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Unagiya Ikumi is nothing short of shocked when Kurosaki Ichigo actually shows up for his shift, dressed in clean slacks and a decent shirt.
“Ichigo?”
“Yo, Ikumi-san.” Ichigo smiles at her, and it’s not his usual exhausted effort at a smile. “I’m not late, am I?”
Ikumi lets him in. Something’s changed. She looks at him, eyes narrowed. He carries himself differently. More relaxed. His eyes seem brighter. He’s in clean clothes. His hair is hidden under a hat, and she tsks. “You’re not late, but no hats indoors!”
“Uh…” Ichigo’s hand goes to his hat immediately, like he thinks she’s going to rip it off his head. “This’s staying on, sorry. My sisters decided to prank me. There’s a uh, a bald stripe down the middle of my head. I don’t know how they didn’t wake me up. Must’ve stolen Dad’s razor or something.”
He’s definitely lying, but Ikumi doesn’t want him running off again, so she lets it go. She busies herself gathering job requests and says, casually, not facing him, “Whatever’s going on with you, is it sorted out?”
“Yes.” He sounds relieved. “I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused you.”
“Thank me by telling me, someday,” she scolds. “I’ve met your father, you know. I understand why you might not want to rely on the adults in your life.”
Ichigo barely covers his laugh in time. Ikumi has only met Kurosaki Isshin once, and it told her everything she needed to know about why Ichigo is as closed off and independent as he is. It’s probably what drove him to get a part-time job in the first place. The man acts the fool. Living with him must be exhausting.
“Thank you, Ikumi-san,” he says. It’s that polite, placating tone he tends to take with her again, so Ikumi turns around and shoves him down onto the couch.
Well. She tries. He doesn’t move an inch and grabs her wrist, yanking it away from his sternum with a bit more force than really necessary. She stumbles back, surprised. Ichigo’s much taller and broader than she is, but he normally seems fine with being touched and bullied around a bit.
She remembers the growl she would swear up and down came out of him last time they met and tries not to shiver. She puts her hands up instead, carefully.
He looks at her, then down at his own hands, and sits down abruptly. “Sorry,” he mutters. “I…Did I hurt you?”
Ikumi waves him off. Always putting others first. “I’ll live. You’ve gotten jumpy.”
“Maybe it’s from the time you kidnapped me,” Ichigo says dryly. It’s a good deflection, but she sees right through it. He wants her to feel guilty and avoid the topic.
“Hmm. Or maybe it’s from your father and his ‘surprise attacks’?” Ichigo looks at her like a startled cat. His eyes…actually are brighter, now that she looks. They used to be a deep brown, she was sure, but now they’re the color of honey in sunshine. “Don’t give me that, it’s hardly a secret. I asked around about you when I hired you.”
“Just wanted to make sure I knew how to defend myself,” Ichigo says, not looking at her. “Really, it’s fine, just…don’t touch me. Or tell me first, if you have to.”
She wants to blame his father for this, but just a few weeks ago, Ichigo wasn’t this reactive to touch. No, something else happened, and she’d bet her last green tea it had something to do with the strange man who came into her office asking about Isshin. And the reason he turned up at such a late hour to ask for more time off, avoiding eye contact and looking like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“Well, let’s go over our list of jobs, then,” she suggests. His body language changes immediately, becoming more open– shoulders back, leaning forward on his elbows, looking at the stack of paper she’s brought over. He really doesn’t like talking about himself, she notes. She noticed that during his interview, too– he’s surprisingly good at deflecting questions about himself while encouraging her to share things about her own life. Plenty of her clients say oh, your employee with the orange hair? He’s so sweet! He smiles, asks after the kids, remembers what we talk about. It’s not what she expected when she hired a teenager with hair that had to be dyed and a reputation for fighting. Their older clients love him.
What a strange young man.
“It’s not because I don’t trust you,” Ichigo says abruptly, cutting her off mid-sentence. “Just…it’s pretty unbelievable.”
He’s avoiding her eyes again, reading the jobs on the table.
She blinks. That’s the closest he’s ever gotten to telling her what the hell is going on with him.
“So I’ll do this one, the bush trim, before it gets dark, and then…”
“Ichigo,” Ikumi cuts him off. He looks up, startled. “I’ll believe you. I promise.”
He just smiles at her, a polite sort of smile that says no you won’t. “Should I get going, then?”
He shows up regularly, after that. Always with a smile, bantering easily back and forth with her. He probably thinks he’s doing a perfect job hiding from her. No doubt he’s fooled some of the others in his life (his useless father comes to mind), but Ikumi is a mother who’s made a habit of hiring teenagers down on their luck. She’s not so easily convinced.
