Chapter Two: The Wrong Girl
Hisana did as instructed: She washed up, dressed in the faded blue kimono set for her, took the forged entry papers, letters of recommendation, and adulterated transcript from her Academy days, entered Seireitei, and made her way to Kuchiki manor. She went about performing all these tasks with a heavy heart and thoughts that cut more deeply than anticipated.
Of all her very bad ideas—and there have been many—this may be the worst one yet.
Despite it all, here she is, sitting primly on a mat in House Kuchiki with her knees tucked under her, shoulders even, and chin up.
"I am Seike Nobutsune, the steward of the House." Nobutsune is an elderly but distinguished man, with a well-kempt mustache, neatly trimmed white hair, and thick glasses.
The man seated next to Nobutsune hasn't said a word, but he's a noble. Hisana just knows it, and he's got all the classic signs: glossy black hair, pale skin, willowy build, and hand-painted silks probably worth ten mansions. The only thing that's missing is the sneer, despite her brain working extra hard to imagine one.
Her imagination, however, cannot change the fact that the nobleman is very much smiling. Warmly. At her. Which reminds her to fix her own face.
Smile, Hisana. Remember, you actually want this job. No. You need this job.
"Sōjun Kuchiki," the noble says and gives a little bow of his head. "It is nice to meet you, Miss Hisana."
Hisana bows low, careful to keep the lines of her arms, hands, and back straight and graceful as she spirals.
Fuck. Which one is that? Captain, Lieutenant, or lordling?
Quickly, Hisana files through the names that her client gave her: Ginrei, Sōjun, and Byakuya. She remembers them in order from most to least troublesome.
Lieutenant, then.
"The pleasure is mine. Thank you both for taking the time to consider my application," she says, proud that she managed to keep the panic from her voice.
"We were very impressed with your credentials," says Nobutsune. "A former Academy student and someone with years of experience. A rare find these days."
Hisana bows her head. "You're too kind. Thank you."
"Yes. Candidates with experience from the Academy are quite rare. You attended for two years, correct?" asks the lord.
True.
"Yes, milord. Two years."
"Your record is also impeccable. High marks across the board," he continues.
Also, true.
She even managed to snatch the top score from her noble contemporaries on more than one occasion.
"And you came all the way here from Inuzuri," remarks Nobutsune.
Hisana braces a little. The muscles in her neck tense, and her heart leaps to a gallop. The old man might as well have closed his hand over her throat when he spoke the name of that city. Inuzuri.
It's a reflex. A necessary one, she thinks. Hisana hasn't met a single noble yet who didn't mean to use her heritage as some sort of moral disqualifier.
And, yet….
As she searches Nobutsune's face, she finds no malice, no trace of disgust, no ill will.
In fact, he looks impressed.
"Inuzuri?" says Sōjun, brows jumping up in surprise. He immediately flips through the pages in his lap to find her arrival documents. "You managed to survive that place and then sojourned all the way here? Remarkable."
He exchanges a meaningful glance with Nobutsune, then says, "I'd like to imagine that serving my family is far easier than whatever hardships you must have endured getting here. And, yet, I think I might be disappointed in that assumption."
Nobutsune smiles fondly at the lord and chuckles. "Serving the Kuchiki family is a blessing, milord."
Sōjun glances askance at Nobutsune, a wry grin tugging at his lips. "More than it is a curse, I hope?"
"More than it is a curse."
Sōjun's gaze meets hers, and he says, "I pay him to say that."
Nobutsune shakes his head. "Milord is very humble."
Hisana grins. Genuinely, grins. Sōjun reminds her of her own father, or at least, what she can remember of him from her days in the World of the Living. Her father had the same agreeable nature and made the same kinds of terrible jokes.
It is at this moment, however, that Sōjun succumbs to a coughing spell. The coughs are dry. They wrack his whole body and steal his breath. When he reaches for a cloth only to turn up short, Hisana immediately hands him her handkerchief.
