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Kanda-san’s house did not have a ghost.
She believed it did, and sometimes that was enough to actually conjure one—especially if there had been a death in the house recently. But Kanda-san had rats in her walls, big ones, and Ichigo was disappointed that he had to break it to her.
Sometimes there would be a ghost. Sometimes the ghost would have something to say, and Ichigo would have to ‘translate.’ But sometimes there was silence. The odd scratching sounds at night, the whisper of something against the wallpapered walls—they were just rats. The departed soul wasn’t there anymore, regardless of how hopefully the client looked at him for answers. Ichigo wasn’t sure how they managed to pass on, but sometimes he didn’t get there fast enough and then it would be too late for the living and the dead to have their last conversation. Whoever ushered souls between the living world and the world of the dead clearly didn’t give a fuck about closure, but Ichigo did, and sometimes he got there in time to help.
That wasn’t the case today. Today the soul had moved on to god-knows-where before Kanda-san had even made the call. When Ichigo said this to her, the old mother’s eyes turned soft and watery with disappointment. He felt disappointed in himself for not getting there sooner. It didn’t matter if he’d seen this scene a thousand times before, it was still a kick to the gut every single time.
“I’m sorry,” he said as gently as he could—always as gently as he could, to soften the blow somehow.
“I should have called you sooner,” she despaired. “He must have waited for me as long as he could.”
Ichigo averted his gaze out of respect, hands in his pocket as he shifted uncomfortably. The gulf between mother and son had just widened, and you could have words for near any situation, but not this one. Words wouldn’t be enough for the grief that had suddenly swallowed her whole. He let a moment pass, and then another as Kanda-san delicately dabbed her eyes with her sleeve.
“In any case, I’ve got a number for a guy who can deal with your rodent problem,” Ichigo explained. “Make sure you’re home when he gets here, alright?”
Kanda-san nodded. He knew the next few weeks, maybe even months, would pass by listlessly for her—that she’d probably skip a meal or two or neglect the dishes because she couldn’t get out of bed. The last thing you’d think about when someone you love died was your clogged toilet. If he couldn’t help the aggrieved talk to the deceased, the least he could do was hook them up with a plumber or a gardener or a cook—someone who’d take all of this off their hands while they dealt with all of that.
So after settling payment, Ichigo called his guy in pest control, made an appointment, and then he went home. The midday lull gave him enough time to make lunch, even if he usually ended up eating leftovers from the previous day. He slipped a key through the door and entered his apartment.
There was a slight shudder in the air. Ichigo held onto the door on instinct, frowning as the ground rumbled beneath him. It sounded like thunder.
Ichigo moved to the window to check the sky but drew back instantly when a little head perked into view. It was a kid.
“Hi!” the kid cheered, pulling himself up onto the window sill in a jacket one size too big for him, his mouth huffing with the effort of his endeavor. When he finally landed in the room, his enormous brown eyes grew curious. His hair was orange.
“Who-who are you?!” Ichigo sputtered, barely registering the window click shut behind him.
“I’m Kazui,” the boy said simply. Something about his earnestness mellowed Ichigo down even through his confusion.
“Kazui,” he repeated. “How did you get up here?”
“I climbed the drain pipe,” Kazui replied, in that same, simple tone from earlier. The one that implied Ichigo was asking questions with extremely obvious answers, even though nothing about this situation was normal or obvious.
Ichigo sighed. “Okay look, kid, you can’t play in my apartment. Didn’t your parents tell you not to enter strangers’ houses?” More like break into strangers' houses, but the mention of parents made Kazui’s so-far easygoing expression waver.
“Mom asked me to come here,” Kazui whispered. “She made me run away.”
Ichigo’s brows knit in confusion, a strange, uneasy feeling settling into his gut as those big eyes locked into his. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew those eyes.
Meanwhile, Kazui looked lost and a little afraid, though he was certainly jutting his chin out in a false bravado that Ichigo recognized all too well. He remembered being that age, and perhaps that was why his tone gentled when he asked, “Who’s your mother?”
Kazui’s throat moved as he swallowed. “Inoue,” he replied feebly. “Inoue Orihime.”
Ichigo’s eyes widened. All the features in Kazui that looked familiar before melted into recognition now, but a paralyzing fear overtook any other emotion as he crowded into Kazui’s space. “Where is she? What happened?”
“I—she—” Kazui began, but Ichigo realized his position—his very tone—was probably intimidating. He forced himself to calm down and Kazui, watching his body language keenly, mirrored him. “There was an earthquake, so she asked me to get to somewhere safe,” he explained.
Ichigo frowned mildly. “And you came here?”
“It was…a special kind of earthquake.” Kazui enunciated his words slowly, like they were part of a rehearsed script, and then he squinted up at Ichigo as if to see whether Ichigo would understand his code.
Ichigo did understand his code, and every part of him was thrumming with restless energy, demanding that he fling himself out the window and run to Orihime’s location. But the kid was here, and he looked scared, and as much as Ichigo wanted to make sure Orihime was safe, the kid was quickly starting to become his immediate priority.
“Okay,” Ichigo said. “Okay.” He tried to think, tried to force down his racing thoughts about Orihime and refocus them on the situation at hand. He knelt down until he and Kazui were eye-to-eye and settled one hand on Kazui’s shoulder. It was very small. “It’s okay.” Ichigo smiled, pushing some genuine warmth into it. Up close, Kazui’s face looked grimy, and he was probably hungry too. “Come on. Why don’t you get down from there and we can get you cleaned up.”
“I’m hungry,” Kazui said sheepishly.
Ichigo chuckled. “Yeah, we’ll get to that.”
Kazui followed him through the house and stopped at a sink, standing up on tiptoes to cup water into his open palms. While he washed his face, Ichigo rummaged through the fridge. Admittedly, there wasn’t much. Some day-old leftovers and a takeout box he’d stuffed in the back an embarrassingly long time ago. He did as best as he could by scooping out the good parts and pushing it into a microwave. The entire time he watched the bowl spin, he thought of Orihime. Orihime, who had a son, whose son was sitting in his kitchen, waiting expectantly for some food. Ichigo tried to think of things to say, but every time he glanced over, all he could see was the flaming orange hair. Ichigo didn’t know a lot of people with orange hair—himself included. He was currently trying very hard not to guess how old Kazui was. He might’ve been stupid, but he wasn’t that stupid, and he needed Orihime to be alright before he started crunching the numbers.
Besides, it wasn’t hard to see the resemblance now—obvious hair color notwithstanding. Kazui’s eyes and soft chin might’ve been Orihime’s, but the unruly way his hair fell was definitely his. Isshin had gleefully taken too many photographs throughout his years growing up for Ichigo to not recognize those features.
