Let's do a time skip again.

I don’t want to bore you with all the details of the next three weeks. At first I was introduced formally as the second seat and then it was straight back to work and training. Day in and day out I would show up in the office, go through a mountain of paperwork, train my Shikai, get back to more paperwork, had to spar with Omaeda (Which was great because I could keep up with the guy now and punching him in his dumb face for making all his work felt glorious).

Of course there were highlights too, namely every single second I could spent with Soifon. Didn’t matter much to me if it was on the training grounds, the office or the bedsheets I was happy to be around here and eventually she started to trust me with more intricate matters in her life.

And so my days went on. The paperwork got easier as I got used to it, my bond with Merc strengthened, the amount of times my fist connected with Omaeda’s face increased, albeit not by a lot and my relationship with Soifon made steady progress.

Then, my training was over. “So you survived, great.” Soifon said, her mood visibly better than usual. It was nice to see her smile, even now she only did so on few occasions. “Now, you will do the paperwork as usual but the training sessions with me and Omaeda are over, meaning you have much of the day for yourself now. I warn you, don’t slack off because of it.”

I saluted, “Of course not, Soifon.” I said and I meant it. Finally, with some time on my hands I started to plan our date in between training session I organized for myself. I was walking through Seireitei, my face an iron mask of discipline but a stupid grin on the inside as I held a reservation for a restaurant in my hand.

Everything was going my way, today I would ask Soifon out again and she was honour bound to agree. I was tempted to whistle a little but was promptly interrupted by lighting that suddenly filled the sky.

“The hell?” I asked and looked at the blue ball that had just crashed into the protective barrier.