"Ichigo?"
Ichigo looked up at the most beautiful woman in the world, and then at the slim hand she'd offered to him.
"Don't just sit there, silly boy!" she laughed, and seized his trembling fingers, hauling him up and dusting him off. He snuffled a little as she tousled his hair and slapped at his dusty hood. "You're all wet!" she cried over his head, but he'd buried his face in her stomach and held her so tightly he could barely hear her.
"What's gotten into you, all of a sudden?!"
He felt warm arms snake back around him and felt the point of her chin dig into his scalp as she roughly ground it into his head. He cried, muffled by her shirt, and slapped at her, and this pleased her so immensely she swung him up and onto her shoulders. "Alright!" she declared. "If you won't move, mama will just have to carry you!"
His fingers tightened in her burnt orange hair, so similar to his own, and breathed in the scent of home.
"Ichigo…?"
Her worried eyes had turned to him. "Are you alright?"
"'m fine." he mumbled. Her hand came up, and—
"Mrow."
The cat brought the little thoughts that kept him abed to an end.
Ichigo didn't wake, the first time. He rolled about, clinging to the shreds of a dream. He breathed slowly, in and out, and attempted to release his hold on wakefulness, and very nearly succeeded.
"Mrowwww."
This time, he blinked awake. It was a slow, and uncertain wakefulness. He sat up slightly, panting as though he'd sprinted to wakefulness, working himself up onto his elbows as he looked around. The source wasn't hard to find. In the moonlight, a pitch black cat sat on his desk, tail swishing, and licking its paw. Behind it, his window creaked in an unseen breeze, half open. A gibbous moon was visible through the parted blinds, and it made the cat's fur appear almost reddish in shade.
Ichigo sat up abruptly, awareness coming to him in a rush. "Cat!" he gasped.
The cat looked at him like he was an idiot. He flushed and tried to hurl his blankets aside, but his feet were all tangled up, and he ended up rolling off instead as he struggled with the sheets.
He landed on his side, breath exploding out of him, feet still half-on the bed and tangled up.
"Mrow." The tip of the satin tail flicked at him, and with a sharp flick, upended his pencil case, sending metal and wood shavings scattering over his workspace. Something metallic hit the floor and bounced, clattering noisily as it slid under his desk.
Gritting his teeth, he kicked his feet free and stood up. His eyes felt wide, wider than usual, and he realized he was baring his teeth.
"You've been following me," he accused the cat. The cat blinked at him, and turned, leaping to the windowsill beside him. He watched, unable to move, as the cat turned to him with a casual disdain—"Mrow"—and leapt out. The long tail was the last to go, and as soon as it vanished over the edge he felt himself able to move again. He let out a long breath and rushed to the window, where he watched the lithe form slink away down his eaves.
Ichigo suddenly felt a reckless rage take hold of him. Was it borne of the dream that was even now vanishing into motes of wistfulness and joy? The wild will to act seized him and before he knew it, he'd thrown the window wide open, and hopped onto it. His chest expanded like a bellows and it felt like the street below receded to a faraway crack in the horizon.
The cat turned, eyes wider than headlights as Ichigo made the leap down and landed right behind the damn animal.
He landed roughly on his hands and knees, and felt them painfully scrape against the tiles. Something cracked beneath him, but the roof held, and he slowly rose up onto his feet. It felt like someone had seized his rational mind and yanked it backwards, and held it tight to the back of his skull. He could feel it's pressure, but his mind was moving far ahead of it. "What now?" he asked the cat, fingers flexing at his side. "Where to now, eh?"
It turned, and bolted, and Ichigo (gingerly, gingerly) sprinted after it. The neighbors roof was a few feet higher than his, but the cat made the leap easily in three bounds, bouncing off an exposed pipe and up onto the railing. It turned back to him, flicking it's tail as though asking what now?
Ichigo sped up the second he was sure he wasn't over the twins' room, pumping his arm for the few steps of room he had and leaping.
