Chapter 15
(Kumiko)
His voice still made my heart skip a beat. I pressed paused and scribbled down into my notes before pressing play. I had been up all night listening to the voice recordings that Kisuke had left behind. They were the one thing I had managed to sneak away from Central Forty-Six's demolition squads, and perhaps the most vital.
His voice was so perfectly preserved in these tapes…
"Theoretically, if a Soul can control the process of becoming a Hollow, they would be able to increase their spiritual energy intake substantially. The same could be said for Hollows who can learn to control their spiritual energy."
Kisuke had explained Hollowfication to me when we first were married. There was little of it that I understood about it. I even had learnt about how Kisuke had come across his hypothesis of Hollowfication while he was researching the limits and growth of spiritual pressures.
What I didn't understand was how someone could replicate these ideas. Even though Kisuke had shared all this knowledge with me, I barely could grasp the concepts of spiritual pressure. Someone couldn't have just picked up his research and continued with it like it was their own—they must have already been conducting their own research.
I had combed through any research of Kisuke's I had left, and reread all of my notes that I had taken at the time I was gathering information from the Shinigami I was ordered to execute. Most of them had been from Squad Twelve, but none of them had anything to do with Kisuke's research on soul enhancements—Hollowfication. It was something that only Kisuke, Yoruichi, and I had known about.
I shut my eyes and stifled a yawn. I hadn't been home for two days now, and I was regretting it now. I was beyond exhausted and I still had an entire workday ahead of me.
The door slid open and Yumichika walked in, "I've got some reports for you to sign."
I quickly put the tape and notes away, "Thanks."
As I read over them, Yumichika sat at his desk. I became keenly aware of the hole he was staring into the side of my head. But when I looked up at him, he said nothing.
And then I remembered.
"Shizuko!" I tore from my seat and flung myself into the air.
(Shizuko)
I was waiting by the Senkaimon when I saw Byakuya. Beside him was a face I had barely recognized, and one that I hadn't seen in years.
As Renji approached me, his face was muddled with confusion and vague recognition. Most people barely recognized me as Chinatsu the famous geisha now that I had grown the black dye from my hair. I still wore it in an elaborate hairstyle but nothing to the extent of my traditional tsubushi shamada hairdo.
Spotting the bronze badge tied to his arm, I bowed deeply, "Lieutenant Abarai."
He looked over at Byakuya, who didn't seem surprised that I had deliberately ignored him. Glancing back at me, he nodded, "You're Shizuko?"
I nodded, "It's a pleasure to meet you again, sir." Before he could question me, I turned to Byakuya and bowed to him, "Captain."
He said nothing to me and turned to his lieutenant, "Lead the way, Renji."
"Sir," Renji stepped past me, stealing a glance as he opened the Senkaimon.
I waited for Byakuya to enter, pointedly looking away from him. His sleeve brushed against me but he made just as much effort not to look at me. The walk through the Precipice World was brief but tense. I could feel Renji's nerves get slowly more and more rattled.
Finally, we reached the World of the Living. The air was thinner, and it took me a moment to adjust. Looking around, I surprised to see tall cars and concrete roads everywhere. It was strangely chaotic and even more beautiful than my mother had ever described it as.
She had always spoke of the World of the Living with a sense of wonder. I always questioned why she had a bright spark in her eyes as she described it. Now, as I stared at the lights of the city and the people hustle below me, I could understand it. The feeling of watching these mortal souls live their lives was touching. It was exquisitely human.
"Locating the target," Renji pulled on the visors he had worn on his forehead.
Byakuya glanced at me, "Do you sense anything?"
I shut my eyes and focused my senses on the spiritual makeup of the world beneath me. My mother had been teaching me how to sense spiritual pressures for as long as I could remember. The way she had explained it to me was that there were two aspects of a realm or plane—the physical makeup, which is what we saw with our eyes. And the spiritual makeup, which we saw using our mind's eye.
Several flames burst around me, but I focused on the ones burning the brightest, "There's a few near us but I don't know which one is hers."
I felt something slipped into my hand, and realized that it was a kimono. Judging by the weight and size of the material, it was a small woman's. Rukia's.
Her spiritual pressure was laced within the weave of the material, and I focused on it. Soon, I had distinguished her from the rest of the souls around me.
"This way," I charged forward. I had to make quick work of finding her before she moved.
We found her walking with a redhead girl by the river—both dressed in uniforms. They were chatting quietly amongst themselves until they were joined by a group of teenagers. Soon, they disappeared into a crowd.
"Follow them," Byakuya told me, "Note who she's with. We can't catch her during the day."
I jumped down and ran into the crowd. It was thick with people on their way to work and kids on their way to school. Uniforms blended together, and I found it surprisingly difficult to distinguish those with spiritual pressure and those without. How many souls in this town possessed reiatsu?
