Rangiku groaned as she slammed her head miserably down on her desk, causing the enormous stack of paperwork she had accumulated over the past several weeks to jump violently; the pracarious tower of forms and reports jiggled like white jelly before abruptly dissolving, sending an appreciable amount of the papers fluttering through the air and scattering across the wooden floor of the pretty lieutenant's office. She cursed under her breath at her own rotten luck, the chair beneath her making a grating sound against the wood as she scooted it backwards to rise from her desk. Leaning over to retrieve the scattered articles, she lifted her head for a moment to blow a few errant strands of her golden-orange hair out of her mouth, and inadvertently ended up looking out the small window to the street beyond. Leaving half of the papers still on the ground, she straightened up and held the ones she had collected to her chest as she walked to the glass panel, looking out at the peaceful Soul Society.
It's been quiet. In the wake of the Aizen War, the Soul Reapers were hard at work cleaning up after the mess. A few stragglers were still in the hospital, but mostly it was trying to fall back into a regular system of things; many of the superior officers like herself were tied down with logistical matters, and the others were out hunting the Hollows that had accumulated in the human world. The duty had been someone neglected for a time, considering they were remarkably short-staffed and had been attempting to save the world as they knew it for a point. Plus… We no longer have our substitute Soul Reaper on that front.
It had been strange without Ichigo Kurosaki. He was a remarkable young boy; though he had stumbled into the world on a mere fluke, he had shaken the entire Soul Society to its core with his recklessness and sheer courage. No one really spoke of it, but the change was there; a gloom had been cast over the upper-level officers, especially those who had known him the best. It was like a depressive, invisible fog shrouded the world, like Ichigo had been their sun that had blinked out of life and cast them all into darkness. That's a rather dramatic way of looking at it. It's not like he's dead, she scolded herself with pursed lips as she pondered the notion, and she turned away from the window with a small sigh lest she continue to harp on the boy's forced retirement. After all, he was just a human boy; why should Rangiku be sad about it?
After she had reclaimed the rest of the papers and returned to her desk to get back to work, however, she found that it was not quite that easy to change the tangerine-haired boy from her mind. A scowl forming on her mouth as she gradually lost patience with the boring work, she clicked a pen repeatedly in irritation before throwing up her hands with a cry of relent and jumped out of the chair to stomp out of the office. Naturally, her captain was attracted by the noise, and his instinct that she was probably trying to shirk her work.
"Rangiku, where do you think you're going?" he accused as she grabbed the handle of the sliding door to wrench it open. She glanced over her shoulder at the short individual, who was leaning in the entryway of his own office with his arms crossed and his childish yet hard eyes narrowed. With a dour look, she sniffed haughtily.
"I just want a bit of fresh air. I've been working myself to death all morning!" she whined and pulled the sliding door open. Just the wave of cool air hitting her lightened her mood considerably, but she wasn't going to tell him that. "Do you know how much it hurts leaning over a desk with these?" she added and jiggled her massive chest a bit for added effect; though it was most certainly true, she knew it would unsettle her captain enough to get him of her case. It worked like a charm.
"Just don't be gone to long!" he snapped at her, his childlike face turning bright pink with a mixture of anger and embarrassment, before he whipped around to stomp back into his office, his white captain's coat fluttering behind him. Rangiku giggled, pleased with herself for her strategic tactic, before she walked out of the administrative building and quietly slid the door shut behind her. She closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in deeply and savoring the moment of not doing work. I think I'll go for a walk, too! I need to stretch my legs! she decided giddily before hopping down the steps, unaware of a few nearby male Soul Reapers eyeing her with slack jaws as her chest bounced with every little hop.
"Hey! Don't you losers have work to do?" snapped an impatient voice as Rangiku landed on the concrete pathway, and she raised her head with wide eyes to see Shūhei Hisagi running off the same pair of lackeys with an irritated scowl. He had his sword propped against his shoulder, trying to seem like some kind of threatening punk, but she just found it cute. He was too busy watching them flee down a nearby side path to see her approach, but when he turned to find her standing right in front of him, his tattooed face flushed pink, a stark contrast to his scruffy dark hair and hard, angled eyes. "Ack! Hey, Rangiku!" he cried and stumbled back. "I didn't even notice you where there!"
