4.

Kuchiki Rukia

"Well, Rukia. This is my family. My Dad, I'm convinced is related to the Energizer Bunny. My sister Karin's dream is to find a career where she can kick guys in the balls for a living. And my sister Yuzu… well, Yuzu's the only normal one in the family. We're not sure what happened." Ichigo said it all so matter of factly, even as her family sent her death glares.

I was standing on the Kurosaki doorstep with a small bundle of loose summer dresses, undergarments, hygiene items, and pajamas Ichigo had helped me buy just earlier today. My school uniforms were mixed in with the pile. I was a bit uncertain - this was my introduction into the Kurosaki family's household.

I shouldn't have worried.

"Rukia-chan, I heard you're going through so much trouble!" Yuzu took my hand, emotional. "Please, stay with us for as long as you need to!"

"Just don't expect any favors. I'm still kicking your ass at sports and video games," announced Karin, crossing her arms.

"Oh, thank you," I said, looking away demurely, feigning tearful emotion. "I've been through so much, I just need -" But Ichigo's father cut me off.

"I have already told Masaki's shrine that I now have four daughters!" Dad announced, and he charged at me, his arms opened wide -

"Rukia, run!" Ichigo and her sisters called as one in alarm, but it was too late. Dad had crushed me into one of his suffocating embraces.

"Be with me, my daughter!" he cried.

"Can't - breathe -" I gasped out, my face purpling.

Ichigo put a hand over her eyes. "I can always count on you to humiliate me in front of my friends, Dad."

"You are welcome, my daughter Ichigo! It is a free service I provide!" he boomed, the sound rattling in his warm chest. I was not used to being hugged by anyone. It was extremely peculiar - oddly comforting. Was this what it was like for Ichigo all the time?

Karin freed me by punching her father in the face and telling him to stop being a perv. (His hand had been inching toward my breasts.)

"I love you too, my daughter Karin!" Mr Kurosaki said brightly from the ground. "Good punch!" He gave her a thumbs up and Karin glared.

Life with the Kurosakis from there was very surreal for me. First, they insisted that I decorate my room.

"But it's a spare room," I said, surprised and confused. "I'm only here temporarily."

"She's so insecure!" their father cried. "Relax, daughter of mine! Come into your bedroom!"

"Yeah, this is your room now," said Yuzu warmly.

"You can't not decorate your room," Ichigo agreed, arms crossed, and even Karin was nodding.

They bought me an armload full of stuffed bunnies to sit on my bed, helped me paste my drawings up onto the walls, bought me drawing equipment, got me a music player and some classical instrumental music, and their father even put up a ladder by the bedroom window so that I could climb up to the roof whenever I wanted to. Ichigo framed two pictures for me - one of me with Ichigo and her family, one of me with Ichigo and her friends - and put them both by my bedside. And then, with my summer dresses hanging, drying, from the closet, it looked uncomfortably like this human room was mine.

Which would be useful for infiltration purposes. But it still made me uncomfortable. Part of me cried out at the inclusiveness of it all - I had never been very good at making friends even in the Soul Society, with a few notable exceptions, and I had always been taught that it was demeaning to make friends with humans. Also, this couldn't last forever. One way or another, I would have to leave, and the thought of having a normal human bedroom instinctively made me want to run away. But I couldn't run away, because Ichigo was still being trained as a Shinigami, needed my help, and had no other way to turn Shinigami besides my fingerless glove.

There was one night in particular. I went to Ichigo's bedroom, almost ashamed, and returned the photographs.

"I'm sorry," I said awkwardly, as Ichigo was sitting on her bed, paused from doing homework, and staring at me in surprise. "It's just - I'm not -"

"It's fine," said Ichigo, hard to read, but her brown eyes were surprisingly understanding. I returned to my room in relief, and then I heard music start to play from Ichigo's room, trailing down to my bedroom, where the door was usually kept open to give more of an idea of empty, freer space. It was a slow, sad song, and these were some of the lyrics:

But once you've learned to be lonely

And lonely is the only thing you've known

It begins to feel like home

It becomes your comfort zone

And once you've learned to be without someone

And settle for the silence of an empty room

Oh, it changes you

There's a lot you have to undo

Once you've learned to be lonely

A risky move on Ichigo's part, but one that had hit me to the core. I thought of my life in the Soul Society: my lack of friends, my distant noble brother, the fact that everyone else thought I was above them, my vast empty room in that vast empty compound. Your comfort zone, the song had said. A human had written that, I thought, dizzy. A mere, frail, stupid human.

