Chapter Text
Another week passed in the month of May, and with it came Spring. The school uniforms were finally feeling appropriate for the warmer weather, which meant that it would be a couple of months before summer break started.
But before that, the soon-to-be seniors had to start working on their final project that would be due at the end of next winter. They only had a year to work on it, and the whole first month of the term was focused entirely on deciding what their project would be, and how they were going to work on it.
“I have thought about taking an internship a daycare to see firsthand what the work is like,” Chizuru muses, leaning on Orihime’s desk and adjusting her red glasses.
“Chizuru-san is interested in working with children?” Orihime asks.
“Mmm, what is my sweet Orihime-chan interested in doing?”
“Well…” Orihime looks out of the window to her left. A clouded look enters her grey eyes, which makes Tatsuki frown. Tatsuki pulls up her own chair, and gets her friend’s attention.
“Don’t think too hard about it, Orihime,” Tatsuki says. “I don’t think she meant it to be asking about your life’s ambitions.”
“Ohhh, no, Tastuki-chan!” Orihime waves her hands in denial. “I was just wondering if I was even cut out to be a policeman.”
“You mean, a policewoman, Orihime-hime,” Chizuru croons from her elbow.
“What makes you want to be a policeman, Inoue?” A voice asks from behind her. The three twist around to see a scowling teen with orange hair. As usual, he has his bag slung over his shoulder in an, ‘I-don’t-give-a-shit’ kind of look.
Orihime starts stuttering and waving her arms around in an awkward fashion.
“Doesn’t police work seem so....action-packed? I mean, not that I like all that violence. But I mean, WHAM and wha-cha! You know what I mean?”
All three of her classmates looked at her as if she were positively insane. Tatsuki knew that she tended to get so lost in her own fantasies, and this was more than likely one of those times.
“So that is what you like about it?” Kurosaki asks.
“What?”
“The action and the crime-busting?”
“Um…kind of. I guess it is kind of like being the hero, in some ways,” she muses.
“But the cops don’t always save people. A lot of times the criminals get away.”
“Yeah, but-“
“So you are satisfied with only saving their lives some of the time? If you let them die, then you are just as bad as the criminals themselves!”
“Ichigo!” Tatsuki shouts, standing up. “What a horrible thing to say!”
“Hmph.”
“Orihime-chan, are you okay?” Chizuru cries loudly. “Are your feelings hurt? Don’t cry, my Princess!”
“It’s okay.”
Everyone looks to the girl with long hair.
“He’s right. If I accept failure, then I am no hero.”
“Orihime, no one is perfect. Don’t let Ichigo tell you what you can do,” Tatsuki says.
“Nah, it’s okay, Tatsuki-chan,” Orihime says, through an attempted smile. “Really.”
Tatsuki sighed, pushing her fingers against her forehead in frustration. Her childhood friend was much too meek.
At that moment, the teacher walks in and everyone settles down at their desks to start another day of class.
However, Orihime was distracted by the scowling face of Kurosaki Ichigo. He had his hands folded in front of his mouth, and a wrinkle between his eyebrows. It was not usual for him to talk to her, let alone give his personal opinions. Orihime worried that perhaps something was bothering him. She wished there was some way to make him stop frowning in such a scary way.
❀
The school bell rang out Westminster chimes and Keigo was bobbing up and down, trying to convince Mizuiro and Chad to go with him to the arcade because they are hosting an event dedicated to some spiritual master called Don Kanonji. Mizuiro always acted stubborn and above such events, but in reality he loved mystical things like psychics and people who talk to ghosts.
As they spoke gregariously outside of the school, the doors suddenly opened and out strode Kurosaki Ichigo, shoulders squared and looking like he could not give a care. He has to pass through their group on the sidewalk to continue past to the streets.
“Kurosaki,” Keigo called, waving, “we are going to see Don Kanonji. Do you wanna go? It will be so boring if I’m just going with Sado and Mizuiro.”
He jokingly pouts and hikes a thumb at the two friends that he was complaining about. Chad didn’t react, but Mizuiro gave Keigo a hit on his head.
“No….”Ichigo looked toward the ceiling to the left, “….I have something important to do. Maybe later. Seeya later, guys.”
The group stared at his retreating back for a minute before Keigo gave a high whistle and expressed his annoyance at everyone’s lack of enthusiasm lately.
Meanwhile, Ichigo took the long route back to his house. He could almost feel the weight of the object hidden in his school bag. He had found it just after the school day ended.
He went to his locker, as usual, and set down his bag on the floor in front of his row. He reached his hand into the slot, expecting his shoes to be facing with the toes toward the back wall like he always put them, but instead they were turned the other way, and his hand collided with something soft. He pulled the shoes out, and something intensely blue in color caught his eye from where it was poking out of the right heel.
