Chapter Thirty
No.
There was no fucking way.
He couldn't be there. Alive. Staring at me like I was the second coming of Christ or something.
It just didn't make sense.
And then, upon closer inspection, I realized that the Grimmjow sitting at the table wasn't a perfect copy—there was no exterior, bulky jawbone with razor sharp teeth, and he wasn't in white. In fact, he was wearing a long sleeved black shirt that fit him just a little too well in the shoulders, sleeves pushed up to his elbows.
Which meant that that wasn't Grimmjow, and Grimmjow wasn't alive—not that there had ever been a chance or anything.
So, a hallucination then. That was the only possible answer. But I should have been hallucinating—I hadn't hallucinated since I was in Las Noches, and Hideki was still firmly against me. If that was the case, then I would need to be checked out by a psych stat; to nip it in the bud, per se. To figure out what it was and what we could do about it before it got so bad that I wouldn't be able to tell right from real.
It was the rational, logical explanation; there was no telling what having Hideki in my head could have possibly done to me, and the onset of hallucinations could simply be the foretelling of something worse to come.
But I could figure that much out later, like when I had time to sort through everything in my head.
Instead, I forced the brightest smile I could manage and turned it on Urahara, jaw tight and my stomach flipping from the implications of my vision.
"What are all of these people doing here?" I asked. There was Ichigo, and the normal Urahara Crew, and Yoruichi, and a busty orange haired girl whose I believed was Orihime. I had only encountered her in passing once.
This was as many people as I had seen in the Shoten ever, Grimmjow hallucination excluded.
"Just visiting!" Urahara exclaimed, spreading his fan and holding it in front of his face. I had come to know him pretty well, well enough to know that he only used his fan when he was plotting something. "Come, take a seat!"
I sauntered to stand beside him on shaky legs, doing my best to keep the smile glued onto my face. Stay calm, Kaori. Stay calm. I was already planning on how fast it would take me to get home and find a phone book, how long it would take me to make an appointment with a psychiatrist, how many meetings it would take for me to find the one that fit best, and how many more it would take to figure out what was going on with me.
I sat down beside him, tucking my legs up underneath me and doing my best not to look over at the hallucination. "Did you get all of your errands done?"
Right. The errands. The massive novel or errands he wanted me to do—the list of tasks that I spent a good chunk of my day doing, running back and forth across Karkura town in a frenzy. He had scrawled across the top of the first page, do these in order, and I had.
But I hadn't thought I would be running back and forth when I could have easily gotten a good chunk of the list knocked out easily enough had I been able to do them in order. I would have been done hours ago if I had.
"Yeah, but was moving a goat six different times really necessary? I can understand once, but six times?" Why moving a goat was even necessary in the first place, I wasn't entirely sure—let alone why he had access to a goat.
A very mean, very angsty goat.
A stupid fucking goat that had found it necessary to ram it's head into my legs not once, but three times. I had yet to see the bruises but I could feel them throbbing under my jeans, and I knew they wouldn't be pretty.
"Of course it was! I wouldn't have had you do it otherwise." Lie. That was a lie, and I knew it. He had strived for weeks to keep me as far away from the Shoten as humanly possible; even my list of errands had gotten progressively smaller until he had me doing nothing at all for days at a time. And then, all of a sudden, there was a massive list of things for me to, almost like I had been sick for a week and had simply let it all pile up.
There had to be a reason he had made me wait almost two months before allowing me into the Shoten again. It couldn't have possibly correlated with Ichigo's presence—Ichigo who, as I had been informed by Karin, had been missing for almost the same amount of time, Orihime and another person with him.
And it wasn't the first time.
Which was weird, because no one was making a big fuss about it. Like, hello, how often did these kids go missing without an explanation? Why had no one gone looking for them? How many classes had the kids missed? Shouldn't some red flags had gone up somewhere?
But Kurosaki-sensei hadn't seemed too worried about it, so he must have known what had been going on. Yet what, exactly, had gone on?
The curiosity was gnawing at my insides, but there was no way I could satiate it properly without sounding like an ass. I wasn't one to ask questions like that, not unless a stroke of courage hit me upside the head and made the words fall out. And I didn't think that was going to happen in this situation, not since I was so shaken by the fact that I was hallucinating.
