Mayuri Kurotsuchi was basking in the light of the ultraviolet lamps that were placed at every conceivable corner of his recuperation room so that, if one should fail, it wouldn’t make too much of a difference. Speed was of the essence, since what Mayuri hated above anything else was wasting precious time—time that he could have spent doing research or yelling at his no-good lieutenant. Moreover, Mayuri didn’t wish to take any chances with his body. He couldn’t dream of having to remain in his liquid form just because the stupid machine he made started malfunctioning.
He tut-tutted at himself, idly waving away the thought that anything he made could ever malfunction. That would be a rather ambitious yet dimwitted attempt at defining impossibility.
That Mayuri hated perfection was true, but would anyone notice if he simply said he had no faults? He doubted it. He was, after all, surrounded by people whose IQ didn’t measure up to half of that of an autistic jellyfish, and such a crowd can’t often be expected to recognize hypocrisy if it belly danced in front of it wearing a tutu.
Mayuri gave vent to a sigh of satisfaction as he felt his molecules move closer to each other, and was in the process of drawing this sigh on for a couple of moments more when he was suddenly interrupted by a disconcertingly loud crash that proceeded from somewhere outside.
His immediate impulse was to bubble up, which was the closest thing to jumping into the air that he could perform in his present state, and conclude that Nemu was being clumsy again. Upon calming down a bit, he was wondering bitterly about what it was that Nemu could have crashed. And then the UV lights went out.
“What!” Mayuri cried.
“Did you hear something?” said Hitsugaya, who had tripped over a wire on the floor, disconnecting it from the plug point.
Zaraki shrugged.
“Why the heck would I be hearing anything?”
“I don’t know,” Hitsugaya said. “I thought I heard someone yell.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“Maybe it’s because all this smoke is stuffing up my head.”
Byakuya coughed in order to draw attention to himself.
“I don’t see the Captain of Squad 12 anywhere.”
This made the other two alive to the fact, and they in turn reacted by scanning the laboratory—the greater part of which they could not see—and concluded that the Captain of Squad 12 was indeed nowhere to be seen.
“Where could he have gone?” Hitsugaya said.
“Beats me,” Zaraki said in response, and a period of contemplative silence followed.
“Maybe…” Hitsugaya said, more to himself than to the others, “Just maybe, Kurotsuchi’s hiding from us.” The idea appealed to him more than it did before. “Yes! That’s it! He’s hiding from us!”
Zaraki warmed to the notion as well, since it insinuated that somebody was going to get hurt pretty badly.
“That piece of rotten crap,” he said, brimming with glee as he idly ran his finger over the hilt of his Zanpakutō. “That cowardly rodent. Wait till I find him.”
“The question is, where is he?” said Byakuya, who had also developed a grudge against the monochromatic mass of unpleasantness.
“Shall we start searching?” said Hitsugaya.
Byakuya shook his head.
“I don’t think it would be fruitful. If he’s gone, he’s probably not anywhere near here. The first thing we should do is douse these flames before we all suffocate to death.”
“And just how do you plan to do that?” sneered Zaraki, who preferred not to think that Byakuya was capable of doing anything.
Byakuya cast him a cold glare before saying, “Captain Hitsugaya shall use his Zanpakutō, of course.”
Hitsugaya’s pride prevented him from gasping and saying, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” Instead he wordlessly unsheathed his sword.
“Reign over the frosted heavens! Hyorinmaru!”
The temperature of the room fell rapidly as particles of ice gathered around Hitsugaya’s Zanpakutō, seemingly out of nowhere, and before one could dwell on the aforementioned happening for more than a split second, an enormous and majestic dragon of ice emerged from the tip of the sword, circled around the room for a couple of moments, the temperature falling rapidly (Byakuya wished he had remembered to bring his scarf with him) by the millisecond, before crashing headlong into the perpetrator of all evil—the pot that spouted the malodorous smoke—incapacitating it by sealing it within the resulting ice-cube (as Hitsugaya called it in private—a sign of affection for his Zanpakutō). Diamond dust fell softly onto the floor, precipitating the smoke particles, and pretty soon, the air was clean again.