He wipes his lips once the spell ceases. Holding the red square of linen to his mouth, he braces for a long moment. Hisana can tell by the depth and quickness with which his chest trembles that he is fighting for air.
"Thank you," he says, voice raw and raspy.
Her smile dims. "No worries, milord. My fa—" She stops herself short, realizing what she was about to say and how deeply personal and deeply unprofessional that would have been.
"Your father was sick as well?" says Sōjun without a hint of censure or judgment.
She nods, hesitant. "From what I can remember."
Sōjun's lips open, but, before he can speak another word, he is interrupted by the fluttering of a hell butterfly. Its dark wings lower and quiet once safely perched on his finger.
"Duty calls," he says with a frown.
"I can continue the interview and test with Miss Hisana-"
Sōjun lifts a hand. "Maybe we should—"
"Milord."
"Maybe now is a good time—"
"Milord, no."
"Seike, he needs to start somewhere."
"He has. Numerous times. And, that's why you're here today. This position has been open for nearly a decade." Nobutsune's voice drops to a whisper.
Hisana averts her eyes, resisting the urge to grin. Now, she knows they're desperate.
"Seike."
"Milord."
"You have my permission to censure him, if need be. But, he has to learn. This will be his responsibility soon enough. After this mission, maybe sooner than either of us would like."
Nobutsune heaves a long breath. "Understood, milord."
"I will send him here before I leave for the Division." Sōjun picks himself up with liquid grace. "It has been a pleasure, Miss Hisana. I hope my son doesn't scare you away."
She smiles politely. "Thank you, milord."
Sōjun's attention shifts to Nobutsune. "If you need to, Seike, just smack him."
"Safe travels, Lord Kuchiki," says Nobutsune grimly, the congeniality draining from his face when Sōjun disappears onto the engawa.
"I take it the young lord is…." Hisana's voice trails, and she quirks a brow.
"He is… himself… fully… at all times."
She chuckles.
"Please, don't take anything he says to heart. He's just… The way he is." Defeated, Nobutsune's gaze latches to the tatami that stretches across the room, as if he is girding himself for a trainwreck.
A noisy sort of quiet comes over them, the kind that hums with tension as if the molecules have all been supercharged. It's not something that Hisana minds. Even prickly silences prove useful. It gives her the chance to survey her surroundings.
The room is capacious. Worse, yet, it's empty save for them, their sitting mats, and a little sunken hearth. The cypress wood looks beautifully burnished. The tatami mats have been laid in intricate patterns. But… there's nothing else.
There is no art. There are no colors beyond the whiteness of the rice paper and the honey yellows of the wood and tatami mats. Maybe that's why the doors to the engawa are open even though the air has taken on a chill, so that they can admire the little piece of wilderness that exists just beyond the engawa?
"Young Lord Kuchiki," says Nobutsune, who immediately lowers into a bow.
Hisana follows suit in greeting and grins when she catches a glimpse of the little lordling.
There's the sneer.
As he steps past them, the air becomes infused with the smells of grass and morning dew. Judging by his attire—a faded blue kosode and black hakama—he probably just stepped off the training field. His hair is as dark as his father's, but the humidity has stripped it of its shine. Hisana spots the little strands that curl against his neck, still damp with sweat.
"It is my pleasure to introduce you, milord, to Miss Hisana, a candidate for the maid position."
The lordling takes a seat on his father's mat and begins shuffling through her application. His face is blank in a way that impresses her. Never before has she seen someone her age so incapable or unwilling to manifest a singular trace of genuine emotion.
Even the prissiest of the Academy nobles carried themselves with some feeling. There was always something onto which Hisana could latch as she prepared herself for the sting of their chill, or worse, the bloodiness of their bite.
"Hisana, is it?" he asks, voice pointed as if to chastise her for forgetting to abide by some unspoken rule of etiquette.
"Yes, milord. Hisana is my na-"
"No surname?" He flips a page, sounding bored.
"Miss Hisana is from Inuzuri-" says Nobutsune gently.
