Okay, I have to warn you - graphic depiction of violence ahead. If you'd like a more detailed, not-spoiler-free warning, skip to the bottom of the chapter.
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Orihime was starting to learn just what kind of a man Ichigo Kurosaki was.
On opening day, Highwell Hall's doors opened for the first time to a crowd of a little less than one hundred people. Most guests were 'family' and friends of 'family' — Orihime was beginning to learn that the way Ichigo and his associates used the word was not the way most people used the word. For starters, family didn't begin or end with blood but extended to everyone Ichigo had a close working relationship with. A family, in this sense, was an institution where everyone was working towards the same goal.
Anyway, with music and drinks flowing endlessly, it seemed as though everyone was in high spirits. Couples waltzed, friends clinked their glasses together, the jazz band played on and on, enjoying the effusive encouragement from drunken appreciators. Outside, the world had its restrictions and social mores but in this private universe, time seemed to flow differently. People were closer, happier. Orihime was thrilled to be able to create such a space, especially at a time like this, when everyone had lost a little hope — a little faith. Glamor, it seemed, was making a quick return, filling the place with life and color.
Keigo Asano, especially, seemed ecstatic that the family now had a new place of leisure.
"Boy, I'm going to be coming here all the time!" He declared, slinging one drunken arm around Ichigo, who quickly but firmly foisted him off onto someone else. Orihime watched in amusement as the sea of crowds carried him away to a distant pocket of the bar.
"Remember," Ichigo muttered from beside her. "Nothing is ever on the house when he's here. He's paying for everything whether he likes it or not."
Orihime laughed behind her hand, glancing at Ichigo out of the corner of her eye in delight. For opening night, he'd abandoned his suit, wearing a dark double-breasted coat over his trousers. He looked casual and comfortable — or at least as casual as he could get when he wasn't working. Throughout the night, he had guided her around the room and introduced her to familiar faces she would be seeing here often, just so she could differentiate the frequenters from the guests. Ichigo intended to use Highwell Hall as a place of public meeting with everyone he had business interests with. The office would, from here on, be for private matters alone, he explained.
Amidst the crowd, Orihime spotted a familiar flash of spiky, black hair. "Tatsuki?" she shrieked, unaware that Ichigo had stiffened slightly beside her.
The head turned, confused, and then Tatsuki's eyes lit up. "Hey!" she said, breaking through the rush of people to get to Orihime. "Boy, it is loud in here, I was looking for you everywhere. Hi." She raised a brow at Ichigo and her tone turned flat. "I guess I should congratulate you."
Ichigo discreetly looked for a way to make a quick exit from this conversation. "Not gonna call the cops on me, are you?"
"Asshole." Tatsuki glared. "I came here to support my friend, not your sins."
"Then I guess you should return my sins back to where you got them from." He gestured to the glass of alcohol she was holding in her hand.
"They don't even taste great." Tatsuki made a face. "I mean whose bathtub did you have to use for this?"
"Tatsuki," Orihime scolded gently, her eyes imploring her friend to stop. "Leave off already. I mean, look at this place. Isn't it nice?"
Tatsuki relaxed slightly. "Yeah." When she looked at Ichigo again, her eyes were fond, almost wistful. "It's a long way from the old days, that's for sure."
Ichigo dropped his gaze to his feet and Orihime felt her heart grow ten times smaller.
No one talked about it, but the mighty Don Kurosaki had once been a child of these streets like any other — vulnerable, large-eyed and sheltered under the love and warmth of a single mother. With her gone, Tatsuki had said, some light in his eyes had disappeared too. All that was left was a tough mask that sheltered a big, sensitive heart.
It was his sorrow that had made Orihime seek him out in the first place — all those months ago. She knew that he would understand her pain better than anyone else would. And he had. That understanding was bittersweet, but it had cemented, in her eyes, an innate humanness in him that soothed her and made him more approachable.
"— a toast!"
