Chapter Twenty Nine
Truth be told, Karakura Town was nice.
I mean, it was smaller than I was used to, but it was a change, so it was nice. And Hideki didn't seem to mind it, either; Mizuri, of course, had been sad to leave her friends but she understood why we had left.
She had been making small sacrifices for me for a majority of her short life, and I had never really given anything up for her. It had always been about me, me, me, and it didn't look like that was going to change soon.
We had mended our relationship as best we could, almost becoming closer than we had before I left, but there was still a rift between us. She had started to badger me constantly since four months after my sudden return, wanting to know what my version of events had been, what had happened to me that had changed small parts of myself.
I had refused to tell her, always deflecting her questions with a smile and playfully pushing her away, or simply ignoring her questions all together in favor of changing the conversation completely.
Mom and I were still strained, completley tip toeing around everything that had happened in those two months, completely ignoring the fact that I wasn't taking my medication at all and hadn't shown any signs of a relapse.
That was the other reason Karakura Town was nice:
Mom had decided it was time, and had placed me in an apartment all the way across town from the house she had rented for herself and Mizuri. Which was, honestly, the weirdest thing ever—I had never thought she would loosen my leash and could afford for me to live on my own all the way across town. But she had always been super careful with the way she spent her money, squirreling away a majority of it for God knows how long.
But if she thought it was time for me to have a little more space to myself, then it was time. And besides, the chances of me actually finding my feet in Karakura were much, much higher than where we had moved from; no one had seen my face on missing posters here, no one had heard about my condition.
Things were starting to look up.
You suck at interior decorating, Ka-chan, Hideki said. I was leaning against the front door to my small apartment, the entrance dead bolted and locked securely behind my back.
"Yeah, that's something we can both agree upon," I said out loud, kicking off my shoes. I didn't have much furniture in my apartment—there was a beat up floral sofa sitting dead center in the living room, a coffee table sitting in front of it. There was a table with two chairs sitting in the kitchen. A dresser sat in my bedroom.
Otherwise, there was nothing in my apartment except for me and a couple of boxes with my clothes in them.
I had lain wide awake most nights since my return from Hueco Mundo, exhausted but unable to sleep. It was weird, having to sleep alone after weeks of having a body beside me; I had been sure I would have adjusted to the change after a few days, but months had passed.
Ten months, if I wanted to be exact. Ten months, three days, eight hours. But it wasn't like I was counting, honest. The number just happened to be lurking in the back of my head during all of my waking hours.
Hideki made fun of me incessantly for both of those things—the fact that I was keeping track of how long I had been out of Hueco Mundo, but also because I spent most nights wide awake and staring at the ceiling.
And when I did sleep, I woke up form nightmares I couldn't remember—they were imprinted on the backs of my eyelids when I closed them, but I could remember nothing from them if I tried to. I woke up short of breath, blanket and shirt sticking to the sweaty, sticky patches of skin available to them.
The first few days, I didn't leave the apartment much. I was too busy trying to adjust to my new surroundings, trying to figure out where to place my meager furniture, trying to make the foreign location feel a bite more home-like and a lot less like a time out space.
It was made worse, I think, by the fact that Mizuri lived much closer to her new school, and therefore did not need me to walk her to school and home everyday—and I would have done it, too, getting up extra early just to walk all the way across town to escort my sister a measly block and a half
Eventually, I got bored of staring at the bare, beige walls.
Why don't we go for a walk, Ka-chan? Explore a bit, Hideki suggested. You've gone over this place floor to ceiling and wall to wall and back again; I'm going to go crazy if we don't see what's outside.
"Sounds like a pretty good idea," I mumbled, rising from where I had seated myself on the couch and heading toward the door. I scooped my keys up off of the kitchen counter as I ducked inside, snatching my phone up off of the counter as well and shoving it down into my pocket.
My black hoodie was hanging in the hall; I wasn't entirely sure how cold it was outside, but the weather had been starting to turn, heralding the changing of the seasons.
It was hard to believe it had almost been a year since I had came back from Hueco Mundo, mostly changed and yet still the same.
My sneakers slipped onto my feet easily enough and then I was out the door, locking it behind me and shoving my house keys in the same pocket as my phone was residing in.
"Which way?" I asked once I reached the bottom of the stairs. The air had a bit of a bite to it, but I was more than warm enough in my oversized hoodie.
Uh, let's go left? Hideki suggested.
So I went left.
It was time to figure out what was outside of my apartment.
I went for walks every night after that, pulling on my sneakers and my hoodie and locking the door on my way out. Hideki always suggested the route we took, always telling me when I should turn, where I should go, whether or nit I should slow down so he could get a decent feel of the place. I never ran into anyone else wandering the streets at the odd hours I had chosen to go out, which was weird—but it was to be expected.
If I hadn't lived through what I had, I probably wouldn't have even thought about going exploring so late at night, completely alone with a half-charged phone and no reliable way to defend myself against anyone. It wasn't like I lived in a terrible neighborhood, either.
But on the fifth night, we had some company.
Hideki had suggested I cut through an alley—which was okay, because we had done so before. And it wasn't like I was a stranger to alleyways or anything, having been both abducted and returned to one on separate occasions. This alley was also a little wider than the ones I was used to, but no less dark.
We have company, Hideki intoned three steps into the alley. I glanced over my shoulder furtively, terrified of the idea that someone could be behind me. About halfway down, Ka-chan, you wimp.
Sure enough, I was almost halfway down the alley when a figure stepped out in front of me. Hideki had warned me of his presence; I didn't jump at his sudden appearance.
Although, I almost bust my gut open laughing about his appearance.
It might have been dim in the alley, but there was no way in Hell that anyone could ever hide an afro that atrocious. When my laughter had subsided a bit, I noticed that he wore clothes that were nearly identical to the ones Hideki had worn when he had chosen to manifest himself in a slightly more physical form.
Which was, y'know, weird. Why would anyone put themselves low enough to wear a black shihakusho anyway? Was he from the same group Hideki had been part of, when he worked for Aizen?
At the thought of Aizen, my eyes flicked warily to the katana that was tied to the sash of afro dude's obi, suddenly alert. Did he work for Aizen? Why would he want me back after almost a full year? He had gotten what he wanted out of us.
Don't worry, Ka-chan, Hideki said lazily. I doubt he's going to hurt you.
I fought to roll my eyes at Hideki, choosing instead to focus a good deal of my attention span on the man before me.
And then the guy drew his katana and I panicked a bit, heart pounding in my eyes.
"Whoa there, careful with that," I said nervously, skittering back a couple of feet. "Wouldn't want to put someone's eye out, would we?"
He ignored me, flipping his katana so the blade thrust out behind me, the hilt of the weapon facing me. And then he started to approach me, which set of all sorts of warning bells in my head.
Stay absolutely still, Ka-chan. He'll realize he's being stupid in about two seconds.
The weirdly dressed afro dude reached out and tapped my forehead with the hilt of his sword. I stood there for a second and stared at him, eyebrow cocked-
And then I doubled over, holding my head as a splitting headache hit me. My knees hit the cool concrete, body shaking as the searing pain overrode my senses. Everything was white, black, grey for an eternity, all I was aware of being the pain in my head and a high pitched keening noise.
Belatedly, I realized that the high keening sound was actually coming from me—I was screaming, agonized by the pain in my head that had come upon me suddenly.
Hideki, what the hell is going on?
I got no answer as the pain started to subside just a bit, losing it's intensity. I struggled to get to my feet, breathing heavy and labored and painful.