He seized the edge by the tips of his fingers, and his body slammed into the wall. The rebound slid him back for a heart-stopping second, before he slipped his second hand onto the roof and pulled himself up. As soon as his head cleared the edge, he saw the cat right in front of him. It had eyes larger than a cat's should be, he realized. They were massive, and golden, and expanded all the way out.
"Nyeh!" he said to the cat, and it erupted back into motion. Ichigo swore and hurriedly pulled himself up to give chase. The next house was too far, and the rain tiles sloped precariously, so when the cat made the leap, Ichigo decided to play it smarter, and jumped down to the property wall, and then to the street. His knees nearly buckled as all his weight went on them, but then he was off like a shot, following the cat from below. Waiting for it to slip, or slow, or get stuck.
But it moved like liquid, with none of the hesitation he'd expected from a stray. House to house, off pipes and walls and chimneys, sliding down gutters; Ichigo nearly stopped from admiration as the liquid form blurred across the rooftops.
He slowed to a run, and then to a walk, a stitch in his side throbbing as he watched the cat continue moving full-tilt down the street, house to house to house, before vanishing into the blackness.
"Damn."
"Ichi-nii!" Yuzu cried from down the hall, "Can I borrow that beach ball you—" She cut off with a shriek, as she walked past his room just in time to see him ram the tip of his scissors into its pliant body, and roughly peel back its plastic flesh. Wordlessly, she clutched at the doorway, feeling faint.
It took Ichigo a minute to notice, before his back prickled and his eyes began trailing across the room, seeking the source, passing over Yuzu—before darting back.
"Hey."
Yuzu made a questioning noise with her mouth, eyes still fixed on the scissors.
"Cat-trap," Ichigo grunted, blank faced. "Gotta build a better cat-trap. I need more of them."
Yuzu squeaked as the scissors cut smoothly through the plastic, clutching tighter to the doorframe. "Cheap junk," Ichigo muttered, eyeing the wobbly hemispheres he'd been left with. He turned one over and measured the diameter while folding the curling edge he'd cut over some wooden chopsticks he'd taken from the Oden man down the road. They pierced the plastic deeply, "I'll need more glue…" Ichigo squinted at the fine print on the tape measure he stretched out over it. More spokes, more support, more layers. See how the cat liked clawing through vinyl. Cats hated that, he was pretty sure.
God, he was so tired.
"Ichi-nii…"
Ichigo blinked and flinched away as a cool hand placed itself on his forehead. Yuzu's worried face appeared at his side, worrying her bottom lip. "You dozed off," she said softly, "Are you feeling alright?"
"I'm fine," he said shortly, and winced at her stricken expression. "I'm just tired," he added. He saw her eyes dancing over his face, and quickly reached up to work some grit out of the corner of his eye.
"You're making a cat-trap out of a beach ball…"
The hand holding a slim bottle of wood glue twitched. "I'm fine," he repeated. "Just fine."
"Ichi-nii's becoming a serial killer…"
Ichigo sprayed his miso soup out over the table in great hacking coughs. To his left, Pops swallowed an entire chunk of tofu and started choking. Everyone ignored him.
Karin delicately put down her spoon, a big, dumb smirk opening up on her features. "Woooooow…" she said. "Guess this is what they call 'Chuunibyou', huh?"
Slamming his chest with a closed fist a couple of times cleared his air, and Ichigo immediately turned his red, watering eyes on Yuzu. "What?!"
She was pouting, and had the gall to be poking at her soup with a chopstick, like she was the victim. "Daddy said hurting animals was the first sign…"
Ichigo felt something in his mind dangerously wobble, as behind him, Isshin donkey-kicked his chair backwards into the wall, nearly shattering it. "THAT'S RIGHT MY DAUGHTER!" He boomed, voice slightly undercut by the rasp of his coughing. "ANY MONSTER THAT HURTS AN ANIMAL MIGHT AS WELL BE A HUMAN BUTCHER, CHOP-CHOP-CHOPPING UP CUTE LITTLE GIRLS WITH AN OVER SI—" his words sharply cut off as Karin vaulted over the table and landed a skipping high kick to his jaw, which neatly clicked his teeth shut over his wagging tongue.
