"I watch the proverbial sunrise

Coming up over the Pacific, and

You might think I'm losing my mind,

But I will shy away from the specifics.

'Cause I don't want you to know

Where I am.

'Cause then you'll see my heart

In the saddest state it's ever been.

(And this is no place

To try and change my life.)

Stop right there.

That's exactly where I lost it.

See that line and where I never should have crossed it?

Stop right there,

Where I never should have said that,

It's the very moment that I wish that I could take back.

I'm sorry for the person I became.

I'm sorry that it took so long for me to change.

I'm ready to make sure I never become that way again,

'Cause who I am hates who I've been,

Who I am hates who I've been.

I talked to absolutely no one,

Couldn't keep to myself enough,

And the things bottled inside had finally begun

To create so much pressure that I'd soon blow up, and

I heard the reverberating footsteps

Sinking up to the beating of my heart.

And I was positive that unless

I got myself together I would watch me fall apart, and

I can't let that happen again.

'Cause then you'll see my heart

In the saddest state it's ever been.

(And this is no place

To try and change my life.)"

- "Who I Am Hates Who I've Been" by Relient K


Chapter Three: 'Cause Who I Am Hates Who I've Been

The next morning, somewhat reluctantly, I was walking alone to Karuizawa Park through the chilly morning streets.

I had been held up briefly by my sisters on my way out the door - they'd asked me curiously where I was going, and I'd made up some crap about visiting one of my friends, feeling guilty the entire time because I'd promised myself I'd stop lying to them about where I was going ages ago - so I was moving rather fast, my hands shoved into my pockets, as I crossed streets, roadways, and sidewalks. The last thing I wanted was for Rukia to go all 'strict, proper Shinigami' on me again if I showed up late.

Sighing and trying to roll some tensity out of my hunched shoulders, I reached into my pocket for a little container of tic tacs I kept there. For some reason, they helped with drug cravings - and even after all this time, those still cropped up sometimes when I was particularly stressed. Like now.

Really, it didn't make sense in a way. What I had to worry about now was nothing compared to what I'd had to worry about a few days ago. But when there was action there, when I had to be on edge and ready, instead of just tense or stressed and helpless to do anything about it... I'd always fared better. I'd always felt better when I could actually do something about my problems. But there was nothing I could really do about any of these. I couldn't do anything about the fact that it would be safest for everyone else I knew if I kept this a secret from them. But I wasn't at all certain this was the correct route to take - going into another lifestyle I felt I had to hide from everyone, even if it was for more... heroic reasons. I was still equally uncertain if I should even be the one filling in for a post like Shinigami, despite all of Rukia's claims to the contrary. And I'd spent all of last night, despite myself, lying awake and thinking of all my old ghost friends, especially Enzeru. But I had done what was best for them. Right?

So, with thoughts and worries swirling around in my mind, I fought off the urge to blow them all away and hurried to the park, almost eager now to start "training" and forget my problems.

But when I got to the park, Rukia wasn't there yet.

Expecting her to appear at any second, I sat down on a bench under a tree to wait for her. Five minutes passed, and then five minutes turned into ten. By this point, I was growing a little annoyed. I understood that shit happened, but... she acted all serious yesterday and then she just didn't bother to show up on time today? I doubted anything had happened to her. Even powerless Shinigami had to bring defense mechanisms down here with them, didn't they?

By the time fifteen minutes had passed, I regretted taking this seriously enough to bother showing up on time. So much for the proper Shinigami. She's the one who's late. I just couldn't figure this girl out...

Finally, she arrived. "There you are," I muttered, standing up as her figure appeared at the edge of the park, walking toward me. "What took you so long? I've been waiting for fifteen minutes already."

"Has it been that long?" she asked, raising her eyebrows in mild, unabashed surprise. "Sorry. I was held up." She waved her hand breezily as she walked by me, and I scowled in annoyance, turning to look at her.

That was when I registered what she was wearing. She had discarded her Shinigami robes for a loose, light, simple white sundress that fluttered around her calves and allowed for maximum freedom of movement. Her shiny black hair brushed against her delicate, exposed shoulders. It was weird to see her in our world's clothes... but at the same time, she didn't look bad. The dress suited her.

"What do you think?" she asked proudly, lifting her head regally. "I have been studying your world's fashions very carefully."

My lips twitching almost imperceptibly at her satisfaction over choosing a sufficiently modern sundress, I admitted, "Good job. You look just like us."

Rukia looked happily satisfied for a moment. But then her business-like face slammed into place over her features. "Right, of course I do. Now let's get down to work," she said briskly, turning away from me. Her demeanor was completely different from before.

Finally, I thought, standing up straighter.

"Now, no offense, but your Hollow destructions up until now have been terrible," she told me bluntly, folding her arms.

I scowled at this. "Hey! They got the job done, didn't they?" I pointed out. I didn't see how someone could not take offense to someone telling them they were "terrible" at something - and I didn't get people who covered up an offensive statement by saying 'no offense.'

"It's true," she said simply. "There is an art to destroying the Hollow. It is meant to minimize the time spent on each individual one and help the Shinigami go through their job as quickly as possible, with maximum efficiency. But before I explain that to you, I want to teach you more about the Hollows themselves - about the creatures you'll be fighting."

"There's a lot of emphasis here on the fighting aspects of being a Shinigami," I noted neutrally, slightly curious.

"It's the hardest aspect of the job," Rukia returned, shrugging. "What else do you train for - but a fight?"

And when she put it like that, I realized it actually made a lot of sense.

Unfortunately, I learned that this meant a day and a half's worth of a hell of a lot of crappy drawings. Rukia loved "illustrating" to give me a picture of the different Hollow classifications and types as she explained them and their basic strengths and weaknesses. But even this wasn't so bad, because I learned a lot of information: Hollows could be classified by how they were shaped and formed, what parts of their bodies they used as weapons, what their weapons were actually made of, or even their basic patterns of behavior, although this was the most inconsistent classification of the lot because some of their behavior seemed unpredictable and incomprehensible. Still, Rukia was able to show me an idea of all the different basic styles of Hollows out there, and there was an almost formidable amount of variation to these things. Rukia seemed dubious at first about teaching the entire thing and expecting me to understand it in one weekend, but I had a good memory, and a good intellect when I put my mind to it. I couldn't tell how much of this she could see, or how much my seeming understanding of her information effected her. At the very least, she stopped calling me 'moron' after the first few times she explained something to me and then asked me to explain it all back to her. I figured that had to be a good sign.

The lessons were also surprisingly tolerable for another reason. I learned that, once you learned to dodge out of the way immediately afterward, teasing Rukia to make her lose her cool was actually pretty funny - and fairly easy once you figured out the few subjects that really did the the job. Then she'd spring up and charge after me, her face all red, aiming in my direction and screaming profanities. It was more entertaining than it probably should have been. It was also useful for when she got too boring. Then all of a sudden she'd stop, as if realizing what she was doing, and decide that this was childish, marching back over to her paper in a dignified sort of way as I stared after her in dry amusement. Blinking at me, flushed in embarrassment, she'd snap to stop gaping stupidly and come back over to sit down. I would do so, still trying not to be amused.

The lessons weren't all good, of course. There were a lot of basic terms that seemed to be common in Soul Society that I didn't know, or a lot of references I didn't understand. But, forgetting this, she'd skip right over them in the middle of an explanation, and I'd have to stop her, annoyed and self-conscious, to go, "Wait, wait, wait... what?"

Sighing in frustration, she would then explain to me that it meant swinging a zanpakutoh in a certain direction, or doing a certain group maneuver, or coming at the Hollow from a certain plane, or standing at a certain air level, or even fighting in a certain part of Soul Society, or with certain Soul Society spells or explosives that I didn't have the time to figure out how to access. Then she'd seem exasperated when I asked more curious questions about things like this, which in turn exasperated me - because really, it wasn't exactly my fault I didn't know this crap, was it?

So all in all, in the first couple of days, we were usually either intently involved in training or trying to rip each other's hair out. Seriously.

