Rukia glances out the window. Renji is swinging his sword with great vigor.

She is very happy for him.

She is not, actually. It is unfair. Renji reads and writes so much better than she does that he finishes his bookwork in half the time. This gives him more time to work on other things, which means that he is getting better at swords much faster than she is, as well. They are about neck and neck at hohou, but Rukia fears he will overtake her at this, too. At least, it turns out that his kidou is dreadful, after all. Strangely, this is not as reassuring as it could be.

Mr. Mochida says that most people who get into the Academy are either good at kidou or good at zanjutsu. It's best if you are good at both, but one or the other is usually good enough. Rukia strongly suspects that Renji is good enough at zanjutsu. She also suspects she is not yet good enough at kidou.

Now is not the time to dwell on this.

If Renji hadn't finished his reading so quickly, she wouldn't have this opportunity, and she wants to take advantage of it.

"Mr. Mochida? I have something I'd like to ask you. It's not about the reading. You don't have to answer it if you don't want to."

Mr. Mochida looks up from his own book. He spends a lot of time looking through his books for specific topics or exercises he thinks would help her or Renji. "Of course, Miss Rukia."

"Well…" says Rukia slowly. "Back when we first got here. The day that you talked about the different jobs that shinigami can do…you never talked about…you know. What you do. Working at a recruitment station."

Mr. Mochida blinks at her for a moment. "Oh," he finally says. "Well…it's not something you can go into directly, you see. You need to have some experience, first. That's why I didn't mention it."

Rukia sucks her teeth for a long moment. "It's not really…it's not something I was thinking about doing for myself. I was just curious how you ended up doing it."

"I see." Mr Mochida's face tenses before he lets out a big sigh. "There are not very many positions for shinigami who wish to live in the Rukon. This is one of them."

Rukia frowns. "I don't understand. Why would you want to live in Rukongai?"

"As it happens, I am from the Rukon, myself. South 27, Zanshien."

Rukia is taken aback by this. She assumed from the start that Mr. Mochida was Seireitei people. She has no idea why she thought such a thing…maybe simply because he seemed so kind and polite. Not like any Rukongai person she had ever met.

"All the more reason to never want to come back," Rukia mutters.

"Do you remember," Mr. Mochida says gently, "when I asked if there was anyone in Inuzuri that you would miss?"

Rukia's mouth opens and then closes again. She nods.

"District 27 is not so far from the Seireitei. It is easy enough to visit on long holidays. Perhaps if it was further away, I would not have. There was a girl."

His gaze turns wistful and he pauses for so long that Rukia isn't sure he means to continue at all. There was a girl. That's a complete story in itself.

Eventually, he takes a deep breath and smiles. "To be honest, I was only passing friends with Kaho before I became a shinigami, but she was always the happiest to see me when I came home. She loved to hear my stories. She was interested in everything about the city."

"I thought…" Rukia fumbles for the words. "Couldn't you have brought her to the city with you? Don't they allow…if you were willing to…?"

"If I married her?" Mr. Mochida laughs. "That, I was happy to do, and I did. But my Kaho was a weak soul. That seems like an awful thing to say, doesn't it? She was a wonderful person, but she could not have lived in the city. She would have fainted every time she passed a seated officer in the street." Mr. Mochida's face turns thoughtful. "It's because she had more Living to do, I think. She was not meant to stay long in Soul Society."

"She died?" Rukia asks in a small voice. "To be reborn?"

"Two years ago, during our last posting in District 60," Mr. Mochida replies. "She loved this job as much as I do. She loved young people. I know that you think I am too kind-hearted, Miss Rukia, but it is only because I am trying to make up for Kaho's absence."

Rukia flushes with embarrassment. She doesn't know what she could say to possibly make up for her rudeness.

Mr. Mochida sighs, but he does not sound sad. "I have reached the end of the Rukon. When I complete my tour in District 70, I am due to go back to the city, where I will serve a few years at Shin'ou. I will have to decide whether I wish to start over again, or whether it is time to take up my blade in earnest once more."

"But you said you loved doing this!" Rukia exclaims.

"I do love it," Mr. Mochida replies. "It has been wonderful. I would like it to stay wonderful in my memory. It would be especially wonderful if I am able to end it by sending two talented young people from the very edge of Soul Society up to the Academy, where I am sure they will distinguish themselves. In fact, I expect they will already have secured positions in the Gotei 13 by the time I see them again."