And the hallucination had yet to go away.
I could feel him staring at me; I was doing my best to ignore it completely, to look straight ahead and not directly at the hallucination. I had been doing so good when it came to thinking about Grimmjow. Like, yeah, sure, he popped up at least once a day in my thoughts, but it wasn't like I let it derail me completely.
This, though? Hallucinating a him that wasn't quite him?
It would likely break me completely, once I was alone.
"Kaori."
I froze, back and shoulders going stiff immediately. My fucking God, it even sounded like Grimmjow. And that—that wasn't going to end well, not if I had to see him and hear him when no one else could. Not when it was a hallucination and I was already exhausted from my day.
And it wasn't like I was going to field any questions about why I started crying when talking about a goat. Nope.
"Yeah, but wasn't six times a little overboard? Like, the last time you had me move it, it went back to where it had started!" Focus on the goat, Kaori. There's nothing else amiss.
Urahara—and every one else, I noticed—was looking at me like I had gone completely off of my rocker. Which wasn't too far from the truth, though it was likely for a different reason than they all thought it was.
"Uh, Kaori?" And again with the hallucination. Wasn't it ever going to go away?
"I could have gone without moving the goat at all, Urahara. I could have avoided getting headbutted and smelling like a farm! I could have actually stayed in bed for another hour and fifteen minutes at least instead of moving that goat." Everyone was staring at me, almost like I had grown another head. Except for the hallucination, who was gaping at me like I should have taken the time to answer it and make myself look like a loon instead of ranting about the goat.
. . . which, okay, made me look like a loon anyway.
"Hey, uh . . . Kaori? Why do you keep ignoring Grimmjow?" Ichigo asked after a heartbeat of me looking at everyone at the table, confused, while pointedly not looking at the figment of my mind.
I stilled completely, mouth going dry as my eyes darted from where Ichigo sat to the Grimmjow look alike next to him. Talking over Grimmjow? I wasn't talking over Grimmjow, I was talking over a hallucination, so why-
Unless he wasn't actually a hallucination and something had happened.
"What."
I blinked rapidly, whipping my head to look full on at Grimmjow, who was still looking at me just a little hurt. And then I looked back at Ichigo, asking, "What are you talking about?"
And that was when Grimmjow officially lost his shit.
"Fuck, Kaori!" he finally shouted, slamming his hands down on the table. "You are not hallucinating. I am actually sitting here, next to this fuck face-" He motioned at Ichigo as he leaned farther across the table, eyes locked on me intently, "-and a few scant feet away from you. I am not dead like Usagi told you."
I looked from him, back to Ichigo, and then back to Grimmjow. And then I glanced at everyone around the table, who were all looking at me expectantly.
"Shit. Uh." What the fuck was I supposed to say? Sorry, I actually thought you were a hallucination? Wow, that was a really long nap? "Welcome back from the dead?" I offered up weakly, shrugging my shoulders and splaying my hands out with a grimace. How had I fucked up that bad?
"I wasn't dead!" he insisted, leaning across the table.
"How was I supposed to know?" I demanded, throwing my hands up into the air and rolling my eyes exaggeratedly. "It's not like there's a newsletter I signed up for that tells me, hey, these people you thought were dead? Aren't! Congratulations!"
Grimmjow's jaw tightened, which was kind of weird to see without that awkward bone thing taking up a good chunk of his face.
"Usagi was mistaken," he said at length. "Mainly because there's no fucking way that I would actually let this bastard," he motioned to where Ichigo sat beside him, "could actually kill me."
I frowned, looking at Ichigo again, who looked like he was trying to wrap his head around the idea that Grimmjow and I knew each other. But why would Ichigo have tried to kill him? When? Where?
Unless . . .
"That's why your name was familiar!" I shouted, smacking a hand into my thigh and turning my attention to Ichigo. I had been right, initially—the kid had seen some shit, despite his protective father. I just hadn't really expected to meet the kid Grimmjow had had such a hard on for when it came to fighting.
To meet and kind of know him out of context was just some kind of cosmic coincidence. The fact that we kind of sort of got along was just an even bigger one. Let alone the fact that we were in Hueco Mundo at the same time without knowing it.
