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“Don’t be such a goody-two shoes!” Keigo jeered. “It’ll be fun. Do you remember fun, old man?”
“Eh, shut it.” Ichigo ran a hand through his hair. “I tell you shit that ghosts say all the time. Don’t know why we need to bring hasbro into this.”
“Obviously because you could be lying!” Keigo said, brandishing the brand new ouija board at him.
“Then why do I need to be here?”
“So we know if a ghost really shows up.”
“But if I’m lying-”
Chad’s hand on his shoulder cut Ichigo off. “Just let it go man,” Mizuiro said. “You know how he gets. He’s got one brain cell in there just pinging around.”
Ichigo snorted.
“Get over yourself and just have fun with your friend, tough guy,” Tatsuki scolded, taking a seat.
They had stayed after school, pushing desks together to make a large table for the wooden printed board Keigo had bought at a kids toy store. For all his complaining, everyone knew that Ichigo would have left if he really wanted to. He had plenty of time while the guys waited around for Tatsuki’s club to end. He sat down next to her, leaning back in his chair while Keigo ran around setting up.
According to the internet, the first rule for a seance was “ambience”. He threw a purple sheet over the desks. The raw edges made it obvious it was scrap fabric from his mom’s shop. While he positioned the board, everyone else took a flashlight from their bags and turned them on. They laid them on desks, all around them, to create the right mood. Keigo ran over to the light switch. He flipped it off, leaving the room to be lit by the orange sunset and a handful of bright white beams.
“Okay, everyone put a finger on the planchette,” Mizuiro instructed, while Keigo took his seat on Tatsuki’s other side.
“Why do you get to be in charge?” Keigo pouted, but followed his order.
“The rules say not to annoy any spirits,” Mizuiro shrugged. He had perfected his ‘innocent face’ over the years, and all Keigo could do was pout at him. Ichigo snickered, serves him right.
Keigo opened his mouth to argue but Tatsuki cut him off. “Let’s get this going! Some of us have places to be.”
Mizuiro nodded. “And thanks for coming Tatsuki. It’s supposed to work best with a mixed gender group. Now all together, we move the planchette in a circle, to warm it up.” They all pushed, making the planchette spin on the board. “Ah, let’s all go clockwise.”
“This is dumb,” Ichigo said. “Moving some little wooden chip in circles isn’t gonna summon a ghost. Either they’re listening or they aren’t.”
“Is anyone here?” Mizuiro called. “We’d like to speak to you. Maybe someone who died here a long time ago. Maybe a former student. Anyone who is open to communicating with us.”
“What the hell,” Ichigo barked, jumping in his seat. The board had started to glow a pale blue light, and someone slowly rose out of it. She had black hair, which curled gently in towards her face, and then splayed out at the bottoms, and was dressed in a purple kimono with flowers on it. When she opened her eyes, they were bright violet.
“I told you it would work!”
“Wait, Ichigo, really?”
“Yeah,” he stared at the woman, who floated in a beam of light coming from the board. Her toes skimmed the printed letters.
“What does it look like?” Keigo gasped.
“Uh, she’s a woman. Dark hair. Round face. Short.” The spirit’s eyes flashed, and she looked over at him, in an obvious show of annoyance.
Tatsuki snorted. “Total ladies man.”
“Careful, Ichigo,” Chad warned, in his low rumbling voice.
“What do we ask her?”
“Ah, I don’t know actually,” Mizuiro scratched at his cheek. “You guy have any ideas?”
“How did you die?” Keigo yelled.
“Idiot, everyone knows you don’t ask that. How would you like it?” Tatsuki used her free hand to shove his shoulder, but the planchette had already started to move.
D-O-N-T-K-N-O-W
“You don’t know how you died?” Ichigo asked, looking up at her.
YES
What’s your name?” Chad asked.
R-U-K-I-A
“Rukia, huh? She sounds cute. Ichigo, is she cute?”
He looked up at her. Her eyes shone in the dark, the most unnatural purple he had ever seen. Her face was the shape of a dumpling, but there was something about it. It was the face of a good person. Someone people want to be around.
