Disclaimer: I own not.

Chapter Three: Family Isn't Funny

"I just love college. I love the people and the classes, the nice professors and the evil professors, the vending machines and the food court. I love this walkway, and those fancy arranged flower bushes. I love the haughty stares from the liberal arts students, and the brainy idiosyncrasies from the engineering kids. There're--no--we're all just a great bunch of losers with plans, or terrified without them. I love it all."

Ichigo's face was blank as he pointed it out, "But you're not in college, Yuzu."

Ichigo was walking his sisters past Karakura University on their way back from grocery shopping. Isshin had unloaded the girls on Ichigo with a vague minute warning that morning on the phone before rushing off to a weekend medical conference. It was still Friday, and the girls had been forced to wait outside his third period class alone and unmonitored. Ichigo had been justifiably furious when he'd stumbled outside from his three hour nap to see his two little sisters sitting against the wall very much on their own in the alien college environment. Ichigo right away opted to skip his fourth class in favor of keeping an eye on them. He'd need to catch up on his groceries anyway.

"Yes, but I can still love college. I don't have to be in college to know I love it. I simply do."

It had already been established that Yuzu was a little insane. She had been unfortunate to take the bullet for Karin by being the one to inherit Isshin's crazy gene.

"Oh look, students!" Yuzu cheered and pointed. "Look at how they are dressed. They must be athletes. Let's go asked them about their sport."

"How about we don't, Yuzu. They look busy," Karin said, taking control of their sister for Ichigo.

"Okay, you guys. I'm going to go and get my homework off of Professor Nakamura's bulletin board. His class starts in an hour, and I'm not going for the sake of you two."

"Why don't you go online and never show your face ever again. Be an elusive learner, Ichi-ni. That's exciting, isn't it?" Yuzu asked, further fascinated with the university the deeper she was led inside.

"We don't have an internet connection for the computer at the apartment."

"That's awful. How do you do all of your intense, college-level projects?"

Ichigo didn't remember having every been faced with any particularly intense projects. He just answered the question. "It's what the campus library is for."

"Can we go there next?"

Ichigo shrugged. "There's no reason to."

"Please," Yuzu asked, clasping her hands together and leaning towards him. "Please, can we see the library?"

Ichigo did not like the face of Yuzu pleading with him, so he agreed. "Okay, fine, but it isn't amazing or anything. Don't get your hopes up."

"Awesome!"

Karin sighed. "You know it does no good to give her what she wants like that, Ichi. She'll be asking to sit with you in class next. And didn't you have a job to get to after third hour?"

"Yeah. My shift changed. You're lucky you don't have to hang around the smelly hospital all day."

"And what time do you start now?"

"Nine in the evening."

"Nice."

"Shut up."

When they reached the library, Ichigo tried to explain to Yuzu what certain things were without enticing The Wrath of the Librarians. She took all the information eagerly and with glee, which made Ichigo feel a little important inside for being responsible for that. He was telling her about the internet using procedures of the computer lab when he happened to look up and see two familiar, glasses'd eyes watching him. The mouth below them was a sneer.

Then, Ichigo did something he would be immensely proud of thirty years after leaving the library; he turned back to Yuzu and continued explaining about the library to her. He didn't realise at the moment that this was a very mature thing to do instead of running at Uryuu screaming about his new working hours that were all thanks to him.

Still, Ichigo didn't feel like he was doing anything different from usual. There was no special "I am now a little more mature than I was yesterday"-feeling. His thought process was more along the need to be quiet in the library, the fact that Yuzu was listening to him, and that he really had nothing to say to Uryuu so there was no point to start a conversation.

"And then," Ichigo concluded, "if something really horrible you did caused the computer to spontaneously combust or whatever else is way cooler than the computer deserves, the library knows who you are."

"That's too bad," said Yuzu. Ichigo's eyes widened.

"What do you mean by that?"