And Urahara, from the looks of it, had known the whole time.
I wasn't about to question the dynamics of it, though. What had happened had happened, there was no changing that. And, oddly enough, Grimmjow was alive.
Alive and, from the looks of it, mostly well. I couldn't help but wonder if the giant hole in his stomach was gone, too, since the two seemed to be linked from what I could understand from Urahara.
"Wait a second! I'm alive, and you're still talking to Kurosaki!" Grimmjow exclaimed. I could feel my lips twitch up in a smile—it had been so long since I had interacted with him; it was nice to see he hadn't changed.
"Jealous?" I asked with a grin.
"Possibly."
"Good," I said, edge coming off of my grin just a little. It wasn't like I was going to hold anything against him, like being away for two years and letting me think he was dead—I was just going to have a little fun, because I was bitter. Bitter about living with the idea that he was dead, bitter about Usagi just dumping me in an alleyway and telling me good luck with my life.
But everyone has their reasons for doing things, and I was sure their actions were completely justifiable. I wasn't sure how yet, but I would find out eventually, whether or not he wanted to tell me.
"Erm, Kozume-chan?" I wrenched my attention away from Grimmjow, looking to Orihime—at least, I was still pretty sure her name was Orihime. I couldn't be entirely sure, since I had only met her in passing a number of months ago.
"Just Kaori is great," I mumbled, setting elbow up on the table and propping my chin in my hand. I could still feel Grimmjow's eyes on me, and I could feel Urahara looking at me and then at everyone around the table; where Tessai, Yoruichi, Ururu, and Jinta had gone or even when they left completely escaped me.
"Right, okay, Kaori. How do you know Grimmjow?" It looked like she was the only one out of the loop—Ichigo seemed pretty up to speed on the whole thing, though I wasn't entirely sure how, though it must have had something to do with the vendetta Grimmjow had had with him.
I glanced at Urahara, who nodded at me—it seemed like everyone in the room knew about Shingami and hollows and whatnot, which made sense considering she seemed to disappear almost every time Ichigo did.
From what I had heard, at least.
"Las Noches, or whatever," I answered, shrugging my shoulders. "I was there for two months a while back." My mind was still stuck on Orihime, something about her often disappearing at the same time as Ichigo. Ichigo, who had fought Grimmjow in Hueco Mundo.
Grimmjow, who had likely 'returned' a friend to Ichigo that had set off the chain of events I liked to call the last two yeas of my life.
I turned my head to look at Grimmjow, chin still resting in my hand. "She's the one you re-kidnapped, isn't she?" I asked blandly.
"Returned," he insisted, eyes focused entirely on me. I had missed that specific shade of blue, having been unable to find it anywhere else. It was a color that was nearly impossible to forget, a color that burned itself into my memory and didn't want to wash out.
"Yeah, yeah, okay. Returned. Re-kidnapped. Whatever." The situation just kept getting weirder and weirder. The chances of me moving to place and meeting people who had been in Hueco Mundo and Las Noches at the same time I was were astronomically small; the fact that I had actually met two who had been there was completely unreal.
And yet, it didn't seem so far out of reach once I took the math away from it all. I mean, plenty enough outlandish things had happened to me already—what was a couple dozen more?
"That was your idea!" Grimmjow protested.
"And it was a joke," I reminded him, fingers digging into my chin. Urahara was still sitting between the two of us; Ichigo and Orihime were watching our exchange, outsiders to what we were discussing.
"Still your idea."
"You're the idiot that ran with it and said, 'I'll be back in two hours!'"
"And here I am!"
"It's been two years. You kind of missed your deadline by a lot." I hadn't meant it as a low blow—it was a fact; I had simply been stating the obvious. But the way he deflated a bit, features softening, shoulders relaxing just a little, made it seem to me like it had been a low blow.
"I didn't mean to," he said quietly. "Nnoitra kind of got in the fucking way, and then I had to recover, and then I'm a joke when it comes to directions. And it turns out that you moved, so even if I could have found you in the first place you would have probably been gone."
