Pull Down the World
Chapter 6 - Part II - Tea and Sandwiches
A thin trail of steam climbed off the surface of the teacup sitting on the table. Rangiku found herself staring at the pattern of whorls and flowers pained on the delicate porcelain again. In her life, she had never seen anything as elegant as that little cup.
"Drink, girl, before it gets cold." Satoru chuckled to himself. "Way you're staring at it, I'd almost think you'd never seen tea before."
Rangiku reached out carefully and tried to wrap her fingers around the cup. She pulled her hand back with a gasp. The porcelain was thin, and she could feel all the heat of the almost-boiling water that had been used to brew the tea. Satoru chuckled again, and she shot a glare at him. She tried once more, this time pinching the little handle between her thumb and forefinger,lifting the cup off the saucer. It felt heavy, and she had to fight to keep her hand from shaking as she brought the cup to her lips and sipped noisily, trying not to scald her tongue. The tea held a delicious taste of lemon and honey.
Satoru watched as she sipped at the tea, his creased face expressionless over steepled fingers. A thin fringe of white hair clung to the sides of his scalp, and liver spots dotted the top of his head. Rangiku sipped at the tea again, and touched her palm to the cup quickly to see if it was still too hot to hold. It was.
Rangiku found her eyes drifting around the room. Paintings lined the walls, showing a variety of landscapes, some of which were so exotic Rangiku had never seen the like of them. The table at which she sat was large, made from reddish Maplewood and carved around the edges in a simple dovetail pattern. Rangiku had never seen so much finery in one place before. The room had no windows, though, and she had seen no windows in the hallways outside either. Could all this be underground?
"Well, Rangiku, now that you seem to have calmed down, let me ask again. Why is it that you were crashing through the alleyways just outside my... home, here? Perhaps you can find a more convincing answer this time?"
Rangiku gave a sigh and glanced down at Oboyi, who lay curled beside her chair. Oboyi lifted its head and gave her a long look before settling back into its nap. Rangiku had the distinct impression the fox was willing her to speak. She trusted Oboyi's judgment, but...
"I'm from... Ishibana. I don't know if you know that district. It's the 79th district of West Rukongai."
Satoru nodded, his eyes hardening momentarily. "I know of it."
Rangiku was surprised to feel her mouth twitch into a smile, pleased that the man had heard of her district. "Well, I lived there with... my family." Gin was like family, and she did love him. There was no one she would have considered her mother or her father, but her earlier story hadn't strayed all that far from the truth.
"And you said they died, girl. How long ago was this?"
Rangiku paused for a moment, thinking. "I'm not really sure. At least a year ago. Maybe two or three. I haven't... yeah. Maybe two or three years ago."
"Would you like something to eat, girl? You must be hungry, after running like that." Satoru pushed a plate of little sandwiches across the table toward her, and Rangiku realized that she did feel a little hungry. Only a little, but it was the first time she had felt hunger since... Her eyes fell on the fox curled beside the chair again. Since she had met the old man in the wilderness. Since she had met Oboyi.
When Rangiku nodded and took one of the sandwiches, a small smile crept across Satoru's face. "And your family, Rangiku. Were you often hungry in Ishibana?"
"At the beginning, yeah," Rangiku said offhandedly. "But then when-" Rangiku cut off, remembering suddenly what Gin had said to her that night, the last night she had seen him before he died. Something about hunger. The Hunger. There had been a strange sort of emphasis when Gin talked about it. Rangiku didn't know what it might mean, but it could be important. And if it were important, she wasn't sure she wanted this man knowing too much.
"Well eat, child. Eat. You can hardly have tea without sandwiches, can you?" Satoru moved around the hesitance easily. He poured a cup of tea for himself and leaned back in his chair, sipping at it with a look of pleasure. "I suppose you're probably wondering about me, as well. What sort of old codger would... I hesitate to use the word 'abduct', but yes, well, abduct you off the street so unceremoniously?" He smiled a wide, beaming smile and watched Rangiku expectantly.
Rangiku stared into her tea, feeling a blush creep into her cheeks. Satoru laughed again and continued. "Well, what can I tell you, hmm? I'm a scientist. I have certain... talents, which can be very much in demand. Among certain people. There are some, also, who take no great liking to my work. No great liking indeed." Satoru rubbed his chin, rough with stubble, and a mischievous gleam lit his eyes. "Which is of course, my Dear, precisely why you are here with me now. I couldn't have you running about bringing attention down on me, could I? I enjoy my privacy quite a lot, you see."