When Ichigo placed the bowl of ramen in front of Kazui, Kazui’s nose wrinkled. Ichigo was embarrassed despite himself, feeling a little defensive of his bachelor lifestyle.
“So.” He cleared his throat, digging around for a clean fork. “Your mom asked you to come here in the case of an emergency?”
Kazui rubbed his eye sleepily. “Kinda.”
That didn’t explain much, but it did explain one thing: that Orihime trusted him to keep Kazui safe. That Orihime relied on him, even if she hadn’t said as much in words. He thought back to the last time he saw her, somewhere towards the end of graduation maybe, a couple of months after they broke up. She’d said goodbye to him in a wistful way, kissing his cheek with a finality that made him uncomfortable.
She must have known she was pregnant then. Ichigo couldn’t help it. His brain had done the math without his permission. She knew she was pregnant, had probably swollen enough to show—maybe not to anyone else, but definitely to herself—and she hadn’t said anything.
A loud burp from Kazui made Ichigo shift his gaze to the boy’s face. His son’s face.
“Kazui,” Ichigo said, just to say it. Kazui looked up at him, eyes so light brown they were almost golden, eyes that were disarming despite their innocence.
Fortunately, Ichigo didn’t have to think of much to say, because the front door opened with a whirlwind. Orihime flew in, her hair in a state of disarray, long skirt and blouse ruffled by her movements.
“Kazui!” She gripped his face with a hand, her eyes critical and worried as her voice raised to a shrill. “Are you alright?”
“Mama,” Kazui whined. Mama.
“I was so worried about you,” she said.
“I’m okay,” he insisted.
Ichigo watched them, mother and son, Orihime’s hands gentle on Kazui’s face as she wiped away lint and grime that didn’t exist and dropped kisses to his soft cheeks. Kazui squirmed and admonished her concern but didn’t move away from her. His small hands were on her wrists, a child’s hands. It struck Ichigo—not for the first time—how young Kazui was. How little.
“He’s fine,” Ichigo said. “He got here just fine.” As he was saying it, he realized it was the first thing he had said to Orihime in six years.
Orihime straightened, suddenly aware of the situation, of the setting. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, nervous, even as she gave him a soft smile. “Ichigo-kun.”
“Been a while,” Ichigo replied in kind. He said nothing of the boy, who gave them both a curious look. Instead, he nodded out towards the window. “Kazui said there was an earthquake of some kind.”
“A special earthquake,” Kazui piped up.
“A special earthquake,” Ichigo amended, a little amused by his insistence.
“Yes,” Orihime admitted, crossing her arms. A pall of tension fell over her face, and Ichigo took the opportunity to examine her closer—her weary eyes, the soft edges of her face. Despite the years, she had only grown more beautiful, except now, her beauty had a maturity to it. A firmness. She didn’t move around with the birdlike clumsiness of before, and except for the initial shrill when she saw her son, her voice was resolute and full of authority. A mother’s voice.
But when she began speaking, there was a real worry within her that was palpable. “We were walking through the town center when the air shifted. It’s hard to explain, but I knew something had happened—the way the ground ruptured wasn’t normal, so I—so I grabbed him—” She bit her lip, suddenly overwhelmed.
“Orihime,” Ichigo said softly, moving closer. “It’s okay. He’s okay now.”
Orihime composed herself, some of the tightness leaving her face as she nodded. “I grabbed him, and I told him to run,” she explained. “Usually, he runs to Tatsuki’s, or to my landlord’s apartment, but I guess his intuition made him run here.” She turned to Kazui, as if, even though she was speaking in third person, she was curious about his motives. Kazui, on the other hand, had already begun poking his head around different corners, now that his mother was here and safe.
“So Tatsuki’s back in Karakura too, huh,” Ichigo said, ignoring the rush of his heart, the knowledge that Orihime had been fully ready to sacrifice herself for her son with no hesitation. But also at the knowledge that his son had inherited his ability—his strange power that attracted death, and with it, the violence of the departed. Now, with this realization, Orihime’s disproportionate anxiety seemed rather proportionate. Fearing the worst, no wonder she’d told her son to run—and her son had run to him.
Ichigo fought down the strength that gave him and ran a light hand down Orihime’s arm to get her attention. When she turned, he felt his own face soften. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
Orihime shook her head. “I’m fine.” It was evident that any distress she endured had entirely been over the safety of her son.
“Come eat something,” he told her. “You must be starving.”
+
Orihime ate Kazui’s leftover ramen with an undeserving amount of gratitude. With her in the room, Ichigo was feeling rather hateful towards his kitchen, but it was obvious she was humoring him more than anything—that she realized how worried she’d made him, when her son had dashed through the door and told him she could be in trouble.
Their son.
“Does this happen often?” Ichigo asked. “These…incidents?”
Orihime dabbed her mouth with a napkin, then shook her head. “We usually avoid crowds,” she explained. “Something seems to happen when we’re around a lot of people, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the energy.” She cast him a clueless shrug. “But I couldn’t avoid it today. I had to pick some papers up from the university, and no one was around to watch him. He’s on his summer vacation right now,” she clarified, at Ichigo’s confused frown about Kazui’s situation.
Right. “And you?” Ichigo nodded at her. “Are you at KU right now?”
“Yeah. I picked up the position last summer,” she replied, with a small smile. “Applied physics.”
“So you’ve been in town for a while,” Ichigo said, without really expecting an answer, a little hurt.
Orihime’s smile turned guilty. “On the outskirts, yes.”
She turned down to press her napkins together, folding them with more precision than necessary. Ichigo didn’t ask her about their son, who was now napping on the couch, his feet making a little ‘v’ on the armrest—didn’t ask about how, or when, or why. He just focused on looking at her, at the longer sweeps of her hair, now that her bangs had grown in. At the slender curve of her neck, the thin material of her blouse, the shape of her body beneath it. Her body, which at some point, had been strong enough to bear a child. She seemed vulnerable now, like she was afraid, almost, that he’d be mad at her.
Ichigo wasn’t mad at her. Even as he fully absorbed the truth of the situation, the concreteness of its presence just a few paces away from them, he couldn’t find it in himself to be mad at her.
“I should wash these,” Orihime announced eventually, standing up to collect her and Kazui’s strewn cutlery.
