Several things in the Soul Society went without saying. It was regarded as common sense, for example, that bringing up Hitsugaya's age or height in conversation was a very bad idea. In a similar fashion, nobody commented on Ukitake's bright white hair or offered him a cough sweet, nor did anyone mention Kenpachi's strange choice of hairstyle. Nobody badmouthed Yoruichi within earshot of Soi Fon, nor did they ask the General why he never trimmed his beard. Within seconds of stepping through the gates of the Gotei 13 it was if everyone knew what was out of bounds and what was downright pointless.
Kyoraku Shunsui, captain of the 8th squad, thought nothing of the fact that nobody disturbed him in a morning, though to everyone else it was the most obvious thing in the world. Everyone knew that while he had a weakness for women, his true Mistress was a bottle of saké. Kyoraku often woke up with next to no idea of what he had gotten up to while drunk and trying to piece everything together was a laborious process. His previous vice-captain had enjoyed saké almost as much as him, though never suffered the unfortunate side effects, which proved most useful. Back then, whenever he woke up with a resounding headache and dry tongue, Riza would have a list ready for him of people he needed to apologise to and objects he needed to return to their rightful places.
That's not to say Nanao was not equally as useful, though her approach to greeting him in the morning was to hand over paperwork for him to sign and, when he asked her if by chance she knew why there was a hippopotamus on the rampage around his division or one of the other captains seemed to be avoiding him, she would reply in a very pitiless fashion that she did not know.
One morning he woke up to find a serious looking orange peacock in the corner of his bedroom. It had a note in its beak declaring that he was thereby forbidden to set foot on the Kuchiki estate. He was convinced that he had never once visited the place.
When Nanao later arrived with a bundle of paperwork, he curled up underneath his desk to avoid the bright morning light that quickly followed. Her immaculate hair and uniform were a complete contrast to his own. His hair had escaped its bindings and was extremely knotted in places, while his robes were creased and discoloured by grass stains and a variety of spilled drinks.
Nanao ignored the peacock and positioned the pile of papers in the middle of his desk.
"You have a couple of files from the fourth squad," she began, lifting a folder from the top. "They require your signature for authorisation to -"
"Nanaoooo, it's early," Kyoraku complained, rubbing his eyes. "I need to-"
She ignored him, instead lifting up the next file. Kyoraku watched miserably as she did so.
"Nanaoooooooooooooo…."
"Yes, Captain?"
"I have a hang over, can't this wait a little longer?"
Nanao sighed and adjusted her glasses. She only ever did so when she was irritated and Kyoraku braced himself for a frosty dismissal. Had there been any onlookers unfamiliar with the pair, they might have been fooled into thinking that Nanao was the true Captain, persuaded into switching roles with her lazy vice-captain as a dare.
"Of course I can tell you have a hang over, Captain," she eventually said. "But that is no excuse to shirk your duties. Besides, the pile was a lot bigger than this last night."
For the first time since she had arrived Kyoraku noticed the small flaws in her otherwise pristine appearance. She had deep black bags underneath her eyes and small indentations in her cheeks where her glasses had pressed into her face as she slept.
Despite the difference in rank, Nanao was the one who won the argument. She tidied up his office while he dressed, complaining loudly that she did not understand how he could stand it being so messy. She shooed away the peacock and cleared all of the empty saké bottles from the floor and surrounding shelves. When Kyoraku emerged from his bedroom in clean robes she took the dirty ones, claiming that if she left it for him to sort out they would never be cleaned.
Kyoraku shuffled over to his desk as Nanao gathered up his laundry and moved towards the office door.
"Oh, Nanao, I almost forgot," he said. "You mentioned last night. I don't suppose you heard or saw anything, did you? Anything that might jog my memory?"
"No, Captain," was her reply. "I'm afraid I don't know anything that could be of use."
Kyoraku spent the morning filling out paperwork, giving his permission for his squad to undertake assignments and acknowledging that the sequence of events given in some reports was the correct one. He was, however, unable to distract himself from the mystery that was the previous night. How on earth had he ended up at the Kuchiki estate? And what had he done to warrant being forbidden to return?
He took a break after two hours and sat back against the wall. His headache had not subsided and, were it not for the fact that the ink on some of the reports was still wet, he could have taken a nap there and then. He stared at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes, thinking that perhaps he needed a drink, when there was a knock on his office door.
"Come in!" he called, hoping that it wasn't Nanao with yet more paperwork.
As it happened, he was in luck - the person on the other side of the door was Ukitake. Not only was he a more than adequate distraction from paperwork, but he may have had some information regarding the Kuchiki estate.
"Ukitake!" Kyoraku roared, climbing up onto his feet to welcome his old friend. "You're just the person I-"
He stopped mid sentence. Considering how well the two knew each other it was an inevitability that the miracle cure Kurotsuchi had passed onto Ukitake had cropped up in conversation. Kyoraku had admired Ukitake's newfound black hair, observing that he looked just like a European prince. The Ukitake standing before him right then had covered up most of his hair with a large hat, a few loose strands of hair draped across his face.
"Is that the new fashion, Ukitake?" he asked, leaning in to get a closer look. Ukitake flinched as he got closer and raised both of his hands to his head in defence.
"No, it's…" He glanced up at Kyoraku. "Promise you won't laugh?"
"Of course I won't," Kyoraku chuckled. "Now come on, you're scaring me."
Slowly, the other captain reached his hands up to the hat and pulled it off, leaving the hair underneath to fall across his shoulders. Kyoraku noted that he still had a full head of thick black hair. From the way Ukitake had been acting, he had wondered if perhaps his roots had grown back. He knew from the past few months just how much the other captain loathed it when that happened, but Ukitake's roots were black and there was no trace of even a single white strand.
