The night air still holds some of the heat of the day, but it has cooled enough that Kisuke isn't bothered by wearing his green coat. He strolls through the empty streets, accompanied only by the sound of his wooden sandals on the pavement. He reaches a corner, the alley opening out to a small square in the midst of which there is a tiny park – really only a few trees and bushes set around a puddle of water. He stands, tipping his head back in an attempt to look beyond the rim of his hat at the small cut of sky that is visible between the high buildings around him.
The few stars are pale and gloomy.
With a sigh he closes his eyes, imagines how the sky has been those nights –
With a shock of burning energy, the gate once again rejects his touch. The physical pain isn't much more than a jolt, a lingering stinging in his fingers. But the truth it represents, that he really can never go back, is like pushing a stake right through his heart.
His eyes fly open, still looking at that dark grey sky, he searches for a blinking star to take comfort in, but the cruel night in this world provides only a few dull spots, and, like the gate, sends his longing right back at him.
He desperately wants to howl his loneliness to whatever stars there are when even the moon is absent.
He casts his eyes down, and continues his stroll, trying to seem as if wandering aimlessly through the nightly city.
He told the children that he was going out to buy juice. Tessai frowned suspiciously, but Kisuke brushed his former Fuku-taichou's worry off cheerfully. Tessai's gaze hardened as he had looked away, because he understands and doesn't approve.
But what is he to do? On lonely nights like this, he can't help himself; he can't bear to stay in the shop with people that aren't her. These times it's even painful to visit the copied training area under the store. It provides many happy memories – which are, in the end nothing but memories, used to fill the weeks, months or years until she visits again.
She loves him enough that she left soul-society because of him. But in her personality as well as in her other form she is a cat and he's a dog; a stray dog, but still, a dog. The painful truth was that she never really left with him.
And all that he can see when he looks at that bleak sky of the human world is that twitch of black tail, just before she is gone.