Bleach (c) Tite Kubo


Once More To See You Again


Fractures


The school bell chimes that dull melody and the teacher dismisses them for the end of the day. And thank goodness for that because the day wouldn't stop dragging.

Ichigo half-believed his brain would melt out of his ears, the classes today were so damn dull. To say nothing of the jeering he's been receiving ever since that damn TV crew showed up in Karakura. People are still giving him grief over that rubbish, and it's not as though Ichigo can turn around and snap he was doing his job by stopping Kanoji from making a damn hollow it the middle of a crowd. They'd He's been keeping a slightly wider-than-usual berth from Rukia because of that nonsense too.

Every time he walks past, he seems people huddle and whisper conspiratorially with creepy glances. Some wretched little punk's even been spreading rumours about them about the two of them dating. Before Ichigo knew it, they'd escalated to wondering if he and Rukia were intimate. Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous. And made even more so when a fraction of those rumours suggested his own twin got in on the action too, disgusting as that was.

If Ichigo ever finds out the gremlin who started that garbage? Just wait until he gets his hands on them!

(Tangentially, Ichigo is happy that those two are actually on speaking terms these days. He might be a bit thickheaded sometimes, but even he noticed how Rukia practically ignored Kaien's existence for the longest time. Probably out of some misplaced desire to keep Kaien out of this mess, but fat chance of that happening considering they share a bedroom, and even if she had used that memory replacement device - Kaien would naturally follow them out of his own insatiable curiosity and the whole thing would start again.)

Prior to the end-of-day bell the teacher distributed the test scores for their mid-term exams and the scoring lists, one copy for each student. A prospect universally dreaded by any teenager with a pulse. Succinctly put, the mid-terms were brutal. Half a dozen essay-length questions that left the more diehard academics in their class complaining about spaghetti wrists.

"I'm dooooooomed!"

Unsurprisingly Keigo Asano's score is abysmal, hence the overdramatic bawling and flopping limp over his school desk in a display that'd make the most diehard actors weep with envy. "Doomed! Doomed! Doomed, I say! My life is over!"

Mizuiro smiles sympathetically but simply takes it all in stride wearing that same mild expression he always does, "Your scores really do look like crap. Well, I'm no better so take it on the chin, won't you?"

"Quit worrying so much over it. Final exams mean jack squat in the long run. Stop working yourself up into a tizzy." Ichigo berates, vein popping on his temple while haphazardly shoving his books into his school bag, zipping it up and ready to head off then sparing a glance over his shoulder to his younger brother.

Kaien's seat is diagonally behind Ichigo to his right, but his twin is still sitting. His dark blue eyes narrowed and focused on his exam results, anxiously chewing on his thumbnail while he scrutinizes the papers with a rare intensity and ignoring everything else around him.

"Well said! That's our Ichigo, let's share the pain of being morons!" Keigo bellows heartily, crocodile tears streaming down his face and practically throwing himself at the elder Kurosaki twin.

"Don't you think its better to reserve that sort of blanket statement for after taking a peak at the test results?" Mizuiro suggests with that polite insouciance. "Here, have a look. It's Ichigo's mid-term test scores."

Keigo stalks over, snatching the scores sheet out of Mizuiro's hands. "C'mon! Don't be ridiculous. Only the top fifty in our grade are on this stupid thing, there's no possible way that-"

Keigo's eyes bulge. He reads it three times, spins to stare at Ichigo with a look of utter betrayal then reads it another five times just to be sure. Another look at Ichigo (who is increasingly tempted to thump him one) and a ninth read. His entire frame shakes with disbelief before exploding, scandalized. Outraged, even.

"H-h-h-How?! Eighteen!?" Keigo screeches loud enough to wake the dead on the other side of the planet, and making the standard mockery of himself along the way. "You-you-you're 18th in our grade?! Of all the 322 freshmen, you scored as the 18th?!"

Ichigo groans, shoulder slumping. "Damn you're loud."

