Omake: Real World II
It was week before she returned. Yoruichi easily justified the minor abandonment by assuring herself that Kisuke could hardly blame her - it had taken nearly that long for her blisters to heal, and she could very well imagine he wasn't much better off. Hell, the last time she had seen him he was still trying to get the dirt out from under his nails; she didn't even want to think about how long it had taken her to get her coat to shine again….
Stifling her guilt nonetheless, she slipped silently into his earthly house to find him sitting at a small table in the back room, absorbed in yet another project. For a moment she paused in the doorway; how many decades of memories did she have of just this scene, that lanky frame bent intensely over his latest obsession? The thought put a sparkle in her eyes as she nimbly leapt up onto the table over which he was hunched, padding across its cluttered surface on her dainty black feet.
"What are you inventing now?" The gravelly sound of human words pushing past animal vocal chords did little to hide her curious amusement.
"Birth certificate," he replied, carefully placing precise kanji on a small document covered in official insignias. "They don't rent equipment to dead people, you know."
"Equipment?" she returned energetically, lashing her tail in surprise. "What on Earth are you renting?"
"You'll see."
Her tail whipped about even more poignantly when, weeks later, the boring equipment was delivered – a new-fangled invention for the 1920's. She looked from the enormous digging machine to the small house with its tiny hole in the flooring, and back again. She had plenty of experience in her little cat form and easily managed an expression laden with smug irony.
"How are you going to get it under the house?" she purred sweetly.
He was already chewing on his lower lip, face twisted in deep thought.
"I'm working on that…."
Shihouin Yoruichi, teenage princess and heir-apparent of one of the oldest and most renowned of the Great Noble houses, let out a vicious string of fluently executed swear words.
Her mother calmly fielded the tirade, allowing little more reaction than a slightly raised eyebrow. As the obscenities wound down and her temperamental daughter lapsed into furious silence, the dowager spoke drolly.
"Nonetheless, you will accept the assistance," she commanded. "In the future, if you do not wish to endure the shame of tutoring, you will endeavor to spend less time with your friends and more time pursuing the education which you so ardently insisted upon receiving. You chose this path, Yoruichi - you will not be allowed to fail in it." Turning her regal back on her fuming offspring, the noblewoman glided towards the garden door, accompanying her exit with her final thoughts. "Honestly, as if someone of your stature even needs to be wasting her time at that ridiculous excuse for an Academy..." A final rustle of silk and she was gone.
Leaving Yoruichi with arms crossed and pouting prettily, the very picture of elegant outrage, alone in the parlor with no one to appreciate it. Well, aside from the person waiting in the receiving chamber beyond, but he was the last person in Soul Society she wished to bear witness to her tantrum. He'd already seen one emotional outburst in the silent darkness of a laboratory weeks ago, and for some reason she had found that experience utterly humiliating. Normally, her little scenes were designed to be witnessed, carefully crafted and performed so as to either get her way, or get those around her to believe what she wished them to believe. She had long ago discovered that nurturing the image of the spoiled, insipid princess had a vast array of advantages. Iit was one of her favorite disguises and by far the most effective.
That was, until the night that had found her staring into silver eyes bright with intelligence, clear and unguarded. That perspicacious gaze had given her the distinct impression that, for once, her theatrics were not going to work. At all. That such shallow endeavors were beneath her. It had left her feeling unimaginably exposed, galling her at the time...but upon later reflection, as she'd replayed that scene in her mind, she couldn't say she'd thoroughly disenjoyed it...
For the first time in her pampered life, Shihouin Yoruichi had found herself confronted with the possibility one person, and a commoner at that, saw beyond her lofty veneer to the intelligent, passionate and intensely lonely person inside, the one no one had ever bothered to find before. The one she did everything possible to keep hidden.
That insinuation had given her little choice in the weeks that had followed but to avoid Urahara Kisuke like a plague of Hollows. A plan that was no longer going to work, seeing as that was the very person currently sitting in the adjacent room waiting to tutor her.
She was still brooding over their last exchange, the wound of his judgment on her still very much fresh. It had been insulting enough how easily Urahara had gazed past her expertly-crafted walls to glimpse the real her...and he'd had the audacity to pronounced her lacking in substance? The hurtful comment still tingled across her skin every time she accessed the memory. His unsettling glimpse of her that night had prompted a bout of self-consciousness and she had spent the last weeks not only avoiding him but also herself - her need to justify her life-long deceptions had compelled her to dive as deeply into the spoiled-noble role as possible, spending far more time than was sensible with her superficial friends and none at all on her studies. Specious, is it?! Fine - if shallow was what he thought her, then shallow she would be...