“I’ve got it.” Ichigo stepped forward, but Orihime shook her head. After a nervy afternoon, it was like she needed something to do, something to channel all that caged energy towards. Ichigo relented, watching her scrub the dishes in silence, casting the occasional glance back at his sleeping son. It was obvious she would leave now. Her bag, which was slumped against his couch, had nothing that indicated she was here to stay. Even Kazui’s run here she had attributed to intuition, or a plan C. Plans A and B had already been appointed to Tatsuki—who had clearly sworn a vow of silence—and a landlord, who didn’t know him. It didn’t escape Ichigo, how fortuitous the earthquake had been, bringing him a son he might’ve never seen his whole life—not unless the circumstance was truly dire, a situation that he was becoming increasingly grateful they hadn’t faced today.
True to form, when Orihime finished wiping her hands, she turned to him with a sad, conclusive kind of smile. “Thank you, Ichigo-kun,” she said. “You’ve been very hospitable to us. But we should go now.”
It was the same smile she’d given him at graduation, he realized. The one where she knew she was saying goodbye for good, even if he’d been none the wiser. Ichigo knew better now. And he knew better than to let her go.
“Wait,” he said, stepping in her way. “Orihime.”
Orihime’s eyes drifted up to his, conveying a muted sort of insistence, a silent plea, perhaps, for him to let things be, for natural order to return to their lives—his, hers and Kazui’s. Whatever that looked like.
“He’s sleeping,” Ichigo explained. It was a pathetic excuse and he knew it, but the events of the afternoon seemed to have taken the wind out of her sails, because she faltered. Her hesitance made him bolder, made him say what he realized he should’ve said at graduation: “Stay. Kick your feet up for a while. I’ve got room.”
+
It was an unfortunate stroke of luck that he ended up getting a call early the next morning. A construction worker dying under a half-finished bridge, a disgruntled boss wanting to speak to him, Ichigo had barely registered the details. He tried to be as present as he could during his site visits, but 6 AM was too early, and after being unable to fall asleep for a long time last night, he’d actually fallen into a stupor sometime at the break of dawn. When the call came, he’d cursed and grumbled but stopped at the spare bedroom before leaving, just to see mother and son. Just to fill his eyes with the relief of their presence. Something had softened in him at the sight of Kazui tucked against Orihime’s side, her hand on the small of his back as they tried to make the best of the narrow bed.
By the time Ichigo returned home, the two of them were already up. Orihime was standing by his couch with both hands on her hips, giving orders to Kazui, who was using a broom to shovel dust into a dustpan.
“—that good, Mama?” Kazui tilted his head up to ask.
“It's perfect, Kazui,” Orihime said, with evident affection. In Ichigo’s shirt—she’d brought no clothes of her own—she looked fuzzy and sleepy, the sleeves dropping all the way to her elbows with a lazy kind of flap. Like this, you could’ve convinced him time had somehow turned back to six years ago, with her standing around in his then-apartment, bare-legged, and bare-faced, waiting for him to crawl back into bed with her.
Orihime’s eyes drifted to the door. She gave Ichigo a tentative smile. “Ichigo-kun.”
“Hey.” Ichigo shut the door behind him. “Morning.”
The gust of wind at his arrival sent a clump of dust bunnies scattering. Kazui, in his rush to chase after them, accidentally kicked the dustpan handle, then dashed with the wind as the different flurries flew in different directions.
Orihime sighed. “Kazui!” she called out. “You’ve made a mess everywhere.”
“It’s fine.” Ichigo unwound his messenger bag from his neck and tossed it onto the couch. “Why were you two up and cleaning, anyway?”
“I was cleaning,” she explained. “Kazui was just trying to help. I figured the place could use a little going over.”
Ichigo flushed, embarrassed, but the glitter of amusement in Orihime’s eyes mollified him. It wasn’t that he was untidy, but house calls always came in at random, forcing him to abandon whatever task he’d been doing halfway. By the time he came back, he’d either forget about it entirely or be too tired to care. It didn’t take a genius to guess, from the looks around the place, that he lived an extremely bachelor life—not one that was suited to accommodate a child, or a family of three—but he felt unwrapped by her gaze anyway. There was much she didn’t say, but from her glances around the apartment, he could tell she’d been drawing conclusions ever since she arrived, though none of them seemed too unfavorable; her smiles were more fond than anything.
“Well, now that you guys are up, I guess I can make breakfast.” Ichigo lifted his grocery bag up, vegetables and egg cartons bulging out of the outlines.
“Real food?” Kazui’s head popped around the doorway hopefully.
Orihime stifled a laugh behind her fist, shaking her head as she headed to the kitchen.
“Yes,” Ichigo promised Kazui, trying not to glance at her legs as he followed her. “Real food.”
Orihime and Kazui kept him company in the kitchen while he cooked, their heads nearly touching as they examined a newspaper together. Ichigo kept glancing back at them, startled by how much Kazui looked like her. He wondered what exactly Kazui knew about him—if he knew he had a father, if he knew Ichigo was his father. At the very least, he must have known Ichigo could see ghosts—the mention of special earthquakes had been a dead giveaway. But how much did he know? How much could he see? Ichigo couldn’t help but feel a distinct betrayal at their closeness and his lack of it. The ache of knowing Orihime had spent years loving and getting to know their son while he was here, by himself. The ache of his separation from her, for no real reason. His stomach sank. He told himself yesterday he wasn’t mad, and maybe he wasn’t. But the sight in front of him tied an undeniable knot in his chest. He couldn’t ignore it.
Withdrawing three plates from the kitchen cabinet, Ichigo turned to mother and son. “My cooking’s not the best,” he warned.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Orihime said, while Kazui eagerly pulled his plate towards himself. Ichigo served them rice and miso with their eggs, plopping different vegetables on the misshapen mound. He’d gone shopping for them earlier this morning with Kazui in mind—overthinking all sorts of things like balanced diets and nutrients until the lady at the shop, a kindly old vendor, heaped a bunch of things into his cart and told him to feed his son well.
“Itadakimasu!” Kazui cheered. Ichigo smiled, an inexplicable rush of warmth coursing through him at this small, cute little kid who was mostly all Orihime in composition, but just a little bit of him, too. He couldn’t help it.
“Itadakimasu,” Ichigo and Orihime said together, and then Ichigo pulled up a chair to eat with them.
The rest of the day passed by in an amicable breeze. Orihime sat at the couch and went over her students’ papers, while Ichigo cleaned the rest of the house. Neither of them spoke, keenly aware of Kazui between them—Kazui, who examined all the crevices of Ichigo’s apartment despite Orihime’s many warnings. In the end, she simply gave up, giving Ichigo an apologetic wince about the invasion of privacy. Ichigo didn’t care. It was an addictive sight. His eyes kept wandering back to his son, his little feet pattering across the floorboards, his little hands sitting on window sills. His unruly hair that Orihime tried to sweep her fingers through, whenever he was around her for long enough to try.
