Chapter Twenty One

I had given up any notion that I would find my way around Hueco Mundo a while ago. Everything looked too much the same, all of the hallways seemed to be the same length, and there was really nothing to distinguish one location from any of the others.

How anyone ever found their way around completely escaped me.

"You really probably could have gone without storming off like a petulant child, Ka-chan." The muscles in my cheek twitched as the voice changed it's location from inside of my head to outside. This time, there wasn't any water around for me to dip my head into, nothing to cover my ears with in an attempt to shut him out.

He was much, much harder to ignore when he was outside of my head.

Instead of coming up with some kind of comeback, I snorted and kept walking, hands wrapped around the strap of my messenger bag so tight that my knuckles turned white.

"And I could probably do without you continuing to act like one."

"You shouldn't give a damn about how I act," I snapped, walking just a little faster in what I figured was probably a futile attempt to put more distance between myself and the visible only-to-me form of the voice. "You're just imaginary, anyway. You're not real; you never have been and you never will be. The only reason you're here is because of whatever it is that's wrong with me."

I didn't have to look over my shoulder to know that he was still less than a step behind me—I could almost feel him, the same kind of sense one gets when they think there is something else in the room, but they can't be sure. It was a shiver up the spine, gooseflesh raising on skin.

He was there when he shouldn't have been, and I could feel him, but I couldn't hear him—I mean I could hear him talk, sure. But the only set of footsteps in the hall were my own, the only breath to be heard mine.

"But there's nothing wrong with you, Ka-chan. You're in near perfect health—well, except for your diet, because it's always been questionable. But other than what you choose to digest, you're fine. You're healthy. And I'm sure if your life held more, uh, normal circumstances, you'd probably have finished school and gotten into a decent university." For once, the voice didn't sound like he was trying to taunt me—he sounded like he was trying to have a somewhat decent conversation. I was likely just imagining what sounded like an apologetic tone just under the edge of his voice.

I stopped walking.

"Nothing wrong with me?" My voice was quiet—I could feel the voice still behind me, but in front of me the hallway stretched out, blinding white where I was standing and getting darker and darker the farther my eyes had to travel.

"Well, yeah—you're healthy, you're pretty normal. I mean, sure, you can't exactly socialize well, but you're not crazy or anything."

That was the second time in recent memory that someone had told me I wasn't crazy. The first time it had been Aizen, who acted kind of crazy himself.

And now it was the voice in my head telling me that I wasn't crazy.

Something seemed incredibly wrong with that.

"Uh, Ka-chan? Why did you stop walking?"

I rounded on him, hands twisting and clenching on the strap of my bag. His pupiless eyes widened in surprise at my sudden movement, and he took a half a step back.

"Not crazy?" I demanded. "You, the voice in my head, are telling me that I, a person with a voice in their head, is telling me that I am not crazy? That I'm normal. Having a voice in your head that isn't your own is so far from normal, like, I can't even begin to elaborate on how weird it is! And besides that, I am the only person who can see you! To everyone else, you don't exist!"

He looked shocked, back pressed up against the wall I had driven him toward when I had turned around.

"So please, oh voice in my head, enlighten me—how am I not crazy? Is it in the fact I was kidnapped for the exact reason of having a voice in my head? It is because all of these people I am now surrounded by aren't even human from what I can tell? Or, you know, maybe it's the fact that I've been heavily medicated for the past eleven years of my life because I just so happen to hallucinate? Would you please tell me how none of that makes me insane?"

My hands were wrapped so tightly around the strap of my bag that I could feel the old, worn leather cutting into my palms, and couldn't feel anything else about my hands otherwise. I was fairly sure that if I hadn't been holding onto the strap, my hands would have been shaking even worse than they did anyway.

"Uh, well Ka-chan, if I could just-"

"Talking to walls now, Kaori?" I froze completely, my heart leaping into my throat as a new voice descended upon my ears. Slowly, my eyes slid to the right, from where the other voice was coming from. The version of the voice in my head that I could see mimicked my movement, large frown forming on his face when his white eyes landed on the speaker.

It was Aizen. Behind him stood another man, one whom I hadn't seen before, also dressed in white. His eyes looked as if they were closed, and there was a smile on his face. His silvery hair seemed to go well with the rest of Las Noches.

"Erm, well. Uh. No. Maybe? Yes. Okay, yes." If Aizen seemed to think I was talking to walls, that meant that he couldn't see the man that was standing directly in front of me. And if he couldn't see him, that meant that I really was crazy and the voice had, yet again, been lying to me.

"Yes, I am talking to the walls," I said again, quickly tucking my hands behind my back and turning to face the duo. "They're, uh, pretty talkative, you know?" I could only hope that I didn't appear to angry given the fact that I had yelled at two men who were much, much larger than me, had been out in the desert, and had nearly been eating by some kind of monster in the past few hours.

Wow I've had a productive day.

"Yeah, you know, there's some pretty interesting conversations to be had with walls. Mainly because they see and hear everything. Which, you know, is a potentially terrifying thought, until you realize that only some of us were gifted with the ability to speak with the walls. Because if everyone could talk to walls, then nothing would be a secret anymore."

If I had any doubts that I was crazy, they were immediately erased by the asinine words that just seemed to be falling from my mouth of their own predilection.

"You have a point there," the voice muttered in my direction. Faintly, I wondered if that if I chose that very moment to punch him, would I hit flesh or just bust my knuckles open on the wall behind him?

At the idea of seeing more blood, I backed off of the thought immediately. Though it would be a good thing to try at a later point in time—like when I didn't have an audience. Maybe then, I would be able to get some kind of idea of what the hell was going on, head-wise.

"Uhrm," I started, gulping. My fingers had tightened their grips on my hands, digging into the backs of them hard enough for me to feel the stress I was putting on my bones. "Is there, uh, anything I can help you with, or . . .?"

"Or what, Ka-chan? 'Can I go back to my conversation with the wall now'?" the voice joked in a whisper. I found it odd that he was going to such great lengths to be quiet, considering I was the only one capable of hearing him.

At the same time, Aizen said, "I was wondering where Grimmjow was. It is dangerous for you to be alone in the halls, Kaori."

"Grimmjow?" I asked, cocking an eyebrow and pursing my lips. Quickly, I debated with myself on how I should answer the question—the truth, or something else completely made up? "He's, erm, elsewhere. I, uh, I wandered off. Again. Alone. While he was distracted by his . . . stump? If you could call his missing appendage a stump? I call it a stump, but it's really just his shoulder, followed by absolutely no arm. Does that classify as a stump? I feel like it should be classified as a stump."

I really had to hand it to Aizen—his face stayed cool and betrayed no hint of what he was thinking as I fumbled my through a lie. But I could almost swear that the smirk on the face of the man behind him had widened by just a fraction of an inch by the time I finished speaking.

"It is time for you to get back to him, Kaori. Gin, take her to Grimmjow's rooms; I'll be taking my leave."

Aizen smiled at me; chills ran up my spine and I could feel a tugging in my stomach, a feeling close to the one I got when I had the urge to puke. Something felt off about the way he smiled, which looked so calm and gentle on the outside and didn't match the aura he had been giving off at any other time I had encountered him.

Tentatively, I smiled back and skittered closer to the wall so he could pass me, leaving me to my fate.

Whoa. Hold the phone. I wasn't gone for an ungodly amount of time again? whoa.

YOU GUYS ARE SO GREAT AND YOU MAKE ME SMILE AND YOU'RE FANTASTIC AND I JUST. I LOVE YOU ALL.