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The path to recovery isn’t linear.
It’s filled with highs and lows, days where one forgets everything and days where it all comes crashing back like a tsunami.
Some will claw their way back up through the muddy water, keep going through it all with the support of friends and loved ones. But some will drown in the dark, trapped under the weight of their grief. Forgotten, alone and afraid.
To the residents of Karakura, the orange-haired teen who went around hospitalizing thugs on a daily basis was nothing more than a delinquent – a maniac-in-the-making with a penchant for increasingly bloody levels of violence. But to the ones who really knew him, he was a boy whose mind and heart were broken. Who put the jagged pieces back wrong and let them set crooked.
A boy who drowned 6 years ago… and was never the same again.
Ichigo Kurosaki walked through the streets of Karakura, barely focusing on where his feet led him. It was late in the afternoon, 7:25pm to be precise – 25 minutes after his curfew. But did he care? Of course not. Did he give a fuck that it was supposed to be for his own safety, as after 7 was when the other delinquents of the town emerged from whatever cave they lived in? Not a single one. He could protect himself just fine.
Besides, he knew the curfew wasn’t actually for his safety. No, it was for their safety.
See, Ichigo was what the adults called a… ‘misguided’ child. Messed up in the head, no sense of right or wrong, a complete lack of restraint in the funky little thing they called his brain. Oh yeah, he heard the hushed conversations the adults in his life had when they thought he wasn’t listening.
Concerned (afraid) teachers talking to his father about his latest incident. The nosy old geezers always sitting outside the convenience store, glancing at him as he walked by. The police, sitting on the other side of the detainment cells and flipping through records about what he’d gotten into that time (yes, he'd been arrested a few times. His fights obviously didn’t go unnoticed by law enforcement).
No matter who it was, the conversations were all the same.
They called him insane. Heartless. Dangerous. Who could blame them? All they saw was the carnage left in his wake, the news articles about Karakura’s resident nutcase beating up another group of idiots who tested him on a bad day.
Ichigo didn’t care what they thought about him. They could gossip all they wanted; he wouldn’t bat an eye.
Their words were true, anyway.
At least, that’s what he told himself.
“I’m home.”
“Ichigo, you’re finally home! Where have you been, it’s 35 minutes past curfew!”
“Walking around.”
“What have I said about staying out this late? You know it’s not allowed.”
“Yeah, yeah…”
A few years ago, Isshin would have greeted him with a flying kick or a punch, but once Ichigo had started predicting his attack patterns and hitting back with double the strength and all the ferocity of an angered bull, he’d stopped. Plus, Isshin already had CPS on his ass for not getting his son ‘the help he needed’ by sending him to therapy of some kind – or better yet, a mental hospital. He didn’t need them accusing him of child abuse too.
Ichigo flopped into a seat at the dinner table on the first floor of the Kurosaki household, ignoring the look his father was sending him. He set his bag on the floor beside his chair and dug into the bowl of curry and rice left in his place.
Isshin sighed and sat down in the chair opposite to him.
“Ichigo… I know you think I’m being stupid,” he started.
“I don’t…” the ginger mumbled through a mouthful of rice.
“But I need you to understand that it’s not safe to be staying out this late on your own,” the elder Kurosaki said sternly.
“It’s perfectly safe.”
“You could get into more serious fights and get injured beyond what can be fixed.”
Ichigo scoffed and dropped his spoon into the bowl. He swallowed what was in his mouth and fixed Isshin with a steely glare.
“Cut the crap, Dad. You and I both know this whole thing isn’t about damage caused to me. It’s about mitigating the amount of damage that I cause,” he snarled.
Isshin frowned. “That’s not true at a-”
“Don’t lie to me!” Ichigo snapped.
He stood up abruptly, his chair teetering dangerously close to falling and hands planted on the table to keep from falling himself as he leaned forward towards his father.
Isshin went silent for a few moments, examining the expression of barely suppressed rage on his son’s face – the bared too-sharp teeth, narrowed eyes that were just a shade too yellow to be considered his usual light hazelnut, the small scratches in the table from where his nails dug into it. He maintained his composure and kept his own expression even, extending a hand to lightly push Ichigo back into his chair.