"What the hell were you trying to do?" I gasped out, a hand still on my head.
"Why didn't you disappear? Aren't you a Plus?" He sounded ever more panicked than I was, a feat of epic proportion
"What in the name of all that is rational a Plus?" I demanded; I could feel bile rising up my throat, threatening to spill out of my mouth, the acrid taste burning in my esophagus. "I am flesh and blood and human, thank you very much."
Except, by the time I had gotten my eyes open, the afro man was gone. Everything was blurry and too, too dark. The piercing pain in my skull had subsided a bit, resulting only in lancing jabs every handful of seconds.
Hideki? I thought, coughing, trying to get the sick taste out of my mouth. I felt . . . less, almost; like not all of me was present. Which was weird, because the only other time I had felt like that was just after I had punched Hideki in the face.
"This isn't funny," I mumbled, pulling my sweater up to my chin as a shiver racked through my body, making my head hurt worse. Which direction was my apartment in? "Hideki, you had better fucking answer me right now, or I swear I am going to make your life hell."
There was still no response.
I didn't get a response as I stumbled down the street, head pounding and my stomach rolling violently with every handful of steps I took. Where had Hideki disappeared to? He had been laying low just after I had punched him, and he had only been dormant for so long because I had been pissed.
After a scattered handful of seconds, I recognized where I had come out at, realizing I was only a hanful of blocks away from my apartment. Which was good—it was very, very good, because I didn't know Karakura very well yet and Hideki; well, Hideki wasn't answering me which was not good.
My head felt empty as I walked, still throbbing from whatever it was the afro guy did to me, but empty. Like I was alone in my head, completely and utterly alone, like I had only ever been the only one to have even taken up residence there.
That thought scared me more than anything.
I was shaking despite the mostly warm air by the time I reached my apartment, stumbling up the stairs. I could feel sweat beginning to pool on my lower back, either from the pain of the ache in my head or the effort I was making to keep everything I had had to eat that day down.
My hands were shaking as I fumbled in my pocket for my keys; I had to try three times to get the key in the lock, five more to get it to turn the right way until I heard the tumblers in the lock spring from their secure position, and it took me a good handful of tries to even get my fingers to wrap around the doorknob and make it turn.
What had that guy done to me? Why wasn't Hideki answering me like he typically did in his snarky, know it all tone of voice?
I shut and locked the door behind me unsteadily, having to lean my forehead against the cool material as I did so, trying to concentrate on my actions rather than the matter at hand.
Hideki, Hideki, Hideki, Hideki, Hideki, I repeated over and over again in my mind, almost like a mantra as I kicked my shoes off, leaving them where they lay in the middle of the entry way. I struggled with the zipper on my jacket, hands tremoring and fingers losing their grip on the zipper more than once.
It got to the point where I gave up, choosing instead to draw my arms into the sleeves and shrug the garment up and over my head, ridding myself of it. It wasn't the easiest process, the sweater getting stuck on my neck as I tried to force it over my head, eventually succeeding and mussing my hair completely.
I stumbled into the bathroom, hands blindly reaching for the knob for the cold water, turning it on full blast. Maybe Hideki was sleeping and just needed woken up; cold water would likely do the trick.
Unfortunately, as I splashed handful after handful of freezing water on my features and making my headache worse than it had been since I had started walking, I realized that doing so wasn't helping at all.
Taking a deep breath, I turned off the water and dried my face. I could barely make out my reflection in the dark, eyes hollowed out in my narrow face, strands of dark hair sticking to my features—a result of both sweat and cold water, I could only assume. My hair had grown quite a bit, coming down past my chin at an angle Mom had called flattering.
I decided to try and talk to Hideki once more, setting the hand towel down on the counter and taking a step away from the mirror. I was apprehensive about what would happen—I couldn't even feel him anymore, whereas I had always been so aware of his presence.
For once in my life, I felt completely empty.
Hideki? I asked tentatively.
I still got no response.
For the first time in years, I cried. My hands came up to my face, both of them covering my eyes as I started to sob, leaning back against the wall and sliding down it slowly but surely until my butt hit the floor with a thud, legs sprawling out in front of me.
Hideki was gone.
I had lost Grimmjow and missed him terribly.
I was alone.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
I went for a walk again the next night, hands shoved down into my pockets, completely numb. I hadn't really bothered to roll out of bed that day, still waiting for Hideki to come back. He hadn't; I figured that if he was going to at all, he would have been back by then with some kind of snarky, rude comment about how tacky the afro-dude's hair had been and about how I didn't need to mope about losing him for a few hours; I'd be wishing him gone in a heartbeat.
It was only to have been expected from him, anyway.
I didn't run into the afro dude again—I wasn't entirely sure what I would say to him if I had. He had freed me from a weight I had been dragging along with me since I was six, a thing I had wanted to get rid of years. And then, when I had come to terms that Hideki was a part of me whether I liked it or not, when we had finally made peace with each other and he had tried to help me time after time, he was gone.
Gone, like he almost hadn't been there in the first place.
It was then I decided that if I did see the afro dude again, I was going to punch him in the face. Sure, I hadn't learned how to make a proper fist at any point in time; it hadn't been important after leaving Hueco Mundo, though self defense was something Mom and Mizuri had both become invested in during my absence.
Fleetingly, I had a thought about becoming invested in self defense myself; it could come in useful, at some point. For all I knew, it could have been useful the night before—maybe then I would still have Hideki.
I stopped walking for a moment, looking up at the starry night sky—well, what stars I could see. It was hard to see them clearly, given the weak light of the streetlights.
Thinking in maybes and what ifs was worthless. There was no way to go back and change the past, no way to know that if I had chosen differently on any occasion that the end result would have been different. I would just have to keep moving forward, my past be damned; getting hung up on anything was pointless because I couldn't change it.
I squared my shoulders and nodded to myself, deciding I would stop getting hung up on thinking about maybes and what ifs, would stop trying to puzzle out how any other situation would have ended.
And then I looked ahead, intent on walking:
But there was someone standing directly in front of me.
My heart leapt into my throat. I had been alone just a few minutes before; I hadn't heard or seen anyone walking toward me, had been completely alone in the street when I had stopped walking to look up at the sky.
Where the hell had they come from? And what did they want?
"You must be Kozume Kaori-chan." I froze, head cocked to the side—my last name wasn't something that was tossed around, especially since I didn't make it a habit to introduce myself. The only way anyone in Karakura could possibly know who I was would have been because of the missing posters Mom had put out—but I was pretty sure they didn't make it this far when it came to papering my face around.
And besides, my features had changed a bit since I had disappeared, and my hair was completely different. It was alarming how little it took to change ones appearance.
The man was dressed weirdly; even weirder than I had seen in Hueco Mundo. Okay, not quite as weird, but just as tacky. A long, dark coat with white diamonds on the bottom, and a dark shirt and pants whose color I couldn't quite make out in the poor light of the street light, or the distance I stood from him. On his head was a green and white bucket hat, effectively hiding a good majority of his face with it's shadow.
Belatedly, I noticed he had a cane.
"What do you want?" I asked, not unkindly, but wary. I didn't have Hideki to warn me about anything anymore, though I was still hoping he would prove me wrong, would just pop up with some snarky comment about how atrocious the man's choice of attire was.
"So you are Kozume Kaori-chan; good!" Since when was being me a good thing? It hadn't done much for me before. In fact, it had gotten me abducted.
There was no way in hell that I was getting abducted again.
