Chapter Text
“Uh, she knows this is all for show, right? Ichigo is fine.”
Yuzu shakes her head, the barest movement, and politely keeps her eyes off of the scene Inoue is making of herself, sobbing before the huge portrait of Ichigo wreathed in flowers. She really tried to stop their father from exercising his sense of extravagance, but she didn’t have much luck. Looking around, Yuzu isn’t sure he listened at all. She knows how much Ichgio’s suit cost. Do most funerals have this many flowers? And honestly, did her dad buy a smoke machine or just light that many incense in the house?
“You know he told all of his friends his plans ages ago. That doesn’t mean they won’t miss him,” Yuzu says, voice soft, “or that this isn’t a sad event.”
Predictably, Karin snorts, amused and annoyed by the sheer amount of tears one young woman can produce. There's nothing sad about this to her, unless you count Inoue's wailing. She knocks her shoulder into her sister’s, and Yuzu graces her with a hint of a smile, though it disappears in an instant. There are too many people watching them. She can't be goofing off. Yuzu excuses herself from Karin’s side, where she is most likely to find trouble, and smooths the wrinkles from her kimono as she crosses the room towards her father.
He has put on possibly the best show of them all - greeting everyone with an empty, enthusiastic smile, cheeks and jaw covered in the beginnings of a beard, the sensitive skin under his eyes so dark it seemed bruised. (She and Karin have matching half-moons under their eyes, Yuzu knows, because faking-but-not-really a death takes up a lot of valuable sleeping time.)
Yuzu sniffs, her eyes watering, from the incense or her father’s faked depression, or the depression he’s passing off as fake, or some combination of the three, maybe. Her mind is so tangled with lies and deceptions, tied together and shoved in a box, wrapped up and tied again; she is starting to forget what she’s supposed to be feeling. Ichigo is fine, she knows, but she won’t be seeing much of him, even if he’s going off to do what he wants more than anything, which she supports, despite the dangers he has and surely will face. Ichigo is strong, though, and she knows that he-
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
The words jar her more than physically running into Doctor Kishimoto does, as his large hands steady her so gently she hardly noticed bouncing off of his back. Her face flushes, the tears stinging her eyes a little more prominently, and Yuzu rambles off three apologies before the doctor can blink.
He nods and his hands leave her shoulders, a chill left behind, and Yuzu gets the urge to look around for Ichigo, or her dad, but she keeps her eyes on Doctor Kishimoto, apologizing again. As if he doesn’t hear a word she’s saying, he looks over her shoulder at her father. Behind him, Yuzu can see Karin giving her a questioning look, and she wants to shrug, but settles for an eye movement that should convey the same thing. Karin shrugs in return, still watching.
Doctor Kishimoto turns back to her, eyes dark and somber. He seems much older than she remembers him being. “Take care of your father, girl. He’s going to have a hard time with this.”
Her lips pull themselves into the caricature of a smile and she nods her head once. “Of course,” she says, voice soft, and extracts herself from that situation as soon as possible. Yuzu checks on her father, mind so carefully blank that it should gleam like the counter tops after she’s cleaned the kitchen. Her dad gives her a one-armed hug that leaves her feeling colder than Doctor Kishimoto’s hands. When no one can hear them, he thanks her for helping put together the funeral and the memorial service. He says Ichigo is going to be so pleased with how things turned out. Something sharp and hot breaks inside of Yuzu, flooding her veins like adrenaline.
It makes her over-warm and shaky like adrenaline, too. Yuzu knows her stiff shoulders and white knuckles, quickly stuffed deep into the sleeves of her kimono, give her away to Karin, who corners her not even ten minutes after Yuzu leaves their father’s side. She asks half a dozen questions in less than a minute, eyes roaming over Yuzu’s face for the answers.
The blank surface of her mind shatters and it feels like falling into the tangled mess below, when Karin crowds her, eyes narrow and furious. Yuzu shatters, too. She throws her arms around Karin’s waist, face buried in the collar of kimono Karin wears, which matches her own, and tries her hardest not to cry. The impatient pats on her back are only half as comforting as the deep sigh Karin exhales, the way she keeps a look out over Yuzu’s shoulder as she hides her face in Karin’s collar while she pulls it together. It takes her longer than either of them would like. Karin keeps watch, though, and mutters a few kind things, eyebrows scrunched together in confused irritation.