“There’s no need to yell,” he reprimanded.
“Well then stop acting like you care about what happens to me! I know you don’t,” Ichigo chuffed as he slumped back down.
The elder Kurosaki had to ignore the slight pang in his heart at the words. Did he truly believe he didn’t care about him?
He looked at the table and closed his eyes. “Ichigo… I do care. A lot. You’re my son, despite the fact that everyone else says I should be disappointed in you. So, I won’t lie. Part of this is because I know that you get carried away in fights and end up seriously hurting people, and I want to avoid that. But I also want to avoid it because it hurts you, too.”
Ichigo crossed his arms. “I don’t get hurt.”
“Mentally, not physically – come on, use that smart brain I know you have,” Isshin sighed, rubbing his nose.
The ginger stayed silent, not arguing against his father’s words.
Isshin opened his eyes and looked up, completely serious. “Look. You act like you don’t give a damn that people think you’re… weird.”
“They don’t think I’m weird, they think I’m a psycho who enjoys beating people up,” he grumbled.
“The point is that you do give a damn, deep down. I know it, because I’ve seen it. But you refuse to acknowledge it, and you push everyone who tries to help away, instead just going back to your routine as if your heart isn’t screaming at you.”
Ichigo glowered at his bowl of curry.
Stupid goat face… he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
The teenager stood up again, but this time he picked up his bag and started to leave the room. He blocked out the protests from his father, made his way up to his room, and slammed the door behind him.
He stomped over to his bed and faceplanted onto the soft mattress, the gentle breeze from the open window ruffling his hair.
He rolled onto his side, bringing a hand up to tap his pillow absentmindedly.
I’m hungry.
2am, and Ichigo was still awake. He laid in bed, staring at the ceiling and examining every little bump in its surface as if it would give him the clue to the meaning of existence. Being up at these hours wasn’t uncommon for him, but something felt different this time. Maybe it was the fact that he’d not eaten anything for most of the day, or the fact that he hadn’t gotten into a scrap that day and gotten out his excess energy, but something inside him was… off.
He sighed and slid off his bed, endeavouring to go downstairs and get something to snack on. Maybe that would fix whatever was going on, get rid of the metaphorical bees buzzing under his skin.
Ichigo padded out of his room and down to the kitchen, making sure to keep his steps light and avoid the notoriously creaky floorboards. He flicked the light on and opened the pantry, eyes flicking over the contents until he found the Tupperware container holding his snacks. Ichigo pulled it out, pulling the lid off with a bit of effort. Inside, there was an assortment of packets of trail mixes, crackers, and his favourite chocolates organised into neat piles.
He picked out one of each, placing the container back carefully afterwards. Having collected his snack, he shut the pantry and started toward the couch.
Another pair of footfalls began behind him, the sound of boots on wood like a thundercrack.
The ginger froze mid-step, body tensing. Was someone in the house? Was it a burglar? Worse? He whipped around, already positioning his feet in preparation of a fight.
A middle-aged man stood in the middle of the room, a pair of glasses on the tip of his nose and wearing rather casual clothes. For a moment, Ichigo was about to tackle the man and punch his lights out until he spotted the chain hanging from his sternum.
Ah, it’s just a spirit.
The ginger relaxed and released the breath he was holding, though he was still buzzing with adrenaline from the momentary panic.
“Oi, spirit. The hell are you doing in our living room?” He prodded quietly.
The spirit’s head snapped toward Ichigo as he spoke, and in a flash, he was gone, fleeing through the wall. Ichigo clicked his tongue in annoyance, walking to the couch.
“Stupid ghosts,” he grumbled.
He sat down on the couch, letting his body be absorbed by the plush cushions. He opened the packets of snacks as quietly as he could, the crunch of almonds and pieces of cracker filling the deathly silence of the night.
About ten minutes later, Ichigo had finished the food (it didn’t ease his hunger in the slightest, to his disappointment), chucked the packets in the bin, and was heading upstairs when he heard footsteps from the roof above him. He wondered if it was his father waking up or if it was the spirit from earlier. Once he was upstairs, he looked down both ends of the hallway, seeing nobody there. He shrugged, figuring it was his father moving around his room.