“No comment,” he said, praying the room was too dark to see the heat licking at his face. He looked away, but not quick enough to miss how the spirit was glaring at him again.
“Oo, cold.”
Tatsuki laughed. “Get real, that’s Ichigo speak for yes.”
“Is it nice over there?” Chad asked, voice tense in a way Ichigo had never seen before. His free hand hovered over the medallion he wore, in a rare show of insecurity. The spirit’s face softened.
YES
“What a waste of a question,” Keigo complained. Ichigo started to tell him off, and Tatsuki upgraded to slugging him. Keigo just yelled over them. “Well, what are you gonna do if it’s not? Just not die? Good luck with that. We should ask more about the girl.”
Tatsuki groaned. “I’m not sticking around to watch you hit on a dead girl. For all you know she’s like, fifty.”
“What, no. Rukia, how old are you?”
1-5-0
Tatsuki’s laugh was half bark. “Told ya so!”
“So she died in the 1800’s,” Mizuiro said thoughtfully, drowning out Keigo’s disappointed whining.
“Oh, what’s the grossest thing you’ve ever seen?”
“Why?” Chad asked.
“It was a different time,” Keigo shrugged. “I bet she’s seen all kinds of things, like people dying in the street and gross diseases.”
The spirit had a small frown on her face, then the planchette started to move.
I-C
Ichigo felt his eye start to twitch. Next to him, Tatsuki was snickering. This had better not go where he thought it was.
H-I-G-O
The spirit finished, grinning at Ichigo with a wicked, triumphant gleam in her eyes. On the other side of the table, Keigo and Mizuiro were wheezing theatrically, clinging to each other to stay upright. Ichigo leapt to his feet, sticking his pointer finger in her face. “Screw off!” he yelled, “I don’t wanna hear that shit from someone with boils all over their face and green teeth!”
“Oh my god,” Tatsuki snorted, burying her head in her hands.
L-I-A-R the board said. The planchette rattled, jumping from letter to letter, but no one was paying attention. Rukia made a fist and held it up, looking like she’d like to sock Ichigo in the nose. She leaned forward, looming over him. Ichigo loomed back. With him on his feet and her floating over the table, they were almost eye to eye. And Ichigo was not about to be intimidated by someone barely over five feet tall.
Keigo choked. “And she STILL thinks you’re the grossest thing she’s ever seen!”
Mizuiro hummed. “Maybe we all look gross to her, if that’s what she’s like.”
Ichigo stuck his tongue out at her, raising a hand next to his head and waving the fingers around tauntingly, while Rukia just continued to seethe.
“Is she saying anything?” Chad asked.
“Nah, nothing this whole time. Hey, can you speak?”
“Maybe it’s something to do with the board.”
“I bet we just have to invite her,” Keigo said. “Dead lady, we hereby invite you-” “Rukia,” Chad supplied, while Mizuiro took his hand away from the board and clamped it over Keigo’s struggling mouth. “-to stay here and hang out with us, as long as you want- ... -and make fun of Ichigo some more.”
Rukia drifted away from the table, the gentle movement undermined by the irate expression she had on. “You fool, I don’t look like that at all! Is there something wrong with your eyes, or is it your head?”
“Well it worked, dumbass. If she kills us all, it’s your fault,” Ichigo told them. He flung himself back onto his chair, leaning it onto the back two legs.
“Nice!” Keigo cheered.
“I’ll have you know, I’m a very respected woman who wouldn’t dream of killing someone as inconsequential as you,” the ghost huffed. She had drifted over, next to Ichigo’s seat. “And if I were to kill you, it’d be your own stupid fault.”
“Yeah well – AH!” Ichigo yelled, arms flying up out of reflex, as his chair flipped onto the floor. The others went quiet, staring down at him. Ichigo, on his back on the floor, stared up at the shit eating grin on Rukia’s face.
“We’re gonna die!” Keigo yelped, hightailing it out of the room. Mizuiro, laughing nervously, inched out of the room after him.
“Ichigo, you okay?” Chad asked, extending a hand.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, letting his giant friend pull him onto his feet. “Guess I’m not too inconsequential to fuck with though, am I?”