Orihime blinked, glancing up just in time to see Ichigo shaking his head vehemently at a drunk Keigo, who had managed to return to them in one piece, albeit disheveled.
"You can't just leave people hanging on opening night, boss," Mizuiro said, a hundred times more sober but still teasing. Someone shoved a drink into Ichigo's hand, the liquid sloshing as he tried to get a handle on it.
"Speech! Speech!" People began to shout as it became evident that Ichigo was now the center of attention. A circle formed, Uryu and Chad bringing up the rear as Orihime, Tatsuki, Mizuiro and Keigo stood beside Ichigo. Someone wobbled the big spotlight from one of the balconies in Ichigo's direction, the light garish and sharp. Ichigo squinted. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for the reclusive don to make his speech and mark the occasion.
Ichigo hesitated. In Orihime's private opinion, he looked shy, unused to stardom or fanfare as he stepped into the circle.
He cleared his throat and raised his glass high, meeting everyone's gaze with a determination that spoke of his calm confidence and his subconscious, natural ability to lead a crowd.
"To family," he said simply.
Everyone burst into a hearty roar.
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Business, to tell the truth, began booming tremendously over the next few months. Of course, there was always the risk of a raid, of the distilleries giving them bad product, of some kind of drunken brawl or the other breaking out, but business was good. As with any ocean, they had learned the currents and adapted accordingly.
There were passwords now, for instance. Any patron who wanted to drink at Highwell Hall had to tell the doorman the password of the month — a word or phrase that Orihime usually selected and then spread around through word of mouth. Half the appeal was the exclusivity of such a ritual, but it was mainly a security protocol that helped keep police and rival gangs out of the premises.
Meanwhile, Orihime was starting to understand a few things about the business, as Ichigo called it. To her utter surprise, it involved a lot more diplomacy than one would think. Ichigo often mediated between various local businesses' disputes — businesses who preferred to consult him, rather than a court of law, for various, less-than-legal reasons.
Take, for instance, Sentaro Kotsubaki, the local grocer. He had, one morning, come in for an appointment with Ichigo, dragging a belligerent Kiyone Kotetsu with him. Kiyone was the local butcher. For the last two years, in a bid to escape pesky sales taxes, the two had entered an agreement with Ichigo. Sentaro would be exempt from paying sales tax on any meat he bought from Kiyone as long as he paid the woman on time. In exchange, Kiyone would push Sentaro up the waitlist, reserving her best meat for him and the so-so ones for the other vendors.
Of course, this was how it was supposed to work. In theory. The two dealers, it turned out, were explosive and often needed a third party to intervene.
" — hasn't been paying on time!" Kiyone had hollered.
" — hasn't been giving me any meat worth paying for!" Sentaro had bellowed back.
In a functioning legal system with reasonable sales taxes, perhaps Ichigo would never have had to entertain such a ruckus at 11 in the morning. But as it stood, the existing framework was fucking small businesses over, and, for a charge less than the government was taking, Ichigo had agreed to be a mediator between many small businesses in the neighborhood. In an economy like this, it often seemed that the don would have to be judge, jury and executioner.
In the end, Ichigo had threatened to censure both businesses — with violence, if need be — if they didn't get their act together. Kiyone had to trust that Sentaro would pay, and Sentaro had to trust that Kiyone would bring out the good meat, and both vendors had to trust that Ichigo would put a bullet in their skulls if they didn't.
Though Ichigo bitched and groused to her about having to resolve petty squabbles among local businessmen, one thing was clear — he was good at it. He built bridges between worlds as quickly as others burned them. Orihime was charmed by how he pinched his brows and cursed the air blue but sat down to listen to the community's problems all the same.
"How do you do it?" she would ask, fascinated.
"I have little sisters," he would joke in response.
It was like this that Orihime was beginning to learn the dimensions of his life. Although Ichigo was often here during daytime, he seldom came in at night, when life truly began at Highwell Hall. He went home to his sisters, she presumed, for there was no talk about him having a wife or a girlfriend or a lover.
