To the casual observer, Ichigo Kurosaki appeared, for the most part, to be fairly normal. That assumption would be incorrect.
In fact, to assume Ichigo was human at all would also be a mistake. He was actually a mixture of several things: a Soul Reaper of the afterlife, a spirit-archer of distant German origins, a manipulator of power within the air and objects around him, and the vessel for a corrupted mirror-soul consciousness that tended to whisper things in his head every so often. He was, technically speaking, no longer alive.*
(* Ichigo actually existed in the small category between 'Post-Alive' and 'Pre-Deceased', a rare condition shared by notable people such as Grigori Rasputin, Queen Elizabeth II, and Matthew Broderick, to name a few.)
Ichigo's friends and family accepted all of this without question.
But something else concerned them, something far more troubling and mysterious that they struggled to understand. Because Ichigo Kurosaki loved English literature.
In fact, out of the greater Tokyo metropolitan area, he was one of twelve people within the past five years who willingly purchased a copy of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Another was Shinkichi Ike, who purchased the largest and most pretentious copy he could find to make his office seem more sophisticated. The other ten bought them by mistake.
Ichigo's deviance knew no bounds. Bought using a fake name, and hidden under his mattress (where all shameful things went), were actual English language versions of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, H.G. Wells, and others. One of his sisters had found them while cleaning his room. She couldn't decide to be relieved that it wasn't something else that teenage boys hid under their mattresses, or to forget it happened out of shame. She decided on the latter.
Ichigo occasionally did other things in his spare time besides reading. Sometimes he fought wars against evil souls of another realm. He saved his hometown at least twice, and eventually all of reality itself. As one did when overflowing with otherworldly powers rarely seen on that plane of existence.
But that was in the past.
Currently, he was occupied with the insurmountable challenge of navigating the Tokyo subway system.
The first thing anyone noticed about Ichigo was his unusually bright orange hair. Next, they noticed the scowl that was almost always present on his face. The scowl tended to go away when he was in the company of Rukia Kuchiki. They had been dating for several months, but neither of them were aware of this fact.
The two of them stood huddled in front of a large map against the wall of the bustling station.
"Are you sure this is the right way?" Rukia asked. Appearing as a very short and very petite woman in a flowy sundress, one might assume she was a regular teenager who studied at a local college, enjoyed knitting, and perhaps helped with the cooking and cleaning of her elderly grandparents in a modest apartment. One might also suspect a love of rabbit-themed items due to the large number of them hidden on her person. All of this would be incorrect- except for the part about rabbits. Rukia loved those.
She was, technically speaking, not-quite-alive, and hadn't been for a few decades, not for as long as she could remember. Soul Reapers lived and aged very differently, after all.
In the human world, Soul Reapers had reputations as dark, looming figures in black cloaks who wielded scythes, but that had gone out of fashion in the Western Branch several hundred years ago, because they were rather annoying to carry for more than an hour. When they weren't battling evil spirits or guiding souls, Soul Reapers fought against mountains of paperwork and avoided pointless meetings which could have been summed up by messenger butterfly. They were experts at it.
But not all Soul Reapers made regular visits to the human world for lunches, festivals, and movies. Rukia became very experienced in the past three years. Since the early days, she'd devoted herself to the study of valuable sources of human behavior and daily life, such as horror mangas and Disney films.
Ichigo squinted at the subway map.
Rukia watched him suspiciously. "If you don't know, we should ask someone who does."
"I know where we're going! I told you, I went there a month ago with my sisters," he said.
Rukia let out an impatient sigh.
Ten minutes and one stranger's directions later, they finally boarded the train. Ichigo was scowling less than usual. After all, Rukia mused, it wasn't every day they both could spend time away from college classes and paperwork to visit somewhere that wasn't within walking distance of his house. She wondered what kind of strange and exotic human foods they might have, such as Or-eos and popsicles.
A great many things, as it turned out, went unnoticed by the workers of Heaven and Hell. Even so, there was something about the reality-threatening battles involving dozens of inhuman beings with unimaginable power near the greater Tokyo area that was bound to attract attention. Especially one being in particular.
Two memos were sent into the offices of Heaven and Hell. The memos were different, given their respective authors, but combined together they noted something strange was certainly going on around Tokyo that was decidedly not human and very powerful. They also noted that moving pictures were still a thing, and were apparently more than a passing fad.