Rukia shrugged, still grinning. She grinned all the way out of the school, and then all the way to Ichigo’s house. “You’d better look out. My family isn’t like those morons from school. They can all see ghosts, and they’ll banish your ass.”
Rukia only shrugged. She glowed a faint white light in the dark, unlike anything Ichigo had seen from a ghost before. Maybe it was because he had invited her through. He paused to fix an offering on the side of the street. The ghost of the little girl who died there waved from behind a telephone pole. Rukia must’ve been scaring her off. He shot a glare at her, just to notice the soft look she was giving him.
“Not as much of a punk as you pretend.”
“Tch, shaddup.” He got back to his feet, continuing the walk home. “I never said anything about being a punk. If you thought I was, that's your own problem.” The soft look hung around on Rukia’s face, tinged with a hint of appraisal, all the way to Ichigo’s front door. “Get ready to go home, you nuisance.”
She floated into the house after him, eyes surveying the room. “Are you some kind of nobility?”
“Oh, Ichi-nii. You brought another ghost back with you,” Yuzu appeared from the kitchen to welcome him home.
“Yeah, that idiot Keigo wanted to mess around with a ouija board and I got roped in.”
Yuzu flinched. “Ichi-nii, ouija can invite some really dangerous stuff...”
“Yeah, well I wasn’t gonna let them do it on their own.”
“Dad! Karin! Ichigo brought something home,” Yuzu called, voice squeaky with fear.
“Someone,” Rukia corrected, primly. The rest of the Kurosaki’s rushed into the room, and before Ichigo knew it, Rukia had jumped into a sob story about dying as an infant. The urgency faded, and they formed a semi-circle around her. And where the hell did she get that tissue she was pressing to her cheek? “-abandoned on the streets by my sister, and I died shortly after, but all this time I’ve just wanted to see what a real life looks like.”
“For the love of-” Ichigo groaned over the sound of Yuzu and Isshin sobbing.
“She can stay, can’t she Dad?”
“Of course she can! Welcome to the family, third daughter!”
Rukia turned away from them, hugging each other because they couldn’t hug Rukia, and grinned at Ichigo. She shot him a thumbs up and he rolled his eyes. “Don’t you think you’re being a little obvious?” But the only person who seemed to notice was Karin, who had decided that at least Rukia wasn’t a threat.
Karin shrugged at him. “Guess you have a roommate.”
--
By the time they all sat down for dinner, Yuzu had completely forgotten to be afraid of Rukia. She explained to the ghost what they were eating, how it was made, how it tasted. Rukia offered a few scraps about the afterlife in return. She had died as an infant, but in the afterlife spirits age, or de-age, erratically, until one day it stopped for no apparent reason. Ichigo listened without joining in, resolutely turned away from Rukia. Even someone who could see ghosts didn’t learn much about the afterlife. Most of the ghosts Ichigo saw hadn’t passed on yet. And yet Rukia was such a goddamn gremlin he couldn’t bring himself to show interest.
When supper was over Ichigo started up the stairs to his bedroom, only to stop when he saw Rukia floating after him. “Where the hell d’you think you’re going?” he shouted.
Rukia blinked at him, like she was reevaluating his intelligence. “I’m following you?”
“Well don’t. I’m going to my bedroom, where I sleep,” he told her. “You can’t follow me there.”
“Why not?”
“Yeah, why not nii-san?” Karin snickered.
“You and your friends summoned her here, you should look after her,” Yuzu called from the kitchen, where she was supervising Isshin's dinner cleanup. During supper Rukia had said she thought she was bound to Ichigo and his friends. That seemed like a load of bullshit but he couldn’t exactly disprove it.
“Dad!” he called.
Isshin came out of the kitchen with a serious expression on. He walked over, clapped a hand on his son’s shoulder, and said, “You’re growing up so fast, son.”
“I hate you,” Ichigo groaned, and turned away. Rukia followed after him with a smug smile that was definitely infuriating, and not adorable. “Just don’t bother me while I’m studying.” He settled down at his desk and pulled a couple of textbooks out of his bag. “I thought I told you not to bother me.”