“Phew,” said Hitsugaya, replacing Hyorinmaru in its sheath. “I’m glad we got that over with.”
Before anyone could say anything in response, a sound much like that produced when one blows into one end of a metallic pipe was heard from the direction of a queer something that greatly resembled a spacecraft.
One could make out the words, “Let—me—out—of—here—!!!” if he strained his ears.
“Who’s that?” said Zaraki.
“Sounds like Kurotsuchi.”
“Is it now,” Zaraki said, grinning as widely as a tiger—if tigers are given to grinning—that has cornered its lunch. In a flash he had cut open the space ship, and where he expected to see a peevish mad scientist complaining about the outrage of being locked inside a machine, a viscous, green liquid trickled out. The liquid expressed its outrage at being locked inside a machine in Mayuri’s voice.
Zaraki was shocked, as who wouldn’t be if they stumbled across talking goo. He jumped back instinctively, and was surprised at himself for doing so—not even Ichigo had made him jump back, and he was the strongest opponent he had ever fought.
“I guess I should be saying thank you,” said the liquid as it retraced its path to the table where it all began, “but since you three imbeciles are the ones who caused all this in the first place—”
“Wait a moment there, Kurotsuchi,” said Hitsugaya, who hated being on the receiving end of injudicious blame. “What do you mean we were the ones who did all this? If it weren’t for you and your insane experiments none of this would have ever happened.”
Mayuri said nothing, and could almost be mistaken for innocuous, lifeless goo. Until, of course, he started flowing up a plank that fell from the ceiling and connected the floor with the surface of the table.
“Just wait until I return to my normal form!” Mayuri said. “Just you wait!”
“For what?”
“You’ve always been so arrogant, Zaraki. I’m going to pickle you limb by limb in a vat of hot acid!”
And cursing thus he flowed out of sight through a crack in the wall, possibly in search of his lieutenant, who would doubtless have a backup plan at the ready.
Mayuri’s scream of agony was heard a short while later as he was stepped on by an oblivious Komamura. Apparently choosing the shortest way out—through the grass—was not the best idea.
As for Byakuya, Hitsugaya and Zaraki—the saying “Great minds think alike” could accurately apply to them. The three of them simultaneously conceived the notion of completely obliterating the odious laboratory, and each did so in his own way.
Mayuri could be heard screaming again.
Captain Kyoraku sat at the window of his cabin, staring wistfully out at the sapphire water of the lake, and the sight of his little Nanao walking toward it, engaged deeply in conversation with her close friends Rangiku and Isane.
He sighed beatifically.
Nanao was beautiful, he said to himself. Although he could only see her back (which was equally beautiful, he said, cursing himself internally at having the gall to conceive the notion that anything about Nanao could be imperfect), he was sure she looked as beautiful as always, if not more beautiful. The evening sun provided just the right amount of lighting to highlight Nanao’s features. Her skin was radiant, and her usually blue-black hair was completely black—the perfect contrast.
He rested his chin on the windowsill.
Nanao looks so pretty when she runs her hand through her hair, he thought.
He was immersing himself slowly into a self-created world where the only inhabitants were Nanao and him. He allowed his thoughts to transport him to a field of buttercups. He could feel the breeze against his face—oh, the soporific feeling!—he could feel Nanao against his chest, smell her lovely scent—
WHACK!
The slap was so hard that Kyoraku stumbled, tripped over his pink kimono and landed on his behind. What would otherwise have been a resounding thud was muffled by the thick grass.
“My little Nanao—” Kyoraku began complainingly, rubbing his cheek.
“Don’t you say another word!” yelled Nanao, red with indignation and embarrassment.
Isane and Rangiku wisely took several steps back. The latter, who ordinarily would have poked a little fun at Nanao regarding the obvious affection her oh so romantic captain had for her, decided against her nature that it was best to remain silent.