“What was that? Are you alright?” Karin hisses as she follows Yuzu back into the crowd.
“It’s just more stressful than I thought it would be,” she says over her shoulder, before stepping towards a hesitant sympathy giver. Karin disappears at the whiff of responsibility coming from the situation. Yuzu does her best to look devastated and placating, molding herself into the mourning little sister.
The sense of helplessness she feels is not faked. The unfairness she sees in the situation cannot be changed. She ties these things together, ties them to lies she has to tell, and sells the whole box with watery brown eyes and a mournful smile. The best lies are rooted in the truth, she reminds herself.
So, Yuzu continues with the show she must put on, speaking endlessly of Ichigo's better qualities and notable actions. It seems like half of his class showed up, plus people he met from the year of college Dad forced him through, as well as all the Kurosaki family friends and acquaintances. Even Urahara Kisuke is here, the two children in his care seeming far more somber than the sweetshop keeper as they trail after him. Yuzu avoids him. She likes Ururu and Jinta well enough, but something about the intelligent gleam of Urahara's eyes, or maybe the lazy smile he always wears, sets her on edge. Karin is happy enough to entertain him, anyhow, and Yuzu does much better with the old doctors and sweet school girls roaming the room. They each play to their strengths.
Which is why, when she and Karin are sipping lukewarm cups of tea together and Inoue Orihime approaches them, she is not surprised that Karin makes herself scarce. Yuzu holds back a sigh, pulls her lips into a smile, and offers Inoue the now empty seat next to her. She accepts with obvious hesitation, though her eyes are finally dry, which relieves Yuzu. She will surely start crying, too, if Inoue tears up again.
Inoue pours herself a cup of tea, after she refreshes Yuzu's with a small smile. They sit in silence for several minutes, simply sipping their drinks, staring into the crowd of people gathered to mourn Ichigo. A tall young woman with glasses notices Inoue sitting and starts to approach, but settles for a wave when she sees Yuzu next to her. Yuzu knows there is a small group of her own old schoolmates here, despite the fact that Yuzu mostly keeps to herself nowadays. Does Inoue still speak to her old schoolmates? Ichigo certainly didn't. Unless they tracked him down or ran into him at the corner store, Ichigo only spoke to a handful of people in Karakura Town. She's probably spoken to more people about him today than he spoke to in the last year.
"Do you think half of these people have spoken to Ichigo since he started university?" Yuzu asks, hands wrapped around her cup.
Inoue blinks at her, a little stupidly, but then she gives a tiny little laugh, soft enough only Yuzu can hear, and her eyes crinkle up in such a sweet way that Yuzu feels bad for thinking poorly of her. "You know," says Inoue with a secret smile, "I bet it's been even longer than that, for most of them."
The conversation fizzles and dies there. Yuzu could pick it up with an effort, but she doesn't mind this silence, so much. People see that she is sitting with a friend of Ichigo's and keep a polite distance. It's almost easy to breathe again after a while. Inoue fidgets, with her long hair and her long skirt and her long fingers, constantly drawing Yuzu's attention with her movements, so she knows the peace is only temporary. As predicted, Inoue breaks it with a soft clearing of her throat. Yuzu turns and gives the woman her full attention, owing it to her for both the bit of peace and her being Ichigo's friend.
With pursed lips, Inoue glances around them, until she's satisfied that they have enough privacy to speak. She surprises Yuzu when she reaches for her hand, but Yuzu lets Inoue wrap both of her hands around Yuzu's, long fingers overlapping, squeezing. She starts to speak quietly, but ardently.
"I tried to talk him into waiting, even though I knew he didn't like the idea." Inoue doesn't use Ichigo's name, keeping her eyes on the crowd. Yuzu knows who she is talking about, anyway. "It was the first time he's ever gotten angry at me, and I'm sure it was just because I was sort of pushy about it, but he never listens. I tried to tell him. I begged him to stay for another decade, a few more years. He would be just as strong, or stronger, by then! And he would be around for so much more."