"I'm Urahara Kisuke." I stared at him; was his name supposed to mean something to me? Because it didn't. "We have met before, Kaori-chan—you were much smaller. Not quite as cute." He snapped a fan open, holding it in front of the lower part of his face. "Of course, you were being told to kill everything then. So."
I blinked. And blinked again slowly, silently cursing Hideki, trying to figure out what he could possibly have meant by that. My memory was hazy enough as it was concerning my childhood; attempting to tell me he knew from before I had started my strict medication regimen was pointless.
"Nope," I finally said. "I think you have the wrong person, sir. Sorry!" But I wasn't about to turn my back on him and walk away; my instincts weren't good, no, but I knew it wasn't smart for me to be out on my own in the first place. Meeting weird men in the street didn't bode well for me; for all I knew, there could have been more hiding in the shadows, waiting for me to walk away.
I shifted on my feet just a bit, completely unsure of what I was supposed to do in a situation like this. I couldn't make an exit that would make me feel safe.
"Ah, I see. Sorry for the inconvenience, then," he said, bowing his head. I stared at him, desperately wishing I hadn't chosen to go out walking. It had been a stupid decision, even when I still had Hideki—who knew what could possibly happen to me? And this, this could end badly.
"Not a problem," I said, taking a half step back. I was going to do it—I was going to walk away, but I was going to have be aware of how I was doing it. I knew full well that it would be stupid to turn my back on an unknown person, especially in the middle of the night in an area I didn't know. "I'll just, uh . . ."
With a deep breath, I started to turn around, completely aware of every shape in the shadows around me and even more so of the man who still stood in the light of the street lamp.
"Although, I am curious as to how you managed to rid yourself of Hideki."
I stopped turning, hands clenching into fists at my sides as I turned to face the man—Urahara Kisuke, apparently—head on again.
"How do you know about that?" I demanded, completely forgetting the fact that I had denied the fact that I even was Kaori to begin with. Did he work for Aizen? Had the guy with the afro from the night before tell him about the loss of Hideki?
"Come to the Urahara Shoten tomorrow and we'll talk."
He was walking away from me before I could reply, almost like he knew I was going to show up.
I resolved then and there that there was no way I was going to show up at the Urahara Shoten—wherever that was.
I didn't sleep when I returned to my apartment, tossing and turning fitfully as I struggled to process the things that had happened to me over the past few days.
I was still trying to get used to the fact that I was the only person in my apartment; I jumped at every little noise, even if I knew it came from outside. Most of the time, I couldn't tell which was worse—the sounds that happened inside of my apartment, or the sounds that happened outside?
I could almost swear I could hear the screeches of the Hollows of Hueco Mundo just outside, but I wrote it off quickly; the idea was preposterous. It wasn't like they could actually reach this plane of existence, right? I mean, sure, Grimmjow and Usagi had, but they were different.
Weren't they?
I looked up at the sign that hung above the shop, frowning. Why, exactly, had I thought it was a good idea to come? What had possessed me to actually listen to the weirdo I had met in the middle of the night?
It was likely because Hideki wasn't around to talk me out of doing idiotic things anymore—nor was he around to pressure me into said idiotic things, but that was beside the point.
This was the first decision I could make for myself by myself, and I could only hope that I had chosen right—and that Google Maps had shown me to the right location.
The door opened just as I reached for it, revealing the man from the night before, mouth hidden behind his fan.
"Good afternoon, Kaori-chan!" he said, moving to the side to usher me in before I could change my mind and bolt. I stepped inside out of embarrassment, trying to take in as much of my surroundings as possible in case I needed to make a quick escape of sorts. My phone was firmly held in my left hand, fingers at the ready to unlock it and call an emergency number.
"Afternoon," I said quietly. There were rows of merchandise that I couldn't name; things I hadn't seen before. The lighting was poor inside, too; other than the two of us, there was no one else in the Shoten. It was no wonder, then that the lights were so low.
He probably didn't get many customers, especially when one considered how far out of the way it seemed to be.
"Follow me, Kaori-chan!" Urahara said cheerfully, leading me through the aisles.
Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea, I said to myself as I followed Urahara into the back silently, stepping lightly. The hand that held my phone felt like it was shaking again, a feeling I was no longer used to now that the medication I had been on for years was completely out of my system. Why did I even come? This was stupid!
I had no idea what could possibly be waiting for me in the back of the shop—a table saw? A walk in freezer filled with other bodies? Blood spattered across the walls?
Thankfully, I saw none of those things. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be relieved about it or not. In fact, all that was in the room was a normal table—bare walls, but with a homey feel hanging in the air.
Tea was already set out on the table; it was like he knew I was coming. While I wasn't entirely sure how he had that kind of knowledge ahead of time, it reminded me almost of how Usagi had an uncanny knack for knowing where Grimmjow and I were most of the time.
He motioned for me to sit on the floor and I did so, taking a seat at the opposite end of the table from him. It was as much distance as I could put between us as I possibly could without coming off as rude. But at least there was a table between us. While tables had failed me as a defensive location and weapon before, there was always a slim chance that my luck might change.
I figured we would continue on with the small talk we had started in the front of the store before we got down to business. I sat quietly as Urahara poured a cup of tea for me, and then again for himself.
"How did you lose Hideki, Kaori-chan?" Wow. Okay. Definitely not small talk.
I took a deep breath and debated with myself for a moment. There was really nothing I could lose by telling him, other than the whole idea of me appearing to be a normal human being in any sort of aspect.
Finally, I decided that there was really nothing for me to lose.
I explained to him quietly how exactly it was I had lost Hideki—the weird guy with the afro, the fact that he walked around in a shihakusho and carried a katana with him, what he had done with the katana. Urahara listened to me like I wasn't completely nutters, unlike a majority of the people I had spoken to about anything of the sort. He listened to me like he believed me.
And having someone who believed in what I was saying was an odd thing, but it was nice. Not that I could be sure he believed a single word that came out of my mouth, but his face told me he did.
"How long ago did you stop taking your medicine?" he asked once I had finished speaking.
I frowned; I hadn't mentioned to him that I had been on any medication at any point in time until I vaguely recalled the fact that he had mentioned seeing me before—a much smaller version of myself that was being told to kill things. Of course, if he had known that, then he would know about the medication.
"Er, thirteen months ago? Or so, memory's a little fuzzy with dates," I said hastily, rubbing the back of my head.
"Why did you stop?"
I bit the inside of my cheek, eyes flicking to the side to see if there was anyone else around. There was no one that I could see, so I supposed I was in the clear. I took a deep, mostly calming breath before looking full on at Urahara.
"Uh, that answer depends. Since you knew about Hideki in the first place, I'm assuming you believe about how I lost him, right?" Urahara nodded, taking a sip of his tea.
"I was abducted fourteen months ago," I said quietly, staring down into my tea cup. My throat felt like it was almost closing up with how cautious I had to be when handing this information out. It had been a year since I had last really spoken about what had occurred to me with anyone, Hideki notwithstanding. "And, well, they didn't exactly believe in medicating me because they, uh, just wanted me for Hideki."
"Oh?"
I looked up, frown on my face. Urahara looked genuinely interested, and I debated with myself for a moment about whether or not I should be telling him anything.
In the end, stupidity won out—he hadn't tried to take me anywhere I didn't want to go, hadn't attempted to attack me, and the didn't appear to be spiked. He also knew about Hideki, and he knew exactly who I was. That much alone probably should have sent off warning bells, but every word about what had happened to me in Hueco Mundo was sitting on the tip of my tongue, just waiting to be let out.