At the end of his quick sweep around the house, Ichigo sank into the couch beside Orihime with a sigh. He was sweaty.
“This is a nice apartment you’ve made for yourself, Ichigo-kun,” Orihime remarked, setting her papers aside to rest her head on one hand.
Ichigo snorted. “Please. You don’t have to lie.”
Orihime shook her head. “I heard about your business,” she said softly, smiling a fond smile. “That sometimes you don’t even take money from your clients."
“I’m trying to be better about that,” he replied sheepishly. It wasn’t that he didn’t accept money. Sometimes the client refused to pay—especially in cases where they didn’t get to talk to their loved one. Most times he let them off the hook for that, even if it played hell with his ability to make rent that month. It just didn’t feel right to talk about money when they’d lost so much, but Keigo had gently warned him that this kind of thing would set a bad precedent. Ichigo glanced at Orihime. Was that where she’d heard it from? Keigo had told Tatsuki, Tatsuki had told Orihime?
“I never hear anything about you,” he said to her, trying not to sound accusing.
Orihime shifted. Evidently, the topic made her uncomfortable. Her eyes followed Kazui, where he was currently crawling on all fours trying to see something under the fridge. Ichigo, too, joined her, and he felt his eyes soften.
“You must have a lot of questions,” she said quietly. “About—about him.”
Ichigo held his breath. Wondered whether to start. “When did you realize? That he could see ghosts?”
Orihime’s eyes widened. Ichigo, too, was surprised that that was the first question that came out of his mouth.
“When he was a baby,” Orihime replied, “he’d grab at things that weren’t there, or try to babble at people I couldn’t see. I know all babies play like that, so I was skeptical at first, but the more he grew, the more I realized it was true. He’d tell me about full-length conversations he was having with the spirits in our house, the kind of things they cried out—things a child couldn’t possibly have made up.”
It was Ichigo’s turn to shift uncomfortably. Growing up being able to see ghosts, he’d seen all sorts of things. He remembered early childhood days—turning a corner in his family home to see a young teenage girl standing in the doorway, wailing about what her father had done to her. He remembered making his mother check under his bed because he knew someone was there, because he could hear the man crying, the terrible whimpers of Naoko, Naoko…An afternoon somewhere, far back in his memories and honestly fuzzy now, where he’d followed an old lady down the highway in search of her daughter, walking, almost, into a line of oncoming cars. After that incident, his mother had never let him out of her sight for more than a minute. But none of that changed anything in the end. In the end, his mother had lost her life precisely because he hadn’t been able to tell the difference.
“You believed him?” Ichigo asked her.
“I knew about you,” she said, like she was a little surprised he would even ask. “I remembered your father’s stories.”
Of course. For as long as he could remember, his ability had been an open secret around town. Growing up, he had always been the boy who could see ghosts, the freak. Some called him an attention-seeker, a liar. Others threw much more callous accusations at him—armchair diagnoses about his mental state. As a kid, Ichigo cried all the time about that disbelief. He had very few friends. After his mom died, he stopped crying altogether. Getting tougher helped keep most people away, but a few had managed to get in anyway—present company included.
Back then, Ichigo wasn’t sure if Orihime had ever really believed him, but she was one of few people around town who didn’t make him feel like a total outcast, and for that reason, he’d somehow let his guard down with her. School—and then college—with her had held a semblance of normalcy for a while, some vague impression that they’d go on to graduate and then get married, the lingering discontent of his life submerging somewhere deep within, even if it didn’t disappear entirely.
But that hadn’t happened. Obviously.
“I’m going to call it a night,” Ichigo declared roughly, standing up.
Orihime started. “But dinner…”
“It’s fine,” Ichigo called out, wandering out of the hallway and into his room. “You two eat. I’m not hungry.”
+
In the morning, Ichigo regretted storming away from their conversation, the guilt souring in his stomach until he felt physically ill. Even though he had turned in early, he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep last night, his ears catching the pattering of Orihime and Kazui’s feet, their chirpy voices floating through the thin walls of his apartment. It was so easy to conjure up a fantastical image, some alternate dimension where they were together—for real—the three of them, a family. A dimension where he was more than he was, where the universe folded into the palm of his hand instead of spilling out through the edges.
“Going out?”
Ichigo turned around from where he was putting on his coat, deeply surprised to see Kazui standing in the hallway.
“Yeah, buddy,” he said. “Just got a call. Possible ghost sighting near Tsukidai Park.”
Kazui’s eyes lit up. “Can I come?”
“You want to come to work with me?”
Kazui nodded. “Yeah!”
Ichigo considered his little form, his rumpled hair. It was obvious from the silence of the apartment that Orihime was still asleep, that Kazui had somehow woken up and slipped out of her hold. Knowing how curious he was—how active—it was probably a bad idea to leave him here on his own. Besides, Ichigo didn’t mind the company.
“Sure.” He nodded. “Go grab your jacket.”
Kazui dashed to the coat hanger and picked up his jacket eagerly. Despite his excitement, he was careful to turn it inside out, one little arm following another as he slipped them through the sleeves. Ichigo fought down a surge of pride. It was unreasonable, really, but there was something about seeing this little human being walk and talk and take responsibility for himself that humbled him.
“Come on,” he said, holding the door open.
“Yosh!” Kazui pumped a fist in response.
The address he received was to an apartment complex, and the walk down there was a long one. Kazui said nothing for most of the way, humming to himself or trying to tiptoe along the beam of the sidewalk. Every now and then, he’d stray off-path, distracted by something or the other—a butterfly, a shimmering shadow, a piece of thread fluttering in the wind. It took Ichigo calling out for him to return, but he did return dutifully and that was something that endeared Ichigo more than he thought it would. Everything about Kazui, from his rapt curiosity to his pleasant absorption in a world of his own, reminded Ichigo of Orihime. But there was something about their shared, content silence that reminded him of him and his own mother too. An invisible thread that connected the two, whether Kazui was right next to him, or a couple of paces ahead.
When they reached the building they were called to, Ichigo could already tell that it was going to be a long morning. A woman stood by the fire exit with curlers in her hair, her hands on her hips. Beside her was her husband, meek and contrite.
“There you are!” she snapped, when she caught sight of Ichigo. “What took you so long?”