And that's when his impassive mask breaks. "Inuzuri?" A furrow appears between the lordling's brows, and the corners of his mouth turn down.
Disgust.
Hisana knows that look well, and she waits, body tense, for him to say something cutting.
He does not disappoint: "We are reaching deep into the talent pool for this position, I see."
"She was educated at the Academy-" Nobutsune rallies only to be interrupted.
"Clearly, she gained admission to the Academy; otherwise, she wouldn't have been permitted inside the city's walls, seeing as she hails from the hinterland." The lord tears through a few more pages until he finds her transcripts.
He pauses. His eyes narrow. His chest puffs out, breath held.
Hisana presses her lips together to repress the burn of a grin.
He probably thinks she flamed out. And, judging by the flicker in his eyes, he can't quite square why someone with perfect grades would be here, asking to be a maid of all things.
"Her grades are impeccable," notes Nobutsune, who watches his master with a sly sideways glance.
The young lord immediately flips to the back of the transcripts, where descriptions of any disciplinary actions taken against her would have been notated.
There are none.
Hisana neither flunked out nor was she thrown out of the Academy. She left completely of her own accord.
"Why are you here?" demands the lord.
Hisana doesn't flinch. Instead, she lifts her chin higher. "Because I wish to serve this honorable house as a maid."
His left eye twitches, as if he just caught sight of a lie. "Why did you leave the Academy?"
"I don't much care for violence, milord," she lies.
"Your kidō marks are all very high. You could've applied for the Kidō Corps."
"They are, milord, but the specialist branches choose to fill their ranks with students on the accelerated track." And, she wasn't among those students.
The lord flips back to her resume, eyes devouring every line of the page. "Before your brief stint at the Academy you served as a maid for House Shiba in the Rukon. What made you abandon that post for the Academy? Didn't have the stomach for the work there, either?"
All lies.
Hisana has never worked for the Shiba family. Nor would she recognize a member of that family if one tripped over her. "I left Inuzuri with the hopes of becoming a Shinigami. I saw being a maid at that time as a way to provide for myself while I waited for the next testing administration."
More lies.
She left Inuzuri to become a Shinigami, true. But she was half dead, sick, and bleeding when she collapsed in front of the station where the tests were administered in the First. She was astounded to have passed on her first try, having fully prepared herself for certain failure.
"So, you studied for the admissions exam while working for them?"
"Yes, milord."
"You worked for them for almost three years, and you only gained acceptance to the remedial track?"
Hisana blinks and sucks in a breath. More than anything, she would love to slug this rich bastard right in his face before unleashing hellfire on him. But, she can't.
Likely sensing her discomfort, Nobutsune intervenes with a soft, "If I may remind Milord that the position in consideration here is for a maid and not for the next Lieutenant of the Twelfth."
"My family, Seike, is of greater importance to me than whoever becomes the next Lieutenant of the Twelfth. The person who fills this position should have sterling moral character, and all I find before me is a silly girl who is untethered, unmoored, and unprincipled with no understanding of duty. Duty to her employer, to herself, or to a family, of which she hasn't any."
"Lord Kuchiki," protests Nobutsune, his exasperation palpable, "you can't possibly think that. She came here all the way from the 78th district, received top marks at the Academy, has wonderful letters of recommendation from a peer family, and—"
Hisana interrupts him with a quiet look. "I understand the lord's concerns, Mr. Nobutsune. He is right to be skeptical of someone seeking employ in his home, who will help take care of things most precious, most dear, to him. And, he is right to question why someone who came all the way from Inuzuri to attend the Academy left that institution in two years' time.
"I, perhaps, was glib in my response to his question asking why I left so shortly into my tenure there. The truth is painful, but I wish to correct any misassumptions as to why I left, and that was because I care deeply for the duty I owe to my family."
The lord rolls his eyes and scoffs. "You're a soul from nowhere. You don't have any family."
"I do," she says, clipping his words with her own. "I was sent here with my infant sister. We died together, and Soul Society, in its infinite wisdom, thought it fitting to deposit two young girls in one of the most violent and impoverished cities that it has.