The result had been a recent round of test scores thoroughly incompatible with academic advancement and, for a member of the Shihouin clan, anything less than prominence was considered failure. And, as her mother had so blithely pointed out a moment ago, failure simply was not an option.
All this flashed through her mind in an instant, along with a lurch of nausea (and a tiny thrill of something she refused to acknowledge as anticipation) at the thought of seeing the brilliant young man again. Sighing loudly in a manner thoroughly put-upon, Yoruichi twitched her voluminous skirts and flounced towards the door, pausing for a moment to collect herself before throwing the screen doors open. Fully composed into her haughtiest demeanor, she entered the room mentally wearing her thickest possible armor.
Urahara Kisuke rose at her entrance.
Yoruichi resolutely told herself, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn't the least bit attractive. Really. Not at all.
With deliberate and scathing condescension, she looked him up and down and fervently sublimated how thoroughly she enjoyed it. "What are you doing here?"
"My Lady Shihouin," he said with a perfectly executed bow. It was the last thing he'd said to her all those weeks ago, and the subtle reminder brought a lovely flush to her cheeks. "I was assigned here as a tutor."
"Yes, yes, but that's not what I asked. Why are you here?" Contempt fairly dripped from her voice.
"Yamamato-dono recommended me," he replied smoothly. "At your mother's request - she wanted only the best for her daughter."
"Ha!" Yoruichi erupted, her lip curling unpleasantly. "And what, pray tell, makes you the best?"
"Yamamoto-dono was of the opinion that I would be suitable. I'm top of the class," was the calm rejoinder.
Yoruichi snorted in an incredibly unrefined manner. "Which class?"
His grin was insufferable, even though the shrug managed to be somewhat self-effacing. "All of them."
That shut her up.
"Humpf," she sniffed loftily. Assuming it was true, it left her little room for leverage. "I guess you'll do." With little else for it, Yoruichi threw him another acid glare and flounced in all her affronted glory to the gilded study desk at the far wall. Settling herself regally, she waited as he silently approached and assiduously tried to ignore how amused his energy felt. He drew up a chair and seated himself next to her, far too close for her comfort, so she twitched away from him in the slightest of motions, exuding disgust at his proximity. Troglodyte...
She sat, stiffly and with chin raised, as he opened a scroll containing recent classroom notes, utterly refusing to look in his direction and rather fixing her attention out the window at the serenity garden beyond, strongly projecting the impression that as far as she was concerned he didn't even exist. Mentally, she dared him to teach her anything at all. He finished unrolling the scroll with the strong, slender fingers she found so fascinating, but the anticipated lecture failed to materialize.
Instead, to her surprise, the long pause that followed carried with it an edge of awkwardness. When Urahara finally spoke, she found her curiosity reluctantly awakened.
"Before we begin, My Lady, there is something I feel the need to address." He leaned forward in the seat next to her, and despite her resolve the beseeching tone of voice drew her eyes to his. They were softer than before, the intensity of those grey eyes unexpectedly disarming and almost painfully earnest. "Last time we spoke, I said something that I fear was...misinterpreted." She started to demur haughtily, but he rode right over her. "It was not my intention to suggest that you were obtuse. Quite the opposite; you make a fair show of being little better than your simpering friends," she stirred in obligatory offense, "Yet, unlike the others, I cannot help but posit that you boast an essentia far more complex than the image you project."
Yoruichi felt herself go very, very still. She hoped she was managing to hide even a little bit of the earthquake his words stirred in her.
Urahara leaned closer yet, his warm, slightly aseptic scent filling her nostrils. "What I truly find incomprehensible," he said softly, all amusement gone, "is why so few others seem to see how much there really is to you."
His observation was positively cataclysmic, but Yoruichi would damn her soul before she admitted to it. After all this time, all her careful hiding, all her safeguards, and this incorrigible ill-bred from Rukongai effortlessly insinuated himself into her deepest, most private self? She wanted desperately to cry but habit overtook her and she forced herself to sneer instead. "You just think you know everything, don't you?"
Urahara laughed, wearing a weariness that was at odds with the playful glint back at home in his eyes. "Hardly - and in your case my dear Lady, hardly anything at all." The sparkle sharpened, something in the grey pools daring her to argue with him. "It does not take a 'genius' to see that there is more to you than your surface appearance." He shifted to a warm grin that she hated to admit was rather charming. "Delightful though that may be..."
Yoruichi's fury died out completely at the obvious compliment, on more than one level. "Oh." His left eye twitched slightly at the word; she got the distinct impression that he had just filed that response away into his memory banks, for what possible reason she couldn't imagine. "Well," she continued, straightening her back and trying to shoulder her way back into disdain. "Yes. Apology accepted." She instantly regretted saying that, seeing as he hadn't actually apologized. Her flush met his deepening smile at her gaff, but to his credit he let it pass.