“I live pretty far away.” Ichigo’s brow furrowed. Above them, on the second floor balcony, the lithe figure of a young woman leaned against the window. She was wailing. Ichigo glanced at Kazui out of the corner of his eye, a little concerned, but the boy looked curious more than anything. His eyes had caught on too, then.
“What’s going on here?”
“Well, I’ll tell you what’s going on,” the woman began, before her husband could get a word in. “About a week ago, all the things in my bedroom begin flying around—my clothes, my make-up, my pet dog. I think, oh, maybe the wind’s a little strong this morning, maybe it’s the weather.” She drew out a newspaper and smacked it triumphantly against Ichigo’s chest. “It’s not!”
Ichigo unfolded it slowly and examined a headline circled in red marker—a report about a dancer who had taken a pretty nasty fall after one of her performances and ended up dead. The date was from about a week ago.
“Friend of yours?” Ichigo nodded at the couple.
The woman threw a scorned look at her husband. The husband stared at his own feet, murmuring incomprehensible things under his breath in a rather pitiful way.
“Friend of his apparently,” she explained in the end, though her tone left no room for exactly what kind of friend the now-dead dancer had been to her husband. “I thought they weren’t talking anymore, silly old me.”
“Now, dear,” the husband piped up.
“Save it, Yuta, I don’t want to hear it from you anymore!”
Ichigo sighed irritably, wanting to scold the couple for arguing in front of a child, but neither of them seemed to have registered Kazui’s presence in the first place. Kazui, on his part, seemed absolutely undisturbed, his eyes flicking back and forth between the two like they were playing a particularly engaging game of tennis. The girl on the balcony wailed again, but no one took notice.
“--if you don’t want me to take Kiki with me to go live with my mother, you better do something about this,” Ichigo heard the woman say, and his eyes drew back to her. “I mean it.”
Yuta cast Ichigo a helpless look. Ichigo sighed again.
“Okay, let’s go upstairs.” He nodded at Yuta, then turned to Kazui and beckoned him with his hand. “You come too, Kazui.” He didn’t trust the woman to be any kind of good influence.
Kazui beamed.
The woman huffed and crossed her arms, but she stayed put at the bottom of the stairwell as Ichigo let Yuta lead him and Kazui up to the apartment. Inside, the place was well-furnished, a classic 2LDK that seemed perfectly suited to this neighborhood. A poodle let out a little ‘yip!’ as they took their shoes off in the genkan, but none of them paid it any mind. When the spirit in the bedroom sensed their presence, she let out a tentative, “Yuta?”
“She’s calling for you,” Kazui informed Yuta, polite but nonchalant.
Yuta paused in his footsteps, bewildered. Ichigo looked back at him, equally nonplussed by his sudden stop.
“You—you can hear her?”
“Yeah,” Ichigo replied. “She’s in the bedroom.”
Yuta seemed caught between the desire to venture deeper into the house and the desire to run away. It was an expression Ichigo had seen before. An apprehension. Perhaps he had dreamed of speaking to her for days now, had imagined all the things he would say. But confronted with the actual possibility, he balked.
“Come on,” Ichigo urged. “Don’t make her wait. She’s got to go, you know?”
“Go?” Yuta repeated, suddenly afraid. “Go where?”
“I don’t know.” Ichigo shrugged. “They pass on. If you want to talk to her, this is your chance. Clear the air.”
Yuta looked uncertain, almost childlike. “And then what?”
“You get closure, I guess,” Ichigo explained. “You decide what to do with the rest of your life.”
That was the theory, at least. For all his ability to see the dead, Ichigo had never once gotten to see his mother—had never experienced the very thing he was trying to give the rest of his town. But Yuta didn’t need to know that.
“Okay,” Yuta said apprehensively, then glanced at Ichigo through his thick-framed glasses. “You’ll—you’ll tell me what she’s saying?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I’m supposed to pay you…”
“That can wait until the end of the session,” Ichigo said quickly. “For now let’s just go in.”
Color returned to Yuta’s face, and he took the lead, nodding and entering the bedroom like he was entering battle. Ichigo followed him, sharing a look with Kazui, who seemed highly curious about everything that was happening in front of him.
“Yuta!” Rika sobbed, from her place beside the swaying curtains. “I waited for you. I waited for you for so long.” She tried to touch Yuta, but her translucence contrasted wildly with Yuta’s opacity.
Ichigo’s heart was constricted within his chest. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before, but that desperation, that faint relief—it never got easier. He turned to Yuta and conveyed the woman’s words.
“I didn’t know,” Yuta whispered. “Rika—that night…I wanted to come. I know it was special for you. I know you worked hard for it. But Yumi and I…” A difficult expression came over his face. “We’re trying now. We’re really trying.”
“Oh, Yuta,” she cooed. “You know I would never resent you for that.”
“You wouldn’t?” Yuta blinked in surprise when he heard Ichigo’s words.
“Of course not. You’re a good man. A good husband.” Rika smiled, with a hint of irony. “But I just wanted to see you once. Before…” Her expression turned troubled.
“Maybe you don’t have to go,” Yuta glanced at Ichigo, like he was talking more to him than to her. Ichigo mutely shook his head. People asked. People often asked. But Ichigo didn’t have control over who got to die and when. He only got to watch—to listen—to translate. Anything beyond that was outside his realm of control, no matter how much he wished he could return children to their parents and the terminally ill their health. No matter how much he’d have traded his own life if it meant some family got to lengthen theirs.
“It was good seeing you. I’ll leave your house now,” Rika said, looking around the disaster-struck bedroom with a little embarrassment. “Maybe I’ll see you one day, in the great beyond.” She smiled. “I hear it’s a nice place.”
“Maybe,” Yuta replied, his eyes a little red-rimmed when he looked straight at Ichigo. Rika stayed put for a moment, observing the room her lover shared with his wife with a wistful appreciation. Then, she floated away, her bobbing figure exiting the apartment and heading towards the elevator, where she would probably stay put until her spirit found rest. Ghosts never ventured too far. They were always stuck within a memory that haunted them. For a few days, everyone who entered the premises would feel cold, uncomfortable. And then Rika would disappear, like she had never been here at all—off to a great beyond.
At the end of the session, Ichigo charged Yuta ¥3,700, a matter that they settled before they went back downstairs. Yumi seemed relieved that the ghost was gone, but her expression hadn’t softened in the least. Ichigo just grabbed Kazui and booked it out of there, not wanting to get involved with the problems of the living. The problems of the dead were enough trouble on their own.
When they were walking back, however, Kazui looked up at Ichigo with a new kind of brightness in his eyes. “What’s closure?”
Ichigo looked down at him, a little surprised. “Closure?”
Kazui nodded.