There was something else that threw me off about a lot of Rukia's explanations, though, and this I tried not to let show. She would talk about having reiatsu, thoughtlessly, like it was a burden. "Shinigami usually do extended Konsoh missions in pairs, because of the psychological difficulties of having to deal with the freshly dead," she had reeled off to me unthinkingly once, and I had given her a hidden sideways sort of look, surprised inwardly at someone just... understanding something like that without me having to explain it to them. I'd never experienced that before; it threw me off-balance, but... almost in a good way. It was odd.

Saturday evening did break up all the explanations of Saturday and Sunday morning, though. I learned why Rukia had been late that morning when she led me down to a secluded part of the park that she had covered with paper figures depicting all the various types of Hollows. Each was about as big as my waist. (Surprised, I'd told her she was a lot better at this than she was at drawing, and she'd hit me in the side.) Rukia basically gave me a giant stick and told her to show me from her explanations how I should attack each of them. I was dubious - they weren't exactly moving, were they? - and even more dubious when Rukia ducked down behind them and moved their arms and legs around, making monster sounds enthusiastically. Smirking, a few times I tried to hit her instead of the paper figure, or just simply squashed the tops of their heads in because they were so much smaller than me, and Rukia would get annoyed with me.

"Fine!" she finally burst out, throwing up her hands. "The default fighting stance for all Hollows is to cut through their heads to destroy them anyway. I guess we can just focus on that from now on."

"Oh, really?" I asked, genuinely surprised that I'd been doing what I was supposed to do as I cleaned the remnants of the latest "Hollow" off of my stick.

We stopped for dinner after that, and Rukia was just grumbling quietly that she'd have to walk all the way back up to the grocery store to get something to eat when I looked over at her in surprise from where I'd been about to walk off the edge of the park. "... You do know there's a hot dog stand right down the street... right?" I asked her in confusion. Was she a vegetarian or something?

It was Rukia's turn to stare at me blankly.

I sighed and took her by the arm, dragging her over to the edge of the park and pointing. "What is that?" I asked her slowly, as one would a small child.

She pulled her arm out of my grasp and gave me one of her death glares. I resisted the sudden, childish urge to smirk. "A vendor! Duh!" she snapped back at me. She seemed to have picked that particular 'colloquialism' up from me pretty quickly.

It kind of figured that the first slang Rukia really understood would be 'duh.'

"A food vendor," I told her slowly, nodding with wide eyes.

Rukia blinked. Then her gaze became incredulous. "You have vendors every few feet along the street that sell food?" she asked in such awe, I figured that wasn't a typical Soul Society thing. Vaguely, I wondered why not. It made pretty good money here.

"Come on," I said, running a hand through my hair wearily and turning toward the vendor. "I'll show you."

The meeting with the hot dog vendor was... interesting. Rukia stared over the cart with huge, gleeful eyes while I ordered for us, and the vendor kept looking at her uncertainly. Then, when he gave us our food, Rukia abruptly piped up to thank him for the food - in formal old Kyoto-accented dialect. The vendor stared at her incredulously. Then she curtseyed to him.

I didn't know what book Rukia had been studying the living world out of, but I was pretty sure it was a little out of date.

The hot dog vendor stared after us as I dragged her away, Rukia asking me the entire time what was wrong - she'd been getting in some good practice!


We ate back in the park, the two of us sitting together on that same bench under the tree from this morning. I was in the middle of explaining hurriedly to Rukia about the difference between old and new greetings, formal and informal greetings, and average and Kyoto accents and dialects. Old language, Kyoto language, and formal language, I told her, was much more... flowery... than ordinary speech was. I gave her an example of what she should have said, and then I gave her a few examples of where language like she had used had been put into things like poems - just to put it in perspective.

"You know a lot of poems," Rukia commented after a while, her tone thoughtful and her eyes assessing.

My eyes widened, and I looked away gruffly. I had forgotten myself for a minute there. That was a little embarrassing. "Umm... I just read a lot," I muttered, and then I looked away over the park, the two of us falling into silence.

"Why do you do that?" Rukia suddenly asked, still sounding curious and assessing, and I glanced over at her.

"Eh?"

She rolled her eyes a little. "Why do you... you know... break off and go all gruff every time you start to be at your most natural?" she asked, and my insides froze up for a moment. Maybe Rukia was a little sharper than I had given her credit for.

I looked away again, uncomfortable, trying to shrug it off. I wasn't sure how to tell her I hadn't known how to really, truly be comfortable and natural since I was about nine - at least, not unless I was alone, or with a select few people, and then guilty thoughts always cropped up now and again. "I dunno what you mean. I don't try to," I muttered.

"You are lying," Rukia said simply, and her calm tone showed quiet, firm expectation of an explanation.

But I wasn't going to give her this. "Look, just leave it alone, alright?" I snapped, looking over at her, becoming a little harsh in my defensiveness. "Whatever you may believe, you don't know everything about me after we've fought a few battles together."

Rukia's eyes widened. She wasn't hurt - she was tougher than that - but she was very surprised, and I could tell I'd touched off some sort of thought or realization inside of her. There was a silence as I trailed off, refusing to let her gleam any others. It was better if she didn't understand some things, I thought. With how morally zealous Rukia was, I couldn't see her discovering what I had almost become having any positive outcome.

And all of a sudden, somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered once more what I was doing here.

The silence lasted for a while this time, stretching between us, before Rukia finally sighed, seeming to come to a reluctant decision. Then she spoke up, strangely tentatively, "Ichigo... can I... ask you about my living world studies?" she asked in a muttered undertone.

I blinked over at her, taken aback. "Uhh... sure," I finally said uncertainly. "What do you want to know?"

So she started asking questions about things she'd read about. Surprising, perfectly normal things, like food variety, fantasy books, religion, movies, pop music, and the horror genre. Mildly curious, I answered her queries, one after the other, explaining a lot of aspects of modern life. I was particularly fervent when we got to horror: she wanted example recommendations, and I warned her away from the crappy, cheesy horror that you didn't want to read. One of my favorite genres was horror, so I was kind of picky and only read and watched the really good stuff.

She listened to all of my information with big eyes, seeming fascinated for reasons I couldn't fathom.


The next morning at that same park, Rukia again spent hours reviewing everything we had gone over yesterday, summarizing it all, before she handed me a pitching machine and a baseball bat. "I told you to slice down through the head, aiming for that first, when destroying any given Hollow, right?" she told me bluntly. "Well, I drew on these balls. In order to emphasize my point, I want you to go to the nearby field and hit only the ones that come out of the machine with heads drawn on them." Her eyebrows drew down together in a frown. "Don't come back until you're done."

Already unenthused at what promised to be a monotonous exercise, it was only when I got to the field and started that I realized the most ironic part: they all had heads drawn on them. And just to make it interesting, pepper came spraying out of some of them, and then I had to duck out of the way. Ha ha, very funny, Rukia, I thought in annoyance, wondering whether this was her idea of a joke.

By the time I had picked up all the balls and was pulling everything back toward the bench she sat at in the park, my arms were tired and I wasn't in a great mood. That had been about the most pointless exercise ever.

My incredulity increased when I got closer and saw what she was reading: one of those crappy sexual horror books I had told her not to bother with. A look of wide-eyed, morbid curiosity was on her face. I rolled my eyes. That stuff could ruin minds.

So, purposefully, I snuck up behind her. She was so focused on her horror book, she didn't even notice me. Then I got right next to her head, took a deep breath, and said loudly, "What are you doing?"

She jumped about a foot in the air and whipped around, aiming a fist at me on reflex. I ducked and jumped back, smirking a little.

"Ichigo!" she said in surprise, breathing heavily, clutching a hand to to her heart. "D-don't surprise me like that!" She was flushed slightly in embarrassment. "I was in the middle of..." She paused blankly for a moment, her brain stalling, as she realized she couldn't tell me she'd basically been reading horror porn because she'd wanted to know what it was. Then she rallied. "I... was studying that modern language you told me about, for your information," she rallied, lifting herself up with dignified indignation. "Before you interrupted me, that is."

