A Note on China

Four words: Beautiful country, shitty Internet. But I'm back at my home university now, simply awaiting my venture to Kobe. I leave in May. I kept a journal online while I was in China, and will be uploading more photos onto it. It's the direct link on my Profile page, if you want a mini-glimpse of my activities. (It's a Livejournal and my user name is kinodiaries, if you're interested)

A Note on Otakon

I have never been at Otakon before, as I have only gone to little cons in my area. I will be going with some friends, with, of course, a Bleach theme. Yes, it's overdone. (Addition: I am also going to I-Con at Stoney Brook, too. Just got my ticket!)

However, I Googled who I plan on going as, and very few others have attempted it (which makes me a little more than nervous as I am still a novice cosplayer compared to most). My best guy friend and I are going as "arrancar" Aizen and Ulqiorra respectively. If you are planning to go, I would be happy to meet you, however, any Ichigos, Orihimes or Chads will be promptly handed to Yami then thrown into the trash. (If that didn't make sense, read the manga a little more, or watch the subbed anime) We also have a Zaraki, so please be forewarned (he's actually the biggest sweetheart despite his Jidanbo-esque size). (For I-Con, I will still be Ulqiorra, but I'm going with different people. I'm working on my friend's Urahara costume as we speak)

A Note on Divisions

I do not know what division Kurosaki Isshin belonged to while he was Captain. I know it wasn't the First, Eighth, Eleventh, Twelfth, or Thirteenth, for various reasons (read the manga!), so I picked one for him based on the remaining positions. If they do reveal it and I'm wrong, sorry. It's an educated guess, no more. Call it creative license.

Enjoy!

Tenth Moon, Twenty-Sixth Sun, Sixth Year (Wood)

The following occurrence happened too late in the night for me to even consider it as the Day of Water. Unfortunately, it's long and complex, and now that I am back in my duties, my ability to sit down and write pages is more difficult. I'll see how much I can fit in now, and when I got more free time I will try to fill in more details. Let me see how much I can pen now:

I was compelled to stay another night at Urahara's. For some reason, that man who had- thinking retrospectively- so purposefully bumped into me seemed to bother me. For one, the man and the boy looked completely different from one another. Was the child really his son or was there a ruse that fooled me?

Urahara, too, seemed to know far more than he was willing to admit. When I returned to his shop and home that evening, the wheels in my brain had begun to click. The man and his fourteen or fifteen year old son were there. 'Under the pretext of buying some sweets for a party', I overheard, as out of the corner of the doorway I saw the young man throw his father a bag of crab chips and continue the argument they must have had since the time I saw the man drag his son a few hours ago.

I clutched my packages tighter. Walking over, I had stopped to do some shopping for Matsumoto, Ren, and Momo- who should be back within Seirentei by this point. As I saw Urahara's large assistant hand back change and a large bag, he also mumbled something I was half-expecting at this point.

"I hate to do this to you, Kurosaki, but that order of yours that was supposed to be here now can't arrive until around midnight, maybe later."

"Then I'll just have to come back for it then, won't I?"

"But your kids…" So the carrot top was his son. And he had more of them at home, I noted, with the assistant's clear use of a plural.

The lab-coated man turned to his son, "You can watch your sisters tonight, correct? I wouldn't bother you to do this unless it was something as important as it is. Urahara and I…"

Awkward pause. I could tell he was about to lie for whatever excuse he was about to give the teen. "Well, let's just say Urahara and I go way back. A good friend of his helped me start up the clinic we now run, and has some new equipment for me."

Actually, despite the pause, the man said the phrase with such a serious conviction that I actually didn't think he was lying. One thing I've perfected over the last half-century is a good judge of character. Yes, it's not always correct, but it's better than what I can say of the average person. And, while this man certainly was not lying, he just wasn't saying the whole truth- like how long he and Urahara "went back". I saw them turn to leave, so I scrambled up the roof as fast as I could, only to see Yoruichi curled up sunning on the tiles before the sky grew dark. The man, as he turned to leave, looked left and right, then up. He sensed me, I thought, but after feeling satisfied that it must have been his imagination, tugged playfully on his son's arm and walked off.