Later, when Ichigo was asleep, I snuck inside her bedroom and took the frames back.

Then there were the Kurosakis themselves. They were loud, enthusiastic, constantly bickering and shouting random things, sometimes teasingly violent - shoving and hitting each other. They cheated horribly at family games; accusations were flung. They were comfortable being nude around each other, and often the sisters took baths together like little kids. Dinners were constantly informal and enormously exciting, everyone sitting on an equal level around a round table in close quarters with each other. Karin introduced me to living world sports (such as soccer and skateboarding), and to the mysterious world of "movies" and "video games" (with Ichigo's help); Yuzu helped me coordinate my wardrobe; Ichigo insisted on feeding me extra food ("you look like you're starving, eat up!" she said worriedly at practically every meal); their father showered me with genuine affection in the goofiest and most grandiose manner possible. He and Ichigo had an interesting relationship - a bickering one, but there was good nature and enormous fondness there, I could see it. In fact, most of family life seemed to revolve around Ichigo, because her sisters admired her so much.

There was something warm about it, being fed breakfast and then headed off to school with a "Have a good day!" amid a mess of siblings. Meeting up with and walking to school alongside Ichigo's friends. I had never really experienced that before.

I told myself not to get emotionally attached. They were just humans, after all, and this was only temporary. I was just acting around them, when I smiled and acted bright and happy. Just acting.

But Ichigo and her life were, in their own way, very hard to resist.


For kido lessons, we needed a place to practice. So we took the bus out of the city until we finally reached open land, empty fields, a few afternoons a week. This was where I taught Ichigo about her spirit energy. I would slam Ichigo's soul out of her body, leave the body off to the side, and train her in her Shinigami form out in a field.

"First things first: push some spirit energy out into the air around you," I said.

But Ichigo looked bewildered. "What do you mean?" she asked. "How do I do that?"

I stared. "You… you don't know how to move your spirit energy? Then how have you already defeated three Hollows and sent on Plus souls?!" I asked, incredulous.

"I dunno." Ichigo shrugged, still looking at me funny.

This was incredible for me. Ichigo had made it to rookie Shinigami - without ever consciously moving any of her spirit energy. This meant that: the power I had sensed and seen in action so far? That was just unconscious spirit energy. Like a sink tap occasionally dripping a drop of water here or there by accident.

So what would happen if the sink were turned… on?

"Okay," I said, suddenly determined. "We're going to help you feel your spirit energy." I reached out my hand and shouted, "Binding spell, the first! Sai!"

Ichigo's legs and arms sprang together and she fell over flat onto the ground again.

"Now," I said matter of factly, "break out of this binding spell. Do what you did last time."

Ichigo stared. "Uh… how? I don't know what I did last time. It just kinda… happened."

I thought maybe she needed a little incentive. "Aww, stupid little Ichigo," I said, faking contempt. "Can't even get out of a stupid little binding spell." In actuality, my Kido spells were not simple to get out of, even when I was weakened, but the goading was to try to get Ichigo's blood pumping. That should trigger an increase in spirit energy.

Sure enough, Ichigo flushed and her face twisted in disbelief and anger. I felt a sudden increase in spiritual pressure, one that nearly sucked the breath right out of me, and then golden characters were suddenly flexing around Ichigo's form. "Ichigo, that's it!" I gasped out, brightening. "That's your spirit energy!"

Ichigo looked down in surprise. Then I felt her reach inside - and something unlocked.

There was a sudden BOOM and an explosion of power that knocked me off my feet. I skidded along the ground… And looked up, gasping.

A mini crater of scorched earth surrounded Ichigo, who was now standing upright, puzzled, freed from the binding spell. Testing, she flexed her spirit energy - and I choked, unable to breathe. Alarmed, Ichigo sucked up all the spirit energy again - and I relaxed.

"Thank God we did this out in a field," I said at last, gasping for air, and we both laughed weakly.

Despite my laughter, though, I had noticed - Ichigo's already massive sword had become even bigger.