"So, I clawed my way through the districts, careful to provide for the both of us. I thought I had saved enough money to sustain her in the care of a family in the Third, while I attended the Academy, but I was wrong. I couldn't make enough money while studying at the Academy. So, I left.
"And that is why I sit before you today. Because I haven't the privilege of mansions to my name. I have nothing but duty to my sister, to keep her safe and provided for." Hisana is careful to let only the requisite amount of rage and sorrow braid her voice as she sells this half-lie. It feels like trying to tame a dragon, and maybe it is. Because the moment the rage and sorrow reach her—the moment they bend the lines of her face and enter her voice-she is afraid that she might not be able to hold back.
She nearly doesn't.
Closing her eyes, she feels the burn of her brows pinching together, but she resists the sting of tears. No. This pompous asshole will not have her tears, only her rage.
"Miss Hisana has my recommendation," says Nobutsune, iron ringing in his voice.
"She hasn't been tested," protests the young lord.
Nobutsune loosens a sigh. "Of course, shall I—"
"No. I will." The lord stands, head up, shoulders squared and eyes burning hot like coals. "Come here." He extends his arm, hand palm-side up.
Hisana rises to her feet and crosses the floor.
"Miss Hisana, this test is a formality given your performance at the Academy, but, because the members who reside in the main house, where you'll be working, possess elevated reiatsu, we test candidates' reiatsu to ensure their safety. Wouldn't want anyone to wither away," explains Nobutsune.
Tentatively, Hisana places her hand over the young lord's. Close. But not touching. She can feel the heat of his palm, and she waits for his instructions.
Instructions, however, do not come.
Instead, she feels his reiatsu rise. He is strong. Far stronger than she, but she manages, immediately drawing up her reiatsu to create a barrier, not in challenge, but as protection.
When she glances up at him, she finds him watching her. Not a single line of his face gives his thoughts away. All she has to interpret is the absence of feeling, which, in this case, is probably a good indication that her performance isn't atrocious.
His reiatsu calms, and she exhales an easy breath.
"Your turn," he says. "Show me what you can do."
Hisana has no idea how to interpret this request. "Kidō?" she asks.
He stares at her, face as blank as a slate.
Kidō it is.
She turns her hand palm-side up. "Hadō number 31, Shakkahō." Bright red energy blossoms from her palm, forming a perfect globe of crimson flames.
Hisana can't deny how good it feels to call forth the spell, the way her reiatsu bubbles forth and swirls to maintain it, to fortify it, make it stronger, deadly. But….
There is sorrow. It is yawning and deep and wide and terrible, and it infuses the spell, causing the red snapping energy to darken from crimson to burgundy.
The young lord notices it, too. His head tilts to the side as he examines the change. Unable to tame his curiosity, he presses his hand to the back of hers, creating a connection between them so that he may explore further.
He searches her, but he must be unprepared for what he finds because, once discovered, he immediately jerks his hand away.
"Hadō 31 is a spell taught to first-year students at the Academy," says the lordling, as if this fact disqualifies her.
"Miss Hisana cast it without an incantation," notes Nobutsune.
"It's a middling spell."
Unable to hold back any longer, Hisana meets his gaze with fire in her eyes. "Would Milord prefer that I cast hadō 33, Sōkatsui instead? Or, is that a middling spell, too?" Hisana doesn't remember much gossip about the Kuchiki from her Academy days, but she remembers the masters saying thirty-three was the Kuchiki's favorite spell.
The lordling tips his head back, and she can tell by the twist of his lips that he is stifling a grin.
"No." He pulls away and places his hands behind his back. "You've shown us enough." With a quick bow, he leaves.
"Welcome to House Kuchiki, Miss Hisana." Nobutsune smiles, voice bright. "Follow me. First, you will sign a few waivers and a nondisclosure agreement. Then, I will introduce you to the head housekeeper, who will give you your orders for the day."
Hisana smiles.
Step one out of one hundred: Accomplished.