"I'M EATING, YOU OLD BASTARD!"
Isshin's screams of pain went ignored as Ichigo turned stiffly to his darling little sister. "Yuzu…"
She turned away from him innocently, and no amount of coaxing would turn her back to face him.
He eventually gave up and left, but only after making sure that Karin knew to try to pry whatever it was out of Yuzu. If it was important, then she'd tell him. If she didn't…well, he was only preponing the next day's mockery anyway.
Ichigo waited for the sun to come out before he took a bus to the bottom of the large hill Karakura was situated upon. It wasn't so steep as to wall off Karakura, but it bore strange bends and contours. He hadn't heard of a single Shinto shrine in the area either; he'd heard rumors (from Mizuiro, admittedly) that the people who lived here decorated their homes with strange statues they pulled from the dirt. Supposedly, the hill was a burial mound dating back to the Kamakura period. Some of the locals liked to imply it had to do with the Mongol invasion, but nobody really knew. Ichigo only ever found himself thinking about it as he went down the hill, because both sides of the road were lined with Sakura blossoms, and they never grew better anywhere in Karakura than right here, where their roots could presumably reach down and wind about the dead bodies beneath his feet.
There were never any ghosts here.
He shook the thoughts out of his head as the bus slowed to a stop, some of the people around him giving him strange looks and edging away. He resisted the urge to voice his complaints as he pushed through the crowd on the bus to get to the exit; the neighborhood outside was dilapidated and he'd be the only one getting off the bus here. They'd think badly enough of him as it was.
Ichigo finally exited onto a block empty of pedestrians. Boarded up storefronts lined the opposite side of the road. And to his right, was a movie theater that had been up for destruction for probably three years now. He could recall visiting with the girls when he was younger, when people occupied those stores, and the theater had people queued up around the block. Pops had taken them to a lot of movies after mom died.
Seeing the place as it was now, taped up and gated, with dark shadows yawning over the upper floors, hurt no matter how many times he passed by. Ichigo cast his eyes down and moved past it, down the alley off to the side, nearly hidden by the massive bulk of the cinema.
The alley was dark, and smelled like mold and stale garbage, but it was blessedly short and after a few turns and crossings it opened up into a wider thoroughfare; here, at last, people could be seen. It was one of those neighborhoods that had never quite been replaced by the more polished urbane of downtown Tokyo. It was the kind of place people said couldn't exist a decade from now. It was full of old people, and refurbished apartment buildings. It was pretty ramshackle, for Tokyo, with multiple stores often sharing a tenement. Shelves jutted out of openings cut into load-bearing walls, overflowing with trinkets and goods. The 'superstructures' ran the length of the street, with stress fractures rippling all the way up the peeling paint and thin sheets of dust occasionally falling on the browsing customers, who tended to be either elderly or poor. The streets were packed with them.
Ichigo moved past the crowds, towards a small general store renovated from a 7-11. He took a second to peer through the entrance before proceeding to the side. If he'd entered, the rail-thin owner would greet him with a frown and a rude gesture. If he paid, the owner might allow him into the back, where he could buy cheap cigs by the individual. Plenty of people that looked a bit like his hair, but all over, would probably also be trawling the dark shelves, and probably pick a fight too.
But Ichigo wasn't interested in that. What he wanted was actually behind the store.
Around the back, following a narrow footpath between an open raingutter and the thin scrub outlining the store, you could walk all the way around and into a small clearing of land you could rent for a couple hundred yen by the hour. It had a little lean-to shelter, and broad flat stone flooring, probably granite, that was smooth underfoot. It was unpaved, which is to say that the stones were loose despite their immense weight, and wobbled, and between each tile, stinking mud lay visible underneath.