Ichigo hesitated. “It’s…” he began. “It’s like—you know how, when it rains for a long time, everything seems caught up in the torrent?”
Kazui nodded again.
“But once it stops, the sun comes out again. Things start smelling nice. The air is cool,” Ichigo listed. “It’s kind of like that with people, too. Something terrible happens, someone you love dies.” He swallowed tightly. “It hurts for a long time. But you try to make peace with it as much as you can, and hopefully it feels lighter. Like the calm after the storm.”
“So you gave that to them?” Kazui stated plainly. “You helped?”
“I try.”
“Why?”
Ichigo shrugged. “Because I can. Because I have this thing that most people don’t, and I can use it to help.”
It was the first time he had said it out loud. Even when he, Yuzu and Karin had sat at the dinner table for the first time to discuss it, even when he and Keigo were checking out the office space to rent, he’d never verbalized why exactly he wanted to do this—or what it would help if he did. It just seemed like the obvious thing to do at the time. He never liked those gimmicky TV shows or those news headlines about astrologers joining in on searches for missing kids. If he could help even one person with his ability, he wanted to do it.
Kazui rubbed his eye sleepily. Ichigo felt guilty. Not only had he dragged Kazui out to see something a child probably shouldn’t have seen, he had made him walk a long way too.
“You want me to carry you?” Ichigo said gently.
“I’m fine.”
“We walked a long way.”
Kazui looked up at him with stubborn determination. “It wasn’t that long.”
“You’d be helping me,” Ichigo said, mostly half-joking. “I don’t lift enough weights to get a good work-out, most days.”
“O-kay,” Kazui gave in, like he was indulging Ichigo. But when Ichigo tucked his hands under Kazui’s armpits, the boy went up easily, sagging his warm weight against Ichigo’s. Ichigo felt relieved he had worn a jacket. When his little arms wrapped around Ichigo’s shoulders, Ichigo ran one hand down his back, feeling an incredible tenderness surge within him like a wave. To any onlookers, the image would be undeniable. They were father and son. When Kazui was tired, he wanted Ichigo to carry him. Ichigo pressed his cheek against Kazui’s head and kept on walking. It was hard to ignore just how nostalgic this scene was—except this time he was the parent, he was the safety, and Kazui would be the one to fall asleep and realize he had reached home by some work of magic. Was this how his mother felt? Orihime? Ichigo’s hand tightened on the back of Kazui’s head, relishing in the soft orange hair underneath it. Had he really hated that color as a boy? On Kazui, it didn’t look half as bad. It didn’t look bad at all.
When Ichigo finally returned to the apartment, Orihime was on the couch, but she stood instantly when she spotted them.
“Where—”
Ichigo held his finger to his lips and shushed her, gesturing at the sleeping boy in his arms. Orihime fell silent, but her expression was still pinched with worry. Ichigo shook his shoulders as if to say he’d be back, then took Kazui inside and gently set him down on the bed. Kazui stirred, lifting the blanket Ichigo placed on him over his shoulder. Ichigo couldn’t help it; before he left, he pressed a kiss to the boy’s head, then quietly shut the door behind him.
“Sorry,” he said to Orihime, once he came back out. “I got a house-call earlier. He asked to go with me, and I thought that would be better than just letting him sit idle around here.”
Orihime tilted her head. “He asked?”
Ichigo nodded, feeling a little pride when he remembered the way Kazui’s eyes had lit up on their way home, the questions he’d asked. Still, when he sat down on the couch, he explained the case to Orihime, feeling like she deserved to know what her son had been up to all morning. To his surprise, Orihime looked pleasantly surprised, pleased, really.
“I try to be encouraging whenever he talks about these things,” she explained, when he raised a brow. “But obviously I don’t understand it the way you do. I’m glad he got the chance to see you work.”
Then why did you leave? Ichigo wanted to ask. He’d been asking it to the version of her in his head ever since she left, but none of the answers made sense.
Something about the soft morning light on her face made him falter, though. As much as she confused him, he also just really missed her, and that was the fiercer emotion, the one that persisted more than any of the others since she and Kazui landed on his doorstep. For a while, it was enough to just sit there in silence, enjoying her presence. Eventually, she shot him a gentle smile and announced she was going to make some tea.
“I could make it,” Ichigo offered, watching the way her bare legs swayed, his shirt falling to her mid-thighs. He never got tired of the sight.
“You must be tired,” Orihime called, pulling things out of cabinets with expert navigation, even though she’d been here for only two days now.
Ichigo was about to refute her, then realized they were both talking about getting tired of different things. He glanced back down at his own lap, then peeked at her again. Her in his kitchen, brewing him tea, her hair still mussed from sleep, their son in the other room. He imagined walking up to her, turning the stove off and just kissing her with reckless abandon, laughing when she laughed, quieting when she reminded him Kazui was asleep. Pushing her against the fridge and getting her so worked up that it ended with her pulling him.
Orihime walked up to him and handed him a mug of hot honey tea. “Welcome home.”
“Thanks.” He took it from her, gesturing at her to join him. She cradled her own mug and rested on the couch, her toes coming up to perch on the coffee table. “Did you sleep well?”
“Mm.”
Ichigo examined the rim of his mug. “I’m sorry I walked out on you last night.”
Orihime shook her head. “I should be the one apologizing—” She broke off, turning to the hallway when the door creaked.
Ichigo mimicked her, smiling when he saw Kazui walk up to them, sleep-heavy and tousled.
“Hi, baby.” Orihime set her mug down and drew him into her arms, taking advantage of his daze to press exaggerated smooches to his cheeks. “Did you have a good nap?”
“Yeah.”
She wrinkled her nose, then pressed it to the back of his head with a giggle. “Someone needs a bath today.”
“I just got the drain fixed a couple of weeks ago. The plumber guy owed me.” Ichigo stood. “Tub’s as good as new.”
“That’s great, but we don’t have any clothes,” Orihime said apologetically, gesturing at her own shirt. “We really should head back.”
Ichigo was about to insist that his closet was big enough for both of them when Kazui interrupted with a little whine. “I wanna stay here for a bit longer,” he mumbled. “Please, Mama?”
Orihime’s eyes widened. “Kazui…”
Kazui glanced at Ichigo a little shyly. “I wanna do house calls again.”
Ichigo’s chest seized at that, and it took effort for him to not press a hand against his own chest to suppress the feeling. “Stay,” he decided. “Go get your clothes, and your other things—but stay.”
“Ichigo-kun,” Orihime began, a little uncertain, then composed herself and rubbed Kazui’s back. “Kazui, baby, do you think you could go into the other room and play for a while? I need to talk to Ichigo-kun in private.”