Out of the corner of his eye, Ichigo sees Kaien silently throw both fists triumphantly in the air with a shockingly subdued little smile on his lips. He must've scored better than he'd hoped, Ichigo realizes.

Tears stream from Keigo's eyes. "No way?! I refuse to believe it! How did you reach such a high place?!"

"I don't do clubs so I study at home." Ichigo responds bluntly like its the most obvious answer in the world.

The curt admission only intensifies Keigo's bombastic Shakespearean levels of theatrics. "That shouldn't be possible! I've invited you tons of times to hang out?! Or is it- … No! Oh no, I see! You frequently turned down my invitations in favour of this kind of treachery! While we were playing outside like idiots, you retreated to your room alone and studied hard without saying anything. You fiend! You damned nerd!"

"Why is nerd even an insult?" Kaien pipes up, leaning back in his desk chair and hands cupped behind his head, having quietly watched the exchange with a half-smile and thoroughly enjoyed himself. There's an underlying sense of supreme satisfaction in his manner.

"What did you say?!" Keigo spins, looming over the younger twin with thunderous rage, practically nose to nose.

"I'm saying I don't really get why 'nerd' is an insult." Kaien points out, unfazed by the breach of personal space. "You realize everything from the games you play, the consoles you play them on, the TV screen you play it on - all of it was dreamt up, designed and built by the kids teased as nerds in high school. Hell, your phone that you love spending all your time on was made by those kinds of guys. I fundamentally do not understand why you insult the group that made all that cool shit for you to enjoy in the first place."

Kaien leans back a little further, eyebrow raised. "While we're at it, not so close. I know I'm cursed to be a damn handsome man and deeply flattered by the interest, you're really not my type. Plus..." Kaien grimaces, "For god's sake, man, brush your teeth."

"Yeah, Keigo. You can't kick his ass seven ways to Sunday and make him thank you for it. Someone like Tatsuki." Mizuiro interjects coyly.

"Will you shut the hell up?!" Kaien pounds his fist against the table, flustered, cheeks flushing bright crimson while Mizuiro hums a jaunty little tune to himself.

Ichigo rolls his eyes. Bait swallowed hook, line and sinker.

"Oh my, oh my. Quite the reaction for someone who insists he doesn't have a crush." Mizuiro muses conspiratorially.

"I know, I know. A man in denial is such a terrible thing to see." Keigo breaks his character for only a few seconds to nod sagely along with Mizuiro.

"You're both worse than gossiping fishwives." Kaien hisses, crossing his arms and pointedly looking away, willing his blush to swiftly subside.

"But, never mind that! K-man, you don't understand. You realise what you said just makes you sound even more like a nerd!" Keigo pleads.

Kaien holds up a finger, interrupting. "One; don't call me K-man. Makes me sound like some whack job hip-hop star or Kamen Rider character-"

Keigo snatches Kaien's collar, half-dragging him out of his chair, grave concern on his face. "Kaien, no! Don't you understand that makes you sound worse?! You have to resist! Resist the corruption of your brother's nerdliness! Don't be tempted from the path of righteous bludging and slacking off! Don't sucked into the deep dark abyss that is academia! You're the last line of defence! You have to be the cool twin!"

Kaien arches an eyebrow, sparing a withering glance to his twin whose expression screams 'you're on your own, buddy'.

"Keigo, look. First off, there's no argument here. I am the cooler one. That's just a statement of fact."

"I know where you sleep." Ichigo threatens.

"Secondly... you do realise that I'm studying my ass off to get into a STEM field, right?"

Keigo gives a horror-filled gasp as if Kaien had confessed to the worst sacrilege possible, dramatically releasing his grip on the latter's collar (the latter landing back in his chair with a reflexive 'ow') and stumbling back as if stabbed. His gaze shiftily sweeps left to right, hunched defensively and hands raised like something was about to materialize out of thin air and jump him. "You... traitor! I'm surrounded by traitors! That's the only explanation. There's a weird wonky mind virus going on... and its spreading."