“Wha- I didn’t do anything!”
“Didn’t say anything, but you’re right up against me reading over my shoulder,” he barked. “Can’t you go in another room?”
Rukia scoffed. “I finally have the chance to see a real human life first hand, I’m not gonna waste my time standing in your boring hallway.”
“Fine,” he bit out. Ichigo pulled open a drawer and took out the new Don Kanonji light novel. Keigo had practically shoved it into his hands and insisted that Ichigo read it. It had lived in the bottom of his desk drawer ever since. “Modern literature, go nuts.”
“What am I supposed to do with that?” Rukia stared at it, where Ichigo dropped it onto his desk.
“Can’t you read?”
“Would you be able to read a closed book?”
“Whatever, smart ass,” he grumbled. He flipped it open to the first page and put an empty glass on the corner to keep it open. The rest of the evening passed quietly. Rukia bothered him to flip the page a few times. When he got up to brush his teeth, Rukia seemed confused, but gave him some space. So at least she knew what a bathroom was.
He had brushed his teeth, turned off the lights, and then gotten into bed, when an uneasy feeling came over him. He opened his eyes to the sight of Rukia, with her ethereal glow, standing in the middle of his dark room and staring at him. “What the hell,” he yelled. “Can’t you find something else to do?”
“I told you,” she scowled. “I can’t go far. Trust me, I’d much rather be somewhere else.”
“Read some more.”
“I caught up.”
“Just – just go stand in the closet. I can’t sleep with you staring at me like some kind of murderer from a B movie.”
Rukia rolled her eyes, but floated through the closed closet door. Ichigo flipped onto his other side, putting his back to her, and ground his teeth together until he fell asleep.
--
The next morning, Ichigo was woken up by a delighted squeal instead of the usual child abuse. A squeal, and a persistent scratching noise. He pulled the covers over his head.
“Good job Rukia, you’re improving!”
“What the hell!” Ichigo flung himself out of bed at the sound of his Dad’s voice. “What are you guys doing?” The two of them were standing hunched over his desk, staring at something.
“I found this in your closet,” Rukia said, holding up a crayon drawing on construction paper. It was a bunny, with a flower on it’s ear, that Ichigo had drawn as a kid. In the corner, his Mom had written ‘Ichigo, Age 4’.
“Chappy...” he mumbled to himself. “So you can pick things up,” he accused. He could feel his eye starting to twitch.
“I figured it out,” Rukia shrugged. “You get boring at night and I needed something to do.”
“I’m not boring, I was asleep! And why the hell are you here, then?” he turned to his Dad.
“I came in to wake you up like every morning, but then I was distracted by the progress my newest daughter is making in her art career,” Isshin grabbed a piece of paper off Ichigo’s desk and held it up. It was an exact copy of the rabbit Ichigo had drawn when he was four. “She’s really getting a handle on using pencils,” Isshin bragged. Next to him, Rukia was beaming. Ichigo’s face heated up.
“Whatever,” he stomped over to his closet to grab a school uniform. The door jammed halfway open. Somehow during the night, every single article of clothing Ichigo had ever owned had found it’s way onto his closet floor. Sprinkled on top, was a box of childhood drawings and toys, and seventeen video games Keigo had insisted Ichigo borrow. He turned back to Rukia.
“I told you I was bored,” she shrugged, still grinning.
--
“Ichigoooooo!” Keigo screamed, running over to him, arms spread wide.
“Morning,” Ichigo said. He caught Keigo by the face before he could do something as ridiculous as hug him.
“I ph-ought you’d be ‘ead,” Keigo said.
“Oh, this guy!” Rukia said. “Tell him I don’t have boils!”
“Tell him yourself,” Ichigo sneered. The three of them walked (or floated) into class, stepping in from the hallway.
“She’s still here?” Keigo started to inch away. “I thought your family would’ve taken care of her.”
“They were gonna, then she played the sad little orphan card and they let her stay,” he said. “And y’know, for someone who thought I was gonna die last night you sure didn’t try to help any.”
