CHAPTER 5 - DAWN OF REVELATION
Both Kasumi's and Shin's brains desperately tried to catch up as Yasuhiro flicked the blood off his sword. To compound their collective confusion, the corpse of the creature that he had just slain disintegrated into ash, its remains scattering across the white sands and disappearing. While both the teenagers stood and stared, Yasuhiro waited patiently for them to speak first, maintaining his genteel disposition in spite of the atypical circumstances.
"Is your butler, like, a knight or something?" Shin asked bluntly, finally breaking the silence. Kasumi could only narrow her eyes at him as she internally questioned how he could be so daft at such a time. It was something he was prone to do, and somehow it cleared Kasumi's head. If there's one thing I can count on, it's Shin's unwavering idiocy.
"Yasuhiro… What's going on?" asked Kasumi, leaving Shin's question unanswered. The old man closed his eyes and then sighed before sheathing his sword in a black scabbard hanging from his belt. There was a period of unbearable silence as Yasuhiro chose his words. "It's unfortunate that we had to meet here. There's no doubt you have a lot of questions, but I'm afraid they'll have to wait for now. Let's return home, then we can talk."
Before Kasumi could respond, she was blinded by a bright pale light that came beaming down from above. When her vision finally adjusted, she saw that the source of the light was what appeared to be a portal back to Karakura Town. A dark, stormy sky bore down on the Earth beyond the mysterious tear in space, familiar storm clouds swirling in the distance. As if the sight wasn't strange enough, a man dressed in black robes came flying through from the other side of the portal, holding a strange silver device in one hand and a katana in the other.
Isshin landed on the ground with a soft thud, kicking up a thin cloud of sand. His eyes quickly scanned the area before he stepped towards Shin and Kasumi. "Oh, you're okay," he said, breathing a soft sigh of relief. Kasumi eyed him up and down with a curious look. The dark robes that hung loosely from his well-built frame resembled what samurai typically wore under their armor, something Kasumi knew from the historical films Yasuhiro was fond of watching. When her eyes inevitably wandered over to the gleaming katana in Isshin's hand, she gulped.
Sensing Kasumi's wariness, Isshin flashed her a grin and eased his stance. "Don't worry, I'm on your side," he reassured. Though Kasumi thought he looked friendly enough, she still thought it wise to give him a wide berth. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" Kasumi asked, her voice tense.
"I saw you and a lot of other people get sucked into the Garganta. I'm here to get you all out," Isshin explained, gesturing to the portal above. "I was worried that I was gonna be too late, but looks like you and your friends are all fine—"
Isshin suddenly froze when he saw Yasuhiro, who in turn eyed him knowingly. Isshin chuckled and beamed with amusement. "Hey, I know you! Yasuhiro, right? From the single parents support group?"
Smiling, Yasuhiro inclined his head politely. "That is correct. And you're Isshin Kurosaki, yes? It's been quite a while since we've seen each other. A shame we met at such an inauspicious time," he acknowledged. Both of the men exchanged some small talk, asking each other about home life and the like. Isshin was in the middle of talking about his eldest daughter's latest exploits when Kasumi interrupted him.
"Wait, both of you know each other?" Kasumi asked incredulously. Isshin turned to look at her before crossing his arms. "Yeah, we've been acquaintances for a while," he elaborated. "Both of us used to go to a support group for single parents. Neither of us have gone in a while, but we stayed in touch. Say, you don't happen to be little Kasumi, are you? You're all grown up now! Do you have a boyfriend already?"
Kasumi furrowed her eyebrows as Isshin barraged her with questions. Shin, who knew Kasumi well enough to know at a glance when someone was ticking her off, stood there with a blithe smirk. It wasn't long before Kasumi cut Isshin off with a brisk wave of her hand. "Can we not talk about this now? Please? If you're not gonna explain anything, then get us out of here."
"Alright, alright," Isshin relented, though something told Kasumi that he'll come back to pester her sometime in the future. "I'll get you guys out of here, but there's something I need to do first."
Isshin surged forward, so fast that he appeared as nothing more than a blur. Before Kasumi could react, she was slung over Isshin's shoulder like a sack of rice. She kicked her feet against him and tried to pull away. "What the hell are you doing?" Kasumi demanded. Isshin looked over his shoulder. "Getting you out," he answered.
"Yasuhiro, mind getting the boy?" Isshin asked, facing the old man. He obliged, quickly dashing over to Shin and gently picking him up, cradling him in his arms like a princess. Shin gave Kasumi a smug look, and she just sighed in response.
"Hold on tight," Isshin instructed, before he suddenly soared into the air towards the portal above. Kasumi's stomach lurched as she watched the ground shrink below. Shin yelped as Yasuhiro followed suit, flying upwards as Isshin did. Oh, Yasuhiro can fly, Kasumi thought to herself. Somehow, the fact didn't surprise her anymore. Between the spirits amassed in the streets and the portal into the abyss that opened up above her home town, flying was fairly ordinary by comparison. Of course he can fly.
