Who's the best beta in the whole world? Yeah, that's right, it's Ami! Anywho...
100 reviews?! Holy cow! You... you guys are amazing. *swoons* I'm so unearthly impressed... Oh, and way to go Nataliebug2 for being reviewer number 100. You guys are the BEST! Anyway, enjoy this pointless chapter of just-passing-time-ness.
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The school day went by quickly. In the morning Ulquiorra had helped present the project Tatsuki, Orihime, and he had completed together the day before.
Orihime thought he sounded like he was back in Los Noches, giving a war debriefing to those lower than himself.
Students still tried to befriend Ulquiorra, all day long. They had warmed to his cold demeanor, and some girls even found it unspeakably hot. Ulquiorra's new rabid fangirls had hounded him all day, but one by one he had shot them down with his signature icy glares.
Orihime wasn't surprised. He looked just like he did when warding off the lower level Arrancars who thought they could get somewhere by sucking up to him.
Uryuu gave Orihime a chocolate bar during one of their classes. He said that he hoped that maybe some time or another they could meet up and he could help her sew one of the shirts she had been trouble making in the handicrafts club. She had accepted the chocolate bar and told him that maybe they would.
Through the corner of her eye she had seen Ulquiorra glowering at the Quincy as he spoke to her. He looked like he was ready to rip the man to shreds. She figured it was because he finally had a real friendship and didn't want to lose it.
Orihime just smiled cheerfully because having such amazing friends made happiness bubble up excitedly inside her heart.
At lunch she had shared her chocolate bar with Ulquiorra as the rest of her friends went up to the roof again. She was left with him and her human friends in the homeroom class, just as it had been yesterday.
She wondered why Tatsuki was with them. It seemed like she had joined the group, but Orihime wasn't really sure how. Didn't you have to have powers to really be in Ichigo's group of people?
She decided that she really didn't mind.
Besides, the girls were going crazy over the fact that she had a normal candy bar in her bag that wasn't completely slathered in wasabi or lime juice or whatever else she usually ate chocolate with. They proceeded to lose their heads over her sharing it with Ulquiorra, who had already turned down the chocolates many girls had tried to give him that day.
She didn't really feel like she was putting her usual vigor and spirit into her smiles and laughs that lunch hour. She knew Ulquiorra had noticed it too, as he was more silent than usual throughout the whole meal, his eyes never once leaving her own, scrutinizing her.
Orihime chewed slowly on her own food – a mix of red bean paste pudding and sushi with banana chicken wasabi soup on the side – and found her thoughts drifting towards Ulquiorra's eating habits. Back in Las Noches, he consumed souls. She thought it was sort of funny how he was eating a normal human meal. Kind of cute, really.
~)o0o(~
Orihime was worried.
Evening came, and Ulquiorra was waiting for her outside on the school grounds like usual. As she walked closer to him, she nervously wracked her brain for what could be bothering her so much. Then she realized; that terrible feeling was starting to go away. It should have been a sign for relief, but instead of loosening, her heart clenched even harder. Dismissing the sign uncertainly, she convinced herself that maybe the feeling she had was there just because she was stressing over the fact that Ulquiorra could disappear at any moment. She tried to ignore it as they walked home together.
She gave him a hug when they said goodnight to eachother.
When she stepped into her apartment, the feeling left quickly and was pushed back into her conscious as she went about her routine.
Still, somewhere in the back of her mind though, she knew it was coming. Maybe it wouldn't be that night, or the next day, or even that week.
But it was definitely coming. A storm would be brewing soon.
And it was headed right for the life she had finally begun to love again.
~)o0o(~
The week flew by fast as ever. Ulquiorra easily became accustomed to school. To him it was just another Las Noches, though on a much smaller level, and with no consequences when something was done wrong. He managed not to kill anyone, to everybody's surprise. The students were still all wary of him since he had admitted to murder during his introduction in class.
He had come close to killing though when a boy had thrown a piece of crumpled paper at the door, yelling trash, and hit the Espada just as he walked in.
In his mind, that meant the boy had openly called him trash.
