Akisame stayed where he was even after Ichigo had dozed off on him, mulling over everything that she'd told him so far. He was pretty good at being able to tell when a person was lying to him. However with her- he had some trouble being able to accurately read her.
Her facial expressions and body language was all over the place. Not only that, but her stories about her friends seemed a tad bit off too. Oh sure, he was fairly certain that she'd been totally honest about the first one, Tatsuki.
But the other two? He wasn't one hundred percent sure of.
It was odd but he had no problem mentally seeing a tiny Ichigo getting punched in the face everyday until she put a stop to it. But the stories of meeting her other two friends? Even he could tell that she was giving him the bare bones of explanations.
Her stories were lacking in a significant amount of detail.
And while he couldn't totally not see her being jumped by gang members- much like Kenichi often was. I mean, they were siblings after all- like she'd mentioned being when she met her second friend. He just had some trouble believing that she'd managed to take them out and save herself and the boy.
At least not without taking significant damage to herself in the process.
Still, he found himself a little bit of a mystery and now that he was intrigued enough, he wanted nothing more than to solve it. Perhaps I should see if Nijima can dig something up on her. The boy's information network was beyond impressive for a teenage boy. And he was fairly accurate as well.
If anyone could find out anything on her past- it would be him.
However he worried that if he asked him to look into her, the boy might refuse out of loyalty to her. Sighing because he wasn't exactly sure how to proceed here, he let his eyes drift a little bit from the yard to the girl.
She was partially propped up against one of the wooden beams, her blanket wrapped loosely around her slender shoulders, her head was turned ever so slightly which was causing her whole body to lean to the side a little bit. If she leaned much further there was no doubt in his mind that she would fall.
Deciding that he couldn't let her fall over due to her chest injury and the fact that it already hurt her a bit anyways, he reached out and grabbed her by the blanket and used that to gently move her so that she was lying down on her back with her head resting on one of his legs.
And as he started to pull his hands back he heard her let out a funny little sound of protest and froze as she muttered, "Dammit Rukia. Why do your drawings suck so bad- it's weird." Which was followed by a small whine before she muttered, "No, Orihime, not you too..."
Chuckling softly in amusement, he brushed her dark bangs back from her face and contented himself with simply letting her sleep while she dreamt strange things. After all, he had sort of forgotten that she tended to talk in her sleep.
So this was a good way to get answers about some stuff too. Even if it wasn't really what he wanted to know at the moment. The more she talked and said her friends names- the more he wanted to laugh. Even in her dreams, her friends sounded like terribly interesting people.
Maybe he could talk the elder into letting him adopt a few of them. For entertainment purposes only. If he actually wanted children, he'd have to try his hand at dating and see where that led him.
Ichigo didn't wake up again until sometime after noon. And by then, she'd already been moved indoors and everyone was sitting down to eat some lunch.
She had been carefully placed in a nice sunny spot underneath a window which was a few feet away from the table and everyone and everything else. Akisame wasn't exactly sure what must have woken her.
It might have been Apachai enjoying his food rather loudly. Or it might have even been a semi-drunk Sakaki taking a bite out of some of the shrimp salad that she'd made earlier this morning and practically shouting, "Holy crap, this is good!" Before quickly devouring it.
"I know right!" Miu said with a small smile. "I think Ichigo and I should alternate fixing meals around here."
"That might not be such a bad idea. You both cook wonderfully." Kensei commented.
"But doesn't she dislike cooking?" Shigure asked. Akisame nodded his head in confirmation as he ate a bite of his own food.
"Yes, that is what she said."
"Well I think it's a splendid idea," Hayato said. "After all, the girl will need something to do around here to occupy here time."
"Doesn't she already have two jobs though?" Miu asked, suddenly recalling that little tidbit of information and regretting opening up her mouth and putting ideas in the others heads. "I mean, Kenichi and I fixed up a work room for her and everything. Wouldn't two jobs keep her busy enough as it is?"
"Normally speaking, it would. But since one of her jobs is ghost writing- and we don't exactly know what the second one is... There will be days sometimes even weeks every so often where she'll be holed up in her work room or wherever working hard. On days like that, she'll be swamped with work and will probably not leave her room for quite a while. Not even to sleep or eat. If we want her to cook for us- we'll have to take full advantage of her while she's got nothing to do."
"That sounds terrible!" Sakaki said as he looked over at Kensei before then saying. "I love how you think." The older man just grinned at him.
"I know."
Ichigo may not have been totally awake enough to process what they were saying, but she heard her name a few times and rolled her eyes at their ridiculousness. She had enough on her plate to begin with as far as work was concerned. She had no time for the manipulations of others.
"You baka's do realize that I can hear you, right?"
Everyone at the table went totally quiet and still as she rolled over onto her side and slowly began to push herself up into a sitting position.
"Ichigo! You're awake!"
"Awake and hearing the lot of you plotting against me. Do you guys have any shame at all?"
