A little while later, Akisame was sitting at the counter in the middle of the kitchen, watching her as she cut up some veggies to go in a side salad with a carefully masked look of amazement on his face.

She'd really gone all out making everyone's breakfast. He didn't think that he'd ever seen so much food at one time before in all his years while living at Ryozanpaku.

To be perfectly honest, he'd been a mite worried about her stepping foot in the kitchen at first. And not just because of her present condition either. Though the fact that she'd have to use some heavy pots and pans had worried him a smidgen. No- He'd been worried about what sort of a cook she might be.

But once she got started she was shockingly good at it. Maybe even a bit more so than Miu herself.

And after she had a good feeling for where everything was, she went to work with a strange singlemindedness that he found that he actually envied a little bit.

She'd already made a enough fluffy pancakes, tamagoyaki, bacon, some honey and ginger okayu, some homemade strawberry, green tea, vanilla and ginger spice flavored awayukikan, cinnamon rolls. What appeared to be a shrimp salad of some sort, teriyaki steak, some stir fried vegetables... All of which weren't even breakfast foods.

In fact some of them looked like dinner and lunch foods.

But they all looked and smelled delicious anyways.

However those that were made for breakfast there were more than enough for all of them to have second helpings of all of the dishes. And knowing Appachai like he did, he would want a little bit of everything that he could get his hands on. Sakaki and Hayato maybe would to.

He might as well. If for no other reason than to sate his curiosity. But he couldn't speak for the others though.

Frankly he'd never seen someone work their way around a kitchen quite like her before. And the easy way that she managed everything without asking for him to help her much bespoke of years and years of solitude and having to do everything for herself.

Perhaps from the time she was a small child.

He wasn't sure that he liked the idea of her as a little kid trying to fend for herself. I mean it was one thing for Miu to fend for herself as a little kid, her grandfather would have kept a close eye on her to prevent her from potentially hurting herself while she learned a valuable basic life skill.

Ichigo though, she'd had parents. Or at least one of them anyways.

So how had she learned to- He stopped his train of thought there and found himself asking, "Do you like cooking Ichigo?"

She looked up from her task for a moment and blinked at him before slowly returning her eyes back to the items strewn about the counter and replied. "Not really."

"Oh? I was just wondering because you seemed to be cooking for an army." He said as he pointed to the mountain of different dishes piled all over the counter. She froze for a second and scanned them all and then went right back to cutting stuff up.

"Are you having fun, making a mess?" He asked in amusement.

She shrugged her shoulders a little bit, and visibly winced as her chest throbbed a bit. He noted the action and started to ask her if she was alright, but she cut him off by saying. "Who wouldn't have fun cutting something up." He snapped his mouth shut and blinked at her for a moment as he thought, Well okay then.

So she had a Shigure-esque personality.

He wasn't quite sure how to react to this little bit of information, so he didn't bother to. Though he supposed that if he wanted to really find out just how Shigure-esque her personality was he could just sic Kensei on her and see how beat up he got. If nothing else it might be somewhat entertaining.

Though something told him that she wouldn't bother to pull her punches like Shigure usually did. So he decided to file the information away in the back of his mind for the time being and try to focus on something else.

"Will you tell me a little bit about yourself?" He asked after a moment or so of silence. She looked up at him again. Her face going blank of any visible thought or feeling as she asked warily,

"What do you want to know?"

He studied her for a moment, curious as to how she managed to put on such a poker face. Her expression was so difficult for him to read that it was just a little bit concerning to him. After all, he prided himself on being able to read a person easily.

"Well, what was your childhood like? After your mother died?"

"Difficult." The curtly spoken word should have put him off of asking her anything else. But weirdly enough it simply made him want to know more. He looked at her expectantly and she made a frustrated little sound, likely becoming irked with him before then asking, "What exactly have you been told? About me? My family and stuff?"

"Not much. Just that your mother died when you were young and the rest of your family passed on several years ago."

"The bare bones of things then." It wasn't a question. Merely a fact.

"Basically, yes."

She sighed and lifted a hand to rub at the bridge of her nose and seemed to be thinking for a moment before saying, "Dad crawled into a bottle the same day that mom died. He never really managed to drag himself out of it again."

"Did he stay drunk often?"

"More than I can accurately recall." She muttered.

"So who took care of you and your sisters?"

"I did."

"That must have been difficult given how young you were as well."

She shrugged again, "It's not like dad was going to do it. When he wasn't working in the clinic, he was drunk and lying somewhere in the way. I can't tell you how many times I tripped over his sorry ass while trying to clean or something. Nor can I tell you how many times I wound up spraining a wrist or ankle, or breaking a bone or two because he was too drunk to move out of the way."

He inwardly cringed a little bit in sympathy and asked what she did to take care of her sisters. Deciding that the topic of her drunken father should be dropped before she got angry.

"Tell me about your sisters. What were they like?"

"Well, Karin- she was the second oldest. And she was a tom boy. She fought, played soccer, baseball-"

"She sounds like she was a little hoodlum." Akisame said as he propped his cheek in his hand. Ichigo had a pretty smile on her face. Her turquoise eyes glittering with happiness.

It was incredibly easy to tell what she must have felt and thought about her sisters. The two younger children had been a small part of her entire world. Losing them much of hurt her terribly.

"She was. Yuzu however, was a little lady. She was...kind of old fashioned. She incredibly sweet, softly spoken, well mannered and lady-like."

"They both sound as if they were wonderful children."

"They were," Ichigo said. Her smile dimming a bit. "I've only met a few other people who were almost exactly alike them."

"You gravitate towards people similar to them." It wasn't a question. Merely a statement of fact. Ichigo blushed prettily and fell silent for a moment before saying wistfully.

"Yeah. I do. But it isn't just because they remind me of them or the fact that I miss them," She said as she finished up what she was doing and finally set everything aside. "It's because those people are genuinely good people. And I guess I'm just fond of the type."

He smiled and was about to ask something else when Sakaki poked his head into the room and asked nervously, "A-Are we going to eat anytime soon? I think the elder and Appachai both have just died from starvation."

Both he and Ichigo looked at the man oddly before he sighed and then told him to grab some of the breakfast dishes and go ahead and take them out to the dinning room. Sakaki didn't bother to make any protests about carrying the plates out. Which was a little bit usual for him.

But once Akisame finished grabbing some of the left over plates and began to carry them out- he quickly realized why. Both the elder and Appachai really did look as if they'd just keeled over dead.

Shigure, Kensei and Miu were all freaking out and trying to revive them. Growling in annoyance because Appachai dying of hunger was one thing, but Hayato's attempt at humor was terrible- Akisame made his way over to the table and unceremoniously stomped on the elder's stomach as he was reaching over to put the plates in his hands down on the table.

The elder wheezed and jerked himself up and looked at him with wide, startled looking eyes as Akisame smiled sweetly at him and then walked off to grab Ichigo so that she could eat too.