The memos were briefly lost in between reminders not to mass-respond to messages sent to large numbers of workers at once.
Instructions were written up by apathetic interns in both offices, and sent via their respective means. An angel received a heavenly visitor who cheerfully relayed a set of orders. A demon was watching Cheers when coworkers rudely appeared to give him an assignment.
For Aziraphale, his priorities were immediately clear. It meant he could have authentic sushi in Japan and practice his excellent Japanese. Perhaps he could visit Mt. Fuji, too, since it had been a few decades. And it would be no matter to travel all the way from England to the land of the rising sun. Because angels could fly.
First class, usually.
"Hot towel?" the stewardess asked.
"Yes, thank you," he smiled. It was fluffy and warm in his hands. Aziraphale looked like a kindly middle-aged human man to the outside observer, clothed in khaki and beige with an ivory waistcoat that hadn't been fashionable for quite some time.
The woman beside him rummaged through her designer bag with a huff in frustration. She was looking for her medication which had been left at home.
"Did you, now?" Aziraphale asked with a hopeful look.
And there it was, right in her bag. Refilled, too, despite the woman knowing it had been half full earlier that morning.
He just couldn't resist himself.
During the flight, he enjoyed a cup of tea and complimentary Biscoff crackers. It was one of the highlights of any trip. True, he technically could have bought Biscoff crackers back in London and enjoyed them in the privacy of his bookshop. But it just wasn't the same eating them anywhere else.
A train was four minutes late. In virtually any part of the world, this would be an expected turn of events for any given day. In some places, this would even be an improvement. But in Japan, a four-minute delay involved a public apology over the loudspeaker, shocked faces across the station, a flurry of panicked calls, and no fewer than thirty-five furious apologies said by attendants while bowing politely. The train conductor himself would spend his evening in a quiet shame, contemplating the meaning of life. Then he would get distracted by his neighbor's cat and drown his sorrows in KFC.
One hour after the train's late arrival, it would make national news.
It wasn't Crowley's best work, but he was proud nonetheless of a bad job well done. It only took breaking into the station control room. It was amazing what a couple of digits in a system could change.
Crowley smirked lazily to himself as he sauntered away from the station. Japan opened up new possibilities for the work of a demon. A decade ago he'd already taken credit for the creation of Ramune bottles, claiming he made them twenty percent harder to open. Never mind it was humanity's doing. Selfies, too, remained on his list of accomplishments that no one ever bothered to verify.
Appearing as a foreign middle-aged man with red hair and sunglasses, paired with his look of black leather which rivaled the most rebellious of rockstars, Crowley got his fair share of attention walking down the bustling Tokyo streets.
Aziraphale, meanwhile, was attempting to make his way out of the crowds, all in the hope of finding a decent place to enjoy a quiet meal.
The angel and demon met, by coincidence or by the will of the universe, on a street corner in downtown Tokyo. They appraised each other with suspicious glances, challenged one another to explain why they were there, and promptly decided to go to lunch.
There was a restaurant Aziraphale remembered visiting on his last trip to Japan. It wasn't very far away, but Crowley insisted on driving them in his pristine vintage Bently. He wove between other cars and terrified pedestrians, but due to the unfamiliar nature of the city, played it safe by keeping his speed at a modest eighty miles per hour.
"You brought your car?" Aziraphale asked. "All the way here?- Slow down!" The car zipped around a school group that nearly wandered into the road. Aziraphale winced.
"Yeah. 'Course I did- Out of the way!- Why wouldn't I?" said Crowley.
"Shipping it by plane? That must've been quite the ordeal."
"It was worth it," Crowley growled dismissively. A red Honda barely avoided a head-on collision.
"Watch out!"
Someone shouted a curse in Japanese. "Traveling without it would be like… It would be like… Traveling without something very important." Crowley couldn't think of what it would be like. But he would think of it an hour or two later, or perhaps late at night just before going to bed.
"That doesn't explain why you're here, you know," said Aziraphale.
"Right. Thought I'd ask you about it- Keep left you snail!- Apparently there's some big something or other that's gotten someone's attention down in the head office. Something not human."
"Something… big? Inhuman?" Aziraphale asked in amazement. "Why, that's what I was sent to find! And- To the right!"
Crowley skid around a corner. Two wheels were lifted off the ground in the turn, and Aziraphale clutched the car seat with white knuckles.
"Were you? I was hoping it was your lot's doing," said Crowley.
