After several questions, ridiculous answers and some arguments later, Ichigo sipped the last of his milkshake before his straw started to suck air. He threw away his plastic cup and stared at Rukia.

"Okay, so it's my turn, right?" Rukia murmured. Ichigo shrugged, leaning back and linking his hands at the back of his head. She looked up at him and put on her thinking face.

"Are we still playing this game?" he asked. Rukia nodded, deep in thought.

"Ichigo..." she said, leaning towards him. Confused, Ichigo leaned towards her too.

"Yeah?"

"When your dad told us to get a drink together and you keep saying 'it's not her'... what did you guys mean by that?" Rukia asked suddenly.

Things fell quiet between the two and Ichigo leaned back on the chair again, looking away. He hadn't expected her to ask that question and he knew he should have been more discreet about it. Rukia bit her lip.

"Right, sorry." She said, sipping her tea and finishing the last drops before standing up. "Well, thanks for the drink but I'll be going now." She smiled. Taken aback, Ichigo reflexively grabbed her wrist and stood up.

"Well I'll walk you home." He said, his scowl coming in to view. Rukia shook her head.

"'S'all right. You don't have to." She said and tugged her wrist free. Ichigo shrugged.

"Like I'm going to listen to a midget." Ichigo snorted and took her wrist again. "Come on, short-stuff, I'm walking you home."

Rukia tried to protest by kicking him and pouncing on him, frankly sick of being nice to him all the time. She literally couldn't stand stubborn gits like him, really. "Let go of me, Ichigo, before I seriously do some damage." She growled and began to kick at him with every step they took. Wincing but still refusing to give in, Ichigo pulled at her wrist more forcefully.

"Let go you giant buffoon!" she said and jabbed his back painfully. Ichigo sighed and released her wrist. "Finally."

"Fine whatever, you win. But we've gotten this far off the main road; it'd be pointless for us to turn back now." He said smugly and Rukia cursed him and his height.

"Whatever." She mumbled and pushed him away. "Well I'm going home. You can choose to follow or go back, entirely up to you." She said.

After a while, Ichigo joined her, hands in pocket and head held up high. Things grew quiet between the two and Rukia didn't even realise it when suddenly Ichigo spoke up.

"Her name was Senna." He said. Rukia looked up, confused.

"Sorry?"

Ichigo scowled. "You should really keep up, midget." He said. "The name of the girl. It's Senna."

"Senna." Rukia tasted the unfamiliar name. "What about her?"

Ichigo kept on walking, hooking his hands in his pocket and blowing out a breath. "A couple of years ago, when I was just entering High school, I dated her." He started. "We met at summer camp and wonders of wonders; she decided to move to Karakura the following year. Senna was... something else, really. She was different and I guess that's why I went for her."

Rukia held up a hand to stop him from continuing. "Ichigo, stop, before you regret telling me all this." She said. "Look, I wasn't miffed about the fact that you went quiet when I asked you about it. It was a harmless question and you did have a choice whether you wanted to answer it or not. Don't feel guilty about it and risk telling me things you don't want me or other people to know so-"

"Can you shut up for once?" Ichigo asked, annoyed. He hadn't meant it to be so harsh but seeing Rukia jolt in surprise at his tone immediately sobered him up. He sighed and raked his hand through his wild mass of orange hair. "Look, Rukia, I really am aware of the fact that we've only just started talking properly over the past week. And in that first week, you told me a little about you that I think you wouldn't have told anyone that you've just recently gotten to know." He said and his mouth twitched. "But the point is; you did. Whether it was... intentional or not, you still told me and now it's my turn to tell you."

Rukia frowned. "Don't think you owe me for it. It'll just make me feel cheap. Look idiot, I told you because I told you, and the reason doesn't get much deeper than that." She said, folding her arms and looking straight ahead.

"I don't take that into consideration. It never even crossed my mind. Like you said, midget," he emphasized. "You told me because you told me. Not because you felt like it, not because you had to but because you did. So the same reason goes for me." He said, shrugging. "So shut up and listen or... don't listen but I'm still going to tell you anyways."

"Why?"

"Because, Rukia," Ichigo sighed, exasperated. "Simply because. You know, if you keep interrupting me, I won't tell you about it anymore; ever." He threatened and Rukia immediately shut up. He blew out a breath. "Senna... was a girl I've gotten to know for the past three years. I've grown to like her, almost love her at one point. But something happened between us last year and well... let's just say she's in a better place."

"Better place?"

"I've had my mom taken away from me in the worst possible way. And after that, it was really hard for me to reach out to people. Senna, although I didn't open up to her completely, eased that burden just a bit. She made me... I dunno, better I guess... in some places in my heart that was lacking." Ichigo said, hooking his thumbs in his pockets. "But last year, I found out that she'd been lying to me. She lied about her whole life. It turned out that all she'd been telling me about herself was a complete lie. I wouldn't want to go into detail about that." He said. "But the bottom thing is that she lied to me and to everyone else. I remembered before you guys came along and joined Ryo, Michiru and Chizuru, she used to hang out with them a lot and she lied to them too."

