A/N: "Kogi aren't you supposed to be doing HitsuKarin Week?" I am. I just needed break so I finally decided to proofread this. Enjoy~

He stared down lamely at the key in his hand; a heavy, long thing, simple in design. He was sure it was bronze, its color a dirty tan. Its bar was diamond-shaped, knobs on each its corners and the bit was a simple rectangle with an L cut from it. It was unremarkable, and it disappointed him for some reason. He expected a master key to be more attractive.

"If you need anything, Izuru, just call." His boss said said before they brushed past him, and they rattled him by his shoulder.

"Yeah, I will." He responded as he tucked the key into his pocket. He grabbed the lantern off the counter by its wire handle, glanced at the clock, and he ventured out between the tombstones.

It was early spring. The snow had melted by then, but the nights were still cold and quiet. The cemetery was just as creepy then despite the perception that spring was fun and lively. But it hardly surprised him since the place was already eerie in the day. Vague shadows were cast by the headstones in the moonlight, and yellow man-made light illuminated the granite at discordant angles. Creepy, indeed, but he was hardly bothered. He practically grew up in the cemetery after his parents died. It was more of a home than anywhere else.

He could still remember it; he always sat in front of their graves, nose stuck in some obscure book he'd found in an antique shop with snacks until he was thrown out, to which he normally snuck back in. It wasn't like his foster parents cared where he went or what he did or what could've happened to him, and neither did he at the time. Until high school, that was. He met Rangiku then, and she'd introduced him to Shuuhei and Renji and they became his family.

But there he was then; home. It first day on-guard at the cemetery he'd haunted like a ghost in his pre pubescence. There was a note of irony to it somehow.

As he absently wove through the headstones, he thought back to his junior year. He remembered when he and his friends snuck out Halloween night and wandered about the graves and tried to scare each other. They'd huddled before the angel in the center of the children's' graves, and he remembered Renji's ghost story of an eyeless woman who haunted the cemetery. He'd told them that she was an escort for people high up in the social hierarchy like politicians. After one of her clients impregnated her and she threatened to tell the entire town unless he help care for it, he gouged out her eyes and cut out her tongue. She bled out and died soon later because of her injuries, and he buried her in an unmarked grave in the cemetery.

It was a half-baked story at best- either that or Renji was the shittiest storyteller of the twentieth century. But something about it had cemented his relationship with them; he'd found his family through the little things they did together.

He stood in front of the same angel they sat before years ago then, its soft, sorrowful expression and rumpled robes illuminated by his light. He wondered if it was inspired by a real woman and what she did if she was made into an angel- or what happened to her. Martyrdom was always romanticized by artists.

He turned on the balls of his feet then and paused as he frowned. There was a woman; silently walked along the cobblestone way, her pale arms folded over her nightdress and her head bowed, face shielded by the fringe that hung over it.

It was unfortunate, he thought, that he had to enforce the cemetery rules, he thought- especially since he was sure she just was there to visit her loved ones like he had years ago-, but he had a job to do and he intended to do it.

"Ma'am," he shouted, "ma'am it's after hours, please come back tomorrow!"

She was still silent as she walked, and he frowned as she disappeared behind the trunk of a weeping willow.

"Goddamn it," he cussed as he jogged after the woman, and the lantern bumped against his spindly thigh as he ran and cast abstract shadows. "Ma'am," he cried out again, followed her around a bend in the trail. She was fast, he thought, but her stride was a leisurely stroll. It unsettled some part of him and piqued curiosity in other.

He watched her disappear behind the maintenance shed, and her spun around the corner of it. He found her crouched in the freshly cut grass, watched as she ran her fingers through the damp blades, and he panted quietly as he strode to her.

"Ma'am-"

"Do you like stories?"

He blinked slowly, taken aback by her query.

"I like stories. My favorite is Hamlet, I've always been infatuated by Shakespeare you see. But Romeo and Juliet is my least favorite. It was just melodrama." She continued.

"... ah." He responded. He didn't exactly disagree with her, he just wasn't sure what to say.

He strode to her, crouched, and leaned against the back of the shed. He set his lantern between them and stared through the corner of his eye as she curled her lily-white legs to her chest.

"What would be your favorite, stranger?"

"Truthfully, it's Lovecraft but he's so racist it's difficult to excuse."

"A horror buff, I see."

"Guilty as charged." He fell back on his ass then and bent his knees, draped his arms over them as she hummed. "Forgive me for asking, but what brings you here so late, ma'am?"

She turned to him then, pushed back her bangs and he nearly fell over in his startlement. Her eyes were black voids in her skull, and what he assumed was blood flared out and tapered to peeks like mountains around her sockets. "Well, I'm dead for one."

