A/N: Two updates in the same month! Whoo! Keep up all the lovely reviews—I go back and read over them when I need encouragement. You guys are the best :)

9:02 p.m.

A cloud of dust rose and settled. Ichigo gingerly picked himself off the ground, groaning.

"This is no time to be napping, Ichigo!" Hiyori scolded, fitting her sandal back on to her foot. "Start again!"

"Wait, wait!" Ichigo shouted, glancing back and forth between Orihime and the tiny, fierce pigtailed woman in front of him. His protests were ignored. "Put on your mask, Ichigo!" Her voice became suddenly deeper, richer, darker, and a bone white mask with a long, menacing looking horn materialized on her face. "Or I'll pummel you again!"

She lunged towards Ichigo who swore, and a similar mask quickly formed on his face, this one sleeker than Hiyori's, with red swirl patterns. He lifted up an enormous sword almost as long as he was tall, and guarded himself against a swipe Hiyori made in his direction. Their blades met with a loud clang, and they struggled against each other for a moment to gain ground. Then, all of a sudden, Ichigo's mask splintered with a loud crack and fell to the dirt in pieces. He stumbled back and Hiyori took advantage of his sudden weakness to knock him down again.

"How long was that?" asked Shinji.

"About four seconds," Kensei answered, looking at a stopwatch.

"Pathetic!" Hiyori shouted in disgust. "You're a disgrace to vizard everywhere, Ichigo! Stand up and fight like a man already or run home!"

Ichigo started to pick himself up for the second time in thirty seconds. "Would you just wait a second?!"

"Life doesn't wait, Ichigo!" She had pulled off her mask and her voice had returned to it's normal shrill quality. "Defend yourself!"

As if of their own accord, Orihime's legs began to move toward where Ichigo lay prostrate on the ground, trying to pull himself up onto his hands and knees. She grabbed an arm and helped him stand up.

"Err, thanks," he said awkwardly, averting his gaze, his free hand clutching the back of his head in embarrassment.

"No problem," she said, feeling equally unsure about this unexpected development.

Rose's voice announcing dinner broke the awkward silence.

"Last one there has to do the dishes!" Mashiro shouted, racing upstairs.

9:46 p.m.

Orihime scrubbed the remnants of curry from a particularly stubborn pot.

"I didn't realize this was where you lived," Ichigo began suddenly, as he rinsed off a spoon.

"I know," Orihime responded. "I didn't tell anyone, not even Tatsuki. I didn't think anyone else would understand."

"I guess we've all kept our fair share of secrets," he mused, placing the piece of cutlery on a rack to dry.

She studied him for a moment out of the corner of her eye. He was back in his normal clothes—black jacket worn loosely over a T-shirt and jeans, and a pink, frilly apron Mashiro had forced on him completing the picture. The sleeves of his jacket were rolled up, exposing tanned forearms, where upon closer inspection Orihime could make out clearly defined muscles. The boy (man?) stood at least a head taller than her and while he was certainly no Kensei, Orihime had no doubt there was not even a single ounce of fat on his body.

"I can take that," he said, indicating the pot she had momentarily abandoned her battle with. "Oh, here," she said blushing, embarrassed to have been caught staring, and handed it to him.

She wrenched her gaze away from him, face still red, and tried to focus on washing the dirty plate in her hands.

"This must be a lot for you to take in," he began again, holding the pot up to the stream of water and watching the soap bubbles swirl down the drain. "Me being here, training with your family. Hell, it's a lot for me to take in."

"I'm still processing," she admitted. "I've had a lot of things to process lately." Her conversation with her parents yesterday, her unexpected meeting with Rukia, and now Ichigo was a vizard too, apparently. What was next?

"I have to ask you something, though," he started hesitantly. "Are you...one of them—a vizard, too? I'm sorry if I'm being too nosy, but—"

"I'm not," she said quickly. "I'm not quite sure what I am, but I'm not quite like my family...or like you."

"But you can see me," he protested. "As a soul reaper, I mean. Most people can't."

She had followed him up the stairs after Rose's dinner announcement had brought an end to training. They trailed the others at a distance who had all hurried up to the kitchen to avoid being last and stuck with dish-washing duty. She had watched him find his body (unceremoniously sprawled in a corner—she had not seen that coming in), picking it up and slipping into it. With a start, she realized she had done the same once, all those years ago after her brother had attacked her.

"I know. I know I'm different too, just not sure yet in what way."

They heard a quiet, muffled noise behind them, as if someone was making shushing noises.

"Nothing wrong with being different from this crowd," he said, grabbing the still-wet pot, striding toward the entrance of the kitchen, and whipping it around the corner. It made contact with something with a loud thump and there were lots of protests and Ichigo yelling about eavesdroppers and Shinji was lying on the ground dramatically clutching his head in pain.