Quietly, I started speaking again.
This time, I told him everything.
To his credit, he sat through my tale quietly, refilling my tea cup when I ran out, and not interrupting me a single time. I did my best not to leave anything out or censor anything—Hideki wasn't in my head this time, telling me little things I had missed or making up things on the spot to confuse whomever I was speaking to.
But he wouldn't have had needed to; the words were spilling out of my mouth, rushing and running together in a blur in my mind as I spoke for what seemed like hours. I didn't choose to give Urahara the condensed version I had prepared for the first two of my psychs—I gave him the uncensored, unabridged version. The version that made my tongue and cheeks numb from speaking, my throat parched and dry, voice cracking by the end of it.
He didn't appear outwardly startled by any potion of my story, though his features visibly darkened the first time I mentioned Aizen, and continually darkened as I mentioned Gin and Aizen again and again and again.
We sat for a few minutes after I finished my tale of how I wound up first in Hueco Mundo, and then in Karakura Town, tying it all up tidily by reminding him of the events that had happened only two nights prior.
"You don't have to worry about him anymore, Kaori-chan," Urahara said, taking me completely off guard. There was only one person he could have been talking about, and I knew it was Aizen.
"What? Why?"
"He's been removed as a threat—completely locked up. He won't come for you again." I was beginning to feel numb again at the idea of Aizen, though Urahara's words put me at ease just a bit. At least I could go out without worrying about anyone swooping in to have me abducted again; not that there was any reason for me to be kidnapped with Hideki completely gone from my being.
"He won't?" I asked, frowning. "And locked up? Locked up how? Where?"
Urahara looked uncomfortable for a moment at my question; he appeared to be debating with himself.
And then he explained to me that Shinigami were, in fact, actual things—the afro guy in the alley had been one of them, as well as Hideki and, at one point, both Aizen and Gin. He also explained to me quickly exactly how Aizen and Gin had wound up in Las Noches. It was an easy enough tale for me to wrap my head around; I had, after all, spent a couple of months in the company of beings I hadn't though existed in the first place, in a location that wasn't exactly number one on people's lists of vacation getaways.
I felt pretty confident that I wouldn't have to worry about Aizen anymore. Gin had, apparently, met a fate much the same as Grimmjow's from what I was told.
He also explained how he believed I lost Hideki—a konso, soul purification. Apparently, the resident Shinigami wasn't too quick on the draw and figured Hideki and I were one thing, intertwined and stuck in between the living and the dead. I was pretty sure I wasn't supposed to identify with the statement, though it might have been the truth; since I had come back from Hueco Mundo, I felt like I had been stuck in between the dead and the living, completely unable to breach either line.
Now that Hideki seemed to be gone permanently, I wondered if I could try to better assimilate myself in society and move on. Although, admittedly, Urahara seemed curious as why a konso would have gotten rid of Hideki when nothing else had worked over the years.
We faded into silence for a moment, each staring into our tea cups as I tried to take in the information and compartmentalize it as best I could. I would go over it at length later, when I was staring up at the ceiling and trying to sleep.
"When you were small," he said suddenly, "your father brought you into the Shoten. And I wasn't fully aware of what exactly it was that was wrong with you at the time, but he was insisting it wasn't schizophrenia like everyone said you had—he had done his research, and it didn't manifest itself in anyone that young.
"And he wasn't exactly normal himself; he had a high enough spiritual pressure—a trait you seemed to inherit—to see spirits and ghosts. He hadn't done anything with it himself, but he could feel enough to know exactly when someone had happened to you; he could, in essence, feel Hideki sharing your body."
"So he came to you?" I asked incredulously; I could feel one of my eyebrows raising of it's own accord.
Urahara waved a hand at my question, almost like he was trying to dismiss it as something of little consequence. "I do have a reputation around here."
I rolled my eyes and took another sip of my quickly cooling tea; I would have to pee soon if we kept this up for much longer, especially since he had refilled my cup at least four times since we had first sat.
"I came up with the medication you were taking; it was a reiatsu suppressant, of sorts. It was tuned in exclusively to Hideki, so as to nullify him as best as we could so you could live a mostly normal life." I frowned; what about all of the other prescriptions I had had written for me, all of the medication I was supposed to be taking to help? And how had Mom gotten her hands on the stuff Urahara had made me after Dad had left?
My questions must have been clear on my face.
"I had your father tell your mother that this was the only possible pharmacy to fill your prescription at, if only for our, erm, unbeatable prices. Although I am surprised that she didn't look into the matter, being a nurse as she is." I shrugged; I hadn't been entirely clear on the relationship my parents had had, but something told me that if my father had said something, my mom typically agreed without hesitation. "And instead of having someone come to Karakura every month for your supply, we mailed it in."
That likely explained how Urahara had known it was me in the alley the night before—Mother would have had to notify him that we were moving to Karakura, to change our address. Which ultimately meant that he knew where I lived, because Mom had said she was going to have the medication mailed to my address.
And I—I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I would definitely make sure to triple check my locks before I decided it was time to try and sleep that night. Or any other night, for that matter.
Yeah, checking the lock on the windows and the door to my apartment was going to be a regular thing I did for a very, very long time.
"I see," I finally said. It was still a lot to take in, and it wasn't like I could just compartmentalize that immediately. He had mentioned my dad, which was pretty much taboo around my mother.
I only had a vague image of my father in my head—he had been a tall man, that much I recalled. I always had to crane my head what seemed like more just to see his face; it had always stuck me as a little unfair that I got Mom's genes when it came to height and Mizuri had gotten Dad's.
Otherwise, I couldn't remember much about him—his face was always hard to see in my memories, and he had left when I was young. From my understanding, it was always because of me and Hideki. Because he couldn't handle it, though I had never completely understood why. Now that I knew he could feel Hideki there, I understood a little better, and I couldn't really blame him.
"I can make you forget, if you want." My head jerked up from where I had been staring at the table so fast that I almost though I was going to break my neck from how fast I moved.
It sounded tempting. It sounded so, so tempting. "Forget how much, exactly?" I asked as calmly as I could after my sudden movement, trying to get a better feel of what exactly it would be that I would be forgetting. The question of 'how' completely eluded me at that point; how didn't matter.
"Everything that has to do with Hideki! Your time in Hueco Mundo, your years and years spent in therapy, all of the pills you had to swallow! Of course, all of those would be replaced by a much more mundane version of events based on your subconscious," he replied cheerfully. I nearly choked on my saliva—I would be forgetting a majority of my life, everything that had shaped me and made me into what I had become.
I would be forgetting Grimmjow. And even though it sounded tempting, it wasn't something I was going to go along with.
"No thank you," I refused, setting my tea cup down on the plate. "I would much rather remember things this way than any other. Besides, given Hideki's influence on my life, I almost doubt whatever it was you were planning to do would work."
Urahara looked almost like he hadn't thought about that part. Of course, he also looked like he wanted to try and fix my memory, just to see if it worked or not, depending on the lasting effects of Hideki's influence.
"I see," he said, picking his own tea cup back up.
"Just one more question before you leave," he said. We were standing in the Shoten proper; I was trying to retie my sneaker as I hobbled to the door, completely ignoring the fact that I could stop and tie it like a normal person.
I paused at the door, looking at him over my shoulder. "Yeah?"
"Do you have a job?"
I almost laughed in his face. It was an incredibly tempting feeling, truth be told. "No," I said at length. I was supposed to start looking for one, now that we had moved and I was in a place where less people seemed to know my history.