“I’ve had enough of you!” she yelled. “I’ve tolerated your immaturity and lack of self-restraint for years, but this time you’ve gone too far!”
“Nanao—”
“No! Not a word out of you, do you understand?” she said, waving her wooden fan menacingly in the air. “I’ve had enough of you! I can’t take it anymore!”
Kyoraku stared in bewilderment as he watched Nanao march in the direction of the lake.
“I don’t want to see you ever again!” she said upon reaching the edge.
Kyoraku, who was too shocked to get up, stared dumbly after Nanao, whose intentions had become abundantly clear to him.
She was wading steadily into the lake, going a foot deeper into the water with every step.
Kyoraku was beginning to panic. Nanao didn’t know how to swim.
“Nanao!” he called, but it was as though she were deaf.
“Captain Kyoraku!” said Isane, who was also panicking. “Go save her!”
She might have done so herself if Rangiku hadn’t been holding her around the middle. According to the strawberry blond, Nanao wanted Kyoraku to go after her.
“Right,” Kyoraku said, realizing suddenly that he had been on the ground all the while. He jumped to his feet and made a dash after Nanao, who was already in neck-deep water.
In a flash he had his arms around her, resisting her feeble attempts at getting him off her, and carried her back to the shore.
“Don’t do that, Nanao!” Kyoraku scolded her softly, draping his pink kimono around her to protect her from the chillingly cold winds.
Nanao hmpf-ed and marched away.
“You know Captain Kyoraku,” Rangiku said. “You really shouldn’t have been so blatant.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Rangiku said, coughing in evident unease, “it almost looked like you were trying to rape her.”
“What!”
“I mean, I don’t blame Nanao for being mad at you.”
So Kyoraku had finally lost control of his feelings. With bowed head, he trudged toward Ukitake’s cabin, desirous of that familiar word of encouragement he always got from him whenever he was dumped by a girl.
Nanao, on her part, was going to seek consolation from the person who could understand her—Byakuya Kuchiki.
“… And then,” said Nanao, wiping tears from her eyes with her sleeve, which was already soaked, “he grabbed hold of me and… and… kissed me.”
She burst into tears.
Byakuya, who was sitting opposite her at the table, listlessly stirred his tea, his eyes closed and his face expressionless, and giving the impression of being uninterested in whatever nonsense Nanao was spewing.
This isn’t true.
Beneath the mask of stoicism lay a troubled Byakuya; a Byakuya who was contemplating the mystery behind why the members of the Soul Reaper Women’s Association always poured their hearts out to him, as though he would understand and cry with them.
“Tch,” Byakuya said inadvertently at the very thought.
“Huh?” said Nanao, raising her tear-stained face to regard her audience with a confused look.
“Nothing,” Byakuya said, without the awkwardness of one who was trying to cover up for an embarrassing slip of the tongue, or the rudeness of one who was trying to tell the other party that it was none of their business. Byakuya spoke the word with the natural air of one who has spent years denying having said anything to distraught women.
“Because it almost sounded as if—”
“Nothing,” Byakuya said firmly. “Go on,” he added, almost as an afterthought when he sensed that Nanao was about to burst into tears again. Oh, the moaning and the whining and the sobbing! Byakuya couldn’t stand it.
“And then,” Nanao said, sniveling, “he grabbed hold of me and… and… kissed me.”
Nanao burst into tears.
“You said that already. Move on to the next part.”
“Oh? Okay. And then I hit him with my fan.”
Byakuya suddenly became interested.
“And then?”
“He tripped over and fell down.”
Byakuya suppressed a stray ‘ha’ of amusement.
“And then I threatened to drown myself in the lake, and he rescued me, and I came straight here. Thank you so much, Captain Kuchiki.”
Byakuya was confused all over again.
“For what?”
“For listening.”
Nanao wiped her eyes and blew her nose on Byakuya’s scarf and left.
“So, er, tell me one more time,” said Ukitake, bringing his best friend much needed sake. “What is it that you did to Nanao?”