One of them he had said earlier, Orihime realized, not one of us. For whatever reason, Ichigo did not want to include himself with the rest of her family members. He did not want to be considered a vizard.

Tuesday

9:14 p.m.

"Err—it's your turn for the bath, Ichigo," Orihime said, still toweling off her dripping hair.

Ichigo looked up from where he lay sprawled on the couch. "Oh—thanks."

It had been two weeks since Ichigo Kurosaki had made himself a permanent guest at the warehouse. He trained fervently, starting early in the morning and not finishing until many hours after the sun had set. Not that you could tell time well in that strange underground training area.

The first few days Ichigo was up before anyone else was, full of too much energy and ready to put it to use fighting. His enthusiasm fizzled out quickly as the long hours began to take their toll, and it became an endeavor in and of itself getting him out of bed, but Hiyori took great joy in finding new, interesting ways to wake him up in the morning. Orihime could often hear his yelps on her way out the door to school, and almost felt bad for him. Almost.

No one was really surprised at Ichigo's absence from school. Their homeroom teacher didn't even blink when Orihime told her that he would be in the hospital for a little while and she would be bringing his homework to him. He had a reputation as a bit of a delinquent, one who was always getting into fights and injuring himself. Orihime realized that this was mostly true, though unbeknownst to most people, his fights were rarely with other humans.

She took her time getting home after school each day, staying late at her handicrafts club or going grocery shopping, content to ponder all of the new happenings in her life. That Ichigo Kurosaki was staying at her home was a secret that she kept to herself and thought about often, as if she had a precious gem hidden in her pocket that she was constantly reaching for, stroking it lightly with her finger to remind herself that it was still there, turning it over and over in her hand to familiarize herself with the feel, the shape of it.

She did not even tell Tatsuki after she was released from the hospital, who had commented that she had not seen the orange-haired boy there, then shrugged and concluded that he must be staying at his family's clinic. Orihime didn't correct her.

Every day after Orihime got home and made sure dinner was cooked and dishes were washed, she would sit Ichigo down and teach him all she had learned that day, helping him with his homework and letting him copy her notes.

"And I talked with all of our teachers, and they said you could make up all of the tests after you get out of the 'hospital!' Isn't that great?" Orihime chirped, proud of herself for making all the proper arrangements.

Ichigo had looked slightly sick at the thought.

Watching him walk down the hall to the bathroom, Orihime thought about how quickly she had become accustomed to this new daily schedule—school, watching Ichigo train, eating dinner, helping him with his homework, taking a bath, going to bed. It was this last part she had not yet gotten used to. As she lay awake in her room each night, her thoughts would drift to their guest staying down the hall. Her heart would constrict in her chest and she would have trouble breathing and she would force her body to fall asleep, desperately trying not to think about what this all meant.

Saturday

2:11 p.m.

"Check." Rukia moved her knight so that it was just a few spaces away from the enemy king.

Orihime frowned at the board and examined the remaining pieces. She moved her king back a space towards her, to safety.

Rukia picked up her rook, sliding it across the board. "Checkmate."

Orihime stared in disbelief. "What? It was a trap!"

The dark-haired woman smiled as she flicked over Orihime's king in an unnecessary declaration of victory. "It's called strategy."

"Ichigo is really bad at this game you know," Orihime said as she picked up her prostrate king, righting him.

"I bet he plays like he fights," Rukia agreed. "Recklessly, taking unnecessary risks, and willing to sacrifice himself to save even the weakest person. Noble sentiments, but ones that will do more harm than good when you're playing a game like this."

Orihime had taken it upon herself to teach Ichigo chess and it was exactly as Rukia described. She won easily every time. She knew it was not a reflection of his intelligence but his character—there was a lot you could tell about a person by the way they played chess.

Orihime considered the pieces, both the survivors and the discarded. She thought back to her conversation with Rukia from a few weeks ago. She had come back to visit several times since then, to keep her updated on Ichigo and to keep him updated on his sisters. She knew he felt bad about worrying his family and being away from home for so long, but he took his training very seriously. Orihime wondered what had happened to make him so fixated.

The knight, Rukia had called Ichigo, and it had been fitting. The queen, Orihime had called Rukia and that had been more fitting still. And if Chad and Uryu were the rook and bishop, where did that leave her? Just a pawn? Maybe it didn't really matter, she told herself. After all, the game couldn't go on forever-someone would eventually emerge the winner. And once it ended, Orihime thought, watching Rukia put the game away—king or pawn, knight or queen—all the players would go back into the same box.