One of their other classmates approached them as Ichigo sat down at his desk, Keigo standing next to him. The other guy had slick black hair styled into a point, and wore rectangular glasses which obfuscated his eyes. Ichigo pulled a binder out of his backpack and started getting ready for class.
“You should know not to trust just any ghost, Kurosaki,” the other student said. “Using a ouija board is incredibly irresponsible for someone with your power.”
Ichigo looked up from his notes, and into the other students eyes. “Sorry, who’re you?”
Keigo squeaked. “Dude, that’s Uryu. He’s been in our class all year.” Nothing but the full weight of Uryu’s anger could have kept Keigo from laughing in his face. Rukia snickered behind her hand. Uryu had flinched back, the early morning sun coming in through the windows reflected off of his glasses so that no one could see his eyes.
“Don’t be too hard on him, it’s the disease,” Rukia said.
“I am not diseased!”
“Are you not? I heard some of your classmates talking on the way in. They said it was called ‘Dumb Bitch Disease’?”
Ichigo had to cut off his yelling as Kanda-sensei walked into the room with perfect timing. The others dispersed from around Ichigo’s desk. Rukia, free from classroom rules on account of being dead, stayed next to him in the aisle between desks.
“You should be nicer to your classmates.” Rukia didn’t bother to lower her voice. No one else could hear her, except maybe that Uryu guy, but it was distracting as hell. “I think that guy might find you after class and challenge you to a duel or something.”
“You’re one to talk. Now stop talking, I’m trying to concentrate,” he hissed back at her.
Rukia shrugged and wandered around the class. For a time, Ichigo lost track of her. She had been hovering over Uryu’s shoulder for a while, and he didn’t seem so concerned with her presence anymore. What was it with her and immediately charming anyone who might get Rukia off his back. Next time Ichigo caught sight of her, she was leaning over the weird girl’s desk, staring at her paper.
“What’re you doing?” he hissed. Leave it to Orihime to attract a ghost. She could probably see Rukia too, she just had that kind of vibe. “Get out of here.”
“Kurosaki,” Kanda-sensei barked. Ichigo’s face flushed and he jumped to his feet.
“Yes!?”
“Do you have something to share with the class?”
--
“You looked like you were gonna have an aneurysm!” Keigo howled. The four of them were walking home together after the longest day of Ichigo’s life. Five, if you included Rukia floating along in their shadows.
Mizuiro, for once, didn’t egg Keigo on. Last week his mom had threatened to cut him off from his girlfriend if he failed one more test. He had been flipping through his notes the whole walk home, and it was making Ichigo feel like he was in some weird kind of twilight zone.
“Hm,” Chad hummed in agreement, smiling like an absolute traitor. Ichigo frowned, looking away from them. He ignored the faint huff of a laugh from Rukia, and the way it made it chest jump. Ichigo thanked whoever was out there that Rukia would never have the chance to meet his friends face to face. He could feel a headache coming on just from the thought. But they never would meet... because Rukia was already dead. He frowned, eyebrows meeting in a point above his nose. No one took notice because it was just like to be frowning at nothing, and he continued down that depressing train of thought as they walked along.
“C’mon, let’s go to the arcade,” Keigo said, breathing finally evening out, even as tears continued to pearl up in the corners of his eyes.
“Can’t today. Gotta pick up some paints.”
“Wha-”
“Hey, is there anything weird about your notes today?” Mizuiro asked.
“Nothing,” Chad answered.
“Chizuru drew some creepy rabbit on mine during class,” Keigo shrugged.
Oh no.
“A rabbit like this?” Mizuiro held his notes up for them to see. Rukia was snickering uncontrollably already. If she bit down any harder on her knuckle she would cut the whole damn finger off. There was that headache.
“Yeah! Identical,” Keigo said. “But how did she draw on yours from all the way across class?”
“It wasn’t her,” Mizuiro said. “I heard some of the girls talking before we left. Like five of them had the same rabbit on their notes, even someone from the next room over had it.”
“Whoa, weird.” Keigo started rifling through Chad’s messenger bag, he didn’t seem to mind, just moved an insanely muscled arm out of the way for better access. “You’ve got one too Chad.”
