Cigarettes and smoking are bad for you. No two ways about it. Trust me, I'm a doctor.
That being said, I used to smoke all the time. Ryuuken got me started when he introduced it to me as a way to relieve stress, saying I couldn't be dealt with without a little nicotine in his system. It was mean, but after giving it a try myself (and getting past choking on the inhaled fumes) I could admit that he was right, it was a great way to calm down. I wasn't a chain smoker with a cigarette always in my mouth, of course, but I'd have one every other day. More if it was a particularly stressful day.
I won't ever forget the first time Masaki caught me with one of those bad boys in hand.
It had been raining hard the past few days, that day too, and there was a bad car accident a few blocks from the clinic, so naturally the injured ended up on my doorstep. The injuries had me rushing around trying to stabilize them so they could make it to the hospital for full care because they were beyond me. It wasn't easy, handling it all by my lonesome, but somehow I pulled through.
Once they had been carted out the door, hysterical buddies and family gone with them, I pulled out my pack of cigarettes for a good smoke out front. And that's how she found me, sitting in the doorway, taking a drag.
"So you do smoke."
I looked up in surprise to see my girlfriend, we'd just made it official, standing before me with an umbrella over her head.
"Well, yeah." I didn't really know what else to say to that.
She just smiled at me knowingly. "You always smelled a bit like smoke, but nothing strong, so I wasn't sure if it was you smoking or if it was just a neighbor or something like that."
"Oh." I guess that explained it. Sometimes the crankier patients complained about that faint whiff of smoke that came off me, but that was easy enough to ignore.
I took a long drag and breathed out a stream of smoke.
"You know, you look pretty cool when you smoke. It's this kind of cool, tortured look, like you've got the weight of the world on your shoulders, but you're gonna deal with it anyways, 'cause that's just what you do."
"Yeah? Well, I was once in charge of about one thirteenth of the world's souls, so I had a good bit of the world on my shoulders once." I replied to her observation, hiding the small glow of pride that she thought I was cool.
"Mmm, but not anymore, you know? So what's bothering you today?" she asked with a smile, lighting up the gloomy day.
"Well, there was a bad accident a few blocks away and I had to deal with the patients from that until the ambulance could get them to the hospital, but nothing's bothering me anymore." I said, returning her grin at the end, cigarette caught between my teeth.
"Oh? Relieved to get rid of them?" she asked with a mischievous smile.
"Nah, you showed up, gorgeous. What have I got to worry about anymore?"
And she laughed like sunshine.
She saw me smoke plenty of times after that, though I had to quit once the twins were born. I tried quitting when Ichigo was born, but I didn't quite make it. Second time's the charm, I guess.
But when she died, oh it was hard not to go back to cigarettes, to not look for the calming comfort of nicotine. But I quit for our kids because she wanted them healthy and happy (not that I didn't want that too) and cigarettes, second-hand smoke, it's not good for them.
It wasn't until the anniversary marking our first year without her that I broke. I had my first cigarette in six years. And one was enough because I remembered that conversation. How pathetic would I be if I couldn't still look cool for the love of my life? If I couldn't deal with a little world on my shoulders like it was what I did?
So I decided, one a year on that day. Just to show her that I could still be cool and handle the world because while cigarettes are so bad for you, to her, they made me look so good.
Author's Note
So this one gets its base from early Bleach, back after Ichigo fought Grand Fisher in the graveyard. I thought it'd be interesting to look at Isshin's explanation for why he was smoking, something you never see him do anywhere else. I tied in Isshin's comment about being too young for the cool, tortured look with how Masaki thought he looked cool and Ryuuken's habit of smoking that got shown later in the series because I figure there's go to be some connection there. So yeah, not much to explain in this chapter I think.
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