"And we thought it was something of yours."
"So, that's it, then. No idea what it could be."
Aziraphale pointed at something up the road. "There! Pull over there."
They screeched to a stop near a blue and red sign that said 'No Parking', next to a modest set of upscale shopfronts. Aziraphale stepped out of the Bently and distractedly led them towards a white set of doors.
"Do you think it was a mistake? After all, it doesn't sound like anything a human is capable of." Aziraphale thought of the strange reports in the memo that came with his instructions, but they were vague, lacking in detail, and had a couple of small typos that were very distracting.
"Wouldn't be the first time. They never come and check. Anyone can send a memo on anything, they'd never know. They still think I invented the open office floor plan," said Crowley.
"Among other exaggerations," Aziraphale said in disapproval. "But… What if it's not a mistake?" he asked hesitantly, as if afraid of the answer.
"Then we'll need to find whoever or whatever it is."
"I was afraid you were going to say that."
They passed through the doors and found themselves thrust into hostile territory, surrounded by dozens of staring eyes.
When Yoshito Nishi opened his restaurant in 1886, it had been the start of a booming business that catered to a sophisticated clientele. By 1923 it passed into the capable hands of Akio Nishi, his eldest and most trustworthy son, who promptly ran it nearly into the ground.*
(* He bought into a proposed profit venture where he was promised money for doing nothing. All he had to do was recruit at least five others into the group, who would then repeat the process until all the money floated upwards in the rough shape of a triangle. Unfortunately, those at the bottom ran out of people to recruit within a ten-kilometer area, and started a small uprising. Akio faked his death, and found a wonderful new life collecting seashells for tourists in Osaka.)
When his son (who was also named Akio) inherited the restaurant, he soundly brought it back to its former glory. Then, in 1983, it was passed on to his son Satoshi Nishi. Within fifteen years, it had transformed into an upscale cafe. But the success was fleeting, much in the way of his marriage, after his wife ran away with a fax machine technician. Satoshi was at a loss.
One day, he visited the supermarket as he always did. There were two kinds of leeks on sale. The first were regular, mundane leeks, while the second were wrapped in bright red labels with Hello Kitty on them, and cost twice as much. The second kind was practically sold out. Satoshi didn't know what Hello Kitty had to do with leeks, but it gave him an idea that would've made his business-savvy ancestors proud. And he'd watched a business video, once, on the internet, so he felt pretty good about business things.
The Sanrio Company of Japan held the rights to Hello Kitty and a slew of other cuteness-based animals that graced backpacks and overpriced office supplies the world over. Satoshi approached the corporate office. He walked in armed with his lucky bow-tie and illustrious plans for a Hello Kitty cafe. He walked out with a dejected stride much like a Peanuts character.
That was fine, Satoshi thought. He didn't need their corporate licenses. He'd make do. His mother always called him creative. She'd kept all of his drawings from art class pinned to her refrigerator, after all.
The cafe held a grand re-opening two weeks later.
A hostess stood before them dressed in cheap pinks and white laces, with a poorly drawn cat on her blouse. "Welcome to the Greetings Kitten Cafe!"
The same cat was displayed everywhere the eye could see, sometimes in other colors, sometimes drawn almost proportionally. Aziraphale and Crowley were being watched by dozens of eyes, and only some of them weren't illustrated.
"Oh, dear," Aziraphale said with the weight of someone who realized a dreadful mistake, all too late.
There is a window of opportunity between a hostess' greeting and being seated when Aziraphale could have put a stop to it altogether, explained they made a mistake, and left for culinary options better suited to their interests. On average, this window lasts seven seconds. Waiting any longer risked making a bad impression or creating an awkward scene. By the time Aziraphale finally started to speak, nine seconds had passed, and they were already being escorted to a bright pink table trimmed with tacky faux-gold utensils.
Crowley shot him a look. "Angel," he hissed.
"I didn't want to be rude," said Aziraphale lamely.
"Oh, and we can't have that, can we?"
"It's the decent thing to do!
"I didn't want to be rude," said Crowley in a whiney, mocking voice. "Hell forbid being rude."
"It's changed since I was here last," Aziraphale protested, "It can't have been more than seventy years. Eighty, at the most." He considered anything within the 20th century to be recent.
Crowley glowered. A deep look of disdain formed on his face, one which grew firmer with every feline he saw in the restaurant.