“Nothing,” Kyoraku said, accepting the saucer graciously before burying his face in it and lapping up its contents like a thirsty dog. “I didn’t do anything,” he said upon resurfacing.
“I don’t believe that,” Ukitake said, sitting down on the floor in front of Kyoraku. “She wouldn’t hit you unprovoked. You must have done something to her.”
“But I didn’t,” Kyoraku insisted pathetically. “I didn’t do anything to her.”
Ukitake shook his head and sighed.
“You should just forget about her, Shunsui,” he said. “You’re much too old for her, and if she doesn’t want you, then you should respect that.”
Kyoraku was too much of an optimist to believe even for a moment that Nanao didn’t have feelings for him, buried deep down within her, waiting to be revealed to her.
“So you grabbed onto her from behind and kissed her, is it?” Ukitake said.
Kyoraku looked shocked.
“Who told you that?” he said.
“Lieutenant Matsumoto. Anyway, that was a terrible thing to do.”
Kyoraku sighed in resignation.
“I didn’t do it on purpose. It just… happened.”
“Things always ‘just happen’ with you, don’t they?”
“I swear, I didn’t mean to do it.”
“You’d better go apologize to her.”
“Good idea,” Kyoraku said, nodding and getting up, forgetting about his half-finished sake and flash-stepping out of Ukitake’s cabin with the alacrity of one who has spotted a ray of hope during dark times.
Kyoraku barged into Nanao’s bedroom with an air of urgency, not registering the fact that his lieutenant was half-dressed and preparing to go to bed.
With a scream, Nanao quickly covered herself with her bed sheets before proceeding to throw everything she had close at hand at Kyoraku.
Kyoraku on his part, more enamored of Nanao than he had ever been, presently in a trance-like state at having seen his Nanao only threads away from complete nudity, was oblivious of the flower vases, panty hoses, towels and soap bars that were thrown at him. Nor was he aware of them hitting him.
“Get out!” Nanao yelled, slapping him when he unwittingly crept too close to her.
Shaken back to his senses, Kyoraku regarded the indignant, half-dressed Nanao before him, and a wave of guilt swept over him.
“Nanao…” he said. “I’m sorry…”
This earned him another slap—the third one that day.
“You jerk!” Nanao said, close to tears. “I already told you I never want to see your face again!”
Kyoraku, suddenly remembering Nanao’s earlier actions, got an idea.
“Then I’ll end my life and drown myself in the lake,” he said, waiting expectantly for Nanao to fling her arms around her and stop him from doing so.
“Do so,” she said coldly. “And take your sake with you. I can’t stand the stench.”
She knew, of course, that the contingency of Kyoraku’s drowning himself was awfully remote, even if he did manage to reach water deep enough to make drowning possible. He was, she conceded, a very good swimmer.
Kyoraku, utterly disheartened now that Nanao’s true feelings for him had been revealed, left her cabin with bowed head, and returned to his, to Sado, in whose comfortingly silent presence he could convalesce from the wounds inflicted upon him and curse himself to his wounded heart’s content for having ever been born.
They were so absorbed in their self-retribution that they didn’t notice Captain Unohana walk up to them and scrutinize them with her keen eye.
“I had a feeling you two would come down with something,” she said knowingly.
“What do you mean?” said Ichigo absently before registering Unohana’s presence and the horrors it portended.
“I’ll get the Treatment Room ready right away,” Unohana said, hurriedly tottering off to look for Isane.
“Here we go again,” said Renji without as much enthusiasm as Unohana would have expected.
Captain Unohana had, meanwhile, changed her mind about Ichigo and Renji. She had revised her views on their unwholesome pallor and blamed it correctly on anxiety occasioned by their inexplicable incompetence.
“Then to whom should I give the Treatment?”
She didn’t want to ruin the thrill of the moment for herself and put off the idea of giving someone the Treatment altogether.
“Isane,” she said to her lieutenant, whom she had just collected from an emergency meeting of the Women’s Association. “Could you postpone your discussion on Lieutenant Ise and Captain Kyoraku to some other time? We need to go see the Head Captain now.”