"You argued with Ichigo?" Yuzu asks, dumbly, trying to catalogue all the information Inoue is dumping on her at once.
Those long fingers grip Yuzu's so tightly that she wants to draw away. She looks up at Inoue, and does pull back a bit when she sees the steel in the woman's gaze. Inoue has never looked at her so seriously, or spoke with such gravity. "Yes, because he is only thinking of himself, and not what he's doing: leaving his family behind, throwing his life away in this world. He's being selfish."
Some distant part of Yuzu is aware that Inoue finds this to be personally devastating, and she looks far less impressed with Ichigo than usual. However, she is rolling Inoue's words around in her mind. He is only thinking of himself. Leaving his family behind. He's being selfish.
"I told him that he doesn't know what it is like to lose a brother, and he is cruel to put his sisters through it."
Arguments spring to Yuzu's mind, but they all die before they reach her lips, either too flimsy or just plain untrue. She is losing Ichigo. He may not be unreachable to her in the realm of the dead, but he won't be here. He won't be living at home, hanging around the clinic, taking classes at the university in town. He will be training with other Shinigami, fighting Hollows, dressing in black robes and straw sandals. Ichigo will be preoccupied with souls and Shinigami. Yuzu will be working at the clinic and studying for classes. He will be lost to her.
Yuzu excuses herself from Inoue as soon as she can, and reminds herself that this is what Ichigo wants. It is everything he has worked towards. There was even some big to-do between the Captains and the Something 46, who didn't want Ichigo to become a Shinigami, and all dozen Divisions threatened to revolt if her brother wasn't given special permission. She can remember the tears in his eyes when the Captain with the eyepatch showed up to give him an invitation to the Shinigami School.
And hours later, when the clinic is clear of grieving neighbors and clueless acquaintances, when there is a party raging in the living room and her kitchen, Yuzu reminds herself again that this is what Ichigo wants. Her brother deserves to be happy. He’s been through so much. This is what will make him happy.
It doesn’t stop her from wondering if she’s supposed to be happy for him, as she carries his urn up the stairs, unwilling to leave it with the Shinigami drinking and dancing and celebrating their newest recruit.
It is not the people who approach her that make the next funeral difficult; it is the people who whisper, too loudly, behind her back.
“…can’t imagine what the loss of the clinic will do to the area,” one says, clucking her tongue.
“Haven’t you heard?” another answers. “His daughter, there, the pretty one, is taking over. She’s been studying at the hospital under that Doctor Ishida…”
She fails to light an incense three times in a row when she overhears someone’s hissing voice in the crowd, recalling, “…Kurosaki was the hottest doctor in town…”
She closes her eyes and fights the urge to laugh when the woman she walks up behind leans over to her companion to say, “He must have been a man of simple taste. His son’s funeral, the redheaded one, you remember? It was so much more extravagant. Or maybe his daughters are just cheap.”
“…can only imagine how she must feel. It’s like tragedy haunts this family, or something, I swear. Oh, you know I don’t mean it rudely, but think about it…”
“…uncanny, really, how much she looks like her mother. You’re probably too young to remember the doctor’s wife…”
“…she can’t help the weather, Mother. Miss Kurosaki is likely just as upset to see it starting to rain as you are…”
The wake alone is enough to have her hiding her hands in her sleeves and curling her toes in her shoes; the day of her father’s funeral, Yuzu hears so many conversations about herself that she loses count of them. She wants to run away from everyone. She wants to open her mouth and scream, to shove them all out of the door of her clinic, her home, when they whisper about her there, too. They say she is “dutiful, as a daughter should be,” but also, “overreaching, for a woman,” since there’s no way she could ever set the same standard of care as "her father, a seasoned physician used to the bloodier side of the work.”