The cafe was almost full. At least four birthday-tea parties were going on, and the adult-to-child ratio was very low. Few parents would deal with it, if they could, and the prospect of free childcare for an afternoon was too good an opportunity to pass up.
Menus were placed in front of them which showcased pictures of cutesey cat faces awkwardly made into the shapes of food.
"Why does everything have bows on it? Animals don't wear bows," said Crowley.
"I haven't a clue."
Crowley scanned the menu for a third time. "No alcohol… Bugger it all."
"Oh, dear."
Teas and juices were listed aplenty. The apple juice, however, was exceedingly popular, as evidenced by the nearby children jumping within their seats and shouting.
A waitress came to take their orders. She wore cat ears and a pink dress.
"I'll have jasmine tea, and the… Kitten Pancake Plate," Aziraphale said with a forced smile.
"Nothing for me," said Crowley.
A few minutes later, a platter arrived with a cat-shaped pancake complete with sugar-printed eyes, accented by candied bows and other dessert fruits.
Crowley stared at the pancake. To his dismay, it stared back.
Ichigo and Rukia arrived four minutes later than planned. This irritated Ichigo to no end, but there was nothing that could be done.
"Where are we going?" Rukia asked.
"You'll like it," Ichigo said with a rare smile. "It's better than the places we usually go for lunch."
"That's the surprise?" she asked. "You're not taking me to buy a new set of clothes, all while you sit outside a dressing room and marvel at my figure?" She smirked in amusement, although she had seen it happen in enough films of the human world that she secretly thought it was possible.
"Shut up! It's something nice, okay?" The smile didn't go away. "I know how hard it is for you to get away from work. You deserve a break every once in a while."
"You are not one to talk. I know your classes have kept you busy, as of late."
They stepped through a set of doors.
The restaurant Ichigo selected was a bustling and upscale cafe, the kind with prices that were slightly too high and portions that were slightly too small. The wait staff were polite, even if they assumed all teenagers were ne'er do wells only pretending to behave. And they sometimes forgot to bring out the complimentary bread. It was just the sort of place to go to lunch when you wanted to impress someone else. Nice, but still somewhere one could wear t-shirts and not violate a dress code.
At least, that was the place Ichigo expected to find.
It had changed in the last month.
"Welcome to the Greetings Kitten Cafe!" the hostess exclaimed.
By the time Ichigo realized his mistake, ten seconds had already passed, and they were led to one of the few tables not filled with excited children and exhausted adults. A large picture of the Greetings Kitten hung on the wall next to them.
"It's not what I expected," Rukia blinked.
"This- This isn't how it was last time," Ichigo balked. "They must've changed it!"
"It's cute!" She surveyed the room brightly, much like a child in a toy store. Rukia liked the cafe's theming, because if you squinted, the cat sort of looked like a rabbit. And rabbits were a very different matter.
"...You think so?" Ichigo cast a skeptical look around the cafe.
"Yes… Although I'm surprised you chose to eat here."
Ichigo mustered a nonchalant shrug and a smirk. "I told you, it wasn't like this before. But if you're happy eating here, I'm okay with it."
"I didn't realize your love of cat-like things. Perhaps I should buy you a poster for your room?" she smirked.
He lightly scowled in a vain attempt at appearing grumpy. Rukia continued to smile anyway.
They ordered food that was still overpriced but was cut and fit into feline shapes with faces on them. Off in a corner sat two foreign men, one of them wearing a pair of sunglasses. Ichigo didn't like anyone who wore sunglasses indoors unless they were blind, or a young child playing dress up- of which there were twelve sitting in the cafe alone. In the latter case, it was adorable. But everyone knew that.
The urge to grumble about it was strong, but he resisted in the name of making the best out of their lunch. Rukia seemed to be enjoying herself, after all. That was important.
Minutes later, plates of mediocre food were brought to their table, along with drinks.
Ichigo grabbed a piece of tamago with his chopsticks. When he lifted it from his plate, airy classical music wafted in the cafe around them, but by the time he'd taken a bite he could've sworn Freddie Mercury was playing instead. He made a face while trying to translate the words from English. He was confident he had it right, which only served to confuse him further.
Crowley sat contentedly at the table.
Aziraphale paused his eating to shoot Crowley an alarmed look. "Really, Crowley…" he chided.