I snorted as I noticed her book had mysteriously disappeared. "Sure you were," I said slowly, letting the disbelief color my tone. She glared at me and I exaggerated the look back at her mockingly in return. "You were reading one of those crappy horror manga I told you about," I said in mild annoyance, "while I was off working my ass off training."

She opened her mouth defensively on reflex, then blinked in surprise as she noticed the pitching machine I was dragging behind me. "Oh. Are you done?" she asked.

I sighed. "Yup," I said grimly, hauling everything back in front of her and wiping a light sheen of sweat from my forehead. "All hundred of them. By the way, what kind of training does hitting a hundred pepper balls with heads on them prepare you for?" The question was only partly sarcastic - I was actually curious.

But Rukia's face was twisting with anger and frustration as she stared at the equipment before her. "You... you are dumb!" she finally forced out, stomping her foot angrily, her face reddening. "You are a dumb human boy!"

I stared at her. "What? Why?" I snapped defensively. I figured the fact that the implication of 'idiot' was back couldn't be a good sign.

"The ones filled with pepper were the bad ones, the ones with fists on them! You were only supposed to hit the ones with heads on them!" she said in exasperation.

"... There were differences between the balls?" I deadpanned.

She nodded, as though this should have been obvious, what with her amazing drawing skills and all. There was a long, awkward silence. I tried to find a way to put this nicely...

She finally slumped over, glaring at me. "You didn't just hit all of them?"

"Yeah," I admitted, watching her cautiously. "I kind of did."

She glared at me... there was a moment of calm... and then she exploded again. "You are an idiot!" she screamed, charging at me, and I put a hand to her head, holding her back and trying to duck out of the way of her swings. "I told you only to hit the ones with heads!"

"Therefore putting faith in your artistic abilities!" I shouted. "There was no difference between your fists and your heads! And for your information, heads are supposed to, you know, have eyes on them!"

"There were eyes on them!"

"There were slanted sideways lines, eyes go the other way! And they have pupils!"

She finally huffed and pulled away from me, spinning around and grabbing a ball. "Look, moron," she said, slightly calmer, but not by much, "the whole point of the exercise was just that you have to get this through your head. "You have to destroy a Hollow by slicing through their skulls. That is their weakness. If you can slice through the head, you can defeat a Hollow in one blow. And sneaking up on a Hollow and defeating it with one attack whenever possible is the essence of Hollow hunting at its most basic level. It's a miracle you've remained unscathed so far, with the way you've been fighting!" She put her hands on her hips, almost scolding.

I scowled. "I'm not fighting dirty like that," I protested. "I don't sneak up on my fights, I face them head on." Even I had some rules.

"And I say again: you are dumb." She crossed her arms flatly, her expression deadpan. "Save that stuff for fighting humans. Hollows are evil spirit monsters; you can't apply the same rules to fighting them or you'll end up dead."

I frowned slightly, still not liking the idea... "But," I said slowly, "that's... I mean, I can't..." It would feel like letting go of one of the few honorable parts of myself I'd always kept.

But our conversation was broken abruptly by the sound of someone calling me from across the park. "Kurosaki-kun!" a bright, cheerful female voice said. I jumped slightly and looked around, suddenly feeling nervous at seeing Inoue Orihime running toward us with her arms full of the groceries she'd just been getting. She looked slightly surprised to see me with "the new girl", but she kept her polite smile firmly in place.

"Hello, Kurosaki-kun!" she chirped with breathless cheerfulness, jumping in front of me. She was wearing a long flower-printed skirt over her full curves and the sparkly hair clips she always used to keep her long red-brown hair back from her face.

"Inoue," I said, attempting and probably failing to seem completely at ease with the situation I suddenly found myself in. I was keenly aware of the curious Kuchiki Rukia watching our interaction from behind me. "Hey. Uh, what are you doing here?"

"Just doing some shopping," she said, smiling and waving her bags around with energy. "I bought onions, butter, bananas, and jello!"

I knew better than to ask. According to Tatsuki, Inoue enjoyed making some pretty strange meals.

"Oh... that's cool."

"Yeah, I'm excited!" she said, beaming and flushing a little. "So what are you doing here?"

"Oh, well, umm..." I wasn't sure what to tell her. For some reason that I didn't entirely understand, saying I was 'training with the new girl' had a slightly weird sort of ring to it, especially when I was talking with Inoue.

Then Inoue leaned a little around me, and her smile lessened slightly. Her gaze went from innocently excited and emotional to quiet and fading, unenthusiastic. "Ah, with Kuchiki-san, I see!" she exclaimed with quiet politeness and surprise, her eyes widening just on cue. "Hello, I didn't see you there at first! I hope Kurosaki-kun is making you feel welcome here!" Her smile was perfectly pasted across her features, and I wasn't sure why, but in that moment I felt even more embarrassed.

Rukia didn't seem to notice the tension in the air. "Who are you?" she asked bluntly, raising an eyebrow, and even Inoue's smile got a little smaller than normal.

"Um," she said with awkward, somewhat forced politeness, "w-well..."

This was a disaster.

I tried to salvage what I could of Rukia's first close encounter with one of my friends. "She's in your new class," I leaned in and muttered out of the corner of my mouth, with heavy sarcasm.

To Rukia's credit, her face immediately brightened. "Oh, of course, I'm so terrible sorry! It's so good to really meet you!" she said politely, and then ruined what might otherwise have been an acceptable response by curtseying. Again.

Resisting the urge to put my face in my palms, I sighed and just gave up on the conversation going normally.

Inoue, because she was Inoue, of course went along with it. "I'm... erm... pleased to meet you too?" she responded questioningly, smiling with determined brightness and curtseying uncertainly, seeming very confused.

The two straightened up and smiled hugely at each other, neither of them having any idea that the other didn't really know what was going on either.

Clearing my throat and trying to steer the conversation away from Rukia, I spoke up as I noticed a bandage wrapped around Inoue's upper arm, only partially covered by her short sleeved shirt. "Hey, did you fall down?" I asked, pointing at it.

"Hm?" She turned to me in something like relief, her usual happy-go-lucky smile becoming less awkward again. "Oh, this? No, I was hit by a car," she explained with slightly sheepish casualness, shrugging in a 'what are you going to do?' sort of way.

I gaped at her - because that was unusually absent-minded and accident-prone even for Inoue, who was somewhat famous at school for such things. "Holy crap," I finally said incredulously, "are you okay?" My eyes roved her up and down, searching for other injuries. Should she even have gone out walking by herself today? And after her brother had been hit by a car and everything... But that was Inoue: always cheerful, never really fazed by much.

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine," she said, waving, as usual. "Last night, I just walked out of my apartment building to get a drink from the corner store across the street. And as I was crossing the road, bam! You know?" She laughed a little, flushed, oblivious to my shock and worry. "Just another injury to add to the list!"

I thought of Mom with a twinge, swallowing uncomfortably.

"You shouldn't be laughing!" I said, fierce in my protective worry. "That's very serious, you should be... I don't know..." I waved my arms expansively. "... angrier!"

She was blinking at me, innocent and surprised. "But it's not like they did it on purpose..." she said easily. "That would make me feel bad!"

I slumped over, torn between exasperation and admiration.

"Do you get injured often, Inoue-san?" Rukia spoke up reservedly, mildly curious and somewhat confused.

"Almost every day," I said pointedly, looking over at her sternly. Tatsuki got on her case about it a lot, too.

"I zone out a lot!" she protested, blushing and laughing slightly. "I can't help it!"

"Well, you need to be more careful!" I nagged worriedly, but Inoue just laughed me off.

"Stop worrying so much, Kurosaki-kun," she said shyly, almost reflexively. She looked down. "I'm okay."

I opened my mouth to respond, but just then Rukia interrupted me. "Can I look at that bruise on your leg?" she asked Inoue, and I looked over at her automatically, because her tone was suddenly intense. She was staring searchingly at the bruise.