He tut-tutted at himself, idly waving away the thought that anything he made could ever malfunction. That would be a rather ambitious yet dimwitted attempt at defining impossibility.
That Mayuri hated perfection was true, but would anyone notice if he simply said he had no faults? He doubted it. He was, after all, surrounded by people whose IQ didn’t measure up to half of that of an autistic jellyfish, and such a crowd can’t often be expected to recognize hypocrisy if it belly danced in front of it wearing a tutu.
Mayuri gave vent to a sigh of satisfaction as he felt his molecules move closer to each other, and was in the process of drawing this sigh on for a couple of moments more when he was suddenly interrupted by a disconcertingly loud crash that proceeded from somewhere outside.
His immediate impulse was to bubble up, which was the closest thing to jumping into the air that he could perform in his present state, and conclude that Nemu was being clumsy again. Upon calming down a bit, he was wondering bitterly about what it was that Nemu could have crashed. And then the UV lights went out.
“What!” Mayuri cried.
“Did you hear something?” said Hitsugaya, who had tripped over a wire on the floor, disconnecting it from the plug point.
Zaraki shrugged.
“Why the heck would I be hearing anything?”
“I don’t know,” Hitsugaya said. “I thought I heard someone yell.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“Maybe it’s because all this smoke is stuffing up my head.”
Byakuya coughed in order to draw attention to himself.
“I don’t see the Captain of Squad 12 anywhere.”
This made the other two alive to the fact, and they in turn reacted by scanning the laboratory—the greater part of which they could not see—and concluded that the Captain of Squad 12 was indeed nowhere to be seen.
“Where could he have gone?” Hitsugaya said.
“Beats me,” Zaraki said in response, and a period of contemplative silence followed.
“Maybe…” Hitsugaya said, more to himself than to the others, “Just maybe, Kurotsuchi’s hiding from us.” The idea appealed to him more than it did before. “Yes! That’s it! He’s hiding from us!”
Zaraki warmed to the notion as well, since it insinuated that somebody was going to get hurt pretty badly.
“That piece of rotten crap,” he said, brimming with glee as he idly ran his finger over the hilt of his Zanpakutō. “That cowardly rodent. Wait till I find him.”
“The question is, where is he?” said Byakuya, who had also developed a grudge against the monochromatic mass of unpleasantness.
“Shall we start searching?” said Hitsugaya.
Byakuya shook his head.
“I don’t think it would be fruitful. If he’s gone, he’s probably not anywhere near here. The first thing we should do is douse these flames before we all suffocate to death.”
“And just how do you plan to do that?” sneered Zaraki, who preferred not to think that Byakuya was capable of doing anything.
Byakuya cast him a cold glare before saying, “Captain Hitsugaya shall use his Zanpakutō, of course.”
Hitsugaya’s pride prevented him from gasping and saying, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” Instead he wordlessly unsheathed his sword.
“Reign over the frosted heavens! Hyorinmaru!”
The temperature of the room fell rapidly as particles of ice gathered around Hitsugaya’s Zanpakutō, seemingly out of nowhere, and before one could dwell on the aforementioned happening for more than a split second, an enormous and majestic dragon of ice emerged from the tip of the sword, circled around the room for a couple of moments, the temperature falling rapidly (Byakuya wished he had remembered to bring his scarf with him) by the millisecond, before crashing headlong into the perpetrator of all evil—the pot that spouted the malodorous smoke—incapacitating it by sealing it within the resulting ice-cube (as Hitsugaya called it in private—a sign of affection for his Zanpakutō). Diamond dust fell softly onto the floor, precipitating the smoke particles, and pretty soon, the air was clean again.
“Phew,” said Hitsugaya, replacing Hyorinmaru in its sheath. “I’m glad we got that over with.”
Before anyone could say anything in response, a sound much like that produced when one blows into one end of a metallic pipe was heard from the direction of a queer something that greatly resembled a spacecraft.
