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Ichigo chances upon Rukia’s movie script, and finds that: she’s going to really have to act in love with another boy—
“Ichigo!” Rukia jumps at him and snatches the script from him. “This is top secret! And stop making that face, you look like an idiot—”
—in love? Ichigo has no idea about what Rukia is like when she is in love. That notion never really crossed his mind.
(and some three or four degrees below his consciousness, approximately in the unconscious region or the lowest part of the iceberg model of consciousness in psychology as proposed by Mr. Freud, this thought nestles: Ichigo himself doesn’t exactly know yet how he’s like when in love—)
“What a joke,” says Ichigo, watching Rukia read her script with some Sharpie-d out lines of crucial dialogue for the other actors. She’s surrounded by their admiring classmates—she's practically a movie star now.
The whole thing wasn’t improbable, really: one walk in the city after Rukia returned and already, visiting Shibuya talent scouts were on her; she charmed half the street. They flocked to her and asked: “pretty-chan, how would you like to be in a movie about festive romance and relative peace on Earth?”
“Heh, you just don’t want the world to see how pretty Rukia-chan is!” Keigo pops up beside him, and then come Sado and Mizuiro.
“Shut up.”
“Now you don’t want to hear how pretty Rukia-chan is!”
“I said shut up.” Ichigo turns away from him and rests his head on his hand. He’s sitting and seething at the table nearby, staring at the back of Rukia’s head pointedly. It’s distracting them—Ichigo means their shinigami work. Ginjo is probably trying to scam another shinigami for powers again or Tsukishima could still be hallucinating somewhere. They have work to do and — and it’s probably not even a good script (despite not knowing what the movie really is about).
“You meanie! You can’t hog her to yourself, Ichigo!” Keigo continues to whine as Mizuiro sits beside him.
“I’m glad she’s visiting us, Kurosaki-kun,” says Mizuiro politely. “That new hairstyle is elegant, it frames her face maturely. I’m looking forward to seeing her on screen.”
Ichigo narrows his eyes at him, that's a suspicious descriptor.
Keigo grimaces, “Nah Mizuiro, she’s more of a cutiieee! Oh, Kuchiki-san—my dream love, it's like she's followed by spotlights everywhere like all the lights go her way. I’m sure I will fight through a new hoard of admirers. I'm going to be desolate, will she still recognize me in a crowd full of strangers—
“No, she won't, Keigo-san, you never had a chance.”
“Hn,” Sado agrees.
"Why so mean-?"
Ichigo looks at Keigo and then Mizuiro severely, and cracks his knuckles, ready to punch them. “Shut up, both of you!”
One step inside Ichigo’s bedroom—
“So, you still don’t have a place you want to stay, huh, Rukia?”
“I do,” answers Rukia confidently. “Here.” She points down to his bedroom floor, drops her bag, folds her arms, and then smirks up at him. “This is more conducive to my lines-practicing than the apartment Urahara got me. You have a problem with that?”
There’s a full 10-second silence when they just glared at one another.
“‘course you’re gonna freeload again,” Ichigo scoffs but offers no real resistance, he finds something warm and terribly familiar in the air instead. He rubs the back of his neck. “Right, just don’t bother me.”
Shoulders downturned, he goes to his study desk and slumps on his chair to do a bit of rearranging plan now that his room is clearly invaded (it is a bit surreal to be arguing with her again).
It’s been four days since her return. Ichigo flexes his wrists and there’s this feeling of reiatsu steadily flowing in him and…it hasn’t left him since. He isn’t smiling when he sneaks a glance at her but there’s a similar expression on his face: eyes lighter and faintly happy. There is, somewhat, a sense of normalcy with Rukia around, back in his room on a sunny afternoon as they settle back in their them-ness, an inexplicable state when they are together, with her trying to forcefully negotiate her stay—
“Ahh, everything feels the same, isn’t Ichigo?” Rukia says, amused, stepping inside and looking around approvingly. Ichigo is surprisingly a tidy person.
When Rukia looks back at him, he seems strangely tired but there is no longer dark tension in his eyes and there is something curiously boyish about the wry scowl he wears nowadays. She thinks it’s the return of his powers. He must be very relieved to have them back. That must be it.
“No,” he scowls, and adds: “don’t break anything, Rukia.”
“As if I have something new to break,” she snorts, inspecting the posters on his wall. “Everything is the same as when I left. Your shirts are old, your bedsheet is old, and even your scowl is really old.”