"My Lady." Urahara bowed again, in perfunctory perfection. "Now," he exerted, rising to his feet and fishing around in his kimono. "Let us begin our lesson..."
She sighed, desultory, but before she could slump he finished his rustling and removed a shiny, round object from the folds of his hakima.
"What is that?" Yoruichi couldn't help asking as he carefully placed it on the desk in front of her and, with a mischievous grin, flicked it with a forefinger.
The orb emitted a tiny, musical resonance. She jumped, gasping, as an image sprang into being in front of her as she reeled in back-pedal halfway across the room. The impossible filled her vision; she could clearly see herself hunched over the desk, staring at a scroll in bland concentration as the figure of Urahara hovered over her - a figure entirely separate from the young man standing aside and grinning at her wickedly. Mouth open, she looked at the faux-pair studying at the desk; the fake Kisuke was droning on in monotone about weights and measures, while the not-real-Yoruichi nodded in absent comprehension.
Yoruichi stared in fascination at the animated mirage. "By all the gods...how...?"
"A regrettable illusion, My Lady," a warm voice vibrated into her ear; she was far to shocked to wonder how he had gotten so close, his breath warming along her neck as he murmured in his compelling tenor. "A little something I invented for the occasion. I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me for the presumption...what I wish to teach cannot be contained in a parlor."
Despite all the determination of heaven and earth, she felt an answering smile curving her lips. Turning to regard the mischievous eyes that hovered mere inches from hers, she felt her blood surge as she met his challenge. "Forgiveness is yours," she purred. "Provided the lesson proves worthwhile...?"
Slipping his hand into hers in the utmost impropriety, his grip firmed tightly. "Now that, my Lady, I am more than happy to oblige."
In a handful of flashes, they were standing in the wilderness beyond her mansion, surrounded by lush forests and babbling wildlife. Grinning at her, Kisuke kept her hand in his and led her along a well-worn deer path; as they walked through dappled sunlight, he pointed out various flora and fauna, delighting in her reactions nearly as much as she delighted in the wildness around her. Never in her life had she been allowing into such an uncontrolled environment, and she found the questions bubbling out of her.
"What kind of plant is that? What a strange little animal...what's it called? Why do the mushrooms grow in the shade...?"
Urahara answered every single one of her questions in a manner utterly unlike any teacher she'd ever met, satisfying her curiosity instead of bombarding her with rote information. It was the single most thrilling experience of her afterlife so far; and as a noble, that was saying quite a bit. Her head felt like it would explode from wonder, from fascination, from the endless variation that simmered and lived and died right outside the walls of her manse.
They spent the rest of the day flitting about Soul Society, as the pale and precocious youth at her side revealed more mysteries than she had ever dreamed possible, raising in her fertile mind far more questions than he had time to answer. He was considerably more accomplished at shunpo than she had credited him, although he was still far behind her in ability; flashing from street market to field to barren desert, he showed her facets of the afterworld she had never even dreamed of in her wildest imaginations, opening up to her a spirit-world full of wonder and mystery. As the day drew on, she found herself fervently wishing that time would halt in its tracks and allow her unhindered access to all the revelations he presented to her...
As the sun touched the horizon, however, she was dismayed to find their latest flash had landed them right back in the stuffy parlor of the Shihouin manse. Snapping out a quick hand, Urahara snagged up the mirror-ball, expertly palming it an instant before Yoruichi's mother slid open the far side panel door.
"Yoruichi? Has your lesson concluded for the day? The Duke is awaiting dinner, and your presence is required..." The patrician nose wrinkled slightly at Urahara's all-too-common silhouette. "I trust your lessons were satisfactory?"
"Quite," Yoruichi replied expertly, rising from the desk seat to regard Urahara coolly, the haughty princess once more. Turning grandly, she addressed him with little to no inflection. "Until next week, then?" she inquired dismissively.
He played his part perfectly. "Until next week," he confirmed, straightening from his formal bow with a miniscule smile reserved just for her. "My Lady..."
Every inch the queen-in-training she was, Shihouin Yoruichi exited the room with all the pomp and circumstance required of her station.
But hours later, in the languid company of a gouty Duke, she replayed the entire sparkling day in her mind, in between absent nods and socially appropriate responses. Something deep within her felt...alive. For the first time in her stable, noble, set afterlife, Yoruichi found herself looking forward to something delightful and unpredictable. Sometime during the evenings bland entertainment, as a means of ignoring the Duke's indecorous attentions, she thanked every single god in heaven that had seen fit to put Urahara Kisuke in her path. And she counted, with mortifying precision, the minutes until she could see him again...