Ichigo rolls his eyes, shaking his head before glancing at his twin, who is currently watching Keigo lose his mind. "I would love to live in his world for five minutes."

"I wouldn't. Mine has trouble enough." Ichigo mutters. "So, where'd you land?"

"Lucky number thirteen." Kaien reveals with his goofy grin and giving a victory V.

"The end is nigh! The apocalypse has begun!" Keigo blares which goes ignored.

"I admit you beat me this time." Ichigo says neutrally, already raising a resigned hand for Kaien to give him a crisp high five.

"You mean you're actually conceding victory to me for once? Quick, what day is it? I have to make sure I mark it on the calendar when we get home." Kaien jokes brightly. Ichigo punches his shoulder as warning which only produces a laugh.

"Its only five places ahead of me. Don't get smug about it, you bloody penguin." Ichigo snorts derisively.

"Kiss my ass, strawberry." Kaien shoots back jovially.

"Test scores mean nothing in the end anyway. All school does is test how well you can regurgitate information. Once you figure that much out its easy to work the system." Ichigo dismisses sharply.

Kaien gives a half-indulgence smirk, "I wasn't about to be so cynical as to say that out loud."

"Even so, it is a surprise to learn you're both pretty good at studying." Mizuiro notes.

"Well..." Ichigo sighs, playing a little with his hair in a sudden fleeting bout of self-consciousness while Kaien goes about packing away his things. "Despite how much we look alike, people forget we're fraternal twins, not identical. All the instructors don't care to acknowledge that fact. They think either I've bleached my hair like some delinquent or Kaien dyed his to fit in, no matter how many times we say our colours are natural. Gets both of us into no end of trouble and slams us with no end of scrutiny."

Ichigo rubs the back of his neck, exhaling a heavy sigh. "More than that, if one of us does wind up in a mess of trouble, the other gets dragged down with them regardless if we were actually there or not. Hell, look at the whole TV fiasco a while back, Kaien was with dad and our sisters the whole time, he got pulled into the principle's office with us and they wouldn't hear a peep otherwise."

"I don't know what they expected; that I could somehow magically split myself into two and drag you back?" Kaien adds rhetorically.

Neither twin is bitter about it, resigned perhaps. Ichigo just lets it show more openly than his younger brother does. Kaien chooses to hide his frustration behind that omnipresent chipper attitude and excelling as a sports representative of their school. On balance, the teachers tend to target Kaien less (especially considering he's been consistently bringing back silver and gold medals since he joined the team), but that doesn't mean they won't try to drag him down with Ichigo, and being the mutual target of their teachers' and upper classmen harassment served only to reinforce their solidarity in a twisted way.

"Instructors and upper class men give us enough abuse, neither of us are not gonna add fuel to the fire by being academic losers too. That's the reason why I study at any rate."

"I suppose I understand. Seems like its caused a lot of problems, even for you." Mizuiro muses.

"Not really. We're used to it." Ichigo dismisses. He draws in a deep breath, "Anyways, what the hell are we still doing here? It's time to head home."

"Yep. Let's go. Oh, wait a minute. It's Yuzu's turn to cook tonight and she wanted us to get her some stuff for dinner on the way home. What was it again?" Kaien asks, slinging his book back over his shoulder.

"Tonkatsu sauce and fresh eggs. She wants to try her hand at making some new curry omurice recipe."

"Ooo, big brother is intrigued." Kaien hums.

"Oh, and you're not gonna sneak in a box of mochi donuts this time. If you do I'm beating you senseless." Ichigo threatens without real heat.

Kaien is taken aback, hand on his chest as if this were a grave offence. "You wouldn't hurt your baby brother, would you?"

Ichigo scoffs, "Funny how the only time you happily roll out that excuse is when you're trying to convince me to let you buy something you know you shouldn't."

"I reserve the right to proudly use and abuse the 'baby brother' card as I wish. It's basically rule one in the kid sibling handbook." Kaien answers solemnly.