He looked at me for a long moment before he smiled at me; I exited the Shoten quickly at that point, intent on getting back to my apartment to mull over the events of the past few days.
"Come back tomorrow, Kaori-chan!" he shouted after me.
I rolled my eyes, like I was going to go back there; Urahara understood a good amount of what I had gone through, and had even answered some questions I hadn't been aware I had, but he was a little odd. I made a note of his request, though.
Just in case.
For whatever godforsaken reason, I was standing in front of the Urahara Shoten again, palms sweaty.
It was because I had nothing better to do, I told myself. Absolutely nothing better to do than to return to the Shoten I had been at for hours the day before. It wasn't like I had furniture to rearrange; otherwise, I had read all the way through the text books Mom had let me take with me to my apartment.
I made a note to myself in the back of my mind that I would have to stop by her apartment when Mizuri was home to return the books I had borrowed and to borrow some more. I wanted to ask my younger sister how she was transitioning to her new school, if she had made any friends, if she missed me terribly like a good younger sibling would—but I wanted to do it person, where she would know I was joking when I said the last bit.
But also because I missed seeing her face, and it had only been less than two weeks since we had moved completely. I couldn't possibly begin to think about the kind of Mizuri withdraws I would suffer from when she got old enough and went off to college. That wasn't for a long time yet, sure, but I panicked thinking about it anyway.
Taking a deep breath, I opened the door to the Shoten and stepped inside, eyes darting left and right. From what I could see, there was no one around—pretty much the same as it had been yesterday. Empty, poorly lit, and quiet.
"Hello?" I called out cautiously, sliding the door shut behind me. From the looks of things, even though the sign out front said open (I had checked before coming in; sure, Urahara had told me to come back that day, but I didn't want to do it if he was closed), there didn't seem to be anyone around.
When I didn't get a reply, I thought about turning around leaving. Pretending I had never shown up in the first place and just forgetting about Urahara entirely. Except then I wouldn't know why he had wanted me to come back, and the question would nudge at me for weeks.
"Hello?" I called out again, moving away from the door a bit.
"Ah, Kaori-chan!" I jumped, looking around for where Urahara was—he didn't sound like he was in the area I was currently in. But if he had heard me earlier, why hadn't he said something before?
Urahara poked his head—complete with his ridiculous looking bucket hat—though the doorway that lead to the back of the Shoten. "I didn't think you would show up!"
I shrugged my shoulders, hesitantly starting toward him. "Well, you did tell me to come back today, so." The grin on Urahara's face widened just a smidge, and I could feel myself beginning to frown. He had known that I would show up; someway, somehow, he had known.
"Right, right," he said, shielding his mouth with his fan. Where in the world did he pull that from? I asked myself, sidestepping a few of the isles as I neared him.
He moved aside, motioning me in to the back where we had taken our tea yesterday. It looked the same—tea set out on the table, mostly empty save for the third person that had manifested when I hadn't been there.
I knew he would have been much taller than I was if he were standing, I could tell that much easily. He looked like he was easily somewhere around my mother's age, though the spiked black hair made him look like he was trying to keep a bit of his youth with him as he aged-
Or he was trying to stay "hip" and "in" with the "kids these days." I felt as though either was a perfectly acceptable answer, truth be told.
"Sit, Kaori-chan!" Urahara said, moving past me to sit where he had been yesterday. The new man was sitting on the side of the table, facing the entrance, and closer to the end where Urahara sat. Cautiously, I took a seat where I had sat yesterday, where there was already a cup of tea waiting for me.
I eyed the tea cup suspiciously—sure, yesterdays hadn't been spiked, but one could never be too cautious. I realized for the hundredth time how stupid it was for me to have even come to the Urahara Shoten in the first place, and then I shook the feeling—I had survived living in Hueco Mundo.
I could probably survive anything at this point if I actually put my mind to it, Hideki or no.
"Kozume Kaori," I said, inclining my head to the taller man. I had decided it was better to introduce myself first instead of waiting for Urahara to start it off. I had been feeling awkward enough sitting there, staring at my tea cup yesterday in only Urahara's company; the awkward feeling had doubled with the introduction of a new person. He was smiling at me warmly, and it made me fell pretty at ease, oddly enough. "Nice to meet you."
"Kurosaki Isshin," he said brightly, still smiling at me. I offered him a faint, wobbly smile before taking a sip of my tea, pointedly staring down at the table.
"Kurosaki-san runs the Clinic on the other side of town," Urahara explained. I perked up a bit—a clinic? Mom had mentioned a clinic in passing, telling me that there was one in Karakura that was suggested I go to if I wasn't too terribly injured for whatever reason.
But why would he be here? In the back of Urahara's shop? Unless the clinic was actually just a bathroom stall and Kurosaki-sensei actually just did pretty illegal surgeries out of bathrooms? Not that he looked like the kind of person who would do that kind of thing, but life had taught me that you never really know a person just by what they looked like.
"Do you know anything about medicine, Kaori-chan?" Urahara drove on, making me curious. Why was he asking these questions? What sort of importance could my answers possibly hold?
"Not a lot," I admitted cautiously, "I mean, my mom's a nurse and I've read the text books she leaves lying around, but I've never actually had to put any of it to use." And I could have, if I had read said text books before going to Hueco Mundo. But it wasn't like I could have prepared myself for that. Most people don't walk around planning to get kidnapped. I surely hadn't.
"And how to do you feel about phones?"
I blinked at Urahara, and then glanced at Kurosaki-sensei. Neither of their faces seemed to be giving anything away; what was going on?
"They're okay?" I offered. I thought for a minute about going off the rail, screeching about phones like I had about walls. But then I recalled the fact that the walls of Las Noches actually had eyes and ears.
"Great! You're hired!" Kurosaki-sensei declared. I nearly toppled over, choking on the drink of tea I had just been taking.
"I'm what," I croaked, thumping a fist against my chest in an attempt to clear my esophagus. Hired? Doing what? Where? Why?
"Kurosaki-san needs someone to answer the phone in the Clinic, Kaori-chan. And that person is now you; congratulations!"
I stared at Urahara, dumbfounded.
"I also need someone to run some errands for me when you're done at the Clinic on a daily basis, sound good?"
"Uh . . ." I was confused and surprised; this was a development I hadn't been expecting. "Yeah?"
"Great!"
I stared first at Urahara, and then again at Kurosaki-sensei. My head couldn't seem to wrap around the idea that I had pretty much been ambushed and handed a job. I shook my head slightly, and then stared at my tea cup intently. Of all of the thigns to simply fall into my lap, I hadn't thought a job would be one of them.
"You're awfully quiet, aren't you?" Kurosaki-sensei asked. I raised an eyebrow, suppressing the urge to smirk at him through my confusion.
"Yes," I answered demurely, keeping my eyes on my tea cup.
If only you knew the truth, I thought quietly. They would find out soon enough, though.
And by then, they probably wouldn't be able to shut me up even if they tried.
"You didn't have to help me with this, Urahara-san," I said quietly, pulling my shoes back on; Kurosaki-sensei had left almost immediately following our conversation, and Urahara had bid me to stay for another cup of tea. I didn't have much a choice but to comply.
"Consider it repayment for not thinking to attempt a konso in the first place," he said, flicking his fan open and holding it in front of his face. He muttered something else that I didn't quite catch, though I was sure I heard, "I can't actually believe that worked, after everything else we tried."