"Oh, this?" Inoue blinked. "Uh, sure. I guess."

Rukia kneeled down before her leg, looking at a large purple bruise there, frowning faintly. I whistled. "That looks bad," I said. It had strange tendrils creeping out of its center and everything. It was almost creepy.

"Yeah," Inoue said, looking down at Rukia's bent dark head, "it wasn't there before last night, so I think I must have gotten that when I was hit, too. I mean, I was just bumped, but it was still a car, you know? Umm, Kuchiki-san?" she finally asked hesitantly down in Kuchiki's direction. "You look really serious all of a sudden, is everything all right?"

For Rukia's frown had become more pronounced, and her deep eyes were fluctuating again, this time in hard thought. She looked up, smiled fakely, and said absently, "Oh, it just looks really painful."

"Wow, how did you know?" Inoue asked, slightly surprised. "It hurts a lot worse than my arm!"

My eyes widened. "What?" I shot out, concerned. "Well, are you alright? Is it numb or tingling? Is it aching? Do you need to use painkillers? Is it hard to walk on it?" I took a step closer, reaching out to steady her reflexively. "You should go to a doctor! I could take you to my Dad," I offered, frowning in worry. Maybe I was freaking out a little bit... but, well, I had more than one bad association with cars and accidents.

Inoue had turned bright red, stammering at me, seeming caught by my hand on her arm. "W-well, well, I, um..."

"Are you alright?" I asked her in confusion, my frown becoming more pronounced.

"I, I, um, I, um... I have to go!" she squeaked out, and pulled away, her face burning, she turned and ran back across the park with her groceries ably enough. I relaxed slightly at this.

"You have to go?" I called after her in surprise, still a little worried.

"Yeah, sorry, my favorite stand-up comedy show is almost on!" And then she fled off the park's premises.

"Do you want me to walk you home?" I called after her.

She stumbled a little, and I had half a mind in that moment to walk her home whether she liked it or not. But then she bellowed back, "NO! I-I mean, I'm fine!" she squeaked, and she was gone so fast it was like someone had lit her on fire.

I stared after her, concerned, confused, and exasperated. "She is so tiring sometimes," I sighed. "It's like her default setting is on 'bring out protective instincts'." Tatsuki and I had often had conversations to this end.

But, of course, Rukia wasn't even paying attention. She was standing nearby, staring off into space thoughtfully. "Hey..." she said after a few moments. "That Inoue girl..."

I blinked over at her. "Yeah?" I asked curiously.

Rukia seemed to be choosing her wording unusually carefully. "Are you two close?" she finally asked, but it sounded like she wanted to ask something else depending on my answer.

I tilted my head. "No..." I said slowly. "But... well, I guess that depends on what you mean by 'close'," I admitted. "She's best friends with someone I grew up near. They've been friends since middle school. So that's how we know each other, but..."

I wasn't sure how to explain our connection through her brother's death, or why she probably didn't remember it like I did, or why she was the only one of Tatsuki's friends who seemed to like me more than fear me. Or even if I wanted to explain any of it in the first place.

"Any family?" Rukia asked with careful casualness, still not looking at me.

"I know she had a brother," I said, wondering why this was important.

Rukia perked up, seeming to find a word she'd been looking for. "Had?"

"Yeah." I looked away quietly, the same usual strange emotions welling up within me as I replied, "He died, a few years ago." I resisted the urge to reach into my pocket for the tic-tacs.

After a few moments, I realized Rukia was staring at me, looking unusually hit by this. I felt the sudden, inexplicable need to explain. Sighing, I said in brief, still looking away, "... I was the one who opened the door that morning. I was about to leave for school. The clinic wasn't open yet, but I heard the front bell ring. No one else was getting it, so finally I went to get it." I'd been annoyed. That made me feel kind of guilty, thinking back. "A little girl was dragging her older brother up the steps. They were both covered in blood." She'd been screaming and crying. "He was hit by a car. She didn't know what to do. No one was around to help her. We didn't have enough equipment to save him." I felt strangely distant, echoing, caught up in memories as I summarized quietly, "He died before the ambulance could arrive."

There was so much more to the story than that, but Rukia didn't need to know those parts.

"... And I only recently realized the girl from that day was her," I finished. "That's all I know about her family." At Rukia's silence, I finally looked up. "Why all the questions?" I added curiously, almost suspicious, still feeling protective of my friends. "You seem interested in her."

Rukia finally looked up, and her face was completely deadpan as she replied, "No, I'm not, really." Then she turned and started walking away.

"H-hey!" I finally called after her, annoyed. What was it with girls walking away from me for no explicable reason today? More to the point, what was it with Rukia and leaving inexplicably? "What the hell were the questions for, then?"

Rukia sighed. "Let's just go home," she called back to me over her shoulder.

I rolled my eyes, realizing she wasn't going to answer. "Fine," I muttered. "Be that wa - Hey, wait a minute, where do you live here, anyway?" I'd just realized I had no idea where she went at night.

"Why?" she asked suggestively, her black eyes looking me up and down, a smirk growing over her delicate white features. "Are you interested in my personal life, Kurosaki-kun?"

I fell back, blushing fiercely despite myself. Fuck. I always hated coming off like that - all virgin-like. It was so.. not typical me. "N-not really," I muttered quickly in denial, looking away.

"Then don't ask," she said triumphantly, and left.

I glared after her. Damnit. Stupid Shinigami girl and her damn tricks...


That night, I had dinner with Karin and Yuzu, dodged Dad's usual surprise attacks, and then took a long, hot, soothing shower. I told myself that Rukia hadn't contacted me yet - I should relax. Just take a breather.

As I went back up the stairs toward my bedroom, slightly damp with a towel over my shoulders to catch drips from my crazy-ass hair, I heard Yuzu calling to me, thinking I was in my bedroom. "NIII-CHAAAN! HAVE YOU SEEN MY DREEEESSES?"

I sighed, amused despite myself. I could tell she'd been standing out there, calling to me, for a while. My sisters never went in my room unless I had given them permission to, something I'd always appreciated, especially with the irritating way Dad would sometimes burst in.

"Yuzu?" I called back, appearing on the landing.

She whirled around to me. "Oh, there you are," she said, brushing her long bangs out of her eyes. She needed another haircut. Her pixie cut was turning into more of a normal bob. "Aww, you took a shower," she said as she took me in, pouting a little, looking her age or maybe even a little younger for a moment. "Buuut I wanted to take a bath with you, so you could wash my hair for me like you always do!"

"Yuzu," I said patiently, giving her a bit of an odd look at the sudden, unusual burst of little girlish clinginess, "you do know it would probably be a good idea for a twelve-year-old girl to at least know how to wash her own hair, don't you?"

She huffed. "You've gotten a lot stingier since you started high school!" she declared, doing her best stereotypical little-sister act. Yuzu did that sometimes - tried to act like a sister instead of like my sister. It was her way of being moody and self-conscious, and I'd always privately found it kind of strange. I was never completely sure how to handle it.

"I have not," I said, frowning and shaking my head as I went past her into my room. "And I haven't seen any of your dresses outside the laundry room."

"Really, that is so weird!" she exclaimed wonderingly after me, her eyes wide and purposefully cheerful. "Because one of my pajama sets is missing, too, you know!"

"Well, what do you think I'm doing, stealing your clothes?" I asked in exasperation as I shut my bedroom door behind me.


A few minutes later, I was sitting on my bed in a set of the loose clothes I used as pajamas - and I was clipping my toenails, of all things. And all of a sudden, to my confusion, I heard this annoying beeping sound start up nearby, sounding strangely muffled by something. I lifted my head and looked around, but I couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

It didn't sound like one of my sisters' things...

Then I nearly had a heart attack when my closet door suddenly whipped open and Rukia's head stuck out of it, clutching her beeping pager and wearing Yuzu's pajamas! "Ichigo!" she said, as if - as if she'd been there the entire time.

The. Entire. Time.

