Ok, so I lied. The traffic lights aren't shaped like Hershey's Kisses. The streetlights are. XD And I have a couple of pictures, too, for you non-believers.
http:/ galenfry. com/penna/hershey15. jpg
http:/ americanindian. net/kusi/trivia/hershey_PA. jpg
Remove the spaces.
Apparently, Hershey also has its own chocolate-based theme park as well. XD
On to other news, THIS IS MY TENTH CHAPTER! :D I'm so, so, so excited with how many reviews this has gotten and how much interest there's been in this story! And I'm so grateful to all those people who've been with me all the way, and I'm so very grateful to my beta who's helped me out on the past few chapters.
Grand totals:
Hits: 5,617 last I checked
Alerts/Favorites: 80-ish. Or something like that.
Reviews: Over 100, and that's all that matters. 12 per chapter, average. ^-^
Thank you to: talkstoangels77, Coolyb, Xylexia, RetroMayhem, Tozase-Murcielago, Sylvertongue, Daheath, anime-randomizrXIV, Hitsugaya'sWife3, Shattered-Shinobi1313, alanabanani, WestAnimeBrigade, G. Ai Inoue, Foxgrl18, readingQueen, Fanime-Sensei, eelgirl13, and Sightspeed for reviewing! Here's your plane tickets! :D Have fun! *hands out tickets*
Huggles and happiness to: RetroMayhem, kitjos, DarkAngel2098, Shattered-Shinobi1313, QANARA IRANOV, Lady Evelynn, Heaven's Cataract, Foxgrl18, readingQueen, Alister's Girlfriend, Mello's-Dark-Chocolate, TTIOT, and Sightspeed for favoriting/alerting. ^-^ Thanks sooo much for hanging in there!
Yes, it took me a month. Part of that was just the beta-ing process, which occasionally takes a while. Don't want any typos slipping by. :P
I'm going to warn you, updates are going to become much less frequent as the full workload of tenth grade comes flying at me, along with a sh*tload of extracurricular activities. I'll try my best for all of you, and for this poor story. IT SHALL LIVE ON! If you feel like sending me a PM and saying "GET YOUR LAZY BUTT IN GEAR", or maybe you have suggestions for later bits of the plot, or maybe you just feel like talking about your pet cat, I generally answer stuff pretty quick and conversation of any kind is perfectly fine and somewhat appreciated. ^-^
*coughs* Alright, so I think this may be the last time I have a Bleach character reading my disclaimer. I've kinda run out of ones I like, so after this, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I've posted a poll on my profile, so vote like the wind!
Anyways, as a tribute to a character I didn't really appreciate until he was dead (or at least in great danger of dying), I shall allow Gin's ghost to read the disclaimer.
G: 3R15UK0UM31 doesn't own anythin'…
Me: Damn right I don't. It makes me sad sometimes…T.T
G: Umm…could someone do a konso real quick…?
Me: NO! You're staying right here! D: Anyways, enjoy the chapter.
"Normal"
The classroom fell dangerously silent as all eyes instantly turned to Orihime. She felt a red hot blush creeping onto her cheeks. Of course he had to go and say something like that, you should've seen this coming, well maybe not. I mean, I knew he was a little overprotective but I didn't really see this coming and OH CRAP EVERYONE'S LOOKING AT ME. Ok, ok, just keep cool, keep cool, and oh no, am I blushing? Um…um…what would Rukia do? She could totally just explain something like this away, no problem, what would she do, excuses, excuses…
The silence had stretched out and murmurs were beginning to spread through the class.
"What a freak…"
"Did he just say he'd kill us…?"
"Man, five minutes in the class and he's already laying his claim on her!"
"The nerve…"
"Did I hear him right?"
The teacher was still staring at Orihime, obviously demanding an explanation for the strange new kid's unwarranted possessiveness.
Orihime laughed nervously, and tried her best not to stumble over her words. "Um, U-Ulquiorra and I met um, a few months ago, I was assigned to show him around, but, um, he still hasn't…hasn't really gotten the hang of the language yet! Uh, he's just a little, um, confused about the grammar and the words and stuff, so sometimes he says things that sound really strange, but he doesn't really mean it! He's really a nice guy, he's just having some trouble adjusting to stuff!" She tried her best to grin, but it felt horribly fake, even to her.