An uncomfortable feeling fills Rukia's heart. She was not sure at first, but in the last two weeks, she has decided that she does want to join the Gotei. She wants it more than anything. Maybe it's because she wants to move like lightning and call fire from her fingertips and wield a sword that sings its name to her. Her eyes dart to the window. Or maybe it's because she doesn't want to lose the last person she cares about. If everything works out, it will never matter which of those two things is more true than the other.

Rukia does not have a particularly strong track record in the category of "things working out."

She shoves out her lower lip. "You can't quit! If we get into Shin'ou," she says, much too loudly, "it will be proof of how good you are at this! There's no way we would have gotten in without your help!"

Mr. Mochida laughs. "Oh, Miss Rukia, I am trying to add a little polish to what is already there. Your talent has been quite evident from the start."

There is a creak, and Renji sticks his head in the window. "Is everything all right? I heard yelling."

"Tell Mr. Mochida!" Rukia demands. "Tell him we're lumbering idiots and if we get anywhere, it's due entirely to him! He doesn't believe me!"

Mr. Mochida gestures for Rukia to calm down. "Now, now, Miss Rukia, that's not what I said…"

"Oh, she's right, for sure," Renji agrees.

"Well, thank you both, but it's certainly not worth yelling over. Maybe you've been cooped up inside too long, Miss Rukia. Why don't you go out and practice swords a bit with Mr. Renji?"

Renji loves this idea. "It's getting lonely out there, just swinging this thing by myself."

Rukia opens her mouth. She intends to tell Renji everything, so that he will help her convince Mr. Mochida not to give up. But then she hesitates.

She's not sure she wants Renji thinking too hard about hypothetical futures where one of them gets in and one of them doesn't. He needs to pack every cubic inch of his brain full of hakuda throws and names of famous shinigami, not worries and contingency plans. It would be pointless anyway, because Rukia is going to get in. She is. She will not be the one to hold him back.

"You should come out, too!" Rukia jabs a finger at Mr. Mochida. "We'll take you on together!"

"Oh, no, that doesn't sound very fair to me!" Mr. Mochida wails in mock despair.

Renji makes a scoffing noise. "Did you really think you could spend three weeks teaching us all this stuff about the Gotei, and we wouldn't figure out how much you've been holdin' back on us?"

Mr. Mochida's face goes slack for a moment. "Well…I…er…"

To be honest, it hadn't occurred to Rukia, but as she runs her brain back over the things she's seen Mr. Mochida do in isolated demonstrations versus the way he spars, Renji is exactly correct. "We've worked really hard!" she announces. "I think we deserve to see how good you really are!"

Mr. Mochida's eyes dart between them. He frowns and strokes his mustache. "Losers cook dinner?"

"You're on!" Rukia and Renji shout together.

"Hey, Ru, take a look at this!"

Rukia isn't sure what she expected to be looking at, but it certainly wasn't Renji with one arm out of his sleeping yukata. There's no reason the sight of his bare chest and one shoulder should bring the blood rushing to her cheeks, he spends half the summer with his shirt off. It's different, though, here in the recruitment station and she nearly looks away before she realizes that he's trying to show off a huge purple bruise spreading across his side.

"Oh, no!" she gasps. "Is that where Mr. Mochida got you? Did he crack any ribs? Are you okay? Why did you tell him it didn't hurt? Renji, you dummy, we're leaving tomorrow."

Renji snorts. "I'm fine. I told him it didn't hurt because I didn't want him clucking over me or feelin' bad." He splays his fingers across the bruise. "That still wasn't his full strength."

"No," Rukia agrees. Once she looked for it, she could see the way Mr. Mochida pulled his punches. He probably sweated more trying to play soccer with those kids than he had fighting them.

"If I end up half as strong as that old goof, I'll be very perfectly satisfied," Renji says, shrugging his shoulder back into his robe.

"No, you won't," Rukia teases. "You, satisfied? Tch! Impossible."

The corner of Renji's mouth tips up into a cute little half-smile. "We'll see," he says.

Rukia pats the futon she is sitting on. "We'll have the entire South Road to argue about it. Come to bed. I'm sleepy and we need to get a good night's rest."

Renji shifts his weight from one leg to the other and his facial expression turns serious. "We never did manage to spend the night apart."

Rukia blows a puff of air out between her lips. "It was stupid. Forget about it."

"It's not stupid. You wouldn't have brought it up in the first place if it wasn't important to you." Renji crosses his arms over his chest. "Once we're on the road, until we hit the upper districts, we're bunking together, for safety. I don't care if we have to pull out the ol' married couple act again. Might even take turns sleeping and keeping watch."

"Agreed," Rukia nods.

"And I imagine the recruitment stations up north are gonna stand on propriety a lot more than Mr. Mochida does."

"What's your point?"