The others, however, had no such commitments and dropped by often. Theirs was a revolving door for anyone and everyone in Ichigo's circle — and Orihime was just starting to figure out who the main players were.
Keigo and Mizuiro had both done time for Ichigo on two separate occasions, a gesture Ichigo had rewarded them for with houses and cars and loyalty — lots of it.
"We used to boost cars together before this whole thing took off," Keigo would explain, playing with the umbrella straw in his drink. He had the petulance of a child, the curiosity of a boy and the loyalty of a soldier.
Mizuiro, on the other hand, was hard to read but spoke fondly of Ichigo whenever he came up in conversation. Orihime often spotted him chatting up various women — usually on the older side — but he never caused any trouble.
Chad came in on afternoons that Ichigo did. Often, the three of them ate lunch together, and occasionally, they were joined by the mysterious consigliere, Uryu Ishida. He never sat with them, but he sat close enough and Chad and Ichigo both acted as though this was an expected thing from him. He only stayed for the duration of lunch, after which he primly wiped hands, closed his briefcase, and shot them all parting nods on his way out.
"He used to be in prosecution a while ago," Chad explained when he left one day, as if he could tell Orihime was curious. "He's with us now."
Orihime's face scrunched in confusion.
"You always tell the story in the worst way possible," Ichigo said, frowning at Chad.
"I don't know how else to say it."
Ichigo shook his head and sighed. At one time, Uryu Ishida believed in the letter of the law and the decency of people, he explained. It was his grandfather who had taught him that and his grandfather, a senior journalist, who had put him in law school.
"Ishida hated guys like us," he said. "Because we made the law look like a joke."
And it was true. Although Ichigo himself wasn't harassing people, there were other, nastier men who were. Don Baraggan wasn't the only evil in the world at the time. There was the Gilga mob, run by Nnoitra Gilga, a wretched, vacuous man if there was one. The story went that Ishida Sr and his grandson were building a case against Nnoitra — they had testimonies, they had photographs, everything was solid. When it went to print, Ishida Sr was hailed as a hero and a truthsayer. Ishida Jr was pleased that their efforts were fruitful. It was almost too easy.
"Until Ishida came home one day and found his grandfather's body in his bed, mutilated beyond belief," Ichigo said darkly, oblivious to Orihime's startled gasp. "Nnoitra."
Listless, grieving, and eager for revenge, Uryu Ishida had turned in his resignation at the prestigious firm he was working for and did what everyone else did when they wanted justice — he went to Don Kurosaki.
Six days later, nearly all of Nnoitra's men had been thrown in jail cells, ambushed with the help of an anonymous tip sent to the police. Nnoitra himself? In hell, probably. Orihime didn't believe in the concept, but when she thought about Uryu Ishida, she hoped for his sake that such an idea would bring peace to his broken heart. It certainly wouldn't bring his grandfather back.
This part of his life, Orihime knew, took a toll on Ichigo, even if he pretended it didn't. While he was perfectly kind and amicable on some days, he was distracted on others — answering Orihime's cheerful questions with faraway answers. Yet, unfailingly, at the end of every business meeting or how-are-you-doing conversation, he asked if she wanted him to walk her home. He never forgot to care and when you were a part of his family, it was so easy to feel the warmth of it. Of him.
Orihime usually said no to his offer, yearning to walk with him without it being an obligation or a duty he performed. He already did enough of that for others and she would never forget that he had already given her the greatest gift of all — the ability to stand on her own two feet. As a liberated woman, she understood the need to be an equal in such unequal times. She wanted to see this thing they built together grow, wanted to contribute.
The rest was simply wishful thinking — a fixation on his hands, his mouth, his rare but handsome smile. These were, of course, the watered down versions of her fantasies that she confessed to a disgruntled Tatsuki privately. When they were together, she mostly focused on business — and how they could make it grow.
On one of the Saturdays Ichigo dropped by, Orihime had found just the solution. She pulled him aside, bobbing excitedly on her feet as she led him through the bar.