Here, a little granny sat in the lean-to, and she'd take any bit of clothing you had and stitch it, or patch it, or if you or she had the spare cloth, she could resize it. She did a good job for a pretty cheap price, and as Ichigo waved to her with an awkward tic people might call a smile from far enough, she broke into a little gap-toothed grin and proffered the curtains he'd left with her. She'd known his mom, back when she'd been new to the neighborhood (or so she told it), and had promised to keep an eye on him. Ichigo didn't believe a word of it, but she was sweet, and lonely, and if she ever brought up his mother, it was with a quiet sentiment she quickly buried, so he didn't mind so much.
But it still hurt, so he was glad she had other things on her mind.
"They were quite old," she told him as he counted out the bills, "Tough job. You don't see crosswork like this anymore—you're lucky I remember my days as a little girl!" And she laughed while working her jaw up and down—hawa hawa hawa—and gestured for him to take them.
Ichigo clumsily gathered up the massive sheets in his arms, and began working them into a cloth bag he'd brought just for this. She watched him fondly as he worked, with her hands folded silently over her lap.
"It's good to see someone take interest in that old store again," she said suddenly. Ichigo slowed, raising his head to look at her. She continued without looking at him, eyes misty with the years, "All of us kids—Taro from the second floor barbershop, Akio from across the river, little Kei, ah! So many of us, we used to run all the way up the hill, to get there. The roads were different back then, more sensible. Two rights, a left, and you were there."
"I hadn't realized the store was so close." Ichigo said slowly. "It didn't feel that way."
She flapped her hand at him, "Oh, it took plenty of time, but what did we care. We went and back, and then it was time for bed. But the owner always kept an eye out for us, always had candy or a new toy. German wind-ups, little spinning prussian men, russian nesting dolls, korean action figures; it was magical, boy." She sighed, forlornly. "It was magical." And she sounded so terribly lonely that Ichigo ducked his head back down and resumed his efforts. He managed to work in silence for a bit, letting the distant sound of laughter spiking from the store beside them fill the air.
"Why'd you say you were renovating the place, again?" she asked suddenly.
Ichigo spoke carefully, "I didn't," he said, "But a friend asked me to help out, so I agreed."
Her lips pursed. "This friend wouldn't be one of them ghosts you see, would it?"
Ichigo shuddered guiltily, and the old lady sighed. "You're too nice to them ghosts," she chided. "You're spoiling them, when you oughtn't be seeing them at all. Leave 'em be." But her whiskered mouth was smiling, so Ichigo gamely ignored her words.
"Your shadow's thin. That's the problem," she continued. "They say people with thin shadows ought to be careful where they step. You're not all there, you're only half in this world. It's a wonder you get anything done at all."
That sounded like elderly nonsense. "I'll try and avoid 'them ghosts'," Ichigo grunted, mildly sarcastic, still bent over his bag, but he could hear her laugh.
She cackled approvingly, a slight clacking from her dentures shifting underscoring her amusement. "You'd better boy! You'll be seeing mine soon enough!"
Ichigo grunted assent, slightly awkwardly. That was a thought he wasn't ready for.
He straightened up to reply, but the bundled curtains burst out of the bag. It tipped over from the force, and Ichigo cursed quietly, staring at the mess in dismay. Frustrated, he forced the curtains into a clump and began using his foot to cram it into the bag.
"I'm just tired," he panted. "Long nights. Stress. Classes. You know."
"I know," she agreed, a faint twinkle in her eye.
The bag ripped slightly, but eventually it held everything, and he hefted it up while he said his awkward goodbyes.
"Be careful now. A dirty old general store is no place for a young man. We buried all his toys with the old man, there's nothin' for anyone there anymore."
"On the contrary," Ichigo replied drily. "Where else could I listen to Teiichi Futamura in peace?"
She started laughing again, and the echo followed him all the way down the street.