I swallowed, eyes sliding back in Orihime's direction—she and Ichigo were watching us closely, almost like they couldn't quite believe what they were seeing. Urahara, on the other hand, still had his fan in the front of his face, head tilted down so the brim of his hat hid his eyes.
And then I yawned suddenly, the need to do so coming out of nowhere; my jaw popped as it widened into a gaping maw, pushing down against the bones that made up my hand. I had been awake and running around for hours, and sitting down had made me sleepy despite the surprises that had come my way and the company I found myself in.
"I think it's time for you to go home, Kaori-chan," Urahara suggested, head coming up just a little. "The goat seems to have taken quite a bit out of you."
Yes. That thrice damned goat was what ran me into the ground, not the list of errands Urahara had issued to me. But if that was the way that he saw it, I wasn't necessarily going to argue. Because, for all of his faults, Urahara was more than likely the mastermind that led to Grimmjow sitting so near to me at that moment.
"Okay," I agreed immediately, chin sliding off of my hand as I pushed myself to my feet. I took a half step away from the table before I looked at Grimmjow, whose eyes hadn't seemed to have left me at any point since my entrance. "Are you coming or what?"
I wasn't sure if I had ever seen him stand so quickly, scrambling to reach me like I was going to leave him if he didn't move fast enough. I hadn't been sure what, exactly, had possessed me to ask him if he was coming with me in the first place—a large part of me didn't want to leave the Shoten at all, not without him, but I hadn't thought I would have actually voiced that.
Must be more tired than I thought.
I turned and headed toward the door, bare feet padding against the floor. Grimmjow had reached my side in record time, a scant few inches away from me.
"Oh, wait! One more thing!" I turned around quickly, nearly bumping into Grimmjow, not liking the tone of voice Urahara was using.
He threw something at me—I wasn't entirely sure what it was, since it seemed to come out of no where—and I caught it awkwardly in my hands, surprised at the strange contours and sudden weight.
I knew what it was the second I looked at it: A spray bottle, filled with water.
"Uh, what is this for?" I asked, looking away from the bottle and back to Urahara, who was waving me off with a hand.
"Your protection, Kaori-chan!"
"Protection against what?" I didn't like the edge of the smirk I could see on Urahara's face.
"Grimmjow, of course!"
What. How was a spray bottle supposed to protect me from Grimmjow? And why would I need protected from Grimmjow?
Raising an eyebrow, I glanced over at Grimmjow—there was no way a spray bottle could offer me protection from him, even if I needed it. Except, he was eying the spray bottle warily, a frown on his face. I looked down at the bottle in my hands; I could feel my brow hitching into my hairline out of my control. Grimmjow, Mr. I'm going to kill him dead and be the king of everything, was scared of a little bit of water in a spray bottle?
I nearly burst out laughing.
"Thank you," I said at length, fingers tapping against the trigger on the spray bottle lightly—not enough to make it go off, but enough to see Grimmjow flinch out of the corner of my eye, enough to prove that it worked. It wasn't like I was actually going to use it on him at any point; I was sure I wouldn't need to.
I smiled at the blue haired man cheerfully, fingers still lightly on the trigger, the threat that I would use it if need be there.
"Let's go!" I waved the squirt bottle in his general direction, turning toward the door. Grimmjow turned less than a second after me, incredibly close, like he was afraid I was just going to leave him there. Which had been the initial plan before I had found out he wasn't a hallucination like I had first thought.
"Wait a second—you're going to take him home with you? Just like that?"
I laughed then, nearly doubling over at the amount of worry in Ichigo's voice. "I don't think you get it," I said, laughter still inflecting my tone. "But he and I? We're a forever kind of deal."
"What do you mean, 'just like that?'" Grimmjow demanded at almost the same time. "Why wouldn't she take me home, you fuckhead? I'm adorable."
Urahara's eyes were the size of dinner plates, visible from beneath his bucket hat, the hand holding his fan hanging limply, revealing to me the fact that his jaw had dropped just a little. I wasn't sure if his reaction was from me actually admitting that in a spur of the moment kind of way, or if it was because of Grimmjow's word choice.
With a quick glance at the rest of our audience of sorts, I saw that they all had pretty much the same reaction as Urahara, though I really couldn't tell who it was they were reacting to, unless it was both of us.