Needless to say, the word was effectively removed from the boy's vocabulary via fear. Orihime had to come over and actually put her hand on Ulquiorra before the man had let go of the offending boy's throat and placed him back on the ground.
Of course, Ochi just told the boy to watch it and that what he had just experienced was another life lesson that had been coming his way for some time. She let it slip that telling the principle would probably result in the man asking for all the small squabbles in class, one of which being the discovery of the porn magazines hiding in said boy's desk. Ochi gently hinted that it would best to keep his big mouth shut.
He had kept it shut up.
Orihime and Ulquiorra became closer. The small feeling that something was wrong had begun to sink deeper into the back of her mind, momentarily forgotten, and Orihime found that she was able to smile and laugh easily again.
She was really starting to look forward to Ulquiorra's company more and more.
They walked to school with one another each day, ate lunch together, and then walked home together. Each night she would hug him goodbye, and he would stand stiff as a board like always, and they would part ways and wait for the next day.
Orihime was becoming attached.
She was fixing dinner one night when she felt it.
She was wearing a pink sundress, stirring up a pot of bubble gum soup. She had been humming merrily to a tune on the radio when she suddenly stopped, the ladle dropping from her fingers.
"I'm happy." The words whispered out of her mouth in a small puff of breath.
It was a simple sentence. Two little words, meaning almost nothing. Simply strung together with no big philosophy at all. And yet they meant the world.
Why? Why was she happy?
The last time she had been happy on a level close to what she was at that moment had been long ago, when she had fallen in love with Ichigo Kurosaki, or at least she had thought.
"Am I…"
Kurosaki didn't come to mind at all anymore. In fact, just the other day she had seen Kuchiki grab him by the collar and pull him down for a kiss, and it hadn't bothered her at all. She may have actually smiled at it.
And now her wild day dreams were no longer filled with men sporting bright orange hair and brash attitudes. The new prince, knight, and other such figures that came in to sweep her off her feet were pale and quiet, cold to the outside world, with jet black hair, and piercing green eyes.
"Am I…"
Her heart no longer beat with excitement at seeing Ichigo.
Instead, it leapt out of her chest each time she saw…
"Am I in love with Ulquiorra?"
The second she said it, her heart jumped and began to beat wildly.
It had crept up on her. Her heart had never done that. She thought her emotions were obvious, bright, and easy to see by all. But this time she had caught herself completely by surprise. Because she really had fallen in love with him, and she didn't even know it herself until she thought about it. But when she did…
"Oh, Kami, I'm in love with Ulquiorra Cifer."
… There was no denying it.
Her "love" for Ichigo looked like a mild crush compared to the rush of feelings that were swirling within her now.
Knock, knock, knock.
She was slightly miffed that someone had to stop by in the middle of her revelation. The girl had just realized she was crazy in love, for all the goodness of wasabi! Now was not the time for visitors!
Even so, she ran to the door and hurriedly answered. "Yes?"
And well, speak of the devil and he shall appear.
"Woman, I realize that this is not part of what you may consider normal, but I am realizing that the feeling of slight pain within me is hunger."
She blushed madly. Had his voice always sounded so… alluring? How long had she not noticed that? "Uh, um, I'm sorry, uh, what?"
He looked like he was about to explain, annoyed, but then stopped. "Woman, do you have a fever? Your cheeks are flushed."
"I-I'm fine! Uh, you were saying that you're hungry! Yeah! I have, uh, some rice in the fridge and a couple other things you might like! Why don't you come in?"
He raised an eyebrow. "You are behaving strangely."
"Am I?" She laughed, crushing her hands together behind her back and wringing them. "I hadn't noticed."
"…"
"Oh." She stopped her babbling, noticing something. "You're still in your school clothes."
"They are the only clothes that I have."
"Uh… didn't you get money?"
"Yes."
"So why didn't you… Oh. Yeah, you don't know how to shop." Her eyes lit up in sudden excitement. "I get to take you shopping! Oh, yes! Tomorrow is the last school day of the week, and then I can take you shopping. We're going to have so much fun! I can't-" But then, in a sudden pang, that terrible feeling loomed over her again, a dark evil cloud.
"Onna?"