Rangiku looked up at him again, a frown of confusion turning her mouth. "But... why would someone care about me? Why would I draw attention to you?" She didn't understand. But in the back of her mind, she heard the too-spry voice of the ancient man in the wilderness again. Something has a powerful desire for you, child.
"Why, your reiatsu of course, girl. I told you that. Oh but yes, you don't know what that is, do you? Hmmm... How can I explain?" Satoru glanced around the room, his eyes settling on a tray of fruit sitting on a sideboard next to the table. He stood and retrieved two oranges from the tray, and then brought them back to his seat. Then he reached into the pocket of his shirt and retrieved two small, metal spikes. About the size of knitting needles, Rangiku thought. Satoru stabbed one into each orange and set them on the table, spikes facing upward.
"All right, girl. We'll start at the beginning. Do you know what spirit particles are?" Rangiku shook her head fractionally, and Satoru smiled reassuringly. "Well, spirit particles make up everything in our world. This room we're in, the paintings on the walls, the food we eat. All these things are made up of spirit particles. Even our bodies are made up of spirit particles. Not our souls, though - just our bodies."
Rangiku set her teacup back on the table, listening attentively to Satoru. The old man had slipped into a lecturing tone, something Rangiku wasn't used to. He seemed intently focused on the ideas he was talking about.
"So, everything is spirit particles," he continued, gesturing around the room for emphasis. "Now imagine that these oranges are people. The rinds are their souls. The stuff inside, that's the spirit particles that make up their bodies. Just like you and me - our souls govern and contain the spirit particles that make up our bodies. You with me so far, girl?" Rangiku nodded quickly.
Reaching for one of the oranges, Satoru plucked out the needle. What happened next prompted a gasp from Rangiku. She watched with eyes wide while, just like a balloon, the orange deflated. Its juice fountained a few centimeters into the air, and then began forming into a shifting sphere that grew with each new drop of juice. The orange continued to shrink on itself, first caving and then flattening, as the sphere of juice grew to little smaller than the original orange. "How did you do that!?" Rangiku exclaimed.
"All in good time. All in good time. Now, Rangiku, you told me that sometimes you get hungry. This is what hunger is. When the spirit particles leak out of your body, you weaken. If you lose too many, like this orange, you die. Oh, your soul goes on, gets reborn in the material world, but you can't survive here without these spirit particles. When you eat, you're replenishing the spirit particles your soul governs. You could eat anything, really, and it would work just as well, but I doubt very much that you'd enjoy the taste of rooftiles or bilgewater."
Rangiku shuddered at the thought, yet a different point of the explanation had caught her attention now. "But wait, you're saying all people are like this? But that's not wh-" But that's not what Gin told me, she finished in her head. "But... most people don't get hungry, right?"
"Correct, my dear. Most people have a constant pressure of spirit particles. 'Reiatsu' is what we call it. The pressure of particles within them doesn't increase, doesn't decrease. It's stable. And very, very low. It doesn't take a lot of spirit particles to hold your body together. What the hunger is, is a sign you're out of balance. You're losing spirit particles relative to what you should have. You're leaking." Satoru tapped a finger on the desiccated orange.
"Now, the other side to the equation is this: if you're out of balance, it's for a reason. Usually, it means your soul naturally controls more spirit particles than just what it needs to make a body. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a lot more. So usually, when we talk about reiatsu, we talk about the amount of spirit particles your soul controls above and beyond what is expected for any human soul. For most men and women who have reiatsu - or reiatsu beyond what it takes to create a physical body anyway - this amount is small, and we say they have a small reiatsu. The pressure, the density of particles within them, is small. You on the other hand... You have spirit particles pouring off you in waves. Or you should, anyway. That little fox of yours is acting as some sort of block, I think. At the moment, it's sealing you off so you don't lose any more spirit particles than any other person. As long as it's around, no one can tell what a strong reiatsu you'd normally be broadcasting.
"When you came running by, though, I could feel you moving from three blocks away. Moving right for me, as it happened. I was about ready to abandon this place and get out of the district, until I saw that it was only you. But if I can feel you, then others can too. So it was necessary to bring you here. I do apologize for that, child. It wasn't my attention to scare you. When you started fighting me, though, you didn't leave me with much choice." The old man shrugged his shoulders and gave her a regretful grin.
