This is the end. Enjoy this ending chapter! I like to thank all of my reviewers who stuck till the end of this long, long story. I may have delayed many updates for this story, but I'm glad I got to finish it all up in the end. I'm planning on more stories that might involve our little captain and our main OC. One involves a crossover and another may be for an IchiRuki story. I'm still debating... Or I may write for another fandom. I'm still in the decision phase.

Enjoy this nice chapter! And my usual title banters with ff are not the case for this chapter.

"Nice gigai. Another one of Matsumoto-fukutaicho's creations?" Naori pointed out once Hitsugaya walked over to meet her. She was sitting at the edge of her seat on the bench while waiting for her captain. The bench was located on the outskirts of the park, conveniently right in front of the shops.

He really looked like a punk. A little kid punk. His gigai was specially outfitted with a black shirt with tight dark blue jeans. If that wasn't dark enough, he had a black belt looped around his pants and a black wristband to finish it off. Black, black, and more black. With an outfit like that, no wonder people in Karakura Town thought that kids with weirdly colored hair were automatically delinquents.

"At least your gigai looks better than your usual outfits." Hitsugaya smartly remarked back.

A twitch of annoyance reached Naori's eyes and she frowned at him. On Matsumoto's insistence, she grudgingly shoved her own gigai into a pair of shorts and two layers of tank tops. That took her a whole ten minutes! What a waste of time! She still wondered why Matsumoto wanted their gigai's to be perfectly presentable when they were stashing them away for an unspecified amount of time.

"That aside… She's in there?" Hitsugaya quickly said, effectively changing their subject of their usual banters.

Naori nodded. "I just saw her walk into that shop."

"Good. Go in and speak with her directly." He quickly ordered.

"What." A dull response replied with the girl tilting her head in confusion. "Is this your last check-up? I assure you that all of her memories are gone."

Hitsugaya simply shrugged. "It can't hurt to double check. Remember, this girl had five captain's worth of spiritual energy sitting in her body."

"Why me? If you wanted to double check, do it yourself." Naori snapped back.

"I'm your captain! That's why!" He equally snapped back. They were going back to their usual arguments again. "Besides…" He sighed and leaned back into a relaxed form. "You spent less time with her. I might trigger something if I went."

Naori stared at him with intent for a while. But she eventually dismissed everything and went along with his orders. She was a member of his division and she had to follow orders. She left his side, crossed the street, and entered into the café.

For a while, Hitsugaya was eventually growing bored since Naori was taking her sweet time. This must have been her secret payback because of yesterday. So to waste time, he decided to do some spiritual pressure monitoring on his cell phone, even if there wasn't really anything to monitor. Naori had already taken care of everything. But that killed off a good five minutes.

But out of the corner of his eye, he could feel someone's gaze on him. Usually, it would be someone staring at his hair, but this feeling was different. It felt familiar. It felt like her. Amui Shizumiya. Hitsugaya quickly glanced up from his phone and instantly, his turquoise eyes immediately was locked with her dark brown eyes. He didn't know why she was staring at him. Did she suddenly remember something? Did she feel something memorable once she looked at him? He didn't know, but she was staring at him as if analyzing each and every movement. It was like she was trying to recall something from him. Their far gaze at each other suddenly broke off once Amui's attention diverted elsewhere.

About time…

He patiently waited for Naori to finish talking. It seemed so unusual for that blue-haired shinigami to be acting so friendly with Amui when she had wanted to kill her half the time. Amui was pretty passive and cordial when she was talking with Naori. She may have never known what history she and that stranger actually had. Suddenly, he saw Naori give a respective bow and quickly leave the café, crossing the street to meet up with him.

"How'd it go?" Hitsugaya asked once Naori was close enough.

"She remembers nothing." Naori reported.

"Absolutely nothing?"

"Nothing." Naori curiously stared at her captain. "Do you want her to remember?"

"No." He immediately responded as if taking offence to her comment.

"Really? You think I didn't catch that staring contest?" Naori stated with her eyebrows perched up in questioning.

'Now why would she be that observant?' He wondered.

Naori sighed and sat down next to him, in her previous spot before she had to go and make that check up. Her amber eyes replaced Amui's dark brown eyes as she was attempting to interrogate her own captain. So, was this the correct time to ask him? They were about to leave anyways so it wouldn't matter.

