.
All we know
.
Days pass as days tend to do, more often than not, without Ichigo's notice. One day it's Monday, the next it's Wednesday and then he's getting up at six in the morning on a Saturday because his internal alarm doesn't know any better than him.
He knows what day it is, at least. He takes the victory where he can.
Ichigo goes through with his usual routine, hearing Karin's snores from her room confirms the day of the week, and he changes into a comfortable shirt and jeans instead of his school uniform before climbing downstairs closer to nine than seven.
In the dining room, his dad is reading the paper, coffee cup posed for a sip though it hangs suspended in his hand as if he'd forgotten about it. The clinic doesn't open until slightly later on the weekends.
Yuzu's in the kitchen. She usually sleeps in on Saturdays, he pauses to wonder why she's up, and then he smells it. There are brownies baking.
She's puttering about with the radio on, in no rush, and flashes a smile at him in greeting.
"Just felt like doing something different," she explains, forcing a brownie square on him and demanding to know if it came out okay.
Ichigo accepts it, confirms it edible to her indignant squawk, and then goes back upstairs.
He reads. He goes for a run with Tatsuki and Chad. Sometimes on their run, he'll spot Karin and her friends, and they'll drag the three of them into a game of soccer. He plays video games. He takes a nap. Sometimes he'll go to the arcade with Keigo. He listens to music. Sometimes he'll go with Yuzu to the market and give Uryuu shit about the cosplay outfits he makes at the hobby shop.
The monotony of school days passes in a similar blur, yet it passes, and that's all he can ask for really.
Life happens to him and he lets it.
It probably isn't healthy, running on autopilot and muscle memory the way he does, but its functional. No one's concerned. No one's complaining. It's fine. Everything is fine.
"Hey you!"
He blinks, and it's like being tuned back in. The pressure in his ears pop like the frequency of his brain was just all wrong and now it's the way it should be, and suddenly he's aware.
It's one of those lame gangs, three guys just causing trouble and looking for something fun to do – something to keep busy with.
It's annoying to deal with them, but Ichigo can understand the need for distraction.
Not everyone's alright with playing at living.
He huffs out an annoyed breath. Whatever wastes a couple of minutes, he supposes.
Fighting is as automatic as any of Ichigo's other routines. It should say something about him that it's gotten that far, but if he had any actual concerns he'd have dyed his hair a more normal colour long ago. As it is, he brushes off the dust that's accumulated on his uniform, hikes his messenger bag up on his arm and continues on his way.
He passes the stream, sees no one there just like every other day, and keeps on walking.
The front door creaks as he shuts it, swops his outside shoes with his inside ones, and though his dad opens his mouth to yell at him, he reconsiders as he eyes the bruise on Ichigo's jaw, and decides against saying anything at all. At dinner, the girls don't say anything either.
Ichigo tells himself it's fine.
Everything is fine.
Other days pass with significance, like they're important, even if only one thing has changed.
Like a sunset he actually took the time to notice, a picture Keigo had taken of their group during lunch that Ichigo had actually liked, finding money in his trouser pockets, Urahara feeling bad about sending Ichigo on an errand right before the shop was supposed to close and paying him extra.
It's not always good things.
Sometimes it's discovering a leak in the hallway, getting a grade he hadn't anticipated, finding gum stuck to his shoe, having no more hot water to shower with, finding pickles in his food.
Like the day he has to take the bus.
He's late, and he's irritable. Public transport is as crowded as to be expected. If he remembers it for that alone, he wouldn't be surprised.
But standing a few feet in front of him, there she was.
She wasn't looking his way, her back turned to him, the strap of a pink messenger bag slung over her shoulder. Though the navy-blue hat and its matching uniform coat are familiar, it might not even be her.
His stop comes up before hers does, and he gets off without ever confirming it.
That day sticks out like others have, until it's awash in those that blur so seamlessly together.
Until the next, and the next, and the next, until the day Karin insists he take her to a bookstore across town after school.
Her favourite series has released a new manga, and she knows a guy who knows a guy that's got a copy saved for her despite being apparently "out of stock" everywhere else.
"That sounds vaguely illegal," he informs his sister dryly.
"Ne Ichi-nii, don't say things you want confirmed."
He rolls his eyes. "I'm only agreeing to go with you so they don't kidnap you."
"Please, like you have any plans anyway," she retorts, "besides it's on the "good side" of town."
"No one cares which side of town you're in when you've got perfectly good organs to harvest."
Karin sighs dramatically. "You're so depressing Ichi-nii."
The store is packed shoulder to shoulder with shelves, dusty with editions that have clearly seen better days, certainly not the kind of place you'd think to find a new or latest anything. But Karin's already disappeared inside to find the guy that can get her the copy of the manga she wants.
So, Ichigo busies himself with exploring, feeling his breath move in his chest as he finds things of vague interest, sparking and jolting him to remember he was awake. As if those ambiguously stimulating things were matches setting off little fireworks at the loose threads of his existence.
In the maze of shelves, squirreled away in a corner, perched on an overstuffed chair. Her lips move silently as she mouths the words to herself, tasting their myriad of meanings on her tongue.
Her smile is tentative even as her brow arches. "Are you following me?"
"I could ask you the same," he returns, leaning more comfortably against the shelf at the mouth of her little nook.
The skin between her brows crinkle. "The hell happened to your face?"
Ichigo didn't notice when she'd gotten up or when she'd walked towards him, but he remembers her hands – pale and warm, a perfume of dust and jasmine clinging to the stale air around him as she touch-touch-touches. "I'm okay," he remembers to say, soft and quiet, and sorry.
"That's not what I asked." She's tilting his face, furrows in her brow and a frown tugging unhappily at her mouth.
When he doesn't reply, she glares at him and he swallows against the sickening churn in his stomach – disappointed, angry, guilty –"Got in a fight," is the defensive growl he answers with, something he's realized in the past as being enough to get his family's concern off his back, to get Tatsuki to leave him alone –
But she's hardly moved, and inside, Ichigo's still snarling half hoping for an argument, half hoping to scare her away. He knows the steps to this, coiled tight and ready to spit venom, and he knows it's destructive, it's awful, it isn't right he doesn't mean to be a dick, he doesn't mean to push people away –
"What's wrong?"
Everything about her has softened, quiet and sorry and drawn, and that's what sets him back, that's what makes him flinch.
She doesn't go after him when he takes a half step back, only peers at him with blue blue eyes, and suddenly he feels flayed open all over again. Like the weeks following their first meeting. Like the weeks following their last. How are you doing this? He wants to ask, but what comes out instead is the question, "How do you know something is wrong?"
Her shrug is small, barely a lift of her shoulders as if she's consciously trying not to scare him off with any sudden movements. "We all have our bad days."
"Sometimes," he decides to say, "this feels like the longest bad day of my life."
"Until you meet your next one?"
"Yeah…I guess."
"Then," she muses, "doesn't that mean you had a good day in between? How do you tell them apart?"
He picks at dry lips and replies, "I don't."
"Then how do you know your day's been bad or good? How do you make them good?"
"I don't…I don't know."
She hums, and from outside, a car hoots. A glance confirms something to her, and she nods to herself before pressing the book she'd been reading against his chest. "Then try."
Ichigo watches her leave baffled, and when he looks down at the book, he finds a battered English copy of Slaughterhouse Five.
She'd stuck a bookmark in, one of those school ones with her school ID photo on one end and her name beneath it: Kuchiki Rukia, he reads it and re-reads it until he's satisfied and a highlighted line on the page next to it catches his eye.
It reads simply, "How nice to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."