Then, he heard the muttering from his sisters’ room. It didn’t sound like either Yuzu or Karin, it was too deep for that. But Isshin’s door was closed, so it couldn’t be him talking to one of them…
Then it clicked. It was the spirit. And he was in their room.
Oh, HELL no.
Ichigo glided down to the girls’ door and ripped it open as quietly as he could (he didn’t want to wake his baby sisters if they were still asleep, after all), to see the spirit from earlier standing between their beds, looking intently at Karin and talking intelligibly to himself.
What consumed Ichigo’s heart and mind in that moment wasn’t anger. It was pure destructive fury, a raging inferno in his body that reduced every rational thought to ghostly wisps of their former selves.
Ichigo grabbed the spirit by his nape, fingers digging into the flesh with an iron grip. The startled yelp that tried to escape his throat was reduced to a breathless squeak, like a mouse encountering a hawk. The teen dragged the spirit out of the room, into the hallway, and inside his own room a door down. He threw the man onto the floor, looming over his wheezing figure.
“What do you think you’re doing in my sisters’ room?” he hissed.
The spirit looked up at him with wide, anxious eyes, a hand hovering over his throat.
“You- you can touch me,” he stammered.
Ichigo crouched down and took a fistful of the man’s short black hair. He pulled it to the side and tilted his head to match the other’s position.
“Answer. The goddamn. Question.”
“Look, that Karin is the only one who could mostly see me after I died a few weeks ago, or so I thought… I wanted to know why, okay? I wanted to know more about her and why she can see!” The spirit said, waving his hands frantically.
“So, you decide to watch her while she’s sleeping? What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Ichigo snapped in disbelief and disgust.
“Oh, says you, ya little psycho. I know who you are, what you’ve done,” the man countered, narrowing his eyes.
A low growl escaped the ginger, his hold on the man’s hair in his hand tightening to the point it started to rip out a few strands.
The gnawing in his stomach became painfully obvious, like claws tearing up his insides.
Ichigo let go of the spirit like he’d burned him.
“Get the hell out of my house,” he seethed.
The spirit instantly stood up and stepped back, and for a moment he appeared to be considering leaving, but then he smirked.
“You know you can’t stop me from coming back, right? You may be able to touch me, but I can phase through any locked door or wall like that,” he sneered, thinking himself safe.
He was openly snickering at Ichigo now; chapped lips stretched into a grin. A boot moved towards the door.
He was right. He could just come back as many times as he wanted unless someone did something about it.
Hungry…
Ichigo lunged.
The spirit’s caterwauling scream never left his body. His vocal cords were snapped and his windpipe crushed by sharp teeth. The scream was replaced by wet gurgles, low and burbling as blood cascaded from the missing chunk in his neck. His body spasmed, hands reaching up to claw desperately at the other body wrapped around his.
Soon, the spirit went limp, eyes glazing over and his arms falling back to his sides. Ichigo watched the life leave the man, transfixed. All he could think about was the warmth in his mouth, the slight quell of his stomach in response to the piece of flesh being broken down in it.
And so, he ate, until the spirit was a pile of crimson-stained bones, little pieces of muscle still attached to them. He sat beside the pile as it started to flake away into little blue dots, drifting off into the air and vanishing. Then, all that remained was red. In a puddle on the floorboards. On his hands, his face, his hair. Obscuring the corners of his vision alongside the licks of black.
Ichigo felt good. There was nothing in him but uncanny euphoria, a giddiness that made his body feel lighter than a feather and made his skin tingle like pins and needles. He sat there, a drunken laugh on his tongue, for what felt like hours, taking in the feeling.
Eventually it died down, leaving him exhausted. The black in the corners of his vision creeped inwards, threatening to engulf him in darkness. Ichigo didn’t fight it, too tired to do much more, and within the minute, he was out cold.
Ichigo came to on his bed, nestled under the covers in a cocoon of heat. He didn’t remember when he’d gotten there – matter of fact, he didn’t remember anything from last night apart from going downstairs to get a snack. But as he sat up, emerging from the covers, he noted one thing.
He wasn’t hungry anymore.