A vein pops on Ichigo's temple. "Sometimes I wonder what god or gods did I piss off in a past life to end up with you as a twin. I figure I must've offended at least a dozen to wind up with someone as annoying as you for a tagalong."

His twin laughs heartily, slinging an arm around his brother's shoulders with that infectious grin of his. "Whatever it was, I'm sure it's well-deserved. Face it, Ichi. Without me your life would be way too boring."

"I think my life's gotten plenty interesting as of late, Kai." Ichigo remarks through gritted teeth, irritated but not actively doing anything to escape his twin's grip.

Keigo swings in front of them as they make their down the hallway. "Well, if you're free tonight, do you two wanna go hit up the arc-?"

"Nope." The twins answered in solidarity.


Ichigo and Rukia are off doing their own thing. Again.

Which means Kaien is home alone in their shared bedroom with nothing to occupy his time other than weekend homework.

Rukia high-tailed it the second she left school grounds, leaving the twins to walk home. Of course Rukia would find her way back to their house eventually and one of the boys would let her into their room via the window. It wasn't really worth much notice, but when the twins arrived at the bus stop two blocks away from the school, Ichigo's scowling gaze was elsewhere. Evidentially he was studying something with keen interest.

Kaien inquired about it. Ichigo gave him some half-hearted excuse to go off somewhere and left Kaien to pursue whatever caught his attention. In turn, Kaien sent an uncharacteristically bitter frown at his brother's back as he disappeared up a flight of stairs across the street.

Them telling their father some boldface lie to cover the spiritual shenanigans? Fine. Sure, it sucks and Kaien feels lousy for it, but exactly how do you explain sneaking food to the depowered psychopomp living in your joint wardrobe? Or that one of you accidentally borrowed too much of her powers to save the whole family from ghost monsters so you decided to help perform her duties until she recovers? Especially to a man who takes exactly zero percent of life seriously?

There's no real ice-breaker for that bombshell.

But Ichigo turning around and pulling that same rubbish with him? Yeah, that's where Kaien draws the line.

Look. Kaien gets it, he does.

Ichigo's trying to do his big brother thing and protect Kaien from all the supernatural stuff, especially since Kaien doesn't have any powers to defend himself. In a combat situation, the cold hard reality is he'd just be another target, like that time when Orihime's Hollowfied brother trashed their bedroom a few weeks ago (and doesn't that feel like a lifetime ago). But clamming up and not letting Kaien try to shoulder the burden, even if its just offering an ear to listen when Ichigo comes back from jobs beaten half-to-death, is fraying his nerves.

By his nature, Kaien's not an angry person. He can get irritated if pressed perhaps, but on the whole he personally thinks the emotion is too damn exhausting. Half the time he's astonished Ichigo can muster the resolve to keep going (which is why Kaien needles his twins so, to give him something other than anger to sink his energy into). On the other hand, privately he's growing restless by the hour. This powerlessness is killing him. His frustrations are boiling beneath the surface and there only so much he can do to avoid exploding at his brother.

(Although he's not quite ready to admit that some of that restlessness might by fuelled by no small amount of envy.)

He wants to support Ichigo, yet despite encouraging his twin down this path Kaien laments they're grown as distant as they've ever been.

A crazy runaway thought is to ask Rukia if she could teach him any of that kido stuff. He's got energy to spare and her own powers are taking their sweet time reviving themselves. If nothing else, as a safety precaution in case he comes up against a hollow and neither of them are anywhere to be found. But he doubts that would ever happen. A human having Shinigami powers is a unique situation from what Kaien gathers, and it might cause trouble for her down the line if her bosses heard she started teaching humans their techniques too... presuming Rukia answered to an authority of course, but she had to be receiving orders from somewhere, right?

Taking a deep breath, Kaien calms himself down. At the end of the day, there's nothing he can do.

Which is a line he's been repeating a lot in recent days with inconsistent vigour.

Although he's curious to realise that as the days wear on and his irritation starts boiling over, he finds himself thinking more and more about that seedy candy store Kisuke Urahara.