Once the two men passed through the opening with Kasumi and Shin in tow, they emerged above Karakura Town, right below the Garganta. Kasumi's heart nearly jumped out of her chest when she saw that they were floating several stories above the ground, but the man carrying her didn't seem to mind. It appeared as if he and Yasuhiro were standing on invisible footholds, hovering in the air as effortlessly as they would stand on solid ground.
Isshin looked down at the silver device in his free hand, its metallic surface peppered with raindrops. "I hope this works," he muttered to himself, before raising the object into the air. The azure gem affixed to the middle of the device began to glow, and the object started vibrating. It pried itself free of Isshin's hand, and of its own volition, it floated towards the Garganta. Several tendrils of pale blue light suddenly materialized from the strange object, which snaked through the air and entered the Garganta. For a while, nothing more happened, but eventually Kasumi began to hear shouting from the other end, which seemed to get louder and louder. Suddenly, the spirit of a shrieking young woman in pajamas came flying out of the void, pulled along by one of the device's tendrils. Many more followed soon after. Curiously, all of them were conscious, unlike the others who were still amassed at the intersection below.
Eventually the device retracted its last tendril from the mouth of the Garganta. Dozens of spirits all hung below, suspended in the air by the device. All of them looked confused and scared, some seemingly frozen in shock. Kasumi thought that she probably looked just like them.
The device conjured several more tendrils which attached themselves to the edges of the massive Garganta. Each tendril began retracting, forcing the Garganta shut as if it was mending a tear in fabric. The Garganta seemed to struggle against it, sometimes widening again even as the device pulled with greater force. After about a minute of intense back-and-forth, the Garganta was sealed shut, the dark clouds surrounding it dissipating soon after. Kasumi felt the rain lighten up, and now she could look around without her face being battered by the wind.
While Kasumi was watching the device do its work, one of the tendrils suddenly latched onto Shin. He cried out as it pulled him from Yasuhiro's arms and into the sky with the rest of the spirits liberated from the abyss.
The strange device sped through the air, rapidly plucking spirits from the ground and pulling them to different places in town. "Is it… returning them to their bodies?" Kasumi asked, watching Shin get swung around like a ragdoll. "That's right. If everything goes smoothly, then everyone should return to their bodies eventually," Isshin replied with trepidation in his voice. He watched the device intently, as if he was making sure that no spirit was left behind.
"Isshin, if there's nothing else, then I'll take Lady Kasumi back home. No doubt she's freezing by now," Yasuhiro said. Isshin nodded before handing Kasumi over, whom Yasuhiro held in a much more dignified manner.
"Thank you for the assistance," Yasuhiro thanked, inclining his head. Isshin waved a hand at him. "No problem at all. You two get home. I'll deal with cleaning up this mess," he said. With that, Yasuhiro turned around and leaped down onto a nearby rooftop. "Wait—" Kasumi began, but then Isshin was gone, off to who-knows-where. Yasuhiro took Kasumi across the town in silence, jumping from rooftop to rooftop with agility that Kasumi knew to be physically impossible. It's as if he was being pushed along by an unseen force, allowing him to effortlessly glide through the air. Do I even want to know how he's doing that? Kasumi thought. But she couldn't fool herself. Though her mind was still struggling to make sense of the events that transpired within the past few hours, she knew one thing for certain: she had to know why Yasuhiro was on the other side of the Garganta, and if it had anything to do with the ghosts and monsters she ran into. As her house came into view, another thought crossed her mind.
What if this has something to do with my mom? Maybe this is my chance to finally squeeze some answers out of him.
As Kasumi's mind raced with questions, Yasuhiro continued dashing across rooftops with her in his arms, his focused eyes fixed on their home in the distance. She studied his stern, almost statue-like face. I never really knew you, huh? Kasumi pondered.
The shower became fogged with steam as the warm water hit Kasumi's body, washing away the grime and the cold. She breathed a long and heavy sigh, savoring the warmth that she missed so dearly. A thousand questions flooded her mind as she ran her hands through her fair hazel hair. Though she always knew that there was more to the world than what was strictly physical or scientific, she never would've guessed that the supernatural would be so tangible, so dangerous. It was like there was an entirely different world that existed in parallel to the one she knew, one she only caught glimpses of. She wondered how many others in Karakura Town had supernatural abilities like Isshin and Yasuhiro, and how much had been going on just out of view. There was so much that Kasumi didn't know. The thought deeply unsettled her, deeper than what the warmth of the water could reach.
