"So, you just ran away from her?"

Ishida glanced over from his shadow beside the foot of a tree to Ichigo, who was unattentively swinging a large stick from the ground in the air like a baseball bat.

Uryuu sighed lightly as the sound of a bullet train passed a few miles away. "So, I did."

Ichigo gave the branch one last powerful swing, making it fly out into the distance. As he watched it bounce onto the ground far away, he smirked. "A burning in the chest, eh? So this is turning out to be a sappy love story, huh?"

"I told you it would," Uryuu replied, rolling his eyes. "And did you complain? No. So, shut up and let me get to the actual good parts."

My running had become a slow limp. That's right, Kurosaki, coodinated me had taken too large of a step and too sharp of a turn and barely twisted my ankle to the point of any pressure to it causing me almost unbearable physical pain. I wasn't too far from my place, but still, the "shortcut" I had taken gave me a few miles to retrace. Exhausted, my eyes went towards the sky, darkening to a dull reddish hue that quickly faded to a deep dark blue to the east. The faint glimmer of stars refreshed me ever so slightly, so I continued on my way, my hand feeling the wall beside me that helped me keep my balance.

I didn't notice, but my neck was lowering my head to the ground, and my glasses slipped off from behind my ears and down to the hard cement. A light clink, but I knew that glasses of any sort, whatsoever, making any fall from a a point at any height to a solid object, such as the ground, in this instance, is not good at all.

Not to mention, the time was gradually delaying my reactions.

After the light clink was a loud, thick crunch.

I froze. Time seemed to be at a standstill.

This was the first time I had broke my glasses. Through all the hollows, rough or weak, big and small, countless sparring with my Master, and bullies with raging hormones, not once had I ever had my glasses scratched, smudged, cracked, dropped, or stepped on.

"… You're such a big dork."

"SHUT UP."

Quickly, I got down and began to pick up the mangled metal that framed what was left of the glass and stared at it impatiently, thinking that I was in some strange dreamworld and this was all just my imagination overcoming me. Maybe I'd wake up in a second or two. No use...

I got up slowly and began to walk the rest of the way, even slower than I was moments before, feeling strange with only air in front of my eyes and a pocket filled with shards and twisted metal.

Ichigo slanted his brow at Uryuu. "Wait, you can still see without those glasses?"

Uryuu blinked. "Yes, I can."

"Then why the heck do you wear them all the time? You could always get contacts or something."

An awkward pause consumed about two minutes, but was interrupted my a brief murmur from Ishida.

"... I guess...," Uryuu began, pushing one side of his glasses up, "... they're sort of like a safety blanket to me… like ones that children have. I can't go anywhere without them."

"Huh...," Ichigo sighed, trailing off a little. "... So, what happened next? Did you two kiss and make up?"

Ishida scoffed. "Very funny, but no." Quietly, he brought his hand to his nose to push up his glasses yet again, but he paused. "She caught up to me somehow, and was waiting for me at my house by the door."

The first thing she noticed was that my glasses weren't on.

"What happened to your-" she started, walking over to me, but I cut in, pulling out the frame.

"It's right here..."

She stared, then grabbed my hand and dragged me inside.

"I don't know why, but she insisted the both of is glue it all back together since I had literally gone a picked up every single piece of broken glass with my bare fingers." Uryuu chuckled. "I told her it was pointless, being that it was rather silly and that I had no glue in my home, but she still continued, finding a tape dispenser that happened to be laying around the house."

Ichigo grinned a little, about to make a smart comment, but he remained quiet and waited for Uryuu to finish.

But Uryuu seemed expectant of a clever statement from him, like he wanted it. Still, he continued after taking a short breath.

"So," Koyuki smiled lightly as she started to clean up my hands, cut from all the sharp broken glass pieces I picked up earlier, after she taped together my glasses. "From the way you reacted, I'm guessing you do know about them."

I blinked. "Quincies, you mean..."

She nodded, her hair falling over her eyes, but her smile still visible.

"But how do you know about their existance, Miss Harihana?" I asked her, narrowing my eyes suspiciously.

"I am one."

When she said that, I glared, about to pull away from her. "You can't be! The last surviving Quincy was killed by Hollows!"

Suddenly, she looked up at me, a slight frown on her face.

"But you were his apprentice, weren't you?"

I stared back, but quickly bowed my head. "Preposterous...," I muttered.

At the time, I was in denial of my own self. After what had happened to my master, I denied any relationship to him or Quincies in fear of what the Soul Reapers would do if they found me, while eliminating Hollows behind their backs. But I wasn't about to tell this girl I met from school about such a thing.

"How could you ever associate me with-"

"I saw you the other day."

I watched her with wide eyes as she carefully placed my hand at my side.

"You didn't cleanse that hollow like a Soul Reaper would. You just quickly exterminated it, then went on your way like nothing happened."

So my cover was blown. Oh well.

I sighed, bringing my hand up to my face, then felt nothing on my nose, and frowned. "... So you saw. I guess it was useless for me to lie about it..."

Koyuki blinked, a look of concern in her eyes. "But why do you lie about it?"

"I explained to her about that and she didn't seem very moved. She told me that doing that was cold and it was as if I were giving up."

Ichigo glance behind him, only to see Uryuu's shoulder. The two of them were sitting at the foot of a tree, each of them on opposite sides, as Uryuu went on.

"Then, what?" Ichigo said quietly, a little hesitant.

Ishida looked down at his hands, examining the small scars in his fingertips. "Then... then, she left."

Pausing, Ichigo folded his arms and scowled, but didn't say anything. He wasn't to interrupt if Uryuu wasn't finished, again.

"... When she did, I thought about what she said before she left."

"You know... those glasses make you look smart... but without them, you seem kinder."

Ichigo heard a light shuffle behind him and turned around to see Uryuu taking off his glasses.

"Hey, what are you do-"

"The next day, she didn't come to school. I knew why, too. A Soul Reaper came and took her life. I saw it happen. It was like my Master all over again. I didn't do anything but hide.

"I thought about what she said... that lying about it was like I was giving up. I knew I wasn't about to give up, but when I was thinking, I realised that she was right. Since then, I've slightly open about myself being a Quincy. And whenever I do remember what she said, my glasses come off and I let myself drown in the endless blue sky, knowing she's up there..."

"In the Soul Society, you mean?" Ichigo blinked.

Uryuu nodded once. "Right..."

The two were silent as Ishida just gazed into the distance.

"... Well," Ichigo sighed, getting to his feet and stretching. "That was a... so-so story. Maybe you could work on it or something to make it less boring like all your other stories."

Uryuu didn't flinch. He probably would have thrown his shoe at Ichigo's head, normally, but he didn't.

"Thank you, Kurosaki... for listening."

Ichigo blinked, surprised, then glanced down to Uryuu, who was still looking at the sky.

"It's getting late, you know..."

Silence.

"... That Koyuki chick was right about that glasses thing."

Uryuu shut his eyes.

Quietly, Kurosaki Ichigo shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away.

As Ichigo reached his home, he read the large sign out front in his head. A breeze whistled in his ear as he glanced back in the direction of where he left Ishida Uryuu under that tree.

"Crazy story...," he muttered, then glanced down at his bag. "Oh yeah... I have to get Dad to sign some-wait a sec," Ichigo paused as he looked at his hand inside of a bag that didn't belong to him. "Ah, crap. I must've taken Uryuu's by mistake..."

About to close the bag before he messed anything up, something caught his eye. A light glare in his eyes from something reflecting the sun inside of the bag. Cautiously, he reached back in and picked up a strange pair of distorted glasses, covered entirely by clear tape.