All of the masters exchanged a look before blurting out in unison, "No." Followed by Miu's questioning, "Should we?" Ichigo snorted and quickly covered her mouth to stifle her laugh though they still heard her anyways.
Everyone stared at her as she composed herself and then muttered more to herself than them, "Un-frigging-believable. I'd consign my soul to hell or something if I said things like that with such an unrepentant manner."
The men all snickered in amusement at how similar to Kenichi she sounded at the moment.
"Will you be joining us, Ichigo?" Miu asked curiously once she was sitting up.
Ichigo was quiet for a moment as she thought over the question. She didn't normally require more than two meals/snacks per day since she was usually always busy anyways. Mostly because of the staggeringly unbelievable energy reserves that she had developed these past few years.
And she'd already eaten once already- though it wasn't much since she hadn't really eaten everything on her plate this morning before deciding that it was too lively for her taste.
So maybe it couldn't hurt her to snack a little bit and skip this evenings meal. At least until they caught on to her anyways.
"Sure. I could go for a snack." She said as she got up and walked over to the table and then sat down next to Miu who smiled happily at her. She gave the girl an awkward looking smile of her own as she asked her what she wanted to eat.
Ichigo told her that she'd have some of the shrimp salad, some of the ginger spice and vanilla flavored awayukikan. Miu looked a little bit startled by how little she wanted, especially after putting all of that hard work into making everything earlier that morning.
Her grandfather and the other masters must have thought the small amount of food she wanted was a mite peculiar too. Each of them were currently watching the dark haired girl like a hawk. However none of them seemed to be about to say anything about it.
At least not yet anyways.
Miu kept a smile carefully pasted on her face as she quickly fixed the other girl her plate. "Do you want some tea to drink with it?" The blond asked politely as Ichigo slowly reached for her chop sticks and quietly replied that tea would be nice. And then politely thanked her before she took off to fix her a cup.
It wasn't long after she'd returned with her drink when Kenichi seemed to have finally returned, his voice calling out to alert them all to his return mere moments before he appeared in the dinning room. "Hey everyone!"
"Hello Kenichi, did you have fun on your outing?" Miu asked as he walked over to the table and sat down on the other side of Ichigo.
"Not really. I went to grab some of Ichigo's stuff so that she'll be able to occupy herself while she's healing." The boy said.
"Aww." Apachai said, looking bummed. He wasn't the only one to look depressed. Sakaki, the elder and Kensei looked pretty bummed to hear this too. "But Apachai thought that we had planned to have Ichigo cook more!"
Shigure reached out and patted the giant on the shoulder in a comforting manner as Kenichi looked questioningly at Akisame. The man sighed and merely cast a disappointed look at the other men and then said, "Pay no attention to them, Kenichi. So, you brought some more of Ichigo's things?"
"Yeah. I even made sure to grab her mail and bring it over too." Kenichi said as Miu handed him a plate so that he could grab some food since she very much doubted that he'd eaten anything while he was gone. He gave her a grateful look and then quickly grabbed himself some of the stuff on the table and then looked at his sister and then asked, "By the way, why do you label your mail such weird things?"
Ichigo gave him a innocent look. Pretending that she didn't know what he was talking about as Shigure asked him what he was talking about. At which point he explained that his sister tended to organize her mail according to weird labels. And then mentioned what those labels consisted of, mortifying the girl.
"She labels every piece of mail she gets under these weird labels that consist of, 'Death threats and Doom. Bill's and nonsense'. And last but not least, 'Oh! Fun!'."
Everyone went totally still again and looked at the girl, whom was hiding her face from them before then suddenly bursting into hysterical laughter. They'd heard a lot of weird things before, but none of them had ever heard of anyone labeling their mail quite like that before. So naturally it was funny to them.
Especially when Miu asked, "Why do you label your stuff like that?"
"If you really want to know, grab a couple of things out of the 'Death threats and Doom' pile and the 'Oh! Fun!' pile. I guarantee you'll figure it out." Ichigo said in a defensive tone before then quickly finishing what little bit of food she had in front of her and then quickly excusing herself from the table.
Needless to say, everyone got more than a tad bit curious and made Kenichi go and grab a few things from both labels, and half an hour later, after reading what the boy had grabbed- they were freaking the hell out.
Apparently the Death threats and Doom stuff was very adequately named. Because Ichigo literally got death threats from several different people. One was named Aizen, another was named Kenpachi- who sent little doodled pictures of him killing Ichigo. Deadpool style.
Creepy.
And the last one was named Tatsuki. Though apparently her death threat was explained with the words, You bitch! You made Orihime cry! Which was followed by the words, P.S. Call me as soon as you get this so that I can yell at you for not keeping in touch.
The stuff from the Oh! Fun! pile wasn't too much better.
Though the letter suggesting a year long vacation in the mountains to play a long overdue game of 'survive my wrath' sounded a little bit fun to some of the masters.
But that was only because they were sadists and weird things appealed to them.