He swallowed his nausea- it would've been rude to vomit. He doubted the poor thing was eyeless because she wanted to be- and nodded then, unsure how else to respond and he wondered what was appropriate to say.

"Well then." He cleared his throat. "I… apologize for my insensitivity."

"You were just doing your job."

There was silence between them then. He wasn't sure what to say to a ghost- he'd never talked to one, even when he and his friends decided to try out a ouija board. Not to mention that he was all around a bad conversation partner. He'd always been a better listener.

"You're new." She stated, and he nodded in return. "What brings you here?"

"Need to pay bills and this position was open. And my parents are buried here, so I have a certain… fondness for this place."

"I'm sorry for your loss." She replied. "Where are they buried?"

"Southeast end towards the back." He replied. "Where are you buried?"

She smiled again, though he could hardly call it a smile. It was too melancholy. "I was cheated out of a grave marker." She answered cryptically. He wouldn't push.

"Alright then… what's your name?"

"Momo. Just Momo."

"I'm Izuru."

"That's a nice name, Izuru." She complimented, and he thanked her shortly. "Do you know any stories, Izuru? I haven't read anything in decades, I terribly miss it."

He fished into his bag and pulled out a novel. It wasn't like he had anything better to do, he thought. "Is Treasure Island alright?"

"It sounds simply splendid."

She became a regular part of his routine. He would get to work, find her whilst he patrolled, and he would read to her until his shift ended in the early morning. She was a quiet ghost, didn't talk much unless he addressed her first. Which was fine with him, he wasn't one for conversation either.

But he liked it when she did talk to him. She was analytical and down to earth, and she was quite poetic when she wanted to be. And he liked her because of it, liked her mellow calm and the simplicity that accompanied her.

The initial shock of her ghostliness eventually wore off. She was just another person, and then a friend before he even realized it. The good days seemed longer with her and the bad shorter and not nearly as strenuous. And the effect she had on him was bizarre. Rangiku, when they were in high school, made things easier for him to cope with but not in the way Momo did. Rangiku pushed him from the darkness into contentment, but Momo pulled him into happiness. She gave him something to look forward to.

Such didn't escape Rangiku. He'd suspected she knew something was amiss the first week after he'd started his job. She may've been a little on the wild side, but she was perceptive and she knew him she knew the spa- a little too well.

They walked arm-in-arm down the mall strip, arms loaded with her shopping bags- he wondered then how she afforded all her wardrobe changes. She didn't use a credit card he was sure and it wasn't like the beauty industry was the most lucrative- and he nodded quietly as she rattled on about one of her nosier regulars .

"Speaking of…" she trailed off then, and he arched an eyebrow as he glanced at her from the corner of his eye. "You've been upbeat as of late. Like, moreso than usual. What's up?"

He shrugged lamely then, hooked his finger under the wire handle of one of her bags and adjusted it on his arm. "The hours working at the cemetery are nice. Night shift's always more peaceful than day business so there's less stress and I've always been a night owl."

"I doubt there's a single person on the planet who likes their job as much as you're enjoying yourself. Seriously, Izuru, I won't make fun of you."

"I know. But's there's nobody-"

Shit.

He groaned then, and Rangiku giggled next to him. He virtually gave himself away, might as well just said that he was hopelessly in love with the most beautiful woman on the planet. Which Momo was definitely up there; she and Rangiku were simply too good for their godforsaken plane. But such was beside the point then when he was as mortified as he was then.

"... are they nice?"

Heat crept up his ears as he thought to Momo. "S-she's classy but quiet, and yes she's nice." He replied, and he watched as his friend smiled faintly.

"Do you like her?"

"In what context?"

"The L-word."

He frowned then as Rangiku steered them into a lingerie store- he wondered briefly if he should've waited outside, and then he remembered that she just needed to return a product since it didn't fit her bust. The poor woman, he thought-. Momo was nice, and she was attractive for a ghost, but he wasn't sure if he was in love. She was hurt and he hardly knew anything about her outside of a few trivial details. "I can't say yet." He responded then.

"Take your time. Perhaps she needs it too." Rangiku remarked, and he smiled softly at her as they approached customer service.

Momo, he thought, had all the time in the world. He, on the other hand, didn't.

It was early April and the trees blossomed and dotted the cemetery with life it previously didn't have. Momo told him that she thought it was the most beautiful time of the year- it was dainty and its simplicity beautiful.

He wanted to say that she was beautiful too, but his tongue cemented itself to his jaw and refused to move until his chance had long passed.