She thinks it should help that they speak of Karin, too, but it doesn’t. She doesn’t like hearing them call her sister “fickle” and “too concerned with her career.” Yuzu knows that Karin has been “skyrocketing towards stardom” with her soccer career; she’s the one who argued with her father to postpone his death until both of his daughters were in the country, after all. The whispering doesn’t say a thing about Karin taking a three month long break from her back-to-back games or training sessions, without Yuzu asking, or the way she’s sleeping in her old room, the one they shared before Yuzu took Ichigo’s room, and how it mysteriously has two twin beds shoved in the corners again.
They don’t know everything, Yuzu tells herself. They know almost nothing.
She has to stifle a smile at the thought. It’s the first thing that’s made her want to laugh in days. Yuzu reminds herself that they are all ignorant of her father’s real plans, his real life, now that he’s legally dead. They don’t know that he’s not dead, really, but returning to his old life, a life they also have no clue about, funnily enough. She's keeping so many secrets, she's losing count of them.
Yuzu makes a little game out of it as she goes through the motions of the memorial service. Isshin’s huge portrait isn’t sitting atop a table, but hanging on the wall and flanked by slightly smaller images of his son and wife. She stands right underneath them, trades kind words and well wishes and bittersweet memories with anyone who approaches her, and all the while, she makes a list of the things these people do not know. She hits twenty before the first person walks away, thirty when Karin pops back up at her side for couple of minutes, sixty by the time she excuses herself from the line of mourners to get a drink.
Her head is dizzy with secrets and numbers. She takes a room temperature water bottle from the drink spread and forgets to open it until Karin asks why it’s in her hand. The water sits warm and uncomfortable in her stomach, so Yuzu starts counting again. She thinks if she reaches one hundred by the time this thing is over, she’ll make herself something nice for dinner.
They don't know about the Gotei 13, or the Captains, or the noble families of the Seireitei, or even the Seireitei itself. No one has any idea that my father got his entire family stripped of their titles. They don't even know he has family, beyond Karin and I.
Yuzu keeps counting, keeps her amusement to herself. The last guests trickle out the door two and a half hours later, and Yuzu’s list stands at number one hundred and sixty-two. She is dead on her feet with dreams of takeout and a hot shower dancing in her head when her father comes dancing down the stairs in his brand new gigai, since she and Karin will be accompanying the old one to an incinerator tomorrow. Karin starts an argument with him before he steps off the stairs. Ichigo, Rukia, Renji, Histuguya, Matsumoto all follow him down the stairs in a loud, impatient line, the last one shaking several bottles of sake in her fists. Yuzu remembers that both Ganju and Kuukaku are hiding somewhere on the property, too.
“You aren’t getting your Captaincy back!” Hitsuguya barks at her father, who laughs loudly, slapping the scowling man on the back.
“I’m not even officially a Shinigami,” Isshin says. “Just trying to get the Shiba clan reinstated.”
He is reminded of the seriousness of this endeavor when cousin Kuukaku grabs him in a headlock and smashes her fist into his head repeatedly, grinding the message into his thick skull. Karin grins ear to ear like she’s just won another championship game. She laughs and cheers Kuukaku on, ignoring Isshin’s whining. She isn't the only one, either. Matsumoto waves the sake bottles around, clanking and cheering, while Renji roots for Isshin.
“The old goat couldn’t make it as a Shinigami nowadays,” Ichigo laughs, throwing an arm around Karin, who looks like she thinks about shrugging it off but decides not to, “if he’s getting soft enough to be taken by surprise that easily.”
Karin huffs a laugh and says, "Dad doesn't stand a chance against anything smarter than a brick wall."
“You make a good point, Ichigo. Can’t let your guard down when you’re guarding the Seireitei!”
“Jinzen aside, you should always be focused on your surroundings.”
“I can remember a few times when your temper got the better of you, Captain, and careful observation went out the window!”
Yuzu stands beneath the pictures of her parents and her brother, staring at her father and siblings encircled by black-clad gods of death. They are so much happier standing in front of her than they are posed behind her. She has no idea what they’re talking about, can’t follow the conversation half as well as Karin, who starts asking about jinzen and zanpakuto with the same shine in her eye that Ichigo answers with. Yuzu doesn’t know how to jump in the conversation. She doesn’t know how to disappear without looking rude, later, when someone notices. Her list is something curled and bitter, now, because she is the one who doesn't know anything.