“Kay,” Kazui mumbled, accepting the kiss she pressed to his cheek before running off to the bedroom.
“Ichigo-kun,” Orihime said, turning back to him once she was sure Kazui was out of earshot. “We really can’t stay. You have your work, and I have mine.”
“Bring yours here,” Ichigo said. “You’re on vacation, right?”
Orihime sighed, running a nervous hand through her hair. Ichigo wanted to draw her closer, to press her into his body until she gave in, until she remembered that he was good at taking care of her, that she could trust him—with herself, with her son. But he couldn’t help but wonder if Orihime was hiding something from him. All her reasons felt flimsy, and every time she cited them, she avoided his eyes, playing with her hair or the hem of her shirt instead. Clearly, there were things they still needed to talk about, but they couldn’t do that with Orihime halfway across town and out of his life again.
“I didn’t realize he’d enjoy it so much,” she admitted, with some regret. “Coming to work with you, I mean. It really isn’t right for us to intrude on your life like this.”
“It’s not an intrusion,” Ichigo said firmly. “I want you here.”
Orihime looked up at him, startled, and really, that was a kick to the gut more than anything. Hadn’t she realized it?
“Go get your things and come back here,” he said again. “I’ll take you to the office on Monday. Show you what we’ve been up to.” Maybe they could get lunch somewhere after—or take Kazui to the park. Whatever it took. Whatever helped prolong their time together while Ichigo tried to divine Orihime’s true feelings.
Orihime, on her part, seemed to be fighting an internal battle within herself. Ultimately, she gave in, giving him a resigned smile. “Alright,” she accepted. “We’ll stay. But only for a week. I don’t want to be in your hair any longer than that. I mean it.”
Ichigo brightened. “I’ll come with you to get your things.”
+
Orihime hadn’t asked him out until they were at the end of their first year in college, but according to Tatsuki, she had liked him a lot longer than that. Ichigo had no idea why. For most of his life, he’d been a scrawny, scowling freak who got into fights and walked around like he had a dark cloud over his head. And this wasn’t an exaggeration. People told him this all the time—how unapproachable he was, how strange his hair was. For a beautiful girl like Orihime, there had never been any shortage of options, but on a sunny day in first year, she’d come up to him and told him, with a clear, earnest voice, that she liked him, she liked him very much, and she wasn’t expecting him to do anything about it—she just wanted him to know.
Ichigo had taken her out to coffee, about a week later.
Now, Ichigo watched Orihime with a strange ache in his chest, a yearning that unfolded as she moved around his apartment like it was her own. It wasn't entitlement. She had a profound respect for his things, and she always made sure to pick up after herself and Kazui. It was familiarity. Orihime treated him like she always had—like she knew who he was, and she was perfectly fine with it. Her attitude made it too easy to recollect the days of their youth, when she had hardly questioned the fact that he could see ghosts, or treated him badly for it. Kurosaki-kun is Kurosaki-kun, was always her go-to saying, and maybe his oddities were easier for her to accept because she had oddities of her own, but she had always been on his side, and Ichigo was unable to imagine her in any other way—until, of course, the day she came up to him in their final year and told him she was thinking about ending their relationship. Ichigo didn’t remember much of what he said that day, but he remembered feeling then that good things never lasted, not for him, and their relationship was the best example of that.
Until now. Until Kazui.
If Kazui caught on that there was much remaining unspoken between his father and his mother, he didn’t let it show. Instead, he seemed thrilled, even if—unlike back at his own apartment—he had to share a room with his mother. His presence by Ichigo’s side was somewhat of a constant fixture now. If he was around when Ichigo got a call, he wanted to go with him. And when he did go, he was curious, his hand in Ichigo’s, his eyes wide and bright as they always were. Ichigo found himself explaining things, giving voice to beliefs he’d only ever held in his heart before. It was easy to take Kazui by the hand and tell him that the reason it was difficult to tell ghosts and humans apart was not because of the difference in body mass but because all of them—the living and the dead—looked the same. Weary faces, hollow eyes, a heaviness that never left, whether they smiled or they frowned. A yearning within their depths, begging for someone to just see them—to just hear their secret sorrows and offer a balm to their enduring pain. Everyone was like that. You didn’t have to be dead to come close to it.
The rest of their days they spent lazing around his apartment, Ichigo and Orihime taking turns cooking and cleaning while Kazui played around the house. Orihime also made Kazui practice his kanji every now and then—and Kazui, eager to impress Ichigo—would furrow his brow with a pen in his hand, his letters neat like blocks against print.
(“I can write my own name too!” he’d said once, pressing the paper into Ichigo’s hand. Ichigo traced his fingers over the word, over the ‘一勇’ that stared back at him, refusing to think about how Orihime had honored his name through his son’s, wondering if she knew the gravity of that一and then realizing that she probably did.)
Eventually, Ichigo got around to taking Orihime and Kazui to his office, too. Calling it an office was generous. It was just a small room, one that he got for cheaper rent because Keigo knew the owner and had developed somewhat of a business acumen, now that he had his own ramen place down the street. Orihime marveled at all the cabinets nonetheless, pointing things out to Kazui and smiling at Ichigo’s long, cursive handwriting. Ichigo showed them his directory, a list of all the plumbers, electricians and handymen he had on speed dial, the ones that gave him a cut if he pushed them to the right clients.
“Some of them are perpetually late, though,” he grumbled, to which Orihime laughed fondly and ran a sympathetic hand through his hair. Ichigo found himself leaning against her stomach when she did, pretending it was six years ago and he was listening to kicks instead of her grumbling stomach.
“Do you remember what you said to me back in high school? A few weeks after my brother died?” she said one night, long after Kazui had gone to bed. They were both sitting on the couch again, Orihime reviewing her student’s coursework on her laptop and Ichigo going over his monthly bills.
“Mm?” Ichigo murmured.
“I remember—very self-deprecatingly—saying something about how much happier he must be, now that he was in the afterlife,” she explained. “I was relieved, I think, that he didn’t have to worry about me anymore.” She stroked a pillow, her eyes going slightly wistful. “But I remember hating him, too. Hating him for leaving me.” She laughed. “It’s silly. But you said something to me back then.”
“I remember,” Ichigo told her.
Her smile widened. “You told me he missed me too, more than I’d believe. I didn’t know back then, that you could see…I didn’t have all the details. But something about the way you said it….” She trailed off, her expression fond and nostalgic. “You didn’t say things like that—ever. You weren’t the type to just say things to make people feel better. We weren’t close back then, but something inside me knew you were telling me the truth.” She lifted her gaze to his, amused, knowing. “I just knew.”