"My brother and his wife are buried here." Momo told him. "I was cheated out of my brother's wedding, one of the most important days of his life, and I never got to meet the woman of his dreams. But I got to see her funeral, and I saw him weep over her like a piece of his soul had just been torn away. Worst of all, I couldn't console him like a sister should."

It broke his heart nearly, how forlorn she sounded. "It's not your fault." He assured her.

She rest her temple on his shoulder, curled her legs to her chest, and hugged them. He closed the novel in his lap then and laid his cheek on her chilly scalp- a stark reminder of her undeath.

"I sometimes wonder what I could've done differently. Maybe if I married a different man… or maybe if I ran instead of just standing there like a fool."

"... what do you mean?"

She laughed bitterly then, pushed herself to her feet and paced in a circle. She crossed her arms over her chest and combed her fringe over her sockets. "Dear god, I can remember it like it was just yesterday. My husband was an eye doctor and very charming, so nobody knew that… that he liked to kill girls and take their eyeballs. I walked in on him one day, and he killed me and enucleated me too. And then he went on to destroy my reputation by saying I ran off with another man after my friends began to ask about me. They believed him until he was eventually caught and executed by the police but… he never disclosed the location of my body or my eyes so I've never been found. And that god awful rumor still persists today- I hear kids tell that inane story every few months and all it does it hurt. I'm not a person, I'm some mythos- I've always been just a toy."

His heart stuttered in his chest then. He'd been one of those kids once upon a time; or Renji had at least. But he sat down and listened and hadn't even considered that there may've been a real person behind the story, and it made him just as terrible.

"I'm… I'm sorry. I am." He croaked.

"I know, and it's not your fault." She said, and she sighed. "I wish I'd married you instead. You're a good man, Izuru."

He felt the same way, he thought. He would've loved to join her for a nice dinner and comb her hair and help her into- and out of- her dresses and walk with her in the park instead of the dismal cemetery and take her on a long drive. But he'd never say it, he couldn't bear to get her hopes up and then something happen that would separate them. He wasn't nearly so cruel.

"If you could have any one thing, what would you want?" He inquired softly. He at least needed to make up his sins and everyone's sins against her. He needed to make things right for her.

"I'd want my eyes." She whispered softly. "I feel so unwhole without them. I just want to feel complete again."

He pushed himself to his feet, and he grabbed her wrist, turned her around, and tucked her to his chest. "I swear to bring your eyes. You will be whole yet again."

Shuuhei was a janitor for the county municipal office. Shuuhei had access to all the unsavory case files that had been documented over the last two hundred years so he could mop the floor. Shuuhei still owed him twenty bucks from two and a half years ago when he needed to replace his seat covers in his car. He would've excused Shuuhei's debt if he did him a favor.

Although he would've loved to get ahold of the files himself, he was unauthorized and didn't want to get his friend in too much trouble even if he did owe him twenty bucks. However, he could ask that Shuuhei bring the files to him after his shift and therefore there was less risk that Shuuhei would lose his job and his debt would be dismissed. It was a win-win situation and made him far less petty.

Normally, he wasn't so charitable as to go on a wild goose chase with minimal information, but he borderline loved Momo and he was sure any sane individual would've sympathized with a lonely, victimized woman. The poor girl deserved a break, and he intended to give her such a break.

"I'm hitting the sack now, I need a nap." Shuuhei explained. "Later, Izuru. Just leave that by the door when you're finished with it so I can take it back in the morning."

"Thanks. Get some sleep." He lamely responded.

He crossed his legs then and draped them over the ottoman before him, and he leaned into the cushion as he plucked the file from the box.

He didn't care much for the case itself- it'd been long resolved and he just looked for a pair of eyeballs. Apparently, most of the eyeballs were found in his office as specimens and then buried with the bodies during official funerals. But an unknown set had been donated to the University of Shin'ou in the name of science. He at least knew where to start.

So he made a trip to the university. He asked about a pair of eyeballs he needed for a research paper a secretary, and after she searched for a few minutes she discovered their location. They were located in the larger biology lab, however, since the department head had gone home that day he couldn't see them then.

But he'd never been the most virtuous. He was possibly the most impatient individual he knew. So instead of wait a day for the department head's return, after hours he broke in with a lockpick and a flashlight.

It was a typical biology room; several granite-top rows with a hose for gas and diagrams tacked on the wall that were beyond his comprehension and lined with locked cabinets.

There were several human eyeball specimens donated over time, he saw, and all of which he couldn't even check to see the dates donated or even the species because they were locked in a cabinet. He cussed then. He didn't want to damage more property, and he wondered if a key was nearby.