After she dried herself off, Kasumi slipped into a set of soft loungewear and made her way downstairs. Every step she took was burdened with anxiety as Kasumi questioned if she was even ready to begin parsing recent events. But even as uncertainty found its way into her heart, she resolved to ask every question she had on her mind until nothing weighed on her anymore.
There was a hot cup of tea waiting for her on the dining table downstairs, which she eagerly sipped after sitting down. Yasuhiro was in the kitchen, pouring one for himself. With a steaming cup in hand, Yasuhiro sat himself across from Kasumi. She stared at the old man as he gingerly sipped his tea, trying to find her words. "What were you doing in the Garganta?" she finally asked, carefully pronouncing the unfamiliar word. This was followed by a long, tense silence.
"I was searching for something. I'll admit, it was a pointless endeavor that was foolish for me to undertake to begin with. It's best if we spend this time resting instead of dwelling on it. After all, you must be exhausted," he answered. Again, he was trying to dodge the question, but Kasumi was intent on extracting something, anything out of him.
"Something? Was it important enough that you left me in the house alone while a world-ending storm was going on outside? What could possibly warrant that?" Kasumi questioned, raising her voice. Yasuhiro's expression softened as the young woman's words seemed to strike something in his heart.
"No, of course not. It's my utmost duty to care for you. I planned to enter the Garganta and take a quick look around, but I got bogged down by hollows. I wasn't supposed to be gone for longer than ten minutes by my estimation, though fate clearly had other plans," Yasuhiro explained. There wasn't a shred of doubt in Kasumi's mind that he was telling the truth, but she still wasn't satisfied.
"You didn't answer the whole question. What was it that you were looking for?" she asked, her voice stern. Again, Yasuhiro fell into silence, his expression unreadable. The old man took another sip of his tea, exhaling deeply through his nose.
"The answer will bring you nothing but distress," he replied. "There's a reason why Lady Atsuko was so adamant that you—"
There was a loud bang as Kasumi slammed her fist on the table, sending ochre ripples across their tea. Her body shot upwards, standing so fast that her chair nearly toppled over. For a brief moment brimming with tension, she glared at her guardian with intense eyes. "I'm sick of hearing that," she fumed. Weeks of unrest had finally boiled over, and now Kasumi was determined to settle the matter once and for all.
"I can't live with you keeping me in the dark," Kasumi continued. "How can I trust you if I know you're keeping secrets? How can I live knowing that you knew my mom, but just aren't telling me about her? I can't! So please, I'm begging you, tell me the truth. I don't care if I'm ready; I just have to know."
The room became agonizingly quiet as Yasuhiro sat there, staring at Kasumi, his face as inscrutable as ever. With bated breath, Kasumi awaited his response, hoping with all her might that he'd finally tell her something that would lift the weight of uncertainty off her shoulders. Then, to the young girl's simultaneous delight and surprise, Yasuhiro's expression softened. "Follow me," he relented. "I will show you something."
Yasuhiro stood up and walked into one of the main halls of the house, and Kasumi eagerly followed suit. Together, they walked in silence, though Kasumi's mind was racing, being overwhelmed by both glee and dread. She had brought herself to the cusp of finally discovering the truth of her past, but Yasuhiro's prior warnings constantly nagged at her, making her doubt if she was making the right decision. There must have been a pretty good reason for keeping me in the dark my whole life, she thought to herself. By forcing the truth out of Yasuhiro, was she changing her life for better or for worse? As much as Kasumi wanted to believe that it was the former, she didn't know, but she wanted to see it through. No going back now.
Yasuhiro took Kasumi to the end of the hall, in front of a large painting flanked by two brass wall sconces, each holding candles that hadn't been lit for as long as Kasumi could remember. The painting was an expressionist rendition of a solitary castle, dwarfed by the frigid landscape that dominated the canvas. The piece always unsettled Kasumi, though she could never articulate why.
Stepping forward, Yasuhiro grabbed one of the sconces and twisted it until it was skewed at a forty-five-degree angle. He did the same to the other sconce. Once both of the sconces were in place, a deep rumbling sound came from the wall, like concrete grinding against concrete. Then, the painting began sliding upwards towards the ceiling, revealing a staircase that led downwards into darkness. Kasumi gawked at the newly revealed passageway, astounded that there was such a thing hidden right under her nose all this time. She shook herself free of her astonishment when she noticed that Yasuhiro was already halfway down the staircase.
The two of them descended the winding staircase, Kasumi using her phone's flashlight to see where she was placing her steps. Once they reached the bottom, Yasuhiro flipped a switch and turned on an old ceiling lamp, bathing the room in light. Kasumi shivered as the basement's cold air washed over her, air that had been undisturbed for years. She hardly noticed the stone brick walls, or the arched ceiling, because she was entirely focused on the large display case in the middle of the room. It stood on narrow legs carved from maple, and under its pristine glass surface were a variety of objects that Kasumi had never seen before. Set in a velvet cushion was what looked like a silver sword hilt lacking a blade, alongside several cylindrical vials made from the same material. Curiously, there were two empty slots that looked like they were meant to accommodate a glove and some sort of cross-shaped pendant.