Then he noticed that Ukitake's hair seemed to be moving, twitching from side to side. Kyoraku stepped closer to get a better look and he gasped when he saw what it was. Ukitake had a pair of black cat ears laid flat against the back his head. When he realised Kyoraku had seen them, they shot up to a ninety degree angle, making them quite plain to see.
"What have you done, Ukitake?" asked Kyoraku. He knew he had promised not to, but he could not stop himself doubling over with laughter. Ukitake did not seem surprised in the slightest by his reaction.
"Captain Kurotsuchi's medicine," he said, one ear facing forward while the other turned in the opposite direction, perhaps picking up on some noise outside. "I finally found out what the side effects are."
He dragged the hat back onto his head and adjusted it until he was satisfied. Kyoraku attempted to catch his breath and wiped the tears from his eyes.
"You don't look so good today," Ukitake said. "Are you feeling well?"
Kyoraku deliberately didn't comment on the irony of that statement and instead proceeded to tell the other captain about what had happened that morning, from the peacock to the letter from the Kuchiki estate to all of the paperwork Nanao had given him.
"I was hoping you might know something about it," he finished, unable to hide the hope from his voice. Ukitake had looked very thoughtful throughout his story but hadn't volunteered any information.
"You did invite me out," he said. "But I had a bad headache and stayed at home. I wonder…"
He looked so serious all of a sudden that Kyoraku's heart leapt into his chest.
"You wonder what?"
"Well, it's probably nothing," said Ukitake, pressing a clenched fist against his lips. "But my squad was training with Byakuya's earlier and-"
"And what?"
Ukitake smiled and shook his head.
"It's probably nothing," he said, with a pointed glance. "But Byakuya was not there."
It was a clue, no, more than a clue. Kyoraku didn't know why he hadn't thought to ask Byakuya earlier - the Kuchiki estate was his home, after all, and the sixth squad was situated reasonably close to his own. Perhaps he could ask him if he knew anything.
After Ukitake left some time later, Kyoraku finished off the last of his paperwork. It took a great deal of self restraint to prevent him from throwing a speedy goodbye and thank you to Ukitake and rushing straight over to the sixth squad barracks. As tempting as it was, he knew that hurrying over there in such a fashion and demanding to see Byakuya was the sign of a guilty conscience and he was not entirely sure if he had one.
It was three in the afternoon when he finally set down his pen and dragged his sugegasa onto his head. The walk to the sixth squad barracks was a relatively short one. Kyoraku took in the rapidly blooming cherry trees that lined the other squad's barracks and caught several falling petals as he passed.
The sixth squad barracks was a flurry of activity when he arrived. Several of the buildings were haphazardly coated with purple paint and a number of others were missing roofs. Byakuya's squad members were busy repainting the buildings, reattaching roofs and fixing doors back onto their hinges. The sound of construction was loud in the air and Kyoraku stood in the entrance for a while, taking in everything going on in front of him.
As he finally stepped inside, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as if all of the busy squad members were stealing glances at him as he passed. It was not a completely unrealistic scenario, as he thought about it. He wondered if any of the destruction was related to why he was banned from the Kuchiki estate and whether he should apologise as soon as he found Byakuya.
Byakuya's office seemed to be the only part of the barracks untouched by damage and it was almost entirely deserted. The only sign of life in the area was the blurred shape of Renji, Byakuya's vice-captain, rushing in and out of the office with what appeared to be a large pot in his arms.
"Abarai," Kyoraku called to him. "Might I speak to your captain?"
Renji did not seem to hear him and Kyoraku knocked on Byakuya's office door. They were both captains, after all.
"You might as well come in," Byakuya said from within and Kyoraku opened the door. He had decided that he was going to pretend he had heard the sound of construction from his own office and ask what had happened. In his imagination Byakuya sat with his back to him and explained that he had decided it was high time the barracks were redecorated. He could almost hear him saying that the older decoration looked cheap and was highly unfitting of a man of his station. It did not explain why the barracks looked as if they had caught the wrong end of a hurricane, but it certainly made Kyoraku feel better.
As he stepped inside, Kyoraku noted that Byakuya was sitting almost exactly as he had imagined with just one subtle difference. Instead of sitting with his back to the office door, Byakuya sat facing his office window, with the left of his body facing the door. He did not appear any different from usual, with the usual unimpressed expression plastered across his face and his hair and robes immaculately tidy.
"Byakuya," Kyoraku began. "I-"
He barely managed to begin his sentence when Byakuya spun in his seat to face him, noticeably shocked by the sound of his voice.
"I don't remember inviting you here," the other captain snapped. Kyoraku's attention was not on his words, however, but on Byakuya's appearance. He then understood why it was Byakuya had sat to the side and not with his back to the door as usual. While the left side of his body was as it always was, the right was a different matter all together. He had ink dripping down his face and neck from the right of his scalp, which he had coated in order to hide how utterly bald it was. Kyoraku realised the pot Renji had been carrying must have been full of ink.
Kyoraku said nothing at the time to Byakuya, save for a muffled apology as he left the room. When he returned to his own barracks he locked himself inside his office, his roars of laughter audible even at the first division barracks. No one ever found out what had conspired between the two captains the previous night, nor did anyone know why Kyoraku was unable to look Byakuya in the eye without laughing for many months afterwards.
The only fact everyone could agree on was thus: Kyoraku never again questioned why it was he was forbidden from the Kuchiki estate. It was just another one of those things that went without saying.