Karin wandered back before Yuzu could answer. She'd gone to explore the library on her own after finding Ichigo's grand tour to be what she called a grand bore. "It's probably time to leave. I'm about to pass out from the sheer presence of so much reading material. I'm already getting a headache. It's a good thing we didn't buy ice cream, but the librarians are still giving us dark looks for carrying around grocery bags."

"Yeah, sure," Ichigo said, standing to leave. "You ready, Yuzu?"

"Now we get to see your dorm, right? That's so cool."

They left the library then with Yuzu eagerly prophesising the catastrophe that would be Ichigo's room. Ichigo didn't think this was fair, since he kept his room at home clean. What was she basing her predictions on?

"What a dump," Karin said on her first sight of the apartment. Ichigo became defensive.

"What? The place is clean. There's nothing wrong with it."

"There's plenty wrong. I didn't say it was your fault; the place is just a dump no matter what you do to it. I didn't say it was a pigsty. I'm not incriminating you."

"Yet it sounds like you are," Ichigo muttered and went to the kitchen to begin putting food away. "When I go to work tonight, Chad will be back, so you have nothing to worry about being alone here."

"Besides the asbestos in the air vent, right?" Karin smarted back. Ichigo looked heard a springing sound and looked around the doorway to see her standing on the couch, surveying her surroundings incredulously. Her arms were crossed, which met she was far from pleased with the sight.

"This building never had asbestos," Ichigo assured her. "You're perfectly safe."

"Except it's a male dorm, and we're two young girls abandoned by their family."

"Don't be so hard to please. This isn't my fault. And, anyway, how much trouble can you be in with Chad watching you?" It was true. "No-one's going to mess with Chad." That was very, very true.

"Well, forgive me for not worshiping your sad college life like Yuzu," Karin said and slid into the couch seat. "Where's your remote control?"

Ichigo motioned to a table across the room. Then, he stopped. "Hey, where is Yuzu?"

"She's probably narrating the rustic brilliance of your dirty laundry pile."

"Thanks," Ichigo said and went to check the bedrooms. Today wasn't his day. Hell, the whole week had been against him. He couldn't admit it to Karin, but he also did not like the idea of his little sisters alone in a strange dorm. He was relieved to hand them over into the care of Chad. Ichigo could not afford to make any mistakes at work now in an effort to win back Ito's respect and his previous working hours. Even the obstacles set by Kurosaki Isshin couldn't stop him from his goal. Ichigo was a fighter; he would overcome in a victory.

"Where's your hairnet? How do you expect you're going to step foot into this kitchen without a hairnet?"

"No-one told me about a damn hairnet."

"Oh, I believe they did, you just weren't listening," the skinny man behind the lunch counter said. "We were going to give you an easy job of washing dishes on your first night, but you're just insisting on stacking up tables and mopping, aren't you?" He leaned forward towards Ichigo, squinting. Ichigo was wondering if he was looking for some slogan, "Yes, you got me: I do insist on stacking tables and mopping" written out on Ichigo's shirt.

"I don't like your attitude, Kurosaki." The man had been trying to read Ichigo's name tag. "No wonder you're here. Get to work. Kikuchi-san will show you the tables' folding and staking technique."

The skinny man pointed to another, much larger man who was busy tackling the first table. Ichigo didn't say anything in response since he knew he had nothing pleasant to tell the skinny man.

"Hello," the man folding tables said brightly. Ichigo was deeply moved by at least one person sounding happy to see him. The man began to explain the key mechanisms of the folding tables. "Now, look closely, and you see that in this part of the table is a lock you just have to loosen…."

Forty minutes later, the combined effort of the two of them had folded and stacked every table in what the man said in awe was a very good time. Ichigo couldn't help but agree, though he had no idea how long it usually took to fold and stack tables. Next up was the sweeping and mopping, which the man assured Ichigo would not take long with two focussed workers as the two of them. Indeed, it did not seem to take long at all, which Ichigo found amazing. The man had some sort of strange effect on the passage of time. His cheeriness and diligent working transformed the atmosphere around him from drab custodial work to something that felt as though it were important to do and do well. Ichigo couldn't beat that work ethic. Instead, he was further amazed.