One could make out the words, “Let—me—out—of—here—!!!” if he strained his ears.
“Who’s that?” said Zaraki.
“Sounds like Kurotsuchi.”
“Is it now,” Zaraki said, grinning as widely as a tiger—if tigers are given to grinning—that has cornered its lunch. In a flash he had cut open the space ship, and where he expected to see a peevish mad scientist complaining about the outrage of being locked inside a machine, a viscous, green liquid trickled out. The liquid expressed its outrage at being locked inside a machine in Mayuri’s voice.
Zaraki was shocked, as who wouldn’t be if they stumbled across talking goo. He jumped back instinctively, and was surprised at himself for doing so—not even Ichigo had made him jump back, and he was the strongest opponent he had ever fought.
“I guess I should be saying thank you,” said the liquid as it retraced its path to the table where it all began, “but since you three imbeciles are the ones who caused all this in the first place—”
“Wait a moment there, Kurotsuchi,” said Hitsugaya, who hated being on the receiving end of injudicious blame. “What do you mean we were the ones who did all this? If it weren’t for you and your insane experiments none of this would have ever happened.”
Mayuri said nothing, and could almost be mistaken for innocuous, lifeless goo. Until, of course, he started flowing up a plank that fell from the ceiling and connected the floor with the surface of the table.
“Just wait until I return to my normal form!” Mayuri said. “Just you wait!”
“For what?”
“You’ve always been so arrogant, Zaraki. I’m going to pickle you limb by limb in a vat of hot acid!”
And cursing thus he flowed out of sight through a crack in the wall, possibly in search of his lieutenant, who would doubtless have a backup plan at the ready.
Mayuri’s scream of agony was heard a short while later as he was stepped on by an oblivious Komamura. Apparently choosing the shortest way out—through the grass—was not the best idea.
As for Byakuya, Hitsugaya and Zaraki—the saying “Great minds think alike” could accurately apply to them. The three of them simultaneously conceived the notion of completely obliterating the odious laboratory, and each did so in his own way.
Mayuri could be heard screaming again.
* * * * *
Captain Kyoraku sat at the window of his cabin, staring wistfully out at the sapphire water of the lake, and the sight of his little Nanao walking toward it, engaged deeply in conversation with her close friends Rangiku and Isane.
He sighed beatifically.
Nanao was beautiful, he said to himself. Although he could only see her back (which was equally beautiful, he said, cursing himself internally at having the gall to conceive the notion that anything about Nanao could be imperfect), he was sure she looked as beautiful as always, if not more beautiful. The evening sun provided just the right amount of lighting to highlight Nanao’s features. Her skin was radiant, and her usually blue-black hair was completely black—the perfect contrast.
He rested his chin on the windowsill.
Nanao looks so pretty when she runs her hand through her hair, he thought.
He was immersing himself slowly into a self-created world where the only inhabitants were Nanao and him. He allowed his thoughts to transport him to a field of buttercups. He could feel the breeze against his face—oh, the soporific feeling!—he could feel Nanao against his chest, smell her lovely scent—
WHACK!
The slap was so hard that Kyoraku stumbled, tripped over his pink kimono and landed on his behind. What would otherwise have been a resounding thud was muffled by the thick grass.
“My little Nanao—” Kyoraku began complainingly, rubbing his cheek.
“Don’t you say another word!” yelled Nanao, red with indignation and embarrassment.
Isane and Rangiku wisely took several steps back. The latter, who ordinarily would have poked a little fun at Nanao regarding the obvious affection her oh so romantic captain had for her, decided against her nature that it was best to remain silent.
“I’ve had enough of you!” she yelled. “I’ve tolerated your immaturity and lack of self-restraint for years, but this time you’ve gone too far!”
“Nanao—”
“No! Not a word out of you, do you understand?” she said, waving her wooden fan menacingly in the air. “I’ve had enough of you! I can’t take it anymore!”
Kyoraku stared in bewilderment as he watched Nanao march in the direction of the lake.