It’s not drugs. He wears short sleeves, with no bruises or injection tracks. He seems physically fit, handling all the tasks she throws at him easily and coming back barely winded. He’s healthy, even if he does eat like three horses– that’s normal enough for a high school boy.
He has shadows under his eyes that wax and wane, and the most honest answer she ever gets out of him is simply nightmares. His eyes turned darker, haunted, the strange new golden color freezing over. She let it go and fed him steamed buns before sending him out.
He always has the hat. Ikumi noticed long ago that his hair is longer than it should be, something she doesn’t have an explanation for. Judging from the clumsy disguise, he doesn’t have a good explanation either.
It all comes to a head one day when she’s left the office to wish him a good evening and press some more snacks into his hands. He used to at least put up a token protest, but he doesn’t anymore, just accepts them with a ducked head and red-burning ears.
And then he freezes, and his head comes up. He gently returns the snacks to Ikumi. “Thank you, Ikumi-san, but I, uh…” He pulls out his phone, which is clearly not ringing, and flips it open without pressing a single button. “Dad? I…Now?” He hangs up, not even bothering to press the ‘end call’ button before closing his phone. “I need to get home.”
“If you think you can feed me that crock of shit, Ichigo, you’ve got another thing coming.” He looks shocked to hear her curse. It’s adorable how innocent he is sometimes. He’s nearly eighteen, in his last year of high school, and despite his general attitude, he’s still so easily surprised.
“I really need to go,” he says, biting his lip. “And you need to get inside.”
Ikumi’s gaze narrows. “Are you in danger, Ichigo-chan?”
Ichigo actually laughs. “No.” He says it with the typical cocky confidence of a teenager. “Just…inside, please.”
“Absolutely not. I’m an adult, and you’re a child. You’re coming w–” Something seizes her collar and pulls her up, cutting her off. She twists and aims a kick behind her to absolutely no result. She can’t feel what has her, and there’s nothing behind or beside her.
“Ikumi-san! Hang on! Shit.” She looks down at Ichigo. Her eyes are watering from the feeling of her shirt cutting into her throat, but she sees him press one hand to his chest and then– fall down on the pavement.
“Ichigo!”
Not two seconds later, the invisible thing drops her. Ikumi barely has time to think I’m too far up to land well on asphalt before she falls.
Black explodes through her vision. When she blinks her eyes open, she’s…sitting up, somehow. There’s a weight on her chest, and metal rattles when she shifts.
She looks down and sees a chain locked to the center of her sternum. Follows it, panic mounting the whole way.
Sees herself, attached to the other end of the chain, sprawled on the ground with blood dripping down her face.
“Ikumi-san!” Ichigo’s voice shouts, and then “Fuck!”
Ikumi looks up at a monster.
There’s no other word for it. It’s huge, like a worm with too many legs, and a grinning white mask like a damn skull has its gaze on her. Teeth crack open and show her another ring of teeth inside, and Ikumi has exactly enough time to think oh god I’m going to die here.
A black-orange blur skids between her and the monster. “Getsugatenshou!” A black void edged in red tears through the monster. It barely has time to scream before it dissolves.
“Ikumi-san?” Ichigo (of course it’s Ichigo) turns around, and Ikumi’s brain skips a beat like an old record, because that is not Ichigo.
“I know,” Ichigo says calmly, stretching out one death-pale hand. His other hand puts his sword on his back. There’s no visible sheath, but it stays when he takes his hand away. He fans his fingers out, palm up, in the universal gesture for peace. “It’s me, Ikumi-san.”
“What the hell, Ichigo?” Ikumi chokes out.
Ichigo winces. “Really long story,” he says, rubbing his neck. Strands of orange hair fall forward over his shoulders. That’s the same, at least, still defiantly bright. “That we don’t have time for. Fuck. Stay right there,” he orders, standing and racing for the other Ichigo sprawled on the ground. His phone, Ikumi realizes, seeing him dig it out. He inputs a number with long-practiced ease.
“Inoue? Oh thank god. Inoue, I need you. Yes, now. A Hollow got my boss– I don’t know, head wound– Unagiya, yeah, I’ll text you the address.” He hangs up and taps on his phone more before heading back over to her. “Okay, my friend’s on her way, she’ll heal you. Just…hold on, okay?”
“Ichigo,” Ikumi says. “Is that…my body? Is that your body?”