"What? Oh… Fine, fine." Crowley said in a whine, and snapped his fingers, and 'Fat Bottomed Girls' switched back to Vivaldi's Autumn. It wasn't his usual temptation, but as far as settings went, the cafe was particularly wholesome, and he was itching to do something or other about it. "As far as lunches go, this has got to be one of our worst." *
(* That list included the disastrous supper of Athens in 430 B.C., and the day the Beatles disbanded. )
"I hardly think…" Aziraphale's chopsticks froze just above his plate. He stopped to stare. All his attention was drawn to a young man with bright orange hair. They were separated by half a birthday party.
"Are you listening?" asked Crowley.
Aziraphale's gaze did not move. It was impossible, he thought. The odds of running into what he thought he saw, by coincidence, during a very impromptu lunch, in all of Tokyo, was enough to make even the most obsessive gamblers pause. It was easier to literally find a needle in a haystack, the record for which was twenty minutes, set by bored teenagers in rural Idaho. It was like winning a contest you never actually entered, and the prize was the very solution to the most pressing problem on your plate. Regis Filmen would have been envious.
And yet, there it was, right in front of them. The very last thing Aziraphale expected to find.
"Aziraphale?"
"Hm?" He turned to Crowley, distracted. "Yes... Would you excuse me for a moment?" The angel stood without waiting for a reply. Then he walked towards the table where the orange-haired man sat while wearing a dazed yet excited expression.
He stared at Aziraphale in confusion, a look mirrored by the woman sitting with him.
"Excuse me," Aziraphale smiled, speaking in clear and polite Japanese, "But, I couldn't help but notice… Is that a Hamlet reference on your shirt?"
It was a situation Ichigo never thought would happen. Not in Japan, anyway. Sometimes he dreamt about it. The unlikeliness of it didn't discourage him from buying the shirt over the internet. It read, in English:
To quote Hamlet Act III Scene III Line 97:
No.
He'd long give up hope of anyone appreciating it. But he wore it into the city sometimes, just in case.
Ichigo blinked at the strange foreign man who wore a pleasant smile. "Ah… Yeah. It is."
The man looked rather pleased. "That's very clever. He would have appreciated his work being used that way, I think."
"Y-yeah. Thanks."
"You're very welcome! He certainly was an interesting man… An optimist, really, even when his work wasn't recognized as it should have been. In the early days, you know."
The man's Japanese was flawless, yet there had to have been a translation error, Ichigo thought. Because it almost sounded like the man had known Shakespeare himself. Translation issues happened all the time with westerners, after all. Just last month a classmate had mixed up the word for 'fight' with the word for 'marry', and made for a very interesting- if unexpectedly violent- Biology class.
"Yeah... I guess," Ichigo finally said.
"Ah! Are you talking about Shakes-Spears?" Rukia asked excitedly. "I'm glad you finally found a friend who shares your exotic passion."
"I told you, it's Shakespeare. And stop calling it that. No one calls it that!" 'Exotic passion' sounded like something advertised on seedy DVDs sold in the back of shops.
"Isn't that what it is? I do not see why you're so sensitive about it."
"I-It just sounds weird, okay? There's nothing weird about liking Shakespeare. I always said it's popular outside of Japan," Ichigo turned to the foreign man. "Right? Where are you from?"
Aziraphale tutted, "Oh! London." He felt very awkward and in the proverbial spotlight, and not the kind for stage or dance performances that he was used to. He made sure to continue smiling at all costs, for lack of a better option.
Rukia's face grew even more excited. The foreign man certainly looked like someone from London with his old-fashioned waistcoat and long overcoat. She wondered where his top hat and monocle were. "Ah! Have you met Big Ben?" she asked.
This gave Aziraphale some pause. His smile wavered. "...I'm sorry?"
"I have heard he lives in London," she continued unabashedly.
"Big Ben isn't a person. It's the clocktower," the orange-haired man said.
She paused thoughtfully."The one from Peter Pan?"
Aziraphale clung fiercy to his polite smile.
"Yeah. That one," said the man.
"Ah. I see," she noted, casually, as she took a bite of tomago from the man's plate.
Past experience taught Aziraphale the dangers of getting involved with couples. Nothing ruined a social event quicker than a couple carrying on right in front of you, as if you weren't even there. Especially if one-half of the couple was royalty and had access to The Tower. Or, worse still, a lull in conversation transformed before your very eyes into the dreaded Awkward Silence.