I jumped off the roof and slid down to enter the main compound, kicking of my sandals as I entered, as well as throwing back to Urahara's assistant the container of Ginkongan. Not that it wasn't useful- it was- however, if I was going to leave my gigai here in cold storage, I had no use for false soul pills when all I was was a soul. Ururu came out from doing whatever it was that she was preoccupied with at the moment and yanked me out. In an instant, my gigai's hand, now loosened by a lack of animation, let go of my gifts, and, with one clean sweep, I snatched them up before they hit the ground, like a well-scripted stunt out of I Love Lucy. As I rubbed a sore spot on my neck, she quietly hauled off the limp body. I could hear cloth being ripped and swishing sounds; she must have been rewrapping it. The girl impressed me greatly, and I wished I could talk with her. But despite her vast stores of knowledge, she thought and acted no more than a child, whereas I looked the part but could not pose as one well. We were identical, her and I, and more so than Ren and me, however, Ren I could talk to whilst her I could not.

I huffed and sat down, fixing the disgruntled mess that was my uniform. I heard a disheartening rip and realized that the green lining of my haori jacket had ripped clean down a seam. I took it off and folded it into a neat pile beside me, then, realizing that the man was going to return, thought better of it and shoved it into one of my packages. Unless he went searching through my things when he returned, he would never know my rank. If I asked Urahara to say nothing, I would simply be another face, a random unseated officer of no consequence.

Said man entered his store moments later, sneezing loudly. He gave me a perplexed look, and simply sat down next to me, removing his hat and putting his face at a comfortable distance to my own. He was close enough for me to actually be able to detail his face- something I could say of so few- but not close enough to impose or intimidate, although the man intimidated me for reasons still unknown. An untapped fountain of knowledge, he was. He was someone I could at least attempt to communicate with, but for him it must feel like what I feel for Ururu.

Silence. He didn't know why I was still here, as I could probably have retrieved my belongings and my phone from his larger assistant and gone home by this point. Thus, I began.

"There's a man coming to your shop this evening. One that can see Hollows. His son has the aura of a shinigami, yet is alive. The man has none, yet, knew what, if not who, I was." I faltered, because I did not know how to ask for what I wanted. It was intruding on private matters, yet the lab-coated man had done the same for me that morning to a lesser degree. If Urahara could be blunt, then so could I. "I want to know what the fuck is going on. I feel like I'm just being toyed with."

Urahara looked oven at me with genuine concern. "How much do you wag your tail for the big dogs?" His face and voice were stern, more so than what I had previously seen.

"Not… not all that much. I receive my assignments, I do my work, and I receive my salary."

Urahara exhaled deeply and scratched the back of his neck. "Tonight, at midnight, come down to the kitchen. Quietly. I do not want you waking up Ururu or Jinta." With a strange change of pace, he turned around and threw me a mock salute of sorts, pushing aside a curtain and returning to a stock room. I had no idea what to make of this situation, so I simply took my leave and bumped into the larger man, who steered me off to dinner.

I spent the rest of the evening napping.

And waiting.

I watched the moon climb higher with baited breath, then plodded slowly down. It was only eleven, I knew, but I was too awake to nap for another half-hour and too bored to sit still. I rummaged through the kitchen slowly, and found something unusual; a jar filled with moderately sized black circles. Upon closer inspection, they were a pair of such circles with something soft and white inside. I sniffed. Sugar and chocolate. Some sort of sweet, I assumed, like the ones that Captain Ukitake always showered me with. The two of us were at least a millennium apart in age, yet he seemed more childish than me. Or, rather, fatherly. I'd gotten used to his occasional drop-in for no reason other than to skip out of work, and he always left Matsumoto a bottle of sake or wine, and me a veritable horde of sugar. Publicly, I threw those sweets out, but Matsumoto knew that the garbage can I dumped them in was used for nothing other than candy storage, and I'm almost positive Captain Ukitake did too, because over the past fifteen years of me as Captain, he got better and better at giving me the kinds of sweets I preferred- dark chocolate, sugar-laced rice cakes, dried pineapple, and gummies. He quickly stopped giving me any licorice, white chocolate, mint, or candied ginger- those things I really did trash on sight… or, in the case of the latter, hid in Matsumoto's cupboard until she realized I'd left it (she, however, still had the last laugh, as the stench hung in the entire office for weeks).

I took a final look at the circle-sandwich, and, was about to bite, when I was interrupted by a gruff voice.

"Seems like someone has a sweet tooth." Urahara. It figured that I would get caught with my pants down. There was no pint in denying that I was stealing his food.

"Quite." I kept my answer simple.

"Can't stand anything with sugar myself; it's Ururu who runs through those things. Take some; we sell candy in the store. And you returned about half the yen I gave you anyway, so don't go worrying about it."

I took the whole jar and plunked it down on the table and sat, Urahara did the same. I bit a corner of the snack then gobbled the rest of it down, and sat munching. It was too quiet.