There were a few seconds of quiet murmuring before the class seemed to accept this and turned back, one by one, to contemplate the new kid again. She let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding and felt her tense muscles relax a bit.
The teacher cleared her throat, regaining control of the classroom. "You may choose a seat now, Ulquiorra."
He glanced at the available seats. One was on the opposite side of the room from Orihime's; the other was right in front of the class, and still far away from the woman's seat. He quickly decided that neither of those seats would do.
Ignoring the mixed looks he was getting from the class, Ulquiorra steadily made his way over to the seat right next to Orihime's. The boy sitting there at first gave him a glare that clearly said Back off; seat taken. However, he withered quickly under the green-eyed man's frosty glare. The unfortunate boy gathered his belongings as quickly as possible and, still pinned under the new student's gaze, slinked away with his tail between his legs and sat in one of the empty seats. Ulquiorra sat down and waited for the lesson to commence as if nothing had happened.
The murmurs began again in earnest, filled with pity, consternation, and even a little awe.
Even the normally optimistic Orihime had to admit that this wasn't the clean start she'd imagined for him. She rubbed a hand over her eyes and looked tiredly up at the white board, where the teacher had already scribbled some notes. This is going to be a long, long, long day…
…
Orihime wasn't sure she had EVER been so happy for lunchtime to roll around. The rest of her classes had run without a hitch, with the exception that Ulquiorra stayed almost uncomfortably close the whole time, and kept glancing over in her direction. Of course, this kept her friends from approaching her at all, instead huddling in small groups and murmuring about that creepy new student with the green eyes and the cold personality who hung so close to Orihime that they might as well have been joined at the hip. She was certain that they were already being considered a couple. She hated having to sift through rumors like that, but part of being a teenager was learning to bear teenage drama.
Orihime walked out of the building, colorfully-wrapped bento clutched to her chest, and looked for a nice shady spot to sit. Her friends had extended their usual invitation, if a bit more hesitantly than usual, but the last thing she really wanted to do was talk with them like everything was normal.
It most certainly was not.
She placed her lunch under a tall maple tree and sat down, noticing that the leaves were beginning to change; fall wasn't too far away. The air was warm, but a cool breeze was blowing gently, making the temperature perfect. I'm not really that hungry, she thought, letting her eyes slip shut as she waited for Ulquiorra.
Her lunch was still untouched when he appeared a few minutes later. Never one to initiate conversation, he sat directly in front of her and waited for her to say something.
Something was off, he could tell. She knew he was there, so why wasn't she saying anything? Normally she would instantly begin to talk once he arrived, rambling on for the entire hour that she was supposed to be eating. Now she refused to even acknowledge his presence, and he found that it irritated him.
After ten minutes of silence, he finally spoke. "Onna." She didn't respond. "Why are you refusing to speak to me?"
"Shhh, I'm enjoying the weather."
He blinked; the answer had thrown him off a bit. "I do not see how my speaking disrupts your perception of temperature."
Orihime sighed and looked at him, through with her Zen moment for now. She was ready for this. Operation: Teach Ulquiorra How To Be a Normal Human was go. "Ulquiorra?" He tilted his head slightly to show he was listening."You know, you can't just walk into a classroom and tell everyone you'll kill them if they come near me. Violence isn't as…commonplace in normal human conversations as it is in Hueco Mundo." He raised a doubtful eyebrow at this, but didn't comment. "Now all my friends are going to be afraid to talk to me until you show them that you aren't going to beat them up for it."
"I was simply informing them that it would be in their best interest to keep their distance. You should be more concerned for your own safety."
"Well, it's not like my friends are going to just turn around one day and randomly attack me! They're my friends and I trust them. Human relationships are based on trust and companionship, not fear of one another. You can't just try to scare people into submission here. Now that you have that gigai, you're going to have to try and fit in, and that means watching how humans act towards one another and trying not to do anything…out of the ordinary until you understand, ok?"
His eyebrows furrowed together slightly. "I assume the human meaning of 'ordinary' is different from the ordinary I know as well."