"But how come we've never seen her around?" Rukia asked, failing to hide her curiosity.

Ichigo shrugged, ruffling his hair. "She was a nobody. That was what she always said. 'I'm a nobody, and I'd like to keep it that way.'"

"But still, I would have seen her around if she had always hung out with those who're... popular." Rukia insisted, trying to recall a girl named Senna in the school.

"Don't bother trying to remember." Ichigo said, recognising that look Rukia had. "Look, there are well over seven thousand students in that school and popularity's just another word. At the end of the day, not everyone in that school will know your name and back then, we were still sophomores so no one really knew us."

Rukia nodded slowly, digesting it in. "So what happened after?"

"As cliché as this'll sound, she really did break my heart. I swore never to let anyone in again after that. I was angry. So angry at the time and almost beat the crap out of that senior bully we had. Remember Kenpachi?"

Rukia nodded and shuddered. She remembered the six-foot one-eyed beast anywhere. He was mean and mean in the worst possible way. "I heard about that." She muttered and Ichigo nodded.

"When word got around, my name skyrocketed for some reason and suddenly everyone wanted to be my friend. But Senna stood in the back, refusing to meet my eye again after that." He said. "Then she went and did something stupid." And Ichigo's voice hitched in his throat. "See, my mind was literally fucked up by all these emotions I was feeling about everything around me that I had just... gave in to popularity and shallow fame and everything. I left her alone. I left her to suffer on her own but at the time, I thought she deserved it." He cleared his throat before moving on. "Then afterwards, she... well she did this really stupid thing and she... jumped."

Rukia's eyes widened in horror. "Jumped?" she gasped. All of a sudden, Rukia wished she hadn't heard this. Her bottom lip was trembling and she wished and really wished she could delete the story Ichigo was telling her.

"It was New Year's celebration. During the holidays and it was about three days to the third anniversary of the first day we met. Senna invented that. She said it was to 'relive the memories of a nobody' meaning herself. She was always like that; just desperate to fit in, to belong. And at the night of the New Year's, she climbed up the top of the highest Karakura cliff just directly behind town and j-jumped." Ichigo said and let out a long, ragged breath.

Rukia exhaled sharply, letting out a breath too, as she hadn't even realised she had been holding. "She... what um.. what... what happened to her, exactly?"

Ichigo shrugged. "Remember when she said that she was just... well, just a nobody? That statement was literally the truth. Because no one knew her. No one. People from our school who used to hang out with her just simply thought she moved. But I had my doubts. So one day I went scouting for her and asked around. Her friends never knew that much about her and after finding out that she'd been lying, they refused to believe anything she'd said and forgot about it." He said. "I asked around town and most of the people never even heard of her. I had a bad feeling. Then one day, a little over three months after, they found her body."

Rukia bit her lip hard. Part of her wished he would stop but another part of her knew that he needed to tell her this. No, that wasn't right. It was just... he needed to tell this. That was it. He had to get it out of him and Rukia could imagine the mixed up feelings he was having now.

"But of course, back then since no one knew her, they couldn't identify who she was, where she was from and frankly, the police bastards didn't want to further the investigation. They said it was just probably some campers from the other side of the town who lost their footing." Ichigo clenched his jaws and his eyes stared up straight ahead, traces of warmth vanishing from his amber jewels. The frosted over and that was all the emotion Rukia would even need to see to comprehend the fact that this piece of history hurt him terribly. She also knew that he felt it was his fault. The death of this Senna girl. He thought it was his fault.

"Ichigo," Rukia said after a moment's silence. "Do you think... do you feel that... all of it... was your fault?"

Surprise flickered in his stony eyes and for a moment his anger wavered. He snorted. "What do you think?" he asked.

"I think it's not." She murmured. "I think you're just beating yourself up for it."

"And you would know." He replied coldly. Rukia formed a small smile on her lips.

"Of course I would. I know the feeling, Ichigo. I know that horrible feeling in the gut when you feel that you've just killed someone you love terribly. Someone you care about. You try to cloud it over, mask the pain by acting as if it never happened. You try to avoid something like it ever happening again by withdrawing yourself from the world; not getting too attached to people, not bothering to entrust your heart to someone and not willing to let them entrust theirs to you. Because at the end of the day, deep inside, you know that if you open up, you're bound to hurt someone so you stay out of it." Rukia said; her voice quiet but loud enough so Ichigo could pick up on every word clearly.

He was shocked beyond comprehension. How did she know? How did she know that feeling? They stopped walking and Rukia rummaged her school bag. She found her passkey and turned to him. Ichigo looked up to the ridiculously huge mansion she was living in and hadn't realised they've been talking for that long.

"Rukia, what did you mean by-"

Rukia pressed her fingers to her own lips and smiled. "I told you. And you told me. So it's my turn again. Someday I'll tell you about my tragic tale too." she winked. "And Ichigo? Don't think about it too much. It doesn't do the brain good. We're only seventeen after all."

Chapter Eleven End.

Sometimes I hate how I make Rukia such a smart-ass. It isn't doing Ichigo some justice, is it? But I promise I'll make him seem smarter in the later chapters.