Tatsuki raised her head from the pile of luggage she'd been sorting through, hair almost grey with dust as she shifted another wrapped package aside. She saw that Orihime had paused, mouth open slightly, as her hand froze on the wallet, and straightened.
"Hime…?"
"I found it," Orihime murmured, voice almost inaudible.
"Your brother's wallet?" Tatsuki stifled a sneeze as she got to her feet, slapping the dust off her shorts. "You found it?"
"Hm? Y—n—" she looked up at Tatsuki, redness clearing away some of the fog in her eyes, "I mean, yes! It's his!" Her thumb traced worn black leather. "But that's not what I meant. Here," she stepped carefully over an open suitcase, bumping her shin slightly on the plastic as she made her way to Tatsuki. "Look!" she flipped it over, letting one side bounce off her thumb. "Tah-dah!"
Tarsuki squinted. "Whoa, old-ass credit cards. Is that dated like 199–"
"No!" Orohime flipped it around, and looked at it before relaxing and stomping her feet at Tatsuki, who doubled over, cracking up. "Tatsuki! I mean the card!"
"Yeah, yeah," she flapped a hand at Orihime. "The red card, right? The one you said looked like Ichigo's?"
"It's identical," Orihime insisted, sliding the card out of the wallet. She turned it over to Tatsuki, who accepted it and ran a thumb over the smooth surface. It was completely blank.
"This has gotta break some kinda terms of service, right?" Tatsuki mused. "Looks like a scam."
"Put your thumb on the top right corner," Orihime said excitedly, "and hold it there."
Tatsuki did so, and upon lifting her thumb, revealed something new. It was simply the logo of a wide latin 'U', shaped more like a bowl, with spokes of various sizes coming out of it in six directions.
"Nice, old body-heat tech. Didn't know they made this stuff back then." Tatsuki muttered, "But no name? Is this, like, a trick card or something?" She began moving her thumb to other parts of the card, seeing if anything else would show up. "What the hell kinda—"
"It's a telephone card," Orihime supplied helpfully. "Ryō-chan collects them too! Some of them are super cute!"
"This one is not," Tatsuki muttered. "It's kinda creepy, isn't it? The hell is Ichigo doing with something like this?"
Orihime shrugged. She'd cheerfully punted the suitcases aside and flopped onto her couch. "My brother always used to play with it," she said dreamily, voice slightly muffled by the pillow she'd placed under her face. "Just flip it end-over-end in his hands. One time—I remember!—I stole it, and hid it in the freezer. He was soooooo mad, like super mad. He ran around the house, flipping the futon—" she giggled fondly, "it mattered a lot to him." She rolled onto her back and sat up. "Flip it over!"
Tatsuki did so. The back bore a credit swipe that glittered faintly purple in the light, and a word, in neat little print.
"Psyren," Tatsuki said aloud, and shivered. "Weird." She ran her thumb over the word, feeling the raised ridges; it had been carved in.
"Weird," Orihime agreed. "It's funny—I actually forgot about that card until I saw it—until I saw Kurosaki-kun had one. It's weird."
"Why's that?"
Orihime frowned, a thick ridge forming between her brows. "I think…I remember, Dr. Kurosaki, he said—" she cocked her head. "He said my brother died holding it. In his hands."
Tatsuki thought about it, swallowing her instinctive words of comfort to digest what she'd said.
"Yeah," she said finally, "that's pretty weird alright."
"I know!" Orihime threw the pillow into the air. "It's super weird."
"Pretty super weird."
"It is! It is!"
"Yeah."
They both continued nodding to each other.
"So," Tatsuki said finally, fighting the creeping grin on her face. "That's pretty spooky, huh."
"Preeeeeetty spooky."
They both continued staring at each other. Once again, Tatsuki cracked first.
"So are we gonna try it?"
Orihime gasped mockingly, writhing on her sofa as though taken aback. "Tatsuki! How could you?"
"Is that a no?"
"Nuh!" Orihime sat up and threw up her fists. "Let's do it!"