Orihime struggled to think of a way to define ordinary. "Well, if people try to talk to you, you should, um, actually listen to them and respond, not just sit there soaking it up like you usually do. And if they ask you where you're from, uh…lie. You're supposed to be a foreign exchange student, so they may ask you to speak some Spanish for them and things like that…uh…"
Anyone who knew him well enough could see by the slight frown and unfocused gaze that he was seriously considering what she had said. Really, she considered the amount of thought he was putting into it to be ludicrous, but she sat in tense silence, waiting for a response. He seemed to notice the almost pleading look she was giving him and nodded in understanding.
"I want you to say it," she insisted childishly, her arms folded across her chest.
"I will not threaten to harm your friends or classmates, nor will I attack them unless they initiate the conflict. I will also attempt to learn about human society and conform to their…social guidelines." In reality, a part of him was still completely fascinated with the strange beings called humans. Of course, now he technically was one. It was the ultimate chance to learn about the species, and while the part of him that had enjoyed the power and certainty that came with being an Espada was disgusted with the new form, the part that had led him to reach out to the woman in his last moments had wholeheartedly embraced humanity in all its weakness and fallibility.
Orihime's stomach growled angrily, reminding her that it was lunchtime, after all. She unwrapped her bento, almost hyperaware of Ulquiorra's eyes following her movements, and pulled out her chopsticks. "Itadakimasu!*" she exclaimed, digging into her lunch.
Ulquiorra sat across from her silently. He hadn't spoken since she had started eating. She hadn't really noticed until then how…different he looked as a human. He was no longer the chalky white he used to be, but was still unnaturally pale. His features managed to maintain some of the sharp, inhuman beauty they'd had before, but in the warm autumnal sunlight of Earth, dressed in normal human clothing with no sign of the blue tear streaks that had once trailed across his cheeks, he looked…well…not exactly harmless, but definitely not deadly. Not even really intimidating, from the angle she was looking.
The pure normalcy of the situation threw her a bit. For a moment, she found it impossible to think of Ulquiorra as her former captor and tormentor; she found that it felt like he was a friend, someone she could really trust and rely on.
She realized she had stopped eating, and had been staring at Ulquiorra's face for longer than was really comfortable for either of them. An awkward pause stretched out while Orihime's cheeks slowly grew redder and redder until she resembled an embarrassed lobster.
The silence was broken by Ulquiorra's stomach growling, demanding nutrition. Orihime couldn't help it; she burst out into a mad giggling fit, trying, and failing, to suppress her amusement.
Ulquiorra glared briefly at his stomach before gave Orihime his characteristic flat look. She could tell he was just the tiniest bit irritated. "I fail to see anything funny about the lack of available sustenance."
Orihime, cheeks still red from laughing, handed him the unfinished remainder of her bento. "You can have the rest of this, I'm not really that hungry today." Her stomach chose that moment to speak up. She blushed slightly and looked at the ground.
"You require the nutrition more than me, onna," he said, his voice only holding the barest traces of emotion. The last thing he wanted to do was admit that he had no idea how to use the eating utensils she had offered him; and he had to admit, he was a bit intimidated by the appearance of the food. Even with his limited knowledge of human cuisine, the contents of the onna's bento hardly looked suitable for human consumption. "I'm sure you will not require me to make you eat here."
She smiled a little. Funny how something that once terrified her almost sounded like a misguided attempt at humor coming from the stoic former Espada. She picked at the rest of the food, feeling a bit guilty about eating it when she could still hear Ulquiorra's stomach growling from time to time.
Orihime stole a few glances at him while she ate. He didn't look half bad in the school uniform, even though the beige color clashed a bit with his pasty skin. The blandness of the fabric just made his viridian eyes even more noticeable. If that was even possible.
Ulquiorra suddenly spoke up, causing her train of thought to completely derail. "I cannot see how humans have any time to do anything when these bodies require such constant maintenance." His frown deepened as his stomach growled again, and he remembered the hour long lecture Yoruichi had given him on how to take care of his gigai. She snickered through the whole thing, although he had failed to see anything funny about his situation.
Orihime just laughed. "Well, if you were born a human, you would've grown up with it, and you'd know that even though we spend most of our time eating and sleeping and things like that, we still manage to be very productive." An idea occurred to her. "You must've been human at some point, Ulquiorra. Don't you remember anything about it?"
"Onna, I am a being made up of thousands of souls. I could not possibly keep track of all of their separate memories."
She thought on that for a moment. "But…the more advanced hollows have one soul in charge of all the others, right? And that one soul would be your soul, the one that has your personality. Don't you remember anything from your past?"