"My point is that if you want to do this of our own free will, tonight might be our last chance."

Rukia squeezes her eyes closed, just for a moment. She doesn't want to, but this was her idea in the first place. She can't back down now. "Okay."

Renji clenches one fist. "Our friendship can take this, Rukia. It's like the book I've been reading on bodyweight exercises. The way you build muscle is by tearing the fibers apart, and then more muscle grows in to repair the tears, and that's how you get stronger."

Rukia stares at him. "Renji," she says, "that is some Renji bullshit."

"I'm going to the other room," Renji announces. Once again, the Renji bullshit has rendered him impenetrable. He taps his knuckles against the wood framing on the wall. "Be right on the other side."

"Pft," says Rukia, trying to cover her embarrassment. "A whole room to yourself and you don't even have the sense to sleep in the middle of it."

Renji laughs and winks at her and departs. She hears the swish of the other door and some brief thumping around, and then it is quiet.

Rukia realizes that she has wasted the time when Renji was galumphing about. Very carefully and very quietly, she drags her futon over close to the wall. She crawls under the covers and closes her eyes. Then, she opens them again, reaches out, and very softly, taps three times on the wall with her index finger. Are you there? If he's already asleep, he won't even hear it.

Three taps come back immediately.

They can do this.

It'll be okay.

They are back at the post office.

They are wearing their sandals. Mr. Mochida has made them bring their packs with them. They have a change of clothes each, some durable foodstuffs, a packed dinner, and plenty of water. Books are too heavy to carry such a distance, plus Mr. Mochida might need them for future students, so he has carefully written out a personalized study guide for each of them. He suspects they will be too tired from the walking to practice their swordplay, but he has made each of them take the practice sword that fits them best.

This is going to be very embarrassing if they don't get in.

Instead of the eternally stretching Ikariya, today's courier is a greenhorn, wispy and high-strung, with floppy hair and a crisp city accent. He doesn't seem much older than Rukia and Renji. Mr. Mochida is trying to bully him into opening the letter for him.

"I cannot!" young Hatori wails. "Mail must be delivered unopened to its addressed recipient! Opening it myself is severely against regulation!"

"But I am the recipient, and I say you can," Mr. Mochida argues unsuccessfully. "Come now, stop that caterwauling! You're keeping these poor children on tenterhooks. They're about to find out if they've been accepted to Shin'oureijutsuin, you know? I just want to give it a bit of ceremony!"

Renji has his hand wrapped around the hilt of his wooden sword. His knuckles are going white.

"Oh, give it to me!" Rukia demands. "I'll open it!"

Hatori quivers, but does not protest.

The thing is incredibly formal. It is wrapped in a large envelope of stiff rice paper, tied with a braided silk cord. As Rukia peels away bits of wrapping, she hands them off to Renji. At least it gets his hand off his sword. There are a number of things inside the packet, additional envelopes and one very fancy sheet of paper. This, Rukia keeps. She squints at it.

The first thing her eyes zero in on is her name, hers and Renji's, right next to each other, along with the words for Inuzuri and Rukongai. Surprisingly enough, she understands most of the other words, too. It is written in the extravagant calligraphy Mr. Mochida says is used for most official correspondence in the Seireitei. Unfortunately, it is also written in an overwrought rhetorical style that refuses to get to the point. There is a lot about pride and honor and service to Soul Society. Rukia is doing her best to read slowly and carefully so she doesn't miss anything, but she suspects she is going to explode from rage before she ever finds out if she will be able to take her entrance exams or not.

Renji skims ahead from over her left shoulder, murmuring the words out loud as he reads them. "...permitted to present themselves for the third and final round of admittance examinations, to be held on the day when sparrows begin building their nests-the what? What in the-?"

"That just means March 21, by the Seireitei calendar," Mr. Mochida says absently, as he reads over Rukia's other shoulder. "Hatori, what day was it when you left the city?"

"I picked this up from a relay in District 30, but it was March 12, then. We're in…we're in 70, right? That's two days in foot-time."

"Hmm, District 30 to the Seireitei…that's about two days of time dilation?"

"Winter is slower in the Rukon, it's only about one day this time of year, so it would have been March 13 in the city…"

"Ah, right…then two days to get here…goodness, it's so hard to do this in your head!"

Renji scowls as he tries to follow their math. "Wait, we only have six days to get there? We'll never make it!"

"No no no no!" Mr. Mochida waves his hands.

"No no no no no!" Hatori waves his, too. "Don't confuse elapsed time for travel time." His eyes roll upward for a moment. "You have eleven travel days." He frowns. "That's a pretty tough march for a couple of souls."