“Just forget about it,” Ichigo groaned. “It’s the damn ghost.”
“It wasn’t Rukia,” Uryu said, appearing out of goddamn nowhere. Ichigo looked up and down the street, and then up in the sky, looking for anywhere he could have sprung from. Nothing. What, did he ride the wind over? “The dr-”
“What the hell’re you doing here?” Ichigo yelled. “And where the hell did you come from?”
“That’s not important,” Uryu replied in deadpan, forehead twitching above his eyebrow. “What’s-”
“The hell it isn’t! Are we sure this guy isn’t a ghost too?”
“Ichigo, calm down.”
“Yeah, me and Mizuiro’ve known him since middle school. Uryu can’t be a ghost.”
“As I was saying,” he continued testily. “The drawings weren’t done by Rukia. The rabbit is named Chappy, and it was the imaginary friend of a little boy who lived in Karakura town, ten years ago. The little boy had no friends, and died by frowning so hard that his face caved in. Now he goes from school to school, drawing Chappy on peoples notes and following them home.”
Ichigo scoffed. There’s no way anyone was buying this. He looked over to Keigo and Mizuiro, who were absolutely buying this. “Very funny,” he said, eyes flickering back and forth between Rukia and Uryu. “They’re making this up.”
“What, how do you know?” Keigo asked, peeking around Mizuiro.
“Yeah, Ichigo,” Rukia laughed. “Do you know Chappy from somewhere else? Maybe you could prove it to them.”
“After all, it’s not like an exorcist would coordinate with a ghost just to embarrass one of his high school classmates, and waste precious resources making himself invisible until the perfect dramatic moment presented itself,” Uryu said, pushing his glasses up so the glare hid his eyes.
Ichigo sighed, and rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Well first of all you can’t die by frowning too hard, that doesn’t even make sense.”
“Yeah, you would’ve been dead a long time ago if that were true,” said Rukia.
Keigo, not hearing her, disagreed. “You know these ghost stories man, it’s always like, a metaphor for something. I bet it was some kind of head trauma, or like a clog fell off the back of a truck into his car and decapitated him, like in a final destination movie.”
“Uuugh. I’m leaving.”
Rukia followed after him, waving goodbye to Uryu. “You really should try to lighten up, Ichigo. You’ll give yourself a headache.”
“No paints for you, Casper,” he snapped.
--
Ichigo was woken that night by a high pitched screaming. “Rukia!” he shouted, jumping out of bed. “What’s goin-” he cut himself off, finally taking a look at her face. In the darkness of his room, the light emanating from her didn’t feel peaceful, like normal, but clammy. Something about it made his skin crawl. She was standing unnaturally straight, and her eyes had a vacant expression. Ichigo hadn’t noticed how much light was in her eyes until it was gone, and he was looking into an empty window. Her mouth hung open, farther than a human’s mouth should, and the screaming...
“Ichi-nii!” yelled Karin, throwing his bedroom door open, Yuzu at her heels, and then their Dad coming in last. “Why is she screaming?”
“Rukia!” Yuzu gasped. She had run to Ichigo’s side and seen Rukia’s face. Yuzu covered her mouth, tears welling up.
“Get out of here,” Ichigo took her by the shoulder and rushed her out of the room, grabbing Karin as they went. He shut the door behind them, standing awkwardly in the hallway. Rukia’s wailing was barely muffled by the thin wooden planks. “Hot chocolate,” he decided, nudging the girls down to the kitchen with him. He sat Yuzu down, then turned on the radio to some dumb pop station. He dug the kettle out while Karin rifled around the cabinets for mini-marshmallows. Ichigo pretended not to notice her hands shaking.
Isshin stayed upstairs the whole time. When the girls were ready to go back to bed, Ichigo crept down the hallway. The screaming hadn’t stopped. He stalked back and grabbed a blanket off the couch, wedging it under the door, and when he walked the girls to their room he took the radio with him. He left it playing for them on Yuzu’s desks while he tucked them in.
“You’ve gotta save her Ichigo,” Karin whispered to him before he could leave. “She’s in so much pain.”