For a moment, he actually tried to remember. The look on her face…he couldn't say no to it. He really did try, but a dark haze seemed to hover over the memories; his mind shied away from the pain, instinctively afraid of the dark, and afraid of the uncertainty that came with being human.
His expression went as blank as a sheet of paper, and his voice, when he responded, sounded just as two-dimensional. "Hollows are empty creatures; we recall nothing of our former lives, nor do we recall the moment of our creation."
Orihime's face fell; she knew he was lying. He could tell from the way she was looking at him. But she let it drop.
The school bell rung, signaling the end of her lunch period. Ulquiorra stood and walked back into the building without a word. Orihime wondered for a moment about his strange behavior before realizing that the late bell for her next class had already rung.
…
Ulquiorra walked just behind Orihime, bookbag slung over his shoulder, only halfway listening to the young woman's rambling conversation. He found that he was having a very difficult time remembering anything from the time before he served Aizen, and the idea deeply disturbed him. It was the first time he'd really felt the lack of the memories, and the first time he'd really cared to think about them, but now that he realized they were gone, he felt as if he was missing a fundamental bit of himself. He did not enjoy lacking knowledge in general; lacking knowledge about himself was just that much more irritating.
He could tell that there was a lot of pain surrounding his earlier memories; it made sense. Hollows were born from the agony and despair of human souls that had lost all hope. He found that was very worried about the turmoil the memories might awaken.
Pathetic. Him, Ulquiorra Schiffer, worrying about emotions. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
"You're not even listening, are you?" Orihime said, bringing him back to reality. She was stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, disgruntled passerby giving her irritated looks before going around her. She was pointing out an oddly shaped cloud. "See? Doesn't that cloud look a dragon?"
He looked where she was pointing. After a moment, he recalled what dragons were, and what they looked like, and concluded that the cloud looked nothing like what the onna had described to him. "Onna, that cloud in no way resembles a dragon." He remembered that she seemed to enjoy this game; cloud-gazing. Looking for imaginary shapes in the clouds. Another of her strangely likeable idiosyncrasies. He had never quite gotten the hang of it; he simply couldn't find the fantastical things she saw in the clouds.
She sighed, exasperated. She looked around the sky until she found another suitable cloud. "Look at that one, Ulquiorra." He looked; it was just a cloud, thin and wispy like the infrequent desert clouds of Hueco Mundo. "What do you see?"
"I see a cloud, onna."
"You didn't really look at it," she said, pouting. "I want you to really look at it and then tell me what you see."
Idiotically enough, he found that he really couldn't refuse her, not when she had that look on her face. Normally, such childish actions would simply irritate him, but he found that with her it was…he wasn't sure what it was, really. Far from unpleasant, but not exactly pleasant either. Just…foreign. Sort of…a warmth spreading through his chest.
He sighed quietly, a sigh of defeat and resignation, and really looked at the cloud. It was long and thin…whitish-gray, with a few other clouds nearby. It didn't really look like anything special. The longer he looked, though, the more familiar the shape seemed. It almost seemed to arrange itself, his mind filling in the blank spaces. He seemed to recall seeing something like it in Hueco Mundo…
When he blinked and looked again, he saw…
"…A snake…"
Orihime blinked, then looked at the cloud. She laughed delightedly. "Oh, wow, you're right! I can see the tail, and then that part's the head, and…"
Ulquiorra didn't hear a word she said, too amazed at what had just happened. He hadn't been able to see anything in the clouds before he'd gotten this body. Perhaps it was defective. Or perhaps it was simply a part of becoming human. He found he wasn't sure which it was; he wasn't sure he would ever get used to the uncertainty involved with living in this world.
"Oh, that's right, you're staying with me now!" Orihime chirped happily, as though she had only just remembered. Secretly, she had been looking forward to it since she'd seen Ulquiorra walk into the classroom in a gigai. She pulled out her cell phone and checked the time. The digital display read 4:00. After some quick math, she grabbed Ulquiorra's wrist and began pulling him along as she hurried towards her apartment. "If we don't get home soon, I won't have time to go to the supermarket and buy the ingredients I need for tonight's dinner, and then we'd end up having dinner really late, and then we'd be up really really late doing our homework, and when we woke up the next morning my alarm clock would probably be broken and we'd be a whole half a day late for school, and-"
"Onna," Ulquiorra interrupted quickly. "It is Friday."