Ichigo stood still for a moment, simply looking at it. The shape told him that it was indeed a rose, but it had been dyed an intense indigo color that was not found in nature. The teen frowned and took the rose out, tucking it in his bag and quickly changing shoes.
Thinking back on the moment, Ichigo briefly wonders again if it was really a tangible rose, and not just something he had entirely conjured from his imagination. Brown eyes searched the street for anyone who might be watching, but there was no one, so he reached in his bag and took out the rose. It was slightly crumpled from being squished in the bag. He thought it was a bit of a shame, as it was so beautiful when he had first found it.
He tucks the stem in the loop on his bag, and keeps walking. Once he’s a block from his family’s hospital, he notices that there are the sound of footsteps following behind him. He glances at the reflection in a house window and sees a girl with long caramel colored hair, so he turns around.
“Inoue,” Ichigo calls to the girl who also stopped walking. “Why are you following me?”
The girl looks very flustered, but doesn’t resort to her usual playful gestures that she does when she gets nervous. Instead, she points a finger at the flower dangling from Ichigo’s school bag.
“I was wondering…who gave that to Kurosaki-kun,” she says simply.
“How do you know I didn’t buy it?” He answers, a bit threateningly.
“It’s not like Kurosaki-kun to buy such things,” she says with a smile. “But the message is a bit confusing, no?”
“Message?”
What is this girl talking about? She has the strangest notions in her head most of the time. It’s like she lives in an entirely different reality than most. But she just smiles at the question.
“Well, I remember reading a poem about a blue rose in literature class that was written over five hundred years ago. It went like this:
“I see once on the pyre
A princess of delicate feature
Whose image will haunt dreams.
Her attention I draw with this rose
For its color is deeper than the sea
And thus grew her eternal curiosity of me.
Though long I had noticed her,
It was long before a smile befell her lips
In my very presence.”
“You have a good memory,” Ichigo replies. “But what does that mean?”
“It’s about a man who draws the attention of a princess with the mystery of a blue rose. Because it does not occur in nature, the rose made her wonder about him.”
Ichigo coughs awkwardly.
“Well…since you like it so much, you can have it, Inoue,” Ichigo says, unpinning the rose and shoving it in her direction. But Inoue waves her hands in dissent.
“Whoever gave that rose to Kurosaki-kun must want him to notice them, like the princess in the poem. I can’t take it from you.”
The thought made a weird sort of feeling creep up Ichigo’s spine. It felt sort of good, but at the same time like it was uncomfortable touching a nerve. Who could have possibly given him this rose? And did they even know what it means? Why else would they have bothered to go buy such an unusual flower just for this sake. A yellow rose would have been cheaper.
Ichigo shakes off these thoughts as he puts it back in his bag and enters his house. He eats dinner with his family, helps Yuzu with her homework and then does his own before going to sleep for the night. A cool breeze flows in through his open window, ruffling his orange hair.
He has a very vivid dream that night. A silhouette wearing an indigo-colored kimono is sitting on the edge of his bed, stroking his hair as he sleeps. The long fingers are very soothing, and he feels more comfortable than he has in a long time. He can even ignore the nagging feeling that he shouldn’t be enjoying the foreign fingers on his cheek because it is as if a spell has taken over his body and it can’t help but just rest.
It was nearing midnight when Kurosaki Isshin woke from fitful sleep. There was a strange fluctuation of reiatsu in the air that wouldn’t let him sit still. But the weird thing was, the waves of soul energy, like pulses, were the same that Ichigo usually oozed. Isshin remembers the one and only time there was a change in his son’s reiatsu. It was on that night that his mother died.
Isshin shakes his head and toes on his slippers, making his way down the hall to Ichigo’s room. He quietly opens the door and sees tufts of orange peeking out of the top of a sheet. Nothing out of the ordinary. The man carefully shut the door and stepped quietly down the hallway with a frown on his face.
❀
The next morning is Friday, and Ichigo goes to school as usual. On his way there, however, there was a terrible crash between a car and a telephone pole that caused him to have to walk an extra block to get through the street.
The car is a small Honda whose hood had been so entirely smashed that the pole had gone straight through between the passenger seat and the driver’s seat. There were a few police cars and an ambulance at the scene, which would probably head to Ichigo’s dad pretty soon.
But Ichigo simply frowned and walked quickly to the next block over. There was nothing the ambulance or clinic could do for those two now. The air was tinged heavily with the remainders of their life-like energy, and only the presence of disturbing spiritual energy was surrounding the area. It was akin to the feeling Ichigo got when a ghost had been following him around for a while. Those two were indeed gone.
The orange-haired teen gets to school and notices that he’s the only one by the lockers in his row. The others are probably already in class already because he’s slightly late compared to usual. He starts reaching to put his shoes in his locker, when he suddenly remembers the day before and the blue rose. The teen examines the small box to see if there was anything in there that wasn’t supposed to be before he puts the shoes in. There isn’t.