"I have quite a few friends in Soul Society," he started. I stopped, my hand halfway to the jar for another treat. Urahara was about to tell me something important; there would be no way for me to go and ruin it. "A few of those Captains have been around for quite some time. One of them was a man I knew well; he told me that in life he had always been ill, but always wanted children. A son. His wife could not produce, and upon reflection, he thought he was sterile. His body was so used to being incapacitated that even his spirit was sick. Tuberculosis, I believe. About fifteen years ago, he found an upstart young boy-captain who had both the arrogance and compassion to remind him of himself."

"Hm," I said, finally speaking. "I think I know this child. Is he short, with green eyes?"

"Yes."

"Did he tell you… if that boy made a good son?"

"He said- and I'm quoting him, mind you- that the boy was the best asshole a father could ask for. Considering how much you know about this little sweet-toothed snot-nosed brat, I'm letting you stay to hear this. Now come, my guest is here."

I followed.

The man from before, still in his lab coat, scratched at his right eye ad cracked his neck as Urahara let him in. "Too late for this," he groaned.

"Well, deliveries from Soul Society don't come until around ten PM their time, so we still have close to a half hour before it arrives. Meanwhile, Kurosaki Isshin, I'd like to introduce you to another customer of mine. Hitsugaya?" Both men turned to me.

"Hitsugaya Aki," I said, bowing. It was strange that now gender was simply a matter of convenience. "I work in the Tenth Division." Kurosaki looked slightly taken aback.

"Tenth? Usually they send the Thirteenth to handle routine Hollow exterminations."

"You saw me. I was off-duty and just happened to be in the area. Can't remember the last time I had to slay a Hollow either. And, anyway, considering the amour of information you know, are you a Shinigami yourself?" The room grew silent. I hit a nerve between the two of them, and I did it deliberately. That statement wasn't aimed just at the man picking up his delivery, either. While I was walking around that afternoon, I had racked my brain for the name Urahara. Something had been shaken loose in my head, and I couldn't quite place it, not until I heard the name Kurosaki just a moment ago. Kurosaki. I'm surprised I did not recognize the man sooner. But nineteen years can change a lot, and seeing the man outside of the robes I was so accustomed to, and with a child, threw me off.

That man was Kurosaki Isshin, the former Captain of the Tenth Division. The man I previously worked under. The man that Urahara said… wait, let me flip back a few pages here, "I knew the previous Captain of your division, and I hate to say this, but there are very few men out there I can't tolerate. He was one of them. So if I treat you in any way that is disrespectful, I apologize in advance."

Sneaky bastard. Urahara was someone I still could not place, but considering that he had such extensive mechanical knowledge, he may well have been a high-ranking Twelfth Division officer, even retired captain. But one thing I knew for sure- Captain Kurosaki was going to get a piece of my mind.

I raised an eyebrow. "So you don't even recognize a former subordinate?"

"Hitsugaya… Hitsugaya Toushirou?" His eyes grew wide as saucers and I could see I had seriously taken him off-guard. "What were you doing in a girl gigai… what are you doing as a girl now?" The poor man was clearly confused.

"Sit," I said, and fearing I sounded too commanding, I hastily added, "please."

The two men sat, and I rummaged through my things I had at the door, finding the ripped haori. I rolled it up in a ball and tossed it behind me; Kurosaki caught it.

"Is this… yours?"

"Yes," I said quite flatly. "I'm your replacement, once you disappeared nineteen years ago, they had one heck of a time finding a new Captain. I was still only the tenth seat, and I was in little mood to make a fuss."

"I'd been seeing this most wonderful woman Masaki in the human realm two years, when suddenly your reiatsu spiked. You achieved Bankai."

"Yes."

"When that occurred, I decided that I would leave. I knew you were capable, but would never have gotten yourself promoted without being pushed. You should have been a Vice-Captain upon graduation. You didn't want to put yourself in the spotlight."

"True."

"Hitsugaya, this is your former captain speaking. Don't go giving me one-word answers, do you hear me?"

"Yes, sir!"

"I was in love, and I left. If you weren't going to step up to the job, I left a note for Captain Aizen and Vice-Captain Hinamori to go find you at Yuyuan on a Wednesday."

"I trained in that park on my day off. So that's how I was spotted. You!"

"Me." I froze in disbelief. I wasn't angry, just… surprised. I hardly saw Captain Kurosaki past the piles of work at my own desk, both literally and figuratively.

A clang on the door's bell. I jumped out of sight and Urahara slid the door open to reveal a shaking shinigami holding a package as far away from her body as she could. Urahara took it from her and she scampered off like a scared rodent.

I've run out of time. I'll have to finish this later…