“I don’t want to see you ever again!” she said upon reaching the edge.
Kyoraku, who was too shocked to get up, stared dumbly after Nanao, whose intentions had become abundantly clear to him.
She was wading steadily into the lake, going a foot deeper into the water with every step.
Kyoraku was beginning to panic. Nanao didn’t know how to swim.
“Nanao!” he called, but it was as though she were deaf.
“Captain Kyoraku!” said Isane, who was also panicking. “Go save her!”
She might have done so herself if Rangiku hadn’t been holding her around the middle. According to the strawberry blond, Nanao wanted Kyoraku to go after her.
“Right,” Kyoraku said, realizing suddenly that he had been on the ground all the while. He jumped to his feet and made a dash after Nanao, who was already in neck-deep water.
In a flash he had his arms around her, resisting her feeble attempts at getting him off her, and carried her back to the shore.
“Don’t do that, Nanao!” Kyoraku scolded her softly, draping his pink kimono around her to protect her from the chillingly cold winds.
Nanao hmpf-ed and marched away.
“You know Captain Kyoraku,” Rangiku said. “You really shouldn’t have been so blatant.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” Rangiku said, coughing in evident unease, “it almost looked like you were trying to rape her.”
“What!”
“I mean, I don’t blame Nanao for being mad at you.”
So Kyoraku had finally lost control of his feelings. With bowed head, he trudged toward Ukitake’s cabin, desirous of that familiar word of encouragement he always got from him whenever he was dumped by a girl.
Nanao, on her part, was going to seek consolation from the person who could understand her—Byakuya Kuchiki.
* * * * *
“… And then,” said Nanao, wiping tears from her eyes with her sleeve, which was already soaked, “he grabbed hold of me and… and… kissed me.”
She burst into tears.
Byakuya, who was sitting opposite her at the table, listlessly stirred his tea, his eyes closed and his face expressionless, and giving the impression of being uninterested in whatever nonsense Nanao was spewing.
This isn’t true.
Beneath the mask of stoicism lay a troubled Byakuya; a Byakuya who was contemplating the mystery behind why the members of the Soul Reaper Women’s Association always poured their hearts out to him, as though he would understand and cry with them.
“Tch,” Byakuya said inadvertently at the very thought.
“Huh?” said Nanao, raising her tear-stained face to regard her audience with a confused look.
“Nothing,” Byakuya said, without the awkwardness of one who was trying to cover up for an embarrassing slip of the tongue, or the rudeness of one who was trying to tell the other party that it was none of their business. Byakuya spoke the word with the natural air of one who has spent years denying having said anything to distraught women.
“Because it almost sounded as if—”
“Nothing,” Byakuya said firmly. “Go on,” he added, almost as an afterthought when he sensed that Nanao was about to burst into tears again. Oh, the moaning and the whining and the sobbing! Byakuya couldn’t stand it.
“And then,” Nanao said, sniveling, “he grabbed hold of me and… and… kissed me.”
Nanao burst into tears.
“You said that already. Move on to the next part.”
“Oh? Okay. And then I hit him with my fan.”
Byakuya suddenly became interested.
“And then?”
“He tripped over and fell down.”
Byakuya suppressed a stray ‘ha’ of amusement.
“And then I threatened to drown myself in the lake, and he rescued me, and I came straight here. Thank you so much, Captain Kuchiki.”
Byakuya was confused all over again.
“For what?”
“For listening.”
Nanao wiped her eyes and blew her nose on Byakuya’s scarf and left.
* * * * *
“So, er, tell me one more time,” said Ukitake, bringing his best friend much needed sake. “What is it that you did to Nanao?”
“Nothing,” Kyoraku said, accepting the saucer graciously before burying his face in it and lapping up its contents like a thirsty dog. “I didn’t do anything,” he said upon resurfacing.
“I don’t believe that,” Ukitake said, sitting down on the floor in front of Kyoraku. “She wouldn’t hit you unprovoked. You must have done something to her.”