Shaking my head, I look over at Grimmjow.
"What?" he demanded when he saw me looking at him.
"Adorable?" I asked, hitching my eyebrows up until they were nearly in my hairline. My fingers were tapping on the trigger of the spray bottle.
"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"
I sprayed him with the spray bottle, unapologetic in my actions.
He jumped away from me, arms coming up to shield his face. It wasn't like I was going to pull the trigger again. Not, at least, while he was expecting it.
"I'll be damned," I exclaimed, looking at Urahara with a grin on my face. "It does work!"
He—and everyone else—just kept staring at us. It was a super uncomfortable feeling, being the center of attention.
"Uh, well. I guess we'll be going then?" I offered up; Grimmjow was still standing a number of feet away from me, wary after my sudden attack with the spray bottle. "Goodnight!"
And then I turned amd bolted into the Shoten, Grimmjow following me only a handful of seconds later, catching up to me quickly.
He stayed closed to me as I stepped into the dark, work area of the Shoten. I found my way to the door mostly by muscle memory instead of sight, mainly because it was nearly pitch black in the area.
I set the spray bottle on the counter next to where I had tossed my bag and coat—it wasn't like I was actually going to take it home with me to use it against him. That would have just been cruel, and I honestly didn't think I would ever actually need it. I had only used it earlier to see if it actually worked against him or not.
And now that I knew it actually did, I had a little bit of ammunition to use against him just in case. In case of what, I wasn't exactly sure, but I figured it was a good piece of knowledge to have around for whatever reason.
I plopped to my ass in front of my boots, reaching out for them as Grimmjow sat down next to me, pulling his own sneakers on. I wasn't entirely sure who had taken it upon themselves to find him clothes and whatnot, but if I ever found out I would have to thank them because they had honestly done a pretty good job.
Like, yeah, it was kind of weird to not see him traipsing about in a white hakama and pretty much nothing else, but I could totally get used to the jeans and sneakers and slightly too snug long sleeved shirts. And it wasn't like I was going to complain to anyone about the tightness of his shirt, either, because damn.
I hadn't successfully unzipped my boots completely before I had taken them off, and zippers liked to stick on them on occasion. This was one such occasion, and I only had one boot on by the time Grimmjow had pulled on and tied both of his shoes.
"How long have you been here, exactly?" I asked quietly, reaching for my other boot as Grimmjow stood up.
"How long has Hat and Clogs been keeping you away from the Shoten?"
My fingers stilled a moment on the zipper of my boot—Urahara had been keeping me away from the Shoten for a good while, and Grimmjow had been there the whole time? That seemed completely unfair. Why had Urahara kept us away from each other?
He must have had a good reason.
I grunted with satisfaction as I jammed my foot into my boot, zipping it up quickly without getting any of my flesh stuck in the metal of the zipper.
"Aren't you supposed to untie those or something when you take them off?" he asked, pulling me to my feet. I swiped my coat and messenger bag from off of the counter with my free hand, small fingers fisting into the bunch of material.
"Technically these zip, Grimmjow. And I didn't unzip them all the way when I kicked them off, because I was kind of in a hurry to yell at Urahara—as you know." He slid open the door of the Shoten and stepped out into the night; I followed him closely, shivering as the quickly chilling air cut through my blouse and raised gooseflesh on my skin.
"Yeah," he said, hint of a laugh in his voice. "Goats and sticky notes."
It was getting colder, and the seasons were changing yet again. Soon enough I would have to travel with an umbrella constantly at my side, a heavier coat on my frame.
Grimmjow let go of my hand as he slid the door to the Shoten shut behind me, holding out his other hand.
"What?" I asked, confused. Why was he holding out his hand?
"Give me your bag so you can put on your coat," he said, extending his arm just a little more in my direction.
"Ah. Thanks," I said, handing him my messenger bag whilst carefully extracting my oversized jacket from the strap.
"This one's new," he said, hefting it up and down for a moment as I shrugged my coat on. "Heavier, too."
"I had to fork the other one over to the police. I haven't exactly gotten it back since my case hasn't been closed. Not like they'll ever close it—as far as they're concerned, their eyewitness and a majority of their evidence come from a schizoid teenager." I zipped my jacket all the way up to my chin, burrowing down into the many, many folds of material. It was getting old a little worn out at the cuffs, an it was way too big for me, but I wasn't going to give it up at any point.