He ran back to his room once the girls were settled in. “What’s wrong with her?” He closed the door behind him, as swiftly as possible, so the noise wouldn’t travel back.
Isshin shook his head, frowning. He dropped his hand, which had been trying to move Rukia’s lower jaw. Somehow the screaming made the room itself that much smaller. He struggled to catch bits and pieces of his Dad’s response. “--never had--. --can ask-.”
“Who?”
“Ryu-- --da.” Isshin stepped around to Ichigo’s desk and grabbed a pencil. He wrote an address down on the corner of Rukia’s drawing from the night before. “--but should - live here. -- the morning.”
“Great,” Ichigo took the paper and walked out. Isshin followed him. “You can sleep on the couch tonight and we’ll go when you wake up.”
“No way, look at her! I’m not leaving her like that.”
“He won’t even be awake, it’s like two am,” Isshin called after him.
Ichigo grabbed his jacket from the closet. “Then I’ll wake him.”
--
Ichigo finally spotted the wrought metal numbers of the address Isshin had given him, fastened on an impressive brick wall. The property was large and sprawling, caged behind tidy brick, with cement pillars topped with black lanterns, casting it all into an eerie light. He rushed up to the front gate. Gleaming black metal, twice as tall as Ichigo’s already excessive height. Down the road was a fancy mid-century western manor. Ichigo didn’t stop to scope it out before stomping up to the intercom and mashing the call button. He kept at it, with no answer, no naturally he prepared to climb the gate. His hands wrapped around the smooth metal bars, one foot propped up on the bottom metal rung. The intercom finally buzzed to life.
“Who are you asked,” asked the disembodied voice on the other side. He sounded like an irritated, disinterested person, who maybe had been woken up by a teenage stranger in the middle of the night. Ichigo had no time for it. He jumped over to the electronic box.
“I’m Isshin Kurosaki’s son. We need your help!”
“... Medical emergency?”
“Wha-no. Uh, afterlife emergency.” How many spiritualists were in the medical field anyway?
“No one here can help you,” he replied instantly. “I have no interest in exorcism, and my son has no gift for it.”
“Well too bad,” Ichigo growled. “You’re helping even if I’ve gotta drag you outta there myself.”
The voice on the other end started to laugh, until he was cut off by someone else. “I’ll be right out.” The second voice was younger, familiar for some reason, and wry. As if he were deriving amusement somehow.
“Ah shit,” Ichigo groaned, as the massive wooden front door opened, and out stepped Uryu from class.
“Kurosaki,” he strolled down the pretentious stone pathway to the gate, in his dorky white pyjamas with a giant blue cross on the front. Ichigo thought they only made that design in bed sheets.
“Something’s wrong with Rukia,” he told him, before Uryu could start whatever nerd dick-measuring contest that was about to happen. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but she’s in pain.”
Uryu paused on the other side of the gate, with a frown. “Why don’t you help her then?”
“Why do you think I’m here in the middle of the goddamn night?! I need a medium who knows what they’re doing, cause I don’t, and my Dad’s an idiot.”
“I’m not a medium!” Uryu scowled, face split in two by the polished metal. “I’m an exorcist, and I hate mediums like you. Mediums like you, summoning ghosts all over the place and leaving them to wander this mortal plane, are the reason my master died.”
“So what? You and Rukia were all buddy buddy just a few hours ago. Now you’re gonna leave her like that just because you’re an uptight dork? Screaming in agony, unable to see or move.”
Uryu scoffed. “Fine, but hear this, medium. I will Never-”
“Yeah yeah, never forgive medium’s like me, enemies for life, lone avenger, blah blah. Can you help her?”
--
“Ichigooo~,” Keigo whined through the phone. “Do you even know how tired I am? I just got to sleep an hour ago.”
“Well suck it up. What stupid thing did you do?”
Ichigo could hear the rhythmic ticking of Keigo’s clock on the other end, while he waited for him to reply. “N-nothing. Why do you just assu-”
“Let me rephrase,” Ichigo said, voice tight and irritable. “What ghost shit did you mess with this time, that you shoulda just left alone.”