"Now, I've got to go sweep out some of the clinic rooms, since the hours are over. Want to help me, or wash counters?" the man asked. He wasn't being sarcastic, either. There was a true concern for Ichigo that kept him from simply dragging the boy after him without making sure the boy wanted to go. Ichigo couldn't believe he even had to ask.

"Sweeping is totally cool," he said, already way ahead of the man and pushing his custodial cart out the double doors.

"Kurosaki! Where are you going?" yelled the skinny man behind the counter, catching sight of Ichigo an instant before he cleared the door.

"He's helping me," the man said, "my back is not the same as it always was. I need a little help after all the tables and mopping."

The skinny man nodded right away with this. "Yes, of course. Take however many people you need."

Ichigo stared, confused. "Why doesn't that guy argue with you?" he asked once they reached the hospital lobby. He didn't ask loudly, but the emptiness of the room raise the volume of his voice, causing Ichigo to winch and lower to a whisper. "I mean, he's a bastard."

"I dunno," the man said, his voice not a whisper, but instead one of those special, deep voices that rarely echoed unless he wanted it to. "Maybe since I've been working here for so long? My back is pretty bad, too."

"How long have you worked here?" Ichigo asked, interested since the man did not look very old.

"Since a while before Ishida Ryuuken took over. He hasn't been administrator very long yet, maybe ten years. I remember when Kurosaki showed up and started his clinic. I was already working here three years before that clinic."

"So, you knew my father?" Ichigo asked.

"Who was your father?"

"Kurosaki Isshin."

The man was taken aback by this. He looked as if he didn't fully believe it. "If your father's Kurosaki Isshin, then why are you a janitor?"

"Because he's also insane and thinks it's good for me."

The man laughed. "He was always a little eccentric. Probably why he didn't want to hang around the hospital taking care of patients. Everyone was sort of bothered with him opening his clinic so far across town. I don't remember why, though. Maybe just because it was him."

This seemed like a good enough reason to Ichigo, since his father had always been an aggravating person. It must've horrified the people in the hospital to know that Kurosaki Isshin was about to set his insanity free on the world and out of the hospital's reach. But then, maybe that was why Isshin had opened his clinic in the first place, to escape the confines and regulation of the hospital. The guy was strange. Good to know it hadn't been a recent characteristic in him.

"What's your name?" Ichigo asked, suddenly realising the man and him had not been properly introduced. "I'm Kurosaki Ichigo."

"My name's Kikuchi Eugene."

"Eugene?"

"I like that name better than Yi Jin. I've got a mixed ancestry on my mother's side."

"I see. But, why Eugene?"

"I used to live in the United States with my brother. I'm going back to stay in a couple of weeks since my brother-in-law is getting tired of me, and I'm getting tired of my brother-in-law."

They reached the hospital clinics then, so Ichigo held back on questions and began getting back to work. He thought about how much it would suck to live with an in-law, especially someone who didn't like you and you didn't like also. Any person who could hate Eugene had to be particularly awful. Eugene was not a bad guy. Some people were just impossible to please.

"Wow, did you just get home?" Chad asked, stumbling out of his room at the sound of Ichigo entering the apartment and searching the refrigerator for a snack. "It's almost two."

"Yep," said Ichigo, deciding cookies were just the snack to help him make it through the morning. "Those bastards kept me thirty extra minutes because I didn't have a hairnet when I showed up. Then, I had to walk all the way back here because the chain on my bike broke. I have to get it fixed after biology. Do you still have that spare chain from the bike you took apart last week?"

"Yeah, and you can borrow my bike if you need to. I don't have a class today."

"Only if I want to break my neck," Ichigo said. Chad was a lot bigger than most people, and this resulted in a need for him to customise his bicycles.

"I was just offering. You know, in case you did feel like breaking your neck."

Ichigo poured himself a glass of juice and took a seat at the coffee table. Armed with cookies and a nearby pen, he opened the textbook that had been sitting there all evening. "Chad, can you watch Karin and Yuzu when I'm not here tomorrow?"