He reached above him then and felt along the top of the cabinet, and he felt cold metal against his fingertips and pulled it down. His eyebrows raised as he recognized it as a key.

"That was surprisingly easy." He murmured to himself, and he pushed it into the lock and opened it. He gingerly turned the tags tied around the necks of the bottles. Cow eyes, rat eyes, cat eyes, horse eyes, lizard eyes, dog eyes, and a few other specimens before he came across a virtually blank tag. It was donated in the late nineteenth century, but the species nor name of donator was listed. He decided that it was likely his best bet.

He gently took the bottle from the shelf and tucked it in his bag, and he locked the cabinet and climbed out of the window back into the twilight.

He just had one thing left to do, he thought.

It was midnight, the time of her normal emergence, and he waited by her body. He was nervous, he thought. Maybe he'd grabbed the wrong eyes, or perhaps he was just in the middle of a psychotic break and just stole a pair of eyeballs for no real reason-

"A-are those my eyes?"

He turned to see her, and she quivered as tears dripped from her sockets. He popped off the jar's lid and held the contents to her, and she ran over and briefly fumbled as she pulled them out. He watched then as tilted her head back and held her eyes over her orbitals, and she dropped them in.

There was a heavy moment of silence, and then she smiled as her form saturated from a dull blue-grey to color; her dress was a beautiful white and her skin an unblemished tawny and her hair the color of his afternoon coffee. And she was iridescent, he saw, her halo cast beautiful ivory over the grass.

He watched as she smiled, and tears still spilled down her cheeks. "I forgot what it was like to feel whole." She remarked. "It's such a beautiful feeling."

She reached and cupped his cheek, her priorly cold hands then warm as sunlight, and she smiled broadly at him. A feeling of peace washed over him, sucked the breath from him from its strength. She pulled him into a hug then and he rest his cheek on her scalp, and she kissed his cheek as she hummed.

"Thank you." She breathed- quiet but it was as clear as church bells to him. She felt so light then, as if her misery had been uplifted and her relief tangible. "I wish I could've met you in life. I was just born in the wrong era."

He laughed curtly then, and tears sprung from his eyes over his cheeks. "Yeah, you definitely deserve better."

She tucked her face into his chest then, and he noted how loose she felt- as if she wasn't quite there. He looked down to see her form unravel in woven strands of light, and it crept up her waist. It felt like it hit him with a sledgehammer; Momo was dead and she was then appeased and therefore had no more reason to stay on their plane. And it saddened him- it felt like his parent's funeral all over again. Although he knew it was selfish he wished she could've stayed at least a little longer. He just wanted to read to her one last time, they still had some of Treasure Island to finish and she liked it a lot and he just wanted her to stay with him.

"Izuru, I love you." She murmured, and he felt her shoulders loosen under him like frayed linens.

He stared at the moon above them as he shuddered. "I love you too." He croaked, and she pushed his chin down with her nose and kissed him softly.

"Hey now, don't look so melancholy. We'll see each other again." She told him with a wide smile, and he somehow mustered the strength to smile back.

"Wait for me, then." He said, and she nodded as she disappeared into mere threads of light.

He stood stone still for what felt like ages, and he finally wiped his nose on his sleeve and sighed heavily. He would move on, he thought, and he would see her again soon. It wasn't the end of the world.

It'd been a lame way to die. He'd been peckish on his shift and decided to snack on the sweet rolls he'd brought. He didn't chew long enough and swallowed a fairly large chunk, and it lodged in his throat and he hadn't anyone to help dislodge it. So he died of asphyxiation.

Dumbass, he thought.

He sat lamely on a tombstone with his arms crossed, unsure exactly how to pass on, and he glared at his body and the bready-drool that had dripped onto the pavement. Rangiku would cry at his funeral… He felt like a pile of shit then. Some friend he was.

"How ungraceful. You couldn't even last a year without me."

He turned then, and he smiled softly at Momo dressed in modern clothes- hair cut short, and a cigarette hung from her teeth- a few feet away.

"Those'll kill you someday." He deadpanned, and she rolled her eyes.

"I'm already dead." She responded as she gnawed on her cigarette.

He strode to her, pulled her into a hug, and she nestled his chest as her arms wrapped around his trunk. "I missed you." He whispered, and he couldn't bring himself to not smile.

"I can tell. So much that you forgot how to eat."

He didn't remember her to be so sassy, he thought. Either way- he was just happy he was with her then. Even if he'd piss off Rangiku, he was sure she'd understand.

"At least in the afterlife, we can be together." She said then. "Come now, you fool. You have to tell me everything I've missed."