“No, that’s not true, I have new clothes, wait—and how would you even know that?”
Rukia laughs at him as a reply. She goes back to her bag and brings out a black binder book.
Ichigo’s face falls again. Oh. Yeah. That holiday movie.
“You’re really excited about it, huh?" The last part comes out as a mumble, "leave me out of it."
“Quiet, Ichigo, I’ll be a great shinigami-actress soon, maybe I’ll spare you a glance when I’m famous enough,” Rukia declares smugly as she sashays to his bed, flouncing her skirt as she sits on the mattress, and looks at her movie lines.
Inoue coos: "Amazing, Kuchiki-san!"
Mahana says: “Oh, that was lovely acting…or not, was that from a real experience with Kurosaki?”
Tatsuki, with a rare display of affection, nods approvingly at Rukia: "That's…well, even though I don't watch these kinds of things, I think you're convincing."
Rukia gives her school friends a little curtsy after a small demonstration of her acting. “Thank you so much, everyone.”
Ichigo, who’s passing by on his way to the school gym, doesn’t miss the wide grin on Rukia’s face, the sheer exuberance in her form, and the little jumps she makes. Why did she have to look so happy and—
“—so cute! Kuchiki-saaaaaaan, I’m falling in love with you more and more every day! You'll fill up my heart in no time, but it’s okay! I have a big heart so don’t worry, there's plenty more space especially for my Hime!” gushes Chizuru.
"Ichigo," Rukia says quietly, and suspiciously gloomily.
She’s crouching beside his chair, leveling with his eye line. It’s late in the afternoon and the warmer colors of the hour layer him well in beautiful gradient shades. Rukia, conversely, is very grim like she brought all the rain clouds with her and they doused her in heavy storms. She pokes his nose.
"What the hell, Rukia?! What-?" Ichigo sputters. He was napping.
"Ichigo, will you help me with my lines. I don't think I…understand some of the human things," she says hesitantly, still stern, but he could detect a bit heartbrokeness. "I don't know how any of this really works, it’s difficult—and before you gloat at me, a part of a warrior's soul is knowing when to admit defeat! So…I…need assistance."
He blinks twice, wonders: where's the smug ‘shinigami-actress’ from a while ago, but still considers: he secretly called her agents and the company too many times to back check and outright ask them if they were a recruitment agency fronting for some local porn ring (he said: the name of production company is a damn sleazy name for a film company) and an SEC document typo was not a neat answer but they turned out to be legitimate (to his surprise); while he keeps saying it's embarrassing for him and he keeps stomping around whenever someone mentions how movie star Rukia will be the next J-pop ice princess star, there is a little place in his heart that likes seeing her excited—he sighs.
"Okay, Rukia."
(and to illustrate: in that iceberg model, “in love with Rukia” just entered the lowest plane of his subconsciousness and is steadily rising—)
It turned out saying okay to Rukia meant two things: improving her movie lines which she had absolutely no context of and management, or specifically, managing a would-be movie star.
The local co-production company is called Holemark. Ichigo’s eyes twitched at that.
And so, of course:
Ichigo never left Rukia alone with the agents when she was scouted off the street of Karakura while they were walking home. What do you mean by test footage? You're filming her doing what exactly?
—such a precocious, energetic, lively, passionate, suspicious, loud, angry teenage boyfriend, the scouts thought.
(somewhere:
“Are you sure it’s not a lewd parody of an American media company called Hallmark?”
“I think somebody made a typo when filing for the SEC here.”
“Hmm.”
“You know how words can get transliterated—”
“Hmm. Okay...and Karakura? Is it a small town and you know…quaint enough?”
“Small enough, it’s a good equivalent to a Maryland farm, or Delaware if you like a tree farm—”)
“Oi, what’s the story again?”
Early morning in the neighborhood playground, Rukia sits on the other end of the seesaw, on one side, cross-legged, while Ichigo is on the other side, lifting the empty seat up and then pushing it down for her. She thinks this contraption is nice, and the breeze is nice, too.
"I'm not sure, it says ‘hideaway and violating international airspaces’ a lot. Ichigo, I’m not sure what those mean," she says, re-reading her movie script pages, and looks over his way.
Ichigo woke up early to accompany her, knocked on his closet to wake her up then gave her one of his jackets to wear. He also brought her sandwiches with melty yellow things and bubble milk tea which tasted really nice.
"Pssch. Give me that.”
She hands Ichigo a piece of paper she tore from the binder book given to her.