Ichigo winces, which is all the answer she needs. “You’re not dead, though!” he adds quickly, hands flailing. “You’re going to be fine. Inoue’s a miracle worker.” He only has one (sunshine-gold) eye visible, the other covered under some kind of mask, but that one eye screams how frightened he is for her.
“Don’t bullshit me,” Ikumi orders.
“I’m not! I just…fuck, it’s been a while since…” Ichigo fists both hands into his hair and makes a high-pitched, distressed whining sound. “Shut up, Zan.”
“Ichigo,” Ikumi says, putting some snap into her voice. It works. Her part-timer looks up at her, startled. “Don’t freak out on me. I need answers.”
“Right.” Ichigo’s hands shift and reluctantly let go of his hair. Ikumi swears she sees pointed claws for a moment, but when he brings his hands down, they’re both human. And why is she thinking of Ichigo in terms of humanity?
“That was a Hollow,” Ichigo starts. His hand goes to his chest, unconsciously, and Ikumi’s eyes drop from his face and oh.
There’s a hole drilled through the center of her part-timer’s torso, rimmed in black. A hole. The bloodless skin, the long hair, the partial skull…
“Ichigo, what the hell? Are you dead?”
“Uh,” Ichigo says instead of the reassuring of course not Ikumi-san she was hoping for. “No! No, I’m alive. This is just…” He takes a deep breath. “I’m not gonna tell you. Because Inoue’ll come, and heal you, and this will just be a dream for you.” He smiles at her, golden eye softening. “Let it be, Ikumi-san.”
“Like hell,” Ikumi retorts. “Kid, I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times. You ought to be relying on adults more!”
“Ikumi-san,” Ichigo says. He almost sounds amused. “...Look, I fought in a war. And I won.” He straightens, going back to the Ichigo on the pavement and rolling into it. The odd horned version of him vanishes, leaving the Ichigo she knows to sit up and stretch, continuing like this is an everyday occurrence. “I was the only one who could win. So I did. You don’t need to look out for me.”
“Kurosaki-kun!”
“Inoue!” Ichigo springs up and waves his hand. “Over here!”
“Oh no, is that your boss?” a girl’s voice cries. Ikumi looks around to see…another redhead? A little less bright than Ichigo, sprinting toward them. “Sotenkisshun! I reject!”
Gold light forms over Ikumi’s body, and then Ichigo’s picking her up and dropping her into the field, and the world goes white.
“-mi-san? Ikumi-san!”
Ikumi blinks awake to see Ichigo leaning over her, eye (eyes, eyes, two eyes, amber and not sun-bright orange-gold) wide with worry. “Can you hear me?”
“Get out of my face, kid,” Ikumi says, pushing him back as she sits up, telegraphing her movements clearly. Ichigo goes easily enough, with an eyeroll saying he’s letting her shove him around. “What happened?”
“Bumped your head,” Ichigo says easily. “You passed out for a couple seconds. Feeling okay?”
“I…You…” Her head hurts a little, but she can’t find a lump on it. “You had a skull on your head.”
Ichigo laughs, too loud. “You definitely hit your head.” He stands up and offers her a hand. She ignores it on principle, and catches him rolling his eyes. Brat.
“You’ll have to try harder than that,” she tells him sharply. “I know what I saw.”
“Maybe I should take you to the hospital,” Ichigo mutters, wringing his hands. “You did pass out. Fuck.”
He does genuinely look unsure that she’s all right. His eyes are pinched around the edges, like they used to be constantly. Ikumi sighs.
“I’m all right,” she tells him. Bless his big heart. She knows all the rumors about him, but she was a bit of a delinquent herself in her day. Besides, pushing one of his supposed ‘victims’ a little told her all she needed to know.
“He was pissed ‘cause we knocked over some shitty shrine for some kid who got run over!”
Defending everyone, even the dead.
Not often himself, though, based on how many bruises the kid picks up and how often he shows up just as loud as usual but with a sleepless night behind him. How he startles if you approach from behind quietly. How he takes no shit from her but gentles himself the second he’s in the presence of someone who can’t handle his loud, in-your-face nature.
He reminds her of herself as a kid, refusal to rely on adults and all. Some lessons have to be learned through age and experience, she supposes. She never listened at his age, so certain that she was an adult and could handle herself.
“You dropped your food,” she says instead of putting any of her thoughts into words. She bends down and picks up the packaged snacks. It’s all decent, high-protein stuff. Peanut butter, trail mix, etc. He eats like a weedwhacker. His sister is lovely, but probably doesn’t understand how much the average active teenage boy needs to eat.