"Holy fuck!" I shouted, jumping back on my bed. "Where - what - where -" This girl was good at rendering me incoherent. Was it just a Soul Society thing to have no concept of personal space?

"An order's come through, effective immediately!" she barked, jumping out of my closet. "Get ready!"

"W-well -" It was a little last-minute. Not to mention I was still getting over the fact that she'd been sleeping in my closet! In Yuzu's pajamas! "Well, when and where?" I finally forced out.

"Here, and now!" she shouted, and dived at me with her red glove, pushing my Shinigami soul out of my body just in time for a Hollow's hand to swipe, transparent, through my wall and into my room, reaching out for my soul, grasping blindly.

Then, as I hissed, got to my feet, and went for my zanpakutoh, a body followed it through my bedroom wall. It was big, muscled, and red - like The Hulk, blood version. It had large sharp-fingered hands and a mop of dark human hair around its mournful mask face. It screamed fearfully in my direction, obviously focused on me, the strongest soul around.

"Remember to aim for the head!" Rukia barked warningly from behind as I pulled my huge sword out in front of me.

I nodded shortly. "Right!" I called back, leaping and swinging, aiming for The Hulk's wide maw and skull mask.

Unfortunately, it didn't seem to go in far enough - like I needed a harder swing to really do the trick. Instead, my zanpakutoh just grazed through its white front, leaving a crack down its facial center.

"Too shallow!" Rukia exclaimed, her voice tense and almost nervous, but I barely heard her. All of a sudden, a piece of the Hollow's mask had fallen away from the crack - and I saw what was beneath it.

... It was the face of Inoue's brother.

I stood there, stunned, as the Hollow threw back its head and roared in pain... but as it did so, beneath the mask, Inoue's brother's face contracted in pain too, and I could hear his scream beneath the roar. But before I could do more than register this, the Hollow was gone, back through my wall and its reiatsu disappearing into the distance. It was either very weak, very smart, or both - it didn't want to be on the receiving end of any more zanpakutoh attacks.

It? I flinched, staring after it. He... not it. He. But how?

Rukia had shot to her feet, as if to leap off in pursuit... and then a look of stoic frustration passed across her face and she turned to me. "Ichigo, come on! We have to go after it!" she said quickly.

"Rukia," I stopped her, and my voice was calm but something in it seemed to get her to pause and look over at me fully for the first time.

"... Ichigo?" she questioned in almost tentative confusion.

I turned to her with deadly seriousness. "What aren't you telling me?" I asked intensely, done with games. Her eyebrows rose. "I saw beneath his mask," I said, almost coldly. "That was no spiritless monster. It was Inoue's brother."

She blinked, and then her face went carefully blank. I knew it. There was more to her questions earlier.

Finally, Rukia looked away from my penetrating, demanding, growingly angry gaze. "... I told you earlier that sneaking up from behind a Hollow and cutting through its head, destroying it in one attack, is the basic concept of Hollow-hunting," she said quietly. "One reason why is to keep the Shinigami safe and end the fight as quickly as possible, this is true. But there is also another, more important reason that I didn't mention. When you attack them that way... you avoid the risk of seeing the Hollow's former human identity," she admitted.

My body went numb. The Thing, Igor, the Spider... they had all been people? That was what that light in the darkness had been - the remnants of a person? I stared at Rukia, for once voiceless. She glanced sideways at my face and winced slightly. "All Hollows are the degenerated souls of former pluses, or ghosts," she forced out all in one go.

Then she watched me cautiously, waiting for my reaction. Getting to know me pretty well, this one, wasn't she?

Letting my anger and sudden self-revulsion boil over, I lunged forward, getting right up in her face. "What do you mean, former ghosts?" I spat, clenching my fists. "I thought they were evil spirit monsters!"

"They are evil spirit monsters -"

"Who used to be humans. Funny, you never mentioned that part!"

"Because you can't think of them that way!" Rukia shouted, her eyes urgent and hard. "Once they have gotten to the Hollow stage, they have been left without a world too long, they are beyond help! We try to help as many as possible pass on, but even the Shinigami are just so many souls, we can never get to them all in time!" I flinched back, staring at her. "They are monsters now, Ichigo, who will eat souls to fill the hollowness inside, and you must destroy them! It is what has to be done!"

There was a silence as we paused, standing there, panting and watching each other suspiciously.

"Which doesn't change the fact," I finally forced out, horrified somewhere inside, more memories flashing past my mind, "that I've been killing -"

"Enough," Rukia snapped, turning away, looking frustrated. "Look, we don't have time for this discussion right now. That Inoue girl," she looked me dead in the eye. "She's going to die."


"Hollows enjoy attacking their former families, too?" I called to her disbelievingly a few minutes later as I was sprinting across dark, shadowy rooftops toward the section of town I knew Inoue lived. Rukia was taking a piggy-back ride because she was still in her gigai form, but at least she seemed to have enough reiatsu to be able to attach her body to my spirit. "Why? I thought they were just hungry, indiscriminate?" My life had apparently recently become something from one of those horror flicks where things just kept getting worse and worse.

"They are," Rukia said flatly in my ear. "After they've eaten the loving souls of the people they were close to in life."

Well, that's not terrible and creepy. "What the hell?" I muttered, speeding up a little as I thought of Inoue and how upset she'd been on the day of her brother's death.

"And one more thing," Rukia said quickly. "They are not 'hungry', as I told you. Their sole purpose in existence is simply to ease their own pain and suffering. They are fallen souls: souls that weren't brought to Soul Society, or that escaped, or that were not saved from other Hollows but not completely devoured in the attack. That degenerated soul loses its heart and becomes a Hollow. To fill its empty heart, it goes after the ones it loved in life." I was struck silent, swallowing as I considered this. "You've heard of a husband dying and then the wife following after, right? That is often because the husband became a Hollow, devoured his wife's soul, and then went on to destroy others'." I thought of Soki and her husband, or even of my Mom and Dad, and I realized how horrifying that was. These things really completely lost their minds?

Was it so easy for a person to just... lose their humanity?

"Today," Rukia admitted after a moment, quietly, "when I saw Inoue... that bruise I was so interested in looked like a Hollow's claw mark, like it had tried to grab her before the car had come, or it somehow pushed her into the car's path in the first place. That was why I asked you about her family; it was the first logical place my mind went. And you said she used to have one older brother, but he died. If it's true that the Hollow we just saw really is her brother... and if he really did stick close to his former home, until finally he recently lost heart in his death and became a Hollow... then not even your reiatsu should be able to attract him for more than passing.

"Not until he's killed his sister."

I did the only thing I could do: I ran faster.


Once I got close enough and touched into my reiatsu range sensingly, it was easy to feel where Inoue's brother had gone after retreating from my attack. He was inside one apartment in an apartment building on a quiet Karakura street. And beneath his power, I realized after a few moments -

"Inoue's in there too, along with another girl!" Rukia shouted over the wind. But I knew who it was. Tatsuki. She must have been visiting...

Chilled, angry, and worried, I leaped to the dark street before the apartment building, slipped Rukia's gigai in her pajamas off my back and onto the pavement, and then jumped off toward the apartment full of spiritual presence. "Ichigo!" Rukia called after me, but she couldn't do anything here, so I flew through the wall and into the apartment to come across a bizarre scene.

It was a single; Inoue obviously lived alone. She herself was there on the main room's floor, huddled defensively in front of Tatsuki's prone form. Tatsuki was lying on her back, panting heavily, bleeding profusely, unconscious - I had never seen her so weak before. The identity of her attacker was obvious. Looming before Inoue and Tatsuki, still roaring and angry, was her brother's Hollow, its mask full and firmly back in place once more.

"H-how do you know my name?" Inoue was asking the Hollow confusedly, in a soft, trembling, fearful voice. She stared up at him with big eyes.