So that was step one. Step two was getting Ichigo to actually control the spirit energy trapped inside her. I decided to start her out with the beginning step to Kido - forming a sphere of spirit energy around oneself.

And Ichigo had absolutely no success. Not because of the normal problem, which was being able to memorize all the spells and channel the spirit energy movements in the correct way. No, Ichigo was an expert in that. She was brilliant, if somewhat emotional and reckless about it; her memory was amazing. Ichigo had a different problem.

Basically, when it came to controlling her energy, she sucked. There was just too much of it. She couldn't get anything to form around her - not even an uneven or incomplete sphere.

I watched her, frowning, puzzled. At last, I decided to try something Shiba Kaien-dono had once taught me before his death.

"The Shiba specialize in Kido," he had said, "even though it's hard for us to master. Our unusually large spirit energy means we have had to learn shortcuts in order to master Kido. But once we have it mastered, we are among the greatest of them all." Then he'd grinned sheepishly. "Not to sound arrogant or dramatic or anything."

Kaien-dono had taught all those shortcuts to me.

"Okay, stop," I said, putting out a hand.

Ichigo was stubborn. "I think I can keep trying -" she began.

"I did not mean stop trying to learn Kido," I clarified. "I meant, stop how you're learning it. Try this. Close your eyes." Ichigo did so. "Imagine a circle. Fill in that circle with black color. Imagine yourself moving toward the circle…"

And my eyes widened as I trailed off in amazement. Ichigo's perfect sphere was growing larger and larger - it was now roughly the size of a house.

The typical size of a sphere like this one? The size of a tall human.

"Ichigo, stop, stop!" I said in alarm as it kept growing. Ichigo opened her eyes, the spirit energy phasing out, echoing around us, rippling with power.

"Was that good?" she asked.

"... Yes," I said weakly. "That was very good. Now." She suddenly became stern. "Make it smaller. The more control you have, the more of these big spells you'll be able to do."


After that came long weeks of training.

Slowly, Ichigo began learning spells and mastering Kido. And soon, amazingly soon, her Kido was massively, alarmingly powerful.

Her attack explosions were huge enough to rival Kaien-dono's or a Captain's. The first time, we hadn't been expecting this. Then the explosion had begun echoing out around its place of origin and Ichigo had yelled, "RUN!" We'd both sprinted away and were lifted off the ground by the explosion, skidding, our ears ringing.

But there was more: her shields were impenetrable, her healing immediate, her binding most likely impossible to break out of even for an experienced Shinigami. She also began practicing her Konso on ghosts around Tokyo, now that she understood how the zanpakutoh siphoned off her power and could control how much entered the sword - and, the usual problems Shinigami had with loosening particularly grounded souls? Ichigo barely blinked at them.

Her sword also became smaller and smaller until it was the size of a regular katana. Not because she'd lost power. But because her control had gotten better.

And, together with her expertise in kendo and karate, her knowledge of Hollow hunting, and her increased speed, this made her quite deadly for a rookie.

"Good job, Rukia," said Urahara, smiling, the next time I went to visit him at his shop for supplies. "Young Ichigo's progress is coming along even better than I expected."

"She is a very driven person," I said reservedly, but inside I was guilty and worried. What exactly did Urahara have planned for Ichigo?


One thing I learned on weekends with Ichigo was that she was fashionable.

Ichigo was tough, but no one ever forgot that she was a woman. Her bone and wood jewelry, her hair clips, her Black Opium perfume, her flame red lipstick and cocoa eyeliner, they enforced this - but so, it turned out, did her clothes. She would pair a crop top with a pencil skirt, in lovely colors of pumpkin, rust, dark peach, ivory, peach-pink, turquoise, gold, deep purple, in lovely patterns of leaves and branches, and she would leave me feeling very plain and inexperienced in living world fashion indeed. She had this long camel-colored trench coat that flowed over her curves and belted at the waist, emphasizing her smaller waistline, and together with a nice pair of heels and some makeup it always made her look absolutely fabulous.

Weekends were usually times for fun. Ichigo had lots of things in her world that she wanted to show me, and I - who had mostly learned about the living world from books, and quickly learned from Ichigo's constant corrections that these were out of date and inadequate - was an interested student.