Ichigo grimaces at the torn page, “Rukia, first, don’t take the pages off, you’ll lose them. Hand me everything.”
“You sound like one of the Kuchiki matrons, and I know that! It’s just easier to carry them around!” She gives him the paper stack anyway. He clips them all back in one and then starts reading.
She thinks amusingly—between him waking her up early, giving her his jacket, feeding her hearty breakfast, and reordering her script back in place—he’s a mother hen in the making.
"Is there even a tree farm in Karakura? There's bound to be an ordinance for that,” Ichigo says, “did they even research this place? Oh wait, this is a hideaway-then-reunion movie, and you’re supposed to house a small-town baker and her brother taking a vacation who then meets her former boyfriend here, hiding from some weird government bullshit, then they’re supposed to meet at the foot of your shrine steps during Christmas Eve then come back—wait, why are your lines so bad?”
Ichigo shudders at the sappiness of her lines, no way Rukia is going to say any of that, he thinks, but there she is, acting her heart out with his sisters this time. It’s ridiculous.
He hears Yuzu: “Uwaaaaaa! See, Rukia-chan? It’s easy when you think of a boy you like—just continue to think about him, okay?”
“Yes,” Rukia says quietly, it’s barely a murmur, as if shyly.
Yes? Rukia sounding shy? The hell—?
Ichigo stops in his tracks, then presses his ear on the living room door. Movie star Rukia sounds so old-fashioned, but it’s so sparkly that his family latched on to it easily like flies trapped in super glue.
“Yuzu, this isn’t a school play, it’s a movie.” Then comes Karin’s voice. Coolly, she says: “Rukia-chan, you have to really commit to getting into this role, my coach says it all the time. I suggest you kiss the boy you like. Go back to Soul Society for a day or whatever, then kiss and make out with him. It should be natural, and then, study how that really feels, it should give you insight.”
Ichigo shuts his eyes, what the hell is he hearing? He would know if Rukia likes someone else, he would know, he stresses, he’s very sure of that. Maybe.
Before he could hear Rukia answer, there is a crash from the other side of the room, very heavy footsteps come barging in, an unbearably ugly man-cry, and then: “OOOOIIIIIIII! STOP RIGHT THERE! How does my Karin-chan know a lot about boys and kisses?”
One night, while everyone is sleeping, Ichigo is still up, and he considers seriously: maybe he should leave context on each of her movie lines so she could easily figure out how they can work for her more naturally, should she choose to. If not, then he’ll live knowing she said bad romantic lines in his lifetime.
Ichigo’s first dream is one of Rukia’s lines in the movie. She is telling him: “I’m waiting for my one and only Mr. Perfect Love to love me this holiday season.” — and his eyebrows furrowed, even while sleeping.
Rukia reads a note one night:
Have you ever been in love? Play it like that —says a note clipped to her script binder book. It’s strangely intimate.
She doesn’t know them, and tries to remember if they’ve been there all along, Ichigo probably added them. He asked for the script (somewhat a non-clear violation of her contract) one morning and handed it back to her wordlessly with a slight change in weight (shinigamis can always tell).
Her fingers find the memo notes and she flips through them one by one. The handwriting is neat—Rukia smiles, of course, it’s Ichigo. He read everything and left memos on some pages. Some were unmarked but there were little Sharpie notes and unauthorized, suggested re-writes on some lines for her to say: it's about your delivery, Rukia.
Some of his memos are sarcastic remarks challenging the original, the most are footnotes outlining the context for her. She figured this is okay for him to do, how his penchant for reading inspired this. Aside from his Shqueakey (Shakespeare) collection, there are copies of Kokinshu and The Tale of Genji in his book stand, spine-cracked and worn out—those, she recognized. She realized she liked that about him.
“Rukia ,” it says on the last memo, “I can’t do much and I’m not even gonna get paid for this but the plot is wack, and I provided some context for your dialogues. Up to you.”
“PS. I’ll fight your director if he complains—I’ll be there with you anyway.”
“Thank you, Ichigo.”
(and to illustrate: in the iceberg model of consciousne — no, not really. How Rukia is like in love is a thought that’s currently indeterminate, currently imperceptible, somewhere floating freely in and out of her subconscious and conscious regions. It made its presence known to her twice but it didn’t introduce itself this time. It will eventually bloom beautifully like a flower, so very soon—)
For Ichigo, there is also this:
He puts his phone down; he really did not plan to be Rukia’s manager full time.