All this talk of spirit particles and reiatsu had caught Rangiku's interest. She shook her head absently. "Okay. Whatever. I'm fine. Now what happens when you have more spirit particles than you need for your body?"
"Ahhh, that," Satoru said with a smile, "That part is my specialty. Now watch." The old man pulled the needle from the second orange, but this time juice began flowing from the still-floating sphere into the orange. There was far too much liquid in the sphere; the orange should have been swelling, bursting, as it absorbed that extra juice. Instead, it didn't seem to change at all. Finally, the last drop of juice vanished into the hole where the knitting needle had been, and the hole seemed to seal over of its own accord. With a smile, Satoru rolled the orange across the table to her. "There you go, girl. Peel that. Eat it."
Rangiku stared at the orange for a moment, considering. If it was filled with all the juice of that first, now-desiccated orange in addition to its own. It would probably explode the moment she tried to peel it. On the other hand, if it was filled with all that extra juice, it should have exploded long before now. Curiosity getting the better of her, Rangiku reached out and took the orange. She dug her rough fingernails into the rind, peeling it away.
What she found beneath the orange's skin was nothing like what she would have expected. It didn't burst. It didn't even leak. The fruit was still an orange, she was sure, but it looked... refined. The color of the fruit was richer than she had ever seen in an orange before. When she tried to pull off a slice, it felt solid and broke away easily, more like a lump of crystallized candy than a fruit. Putting the slice in her mouth, she found that the taste was enriched just as much, if not more. Rangiku couldn't keep a small moan from escaping her lips as she chewed on what seemed to be a perfect ideal of a slice of orange.
"Reiatsu works like that," Satoru continued. "When the density of spirit particles contained by a soul becomes higher, that soul goes through a refining process. Reiatsu makes your stronger, tougher, and faster. Maybe smarter, too, though I haven't really found a way to test that one. It also... Well, I said spirit particles leak off of people with a strong reiatsu. That can be controlled, as well, in a number of ways. Having a higher density of spirit particles lets you do things most people can't. That bit with the juice from the oranges, that was a very simple trick. You could probably do that yourself, if you knew enough to control the spirit particles flowing off of you."
A strange sensation filled Rangiku, something she had very seldom felt. It was a kind of lightness, a happiness. It took her a few moments to understand that the feeling was excitement. What the old man was talking about, that was part of her. He had said so himself, said she was strong in this reiatsu thing. Rangiku opened her mouth, on the point of asking him to tell her more, but Satoru cut her short.
"So, girl. That answers why I, shall we say, took an interest in you. Now you still haven't told me what you're doing here, so close to Seireitei, wearing clothes that are hardly better than rags and looking more feral than that fox that follows you around everywhere. Or why that fox is following you around in the first place."
Rangiku looked down at her clothes, noticing them again. They seemed so out of place, in this room full of fine things. She felt tears start to well up in her eyes, and fought them down violently. She would not cry, not for something silly like feeling alone and out of place. Rangiku found herself warming up to the man, though - especially after he showed her the first hints to a part of her life she had never before understood. She felt more willing to talk to the man, now. More willing to talk about some things, anyway. Gathering herself, she took a deep breath.
"It was after Gi- ...after my family died. I don't really understand what happened. Something... pulled me, out into the wasteland outside Rukongai. Something was calling for me. I don't remember very well. But I found a man, a very old man. Or, well... he found me, really. And somehow, I don't know... whatever was pulling me out there, he stopped it for me. He stopped me from going any farther into the wastelands. He had two foxes with him, too. Oboyi and... another one. I don't remember the name he gave the other one, though. He had Oboyi bring me back to Rukongai. That was just after when my family died. I've been with Oboyi ever since. But... Oboyi doesn't really like people," somehow, she knew that to be true, "So we always stuck to the empty places. We avoided cities. I still don't know why Oboyi brought me to this one." Rangiku glanced down at the fox, and Oboyi returned her gaze. It looked... exasperated, was the only word Rangiku could think of to describe that expression. Was she missing something?
"Hmmm... Now that is a story. An old man with two foxes, you say? Did he give you a name? No, he wouldn't have, would he..." Satoru scratched his chin thoughtfully and spoke in a low voice, as if for his own ears. "Been a long time since I've heard anything about him, and even then it was never more than rumors. A very, very long time. Hmmm."