"They have already mastered hayaashi," Mr. Mochida says, clenching a fist victoriously.

"Oh!" Hatori says, surprised. "Well, you'll have to keep up a good pace, but you should have plenty of time, then. Good luck! Hayaashi's a good skill! I wish I'd already known it when I went to the Academy."

Mr. Mochida manages to look unspeakably proud without looking the least bit smug.

"Wait!" Rukia demands, waving the letter. "I'm still back in the first paragraph! We're- we're going?"

Renji looks blank for a moment. "I- I think so? It sounded like- are we-?"

"Yes!" Mr. Mochida exclaims. "Yes, this is the standard approval form! I forgot how silly it sounds to someone who has not seen it before! But yes! You are going! I knew you would be!"

There is a ringing in Rukia's ears. The letter in her hands is from the Soul Reaper Academy and it has her name written on it and they want her to come and show them what she can do. It feels the same, but also different from when Mr. Mochida told them that he planned to recommend them. Realer, perhaps. Or maybe she just knows more about what it means now. She is glad Mr. Mochida made them bring their packs, because they have to go. She needs to focus, there is no time to…to…

"RENJI!" she shouts at the top of her lungs. "WE HAVE TO GET MOVING!"

"I KNOW!" he shouts back. "WE'RE GOING TO THE SEIREITEI! RUKIA, WE'RE GOING TO THE SEIREITEI!"

"I KNOW, YOU DUMMY! STOP SHOUTING! YOU'RE EMBARRASSING THE BOTH OF US!"

"YOU'RE THE ONE WHO STARTED IT!"

Mr. Mochida relieves Renji of the various envelopes and slips of paper Rukia shoved into his hands, and examines them one by one. "These are your travel visas. Let's open those up and check them before you leave. Here is the stipend…oh, they have increased it a bit! Wonderful!"

Rukia can't help but think back to the Rukia of three weeks ago, who could have thought of a lot of things to do with that money that would not require eleven days of hard travel. But if she ran away now, she would never find out if she would have passed the entrance exams or not. Rukia has never cared very much about measuring herself against other people (except Renji), but maybe that was because there wasn't anyone else in Inuzuri worth measuring herself against. Some small part of her thinks that maybe that is a better way to be, but even the chance that she might be worth something is too intoxicating to give up.

She tries to focus on the things Mr. Mochida is saying. She nods and Renji nods and she tries to hold onto the thoughts even as they slip out her ears like silvery fishes.

Finally, Mr. Mochida is satisfied. He checks their packs one more time, and then declares it is time to set off.

Hatori whines that he has a four hour layover before he has to head back north, and has no wish to look at the South Road again before he must. Mr. Mochida suddenly breaks out his heretofore unrevealed Gotei Voice, questioning the younger fellow's devotion to the corps, and lambasting him for failing to support his juniors. It is very impressive and also very effective.

They all troop outside, along with a few other bystanders from the post office.

The northbound access point to the South Road is located on the rear side of the post office. It is smooth and well-maintained in the center, with wide, rougher shoulders. To Rukia's surprise, she can see the wards shimmering down its length. The ones along the edges are to keep people and wildlife from wandering into it and getting creamed by fast-moving shinigami. There is an additional chain of them down the center to separate north and south-bound traffic.

"Keep to the left lane," Hatori sniffs. "If you're using hayaashi, you can stick close to the right-most edge, but mind the shinigami traffic. We use the civilian lanes to decelerate and sometimes we come out hot. If you need a break yourself, pull off to the left shoulder."

Mr. Mochida has been over all of this with them already, but somehow, it all feels more official coming from Hatori, even though it's obvious that he's a bit of a twit. Rukia's pretty sure that she and Renji could take him down if they worked together on it, but he's graduated Shin'ou and they haven't even taken their entrance exams yet, so for the moment, he deserves their respect.

A sudden pang of guilt hits Rukia like a lightning bolt. Mr. Mochida has taught them so much. The world seems so impossibly large at the moment, and so much of it is not Inuzuri. Rukia knows a lot about Inuzuri. Everything else she knows came from Mr. Mochida. It doesn't seem like nearly enough, but it will have to be. He believes in her, her and Renji. She owes him for that. She looks back at him. Her eyes feel hot.

"You will do very well," Mr. Mochida says. "I know it in my heart."

"Thanks for everything," she says softly.

"It has been my pleasure," he replies.

Renji jabs her with his elbow. "You ready?" he asks. His voice sounds nervous, but in a way that only Rukia would recognize.

"I was waiting for you," she grunts back.

They each set one sandaled foot onto the road.

the end