A/N: Hi. This is my first fanfic and my first Bleach Fic. I hope you all like it. I will try to update as soon as I can, but exams are coming up and I might not have enough time. Still, I hope you love my brain-child as much as I do! Oh, and thanks to Adobo-chan, whose fanfics inspried me to write this one!

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach, because if I did, the anime would last forever instead of ending.

Part One: Shoeless

Ichigo had a lot on his mind. It had been a long time since he had been home from college long enough to actually relax. Usually he was sprinting in and out of the family home, wishing that he had more time. Paying your way was a lot harder than it looked, even with the scholarships that he had gotten. Two jobs and classes didn't make law school any easier.

Ichigo wasn't really sure why law school appealed to him. He certainly wasn't one for the bland or the normal, but it allured him—the chance to argue and win, to present your case and win it. It also helped that it would give him a stable future. With how hectic his life had been lately, maybe he needed a little stability and a good life.

He was sitting in a chair next to his bedroom window, where the rain fell like dark essence upon the water-blacked concrete. It was a worn Sunday at the end of May, only a couple of weeks before he would go and pay respects to his late mother, who had died in a car accident in a day much like this. Strangely, after all the years of her death, it didn't bother the nineteen-year-old Ichigo as much as it had bothered the nine-year-old one about her death. Now, as he watched the rain fall softly, there was a sense of peace that came with the steady rhythm rather than grief and pain.

It was nice to simply be alone for a while. Karin understood that. Yuzu didn't, with her constant penchant that he needed to get a girlfriend and that he needed to get out more, while she avoided her constant suitors from her third year in high school. Karin, on the other hand, had a nice steady relationship going with Toshiro, one of Ichigo's friends. Karin pretended like she wasn't. Ichigo pretended that he didn't know that she was hiding it.

Ichigo and Karin maintained a simple "you stay out of my business, I'll stay out of yours" relationship. However, he had already threatened Toshiro that if he made Karin cry for the wrong reasons, he wouldn't let Toshiro see the light of day.

As Ichigo watched the rain drip down the window pane like tears, he considered what Yuzu had said. It wasn't that he didn't have friends; they were just too caught up in their own lives and final exams to have time to hang out. Not to mention that most of them were on the brink of failing anyway. And the ones who weren't, like Toshiro, mainly had girlfriends to worry about.

Yuzu was wrong on both accounts. It's not that he didn't want a girlfriend. He wanted a relationship as much as the next fellow, but honestly, he just couldn't see himself in one. Especially not with someone superficial. He had dated a lot of girls who cared to much about appearances and what other people thought of them, and he had dated girls who had no personality other than the one that society had engraved upon them. It was hard to find a girl who was truly outgoing and fearless, yet had the intelligence to keep up a decent conversation. He wasn't looking for just anyone, and he didn't think that anyone should be. No one should look for a relationship under the idea that "any girl will do." That was disrespectful and cruel to both parties.

So, no, he wasn't in a rush to get into a relationship, much to Yuzu's disappointment.

He closed the Calculus textbook that he was supposed to be reading and understanding. It wasn't that hard, but it wasn't the way that he wanted to spend his afternoons. Ichigo ran a hand through his orange hair and wished that he had no obligations, to himself or to his mother. He had promised her that he would protect people, and he guessed that being a civil rights lawyer would do just that. He supposed that he could have become a cop as well, but he had never really gotten along with the force, after being a branded delinquent in high school for all those years. He wasn't especially feeling the need to get chummy. And arguments were his thing.

As he looked outside the window, he saw a girl dressed in nothing but a white T-shirt and shorts, dragging a garbage can behind her. She was short and . . . petite, maybe . . . with black hair that clung to her shoulders. She was pulling the can with surprising strength considering her size. If he had just glanced at her, Ichigo would have thought her to be a middle-schooler at best. But even through the water- blurred sight of the window, he could tell that she was his age, maybe a little younger.

Her hair was a mess and glued to her scalp from the rain. She continued to drag the trash down her driveway without so much as a raincoat on. Her body was slim and fit and she didn't hesitate to run back up the water soaked concrete as the heavy rains came down on her.

These rains were the type that flooded the backyard of Kurosaki Clinic, the type that froze you to the bone in mere minutes despite it being mid-May. Ichigo had to respect a girl who would brave the weather for something as trivial as taking out the trash.

When she was done, the girl smiled and held up a hand to catch a few raindrops in her palm before dropping them back onto the concrete. When Ichigo saw the girl smiling, behind the panel of glass, he had to smile was well because of her simple happiness and her willingness to enjoy the simpler things.

He admired that she was willing to go outside in nothing other than a ratty T-shirt and some shorts, her hair ruffled and completely without anything that would change her appearance from the natural look that it was. It was a breath of fresh air from the complicated social norms. The same social norms that had gotten him branded as a bad kid in high school for his natural orange hair.

Ichigo was suddenly reminded that this girl was probably one of his new neighbors. He vaguely remembered Yuzu mentioning that there was a new family comprised of two siblings moving into his neighbor. He hadn't really thought of it at the time, but now he was beginning to wonder who she was and where she came from.

He watched as she lugged a recycle bin out along with the trash, which was quite frankly larger than her entire being. The girl nodded at her handy work before running back to her house, now completely and utterly soaked to the point of where her hair flung raindrops when she flipped it.

But as Ichigo watched her go back inside, he realized that the entire time that she had been outside, she hadn't been wearing shoes.

With that unconventional thought, he suddenly wanted to know her name. Because it had been a lot more interesting watching her than it had been reading his Calculus textbook.