"Hitsugaya-taicho…" Naori said with a pause, peaking Hitsugaya's interest. "Do you like her?"

At that time, he really wanted to choke her.

"Hibana Naori! What the hell-" Hitsugaya tried to yell at her, but his mouth couldn't form the correct words.

"Do you like her? Or better properly phrased, do you love her? You know, like Ichigo and Rukia?" Naori innocently repeated.

"No! Absolutely not! Never! Why the hell would you think that?" Hitsugaya managed to spit out. His cheeks were clearly burning red.

"You've gotten pretty close to that human girl? You've gone on plenty of dates. You fight for her. You worry about her…" Naori began listing all those times he and Amui were in the same vicinity together.

"First of all, that girl is unbelievably clingy. Second, I made a deal with her because I needed information for our mission. Third, I merely felt sympathetic for her on the whim. Nothing more. Nothing less." He ranted out on her. Yeah, he was still furious that she even brought it up.

"Why are you overreacting now? You seemed so calm about it the last time I asked you." Naori retorted back.

"When was that?"

"When I came back here." Naori quickly answered. "You said that you have no intention of that. You weren't going to fall in love with that entity girl because it was against Soul Society's policies. You said your duties as a captain came first!"

"That…" Hitsugaya blinked as the girl was glaring at him. "That…I thought you were talking about my alliance with Shizumiya. I did break protocol for not erasing her memories properly and allying myself with a random human. But I had no other choices to solve this problem. And yes, my duties as a captain were always my top priority."

"Wait…so you mean…" Naori repeated mindlessly to herself, as her cheeks turned bright red just like Hitsugaya's a minute ago. That was the dumbest move she ever made. Ever. She was right about Amui tricking herself into falling in love with him and thinking that he loved her back just the same. But unknowingly, Naori tricked herself into thinking the same thing. That was unbelievably stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She really wanted to punch herself right now.

"By the way, why did you ask that in the first place?" Hitsugaya smartly questioned, watching her cheeks glow a brighter shade of red.

"That-That's beside the point!" Naori stammered. "Why didn't you just tell me in the first place?"

"I assumed you already knew." Hitsugaya simply replied with a shrug. "Come on. We've been together for many, many years now. You would at least know how to read your captain's actions."

"You jerk…" Naori mumbled as she glared back at him. "Do you know how much of a emotional roller coaster this was?"

Her amber eyes were glistening now, probably from angry tears or something like that. She was such a crybaby. In fact, he already had a perfect nickname picked out for her: Crybaby. Out of all the names he could think of, weak, useless, bipolar, crazy, under-dressed, "crybaby" seemed to fit Naori the best. It sort of developed during this mission whenever he thought of her. Mostly because she sort have reverted back into calling him his old nickname. This time, he didn't want to place any bet or competition with her. He remembered what happened last time. So whenever Naori called him "Hitsu-kun", he would just call her a crybaby. Pretty simple. Just like him and Hinamori's nicknames with each other.

But if she ever asked for his reactions every time she cried…then he would be really stuck. Like now…

"Look…" Hitsugaya said, quickly quieting down the furious girl. "Sorry I caused you to feel that way. You were in pain because of me…sorry." He wiped away a tear that was streaming down her rosy cheek, greatly shocking Naori to no ends.

The greatly embarrassed girl pushed his hand away from her face as she turned around, trying to lose all that color from her face. He just watched her, finding it amusing and peculiar on how flustered his subordinate was acting currently. It was so unlike the Naori he was used to. The Naori he knew was composed, calm, and nearly unreadable like a robot. Here, when she was acting like this, he could read her like an open book. It was sometimes a relief for him whenever she acted so out of her usual character.

Or maybe, he just liked messing with her…

"Stop crying about it. Crybaby."

What did he just call her? Naori glanced up at him with confusion with all the blushing effectively gone. Did he just call her a crybaby? But she didn't even cry…that much. "What did you call me?" She said with a deadly tone in her light voice.

"A crybaby." He smirked. "It fits you."

"I can't believe my own captain is calling me such names!" Naori exasperatedly said.

"You did that to me the first time we met."

"I was young. I was immature. What could I do?"

"Shut up?"