Her brother's monstrous form shook. My attack seemed to have completely unhinged him at last. "You've forgotten even my voice?" he whispered, and beneath his inhuman hiss you could hear, faintly, the remnants of the man behind it. He took a deep, shuddering breath, raising himself up. "How dare you, Orihime!" He whipped his claw out furiously to lash her right across the face and body - she flinched back, crying out, not knowing who the monster before her had once been -

Shaken, I sped in front of Inoue's brother's attack, whipped my sword out, and stopped his claw with it. He pushed back with all his strength and my arms shook just a little, but I gritted my teeth and kept my sword steady against him.

I heard Inoue gasp behind me. "... Kurosaki-kun?" she finally murmured disbelievingly, her tone the same awed as the unknowing ghosts' had been.

Her brother's hiss was cold. "You would dare interfere in this... a private matter?" he asked angrily, still trying to shove me back and away. "I'll deal with you after!"

But I stayed steady. "Sorry," I panted, "but you're dealing with me now. Because interfering's my job." Gaining strength from this thought, I told him flatly, "If you want to kill Inoue, you'd better get through me first."

Assessing me craftily, Inoue's brother slowly let go of my sword and moved back a little. He never took his eyes off of me, but for a few moments there was a pregnant silence as we watched each other, waiting suspiciously. My mind was racing.

He wasn't attacking - he seemed to be avoiding wounds as much as possible, conserving his strength for when he was really emotional or when it really mattered. A part of me hoped he would just leave, stop trying to hurt his own sister, save me from possibly having to destroy his soul... but I knew that was a foolish hope. And behind it all was Tatsuki, who had done nothing wrong but gotten caught up in it all anyway and been badly injured. A pointless victim. The thought lit a flame of anger within me.

But, after a moment, I realized that in the shadows behind the Hollow, I could see another prone form lying on the ground, still. The thing was, I could only feel two other human souls in the room... I squinted slightly, trying to see who it was behind the Hollow...

And my insides froze.

It was Inoue.

Except Inoue wasn't there. She was behind me, wasn't she? I whipped my head around to look before I could stop myself, and sure enough, there she was. Sitting behind me, too.

But that meant...

Inoue saw my face and immediately brightened, seeming enormously relieved, almost ecstatic. "I knew it! Kurosaki-kun, it is you! You've come to save us!"

But I stared at her wordlessly for a moment, feeling numb and heavy. "... How... how can you see me?" I asked her with quiet hoarseness, suddenly afraid. Because no living person besides me was supposed to be able to see a Shinigami. For that matter, no living person was supposed to be able to see or speak with a Hollow. No one.

"H... how?" She trailed off at my expression, suddenly looking nervous. "Uh... w-well... umm..." But as she spoke I looked down and noticed a chain hanging from a small, dark hole in her chest. It ran slinking across the floor beyond her brother, attached to what must be her body, lying still in the corner.

It was the same chain I always saw on ghosts.

"Isn't it obvious?" the Hollow whispered in a quiet, gleeful voice above us. "She can see you for the reason you already know - I've already attacked her. That isn't her body. It's her soul. Too bad for your little rescue mission, Orihime is already dead!" And he shot forward, roaring, ready to rip me to pieces. Reflexively, still stunned at what he had done, I put up my sword to guard, but at the last minute he was clever. He whipped the scaly tail behind him out around instead, caught me across the sword, and sent me flying into the nearby wall amid Inoue's sudden screams. I tried to muffle my contact with the wall by throwing my reiatsu out around me, but I pushed out too far, went through the wall, and fell down toward the waiting street below.

At the last moment, I stopped myself, using all that pushed-out reiatsu to skid to a halt abruptly in midair. I could feel a scratch across my forehead where my sword had been knocked back into me, but I ignored the faint pain of this to grit my teeth and take a stance in front of the hole in Inoue's apartment wall, where Inoue's brother's Hollow was climbing out, his mask-face leering painfully at me. As usual, no one around us seemed to have noticed what was happening right in their own neighborhood, and again I wondered if it was more than ordinary humans not being able to See - if it was a complete, instinctive ignorance on every level on their part.

"You know," Inoue's brother's Hollow was saying, somewhat smugly and arrogantly, "for someone who talks so tough... you're being very hesitant, aren't you?"

I hardened my face, trying not to react - but inside I knew he was right. It made it different, when the attack was personal. When the Hollow was smart enough to speak. When it was not an 'it' - but a 'he.' "Is it that shocking," he hissed quietly, the small light in his eyes sharpening, "that Orihime's soul is gone from her body? Huh? Is it, Kurosaki Ichigo?"

He knew my name. The man from that day at the hospital who'd never even met me - how did he know my name? He opened his jaw and spat at me, and at first I wondered why, if it was a distinctly symbolic human gesture, but then some of the spit landed on my hand and it started burning - acid! Hissing, my hand flinched, I lost control of the zanpakutoh, and I had just enough time to think, Oh, shit, before a huge tail that had snuck around my back as he was talking came up and hit me from behind with an explosion of pain. I could see the gravel coming up to meet me as I blacked out.


I came to with a voice that sounded like Rukia's calling my name frantically from directly above me. More distantly, I thought I could hear another voice that was strangely like Inoue's - it was screaming.

That, more than anything, was what woke me up.

"Ichigo!" Rukia was calling overhead, sounding... surprisingly frightened. "Ichigo - can you hear me? Ichigo!"

I opened my eyes and winced at the ache it engendered. "Shut up," I muttered. "You're really loud." Then I sat up and rubbed my head. I felt less reiatsu-heavy than usual, like some of my power had been sucked back into me, but on the other hand I didn't seem to be badly injured, so I guessed I'd take the trade. I felt my skull and realized my forehead was still bleeding. That was kind of annoying.

Rukia was quickly switching from 'frantic' to 'furious and exasperated.' "That's all you have to say? You're beaten up; this Hollow isn't that much stronger than the other two! What happened?"

I looked away. "It's nothing," I said. "It's just..." She waited, gazing at me penetratingly, but calmly. Rational. In control under stress. "It's different now," I admitted. "It's personal - I guess it's throwing me off."

She watched me silently for a moment. "That's understandable," she finally said quietly, surprising me. "But keep in mind - if you don't defeat him, Inoue's soul will die."

As I turned to stare at her, torn, I realized abruptly that Inoue's screams had stopped from the apartment above.

Bolting, I grabbed my zanpakutoh and shot up toward her apartment again, filled with a strange mix of frustration and renewed determination.


"As you overcame my death... and moved on... I watched myself fade more and more from your heart each day!"

"N-no, Nii-san, I just -!"

Inoue was kneeling before the huge form of her brother's Hollow, which was blocking the hole out of her apartment, and from the wide-eyed, pale, pained look on her face, it seemed as if she'd realized who she was speaking to at last. That must have been why her screams had stopped - something must have made her see. And her brother was delivering an angry diatribe about why she actually deserved this.

"I was sad and lonely! All the time!" There was raw, inhuman, unbridled pain and fury in his voice. "So sad that sometimes I just wanted to kill yo -!"

And that was what did it for me. Because in that moment, Inoue looked so small and pale and hurt kneeling there below him, so like a little sister, and it made me think of my sisters, and of what a terrible person I'd have to be to even consider killing them...

And I snapped.

Realizing how ridiculous I'd been all along to hesitate to defend Inoue from this thing, I pushed myself forward, swung my sword up high, and thought of nothing except precision and destruction as I smashed it down toward his skull. Startled and distracted he whipped toward me at the last second, flashed his tail out, pushed me up against the wall in a flash of pain. I growled and pushed back, half to be able to breathe.

"Kurosaki-kun!" Inoue cried, attempting to stand, but she was grabbed in her brother's giant, scaly hand and pulled away. He lifted her up.

"Now let's go, Orihime," he said in a low, forceful voice, shaking her slightly like a rag doll. "Let's go live together, like we always used to." And that surprised me slightly through my angry, frustrated struggle with his enormous tail. Was it just something said in the heat of an unhinged moment - or did he really not mean to eat her?