My fingers were tingling and I couldn't tell where the soul that was causing it was until they were bumping into me. I jolted as his shoulder bumped into mine, sending lightning up it. My entire arm had gone numb and I momentarily lost my breath. That had been nothing like I had ever experienced before.
I looked up to find a young boy with orange hair staring at me with wide eyes. His mouth was open, eyes glancing down to my zanpakuto and then back to my face.
"Ichigo!"
I straightened up just as she ran up to him. She hadn't sensed me—something that I had found frighteningly disturbing. I could barely feel her presence even as she approached us.
"What are you doing?" Rukia pulled on his sleeve, "You're gawking like a moron—"
"I…" He turned around but couldn't see me. In the time that his had looked away from me, I had disappeared into the crowd again. He looked around but couldn't find me, "Never mind…I thought I saw another shinigami…"
"Stop being stupid," She pushed him towards his friends. She carried on with them but then stopped.
Turning around, she glanced frightfully over her shoulder. And then her eyes found me, standing still in the sea of movement, watching her. Her eyes widened and suddenly she became that scared, young girl I had stumbled on in a dark office. The only difference now was that only one of us was hiding.
"Is this your first time in the World of the Living?" Renji asked while I made them tea later that evening.
"I was here briefly for a field operation back in my final year in the Academy," I glanced at Byakuya. He had been there and I wondered if he even bothered to remember. "But this is the first time I've seen the true beauty of it."
"I don't think I've ever heard it described as that," He said thoughtfully, "But I suppose in some ways it's a pretty cool place."
I leaned over and poured him a cup of tea. He grew quiet and watched me serve tea to his captain too, bowing slightly as I did so. Setting the pot down, I continued the order of the ceremony I had come to love as a geisha. There was familiarity in it and order—serving tea was a habit that would not die easily in me.
"Oh holy shit," Renji's words made me look up at him. His eyes were nearly popping out of his head, "You're—Chinatsu?"
I smiled, "Shizuko. My name is Shizuko now."
"You look…your hair," He looked at Byakuya for confirmation. He only sipped at his tea quietly. "When did you—"
"I got married," I smiled sourly. Byakuya couldn't ignore my look now, and he set his cup down to meet it, "It was found out that I had been working with the Seireitei to gather information about certain clients. When my clan found out, they decided that marriage was the only way to repair my reputation."
"Oh," Renji shifted, "Who is your husband?"
This time, Byakuya spoke, "He is from the Tsunayashiro Noble Family."
"The Head?"
I shook my head with a laugh. Even Byakuya found what Renji said amusing, "I'm a junior member of my clan at best. I'm much too unimportant to be married to such a man—no, I was married to the second son. Jirou."
I became lost in my thoughts now, staring into my empty cup with the teapot poised to pour. I hoped that he wasn't in too much pain. For a moment, I was plagued with guilt for leaving him when he needed me at his side most. Even though this is what he had wanted, had I done the right thing by him?
"He's more of a businessman than a noble. And besides from pouring tea and the occasional shamisen show for him, we are very much in our own worlds. Which has left me more than free to do what I had originally planned to do to recover any respect I had," I poured Byakuya another cup of tea, "And become a Shinigami. Just as my parents did."
There was a long stretch of silence between all three of us. Renji stared at me with wide eyes. He was too busy absorbing all this information to notice that Byakuya and I were openly glaring at one another.
"The Tsunayashiro's are one of the Great Noble Families," Renji murmured, "Which means that you're a noblewoman of one of the Great Nobles Clans?"
"My name is Shizuko Kuna—the great-granddaughter of Ginrei Kuchiki."
Renji swore, his eyes flickering between his captain and me, "You two are family?"
Byakuya nodded stiffly. I only smirked, unable to keep myself from laughing. Family. What a troubling word. The only "family" I had were my mom and grandmother. The rest of them…well, at least now I could understand my mother's distain of them.
I set the teapot down and walked away from the two of them. Byakuya was not my family—not after he had allowed the Clan to pull me through the bush backwards and marry me off. My mother had fought it but her word meant little to the Elders…still at least she had tried.
But as much as I loved and respected my mother, I couldn't deny that there were times where she had held me back. Instead of encouraging me, she had found ways to make the things I wanted more difficult to obtain—all for good reason but it would have saved me a lot more heartache if she had just explained instead of manipulating me.
I perched myself up in a tree and looked out at the town around me. Somewhere nearby, my father was probably getting ready for bed. Was he my family? I highly doubted it, which is why I hadn't run at the first opportunity to see him. To hell with that bastard.
To hell with the lot of them.
Next update: Near kisses in close quarters. Shizuko is shot out of the sky. Rukia's arrest.
See you in two weeks! Happy President's Day tomorrow for all my Americans! To everyone else, Happy Almond Day today and Random Acts of Kindness Day tomorrow!