I didn't have the vaguest idea of what "everything else" entailed, but I was thankful for that happening to me at a young age where I was less likely to remember any of it.
"Thank you," I said, standing and bowing to him.
He waved it off. "You shouldn't be thanking me, Kaori-chan! At least, you won't be after tomorrow."
And then he flounced off, leaving me to wonder what exactly it was that I had just agreed to. I stared at his reatreating form for a moment before shaking my head and exiting the Shoten.
Things were finally starting to look up.
Working for Kurosaki-sensei was easy.
He had me answering the phone, making the appointments, and occasionally being a 'nurse' when he needed me to.
Urahara, though.
Urahara was a maniac.
The errands he had me running seemed pointless at best and absolutely aggravating all the time. He had me running around Karakura for hours on end until I was sure I could draw a map of the town in my sleep, labeling every street and shop I had to pass. I would stumble home with less than two hours before I had to be up and at the Kurosaki Clinic again, muscles sore and brain numb from the errands.
And then I had to repeat the process. Repeatedly. And it was so not worth it. But I kept at it anyway, because this was likely the only kind of work I was going to find around Karakura.
I noticed, though, that as I did more and more errands, I seemed to be getting home just a little earlier each night, taking shortcuts that didn't show up on Google Maps because I was getting to know every inch of Karakura just a little better as each day passed.
This might be a good thing.
The nightmares had stopped.
They had trickled down, occurring less and less frequently after Hideki had been forcibly removed from my person. And then, they simply stopped happening altogether, leaving me to a dark, restless, dreamless sleep that occurred for only a handful of hours each night.
Said sleep didn't do much for the purple crescents seemingly tattooed beneath my eyes, but they helped re-energize me for whatever would occur the next day—whether it be working for Kurosaki-sensei, working for Urahara, or a combination of the two.
I fell asleep most often out of exhaustion from the mental capacity it took for both of said tasks, though I was never quite sure what it was that jolted me awake at odd hours of the night, leaving me unable to return to sleep.
Walking home from the Kurosaki Clinic at night wasn't as terrifying as one would think—it wasn't too late to be considered 'too late to be out', and the streets weren't necessarily empty. I wasn't looking over my shoulder every handful of feet, afraid of who or what could be behind me.
The fact that I had a knife in the waistband of my pants probably helped boost my confidence just a bit—knives, I had found, were easier for me to handle. I was so small that it wasn't like I was going to be great at hand to hand combat, but a knife? A knife was easy for me—it wasn't like I had to throw it or anything; I was quick enough with my hands to have it out and at the ready in less than a second.
It was probably the only upside to my size; people didn't assume that small girls like me—girls who looked like they probably should have still been in the earlier years of high school height wise, girls who looked nervous all the time, who quickly and pointedly looked away when they were looked at—would be armed.
I hadn't actually had to pull said knife on anyone yet; I was hoping that I would never have to.
I had also taken to carrying around a first aide kit in my new messenger bag, just in case. Urahara had been the first to suggest it; I figured it was because I had some of the weirdest luck ever when it came to stumbling across injured people or when it came to injured people stumbling to me. I had enough knowledge at that point that it wouldn't bother me quite as much anymore.
The sight of blood hadn't bothered me ever, which was a plus considering I now worked in a clinic. Even though my main job was to answer the phones, Kurosaki-san had me filling in as a nurse when he needed an extra hand or two and Yuzu and Karin weren't around.
In my opinion, Yuzu and Karin were great. Yuzu was talkative, and she showed me how to do a great deal of things that she typically took care of when she had the time. Honestly, I wasn't sure how she managed it on top of cooking and cleaning and school.
Karin, though. Karin was the opposite of Yuzu. She was brash and quiet unless her father or sister were involved, and she tended to stay far enough away from me. She did help me out on occasion, though, especially if I had a question and she was the only one available to ask.
There was one more way Karin was the opposite of Yuzu, and I hadn't quite figured it out until I had been walking home from the Shoten late at night. Urahara had wanted me to run some errands for him once I was done at the Clinic and I had complied, going to drop off what he had needed me to grab for him before I went home.
It was late, and I felt like I was dead on my feet as I walked slower than my normal pace. I wasn't afraid of walking home by myself late a night—the knife Mom insisted I carry with me might have helped in that aspect—and I didn't jump at every little noise or scrape against the concrete behind me.
I did almost completely lose my composure when I heard a terrifying screech rumble toward me from somewhere behind me. I felt the gooseflesh raise on my arms, my limbs grow stiff and heavy as I tried to both fight off the fear and place where, exactly, I had heard that noise before.
Because it was a noise I had heard before, but I had simply though I had been hallucinating it the whole time I had moved to Karakura, lying awake in my empty apartment at night.
Slowly I turned, gulping as my eyes alighted on the thing that was making the noise.
"Shit," I muttered, blinking rapidly to see if I was simply seeing things from a lack of sleep or if the thing was actually there. I hadn't seen one in person since I had been in the desert outside of Las Noches, standing in the sand as I watched Grimmjow take down hollow after hollow after hollow.
And this was definitely a hollow; there was no doubt about that.
Even in the dim light given off by the street lamp behind me, I could tell that it was a little smaller than the ones I had seen fall in Hueco Mundo.
A lizard.
It looked like a giant lizard with razor blades for teeth. It was black, with a white mask on it's face, horns protruding from it's forehead. I could see, as it flicked it's tail back and forth, serrated looking bones sticking out it's tale on it's sides, as well as on the top. From what I could make out, said serrated bones stuck out from it's spine as well.
It was the weirdest lizard I had ever laid eyes on, though I wasn't entirely sure I could actually classify it as a lizard seeing as it was, actually, a hollow.
Another question popped into my head—what did it want? How was I supposed to fight it, if it came down to it? I knew my knife would be absolutely no good in this situation. Was I supposed to run and hope I could out pace it, or was I supposed to stand there and bore it to death with my words, where it could possibly kill me.
Was I ready to die?
"Nope, not feeling it," I announced before I turned on my heel and started booking it down the street, heart pounding in my ears as I ran. I still did not have a great amount of stamina, and there was no way I was going to be able to outrun that thing, especially in the dark.
I skidded around the corner and nearly fell over, glancing down the street as I turned, trying to see if the lizard thing was following me or not.
And following me it was—and it was moving fast. Easily much faster than I could run, even if I was terrified and had a good amount of adrenaline to help me along.
I heard much rather than saw the giant lizard hollow flick it's tongue out toward me, the tip of it smashing into the place I had just been standing in the split second I had paused to see if it was following me or not. I yelped and starting running faster down the sidewalk, ducking into the first alley I got to, hoping it wasn't a dead end.
It was not a dead end; I almost sighed in relief, unsure of what I would have done if it had been a dead end. It wasn't like I would have had time to turn around and pick another place to turn into. The lizard hollow would have been on me by then.
I glanced over my shoulder in time to see it skid around the corner and follow me, the distance between us much, much smaller than it had been before. It was screaming at me, a loud, high pitched sound that grated on my ear drums and almost made me feel like they were going to burst and start bleeding on me at any point.
I screamed as I felt the tongue fly over my head, sticking to the side of the building I was running beside.
I nearly screamed again as a figure appeared in the head of the alleyway, the spot I was running to, and stood there, watching. I probably looked like a loon as I ran away from the hollow—Urahara had mentioned to me at one point that not everyone could see them, though there were quite a few people in Karakura town who could.
Instead of saying anything to them as I approached, I decided it was probably better for them to think I was crazy. It wasn't like anyone else who hadn't known me hadn't had the same through before.