“But I didn’t,” Kyoraku insisted pathetically. “I didn’t do anything to her.”
Ukitake shook his head and sighed.
“You should just forget about her, Shunsui,” he said. “You’re much too old for her, and if she doesn’t want you, then you should respect that.”
Kyoraku was too much of an optimist to believe even for a moment that Nanao didn’t have feelings for him, buried deep down within her, waiting to be revealed to her.
“So you grabbed onto her from behind and kissed her, is it?” Ukitake said.
Kyoraku looked shocked.
“Who told you that?” he said.
“Lieutenant Matsumoto. Anyway, that was a terrible thing to do.”
Kyoraku sighed in resignation.
“I didn’t do it on purpose. It just… happened.”
“Things always ‘just happen’ with you, don’t they?”
“I swear, I didn’t mean to do it.”
“You’d better go apologize to her.”
“Good idea,” Kyoraku said, nodding and getting up, forgetting about his half-finished sake and flash-stepping out of Ukitake’s cabin with the alacrity of one who has spotted a ray of hope during dark times.
* * * * *
Kyoraku barged into Nanao’s bedroom with an air of urgency, not registering the fact that his lieutenant was half-dressed and preparing to go to bed.
With a scream, Nanao quickly covered herself with her bed sheets before proceeding to throw everything she had close at hand at Kyoraku.
Kyoraku on his part, more enamored of Nanao than he had ever been, presently in a trance-like state at having seen his Nanao only threads away from complete nudity, was oblivious of the flower vases, panty hoses, towels and soap bars that were thrown at him. Nor was he aware of them hitting him.
“Get out!” Nanao yelled, slapping him when he unwittingly crept too close to her.
Shaken back to his senses, Kyoraku regarded the indignant, half-dressed Nanao before him, and a wave of guilt swept over him.
“Nanao…” he said. “I’m sorry…”
This earned him another slap—the third one that day.
“You jerk!” Nanao said, close to tears. “I already told you I never want to see your face again!”
Kyoraku, suddenly remembering Nanao’s earlier actions, got an idea.
“Then I’ll end my life and drown myself in the lake,” he said, waiting expectantly for Nanao to fling her arms around her and stop him from doing so.
“Do so,” she said coldly. “And take your sake with you. I can’t stand the stench.”
She knew, of course, that the contingency of Kyoraku’s drowning himself was awfully remote, even if he did manage to reach water deep enough to make drowning possible. He was, she conceded, a very good swimmer.
Kyoraku, utterly disheartened now that Nanao’s true feelings for him had been revealed, left her cabin with bowed head, and returned to his, to Sado, in whose comfortingly silent presence he could convalesce from the wounds inflicted upon him and curse himself to his wounded heart’s content for having ever been born.
* * * * *
Ichigo Kurosaki, startlingly reticent since the Hollow attack, was still recovering from the shock he received at registering his inability to defend himself, and was sitting under a tree next to Renji, who was doing the same. They were so absorbed in their self-retribution that they didn’t notice Captain Unohana walk up to them and scrutinize them with her keen eye.
“I had a feeling you two would come down with something,” she said knowingly.
“What do you mean?” said Ichigo absently before registering Unohana’s presence and the horrors it portended.
“I’ll get the Treatment Room ready right away,” Unohana said, hurriedly tottering off to look for Isane.
“Here we go again,” said Renji without as much enthusiasm as Unohana would have expected.
Captain Unohana had, meanwhile, changed her mind about Ichigo and Renji. She had revised her views on their unwholesome pallor and blamed it correctly on anxiety occasioned by their inexplicable incompetence.
“Then to whom should I give the Treatment?”
She didn’t want to ruin the thrill of the moment for herself and put off the idea of giving someone the Treatment altogether.
“Isane,” she said to her lieutenant, whom she had just collected from an emergency meeting of the Women’s Association. “Could you postpone your discussion on Lieutenant Ise and Captain Kyoraku to some other time? We need to go see the Head Captain now.”
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