreadful about her presence.

The ghost is undeterred by the sunlight, and whose facial features are gleaming, recognizable and all too white and translucent, yet is strangely very human, if not, familiar.

At an arm's distance, she bows - like always. And him, feeling uncultured and has never been really mindful of his actions and remembering how old she is - would have been, respectfully returns her bow albeit lower.

The ghost died a little less than four hundred years ago, but she keeps to her graceful noble roots - from her clothes and mannerisms.

When greetings are properly exchanged. He feels grouchy and uncouth in comparison - wearing black denims and a plain shirt, and has bright orange hair. He's grown in the city, loud and always in a hurry and modern. This ghost, certainly, is the antithesis to that.

Her long, unbound hair would have been black, he remembers thinking. She barely reaches his shoulders.

"I, uhh...here," Ichigo offers her his little bouquet. The ghost looks up to him, confused, a stubborn bang hangs between her eyes - which somehow retained a purplish streak.

"Oh, right sorry," Ichigo says hurriedly, and takes back his offer, as if the ghost can hold something, "I'll just put it on there somewhere, you okay with that?" He points to the engawa.

At her nod, he covers the distance to the delicate wooden flooring and places there the red string-bounded bluebells and the hazels and twigs.

"Do you need to ask me something?" Comes her voice.

"Do I need to 'ask you something' to visit you?" Ichigo returns, his face cracking a playful smirk.

2-part. im disappointed. had to remove 1 word from the title by p. neruda.