Ichigo nodded. “I saw him following you around for a long time.” He’d recognized Sora almost instantly, the dark-haired, lanky brother who Orihime had brought to the clinic in her arms, engulfed by the weight of him. He’d followed her to middle school for weeks, calling out to her, pleading with her to just look at him, to just tell him she was still praying to him like the dutiful sister she’d always been. And then he’d disappeared altogether.
She moved her hand closer to his until they were almost touching. “You were so good at this even then.”
Ichigo felt his own voice go hoarse at her closeness. “At what?”
“Telling people what they need to hear,” she said. “Helping them.” She looked up at him, heart in her eyes. “You’re special.”
“Orihime…” he muttered, unable to pull away and refute her in the face of her gravity. His hand touched hers, just a brief contact, and then he was pulling her closer, other hand lifting her hair out of her face until their noses brushed. In the dim light of his living room, Orihime’s lips looked soft, inviting, but at the last minute, he felt himself turn away and press his nose to her cheek instead. “Why did you leave?”
Orihime stirred, her hands gentle on his chest as she lightly pushed him away. “You were unhappy.”
He frowned. “I was never unhappy with you.”
“You were unhappy,” she said carefully, “about all the pain you saw, and what it put on you. And how you couldn't do anything about it.”
Ichigo hung his head, unwilling to affirm or deny her assumption.
“You didn’t see what we saw,” she continued, stroking his chest. “You hated yourself.” Her voice went hushed with a tinge of guilt. “When I found out I was pregnant, I knew there was always the chance that our child might turn out like you.”
Ichigo looked up at her, shocked.
She smiled ruefully. “Maybe it’s a mother’s selfishness. But I was afraid you’d see it as a curse.” She shook her head, the first sheen of tears lining her eyes. “I didn’t want to see him as anything other than a blessing. He is a blessing. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. But I knew I had no right to force that view on you, too.”
Ichigo fell silent. Thought about the last few days—about Kazui’s hand in his, his eyes seeing what Ichigo did, his little body leaning on Ichigo’s bigger one for support. There was absolutely nothing in the world that could make him hate Kazui, not even the parts of himself that he saw mirrored back to him. Kazui made everything beautiful, turned every bit of dust to gold. He was a good kid. He was curious and clever and kind. He was Orihime, and he was Ichigo. And he was good. How could he be anything else?
“It's different now,” Ichigo said finally. “I'm different. We could be different. We could get another apartment, somewhere closer to campus but still within town.”
Orihime traced his cheek with her fingers. “Ichigo-kun…”
“He won’t have to grow up like me,” Ichigo told her, holding her hand to his face like it was a promise. “I won’t ever let him grow up like me.”
The sudden shift of floorboards made them both jerk out of their stupor.
“Dad?” Kazui whispered, coming into the light with a little squint. “Why are you still up?”
Ichigo froze. Orihime, too, looked startled. Dad. Dad. The word took hold in his chest, then spread its roots outwards, warming him, reducing him to nothing and yet, magnifying him.
“We were just about to sleep too, bud,” Ichigo said, fighting back the tremble in his own voice. Orihime turned away to subtly wipe her eyes, but Ichigo stood up before Kazui could chance a glance at his mother. “Come on. You want me to take you back to bed?”
Kazui nodded, lifting one sleepy arm up so Ichigo could carry him. Ichigo did, feeling his heart weigh down with the intensity of his emotion, his love for the little being in his arms. “Shh.” He gently pressed a kiss to Kazui’s head, his cheek. “I’ve got you.”
Kazui murmured contentedly, making himself at home in Ichigo’s arms and instantly falling asleep on his shoulder. Setting him down proved to be a task. No weight had ever been more comfortable, but in the end, Ichigo managed to tuck him in anyway, sweeping his hair away from his forehead like Orihime always did.
When he came back out, Orihime was already standing by the doorway, her eyes glistening but pleased. Instantly, she reached out to him with her hands, laughing when their foreheads touched.
"He called me 'dad'," Ichigo reported, even though Orihime had been there.
Orihime sniffed. “I don’t know who I thought I was fooling,” she admitted, stroking his cheeks with her hands. “Looks like he knew the truth about you all along.” She didn’t sound upset about it, though.
Ichigo, too, smiled. “I guess some things you just feel in your heart.”
“I guess so.”
Ichigo leaned down and caught her mouth in a kiss, his hands instantly settling on her hips so he could draw her closer. Orihime readily responded, her arms tight around his shoulders until they were leaning against the wall for support, his breaths coming in fast against her own.
“Come on,” he breathed. “I don’t want to wake him up again.”
He took her by the hand—unresisting—to his own room instead of her own.
+
In the coming weeks, Ichigo found an apartment near the town center, and the three of them spent most of their time getting things moved in. The place was a reasonable enough distance from the university, and Orihime had her eyes on an elementary school nearby that Kazui could attend. Ichigo, of course, had no station of his own—having long picked a job that required him to show up any time, at any place, within the confines of their town. Mornings now involved getting ready in a rush, sharing hurried kisses with Orihime and hurried goodbyes with Kazui before he took off in search of whatever trouble was calling to him. On the way back, he bought the groceries, then picked up his son, who was eager to hear about who he had visited—and how he had helped them. Often, they ran into many such clients of the past, people who greeted him, or reminded him of a service he’d done for them, back when they’d lost a loved one. Despite himself, Ichigo held his head high with pride at their testimonials. It wasn’t all for himself. He wanted Kazui to see it too, the impact this life had on the lives of others.
When they came back home, they each pressed a kiss to Orihime’s cheeks, a domestic cacophony that—only months ago—Ichigo couldn’t have fathomed enjoying. Life was different now. Beautiful, even. Some time after the move, Ichigo took Kazui and Orihime to the office again, except this time, there was a new surprise in store, a new development he was rather proud of.
“What do you think?” Ichigo asked, adjusting the signboard as Kazui and Orihime looked up at it appreciatively.
“Looks great, Dad,” Kazui beamed, while Orihime squeezed Ichigo’s arm with tender pride.
Ichigo looked down at them both, smiling. They had an appointment later to stop by at Spirit Ramen and meet Keigo, then head down to the clinic to eat dinner with his father and his sisters. But for now, he was content to stare up at the new refurbishment, the new change that had twisted his life upside down in the most fulfilling of ways.
Spirit Communications, it said, in bright blue paint and big, friendly letters.
Kazui had helped him pick out the font.