"Good heavens, look at the time! I really must be going…" he said without so much as glancing at his nonexistent watch. "My associate is wondering where I went, I'm sure. I'll let you get on with your date." Aziraphale smiled and gave a brief bow. "Nice meeting you both!" Then he turned away.
His words took a second or two to sink in. It was noisy in the cafe, after all. Either of them could've easily misheard what the man had to say.
For Rukia, what happened next was much like reading a big, shocking plot twist in your favorite story, when something momentous and unexpected is revealed, something you in no way saw coming, but when you start to think about it and everything that happened leading up to that point, suddenly a lot of little things made sense. And with a final realization, a soft 'oh' in understanding, you wonder how you didn't see it coming the entire time. It was exactly like that as Rukia reviewed the past three years.
"Ah," she uttered absently.
"Y-Yeah," Ichigo said distractedly to the departing man. Then was focused on the remains of his food, scowling. The faintest of red could be seen across his cheeks.
Aziraphale returned to his seat. "Amazing how humans can be so oblivious to something right under their noses." He found it endearing. Some things simply didn't change throughout the ages.
His mood dampened when he remembered their mission, and that they were no closer to finding the mysterious being of exceedingly strange power in the labyrinthian metropolis of Tokyo. It seemed impossible. Still, he thought, no need to let it ruin an otherwise pleasant trip.
Crowley was distracted by something else in the restaurant. "Yeah. Amazing…" he said absently. He could scarcely hear himself think over the screams of the nearby children and harried, outnumbered adults. It was the far-off look one had when just on the verge of inspiration, on the cusp of a stroke of genius. The same one he had before encouraging the Vasa to be built.*
(* Gustavas Adolfus, King of Sweden in 1626, wanted to build the most impressively ostentatious boat ever constructed. 'Go big or return home,' Crowley had told him repeatedly. The Vasa was indeed the tallest, grandest ship to be built at the time. So tall, and so weighed down by decoration and weaponry, that it blew over from a light breeze minutes after first setting sail. It sank in the harbor in front of thousands of awkward spectators.)
Crowley didn't know what his new idea was, just yet. But he was getting close.
A thought came to Crowley. Ooh, that was a good one. He discreetly gave a wave of a hand, disguised cleverly as smoothing out his auburn hair. He smiled.
The juice tasted different. But Aki Kanda, age seven and birthday girl for party number three in the restaurant, continued to drink it anyway.
A more discerning child of particular taste in juice might have noticed the difference. An adult most likely would have.
More specifically, they would have noticed it wasn't juice anymore at all.
Aziraphale finished his plate and dabbed carefully at his mouth with a napkin.
"Well… That was certainly… interesting," Aziraphale said with a forced smile. A waitress hurried over with their bill, which the angel paid using yen that used to be British pounds just a moment earlier. The waitress had grown increasingly flustered by the rising activity of the children in the room. She smiled and bowed politely before scurrying away.
The cafe had gotten louder within the past few minutes.
"Shall we?" asked Aziraphale.
"I'd thought we'd never go," said Crowley. As they moved towards the exit, he hung backwards at a slower pace. He peeked over a shoulder for a final glance at the state of the children, at how active they were, and how everything teetered on the brink of chaos.
Rukia finished the last bites of her fruit tart. She had not spoken for several moments. Neither had Ichigo.
For the very first time, they had an Awkward Silence of their own. Rukia hated it. It was foolish, she thought. After all, to put an end to any kind of silence, all you had to do was say something. Finding the right thing to say, however, was the hard part. Done wrong, one risked descending even further into an Extremely Awkward Silence, which couldn't be fixed without waiting at least forty-eight hours between interactions.
Rukia pondered this and decided it was all rather foolish, and she would just pretend everything was normal.
"Do cats in the human world typically wear bows?" she asked casually.
Ichigo had been staring distractedly at the children moving about the dining room. He looked up at her. "What?"
"I've seen many cats with bows on their heads. Is that normal, here?"
His brows furrowed, which was a good sign. "No, it's not. It's just a mer-"
A little girl skipped up to them. Sora, of birthday party two, blinked her large eyes rapidly at Ichigo. "When you're done being her boyfriend can you be my boyfriend?" she giggled. She'd read about boys that like in magazines and on YouTube. He would buy her candy, probably, and hold her hand, or so she imagined boyfriends would do.
Ichigo blinked. "W-What? I'm- I'm not-"
The girl smiled at him and giggled again before running away to a group of other laughing girls.