A roar of laughter comes after something cousin Ganju asks, and Yuzu startles, blinking away tears. She knows that it is dinner time, and they have the right ingredients to make her father’s favorite, so she haunts the kitchen while they get the party going in another room. Yuzu sings to herself as she chops up the fish and the onion. She laughs at herself when she spills the water on the way to the rice maker and has to go back to the sink. She asks herself if someone has noticed she’s missing, and answers herself when no one comes looking for an hour or so. She makes her family dinner, presents it to them and their company with a smile, and eats it without tasting a thing.
It is Yuzu’s choice alone to give Karin as private a funeral as she can manage. When asked about her wake and other services, Karin simply shrugged, leaving it up to Yuzu, who is dutiful and used to planning these things, by now. She attends the very public service that her sister’s soccer team holds, shaking the hands of fans in place of Karin, thanking teammates as though she played out on the field with them herself. It is almost as bad as listening to everyone’s opinions on “the new Doctor Kurosaki” when her father passed.
Yuzu still manages to catch her newest title at Karin’s funeral, attended by less than twenty people and held as early as possible. She is standing by the grave and speaking with Tatsuki and Inoue, the only two faces she’s been pleased to see so far, about the plaque being put up at their old school in Karin’s honor. The day is cool and Yuzu has her arms wrapped around herself, and she is so very glad to have that singular anchor to herself when the wind brings her the a moniker, whispered by a voice she can’t place over the roar of her blood.
The last Kurosaki.
She hasn’t thought of tha, until now. Of course, Yuzu realized years ago she would be the last living member of her family - as her dad, her sister, her brother all kept one eye on the realm of the dead and one foot out of the door for most of her life. Yuzu realized years ago that the only one of them who wasn’t leaving her willingly was her mother. Yuzu realized years ago that she would be the only Kurosaki hanging around the world of the living.
Now, she realizes that she’s the only Kurosaki running Kurosaki Clinic, the only Kurosaki living there, too. She’s the only Doctor Kurosaki, and now the only Doctor Kurosaki’s Daughter. The only Doctor Kurosaki’s Kid, even.
The only Kurosaki.
The last Kurosaki.
Yuzu drowns in these thoughts all day, and all night, she thinks, because those words are printed across her eyelids before she even opens them. They are always there. The last Kurosaki. The words haunt her. She is always there, and now she’s the only one here - the only Kurosaki, the last Kurosaki - and she can’t stop thinking about it.
Karin skips her own funeral, only comes to the world of the living on the day the crowd arrives at the clinic to honor her memory, and then to gawk at the crowd outside the gates of the clinic, cheering her name. She gapes at the ceiling of Yuzu’s bedroom, laying on the only bed in the house that doesn’t have sterile sheets, listening to them chant her name as they wave around her jersey number.
“Ka-rin! Ka-rin! Ka-rin!”
The noise is starting to give her a headache. She has hopes they’ll quiet down when it is time for the service to officially start, or even when the last of the guests arrive. She could always send someone out there, of course, but the edges of Karin’s fame make her uncomfortable and tense; Yuzu doesn’t want to force that on someone else.
“It’s like they know you’re here,” she says, tying her obi and grinning at Karin in an attempt to lighten her own mood.
Karin scoffs, flopping over on her stomach. “Those idiots couldn’t dream of what I’m up to.”
Yuzu drops the end of the obi she’s trying to tuck away and hastily picks it back up, fixing it in place without taking her eyes off the snow white silk. The pride in Karin’s voice makes Yuzu even more uncomfortable than the crowd outside. She takes careful, stiff steps to her vanity. Karin lazily watches Yuzu finish getting ready, only opening her mouth to compliment the earrings Yuzu chose and argue for a different shade of lipstick. Yuzu takes the advice even if she doesn’t think that Saccharine will look better than Stella Rosea.