Kasumi placed her hand against the glass as she closely inspected each and every item, wondering what their purpose was. Yasuhiro walked up next to her and wistfully looked at the items as well. "Your mother was a Quincy," he began, before explaining what the Quincy are and what happened to them. He went over the core Quincy beliefs: namely their hatred for hollows and shinigami. Kasumi listened carefully, trying to wrap her head around his words. A year ago, Kasumi wouldn't have believed a word he said, but now, after what happened just hours ago, she was pretty much ready to accept anything, no matter how fantastical it seemed.
"The last I saw of your mother was when she was pregnant with you," he said. "I saw her disappear through a Garganta. For months, I was alone, until you showed up in a box on the doorstep. I knew it was you right away. I don't know why she disappeared. All I had was her last wish, which was to keep you safe."
"Wait… So that means you don't actually know if my mom is dead?" Kasumi asked, realization crashing down on her like heavy rain.
"Yes," the old man admitted. "I entered the Garganta because I was unable to resist the urge to look for her, on the slim chance that she was somehow waiting on the other side. It was an impulse born from a moment of weakness. You mustn't do as I—"
Yasuhiro stopped talking when he saw that Kasumi was glowering at him. "Why did you lie to me?" she demanded. The revelation hit her with the force of a speeding truck. All this time, she was sure that her mom was dead, that she was never going to get the chance to know her. When Kasumi was alone with her thoughts, she often found herself fantasizing about a reality where her mother never passed, where the two of them could live as a family, and every time, she'd have to come to grips with the fact that such a thing was an impossibility. And now, Yasuhiro was not only telling her that her mom was alive, but in hiding, leaving her daughter behind to do God-knows-what.
"She didn't want you to look for her. It was a dangerous world that she lived in," Yasuhiro explained, but his words fell on deaf ears. There was a heavy weight in Kasumi's chest that made her feel like she was going to collapse if she didn't do something- anything- to alleviate the burden. With wide eyes and quivering breath, she stepped backwards. "You lied," she started. "You've been deceiving me since the day I was born! I don't know how you could have raised me while telling such a bold-faced lie all my life. I have the right to know about my mom, and you can't tell me to forget about her when you admitted to leaving me in the middle of a storm to go look for her yourself!"
"I miss your mother too!" Yasuhiro responded, raising his voice. Kasumi couldn't remember the last time Yasuhiro shouted at her. It felt like the first time. "I don't enjoy lying to you. Not a day goes by where I wish I could tell you the truth, and in a way I'm glad that something eventually forced me to. But you have to understand, it was for your own good."
"I'm so fucking sick of hearing that," Kasumi fumed as she glared at the old man. Turning around, she stormed up the stairs, ignoring Yasuhiro when he shouted for her to come back. The walls of her home seemed so foreign now, so hostile, like the flawless wallpaper was peeling back and revealing rotten wood and crumbling concrete. Though her turbulent mind was flooded with uncertainty, she was sure of one thing: she wanted to get out of her house. She walked into the living room and threw on a jacket that was slung haphazardly over a chair before heading out the front door.
By now, most of the streets had been drained, with only the most sunken of areas still flooded. People were out on the street, surveying the damage to their houses. Many of them looked confused, like they had just woken up from a nightmare. Looks like Isshin's plan worked, she thought to herself, and she silently thanked the shinigami as she stepped over a piece of wooden debris on the street. But as much as she wanted to enjoy the fresh air and be grateful that the storm was finally over, Yasuhiro's revelation didn't allow her to. The warm sunlight peeking out through the clouds did little to comfort her as she walked through the streets, lost in her own head. Maybe I shouldn't have asked him, after all, she thought, but she quickly pushed the idea out of her head. No, it was the right thing to do.
Kasumi bumped into someone when she rounded a corner into a street leading away from her house. Without looking up at him, she apologized and began to walk away, but she stopped in her tracks when the stranger called out to her.
"Koike Kasumi?" the man asked, his voice casual yet somehow tinged with mischief. He was dressed oddly, with a flowing black haori over a loosely fastened forest green samue which contrasted starkly with his pale skin. Atop his shaggy blonde hair was a white bucket hat with vertical green stripes, pulled so low that it concealed his eyes in shadow. As he turned, his wooden sandals clicked against the asphalt. From his odd choice of attire alone, Kasumi knew that whoever he was, he was probably someone of Isshin's ilk.
"I was just about to drop by," Urahara Kisuke said.
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