Gin couldn't say he'd been fooled. Sure, he'd been young, but he was a smart kid. He'd walked into it with eyes wide open. Anyway, there was no going back now. No point in crying.
He'd been ambitious. All through school, so bored being taught things he already knew, chafing against the strictures of the system, nurturing that anger toward his absent father, and Rangiku's absent mother and father, and all absent parents everywhere.
A bomb ready to go off.
So when he was at the top of his class in college, of course he'd said yes when someone said to him, "Come work with us. We appreciate your genius, and we'll let you achieve your full potential."
"Call me 'older brother.'"
"We're like a family here."
He'd shown his father that he didn't need his money, he could make more than him, and he'd even enjoyed the work, and the more vicious aspects of it—well, he'd never been squeamish. It really wouldn't have bothered him at all.
If it wasn't for Rangiku.
Maybe if he had started on a different track, maybe if he'd left college and got a nice respectable job where he had to work nine-to-five and wouldn't have his littlest whims indulged—but even then, would it really have worked out? Sooner or later, he'd have started chafing at the rules there, too, and then he would have been fired, genius or no. And that was no good either.
And even if he could keep an ordinary job . . . he wasn't sure he could pull off the role Rangiku wanted him to play. Barely having had parents, could he act as the figure of authority to a kid—wipe its snot and read it a bedtime story, even when he was tired from work and not in the mood for kindness?
No. Not even if he really wanted to. There was something wilful about him, and he didn't know whether he just lacked everyone else's restraint or indulged himself more or whether there truly was something slightly wrong in his head, but he knew he couldn't make himself conform to that mold. Rangiku might think so, but she had always believed in him a little too much. He wouldn't get her hopes up only to see it all end in disappointment, another aching mother, another absent father.
That was the thing: kids were important. The world didn't need any more little Rangikus passing out on the curb, or little Gins roaming the neighborhood and stealing from the convenience stores though they weren't really hungry.
So what did he want to do? Did he want to keep doing this to Rangiku, coming and going like the tide, washing the past away each time he returned?
He just wanted tonight never to end. His arm around Rangiku's shoulder, a beer in his hand just so that he could feel a little closer to her, while she was laughing uproariously at the stupid comedy playing on the TV.
He liked being in her apartment, much more than he liked being in his own despite all its expensive gadgets. The place was so much like her. Messy, with big posters everywhere of the newest thing to have caught Rangiku's attention. One big poster of her in that funny dish soap ad, her hair all fluffed around her shoulders and her arms sudsed up to the elbow. The really funny thing was, Rangiku hated washing her dishes.
That was okay. When he came by, he did them for her, and she'd put her arms around his waist from behind and try to say things to make him stop. Sometimes they would even get finished.
Rangiku drained her beer with a satisfied noise and got up to get another one. She wasn't unsteady on her feet, he noticed, but that wasn't good either: a higher tolerance meant she was drinking more. Gin would have liked to ask her to cut it down a little, but he wouldn't. Just like she wouldn't ask him to stop disappearing. He knew. And she knew. And neither of them was going to stop.
Autumn was just beginning in their second year of high school.
Having recently blossomed, Rangiku was getting a lot more attention these days. Mostly, she was learning to fend guys off with her fists if they bothered her too much—Gin was pleased to see that—but sometimes she seemed to listen to them, just a little. This one kid, Abarai, had successfully had several conversations with Rangiku. Now he was even trying to get her to join his football team.
So Rangiku was off playing football with Abarai and his goons, and Gin was stalking home under a cloud of jealousy. He knew very well that he was jealous, but the solution to the problem was not as clear to him, and that in itself was annoying because he never had difficulty solving a problem.
He could seriously injure Abarai somehow, but that didn't seem like it would be satisfying or solve the root of the problem.
He could probably persuade Rangiku not to play football any more, but that seemed unacceptable too. She wanted to do it, after all.
He spent the night roaming the neighborhood in displeasure, totally unable to even get close to sleep. That night, even the broadest street seemed confining, and he walked until his feet hurt, hands stuck in his jacket pockets.
Rangiku was worried about him the next morning. "You look so tired," she said. "Are you getting sick?"
"Nah, I'm fine," he said brightly. "So how was . . . basketball, was it?"
She elbowed him amiably. "Football was fine. I don't think I'm going to join the team, though. I mean, you have to practice every day." She made a face.
Gin felt a little better hearing that, but he still hadn't come to a decision by the end of the day as to what course of action he should take. Events were rushing forward too fast for his liking—he felt as though if he lost touch of Rangiku for a second, she would be gone forever.
She laughed, and he glanced over at her. It was so easy to be around her, he thought. She gave out her companionship and her opinions and her enthusiasm to everyone she met, without hesitation. Even to him. Not to mention that, obviously, she was beautiful. He'd heard people saying that they didn't understand why someone like her was hanging around with a creep like him.
And if he didn't do something soon, it would be too late. It was the first time he'd ever felt this kind of anxiety—but, then, it was the first time he'd ever contemplated losing something as important to him as Rangiku.