More importantly than her lipstick shade, she doesn’t know if this will ever happen again. Yuzu and Karin have spent thousands of hours getting ready in a shared room, swapping snipes and shirts, tucking in stray tags or obi ends, complaining about whatever they’ve been roped into attending. As a twin, Yuzu has more memory of shared space than privacy. She has been with Karin more than without.
Things will be very different, now. Karin won’t be an hour away in the city at the soccer field, or a phone call away, even. Karin will be a world away.
It ends too soon. There is a weight in her chest, a weight that keeps reminding her she is alive, and Yuzu welcomes everyone to the memorial service with a very believable redness around her eyes half an hour later. Everyone greets her with soft nods and soothing words. Yuzu swans through all of it with her lips painted into a pretty, pink smile that doesn’t reach her red eyes.
She has flashes of genuine interaction. Sado puts a huge hand on her shoulder as he looks at the ground, sorrow welled up in his big, warm eyes. He leaves not long after that. Yuzu isn't surprised by that, or that he came, but she is warmed by his care. Tatsuki finds her next. She wraps her firm arms around Yuzu's waist and hugs her fiercely. Yuzu digs her fingers into the woman’s strong, steady shoulders for a long second, surprised and grateful. Only minutes after that, Inoue presses a tin of tea into her hands, tied with a purple ribbon.
“It’s mint and lavender,” she says, wiping her eyes after glancing at the image of Karin displayed on the table behind them. “Both are very calming, and the lavender can help you sleep, too.”
Yuzu clears her throat, whispers, “Thank you, Inoue.” She holds the tin close to her chest long after Inoue walks away, and jumps when someone offers to take it to the kitchen for her. Blushing, Yuzu puts it away herself, glad for an excuse to step away from the mourners.
It almost feels like a trap when she turns around from putting the tea away and finds two men standing in the doorway, silent and solemn. She takes a deep breath and pastes another smile on, trying to figure out what Uryuu and his father could possibly want from her. Doctor Ishida wasn’t invited to Karin’s service, though Uryuu has a standing invitation as a friend of the family, so she supposes he could have simply come with his son, but she has no clue as to why. Yuzu mostly speaks to him on business, since she has started running the clinic instead of working under him at the hospital.
“I would say I’m sorry for your loss, Doctor Kurosaki, but we both know it’s not quite that simple. I am sorry for your charade would be more suitable, I think,” Doctor Ishida says, by way of greeting. It’s quite warm, for him, really, Yuzu notes. A full two sentences.
“Doctor Ishida,” she says, nodding to him, polite as always. “Thank you for your… kind words. I didn’t expect to see you today; your concern is touching.”
His sharp eyes narrow even further and amusement bubbles up in Yuzu’s throat. It would be wrong to be caught giggling after her last family member’s death. Thinking about it that way only makes it harder to keep the laughter from escaping her, so Yuzu grits her teeth and smiles sweetly at her guests. Doctor Ishida is having none of it.
“I was informed,” by Uryuu, she interprets by the cut of his eyes towards his son, “that you’re now the last Kurosaki in Karakura Town.”
The words take the breath from her lungs and the strength from her bones. Yuzu fights the urge to grip the counter beside her; she does not let her knees shake, no matter how hard she has to grit her teeth instead. Her smile does not shatter as easily as her heart. “Yes, I’m the only one who hasn’t left town,” she says, arching an eyebrow.
“We came to offer our condolences, of course,” Uyruu interrupts, “but also to speak with you, Yuzu.”
His father cuts straight to the point, straight through the jugular. “Your mother was a part of my family, once, and should you find the need, you are free to consider yourself the same.”
“Doctor-”
Uryuu does not let her finish. “I live five minutes away, Yuzu. You have no excuse not to call me if you need something; I told you that when your idiot brother passed on years ago, but I think you need the reminder.”
Her lungs weigh much more than they should suddenly, or maybe she’s inhaled water, except she didn’t come to the kitchen for water. Yuzu takes a step backwards. Her hand clenches around the counter top next to her, skin stretched tight over her knuckles. “My brother…”
“The Gotei 13 does not call to everyone, and only fools rush into anything. You have the number to my private line at the hospital. My son has given you the means to contact him. I will be going, but I expect to hear from you soon, Doctor. Have a good evening.”