“Ah, I did. Thanks.” Ichigo accepts the pile of wrapped food. “Are you sure you’re okay, Ikumi-san?”
“Don’t worry about me, brat. Get home before your sisters worry.”
“That’s a new tune coming from my kidnapper.”
“You’ll never let that go, will you? If you’d showed up to work—“
“—hell no I won’t, do you know how long the school was gossiping about my secret older girlfriend? Disgusting.”
“Don’t be that way, Ichigo-chan, I’m sure I could make you very happy—“ Ichigo mimes throwing up and she laughs and lets him have it. She should be offended, maybe, but it’s not like she would be caught dead dating a seventeen-year-old. That’s the attitude he ought to have toward women her age.
She sees him off toward home, cooks dinner, goes to bed early and dreams of white-masked ghosts. Lets Ichigo mother-hen her a little for the next couple of days, amused by his clumsy efforts to take care of her while refusing to admit anything happened. Stubborn as a bull, that one. She lets it go. He’ll tell her when he’s ready. She does, however, start ‘accidentally’ leaving pamphlets about post-traumatic stress disorder around, then books. Whatever this war of his was, PTSD is PTSD, and it would explain a lot of his jumpiness and depression.
A month later, her phone rings, and when she picks it up, it’s Ichigo. “Ikumi-san. I won’t be in today. Maybe not for a few days.” He sounds tense, wound tight.
“Ichigo? What’s going on?”
Ichigo laughs in her ear, nervous. “Uh. Family stuff. Kind of an emergency. I’ll call you when I can.”
“When you can? Ichigo, if you’re in trouble…”
“Ikumi-san,” Ichigo says, cutting her off. It’s warm, still nervous but grateful. “…Leave a light on for me, okay?” And he hangs up before she can say anything back.
She remembers a golden eye in a chilly white face, half-masked and still wearing his fear for her clear as day. She remembers a horn that could skewer a moose and hands moving too fast as he tried to convince her it was all right. She remembers I fought in a war and I was the only one who could.
She clicks on a lamp and leaves it on.
Goes over to the Kurosaki Clinic and knocks on the door, one-two-onetwothree.
Kurosaki Isshin opens the door. “…Unagiya-san?”
“Good evening,” Ikumi says, bowing respectfully and smiling at Ichigo’s father. “I heard from Ichigo that he needed some time off work for a family emergency. I wanted to offer my assistance. If you need anything at all—“
“We’re fine. Thanks.” The words are final, cold, get out of our business.
“Isshin? Who’s that?”
That’s Ichigo’s voice.
Isshin turns a really interesting shade of off-white and curses under his breath. “Unagiya,” he calls. “She was just leaving.”
“I see Ichigo comes by the inability to accept help honestly,” Ikumi comments. It’s rude and caustic but she doesn’t care right now. “Ichigo! Don’t make me kidnap you again!”
“Aga— “ Ikumi narrows her eyes. He sounds surprised.
“Kurosaki-san,” she says. “Let’s cut the crap. Either talk to me, or let Ichigo do it.”
Isshin looks at her, considering, then sighs and says “That’s not Ichigo.” He steps aside, lets her in. She takes the opening and slips her shoes off in the genkan.
“A month ago,” Ikumi says calmly, “I’m fairly sure Ichigo saved my life. Whatever you’re hiding for him, whatever he’s mixed up in, I’m not ignorant to it.”
“Dad?”
One of Ichigo’s sisters. She has the melted-chocolate brown eyes that Ichigo had when they met. Blonde hair, softer set to her face. “Is everything okay?”
“This is Ichigo’s manager,” Isshin says, nodding to her. “She’s a bit worried for him.”
“Unagiya Ikumi,” Ikumi says, bowing politely to Yuzu.
“Kurosaki Yuzu,” the younger girl returns. “Please come in, Unagiya-san.”
“Ikumi’s just fine. You’re Ichigo’s family, after all.” She smiles, and Yuzu smiles back and shows her into their family room.
Ichigo’s there.
Sprawled out reading Sailor Moon with his long orange hair loose, flipped carelessly over the couch arm he’s using as a headrest. He’s sounding out kanji, squinting at the pages, but looks up when he hears footsteps.
His expression isn’t one she’s ever seen Ichigo wear. It’s easy, relaxed in a way Ichigo never is, open. Even in Ichigo’s most unguarded moments, he doesn’t look like this. His entire face is different, younger somehow.