Inoue had gone silent, staring disbelievingly, horrified, up at the being her brother had become. Then, almost involuntarily, she whispered, "... Why? If you were this upset, Nii-san," she choked out, "if that was what you wanted all along... why didn't you just leave it between us? Why did you have to hurt Tatsuki-chan, or Kurosaki-kun? Why...?" Her eyes were swimming with tears. "The brother I remember wasn't someone who did things like this!" she cried hysterically, losing it.

He had gone completely still, coming as close as I'd ever seen any Hollow come to gaping at her. But at this, he suddenly exploded. "AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT?" he roared insanely, squeezing her tiny form beneath his giant fingers. She arched her back in pain, her face twisting, gasping for breath... "IT'S YOURS, ORIHIME!" he hissed. "NOT MINE! YOURS! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL -"

That was enough.

Pushing as much reiatsu as I could into my zanpakutoh, I simply gave up all pretenses and sliced right through the tail holding me down, breaking free through a shower of blood. I threw myself forward, swung my sword down in between the two siblings, and cut through the bone and sinew holding The Hollow's hand to his arm with a sickening slice and a crack. Inoue fell to the ground amid the dismembered limb with an "Oomph!" of shock, and all noise in the room suddenly stopped as Inoue's brother's Hollow choked on his own words, stunned.

The two turned slowly to stare at me with very different emotions, and I glared furiously into the eyes of the bastard who dared to call himself her brother, hardly able to see straight. "You know why big brothers are born first?" I asked him intensely, with an air of false calm I did not feel. "So that when their younger siblings come into the world after them, they're protected! They have an older presence there for them!" I thought of my own sisters and felt another stab of mad anger as I told him, "Not even a monster should be able to kill his own little sister!"

The Hollow roared back, flinching away from my words. "WHY?" he wailed. "WHY DO YOU INTERFERE, KUROSAKI ICHIGO!" I glared at him, but there was no reason to respond. I'd already told him my reasons. It was his problem if he couldn't understand them anymore.

Then the Hollow took a deep breath, and suddenly stilled, glaring at me through wide, unstable, wanton eyes. "Do you want to know," he whispered lowly, "why I do this? Why I seem to hate you so much? You don't understand. I'll tell you.

"Orihime was born when I was fifteen. She was always more of a daughter to me than a sister. I was certainly more of a father to her than our real parents ever were. Our parents - they were the true monsters. A whore and a demon, that's all they were, the kinds of monsters who would hit a child to make it stop crying." My eyes widened briefly, as did Inoue's. I wondered if she even remembered any of this - if her brother had just never told her. "I would hide Orihime - protect her - calm her - take care of her from our parents. And, the day I turned eighteen, I took my three year old sister... and we ran away from that house. We never looked back. I got a job and this apartment, I looked after her, I watched her grow as a true parent would, keeping to this apartment even after the car accident just to watch over her - but when I died she forgot me. She moved on." He sounded angry now, his voice shaking. "It was supposed to be just the two of us - forever. She was supposed to be my family! I raised her! I protected her! She's mine! And I won't surrender her to anyone! Not to her friend Tatsuki, and not to you, Kurosaki Ichigo! Her thoughts should remain solely on me! But I'm not even there anymore, I'm unimportant, pushed into the background just like I always was! Well that's fine - but you won't have her! If I can't have her, no one can!"

I stood there and watched him flatly. It was a touching story - emotional. But frankly, he came off as pretty goddamn selfish in it. He got upset enough with his sister for finding a way to be happy again - upset enough to become a Hollow and attempt to "kill" her - and then he assumed we were fighting because I wanted her for myself instead? The guy was wasted. Nuts. Had probably always had some issues in the first place.

But he was still dangerous, and when he charged at me, roaring, I tensed and readied my sword. "Nii-san!" Inoue cried, as the clash sounded of my sword connecting with his open mouth, pushing his teeth in and working its way toward cutting through the gumline with effort. Before I could cut through his mouth, however, he pushed away and roared at me again. I was tempted to tell him to shut up, but I doubted he could do much about it at this point.

"YOU CAN'T HAVE HER!"

I nearly rolled my eyes. "Inoue is Inoue!" I snapped at him. "She doesn't belong to anyone but herself, and she sure as hell doesn't belong to you!"

"SHE'S MINE! MINE! I LIVED FOR HER! YET SHE WILL NOT LIVE FOR ME!" he screamed. "THEN AT LEAST SHE WILL DIE FOR ME!"

And abruptly, he completely reserved his attack, turned and blew past me in the defenseless Inoue's direction, mouth open, roaring. "NO!" I shouted uselessly, running to get there in time...

But before I could get there, there was a sickening crack of flesh between teeth and a show of blood, a sound eerily similar to one I had heard from Rukia just three nights ago.

Even I stopped in shock.

Inoue had opened her arms - a motion I was uncomfortably familiar with in the face of a Hollow attack - and held them out waiting for the attack. Her hysteria was gone now; in its place was a calm, almost determined expression. Slowly, she wrapped her arms around her brother's skull to embrace him as blood leaked from her torso in between his teeth.

And I watched, speechless, as she actually explained softer emotion to a monster.

"... I'm sorry, Nii-san," she whispered in a weak, shuddering voice. "When I started telling your offering place about my friends... instead of talking about us... I just wanted to tell you about all the good things that were going on in my life. Make sure you knew I was happy. In the beginning... all I did was pray every day. But I thought... that might be bad. That it might make you sad. So I wanted to show you... that you didn't have to stick around if you didn't want to..." Her eyes filled with tears. "I wanted you to see that you didn't need to worry about me so much anymore!"

As I watched her... it registered, distantly, that this had been going on with her the entire time, and no one had ever known.

Her brother was staring at her, and for a moment his eyes were human, as if this had cleared his head briefly. He looked horrified.

"I didn't mean... to make you sad... Nii-san... I'm sorry... I love you..." Her voice faded away, and she slumped over past her brother's stilled, slacked jaw and onto the floor.

"Inoue!" There was rare, unbridled fear in my voice as I was suddenly, painfully jolted back to life.

But... "Don't give up! We can still save her!" I whipped around at this muffled voice to see Rukia struggle up into the hole in the apartment wall. She looked as if she'd shimmied up the drainpipe, and she was breathing heavily. She leveled me with a single glare for this before continuing urgently, "The chain of fate on her chest has not yet been broken from her body. Her brother merely pulled her soul out of her physical body to join him, he did not bother to break the chain connecting her to her body! As long as the two remain connected there is hope. I have recovered enough of my reiatsu to be able to use kidou to heal her, and then place her back into her body." She leveled one of her steady, hard looks at the Hollow and said, "Just let me through to her."

Slowly, the Hollow, his eyes still wide and surprisingly human, moved backward away from his sister's battered soul. Rukia rushed over to her, kneeled down beside her, and her hands glowed over Inoue faintly, her expression calm and focused. Slowly, I relaxed.

"Orihime," the Hollow was murmuring shakingly, circling around them worriedly. "Orihime, Orihime..."

"Move back," Rukia snapped, so matter-of-factly that it was actually somewhat impressive. "You're in my way."

Still subservient and calm, the Hollow moved back immediately. "I knew," he said to the room after a moment, nervously. "I knew somewhere inside why she was doing it. But... I wanted her to pray for me... because when she prayed for me she was all mine..." His eyes were as distant as his voice was becoming. He stared blankly down at his sister.

Seeking both to keep him grounded and to distract myself from my own worry for Inoue - I was long practiced from my family in keeping back and quiet while a healing was going on, but that didn't make being unable to do anything any easier - I cast around in my mind for a moment. Then, catching her hair spread around her in the light, I spoke up quietly. "Hey... you see those hairpins?" He showed no sign of having heard me, but his eyes did focus, immediately, on the star pins that always kept her hair back from her face. "I asked Inoue once why she always wore them... about a month ago. She told me they were a present from her brother. So she wore them every day... to remember him by."

He stilled, his eyes widening into a pained stare.