Orihime stopped suddenly and if she hadn't been holding his wrist, Ulquiorra didn't doubt he would've run into her. He could practically see the gears turning in her head as she tried to remember what day it was and how many days it had been since Monday. Finally, she laughed brightly. "Oh, wow, you're right! I don't know how you can keep up with the weekdays, they all seem to just blend together for me."
She was still holding his wrist, her grip firm but not tight. Her fingers were warm and her palms were smooth and soft; she had never held a sword. She had never needed to, really, he reasoned. Her friends had always protected her and sheltered her, needlessly in his opinion.
He let his eyes wander to her fingers, long and thin. Her skin tone clashed pleasantly with his; he found the gentle pressure on his wrist to be almost comforting. He could feel his pulse where her fingers touched the bluish vein in his wrist; very faintly, he could feel her heartbeat in the palm of her hand, echoing his. He vaguely wondered what her pulse would feel like in other places and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to trail his fingers along every inch of her skin, just to see if it was all that soft, just to see if he could feel her heart racing beneath his fingertips. He felt something tightening in the pit of his stomach…
Orihime finally noticed that he hadn't moved or spoken, or really done anything. She traced his line of sight to her hand wrapped around his wrist, and she quickly let go, letting her hair fall over her face to hide her blush.
The sudden loss of contact seemed to snap Ulquiorra out of whatever trance he'd been in. As he walked ahead of her, Orihime couldn't help but notice that his posture was unusually rigid, even for him. She sighed, slightly hurt; he hadn't complained when she'd held his hand. Even now, he wasn't complaining, per se. But she could tell he was making a conscious effort to stay ahead of her, trying to avoid conversation and any further contact.
She trailed just behind Ulquiorra all the way back to her apartment, resembling for all the world a lost puppy.
…
Ulquiorra sat in the living room of Orihime's apartment, absentmindedly watching the commercials flashing over the T.V. screen. He was familiar with television, but in Las Noches, the screens hadn't ever been used for recreational purposes. There hadn't been any recreation, really, except for fighting.
However, despite the onna's explanation of the television's purpose, he failed to find any kind of entertainment in the programs being shown.
The onna in question was writing a shopping list, pausing every few minutes as she thought of more things she'd need for the week ahead. Finally she finished the extensive list and stood up, stepping between Ulquiorra and the TV screen, effectively getting his attention. "I'm going to the supermarket. I'll be back in an hour or so, so don't think I've been kidnapped and taken to another dimension or anything, m'k?"
He looked up at her blankly for a few moments before replying. "I fail to see why I cannot just go with you, onna."
"Well…you aren't very inconspicuous…especially not in that uniform. Didn't Urahara give you anything else to wear?"
"No."
"Well, he gave you that bookbag, right?"
"No."
"Then who gave it to you?"
"Yoruichi."
Orihime sighed exasperatedly before going over and searching every pocket of the bookbag. Finally, she found something; a white t-shirt with a local band logo on it, some dark jeans, and a pair of boxers. She blushed slightly as she tossed the last article of clothing in Ulquiorra's general direction. She pointed down the hallway. "Go and change and I'll let you come to the supermarket with me."
He stared at the clothing and then in the direction the onna was pointing, before standing and going into the bathroom to change.
Five minutes later, he came out, fully dressed. Orihime had to admit, dark colors looked much better on him than the pristine white of Las Noches. And that had looked pretty good on him to begin with. She blushed brightly before grabbing some shopping bags and heading out the door, Ulquiorra following close behind her like a silent, watchful shadow.
Yay, shopping trip! ^-^
*Itadakimasu is a saying akin to "Bon appetite". It's generally said at the beginning of a meal. Check me on this, cuz I'm not too sure of it…
Again, I cannot stress this enough, warn me of OOCness! Please. Pretty please. With chocolate syrup and sprinkles and cool whip on top.
Also, be sure to vote on the poll in my profile that I mentioned in that freakishly long author's note waaay back at the beginning of the chapter (that I'm sure maybe 2 of you read XD).
Reviewers get t-shirts for their favorite bands! :D Even if said t-shirts don't exist! And some Japanese caffeinated candy!
So, R&R please! I love hearing from all of you.
~Erisu Koumei