It had happened so quickly. My father had died. It had been so abrupt. One moment he was there, and the next... Gone. Without a single trace.
I had no mother. My mother had been killed by a hollow four years ago when I was six. Me and my father wept for a whole month over it. But eventually, we had to move on. And we did.
My father had been a captain. He was the tenth squad captain for some time, and everything had been good. Until one day he had come back with his right arm infected by a hollow. He had a hollowfied arm.
The fourth and twelfth squad tried to amputate it, but it had failed. The captain commander, Yamamoto, was afraid that my dad would become hollowfied if he continued to have that arm, and he was stripped of his rank, and forced to leave soul society.
So we made a small cabin and lived in the woods. But the hollowfication continued to get worse and worse by the minute. Eventually...
I sat by the grave minutes passing by with absolute silence. It was weird. I thought that I would be weeping and crying like crazy over his death. Yet... I feel like I've accepted it. It's weird, I never thought that I would feel this empty.
I heard soft tapping noises come from behind me. I turned around to find myself face to face with a shinigami.
He had messy blonde hair that stuck out from the white, green striped hat he wore. He had a standard shinigami attire on, and heeled sandals. His eyes... I couldn't see what colour his eyes were because his hat was covering them. If it weren't for his solemn face, I would have definitely labeled him as a goofy carefree kind of person.
After a while of staring at each other, he finally spoke up.
"I'm sorry about the loss of your father Yoshi. He was a good man..."
I just frowned at this.
"Huh? How do you know my dad?"
"Simple. I used to be a captain just like him."
My eyes widened in shock at this. "You? Did you get banished too?"
The shadows covering his eyes gave way revealing sad grey irises looking down on me. It wasn't pity, that's for sure. But something else...
Compassion. That's the word my dad used for this situation.
"Come with me Yoshi."
"Come with you? Why? Who are you? And how do you know my name?"
The banished captain gave a sad smile to me.
"Name's Kisuke Urahara. I've been a friend of your dad for a looooooong time. And we made an agreement that I promised I would keep."
"...What's that?"
Urahara reached out his hand and with the other, made some sort of weird portal and began to guide me to it.
"I promised him that if he and his wife were ever to die, I would become your new guardian."