He'd spoken to the man exactly once. And that once was enough. While the mysterious Kisuke Urahara seemed completely cordial in their brief interaction despite the fact Kaien was basically stalking him home, actually being in the man's presence scared the shit out of him. Kaien's not one to scare from people easily (unholy ghost monsters aside), but he believes in maintaining a healthy respectful (fearful) distance especially when the person in question could squish him like a bug on a whim.

At the same time, Urahara had offered answers and an open door.

Of course, Kaien's well aware it sounds like every stranger danger cliché every parent warns their children away from but the shopkeeper's been helping Ichigo and Rukia out where Hollows are concerned. Maybe... maybe he knew something more? Perhaps he might know a more constructive way Kaien could help his brother and friend out? Because one thing is for certain; he hates being stuck as a powerless bystander.

However Kaien is not so naïve as to assume those answers would come free. Nothing in this world is without price, and Kaien has no illusions that if he did take Urahara up on his offer it'd cost him a pound of flesh in exchange.

But in the end, that's idle speculation.

Right now Kaien's absently chipping away at his homework in five minute increments.

There is one thing has changed in their routine.

Lately (as in the last couple days) there's been a host of complaints about Rukia's phone - correction; her Denreishinki as she firmly insisted - picking up dud hollow signals. Her phone would go off at any hour of the day, she and Ichigo would charge pell-mell towards the danger ripe and ready for Hollow-slaying and soul saving, only for the Hollow signal to vanish without a trace.

Its fine and all, sometimes technology likes to act wonky and needs a good bang against the wall or a service to get things back to tip-top condition. That being said, there's not many places that can provide tech support for dwellers of the next world.

Funny, isn't it? With a job as chaotic as Shinigami, one would expect the technology to handle an equal beating. But that'd be common sense now, wouldn't it?

Maybe that's where Rukia and Ichigo are? Rukia's off getting her toy serviced, probably at Urahara's little shop (assuming he's equipped for that kind of repair work) while Ichigo's scouting around for Hollows the old fashioned way. That would explain why Rukia pulled Kon from the stuffed toy and gave his pill to Ichigo for the time being, an expedient way to knock Ichigo into Shinigami mode if she's not around.

The pieces do fit...

Kaien shakes his head clear of those thoughts. There's no point with rampant speculation, he reminds himself. He can grill them about acting so weird when they get home. Closing his eyes and heaving as sigh, he absently reaches with his right hand for his glass of water for a drink. Only to groan in annoyance when its empty. Not even droplets remain.

"Damn it, that's inconvenient. I could've sworn-" Kaien opens his eyes and examines the tall glass, only to frown in confusion.

Contrary to his assumption, its still half-full. But with the glass tilted at a ninety-degree angle the water remains perplexingly locked in place.

"O... kay?" Kaien mutters slowly, pulling back.

Experimentally, he tips the glass gently, well past the point conventional laws of physics and gravity should've kicked in and splashed the liquid over his desk. And despite the glass being completely upside down, the water remains confined.

Turning the glass upright again, Kaien scans around quickly with a searching expression, his developing sixth sense branching outwards.

Maybe there's a ghost haunting the clinic that he doesn't know about and its pulling a prank on him like a classic poltergeist? There was one bothering them a while back, but Ichigo told him Rukia performed a Konso to get rid of it. A dash through that theory is the fact he doesn't sense anything like that in the area. Nor does he detect the disgusting miasma of a Hollow nearby so it can't be any weird ability of theirs.

Kaien turns his attention back to the glass, repeating the pouring motion. Like before the water remains.

"What on earth...?"

On a hunch, Kaien slowly manoeuvres his left hand and takes hold of the bottom of the glass. Releasing the grip on his right, Kaien slips the glass away and... impossibly, the water remains where it is (then again, what does he know of impossible these days?).

Free of its container, the water just... floats there shapelessly hovering above his palm. It reminds Kaien of those videos from the international space station where the astronauts demonstrated the gravity-less environment with assorted objects and liquids.