He writes a finalized list of dates and times for her to remember, filming will start in about a week. There is a spreadsheet for this, he remembers setting up one and promptly opens his laptop. Then he crosses items from his list named “sched calendar” and “answer scam calls(?) screen for pervs” — calls that mostly felt like wrestling with either over-enthusiastic young media reps or aggressive old bats who want to milk Rukia for all her potential in money-making, and there are more of them to come. As expected, scammers hawking car commercials called him for her, some threatening to pay them a visit.
Well, he muses darkly, he’d welcome them, preferably in an empty vacant lot with a nearby clinic. If they figure out their home address, they all need to go through him, both of his fists, to get to her. But, but, this is still a lot of work for him (but then it is all worth it, to shield Rukia from all this bad celebrity bullshit so she could focus on what she wants to do, after all, it’s an experience for her).
When did he grow up? Ichigo wonders, he doesn’t feel like 18 anymore (though he hadn’t felt like a teenager in a long time).
From his window, Ichigo sees Rukia leaning on the clinic sign, quietly to herself, as the sun starts to gild the trees nearby in light amber and gold — autumn has set, its full colors upon them. She finally lets go of her wide hand gestures, and he smiles a bit at that. Focus and determination look right on her.
Rukia spends a lot of time on her own the past few days, becoming too involved in her role (there were times he found her reading his memos carefully; he didn't say anything to her about it but something sloshed pleasantly at the edges of his heart). He long figured that it isn’t her acting that needs help, she’s accomplished on her own, and she could charm anyone unfortunate to come her way; he has no doubt that she will do absolutely well.
Ichigo decides to hang a little more — puts his hand below his cheek and looks a little more.
(by now, “in love with Rukia” is a hair breadth out of his subconscious region, it's now in the conscious region—)
During a Saturday mid-morning, Ichigo comes home from grocery shopping expecting his house to be empty. Yuzu and Karin are out on a school festival activity, and his father (best left alone) is loitering somewhere — he hasn’t died though or they would know. Instead, he finds Rukia in the kitchen, hunched over the dining table, head buried in a binder book, probably drooling.
“Oi,” he calls, flicking a piece of macaroni pasta to her head. “Stop drooling on my table.”
“Huh?” Rukia wakes, she looks up at him from her glass of water, “Ichigo!”
She is drooling. Ichigo flicks another macaroni pasta on her. “Yeah, don’t drool.”
“I am not,” she says, defiant, “Kuchikis don’t drool.”
Ichigo raises his eyebrows, doubtful: “Ah, then what did I just see? Snot?”
“I said I’m not!” She shuffles her papers away to make room for his groceries nonetheless.
They continue to engage in increasingly erratic drooling denials while he neatly layers his ingredients on the table, beside her binder book, a small stand mirror, and a glass of water.
“—I’m making spaghetti,” Ichigo says nonchalantly, after a few minutes to cut their argument and the silence that settled after it, “...and spicy curry for lunch. Would you like that, Rukia?”
Rukia blinks herself at the matter at hand, “oh.”
“Okay,” she says. She remembers how many months ago, they huddled over the same curry he cooked for them. He’s very thoughtful; she likes that, too, about him.
Something pleasant settles inside his chest, Ichigo thinks, it is that again, that inexplicable them-ness.
"Okay? You're not even going to ask me what spaghetti is?" Ichigo eyes her.
“No,” Rukia laughs, shrugs, “I don’t need to, Ichigo.”
Ichigo supposes it’s still a demonstration of her unwavering faith to him, he muses as he plucks basil leaves off Yuzu’s herb pot. They settle in the kitchen, the quiet bubbling of the boiling water punctuates the silence. He sits opposite her, and thinks of bringing out his school readings but thinks none of them when gets to look at Rukia properly in days (up-front at least), who’s sleepily looking back at him.
"You look like you're working hard," he starts, he holds her gaze for a moment. “Are you alright?”
Rukia huffs indignantly. "Nonsense! I always work hard!"
Of course, you do, he thinks.
The past few days quickly went by, and he remembers how they haven’t really made up time to catch up with one another. Maybe, she will make time for him soon.
“Have some rest, Rukia,” he starts, calm and caring, “you can nap. I'll wake you up when the food is ready—on second thought, do you want yakisoba instead? Spaghetti and curry will probably ruin your stomach."
Still: She’s come home, he realizes, the important thing is this, she’s come home (and he's helping her study her stupid romantic holiday movie lines).