"Ah," was all he said as I motioned for my bag. He handed it to me after a moment of looking from me to the bag and back again, almost like he was weighing his options.
I slung the bag over my head and onto my shoulder, shifting the bulk of it so it sagged against my butt as we started walking again. "And, I mean, now that I'm home and have a job, there's more stuff I need to carry—like my house keys, and my phone, and my wallet, and some water, and the first aide kit, and whatever else I can manage to stuff into it."
He nodded again, accepting my answer. I hadn't realized how much weight I carried with me now that I lived in Karakura, how much heavier my bag had become over the months of living there. It weighed a ton compared to the other one, which had been light as a feather considering how little I had carried in it.
"A forever kind of deal, huh?" he asked finally. We had made it halfway down the street from the Urahara Shoten.
I panicked for a moment, realizing that I probably shouldn't have said that. "Uh, yeah, sorry, that was kind of presumptuous of me and I probably-"
"No, no. It was fine." Something sounded off about his voice, prompting me to glance up in his general direction.
"Are you blushing?" I blurted; I could see the tips of his ears turning bright red, a color that intensified upon my words. I had never seen him blush before, and the fact that he wouldn't actually look at me was simply proving my assumption.
"Is that why my skin feels so hot?" I bit the laugh down into the back of my throat, doing my best not to let it out—it wasn't like I was going to actually laugh at him for blushing. I had done it myself plenty of times before, and he hadn't laughed at me once for it.
"More than likely. It does look good on you, at least." I mentally high fived myself as his blush deepened—a thing I hadn't actually thought was possible. I could see scarlet creeping up his neck, even in the poor lighting.
"Yeah?"
"Well, sure. I mean, nothing can look worse than me blushing. I mean, in my opinion." He looked at me then, an eyebrow raised in a challenge.
"You think?" He sounded half dangerous, and I wasn't entirely sure which part of my speech he was referring to. And was it just me, or did he seem to be leaning toward me?
At the realization that, yes, he was leaning toward me and getting closer as we walked, I could feel my face heat up. Was he going to kiss me? I wasn't sure how I would feel about that if he did—I mean, so much time had passed. And while it might look like we felt the same way about each other (feelings that I hadn't actually spent much time thinking about because he was supposedly dead; feelings that we hadn't really discussed in Hueco Mundo after we jumped into the kissing thing), it had been two years. Two years of me thinking he was dead, two years of him thinking . . .
Well, of him thinking whatever it was he had thought about. I would get the story out of him eventually, because he seemed to be mostly caught up on what I had been doing from Urahara. As well as how he knew Urahara and Ichigo and ended up at the Shoten and not looking identical to the Grimmjow I had known in Hueco Mundo.
Of course, I didn't look like the Kaori I had been in Las Noches, either, but I felt like my physical changes weren't quite as extreme as his had been.
"Yeah," I squeaked out, his face less than an inch from mine. We had stopped walking completely, and I wasn't sure when that had happened. "I'm—I'm pretty sure."
I had forgotten just how blue his eyes were, though the color was a little harder to discern in the twilight. He was so close, I could feel his breath on my face. When had I pushed myself up on my tip toes?
"Is it still okay for me to kiss you?"
That was the million dollar question, wasn't it?
"I don't know," I said, somewhat shocked by my own honesty. Now that I had thought about for a few moments in a rush, I had some of my thoughts straight. Although, with his face in such a close proximity to mine, it was kind of hard to get the words out when a majority of my nerves were screaming yes, yes, yes.
"Kaori, it'll be fine."
"But it's been two years, Grimmjow. What if—what if we're not who we thought we were then? What if we've changed so much that we can't even recognize each other anymore? Like, I mean, obviously we recognize each other, but. Well. Sometimes, when you want something for so long and you finally get it, it's not what you thought it was. What if that happens?"
"Then we'll work it out."
"Yeah?" I asked, running a hand through my hair, tugging on some of the strands in an attempt to keep me focused on the matter at hand so my mind wouldn't wander like it had a tendancy to.