"She never really forgot you, you know." With how much she'd cried the day he died, I didn't see how she could have. "It was just as hard for her as it was for you. She just handled it differently." Looking away, I tried not show how much I felt as I said, "Death is just as hard for the living as it is for the dead." I supposed I had some personal experience with that sensation. "So... so don't go thinking you're the only one who's suffered, okay?"

"... I never noticed," he said simply, sounding stunned. "I... I can't believe I never noticed..."

I kept my face turned away, because if I actually looked at him I'd probably say what I was thinking, which was something along the lines of "Yeah, no kidding, you fucked up, dumbass."

But all of a sudden, I was broken from my thoughts by the sensation of my zanpakutoh, whose huge size I had slung over my shoulders, being gently tugged on from the blade end. I whipped my head around to see in disbelief that Inoue's brother was trying to take my sword from me. "Hey," I said defensively, "what the hell are you..."

But I stopped talking, because it quickly became obvious what he was trying to do.

He wanted to pierce himself through with the sword.

There he was, reaching up and carving a path through his mask with its sharp tip, and as the pieces of his white mask fell to the floor, I could see through edges of blood the face of the man I remembered from that day. Dark-haired and angle-faced, quietly intelligent, with a face old before its time. His brown eyes were wide and vividly emotional, but surprisingly gentle. Evenly, he tilted the zanpakutoh's tip toward his own throat.

I found my voice. "Wait, what are you doing -?" I began in alarm, but he shook his head at me, seeming in that moment calm and infinitely sad.

"It is what I need to do." His voice was quiet without the monster inside it. "If I stay like this, even with Orihime, I'll just end up hurting her again. So now... while I've regained a small part of myself... I want to do this."

"But... why?" I forced out stupidly before I could stop myself. He seemed like he was just getting himself back, and now he wanted to die? "Y-you don't have to -"

"Ichigo." Rukia spoke up, her face stoic, determinedly not looking away from her healing. "Once a Hollow is a Hollow, they can never go back. His decision is the correct one."

I turned to her, frustrated at her lack of care for all this. "But Rukia -!"

Then Rukia looked up, and behind her stoic determined mask she had deep black eyes of understanding, and surprising depth of emotion. Then, of all things, she smiled gently. "Don't worry," she said quietly. "It's not as bad as you think. The zanpakutoh does not destroy what they were. It merely washes away their sins. Their spiritual particles will be absorbed back into the fold around us, and someday those particles will be reborn into a new soul, whole again and pure.

"That's why we Shinigami exist, you know. In the end, it is simply to ease the burdens of souls."

I relaxed slightly at this, a strange sort of feeling filling me that I couldn't explain. That idea... it was still terrible... but in a way it was also kind of beautiful.

So went with basically everything about death, I was learning.

Inoue's brother was bending over her unconscious healing soul, his face tender. He really had loved her, I realized... in his own way. "Goodbye, Orihime," he murmured.

But at this, Inoue's face twitched and her eyes slid slowly open almost forcefully. "Nii-san," she panted, and her brother's face stilled in surprise and some deeper, more mournful emotion. "There something I always wanted to tell you face-to-face... after you died.

"You'd gotten me these childish-looking hairpins shaped like stars... And I remember disliking them, thinking I was too old for them now that I was an older girl, that the other girls at school would tease me if I wore them... They used to do that a lot, you know, because I was quiet and shy, and I lived in a little apartment with my brother... I know you worried about me... But you'd spent some money to get me these hairpins, and I didn't even like them... We had a big fight, and I remember that we ate dinner in silence and we both slept in separate parts of the room, each facing the wall. I didn't even say anything to you the next morning as you left for work, and you looked back once, but in the end you didn't say anything to me either. And... and I never saw you again... Why did it have to be that day?

"I looked out the apartment window... and I saw the car hit you... and..." There were tears in her eyes again, and her voice was choked up when she spoke. "And I know it probably wouldn't have changed anything, and it probably wouldn't have kept you long enough that you didn't walk out into the road as that car was going by... But I always wondered what would have happened if I'd swallowed my pride and said something to you that morning before you left for work.

"So I just wanted to say to you... 'Goodbye, Nii-san. Have a good day, okay?'"

There were tears welling in his eyes too. After a moment, beyond words, he managed one small, pained smile. Then he pierced himself with the sword and slipped away... dissolving into particles... and gone.


There were a few minutes of very complete silence in the apartment. Rukia finished healing Inoue's wounds. Inoue sat up slowly, quickly wiping her tears away, like she was ashamed to let us see them. We looked at each other, an understanding passed between us... and then we quickly looked away.

I cleared my throat roughly. "He's gone," I commented quietly after a moment, wondering why that was almost as hard for me as it probably was for her.

Inoue nodded slowly. "Yeah," she said softly, as casual as we could be like this.

"How are you feeling?" I asked her quietly, giving her soul and connected body another once-over.

"Oh, I'm fine," she brushed off, just as she always did. Some things hadn't changed. Then she looked up. "B-but never mind that," she said quickly. "Kurosaki-kun, I don't understand what all of this was, I have so many questions for yo -"

But before I could do more than tense up, Rukia matter-of-factly reached into her pajama pocket, popped a little container, and a puff of smoke released from it into Inoue's face. Her eyes rolled into the back of her skull and she passed out.

"I-Inoue?" I exclaimed, freaking out reflexively. "What the hell did you do?"

Rukia waved the container and shrugged. "This is the memory replacer. It takes away a human's memories of an incident and replaces them with false ones concocted in their own subconscious. Standard Shinigami protocol," she said.

I stared at her, amazed at how calmly she could take away a memory that important. "A memory replacer?" I asked dubiously.

"Exactly," Rukia said briskly, standing up. "If you don't understand, you will when you see them at school tomorrow. Trust me. Some of the replacements can be a bit... random."

"And you're sure that's safe?" I emphasized, raising my eyebrows.

"It doesn't cause brain damage, if that's what you mean. Now go home. Oh wait, no." I paused uncertainly as she grabbed me, pulled me down, and put a hand to my forehead. There was a glowing and a gentle tingling for a moment, then when she let me loose, I reached up and realized to my amazement that my wound was just... gone. She waved a hand dismissively. "Now go home. I'll take care of the rest." I started and stared over at her, but she rolled her eyes in gentle exasperation and almost shooed me to the hole in the wall. "I'm serious. Go. I don't want to be disturbed while I'm doing this." She looked me in the eye firmly. "I'll put Inoue back in her body, heal the other girl, and implant the same memories in her. Your part here is done." It had the feeling of an impending routine to it. Nonetheless, I was reluctant to leave Tatsuki and Inoue after they'd both recently been attacked so badly...

But in the end, I did leap away to return to my body in my bedroom at home. Because I realized, to my faint surprise, that after all this, I actually trusted Rukia with my friends' safety.

Who'd have thought?


The next day at school, we sat at a couple of desks in homeroom, watching, staring, as the nearby Tatsuki and Inoue told their friends about something incredible that had happened last night.

"No, it's true!" Inoue assured her disbelieving, snickering friends with big, earnest eyes. "A sumo wrestler really did shoot through my apartment wall with a bazooka! It was incredible!"

"Oh you and your imagination again!"

"You're so cute!"

"B-but it really happened this time! It wasn't just a daydream! Right, Tatsuki?" She turned to Tatsuki, who nodded reluctantly.

"Yeah," she said with slow disbelief. "I was there; it... really happened."

"What!"

"Really?"

"No way."

"Yeah! A sumo wrestler with a bazooka... What are the odds of that?"

Rukia and I glanced at each other - and then looked away, snorting, suddenly trying to hide our own amusement. "I guess it worked... sort of," I said in a low voice.

"I told you," she muttered. "It's not our fault if the human mind concocts bizarre stories."

I thought about this and then said suddenly, "You used that on my family the other day, too, didn't you?" Things were starting to click into place in my mind.

"Yes," Rukia said briskly. "Of course. It worked well, no?"

And as I gazed at Tatsuki and Inoue, perfectly healed and happy, no idea of the traumatizing events they had just been forced to experience the night before - I had to admit, it kind of did.