"I-I…" Naori tried to say something, but her voice made it seem like she changed her mind. She merely turned away and refused to look at him any longer. "I-I'm sorry Hitsugaya-taicho. I didn't think you were going to be so sensitive about your name and title."

"Whatever. That happened in the past. Like what I apologized to you about, that happened in the past. We both shouldn't be moping about it now." Hitsugaya passively responded back, effectively putting her at ease. At times like this, she was playable at his hands. He liked that.

"Hey…Hitsugaya-taicho…" Naori hesitantly asked. "I'm going to get a lot of paperwork for this, aren't I?"

"Yeah."

"As always, a big jerk when it comes to punishing people." Naori groaned in a mumble.

"But I'll help you till you finish. Does that seem fair?" He offered for her.

"A little…" Naori quietly admitted to herself, not noticing her captain leaving her side. "Hey! Hitsugaya-taicho!"

"Let's go home. Back to Soul Society." He simply said, grabbing hold of her hand once she got near him and leading her away into the crowds ahead of them.

Naori didn't protest. She just followed him. Almost like it was a direct order. She was his subordinate and he was her captain. A plain and simple working relationship. She always thought of it that way…their relationship with each other. That would never change. Though she didn't mind.

She never did.

"Hey Shizu-chan!" A loud voice rang inside of Amui's ears through her phone. "Where are you?"

"I'm sitting near the window. Can you see me?" Amui replied, glancing out the window. She had really just been sitting there for about five minutes after the cute couple left.

"Oh wait I can!" Her friend replied and suddenly slid into the seat across from her. "So…how was school without me?"

"Boring."

"Aw! What did you do?"

"The same old. I think I almost pulled an all-nighter yesterday watching TV." Amui replied, sighing as she shook her head. "How was your trip to Paris?"

"Amazing! I'll tell you all about it…" Her friend replied with a glint in her eye. "When we go to visit our school! I really need to do some catch up work! Those torturers (teachers) must hate me now!"

"School? On a weekend?" Amui questioned.

But she was already yanked out of her chair, out of the café, across the street, and hitting the sidewalk with her friend. They walked straight for about ten minutes before turning at the curb and heading straight towards the school. The entire time, they were simply talking. Her lively friend spoke greatly of her adventures in Paris, exclaiming how exquisite everything looked. Amui simply nodded and let her friend talk and talk and talk. Eventually, her friend's motor mouth caused her to wander off away from the conversation. Her attention focused on a nice set of trees lined up on the street across from her, effectively causing the girl to not know where she was going.

All in that instance, something hit her in the shoulder and she tumbled into the ground.

"Shizu-chan! Are you okay?" Her worried friend cried.

Amui couldn't hear her friend at all. At that moment, she didn't even acknowledge her friend's presence. Because in front of her was that boy, the same boy that she was gazing at back at the café. Everything she saw from that window matched up with this boy. The white hair, the dark clothes, and even the cell phone matched.

He held out his hand and she took it to help herself up. Why did his hand feel so familiar? She quickly said her apologies and he shrugged, probably his way of accepting that apology. Everything went by so fast because before Amui knew it, he was mysteriously gone. That familiar feeling was gone. His very presence disappeared. He didn't even speak a single word to her. All those hopes she had that she was maybe forgetting someone and her speculations that it was him…gone.

"Damn…he's a hottie! You think you have a chance?" Her excited friend squealed.

"Me? Uh…no?" Amui stalled.

"I don't know. He just might be into you!" Her friend squealed again. "But he's definitely my type!"

"Don't get your hopes up. I think he has a girlfriend." Amui quickly said once she noticed the same girl, who asked for directions, run up to him.

"Really now? You may never know until you're sure…"

"I think I'm positive on this one." Amui confirmed. "Besides, I don't think I'll be a good couple with him."

"Fine, fine." Her friend grumbled, but a twinkle was still in her eye. "But think about it!"

"Shut up!" Amui exasperatedly groaned. "This conversation is all over now!"

Fin

Thus with this...it's the end of my story. I hope you guys enjoyed the ups and downs of this story. Your aggravation with Amui, your horror at the sight of crazy Naori, and your giddiness of when I shipped Hitsugaya and Naori together. I'm proud that I was able to finish this long story and I'm glad you reviewers took the time to read and review. It was a great pleasure! Thank you forever!

Thank you, everyone, for enjoying this story! KyraX signing out!