"You're studying now?"

"Yeah, my whole schedule is f---ed," Ichigo said, skimming lines to find where he stopped reading before. "I didn't study yet. And I just got a whole load of crumbs in the stupid margin. Dammit." He turned the book upside down and began shaking it clean.

"Well, I suppose I can watch them. I've got some insulation work at an office building a few blocks away. It's afternoon hours. That's all."

"That's great. I'll be here, then. As long as you get back before I leave for class, it'll all work out. I'm going to have to run to the hospital right when the professor lets us out. It sucks."

"Can you study at work?"

"No. There's this skinny dictator who keeps trying to convince me I'm a horrible person and should drink cleaning fluid. It's stupid because we're in a f---ing hospital, so how sad would that be if I died of something like cleaning fluid when the stomach pumps are two storeys up?"

Chad smiled and shook his head. Ichigo had a tendency of being unintentionally funny.

"It's a good thing all the hollows are not doing a whole lot now. I dunno how I would've passed high school if they hadn't held back their worst shit until school holidays."

"You said your were going to stop putting so much time into killing hollows for college. Don't worry about it. Soul Society has got things covered."

"Yeah, well I can't help feeling it still concerns me. I haven't really done any shinigami stuff for weeks."

"But you have been going to class and going to work."

"I might fall out of practise."

"You'd never fall out of practise if you wanted to."

"I know, and I know I don't have the sort of time shinigami have to focus on their jobs, but I still want to jump out of class and go after a hollow, especially when Soul Society is taking it's damn sweet time responding. They show up right after I've saved some spirit and ask me what the hell I think I'm doing. Then I just want to yell at them, "your job, you f---ing idiot" and storm off." Ichigo sighed and began flipping pages through the book at random, hoping to come up an illustration or something he recognised. "Is it me, or does Soul Society sometimes not respond at all? Remember when Ishida set off that stupid bait and every hollow in hueco mundo filled the city? No-one the hell showed up. Then, they tried to kill me. What the hell?"

"That sounds like the Quincy problem."

"Who the hell's side are you on?"

"I'm just observing."

"Well, unless you want to observe my fist in your face, stop."

Chad had to smile. They both knew who would win if the two of them got into a fist fight. They both also knew they would never get into a fist fight because of these odds and also because Chad wouldn't hit back. Chad was just that upstanding of a guy. Ichigo sort of wasn't.

"Hey, why are you guys being so noisy?" a sleepy Karin asked from the doorway to Ichigo's room. She looked at Ichigo and his textbooks. "Are you cramming? That's sad."

This could've possibly have been one of Karin brilliant attacks, except she followed it with a yawn and nearly toppling over into the coffee table. She was rescued by Chad, who was closest and the sufferer of a major hero complex, and was then handed over to Ichigo.

"She's a lot cuter when she unconscious, right?" Ichigo asked, his voice scornful but only out of reflex. Wisely, Chad opted for silence. "I suppose I'll put her back into bed. You know, tuck her in and sing her a lullaby. She would die of embarrassment."

"If she weren't already asleep."

"Yeah. And that," Ichigo said, standing and heading back to his room. Last time he'd carried Karin to bed, she'd been half the size she was now. It was scary how much taller she'd gotten in little time. Puberty had hit the kid like a brick. It only made Ichigo more defensive in his role as the protective older brother. There was no way he was going to end up with some strange brother-in-law that he did not like, who would pester him in his advancing age and kick him out of the house at the soonest opportunity to ship him to the United States.

Though Ichigo had no idea why he'd be living with his brother-in-law anyway. What the hell was he thinking?

Ichigo decided then that he'd been awake for far too long. It was time to have a quality snuggle with the couch and stop thinking.

Endnote: I was going to try to make you all carzy by posting this chapter on the end of last chapter, but you took it so well. I didn't want all the chapter numbers to add up. Because I'm evil.

You should be happy you get two chapters so quickly.