The city of Tokyo was an ode unto itself. Ichigo took me to sumo wrestling stables, which were bizarre and amazing - basically, big, grunting, sweating guys went at each other in the brawling-est way possible, and wrestled each other to the ground, and people paid to watch. Ichigo snickered at my expression, placed bets, and cheered in loud ways at inappropriate moments. Even her fellow Japanese stared at her.

Pachinko parlors were fun - the object of the pachinko game was, quite simply, to get as many balls as possible through a series of pins and into the center hole. Cat cafes and themed restaurants were fun as well - cat cafes being cafes where people could play with cats while sipping at their drinks (Ichigo introduced me to a drink called "coffee" that made me bounce relentlessly off the walls for several hours yet apparently wasn't restricted), and themed restaurants being simply restaurants with a particular theme. Ichigo took me to several, including a jail-themed restaurant and a robot-themed restaurant with singing, dancing robots, but Ichigo's personal favorite was the Christon Cafe, which was themed like a "gothic cathedral" - a Western earthly building that was impossible to describe and had to be experienced, but had dark religious undertones.

This brought me to the Harajuku district. Goth Lolitas also had dark undertones. They wore tiny black dresses and curled hair and black eye makeup and carried black parasols. But there were hundreds of other fashions in the Harajuku district as well, from long ponchos and cowboy boots to heavy makeup and bright neon colors. Ichigo loved visiting the Harajuku and taking photographs of different fashions.

Ichigo also introduced me to DDR - a game called Dance Dance Revolution - which basically entailed acting like a complete spazz, and which I was horrible at. And she took me to a long street of restaurants called Piss Alley, where bizarre foods like grilled salamander, snake liquor, frog sashimi, and raw pig testicles were sold at - for a Soul Society person - absurdly cheap prices.

All food was cheap in the living world, as an interesting side note. And food was everywhere. You could even get food at vending machines, big machines where you could slip in coins or notes and pre-packaged food was thrown out of the machine at you. Ichigo had to show me how to open and use pre-packaged food and drinks, and we got into a whole history lesson on the Industrial Revolution, a period in human history when assembly lines full of people and machines started making the same thing over and over again and selling it to the masses - and thus large "chains" of businesses had been born, with CEOs, Chief Executive Officers, to run the corporations. You could also get a number of other things from vending machines, like condoms and hair care products, but Ichigo explained this was mostly unique to Tokyo.

The mention of condoms, of course, brought my adventures to Love Hotels. Ichigo booked us a stay for one night in a Love Hotel, and I didn't understand why we were staying at a hotel until we walked into a big glowing traditional-looking palace compound like place, and paid and got a room number from a slotted little door instead of an actual person at a desk, and then entered a huge bedroom decorated with traditional shoji that included a traditional looking bridge and a vast bed for two. There was a gigantic bath in the other room.

Ichigo saw my face and burst into hysterical laughter. "Love Hotels are where people go to have kinky weird sex!" she managed through her giggles.

"I am not having sex with you, Ichigo!" I said in fierce, blushing alarm. I'd gone along with everything else, but this was where I drew the line.

"I know that! I'm not even a lesbian! I just wanted to see your face when I took you into a love hotel room!" Ichigo finally collapsed, overcome with laughter.

I sighed. Humans.

Then we took a bath together, onsen-style, and sat cross-legged on the vast bed as Ichigo explained in gory, enthusiastic detail all the other rooms that had been available, from boat rooms to carousel rooms to UFO rooms to Disney rooms to S&M rooms to Victorian-era rooms to under-the-sea rooms to car rooms to classrooms to - weirdly enough - rooms that looked like they were from other cities. Half of this stuff was so living world I didn't even know what it was, let alone why people would want to have sex in one, and then Ichigo had to explain those things to me as well. She clearly found the whole thing highly amusing.

It was all quite mystifying. I asked Ichigo if sexual morals really were as loose here as I'd always heard, and despite the appearance of love hotels, Ichigo insisted they weren't. While courting had evolved into dating, a sort of game where people dated around with different other people to find one they liked and then left the others perhaps with emotion but not with remorse to marry their final singular choice, sex was still for most people (like Ichigo) a highly intimate and private and specialized thing, and one should never hug or kiss someone they didn't know really well in Japanese public. Even holding hands in public was thought to be a bit much, at least in Japan. Dating and sexuality were considered private affairs.