"You're certainly asserting your dominance today," she teased, motioning with her chin to the area where the startled men had fled in terror. "Surely you have something better to do than harass the lower-ranking officers?" Shūhei scowled down to her, but rather than the threatening wolf look he was trying for, Rangiku thought he looked like an adorable puppy trying to scare off a big hound. His scowl deepened as she could not help but giggle at his attempt to seem tough.
"Don't you have some paperwork you could be doing?" His cold rebuke soured her amused mood, and she crossed her arms and tossed her head haughtily, and her long orange hair smacked him roughly in the face. As he whined and held his nose, she continued to stand primly in front of him.
"As a matter of fact, I've been doing paperwork all morning! I just wanted to go for a walk!"
"All right, all right. You didn't have to hit me," he mumbled as he tenderly rubbed the bridge of his nose. "How are you holding up, Rangiku?" His sudden question surprised her, and she relaxed her posture to glance back at him. His face was flushing again, and though he always wore the same expression of irritation, she could tell from the look in his eyes that he was genuinely worried about her. What is it with all these people so worried about me? Starting with Ichigo, every couple of days or so someone would approach her about Gin's death. Part of her was grateful to learn that people at least cared about her well-being enough to ask, but part of her was also weary of answering the question.
"I'm just fine," she responded without missing a beat, pouring as much of her happy-go-lucky attitude into her voice as she could muster. Behind the bright smile, though, she was already falling to pieces. It's been weeks. I should be over it, right? Then why can't I stop thinking that there was some way I could have saved him?
"I'm sure he was just happy to have you there with him at the end, Rangiku." She was shocked at the voice that suddenly chimed in her head, a fraction of a memory that surfaced and then sank back below the sea of thought. That's right. Ichigo told me that… As the image of his face formed in her mind, that awkward smile as he was trying to console her, a warm, fuzzy feeling bloomed in her chest, like warm sunshine falling over the cool morning dew. Ichigo had been so worried about me. With everyone else, it just seemed like common courtesy, but with him, it had felt so different. Like he couldn't go home knowing that she was sad. That strange feeling that had risen up inside her the moment Ichigo had appeared from nowhere to confront Aizen began to surface inside of her once more. What is it? She didn't know how to describe it, except that whenever she thought about him, she felt like she was floating on air…
Her bubble of introspection was rudely burst when Shūhei impatiently snapped his fingers in her face, startling her thoroughly.
"Earth to Rangiku! I've been talking to you for three minutes! Are you ignoring me? What's with that funny look on your face?" he demanded hotly, putting one hand on his hip as he leaned over and bonked her on the top of her head with the hilt of his sword as if trying to wake her from a dream. She lifted her hands to her scalp, pouting as she shielded the area from another round of attack.
"I'm sorry. I was just thinking about something someone told me," she apologized, and thankfully, he took that at face value and mumbled some insensitive comment or another about her head being full of air. Rangiku's mind was already wandering off again, drifting to the tall, strong man with a cocky smile and bright orange hair…
"You know, it's weird not having Kurosaki around anymore," Shūhei suddenly remarked, and she flushed, for a moment fearful that he had read her mind and caught her red-handed thinking such compromising thoughts. When she sheepishly glanced up at him, he had turned his angular face to the blue sky above their heads, his wolfish face relaxed as he sat deep in thought. "It's almost boring now." Shūhei was a hothead, with the desire for a fight always boiling in his blood, but Rangiku could not help but agree with him; she nodded mutely and followed his contemplative gaze to the sky, wondering what the young boy could be doing at that moment.
I wonder… Does he give as much thought to me as I do to him?
"Hey! Rangiku! Get your butt in here!" A shiver traveled up her spine at the sheer anger in her captain's voice as he threw open the sliding door and stomped out onto the patio of the administrative building, one of his pure white eyebrows twitching as a scowl disfigured his cute face. "I told you not to goof off, and here you are bullshitting with Hisagi! Get to work, lieutenant!"