But how?

Well, in lieu of any other rational reason, the only explanation is somehow he's doing this. He's the one making the water float on its own. Testing that theory, Kaien moves his right hand away from him. The ball of water follows. Bringing his hand close, the same thing happens.

Tentatively, Kaien pokes the globe with his left pointer finger and watches the water rippling in response, but unlike the space station videos, a thread of water weakly trails after his finger like metal to a small magnet.

Momentarily taken by the bizarre phenomenon, he lets out a small boyish giggle, poking and prodding the small sphere, manipulating it and testing the limits of its reach with child-like awe and wonder. He's so caught up in the childish glee of this newfound discovery he doesn't sense that unnerving otherness in the pit of his spirit nor its budding approval.

"Big brother! I bought you some juice!" Yuzu knocks on his bedroom door.

Kaien's concentration snaps and the fascinating anomaly ceases instantly. The water splashes all over his desk and hours of work. "My homework!"

The door slams open, Yuzu with a look of horror on her face while the water drips over the front and back of his desk, down Kaien's pants and onto his pillow case respectively.

"Oh no! I'll get some towels!" Yuzu sets the tray down by his door and rushes deeper into the house for exactly that while Kaien curses his poor luck. Those bedsheets were just cleaned too. Damn it.

Well, his school pants needed a wash anyways. Grumpily, Kaien sheds them and puts on a pair of comfortable jeans instead and he puts on a clean plain black shirt while he's at it. His doesn't bother trying to use it as a makeshift sponge, his homework's completely unsalvageable. So he just kicks his discarded school pants under his desk to make sure the wood floor doesn't stain from the water, then stretches out a few kinks in his back.

Still, his lips press in a thin line while he scowls at the mess. Kaien hadn't... dreamt that whole thing up just now, had he? Maybe he'd had a lucid dream during a powernap or something. The brain does stupidly weird things when a person's asleep after all. Scrubbing his hands through his hair with a bone-deep sigh, Kaien concludes yeah, that's probably exactly what happened. It'd been a silly daydream.

He'd spent hours looming over his homework and dozed off. When Yuzu knocked on his door, he jerked awake and knocked the glass over. That's all. It wouldn't be the first time Yuzu's found him like that either.

But that flight of fancy is all but forgotten when he senses a cruel viciousness - no, more like multiple individual dark feelings all concentrated in the same location. Glancing out the window, Kaien is horrified to see a black crack in the sky. A growing maw like the fabric of reality itself is tearing.

"What in the hell is that?"

He snatches up his phone from his desk, having mercifully avoided the water spill, and dials Ichigo's number. First order of business is to confirm he's not legitimately going mad. Second order of business is to find out what the hell's going on and if Ichigo already had eyes on it.

"Come on. Come on, pick up your phone." Kaien growls, glaring up at the wound in reality that only seems to be incrementally growing. The call rings out and Kaien dials again. "Pick it up, you damned idiot!" He hisses under his breath, only to slump when he hears a distinct vibrating sound somewhere over Ichigo's half of the room.

His phone vibrates on his desk and Kaien curses, abandoning his phone. Too late, Kaien remembers Ichigo's complaints this morning about having forgotten his mobile and how bothersome it'd be to double back home and get it.

"Damn it. Yuzu, stay inside. Don't go anywhere until Ichigo or I get back, understand?" Kaien shouts over his shoulder, barely sparing a glance to his little sister when she protests. He sprints down the stairs, toes his sneakers and sprints into the streets.

Truth be told, he hasn't got much of a plan. Either find Rukia or Ichigo to find out what madness that giant crack will unleash or failing that, go ask that old shopkeeper.


Author's note:

Regarding their nicknames. Ichigo is obvious. For Kaien, penguins are a sea bound bird who spends most of its time in the water.

For the STEM field Kaien wants to get into; there's two options. Marine Biology or Chemistry.

Regards,

Aurora313