"Of course; why wouldn't we?"
I couldn't find an actual answer to that question; there wasn't one that was apparent, no matter how hard I thought about it.
"Promise?" I said at length, mouth just a little dry. I didn't think I'd be able to go through losing him a second time, not unless I was fully prepared and it was mutual parting of ways.
"Are you sure you want me to promise something? Because, uh, last time, I kind of. Missed the mark. By, like, 17,518 hours. Or so. Something like that." I blinked owlishly, wondering if he had just done that math then and there or had it prepared in case it came up in a conversation.
I wasn't sure which answer I would have liked, had I asked.
"Pretty sure," I said, bumping my shoulder into him. "Besides, I'm positive you won't miss it by quite so much a margin a second time."
A streetlight came on as we passed it, reminding me of just how late it really was.
"How do you feel about pineapples?" I said at length, figuring out quickly that, no, there was no food in my fridge and, no, I did not feel like cooking that night. I also knew the status of my bank account, and could more than afford to binge on a pizza.
"Pineapples?"
"Yeah. Like, pineapple pizza. Er, Hawaiian. Whatever. But pineapples."
"Pizza?" he asked after a moment, almost like he wasn't sure what part of what I had just said he should question.
I looked up at him and grinned. "You'll find out," was all I said.
"So," I said quietly, warm box of pizza firmly in my hands. His arm was slung around my shoulder, sleeves rolled down to protect his skin from the chill of the night that was beginning to settle in. Which was weird, because temperatures had never seemed to bother him before. "What you're basically telling me is that you're, uh, human? Like, live and age and die human?"
"Like you, yeah."
I titled to my head to the side and then nodded—that wasn't too hard of an idea to wrap my little mind around. That was probably the easiest bit to accept: That Grimmjow no longer checked off the box marked 'other' on surveys. I was mostly numb to everything else, because it all seemed so surreal.
"Does it feel weird?" I always took being a human for granted, now that I knew other things were out there—a whole different set of checks and balances to keep humans in check and alive.
Or dead. But, you know, to each their own and all that jazz.
"A lot. A lot weird. Yes. The hunger thing is new. Well, not new new, but weird new. The whole temperature, hot and cold thing is kind of weird too."
"And the blushing thing!" I interjected, grinning at him cheekily. I could see the tips of his ears turning red again as he ducked his head and pointedly avoided my gaze while still looking around and checking our surroundings. The action might have been simply out of habit, or maybe he was already trying to figure out the layout of Karakura town.
"Yeah. That too."
We had reached the bottom of the stairwell to my apartment. Grimmjow removed his arms from around my shoulders as I mounted the stairs, holding the pizza box up in the palm of one hand while I eyed the stairs as I climbed, reaching the other hand into my messenger bag to find the key.
"What about you, though?" he asked once we had reached the top of the stairs and I had procured the key. My door was the third one down, fifty feet or more away from the stairs.
"What do you mean?" I asked, looking over my shoulder at him. He was looking around, trying to get a grasp on the area I lived—it was a little hard to see, since the street lights didn't illuminate too much and it was just getting darker.
"The, erm, voice in your head. Urahara said you . . . misplaced it." I bit the inside of my cheek as I came to a stop in front of my apartment. Of course Urhara would pick some weird ambiguous wording.
"Lost it. Sure," I said, jamming my key into the door knob and turning it, shouldering open the door and entering my apartment. "I mean, my head is quieter now that there isn't a voice babbling at me constantly. Although, it wasn't constant, per se—it was more of snippy comments and an attitude and a, "Kaori, I told you not to do that," every once in a while." I kicked my shoes off, shoving the key into my pocket while motioning with my head for Grimmjow to close the door behind him and do the same.
"This is going to sound batty, but I actually miss him on occasion. Sometimes, he would actually give some good advice or help me out in a sticky situation."
"Like screaming the first time I kissed you?"' I cringed—I hadn't necessarily wanted to be reminded of that part.
I nodded, unable to voice the word 'no' as I tried to stuff my embarrassment from that situation deep down to where it would never come back and haunt me again, angling my body in the direction of the kitchen, which was less than a step and a doorway away. I reached my free arm around the corner as I walked toward it, flipping on the light switch so my apartment wasn't completely dark anymore.