"Come on! It hasn't been that long!" she whined miserably and stamped her feet, as if she were a child throwing a temper tantrum, but she knew she had been caught. She exhaled deeply and ran a hand through her fluffy hair, smiling sweetly up at Shūhei. "Well, it's been nice talking to you. See you later!" she chimed and whipped around to hurry into the building, leaving him practically short-circuiting as he overheated with a raging blush.
After Captain Histsugaya was satisfied with the amount of work she had done, Rangiku was finally permitted to leave. She stretched her arms above her head as she strolled out of the building, feeling her vertebrae crack with a series of satisfying pops. As she dropped her arms, she tenderly reached behind herself to rub her lower back muscles, which were aching terribly. "I wasn't made to sit at a desk," she grumbled to herself as she tiredly marched down the steps. Her gaze were trained at her feet, watching her sandals shuffle across the tiled stone, and she blinked when another, petite pair of sandal-bearing feet appeared in her vision. She lifted her head in confusion, then smiled. "Oh! Hello, Rukia. I didn't expect to see you here so late in the day."
The raven-haired girl shuffled her feet shyly, looking highly uncomfortably as she glanced away with pursed lips. She normally isn't so shifty. Is something wrong?
"I… I have a lot on my mind. I thought a walk would clear my head," she mumbled. In her large blue eyes swam a mixture of loneliness and sadness. Rangiku stared at her for a moment, wondering what could possibly be the matter with the normally strong, bold girl, until it finally clicked in her mind.
"You miss him, don't you?" Rukia gasped and looked at her, blushing bright red, but after a moment of staring at the lieutenant and possibly considering denials, she lowered her head with a small nod. "I understand," Rangiku smiled gently. "He was a very good friend to you."
"What about you?" she asked her quietly, her gaze sliding up to meet hers, and it was Rangiku's turn to blush profusely.
"Wh-what about me?"
"I hear the talk. You've been pretty spacey, lately… And there was that matter of Ichigo going to talk to you right before he left. You, of all people," she explained. Her voice was low, but it wasn't menacing; it was calculating, almost curious, and those large blue eyes of her were staring at her with such an intensity that Rangiku felt as if that gaze pierced the very depths of her soul. She felt utterly naked in front of the girl. "You love him, don't you, Rangiku?"
I… love Ichigo? The thought was ludicrous. She, a several-hundred-year-old lieutenant Soul Reaper, in love with a boy from the human world who had managed to wriggle their way into their world with some bravado and a half-baked sword? It was preposterous. It was asinine. It was…
It was true.
She wasn't sure when it happened, but she had begun to cry. The tears lingered in her thick lashes before breaking free and sliding down her cheeks, which were rosy with emotion. She raised a hand to her heart, feeling it constrict, but no matter how much she wanted to escape that level stare that Rukia was giving her, she could not look away. When had it happened? How did it happen? Rangiku did not know for sure, but somehow it had, and she had never even know it until right this very moment.
Now, it was too late to do anything about it.
"I thought so. You've always acted a little different around him, you know," Rukia said, her mouth finally curling into a small smile. In that instant, whatever spell the little enchantress had cast on her vanished like a puff of smoke in the wind, and Rangiku hastily composed herself, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands and controlling her miserable sniffling. Look at me. A mess over a man I won't ever see again…
"It's not like it matters. He's back to his old life now," she muttered, mostly to herself. "Ichigo isn't a Soul Reaper anymore."
"For now," the small girl mused. "Ichigo's too stubborn to just watch everyone else do the work. He'll try and figure out some way to get them back, sooner or later. I just hope he doesn't kill himself in the process!" she laughed, and despite her high level of emotion, Rangiku laughed, too.
The girls talked for a while, reminiscing in old memories, before taking their leave of each other and parting ways. As Rangiku slowly walked down the path towards home, her mind a maelstrom of mixed emotions, she glanced back up at the sky.
Could Ichigo love me, too?