"So how do people greet each other?" I asked. "I heard it's by curtsying."

"Yeah, maybe over a hundred years ago," said Ichigo flatly. "You have to understand, here in the living world, a whole generation can die in a hundred years and another generation can be on their way out. Now, it's typical to shake hands or bow with someone, or to just say hello."

So sometimes, it was actually simpler than I had thought it would be.

Ichigo also introduced me to technology and public transportation. There were countless odd living world machines, devices, and vehicles I had to learn how to work, and public transportation - huge machines stuffed full of people of all ranks that transported the crowd from one place to another for free - were covered with stains, filled with unstable and homeless people, and frankly a little disgusting. Ichigo called me a snob.

On a slightly more normal note, I also joined all the clubs Ichigo had joined, because of course I had to be around Ichigo all the time to alert her about Shinigami duties. These at-school clubs included: kendo club and karate club (both of which Tatsuki had joined, in which I also met another girl named Mizuho, and which had lots of sparring involved), and student government. Ichigo was passionately interested in politics, and she got such good grades and read so much that she was able to explain to me much of living world thought, from political systems to philosophies to poetry. Feminism was a big one in Ichigo's life, the belief that women were equal to men and should play a more prominent role in the important aspects of society. Racism puzzled me; it involved people discriminating against each other over physical appearance and skin color. The concept of democracy both interested and troubled me; it took political power away from nobility and royalty and even the military, and instead put it back in the hands of ordinary people.

Japan was a democracy. The common people had even outlawed weapons such as swords, in a (misguided, in my opinion) effort to make their world safer.

Ichigo really did seem to love books. She introduced me to her personal favorite living world books, music, and movies (a kind of pre-recorded theater). Then there were video games, games played on electronic devices. I took an especial interest in things I had never experienced before, in particular the horror genre and comics, especially in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. So Ichigo let me borrow her horror video games, Stephen King novels, comic books and manga volumes, and urban exploration videos (urban exploration being a filmed exploration of creepy abandoned hospitals and asylums, especially late at night). Almost all horror, to my fascination, featured death in the scariest manner possible - almost as if all humans had embarked on a mission to mutually terrify each other over the all-consuming idea of death. The idea of "ghosts" really was a common one, and most abandoned places were said to be haunted, even when they really weren't. Living people were fascinated by the concept of death.

I asked Ichigo about this, and Ichigo explained, "I like seeing death played out in fiction. When it goes too far for me are with psychics and scary reality TV show hosts - people who try to make money frightening people over something that's not really there. That's where I draw the line and where it stops being enjoyable for me."

Ichigo also took me rock-climbing once - there were whole buildings and organizations who built fake walls specifically dedicated to the practice, and all sorts of special equipment had been made specifically for rock climbing.

And she introduced me to ASMR, which involved soft speaking, tapping, and other triggers needed to soothe a person to sleep. Ichigo made ASMR videos and put them on the Internet, an invisible web of communication using devices that linked people all over the living world.

Even medicine had advanced. I saw things even in Mr Kurosaki's small hospital that I had certainly never seen in the Fourth Division. Watching Ichigo in a nurse's uniform casually use medical advances was fascinating.

One of the biggest and most amazingly welcoming things Ichigo did for me, though, was immediately let me into her circle of friends.

Ichigo's friends group at school really occupied three places during lunch. Sometimes they sat underneath a tree by the baseball (a sport) diamond, sometimes they sat inside Ichigo's classroom, and sometimes they sat on the flat school roof. Either way, I was introduced to everyone in the big rowdy group, and we all sat in a giant circle, eating, talking, and joking. I was shy at first, which was true of me but also projected the kind of image I was trying to project, but Ichigo's enthusiastic friends wouldn't let me get away with that and tried to include me by asking me questions about myself. Yet they always evaded questions about my family quite neatly, only asking me questions in what they considered "safe" territory. The girls (mainly the gossip Mahana) tried to set me up on dates with several boys, despite my protests, and the boys flirted with me relentlessly - embarrassingly, Ichigo had to tell me that was what they were doing.