Except I recognized who it was as I neared them and I nearly tripped over my own feet. "What-"
It was Karin. Kurosaki Karin, whose father I answered phones for. Who bought stuff from Urahara on a regular basis. Who had helped me out and answered my questions from time to time.
Chances were, she could probably see the giant lizard hollow behind me, but she didn't look afraid.
"Run!" I shouted, regaining my balance and racing past her, rounding the corner again to continue up the street. Part of me thought that if I kept changing direction, kept turning corners and whatnot, maybe the lizard would get bored and give up on me entirely.
I heard a screech—the unearthly one, the one I had heard emitted from the lizard hollow at least twice. My pace slowed and I looked over my shoulder, breathing heavy. I could feel sweat dripping down my forehead, feel my shirt and shorts sticking to my skin from where the sweat had started to pool.
Karin had something in her hands; it was too dark for me to make out what exactly it was, and I was too far away.
But then she launched it into the air and whatever it was hit the hollow dead center of his head, in between the two horns just as its tongue lashed out toward Karin.
I didn't see what happened next, I was too busy tripping over my feet, landing square on my face, bag going over my head and landing just in front of me. I yelped as I fell, hands out to brace me. I shook myself out quickly, scrambling to get back onto my feet, turning around to look at Karin, to see what was going on-
The hollow was no where to be seen; Karin was walking leisurely back into the alley. And if Karin was walking slowly and the hollow wasn't there, that meant that she must have killed it.
Well, that explained why she was always buying stuff from Urahara.
I ran back in her direction, following her into the mouth of the alley. "Karin!" I said urgently, trying to catch her attention. The younger teen turned around, frowning.
"Kaori?" she asked. She must not have known it was me running down the alley and away from the creature, who told her to run when she instead chose to stand her ground. Which, I suppose her standing her ground had been a good thing, seeing as the hollow was gone now.
I came to a stop in front of her, suddenly unsure of why I had decided to come back into the alley.
"Uh, thanks," I said awkwardly, rubbing the back of my head. If she could do that to a hollow, I couldn't help but wonder what she could do for me. "For saving me, y'know?"
I saw a thick line of blood streaming down her arm, black in the poor lighting of the alleyway we stood in. "Here—I can fix that for you, right now, just sit down."
"You don't-"
"I have a first aide kit in my bag, Karin. I have the knowledge to use it. And I feel partially at fault for the fact that you are bleeding. Also, your dad would probably kill me if he found out I had just left you alone to bleed in an alley, and—as showcased earlier—I do not want to die. So. Sit."
She looked me up and down for a moment, frowning. At frowned back at her, an eyebrow raised, though I was totally hoping she wasn't going to kick my ass and leave me there to bleed in an alley. That was the kind of vibe I was getting off of her at that moment.
Karin could take out a hollow; I couldn't. Therefore, if Karin could take out a hollow, she could take out me.
After a few tense seconds, she sat, sliding down the wall of the alley.
"Thanks again for saving me," I said, pulling my messenger bag over my head and setting on the ground beside her.
"You were in trouble," she pointed out, eying me cautiously. I had no doubt that she remembered how poor at patching up wounds I had been when I had first started out at the clinic a month and a half ago.
"I'm always in trouble; it's part of my charm," I said, kneeling in front of her, digging a hand into my bag and pulling out the flashlight. "Now, which arm was it?"
I flicked on the flashlight and held it in my hand as Karin motioned toward her right arm, rolling up her shirtsleeve to show me the wound. I glanced at it, assessing it quickly before digging around for the first aide kit in my messenger bag, never so happy to have been prepared for the first time in my life.
Quietly, I set to work, cradling the flashlight in the nook between my neck and my shoulder, effectively holding it still and shedding some light on Karin's wound while freeing up both my hands to work. It was an uncomfortable position, the cool pavement biting into my bare knees and shins, the cold metal of the flashlight smooshed up against my face, neck held an uncomfortable angle.
"You can see them too?" she asked me after a while, watching me closely as I worked. I had already cleaned the wound and, seeing that it didn't require stitches, reached for the gauze and bandages.
"Yeah," I said tightly, focusing on the bindings. "I can see them. They're not the prettiest things in the world, are they? You're pretty brave to be facing them like that."
She grunted in reply, shifting slightly where she sat.
"Sit still," I admonished quickly, hands stalling for a moment. "I'm nearly done. Just give me—there." I rocked back to sit on my haunches, admiring my handiwork.
Grimmjow would be pleased, I thought. The idea of it startled me, almost sending me sprawling from my precarious position on the tips of my toes and onto my back. It had been over a year, and he was still worming his way into a majority of the things I said or did or thought of; I knew it was a regular occurrence, but it slipped past me without actually standing out to me on most occasions.
Shaking the thoughts out of my head, I packed up my first aide kit and stuffed back into my bag, flicking off the flashlight and tossing it inside. Karin had stood, flexing her arm and wincing at the pain, looking over my work to see if I had done it right—she could probably do it much, much better than I could.
I stood up myself, hooking my messenger bag over my head and setting the strap on my shoulder; it was a new one, all pink and floral and bright, the one I had used in Hueco Mundo in the trash from the holes it had gained over the years since I had initially bought it, the strap frayed and worn from where I had always grabbed it nervously.
Thankfully, grabbing the strap of my bag and twisting on it nervously was a habit I had broken.
"Thanks," Karin said, rolling the sleeve of her shirt back down over the wound.
"No problem," I replied, smiling at her. She nodded at me once and then walked away from me, hopefully going home. It wasn't like I was going to tell Kurosaki-sensei about what his youngest daughter was up to at night, though I had a feeling he likely already knew.
"Hey Karin?" I said suddenly, an idea hitting me. She turned to look at me, eyes narrowed, though it was hard to see in the dark alley; my eyes still hadn't adjusted fully to the lighting after having my flashlight on and so close to my face for an extended period of time. "If you ever need any help with anything else, you can probably figure out where I live. Or ask Urahara—but I'll always answer my door. Y'know, in case you don't want to go to your dad."
I saw Karin once every other week after that, all of it for various reasons. Most of them were bloody reasons, but none of her injuries were terribly bad. None of them weren't anything I couldn't handle.
I mean, I had helped patch up a man after he had lost his arm, and he hadn't been entirely as willing as Karin was most of the time.
Even the thought of Grimmjow would still my body in whatever I was doing, slow it down for a few seconds before I shook off the feeling of sorrow and threw myself back into whatever it was I was doing. He was dead; I couldn't change that. Thinking about it wouldn't change it. Nothing could change it.
But it didn't stop me from thinking about him when my hands and mind weren't busy with the immediate matter at hand.
Typically, Karin left almost immediately after I was done patching her up, thanking me brusquely and excusing herself. I would always see her down to the bottom of the stairs and watch her as she went down the street before turning and going back up to my apartment, locking the door firmly behind me.
Some nights, though, she would stay and we would chat. She was much easier for me to talk to than Yuzu was; less excitable, less likely to talk about housework and more likely to chat about mundane things like soccer—which I didn't know much about, admittedly—or siblings.
I listened to her go on and on about her siblings more often than not; about how Yuzu had taken the place of their mother after she had died, about how her brother had become more and more distant over the past few years, but even more so nearly fifteen months ago.
I only realized after she left that I had been leaving Hueco Mundo fifteen months ago.
"Kaori, this is Ichigo!"