"I… Uh, sorry. Guess I zoned out." Something bad's going to happen. Something bad's going to happen. Soon. Soon something bad will happen. Something bad. Soon. Something horrible will happen soon. Something is-
"Woman."
She shook her head, her heart working double-time. "S-sorry."
"Perhaps I should come in. You do not seem to be feeling well."
She nodded numbly. "Uh-huh."
"May I? I will not be overbearing as I was in Las Noches."
"Y-yeah. Come in, make yourself at home."
He gave her a nod of thanks and then brushed past her, going to sit on her couch. He snatched a book off the arm, glance at the title, and then began to read.
She wondered where all her novels had been disappearing to… everything but the romance books had disappeared throughout the week. At least now she knew the culprit. Just how did he get to them, though…?
Snapping out of her train of thought, Orihime called, "I'm going to go get you some pajamas of my brothers… I never got rid of all his clothes. They'll be a little big, I think… but that's okay with you, right?"
Never once glancing up from his book, he replied, "Only if you are feeling well, woman. If you are not then you should come lie and regain your strength."
"I'm okay."
"If you believe it to be so."
At least he wasn't the needy friend that followed her around the house, Orihime thought as she climbed up the stairs. She loved Manhana, but the one time she had the girl over… well, she felt like a mother hen the whole time.
She went to the back of her apartment and opened up a closet with bins holding all of Sora's belongings. She grabbed one of the ones labeled clothing and pulled them down, waving the dust out of her face. She pawed through the clothing, looking through things that made her a little happy and a little sad at the same time. She found a pair of pajamas, the blue plaid ones that buttoned up for the top, and then put the rest of the bins away.
She came back to the living room and sat the clothes next to Ulquiorra. "I'm sure sleeping in those is uncomfortable. You can just put these on when you feel like it. My bathroom is right down there-" she pointed, "and feel free to keep the pajamas."
"Thank you for your hospitality."
The amount of emotion he had showed these days was starting to seep through again. It still surprised her to no ends.
"I'm going to eat." Orihime broke the silence. "Would you like anything?"
"I believe you offered me rice upon answering the door."
"Want me to get it for you?"
He stood, placing the book back down on the arm of the couch. "That's fine. I am able." He walked to her fridge, opened it, and quickly spotted the rice. He grabbed the container, and after a brief pause, turned to her.
Knowing what he needed, she handed him some chopsticks she had grabbed out of the drawer next to her and placed them in his hand, smiling. Almost as an afterthought, she found she was blushing again.
He nodded slightly, almost a head bow, and then returned to the couch to resume reading. She didn't try and tell him to eat at the table, knowing he wouldn't spill a single grain of rice on to her furniture and floor.
They ate in silence. At one point he got up and changed into the pajamas, right after putting his bowl in the sink.
They suit him, Orihime thought, her light blush appearing once more.
He asked if she was sure she was not ill again, and she had adamantly confirmed she was fine.
After finishing her homework with the help of Ulquiorra, who told her the answers to her questions without once glancing away from his novel, Orihime changed into her own pajamas.
She yawned, coming into the living room. Seeing her relaxed on the couch still, half way through the book, she asked, "Aren't you going home?"
"Might I read for a while longer?"
She smiled tenderly. "Of course you can. Lock the door on your way out, please."
He nodded and flipped the page.
She had gone back to her bedroom and after closing the door behind her, lied down on her bed with a slight frown. The frown was in place because the feeling of unease had crept up on her, even worse than before. It felt like a little monster biting at her from the inside, slowly eating her confidence up until all she was left with was unease.
Eventually, she was able to force herself to sleep, over and over repeating to herself that Ulquiorra had promised he wouldn't leave her again. And he was good on his promises. So he wouldn't leave.
Right?
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Pretty much where we left off last time. But I had to make them... you know. Together for a longer amount of time. A week of school! Then we get crazy again. Sorry for drawing out the suspense... but next chapter, the nameless dread will happen. Mwahahahahahaha! And there's nothing you can do to stop it! Well... maybe a review... No. Even reviews can't stop this. But I still beg you to leave a review, ya know... Thank you to all who have so far! You rock!