“Look dude, I’m sorry! But first there was the weird ghoul woman, and then the creepy stalker boy,” Ichigo glared at Uryu, sitting across from him at the kitchen table. “And Mizuiro thought the board might be attracting them to the school. So we got rid of it.”
“Got rid of it how?” he asked, through grinding teeth.
“We burnt it. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right?”
Uryu sighed, a long drawn out thing. “That’s the problem. The doorway she passed through is closed, so her spirit is trying to pull her back to the afterlife, but there’s no portal for her. It’s like she’s being pulled, inescapably, into a solid wall.”
“Uh, why is Uryu with you in the middle of the-” Keigo asked, until Ichigo pressed the button to cut him off.
“Alright, well you’re an exorcist. Forcing spirits to pass on is your whole thing, isn’t it?”
“Not exactly. When an exorcist banishes a spirit, that spirit ceases to exist, in this plane or any other.”
“Wha- So you kill them?”
“To protect-”
“FINE. Whatever. Well what do we do then, because you’re not banishing Rukia.”
“We give her enough strength to push through the wall. Her spirit is trying, instinctually, to get to the other side. All she needs is enough power to do it on her own. You lend your strength by pushing her, aided by this. It’s full of my psychic energy.” Uryu fiddled with a small metal capsule, twirling it around in his hand. Ichigo nodded, jerkily, and they walked up to his room.
Uryu had come up to examine Rukia already, but he still flinched on seeing her again. He pushed past it and stood next to her, though there was a familiar stiffness to his shoulders. Ichigo sat down on his bed, crossing his legs and closing his eyes. “You’d better be ready,” he shouted.
“Get on with it,” Uryu shouted back.
With his eyes closed, Ichigo could feel the edges of Rukia’s spirit; now a strange, flickering, presence. This was more Isshin’s expertise, but the useless old man had gone back to sleep by the time Ichigo got home. So Ichigo did the only thing he could think to do, he gathered all his power in his chest, and then released it in a wave across the room. Immediately there was a loud bang, and Ichigo opened his eyes to Uryu thrown across the room. He sat through the closet doors, one of them leaning against the back wall.
Uryu blinked in surprise, and Ichigo stared back.
“What the hell was that, Kurosaki?”
That was him? Ichigo was so surprised, at first he missed when the screaming grew quieter, and petered off into a groan. He looked at Rukia, eyes panicked and vulnerable. Staring back at him, finally, was Rukia, the light back to dancing in her eyes. Slowly, her eyes became sharper, even as she started to disappear from his vision. It started at her feet, climbing up in curling uneven edges, like a corrupted strip of film. She looked quickly around the room, seeming to come back to herself, before her gaze snapped to Ichigo’s. The tension disappeared from her body, and even though she didn’t say anything, the way she looked at him was so warm. He remembered then, why he had been so frantic to save her. Not just because someone needed saving, but because Rukia needed saving.
--
It took a while for Ichigo to clean up the mess Rukia had made of his closet. He didn’t bother to examine why that was, why he suddenly preferred to keep his stuff thrown all over the place. In between packing up his own stupid Chappy drawing, and hanging clothes back up, Ichigo found something. An empty, coiled, notebook from elementary. Ichigo started to flip through, noting the crumpled, and then torn pages. Clearly this notebook had taken the brunt of Rukia’s testing. By the middle, there were entire pages missing. When she had grown bored of that, the next pages were littered with shaky lines. Shaky lines grew steadier, and then slowly turned into Chappy.
Ichigo laughed to himself, and thumbed through the last half, full of blank pages. He was about to pack it up when a flash of gray pulled his attention to the last page.
“Ichigo,
“Did you know you snore? You snore so loudly, I think it’s part of your power. No way that snore couldn’t wake the dead. You must be the most powerful spiritualist in the living world.
“Who knows how much longer I’ll be able to stay. I think if I had a family like yours, or a person like you, I would have lived a very happy life.
“See you on the other side.
“Rukia”
Ichigo smiled to himself, and tucked her other drawing in between the notebook pages before closing the box.
I wonder, can I keep up with it? The speed of the world without you in it.