"And, uh-"
I stopped, trail of thought completely gone.
Flipped the light switch off and then on again.
Blinked a couple of times.
Yeah, no. I'm not seeing things.
"That son of a bitch," I spat.
My apartment was covered in sticky notes again, all of them a myriad of colors, some of them written on, some of them drawn on, and most of them blank.
"I'm guessing it doesn't normally look like this?"
"Yeah, no."
"Then I guess this explains what that cat lady and those kids were doing most of the day." Yoruichi, Ururu, and Jinta. That—that kind of figured, I supposed. I knew Urahara was likely the mastermind behind the assault on my apartment, but of course he wouldn't actually do it himself.
No, he would farm out the work to people who could actually break into my apartment and were more than willing to terrorize my living space.
"I am going to kill them," I announced, plopping the box of pizza down onto the sticky note covered table and turning on my heel to prove my words true.
"Not so fast there." Grimmjow grabbed me by my upper shoulders and spun me around so that I faced the table again. "Food first. Revenge planning later."
"But-"
"Where do you keep the plates." I blinked at the table owlishly, still trying to sort through this new development. I was good with taking new information and just running with it, rolling with the punches as I went. But this one?
This one took the cake.
"They're above the sink," I said. There were even sticky notes on the chairs. The chairs! They hadn't been so thorough with their vandalism before.
"Right." He let go of my shoulders, mumbling the location I had told him as I stared in defeat at my kitchen. I couldn't even imagine what the rest of my living space looked like—how many more colors I could find, how many of them had hidden messages on them, how many of them had been used prior to being papered on my apartment walls and furniture and—
Cringing, I looked up to the ceiling to find more sticky notes. They had never actually gotten to my ceiling before.
Lighting a match was going to be easier clean up than peeling each and every one of them off individually. Committing an arson was tempting, especially if it got rid of all of the rainbow colored sticky notes that made me want to cry.
"Don't worry about it," Grimmjow said, placing the plates down on the table and looking at me expectantly. "We can fix that problem after pizza."
"And before revenge?" I asked, taking the step and a half over to the table and falling into my chair, leaning toward the box of pizza.
"Of course. And by the time we're done, you'll either have the best revenge planned ever, or you'll have given up on the idea entirely."
I flipped the lid back on the box of pizza, pulling a gooey slice out and setting it on his plate. "Yeah, or I won't have a place to live because I'll have decided that, hey, we can just light it on fire and be done with it!" I pulled another slice out and set it down on my own plate, mouth watering at the very cheesy smell of the food I was about to devour.
"I don't think that should be an option, Kaori."
Grinning at him, I pulled a handful of napkins off of the pile I had in the middle of the table, next to the pizza box. I passed a handful to Grimmjow, taking the rest of my handful with me.
I wondered for a moment how Mom and Mizuri were going to handle this new, weird update on my life. Mom had heard the full report I had given to the police, had heard everything Hideki and I had said about Grimmjow. I almost didn't doubt that she would make the connection at some point and really start to wonder about my story, about whether or not I was telling the honesty truth and it all hadn't been made up.
And then I watched as Grimmjow managed to burn his mouth on the pizza, swallowing through the painful experience while simultaneously, somehow, cursing around a mouthful of bread and cheese and sauce and pain.
Pushing my napkin to my mouth to avoid spitting my food out all across the table while laughing, I stood and went to get water, almost gleeful at the predicament he was in—it made everything seem just a little more real at that point, almost more believable.
As I walked back to the table, I realized that it didn't really matter what, exactly, Mom and Mizuri thought about this situation. It was my life, and I was mostly in control of it now. I was going to keep that control, even if it meant widening the rift between my family and lying through my teeth about Grimmjow.
There was only one thing I was positive about:
Everything would turn out all right.
fin.
Whoa.
Thank you. Thank each and every single one of you, no matter how much of it you've read, no matter how long you've been here-since the first word or since the last-no matter if you've never even hit the cute little 'send review!' button or w/e it is down there. There is no way I would have been able to finish this without any of you, especially those of you who returned even after the one year hiatus.
Thank you.