Chapter 12

(Kisuke)

I stared at the Shinigami with wide eyes. The words played over in my head a few times but they were having trouble sticking.

"A marriage? In the Kuna Clan?"

The Shinigami, a younger girl from one aristocratic families, nodded, "Yeah! It's very exciting! The bride is breathtakingly beautiful—a member of the Kuchiki family, actually—and she's marrying a very handsome lord from the Tsunayashiro Clan. How lucky! I wish I was there but I got deployed…"

She was continuing her ramble but all I could was slump against the wall with a dumbfounded expression. The only girl who would have married would have been Kumiko. Perhaps her mother Sachiko but she was starting to get too old to have anymore children. She didn't have as much to offer that Kumiko still did…

Would she have agreed though? Maybe—I thought with a shattering heart—she had fallen in love with someone else.

"How much do I owe you?" She asked but I shook my head and waved her off, "Oh! Thank you, Mister Urahara! Have a nice day."

The doorbells jingled as she left but it sounded more like a bomb to my ears. Everything was silent in the shop, still until Yoruichi hopped onto the counter.

"That was generous of you," She commented, licking her paw and lifting it her face. After a long, painful silence, she sighed, "Kisuke, you ca—"

"I just wish I could tell her how sorry I am," I ran both hands along my face and through my hair. All these years I fought to go back to the Soul Society or send her some kind of message—if not to rekindle what we had then to at least explain myself.

I needed her to know that I hadn't willingly left her there. But now it seemed too late.

"We don't know how many women are in the Kuna family," Yoruichi argued but even she didn't believe her own words. After being married for nearly a decade, you knew a person's family like they were your own.

There were no other women in the Kuna family.


(Shizuko)


"You look beautiful," My mother said through unshed tears. She had chased all the maids sent to dress me and now it was just her and I. Stepping forward, she took my hands and squeezed them tightly, "Shizuko—listen to me carefully. You do not have to go through with this."

"I know," I nodded, meeting her eyes for what seemed like the first time, "But I'm going through with this because—"

"If you say because you want to, so help me—" She stopped herself and took a deep, calming breath before speaking, "I won't let you forced into a marriage just because the Kuchiki Elders want this. There are ways out of it!"

"Like running away and hiding your identity? Like your intended husband passing on?" My words silenced her protests, "Like becoming a geisha? It's useless, Mum. They won."

She did what I expected her to do much sooner, and slammed her fist into the wall. Her face was bright red with anger and she shook so hard that she might have started an earthquake had I not pulled her into my arms.

"The thing is…I'm not upset," I whispered to her, "They need to think that they have control. After this, it'll be fine."

She said nothing and I wasn't sure if it was because she was crying or she didn't have the heart to educate me on the assholes that were our Elders.

"You're my brave girl," She pulled back and shook me, "You deserve so much more than this. I wish that there was more I could do…"

She cupped her hand over her mouth and began sobbing. I knew what she meant. She wished that Kisuke was here to fight this. At the end of it, we still lived in an era where men had more sway in politics than women—the Soul Society had yet to progress like the World of the Living had.

In that moment, she and I were on the same page when it came to Kisuke Urahara. As I watched my mother pull herself together, wipe her tears away, and march me through the hallway with her head held high, I felt resentment. For the first time in my life, I understood the ill will my mother felt towards my father.

Because if he was here, he would be able to protect me. He would have had the entire weight of the Shihoin Clan behind him. If he were here, the Elders wouldn't have been able to bargain me with my mother's freedom.

I still remembered the night of the party so vividly, where the Kuchiki Elders revealed to me that they knew. They knew about me being a spy for the Seireitei. They knew about me helping Byakuya marry Hisana in secret before they could stop him. And so they gave me a choice—which one of us they would marry; my mother or me.

We stood outside the doors of the hall where they all stood. The families had decided to keep to the traditional formal wedding but had incorporated other traditions. For instance, the man I intended to marry insisted that I have my hair decorated intricately—much like I had when I was a geisha—and not wear a headdress. It didn't come as much of a surprise since the man I was being married to was one of the men bidding to become my patron.

When the Elders had heard that the second eldest son of the Tsunayashiro Clan had an invested interest in me—a thorn in their side who they had been unable to reign in until now—the opportunity had been too much to pass up.

"I'm ready," I whispered and the doors opened.

I was to walk down to the groom with my mother at my side, but the ceremony itself was strictly Shinto. And now, as I stared down at my own checkmate, I felt as though I was about to puke.

The moment I caught sight of the Elders, kneeling on the side, I felt an fury ignite within me that I had never felt in my life. They didn't dare meet the glares my mother and I cast their way—not that it affected them. I do believe that they knew if they made eye contact, one of us would fly off the rails and claw someone's face off.

When I reached him at the end of the aisle, I hugged my mom so tightly that Sachiko had to pry us away from one another as discreetly as possible. Slowly, I turned to the man—to my husband, Jirou Tsunayashiro.

He smiled at me, "You look very beautiful, Shizuko."

Shizuko…I had always loved my name but right now it felt like a curse word. It was only a reminder that I was no longer Chinatsu. I was no longer my own person—no, I was quickly reminded that I would always be Shizuko Kuna. Property of the Kuchiki Clan.

"Thank you for wearing your hair—it's been done lovely," He seemed to notice that I was half a second away from running out of the hall, because he took my hands in his own.

"Thank you, sir," My voice could have been lost to the wind.

The priest started the ceremony and I looked anywhere but at the man beside me. My Mum gave me a smile but soon she was turning to the Elders. My grandmother was swatting the back of her head, and gave me a thumbs up. It was ridiculously encouraging but it soothed me. Oddly enough, watching the two of them act the way I had always known them to was comforting. Nothing was going to really change…just that I would be a married woman.

My eyes caught the sight of Rukia. She stared up at me with wide eyes, tears running down her cheeks. She kept wiping furiously as her eyes but they kept coming. She looked at Byakuya, who sat beside her, and then down at the ground furiously. And then she did the most surprising and revealing thing—she glared at the Elders with the same amount of disgust as my mother had. It seemed that this small, quiet girl who had come from nothing despised what they were doing just as much as we did.

It made me look at Byakuya. He knelt beside the Elders and Rukia, pompous and ceremonious. I had always admired his dedication to our family—although his harshness was insulting at times—but now all I felt was conned. The man who had once been my closest friend was now my worst enemy.

When had we gone from sharing apples in the courtyards and dancing until the Ginrei had us smacked…to this?

I gazed up at Jirou, who smiled at me as we performed our wedding rituals, and was struck with revelation. The Elders were not to blame—they could have been stopped. He took my hand and his family began to clap, and so did mine.

As we turned, my eyes met Byakuya's. He must have seen the rage—the pure and raw hatred in my gaze—because his widened. I walked past him as a married woman, and realized that the only one to blame for this was him.


*insert dramatic music*