Mizuiro was the best flirt. By far. Chad was too quiet, and Keigo too loud and perverted, but Mizuiro could make you think you were the loveliest person in the room. Ichigo said this was a ploy of Mizuiro's, one that usually worked like a charm with older women. Chizuru flirted with me too.

"Mizuiro and Chizuru are both one of those modern daters who ain't looking to settle down and get married," said Ichigo bluntly. "They just like the feeling of being in a relationship, especially a sexual one. Don't be with them if you're looking long-term."

"Of - of course not - I never would -" I sputtered, red-faced.

Ichigo smirked. "Relax, Rukia," she said. "You don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with."

We also hung out with Ichigo's friends outside of school.

Tatsuki and Orihime seemed to be Ichigo's closest friends. Ichigo's Dad called them "The Terrible Threesome." Tatsuki and Ichigo had met in karate class as kids - each had been the other's first friend, being the only two girls in the class - and then later they'd befriended Orihime, who was being bullied, and had taught her self-defense. Tatsuki, Orihime, and Ichigo took me out shopping with them, counseling me in the art of fashion - made more complex by the fact that they all had a different fashion sense - and sometimes we all met up in one girl's kitchen and cooked and baked sweets together.

And sometimes Ichigo just hung out with one girl or the other. She sparred a lot and traded manga comics with Tatsuki, for example, and sometimes they went to the arcade (a big shop full of electronic games to play) together, whereas she preferred snacking and watching stand-up comedy in front of the TV with Orihime, who had a great sense of humor and was a consummate daydreamer. (Seemingly an airhead, she opened her mouth and stared off into space a lot - but she had these surprising moments of great insight.)

Of course, Orihime and Tatsuki weren't Ichigo's only friends. Chad was in a rock band, and when we went to one of his band's local concerts I was introduced to my first rock concert, which was tremendously noisy and full of standing, dancing, jumping people and flashing lights. The band members just sort of went nuts with their instruments on stage, and then Ichigo was invited up to play guitar and sing with them, and with her tough black outfit and stiletto heels she fit right in, banging right along with them. She sang two numbers, Paramore's "Ignorance" and Gin Wigmore's "Man Like That", both furious dance numbers, and as she strutted around arrogantly on the stage she seemed somehow overtly sexual in a way even Ichigo usually wasn't.

By the end of the concert, even I had gotten the hang of it and was dancing around, having the time of my life. Living world concerts were fun! I felt brave enough to put my hands to my mouth and whoop, clapping, at the end, and a glowing, sweating Ichigo and her friends grinned and slapped me on the back.

Ryou, on the other hand, was a track star. That meant she was in a whole club solely dedicated to people running really fast. We visited the school's baseball stands to watch one of Ryou's "track meets", which consisted of Ryou and others racing each other around the field, leaping over various obstacles put in place specifically to hamper them. Ryou was actually almost as scary as Tatsuki and Ichigo, in her own way - she was an honor student.

Tatsuki's competitive karate spars were usually held indoors, but were similar in nature and even more vicious.

Michiru, rather shy at first, was the one I had gotten to know least, so one day I sat down next to Michiru and we bonded over a shared love of bunnies, stuffed animals, and arts and crafts. Finally, I thought, someone who gets it!

And I didn't even realize how warmly and enthusiastically I was talking with a human.

Slowly, over time, without me fully realizing it, Ichigo got a lot of information out of me. I told her about being abandoned as an infant in the Rukongai - the districts outside Seireitei city - and being a street urchin, about my friends dying of poverty and violence rampant in the later district of Rukongai, about my early childhood friend Renji. I talked about the two of us entering the Shino Academy together, and then the way were separated twice: first when Renji was put in a higher-level class than me, and second when I was adopted by Kuchiki Byakuya, head of the mysterious noble Kuchiki clan. I told her about Kuchiki Byakuya's stiff coldness, about no one willing to be friends with me in my division except Kaien-dono, about my etiquette lessons, about Kaien-dono's death, about my confused feelings both toward Kaien and toward Renji, who was still considered a commoner.

She, in turn, told me that she had been gentle once, soft and bookish and daydreamy, "a wimp." She told me her mother's death had changed all that, had left her without tears and with a zealous determination to be the best, to protect what was important to her.

Both of us had things in our lives that had made us cold.