She had reached the front step to her house, and turned around to say goodbye to him.
He leaned forward and kissed her.
A few red leaves fluttered past.
He thought it might have been because Kira reminded him of Rangiku. Or perhaps it was because of the ways Kira wasn't like Rangiku.
Gin had looked at himself in the shop windows when he arrived. Here in Osaka, hundreds of miles from home, he was a stranger to himself; he could be anyone at all, a ghost, a whole new person. He looked in the window at Ichimaru Gin, the humble convenience store worker, Ichimaru Gin, the stand-up comedian, Ichimaru Gin, the family man.
For some reason Gin could not understand, to Kira he had become Ichimaru Gin, Kira Izuru's Personal Hero. He thought maybe Kira had just been looking for someone to idolize, and in had stepped Gin, generally accepted to be a genius, exceptional at his work, and flirtatious from a certain point of view. That was to say that most people found his manner creepy, but a special few, like Kira, reacted in the opposite way; it didn't matter to Gin, since he liked both reactions.
Well, after several days of working with people noticeably less intelligent than him Gin had eventually gotten bored and left at three o'clock, and since there was little else to do in a strange city, he'd decided to go out drinking. And Kira had offered to show him around, since he knew the city and could show Gin all the best places.
Gin, amused, had accepted.
First, they'd had dinner, and then there had been drinks. And while Gin hadn't let the kid get too tipsy, Kira had lost a few of his inhibitions.
And Gin had enjoyed playing the part of Kira's idol. When he approved of Kira's work, Kira glowed, and when he found a mistake, Kira's shoulders sunk until Gin found something else to cheer Kira up.
But when he kissed Kira, Kira's shy delight was something to be treasured.
He'd only considered that he might be doing something wrong when he saw how dejected Kira looked at the train station, all wrapped up in his scarf and big coat, lacking the inner warmth alcohol bestowed. "Have a safe trip, Ichimaru-san," Kira had said, looking close to tears.
"Don't look so downhearted, okay, Izuru?" Gin had said. "Maybe we'll meet again sometime."
Kira nodded and let go of Gin's fingertips, which he'd been furtively holding under the cover of his coat sleeve.
That was the part Gin hadn't liked. It was one thing to tease people a little, but he never meant to make them cry.
The rainy season had begun, and Gin felt damp from head to toe, like he hadn't dried out properly in days. It was too much traveling, too much living in hotels and cars and trains, never a place to just spread out his wet suit jacket and relax for a little while. After all that, the light from Rangiku's window in the rain had just been too bright to resist, even though he'd known what was waiting for him.
He'd known it would happen as soon as he saw the wedding invitation. That was probably why he hadn't gone.
At the age of twenty-seven, Nanao was the last one of Rangiku's female friends to get married. All the others—the Kotetsu sisters they'd known from high school, tiny Rukia, Soi Fon who he kind of liked (she'd slapped him once; he appreciated her sincerity), dopey Orihime—had fallen by the wayside years ago. It was too bad; he'd kind of been relying on Kyouraku's irresponsible nature to hold out a little longer.
He'd suspected it would be Hisagi, too. Eager Hisagi: he'd always been sniffing at Gin's heels for a little scent of Rangiku. But if that was what Rangiku wanted, he wasn't going to say anything against it.
Then Rangiku said, "Let's dance," and reached over to turn on the radio, her hair tumbling down over her shoulder. Every time Gin came back, it was longer.
But the song on the radio kept repeating the same insistent refrain; almost like a siren turned into music, Gin thought, or something else, like a sine wave, a heartbeat, a tide on the shore. The rain kept on falling, too, and Gin could imagine it was the same rain, over and over—like the record of the universe was skipping, and the same melody would play again and again, and the same rain would fall against Rangiku's window, and he'd twirl Rangiku around the magazines on her floor for the rest of time.
And Rangiku would never go on her date with Hisagi, and the light in Rangiku's window would never be barred to Gin. He would never lose touch of her hand, and—
The last note of the song rang out, and they stayed in place, her arms around his neck, his hands on her waist.
"Thank you," Rangiku said. Instead of pulling away, though, she rested her head on his shoulder. She felt tired, too; her body was tense, yet it felt as though she was barely supporting her own weight.
He remembered standing on Rangiku's front step, his sudden certainty that if he didn't act he'd lose her forever, those few early leaves falling past as he leaned to kiss her.
He moved his hand to her back, under the warmth of her hair. On the radio, another song began.
A/N: Oh no, I accidentally wrote a second chapter of this? Oh well.
Please review if you read and enjoyed it/hated it/have any thoughts? A ton of people have read this, but I don't know if they hated it, or it was too confusing, or what. : /
If it was unclear, yeah, Gin works for the mob. Rangiku does not know this.
Right now I don't plan to necessarily write any more of this, but I don't know, I suppose I could be open to persuasion. But don't wait up or anything, I guess.