Rukia would have enjoyed teasing him if she wasn't so distracted by the flush that stubbornly rose to her cheeks.
Before she could comment on the matter, she couldn't help but notice the chunk of porcelain that exploded against the wall just beside Ichigo's head.
"What on Earth…?"
Another plate followed and broke against the framed picture of Greetings Kitten. The glass turned to a web of white splinters.
Ichigo stared. "The hell?!"
A young boy leapt onto a table next to them, kicking away half-eaten pastries and dirty plates that sent sauces splattering in the air. He jumped onto their table with a 'clank!' and caused silverware to clatter. Then he leapt onto the next half-cleared table before either of them could react. Behind him trailed a frantic mother with her arms flailing in vain.
Yoshiro Arata, birthday boy, had always loved volcanoes. He loved the lava part of them more than anything, because molten rock hot enough to cause things to spontaneously combust was very cool to most seven year olds- but not in the temperature sort of way. Lava was all well and good, but even better was pretending not to stand in it. And the only way to do that was by standing on tables and chairs instead of the floor.
"Don't touch the ground!" he shouted. "Your feet will melt off!"
His friends eagerly joined in.
Best Friend of the birthday girl in party two, Takara Sakuma, pouted because her boyfriend hadn't said anything to her in over ten minutes. What kind of boyfriend was he if he didn't talk to her? She jumped up and down in her seat with a whine. Then she started to wail at an ear-splitting volume, because she didn't want to break up with him. They had been dating for a whole week.
"Toshio!"
Birthday boy Masumi Yamakawa started to scream, loudly, because he was supposed to be best friends with Toshio, except Toshio kept telling him to go away. Why didn't he want to play? Surely, everyone wanted to be his friend. He just needed to shout louder. And so he did, repeatedly.
"Toshio!"
Running, fighting, and yelling were all well and good, especially for a nine-year-old of average aspirations. But Shinji Konno was fixated on the leftover food that lay in haphazard patterns across tables of unfinished meats and pastries. He lifted a piece of matcha cake and mashed it between his fingers. Then it sailed through the air, scattering like a broken mortor shell that rained down on fighting children below. It was just like in the movies, Shinji found, and soon there was more food in the air than left on the plates.
Every inch of the cafe was moving. No bit of plastic florals or cheap tableware went untouched, no bit of floor or table safe from the manic hive of activity. A game of tag seemed to have broken out which spanned at least half the restaurant. At least one child managed to get into the kitchen and was running around with cooking pots turned into hats, with a furious chef in pursuit. Others had turned the booth seats into trampolines.
The adults, outnumbered and ignored, shouted in vain as another herd of children decided to build a fort out of upturned tables and chairs.
There was a reason energy drinks were marketed to edgy teens and overworked adults, and not to children under thirteen years of age.
Everyone in the cafe was learning this very quickly.
Next to Ichigo and Rukia's table a trio of kids started a three-way wrestling match, complete with headlocks and tough-sounding insults.
"Hey! Cut that out!" Ichigo rose from his seat and pulled them apart, with the experience of an older brother and enemy to bullies everywhere. "What's wrong with all of you?!"
Rukia sent a stern look at a boy who was about to pull a girl's hair. "Stop!" The scary look in her eyes made the surrounding children scatter.
Something flew through the air, just out of the corner of her eye. It was headed directly for her.
Before she could move, Ichigo jumped in the projectile's path. Wet crimson stained his upper chest in a gruesome display. He staggered backwards as Rukia grasped him by the shoulders desperately and lowered him to the ground. "Ichigo!"
He stared up at her in a daze. "Are you okay, Rukia?"
"Fool. You needn't do that for me," she said, shaking her head but smiling softly. "That was your favorite shirt." She swiped a finger at the red splatter on his shirt. It smelled of strawberry. She scowled. "Damn!"
Ichigo smiled, oddly content. "I'm fine. Stop worrying about me."
For Rukia Kuchiki, Soul Reaper and Acting Captain of the Thirteenth Division of the afterlife, Eastern Region, it was an impossible request. She stood in a powerful stance, sternly glaring at any and all around her. The same piercing look that had instilled fearsome respect into many a veteran and trainee Soul Reaper alike.
"Oi!" she shouted.
The chaos continued. She darted her head aside to avoid a passing half-eaten pancake. Rukia leapt onto a table. "Oi!"
Everything stopped. All eyes were on her- human, feline, or otherwise.