His eyes settle on her chest for too long to be polite, and he doesn’t blush even a little. That’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
“Who the hell are you?” Ikumi snaps, crossing her arms. “Where’s my part-timer?”
“Uh. Oh. You’re Ichigo’s boss? Shit, he’s gonna kill me,” not-Ichigo says. “He told us specifically to keep you out of this.”
“I’ll take responsibility,” Isshin says with a sigh. “Ikumi-san, meet—“
“Kurosaki Kon,” Yuzu interrupts, stressing the family name. Not-Ichigo looks like he might cry.
“I see the family resemblance,” Ikumi says dryly. She knows damn well that is Ichigo, or at least it ought to be. She sees the crooked fingers, his slightly-short jeans, that absurd combination of flaming orange hair and golden eyes. Nobody else looks like Ichigo does. Even more so since his hair inexplicably grew, his eyes changed. And that hair . It spills around Kon everywhere, long and thick as he sits up properly. She’s never seen it out of an updo (and usually under a hat) before.
“I’m Ichigo’s bodysnatcher,” Kon introduces himself graciously. “Closest you’ll get to him right now, sorry. He’s not home.”
Ikumi remembers seeing his body fall, remembers the singular experience of her part-timer’s panicking ghost rifling through his body’s pockets to find his phone. “If that’s his body…where is he?”
“Ah! Great question! Long story,” Kon says, making fingerguns at her. It looks ridiculous in Ichigo’s body, and Ikumi wishes she had a camera. “First: what do you know?”
“That Ichigo can hit monsters with a sword,” Ikumi answers deadpan. She tells them the story— it’s short, though Kon and Yuzu both laugh at her recollection of his staged phone call.
“He must have known it was there,” she says, shaking her head. “What an idiot.”
She tells them how she’d been lifted in the air, how it had dropped her and leaned over her, how Ichigo had come to her rescue. Ichigo’s strange appearance, how he’d called it a Hollow and started to explain before saying let it be a dream, Ikumi-san.
How he’d called someone who healed her like she was never hurt, how he’d blown her questions off and gone home.
“Sounds like Ichigo,” Isshin grumbles.
“He got it from you,” Yuzu retorts promptly.
“Your turn,” Ikumi says, folding her arms. “Where is Ichigo?”
“Well,” Isshin says, exhaling. “The short version is: taking down a thousand-year-old tyrant king in another dimension with his cousin.”
“What?” Ikumi manages.
They give her the long version. Ikumi suspects it’s an extremely edited long version— she’s too damn old to not know when someone’s glossing rough edges for her. They tell her about the Three Worlds, about the shinigami, spirits and Hollows. They tell her about an insane would-be god that Ichigo stopped. Stopped at the cost of his ability to ever fight again.
No wonder she found him brawling with a street gang outside his school.
They tell her he got them back, and here Ikumi breaks in.
“That’s when he changed. His hair, and his eyes…”
Yuzu nods.
“He isn’t dead, is he?”
“No,” Yuzu says with a small laugh. “That hole in his chest is scary, though, isn’t it? He’s the only one like him.”
“A…living Hollow?”
“That’s for him to tell you,” Yuzu says primly.
“He’s hungry a lot.”
Yuzu actually looks up at the ceiling at this, exasperated. “…Hollows hunt other souls,” she explains. “They eat them. He wasn’t getting any spiritual energy from human food.”
“And he would never touch a soul,” Ikumi concludes, setting aside her many, many feelings about Hollows eat other souls. (No wonder her poor part-timer panicked when he realized there was one in the parking lot.)
“We found another way. Once he told us.” The frustration’s clear in Yuzu’s voice. “But he’s better now.”
“You’re taking care of him?”
“About to head to a friend’s, actually,” Isshin says. “We’re his backup.” He stands and bows. “We’ll have him call you when he’s back, Ikumi-san.”
She wants to go with him, but her sensible adult brain stops that idea in its tracks. She has a young son to care for. She has a business. She has a life.
And she most certainly does not have a Hollow-cutting sword.
“I’ll leave a light on,” she says, following Isshin’s lead and standing up. “And if he doesn’t come back, I’ll kick your ass, Isshin-san.”
Isshin laughs, a full-on belly laugh. “If he doesn’t come back, we’ll have bigger problems.”
“He will,” Yuzu says, putting a hand on Ikumi’s elbow. “Don’t worry about him. Ichi-nii’s strong. And he’s not alone.”
Ikumi goes home.
She leaves a light on.
In the end, it’s not even a full day later when her phone lights up with Slacker Part-Timer is calling…