"Thanks for the hard work, oji-san~"
Just as he came downstairs, Higashino Shuuichi saw Nagasawa Satomi standing beside Tsukabishi Tessai and greeting him.
"Hello, Nagasawa Satomi-san~"
Shuuichi offered a warm greeting.
At the sound of his voice, Satomi turned. The speaker was a short-haired, black-haired man, decent-looking, but with a sickly air about him in both presence and expression.
So this was the one Kisaragi Shūsuke had spoken of on the way here—the Shuuichi-sama he respected and revered so much?
I can't tell at all.
Satomi couldn't make sense of it, though she kept a bright look on her face.
"Hello. How should I address you?"
"Higashino Shuuichi. Like Shūsuke-kun, Satomi-san can just call me Shuuichi."
Shuuichi replied amiably.
Once, he might not have noticed the tiny shifts in Satomi's expression. Now, it was effortless.
"Kabuma Sayako. Like Shuuichi-kun said, Satomi-san can just call me Sayako~"
Standing at Shuuichi's side, Kabuma Sayako followed with her own introduction.
As for Yoruichi Shihōin, sprawled on Kisaragi Shūsuke's head, she let out an excited "meow" to announce herself.
"Alright then—Shuuichi-kun, Sayako-san, nice to meet you~"
Satomi bowed slightly to Shuuichi.
"I heard from Shūsuke-kun that you want to repay him for saving your life?"
Shuuichi studied the girl before him, clearly not yet twenty, his curiosity piqued.
There was no doubt Nagasawa Satomi had approached Kisaragi Shūsuke with ulterior motives. But why?
Shuuichi didn't know yet, but he was sure of one thing: Satomi wasn't a Shinigami (Soul Reaper). Otherwise, the ones standing here wouldn't be just her alone, but the captains of the Gotei.
"Yes. Thanks to Shūsuke-kun, I wasn't violated by those ronin. I truly, sincerely want to repay him for that kindness!"
Satomi spoke with genuine feeling. As she went on, it was as if the day's ugly memory returned; tears glimmered at the corners of her eyes.
It drew a wave of sympathy from Kabuma Sayako at Shuuichi's side. "Satomi-san, I understand how you feel very well. I've… been through something similar."
"Ah?"
Shuuichi couldn't help a soft sound of puzzlement.
But Kisaragi Shūsuke, profoundly lacking in sense for the mood, cut the odd atmosphere cleanly, firm to the point of obstinacy. "Satomi-san, I truly helped only out of goodwill. I never once thought of asking you to repay me. Let's end today's matter here, alright?"
Shūsuke's heart held only the drive to become stronger—then cut down Aizen Sōsuke, the culprit who had turned Shuuichi-sama into his current state, and personally slay Gin Ichimaru, who had betrayed Shuuichi-sama.
To think he had once regarded Ichimaru Gin as his best friend. In the end, among those who stabbed his most-respected Shuuichi-sama in the back, Gin had been one of them.
"But Shūsuke-kun, I really—"
Satomi tried again to win a chance to repay the favor, but a burst of laughter from the back room cut her off.
"Hahahaha! Shuuichi, you punk, you finally woke up. I thought you were going to sleep like this right up until we beat Aizen!"
A man wearing a mask strode out and charged straight toward Shuuichi.
He threw a punch. Shuuichi raised a hand to block, but his body was still in the last few days of the aftereffects from his earlier self-inflicted gambit; he hadn't fully recovered. He was driven back several steps before he managed to stop the blow.
"Yo~ Not a bad recovery! Kisuke said it'd take you another day or two to get back to normal, but you look just about there to me!
Wanna go a round?"
The man spoke with barely contained excitement, oblivious to the setting.
From his point of view, there was no need to mind such details here.
Shuuichi only shook his head, signaling that now was not the time.
To his surprise, the expression on Nagasawa Satomi's face shifted even more dramatically than his.
"Sh-Shūsuke-kun… do the people in your house usually wear scary masks like that at home?"
In the end, Satomi was a girl with little experience of the world. For all her earlier poise, faced with this sudden, ghastly sight, her true feelings showed through.
What she didn't know was just how much shock that one sentence would cause.
In an instant, the whole room went quiet. Even Kabuma Sayako, who had been about to go comfort Satomi, froze mid-step.
Tsukabishi Tessai, who'd been diligently unloading crates and staying out of the conversation, let his face shift from indifference to something a shade more serious. Without a word, he slid two steps toward the door, quietly blocking a possible way out for Satomi.
"Hm? Young lady—you can see me?"
The masked man turned as well, looking straight at Satomi.
"Am… am I supposed to pretend I can't…?"
Satomi sensed the shift in the air and tensed without meaning to, edging a step back.
This wouldn't be some kind of wicked game the Kisaragi family plays at home… would it?
She remembered old ghost stories she'd heard as a child—some villages where people liked to play "haunting" games.
"If you could manage it, pretending not to see would actually be best. But now… it might be a little late."
Shuuichi regarded Satomi with interest.
He hadn't expected that, the moment he woke up, Shūsuke-kun would hand him a gift like this.
After all, the man who'd just thrown that punch—Kensei Muguruma—had just come up from the underground alternate-space training field. He hadn't put on the special gigai Kisuke Urahara made.
In other words, Muguruma Kensei, still in a body composed of reishi, should be completely invisible to ordinary humans in the World of the Living.
Yet Nagasawa Satomi could see him clearly. That could only mean one of two things:
Either Satomi was a Fullbringer, or she had been in close, prolonged contact with someone with extremely high spiritual pressure (reiatsu), which had affected her enough that she could perceive Shinigami in a reishi-state.
Shuuichi leaned toward the former.
At this point in time, finding someone in the World of the Living with truly overwhelming reiatsu was almost impossible.
Shuuichi could guarantee, the moment such a person dared to let their reiatsu leak, it wouldn't be long before Shinigami came knocking—"paying a visit"—to check whether they had ties to the group of defected Shinigami Shuuichi's lot belonged to.
"What are you trying to do? I'm warning you—I don't—"
Hearing the warning edge in Shuuichi's voice, Satomi, simple as she might be, understood clearly that her situation had turned bad.
And she wasn't that simple.
But just as her right hand touched the necklace at her chest, Shuuichi's figure flashed like a ghost. He appeared in front of her, and his hand settled lightly on the back of her right hand.
"If I were you, I wouldn't try anything else.
Believe me—whatever trump card you're holding, this is not the place to use it."
Shuuichi spoke softly.
Satomi felt her heart hammer in her chest.
How did he suddenly appear in front of me?
How does he seem to know exactly what I'm about to do?
Who are these people?
Questions piled up in her mind. In the end, she didn't know why, but as if bewitched, she slowly let her right hand fall.
Seeing her comply, Shuuichi nodded slightly. At least this girl wasn't hard-headed to the point of stupidity.
He raised his right hand, and let two words fall from his lips:
"Hakufuku (White Crawl)."
A muddled light filled Satomi's vision. In an instant, her consciousness slipped away.
"I'm sorry, Shuuichi-sama. I've caused trouble…"
As soon as Satomi collapsed into unconsciousness, Kisaragi Shūsuke dropped to his knees before Shuuichi and confessed his failure.
"This isn't your fault, Shūsuke-kun. And it might not even be 'trouble.'"
Shuuichi shook his head. Looking down at Nagasawa Satomi—now unconscious and slumped against him—he thought that this, too, could be an opportunity.
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