"You will drop whatever you are holding, you will be silent, and you will form a line toward the door!"
A few children murmured or whispered amongst themselves, which were swiftly silenced with another burning glare. "Now! Get moving!" Rukia barked.
Adults and waitstaff scrambled to regain control during the fragile peace. They hastily counted heads, gathering children together like one might cattle, fearful any of them could bolt at any second.
From the floor, Ichigo gazed up at Rukia with a smile.
As far as dates went, it could have been worse. For one thing, all limbs were accounted for. No angry exes made a surprise appearance to shout accusations. Property could be repaired, hair could be recombed, and shirts cleaned. And, somehow, all the children suffered no more than a tummy ache and a drowsy feeling an hour or two later. It was almost as if something made sure no one was actually hurt, because that would've taken all the fun out of it for a certain demon.
Ichigo and Rukia walked back in a silence that was not awkward. His shirt was a lost cause, much to their dismay, and bits of food were still stuck to clothing in places they couldn't immediately see.
Rukia tried to muster up another glare at his needless heroics. She ended up smiling softly instead.
"That was not what I expected," she mused.
He scoffed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah… I guess it wasn't very good. I'm sorry. I know it's hard for you to find time away from work."
Rukia let out an amused snort. "Fool. It was hardly your fault. You should not blame yourself." She gazed up at the afternoon sky. "We will simply need to do better, next time."
Ichigo looked at her in surprise.
"And if next time is no better, then we will have to try again," she smirked. "Perhaps there is a dog-themed cafe?"
He froze, just for a moment, then smiled knowingly. "Yeah. Or a rabbit one."
Rukia grew quiet. She struggled to keep her calm composure, but stared nonetheless with wide eyes. She coughed to cover her blush. "A-Ah. Perhaps."
"Is that it?" Aziraphale asked.
They were standing in front of a video advert on bright screens just off the road. A rather odd-looking man struck a dramatic pose. He wore an outrageous hat and an outfit of bright colors trimmed with gold, and he would've looked comfortable leading a troupe of underdog circus performers of questionable legality. A cape billowed behind in his wake. His mustache could have made an excellent skewer.
"Casual Soul Realm Assault Trip," Crowley read, the syllables not so much rolling off the tongue as they did bump and clatter. "That's a mouthful."
"Over two hundred spirits cleansed," Aziraphale read. "'Spirits are always… with you.' Oh, my."
"Seems a little full of himself, if you ask me. If he was really that good… Well, he probably wouldn't need the ads."
"But… Do you think? It would explain the reports, I would think. Someone excising spirits and all."
"Maybe," said Crowley thoughtfully. "Must be, yeah. Can't speak to his sense of fashion, though."
Aziraphale couldn't help but agree.
Don Kanonji, local celebrity and once king of the coveted 18-25 age demographic, helped the local Soul Reapers by defeating evil spirits in the area, the ones weak enough they barely registered on the Soul Reaper's radar.* It was less of a duty and more of a side hobby. Everyone needed one, after all. Some people just prefered to crochet hats.
(* His assistants consisted of a young girl with a soccer ball and a very angry ginger boy armed with a broom. Sometimes they were aided by a talking lion plushie with a strong preference for voluptuous women.)
One might even suspect Don Konanji wasn't inhuman at all, but merely someone with a vague ability to see spirits who found a way to commercialize it and become a local television star.
This would be correct on all counts.
"Well… We've found what we were looking for," Aziraphale said with poorly concealed disappointment and false cheer. "Mission accomplished!"
"Yeah…"
The angel cleared his throat. "But… You know, if we were to be sure, we could always stick around a little longer," Aziraphale said hopefully. "Perhaps… checking the area near Mount Fuji? There are a lot of shrines around there."
"Right..." said Crowley as he mulled it over.
"Just to be sure," Aziraphale added.
"Just to be sure."
"Yes."
"Oh… Alright, might as well," said Crowley.
Aziraphale smiled.
With a wave of Crowley's hand, the Bently drove itself around the corner and pulled up next to the sidewalk in a trail of parking tickets.
"This time it's my turn to decide where we eat. Somewhere… somewhere with alcohol. Lots of alcohol," Crowley said with the decisiveness of one eager to put the work day behind them.
"I couldn't agree more," Aziraphale smiled.
They sped down winding Tokyo streets, out of the city, and found a modest restaurant where they enjoyed a very pleasant and very normal meal.