Rangiku's eyes widened in surprise. "Do you... do you know him? The old man?"
Satoru came to himself again with a start, apparently surprised Rangiku had heard. "What? Oh, no, girl, of course not. Don't know anything about him. What has me curious though, and maybe you can tell me, have you ever heard of a man named Terada Yusuke? Used to be a friend of mine. Last I heard, he had worked his way down to your 79th District, but that was a few years ago. Haven't heard from him in a while. Any chance you might know of him, girl?"
Rangiku shook her head. "No, I don't think I ever met him. We... my family and I, we didn't live in the district town. We didn't have a lot of contact with anyone, except when we visited the town to sell clothes or buy food, or... Terada Yusuke?" The name felt familiar on Rangiku's lips for some reason, as if she had said it before. But no, she was sure she had never met the man. Why then that sense of remembering?
"Too much to hope for, I suppose," Satoru sighed. "I would have liked to know what happened to him. Some details, anyway. He was a good friend." The old man leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Rangiku waited, her hands folded in her lap. The man must surely have more questions for her. Strangely, she found that she wanted to answer his questions now. At least, as long as she didn't have to talk about Gin. She wanted to know more about the things he had told her, and if that meant telling about her own life, she was willing to make that trade. So she waited, but the questions didn't come. Satoru sat silently, his eyes still closed, his head still turned up toward the ceiling. Rangiku began to fidget with her hands impatiently.
Finally, after what must have been minutes, one of the old man's eyes shot open and fixed her with a stare. "Oh. Yes. You. Well, Rangiku, what shall we do with you? I suppose you should be on your way. I've kept you long enough. Anyone who felt your reiatsu flare in the town should have given up their search by now, which means both you and I are safe. And as long as you're with Oboyi there, you shouldn't have to worry about anyone detecting you again. Just make sure you don't stray far from him. Not unless you learn to control that reiatsu yourself." Satoru placed his hands on the chair arms and pushed himself erect. "Now, if you'll follow me, I'll show you out and you can be back on your way."
"Wa.. wait," Rangiku said breathily. "Are.. are you sure they might not be looking, still? Wouldn't it be safer if I stayed here a little longer?" She still wasn't clear on who 'they' were, or what danger 'they' might pose, but Rangiku found that she didn't want to leave the old man's home. She still had questions, and... This place was finer than any place she had ever known, and the old man seemed so welcoming. Now that she had had a taste of it, she wasn't ready to go back to living in the wilds so soon. Unconsciously, she shot an apologetic glance at Oboyi.
"Oh, no, child. With that fox of yours, they couldn't tell you from a lump of clay anyway. It's perfectly safe. Now come, come. Speaking with you has already disrupted my schedule for the day. I need to get back to my work." Satoru began walking around the table toward her.
"But you still... I mean... But what if something happens to Oboyi, or what if there's some other way they can find me you haven't thought of, or..." She was rambling, she knew, trying to find some excuse to stay. "Maybe you're wrong? And maybe they're waiting for you, or... Maybe they know right where we are now..." Satoru stared at her with a blank expression, and the words continued pouring from her in a torrent. "And I want to know more! You haven't told me anything. You can't send me back out there. You have to teach me about this reiatsu thing. You have to show me how to use it. You said I could, I know you said it. Maybe if I learn how..." Maybe if she learned how to control these spirit particles, she would have something to live for. Something besides the memory of Gin. Tears of frustration began to roll down her cheeks, and she hated herself for them. "You can't send me away, damn you! You can't!"
Satoru regarded her for a few moments, his eyes suddenly cold and hard. "And why should I teach you anything, girl? What have you been besides rude and impertinent? I shared tea with you and you never even thanked me. Would I have that to look forward to, every day? How could you possibly repay me for the effort it would take to train you?"
Scrubbing the tears away fiercely, Rangiku glared at the man. Words sprang from her lips faster than she could think. "I don't care, I'll find a way. There has to be something. You said your work has something to do with these spirit particles, didn't you? I remember that. If I can control them, maybe I can help you with your work. Be some sort of assistant, or something."
"Be my assistant, Rangiku?" Satoru stroked his stubbly chin again. His expression was all sugar and honey again, and a knowing smile split his wide mouth in two. "Why, I thought you'd never ask!"