outside his vision
10. pathway to self-discovery
It sounds simple enough, but apparently he lacks the self-awareness of more experienced spiritual mages. At least he's not the only one, he thinks – until he realises there's a certain advantage of having come into your powers late, as opposed to growing up with an awareness of them. The spiritual world is such an innate part of him and so are his parents that it's hard to find where the parts of him that have been spared their touch exist.
Of course, nobody's life resolves around just their parents – unless they've been kidnapped and locked at home without visitors, or something. And both his parents are pretty social people. There are his father's family, his parents' friends, his schoolmates (because even Shinigami-in-training have to go to school, though his school is pretty different from Itsuka's), their neighbours and other people they interact with semi-regularly… There are a lot of people in his life, and now he has to think about all of them and try and separate them out.
It should be easier to find somebody who he spends so much time with and who's such a big influence on his life, but it's not. It's harder. It's too hard. He can find others instead. Urahara's amusingly easy because he's so creepy. The chief of section 12 is even easier. The people he barely knows, who leave strong first impressions… those are the first he can weed out. People he sees pretty regularly and who've allegedly seen him in diapers (including Itsuka who's definitely too young to remember) are a lot harder, and Urahara's not particularly helpful. 'Think of the things that stand out,' he offers.
That helps him find the ones that leave quick and sharp impressions, not the people he's grown up with!
He figures it out eventually. It's like picking voices apart in a crowd, or knowing when someone's visiting when he sees their shoes, or something like that. Little things and it's not necessarily something that's blaringly obvious, but just something that clues him in. Like how pins remind him of his mother because of the Shun Shun Rikka, even if it's just the one holding his bag together after the strap broke.
Why, he wonders, is finding his father the most difficult of them all? It's been days, and he still can't manage it. They're waiting on him, too. Or they probably are, anyway, and Xcution's been suspiciously silent so Kazui knows the shoe's going to be dropping there soon too. He has to be on time, and only one of Uryuu's time-travel theories guarantees he will be on time.
Surprisingly, it's his grandfather-to-be who answers his question. Not the "how to find his father's imprints on his powers" question, but the "why is it so difficult to find?" ones. 'Everyone's got a role model,' he explains. 'And of your parents, everyone's got one that they emulate. It's not the same as splitting them into the disciplinarian and the comforter, or the bread-earner and the house-maker or anything like that. It's not the same as being a mama's boy or papa's boy or anything like that. It doesn't even mean you've inherited more visible traits from one parent than the other – but rather, you've "inherited" their spirit, or personality.'
'"Inherited" in quotation marks,' Kazui muses.
Isshin grins. 'Well, it doesn't have to be a parent. Look at Karin. She inherited her personality from Ichigo.'
Kazui giggles at that, because it's not as obvious in his time but he can still see it. His aunt Yuzu is quite a bit different from the rest of the Kurosaki family.
'Naturally, you change as you interact with other people, but there's a base that you've taken just a bit more from than the others. In your case, it's your father.'
'So that's easy then.' And it is, now that he realises that. The answer clicks. Real easy. 'I don't need to sort out everyone else. Just me and him.'
'Exactly.'
And then his grandfather-to-be ruffles his hair – not that it behaves anyway.
That's one physical trait he definitely inherited from his father and not his mother. Who he inherited the colour from isn't so obvious, since his parents have similarly coloured hair.