I stared at the tall, orange haired guy. I had to look up to see his face, which was rather uncomfortable for me—I hadn't had to do that since I had been around Grimmjow and Gin and Aizen, and it was something I hadn't gotten used to in the first place.
If I had to guess, he was probably a year or two younger than myself, but he looked like he had seen some serious shit. Which was weird, because Kurosaki-sensei seemed super protective of his children.
Not that my own mother hadn't been super protective, and look at where that had gotten me.
I bowed to him quickly, a quick bob before I righted myself, tugging down on the hem of my shirt. "Nice to meet you," I said, trying to figure out why his name had nudged something distant within my memory. Ichigo was a girl's name, sure, but I had heard the name Kurosaki Ichigo somewhere before. I just couldn't quite remember where.
And it hadn't been from Yuzu or Karin or Kurosaki-sensei—sure, I had heard Ichigo's name from them plenty of times. But I was pretty sure I had heard it before I had met Kurosaki-sensei, before I had even moved to Karakura.
"Yeah," was all he said, disinterested. I shrugged and sat back down, fingers flicking through the files that sat on my desk—files that had been begging to be reorganized and put away.
Ichigo Kurosaki and I got along well enough, but we didn't go out of our way to speak to each other, and I did not go out of my way to get a standing invitation to dinner weekly, courtesy of Yuzu and Kurosaki-sensei. I only showed up every other week when Yuzu came banging into the clinic, asking me politely if I would stay for dinner.
Typically, I did so on the nights she asked, but only if Urahara hadn't contacted me earlier that day and had asked me to run an errand for him.
On the nights that I did attend dinner, Isshin had nearly strong armed Ichigo into walking me home; "Kaori-chan is small and delicate and can't be out alone at night! She'll be kidnapped! Attacked! Murdered!"
I felt like Kurosaki-sensei dealt some pretty low blows to Ichigo on a pretty regular basis; however, I almost always squawked with laughter during his tirades. He was fully aware of how I had met Urahara, as well as what had occurred to me before I had moved to Karakura.
I would ditch Ichigo two streets over, telling him to wait an hour before he showed back up at his home. I had no actual doubt that Kurosaki-sensei knew I did this, especially since he always frowned at me the morning after, but Ichigo was more than happy to leave me to walking home myself.
And it wasn't like I didn't have a knife in my pocket or anything.
My apartment was covered in sticky notes.
Floor to ceiling, every inch of the walls, every appliance I had in the place, every bit of furniture—all of it, covered in sticky note upon colorful sticky note.
My jaw dropped and I blinked furiously, trying to figure out just what had happened in my short absence. I had done my normal shift for Isshin and then had gone over to help Urahara at the Shoten—when had this happened? Who could have done it?
I closed the door behind me, even more floored by the fact that there were sticky notes on the back of the door as well. I threw the dead bolt quickly—there was no way any more vandals were getting in, not while I was there, not unless they wanted to help clean up the mess—and took stock of the damage.
Even the toilet was covered in sticky notes.
With a sigh, I shook my head and started to pluck them off of the walls, groaning in agony as I did so—it was going to take forever to get rid of all of them. Lighting my apartment on fire would have been an easier clean up.
Urahara later claimed he had nothing to do with it, but I overhead Yoruichi laughing about with Tessai and I knew he had been the mastermind behind the massacre of multiple stacks of sticky notes.
I woke up to my phone buzzing.
"Morning?" I answered groggily, not bothering to check the caller ID. Seconds after the word left my mouth, I realized that I probably should have—Isshin had given me the day off, which meant that there was only one person who could possibly be calling me at that hour.
"Good morning Kaori-chan!" Urahara chirped. I held the phone away from my ear for a moment at the sudden volume change, half tempted to shut my phone and chuck it across the room.
Instead, I pushed myself up, leaning heavily on my forearm, elbow of the arm holding to phone to my head digging into the futon.
"I need you to run some errands for me today! Yoruichi-san left the list on the counter in your kitchen. Have fun!"
The phone clicked off before I could even say anything back to him, some sort of acknowledgment that I had heard him. It didn't surprise me that the list was already on my counter—it had happened before, though I had no idea how the hell Yoruichi managed to get in and out of my apartment completely unnoticed; I kept the windows and the doors all locked firmly.
Groaning, my face fell back into my pillow with a soft thud. I had been looking forward to being able to lie in bed all day, to being able to leisurely do a good deal of my coursework that I typically had to do in the wee hours of the morning.
And that wasn't going to happen.
I rolled off of my futon, climbing to my feet as I dashed a hand across my eyes, trying to clear the sleep out of them. With a yawn and a stretch, I set to cleaning up my sleeping area at a leisurely pace, not quite ready to start my day.
Scooping everything up in my arms, I stumbled over to my closet and shoved everything inside carelessly, effectively undoing all of the work I had done in folding everything up.
And then I stood and surveyed my closet, trying to figure out what would be best for me to wear—not shorts a dress, since I would be doing plenty of running around and the forecast had called for cool temperatures.
The only lack of color in my closet was my black hoodie—it was the only article of clothing I owned that wasn't bright and flashy and colorful. It had startled me ages ago when looking through my clothes, just after I had returned, that a majority of them were black or white:
Apparently, I hadn't had much room to make fun of the clothing choices of those in Hueco Mundo.
Lazily, I grabbed the first two pieces of clothing I figured would match: a sea green blouse and a pair of pastel, floral pants.
Okay, so my own sense of fashion hadn't improved much, either.
"Shower, shower, shower," I mumbled to myself as I slid the door on my closet shut and shuffled out of my room and into the bathroom. I caught my reflection out of the corner of my eye: My chestnut colored hair was sticking practically on end form sleep, a messy macabre halo around my head. When it was clean and dry, it hung just above my shoulders in waves; the frizzyness it had contained before my abduction had vanished as time had passed.
I shook my head and looked away from the mirror.
'Some errands,' Urahara had said.
Some. Errands.
There was novel of errands he wanted me to run for him sitting on my kitchen counter.
"I probably shouldn't have showered," I stated dumbly, staring at the large stack of paper.
And then I jumped into action, sliding the first page off of the top and jamming the rest of them into my bag before bolting out of the apartment, locking the door firmly behind me and shoving the key into my pocket.
It was going to be a long day. I realized something else in the back of my mind as I ran down the steps, zipping up my hoodie as my eyes flicked over the paper in my hand:
It had been two years since Usagi had dumped me in the alley and left.
I slid open the door to the Shoten, stepping inside and already unzipping my jacket. I tossed it and my messenger bag onto the counter, given the fact that the sign on the door had been switched to closed near constantly for the last few days. I kicked off my ankle boots and pushed them over to the counter, not stopping to right them as I strode toward the back of the Shoten to where I knew Urahara was.
I slammed open the door before I started to talk.
"I have been out running stupid errands for you all day, and I swear to God, Urahara, if my apartment is covered in sticky notes again-" My eyes flicked across all of the faces in the room, mind barely registering the fact that there were more people there than just the normal group until my eyes landed on a shock of blue hair.
I froze, heart in my throat; I could feel my fingers tighten on the door frame.
What the fuck.
A very much alive Grimmjow was sitting at the table, right in between Urahara and Ichigo.
Holy shit. Wow. Okay. Uh. So, next chapter will hopefully be up Friday? It's probably going to be about the same length? But I have a lot to write on it yet, so maybe Saturday instead? Also, if you aren't completely caught up with the manga, there will be spoilers. So. there's always that.
Thank you all so much for sticking with me for this far!