Yuzu watches him sweep from the room with the flair of a super villain, a heart of solid, chilled gold in his chest. A minute and an apology later, Uyruu traces his steps with a much more rigid grace. She puts both hands on the counter, curls over it, and forces herself not to be sick. The sink and trash can are seconds away, but she will not need them. She will keep it together. She will get through the service and see Karin off to Urahara’s Shoten and his Senkaimon. She will.
She does.
She bites her tongue and grins at Karin’s bouncing, excited steps, her eager tone, her gleaming eyes. She hugs her goodbye and waves until the Senkaimon is shut, declining the offer of dinner Tessai pushes, as she has more to do today. She leaves the shop while making a phone call, to assure Tessai that she is not making up excuses, and to keep Urahara’s watchful gaze at bay.
He may mean well. He may be watching her at Ichigo’s request, or Dad’s, or even Karin’s. She still does not trust him. She still does not want anything to do with questionable business, shady motives, and sickly sweet words. Yuzu doesn’t want to commit her life to the realm of the dead just yet. She has her own plans.
Yuzu attends the cremation ceremony alone, for the first time. She is more stoic than the last times, though it is jarring to be recognized by a few of the employees, and she turns in on herself after that, no longer applying her usual aggressive politeness. It is over quickly. She thinks she will breathe easier, as she leaves the building, but her breathe catches in her throat when the evening air hits her.
The sky has lost the lazy blue of afternoon and slipped closer to darkness, streetlights flickering weakly against the setting of the sun. She’s late to making dinner. The image of her sitting alone at the Kurosaki dinner table eats away at her, destroying any appetite she may have had. Yuzu tightens her arms around the box she holds, though hugging Karin’s ashes only makes her feel much, much worse. She sighs, upset with herself for being upset, and shivers when the wind picks up.
Yuzu tries to zip her coat, hands shaking, while she keeps a grip on the box at all times. She tries once, twice, three times, and stomps her foot, frustration building, and then, of course, it starts to rain, and the building doesn’t have an awning or anything overhead.
She is shivering and trying to wipe the rain from her face and not drop Karin’s ashes, and she is alone, and Yuzu thinks this may be the worst day of her life.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” someone calls, startling her, and Yuzu whips her head up to see Uryuu approaching her, pace brisk, eyebrows drawing in concern when she sees her. “Yuzu? Is everything alright?”
Uryuu looks down at her with a startled expression, mouth opening and closing quickly. She thinks there is a flash of anger in his sharp eyes, or it could be the way his glasses catch the light as he glances down at his coat. He pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and Yuzu blinks at him in surprise. Who actually carries a handkerchief? It's even embroidered with his surname in the corner. She’s even more surprised when he offers it to her.
It hits her, then, that there are no clouds in the sky, only the beginnings of the stars, and it is not raining. She laughs as she mops up her face, one-handed and exhausted. Laughing has to be better than crying, she tries to reassure herself, even if her company doesn't reassure her in the least. Uryuu does not so much as crack a smile. He looks like his father, though she won’t say that to him.
She isn’t sure what to say to him.
“My father insisted I use his car to pick you up this evening, so your ride home will be shorter, but obeying all those tedious traffic laws held me up. I know I said I would be here when you finished. I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Thank you,” Yuzu says, feeling both sincere and lacking. She follows him to the car and doesn’t say anything when he braces himself against the steering wheel, whole body rigid, and starts towards her house at a snail’s pace. The drive takes twice as long as the train would have, and Yuzu drinks in every second of it. Uryuu insists on seeing her to the door. He leaves her with a reminder to call, and a lingering look.
Yuzu wishes she could wrap Uryuu’s kindness around her shoulders, shield her heart with his father’s protectiveness, keep herself warm with the burning anger they all do not speak of, that is not aimed anywhere in particular, since no one is around to take the blame. Instead, she thanks him again and waves until the car is gone, faded into the darkness of the horizon.
It is well past dinner time. Yuzu shrugs the box in her arms in one side and fumbles through her purse for her keys. She walks into the house alone.