"You look happy as always," he remarked, half-leaning down so he could hear her over the crowd. "Special occasion?"
"I have someone I want you to meet," she explained, guiding him by the forearm past random drunkards and dancers and towards one of the bar's private chambers. "Remember when we were talking about getting a few regular singers in here? Household names?"
Ichigo nodded. "Did you find someone?"
"Oh, did I," she said, sighing dreamily. "Mr Kurosaki, the set of pipes this woman has on her. Why, if you heard her sing, you'd send her to Hollywood yourself."
"Well, if she's as good as you say she is then I'd prefer she stay right here," Ichigo muttered, following Orihime as she opened the door to one of the storerooms. Inside, it seemed to have been converted into a lavish boudoir, costumes lying strewn on rolling clothes racks. A glamorous mess.
"Matsumoto!" A man snapped, then jerked his head towards the open door. "Oh." He frowned. The man had white hair and sharp eyes, but his face was round, almost boyish. "Hello."
"Mr Hitsugaya," Orihime introduced, gesturing to Ichigo. "This is Mr Kurosaki, the owner of Highwell Hall."
"Pleasure." Ichigo reached forward to shake Hitsugaya's hand.
"Mr Hitsugaya is Miss Rangiku's manager," Orihime explained to a slightly confused Ichigo. "Miss Rangiku, well…" Orihime smiled like she was at a loss for words.
Certainly, Ichigo too was at a loss for words when a blonde woman stepped out from behind the curtain, wearing a low cut dress that highlighted her rubenesque figure. She looked like an actress, and when she spoke, it was with a deep, delighted voice. "Orihime, did you finally bring your boyfriend here to meet me?"
Orihime squeaked. "M-Miss Rangiku!"
"Ichigo Kurosaki." Ichigo nodded respectfully.
"Oh, I know who you are." Rangiku winked. "Orihime paints quite a lovely picture of your good character every chance she gets."
"Miss Rangiku," Orihime cried miserably, to which Rangiku simply pinched the girl's cheek. They seemed close, like sisters—though to hear that Orihime had showered high praise on him was certainly…flattering.
"Miss Inoue has a way of making the ordinary seem very extraordinary," Ichigo agreed, strained. Orihime was busily examining her own long skirts, cheeks pink. "Thank you for joining us."
"The pleasure is ours," Hitsugaya grumbled. "Miss Rangiku has a heavenly voice but a most disagreeable disposition." ("Hey!" Rangiku snapped). "If it wasn't for your Miss Inoue, we would have been out of gigs." He nodded in Orihime's direction. "Thank you for hosting us."
Orihime beamed. "We'll leave you be."
"Ready when you are," Ichigo told them, bidding the two goodbye.
When they stepped out and headed back to the main hall, Ichigo raised a heavy brow in Orihime's direction. "You have an interesting set of friends."
Orihime looked a little wistful at that. "I met Miss Rangiku a few months ago," she said. "She was in a really bad place after…after she had a falling out with a close friend. I let her stay with me for a few weeks, which is when I found out she could sing — and that she hadn't been getting booked in a while."
"That's kind of you," Ichigo remarked, leading Orihime upstairs, from where they could watch the show from the balusters.
Orihime shook her head. "I wanted—" When she turned to Ichigo, her face was coy, almost shy. "I wanted to do for her what you did for me. What you do for everyone…" She wanted to say more, but in his presence she felt a shyness she had never associated with herself before.
Meanwhile, Ichigo looked stunned, touched in some way by her sweet words.
"Let's just enjoy the show," he said gently, shooting her a soft smile as they headed towards the balcony together.
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Hi! Disclaimer: This chapter contains descriptions of past gore. If you'd really rather not read it, then skip the paragraph that begins with "Until Ishida.." You didn't miss much! Just that Nnoitra and his gang killed Uryu's grandfather (sorry Soken!)
Hope you're enjoying the story so far! Thanks for all the reviews so far, and if you like the story please keep them coming :D
