Boredom and a lead.

I awoke as early as usual and carefully distanced myself from Rukia’s sleeping form. While stretching I walked over to my Shinigami uniform and after I had put it on I walked out of the house. I used the morning time to take a little stroll.

Karakura was not to my liking, the city was a desert of cement and buildings of different structure. I liked locations either ordered or natural and this was neither.

But I wasn’t here on vacation, so I stopped in my tracks and walked back to the school to follow Rukia around for the rest of the day, however boring the task may be.

I had been in the classroom for like 2 hours already when Ichigo und Rukia finally arrived. I was so bored out of my mind that I had actually started solving equations out of their math textbook.

“Good morning! Kurosaki!” Orihime shouted across the classroom. To my surprise the, at least to my knowledge, usually somewhat grumpy Ichigo answered with a big smile. “Hey! Morning, Inoue!”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one surprised by that, a girl sitting next to Orihime even asked if he wasn’t in a real good mood today.

“Why is Kurosaki so tense?” Orihime asked. “”Eh?”” the girl and I went. Sometimes minds across cultures and times can be just as confused.

“Michiru what day is today?” Tatsuki asked, to which she replied. “June 16th, why?” Tatsuki thoughtfully looked over to Ichigo, who seemed to have a great conversation with two of his friends. “Because that explains it. Tomorrow he will not come to school.”

The conversation stopped there, but my curiosity was tickled so I kept a close eye on Ichigo for the rest of the day.

I would only get my answer about 14 hours later, believe me I have stood through worse, like canon barrages, but staring at a guy for 14 hours really is about as boring as it got. But I digress again, the school was really taking a toll on me.

Ichigo was doing some stretching before going to bed, with Rukia, in her pyjamas asking about a family meeting the Kurosaki’s held earlier. I myself was leaning against the wall and was currently pondering about the question whether I should ask Rukia to have sex with me again or go back to Orihime.

“Would it be okay for me to take a break from Shinigami work tomorrow?” Ichigo asked out of the blue. Time froze as both Rukia and me suddenly tensed up.

“Of course that’s not possible!” she shouted, seemingly having forgotten all about me. “What is your problem, huh? Since this morning you’ve been…”

“It’s the anniversary.” Ichigo interrupted calmly. “Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day my mom died.”

Seems like I just stumbled into some pretty grave shit. But it seemed like Ichigo wasn’t just finished yet. “No, the truth it it’s the day she was killed.”

Okay, so I needed a second to process what I just heard. Not the ‘my mother was killed part’ I didn’t care all that much about that. Tragic, yeah, but I barely knew the guy so it wasn’t on me to feel sad about it. But what he had asked first was really interesting.

Is it possible to take a break of Shinigami work? Now this could mean one of two things, either he was helping her, he did possess incredible spiritual power after all or he Rukia Kuchiki had created a substitute Shinigami. The first one was not illegal but frowned upon either since the whole Quincy war but the later was an actual offense to Shinigami law.

Ichigo silently went to bed and Rukia soon followed suit leaving me standing in the darkness of the room, pondering over my options.