Chapter 205: Differentiation
Inside Seireitei, within the Central Forty Six Chambers.
Since Aizen's return, his presence had become strangely omnipresent. He seemed involved in everything, and yet it also felt as if he was doing nothing at all.
Compared to the old days, when every move was hidden behind layers of calculation and secrecy, the Aizen of today wore an unsettling calm, like someone who had already accepted the end of the story and was simply rereading the pages.
Above Seireitei, Hell Butterflies drifted through the sky, carrying urgent reports and whispered orders. Yet once those messages reached Central Forty Six, they were gathered and processed in a sealed corner. By design, nothing that entered this place was allowed to leave.
Even so, the Hell Butterfly was not truly isolated.
The tiny phosphorescent creature fluttered as if it belonged beside death itself, circling lazily before settling, bit by bit, upon the scattered bodies.
In Soul Society, there were no bacteria, no rot, no stench to warn you away. A corpse left for three days still looked freshly fallen. Bloodstains remained wet and bright. Limbs lay where they had been cut down. The room was a massacre preserved in perfect stillness.
Aizen's figure emerged soundlessly from the corridor.
He did not look at the dead at all.
Instead, as if this room were nothing more than an empty garden, he lifted his gaze toward the clear sky beyond the eaves and let out a quiet sigh.
Then he walked among the corpses as though strolling through someone else's tragedy.
Near the center of the ruin, Kaname Tosen still sat among the bodies, posture rigid, sword in hand, as if he had fused into the scene.
Aizen stopped near the steps and looked at him. For a moment, something like emotion surfaced in his eyes.
"…Do you think this Soul Society is ugly?"
Kaname's shoulders tensed. "Lord Aizen…"
"It is just conversation," Aizen said, raising a hand to stop him. "There is no special intention behind it. No hidden action."
He sat on the step, back straight, glasses catching the daylight, and continued softly.
"My long held dream is close to becoming reality. Yet I feel empty. I simply want to talk to someone, before the void in my heart swallows me whole."
Kaname lowered his head, voice cold and firm.
"Yes. If you ask me, Soul Society is ugly, Lord Aizen."
"The aristocratic system murders ordinary Shinigami and wandering souls without end. The balance of the world is steered by personal whims. The cycle between Soul Society and Hueco Mundo, life and death itself, has become nothing more than a game played by nobles."
His words sharpened like steel.
"A world like that is ugly."
Aizen watched the sky, watching thin white clouds drift like slow ink across blue paper.
"So you believe all beings in Soul Society should die?"
"At minimum," Kaname answered without hesitation, "the nobility must be erased."
Aizen's gaze remained fixed upward. "Is that so. That is what you think."
He paused, then spoke again, quieter.
"But after returning from that other world, I realized something. We, and they, are puppets behind a curtain."
The clouds continued their indifferent drift.
World travel had damaged him. Recording the coordinates of worlds had weakened his foundation. Yet there was no hesitation in him, no thought of stopping.
In the Land of Naruto, he had seen the necessity of organizations. In Soul Society, he had seen what an organization became after it rotted from the inside.
And now, he could feel the loneliness inside him growing, steady as a tide.
The Aizen of the past had feared his own talent. He had feared walking alone. He had even wished the Hogyoku would lead him to defeat, if only to prove he was not destined to stand alone at the top forever.
The current Aizen could not easily explain the confusion buried inside him, but he could feel it changing as Ichigo continued to train. The bitterness that once burned in him was being filled in, slowly, as if a missing piece had been returned to its place.
It reminded him of something he had once read, long ago, in stories he would never admit to enjoying.
Sever cause and effect.
When regret, pain, flaws, and resentment were smoothed away, the shape of the heart changed, and many things changed with it.
He had killed his past self, the extreme self, the cowardly self. He had abandoned the version of himself that acted only for selfish desire. He had exposed weakness and offered the world a second path, an act that looked like conspiracy from the outside, yet felt strangely honest from within.
Aizen understood one thing very clearly.
He no longer belonged to Soul Society.
The Soul Society he had once lived in had already sealed him in the Abyss. This place was merely a similar flower, blooming in familiar soil.
But who said a similar flower could not bear the fruit he desired?
He was simply walking a different road now, step by step, continuing the experiments he once longed to witness, continuing the curiosity that had always driven him forward.
Sitting under the sky, feeling the Soul King's power woven into the world itself, Aizen felt something he had not expected.
Tranquility.
Perhaps, in the beginning, all people were not so different. It was their positions that created divisions, and those divisions bred struggle.
He exhaled slowly, letting a portion of the loneliness leak out of him like smoke.
It seemed that as his plan advanced, the purity inside him was increasing as well.
"Simply grouping people together because they stand inside an organization is incorrect," Aizen said, voice faint now, as if speaking from a great distance. "Organizations can share a purpose, yet express it differently. The roads they take are not the same."
"And in that process," he continued, "cracks appear."
Kaname frowned. He sensed something wrong, something shifting beneath the words.
Aizen did not look at him. He only watched the clouds, as if speaking to Kaname, or perhaps speaking to his own heart.
"I cannot simply tear down the Soul King Palace, kill Squad Zero, and take the Soul King's place as I once planned. I am too weak now. I no longer have that ability."
He smiled slightly, not with mockery, but with the quiet amusement of someone admitting a fact.
"But why should I kill everyone? I used to care whether anyone stood above me. I cared whether anyone could understand me. Now, something is different."
"Lord Aizen," Kaname said, his grip tightening, the tremor in his hand betraying him.
"Do not misunderstand," Aizen replied smoothly. "I am not saying I will abandon our path."
He turned his eyes upward again, voice calm and steady.
"I have never been the one who wavers."
Once, he had wanted that throne. He had wanted to stand at the highest point and ensure no one could ever step on his head again.
But now the fog in his heart was clearing.
He had been lonely.
No one understood him. No one could speak to him. And the road he walked was terrifying, not because of enemies ahead, but because there was no one beside him.
Walking alone through endless darkness, glancing left and right and finding nothing but emptiness, while behind him were countless hideous faces, that solitude had been the true horror.
That was why he had sought height.
That was why he had sought power.
He did not want to be afraid anymore.
Aizen Sousuke had always been a coward. He lacked the courage to walk alone.
But after seeing people from another world, after seeing Ichigo Kurosaki throw himself toward something new with reckless excitement, Aizen realized something had changed.
The emptiness inside him had been filled at some point.
Not by companionship.
By anticipation.
What would the next world look like?
What kind of people would he meet next?
A good being like the Soul King should not be treated like this. And those with the courage to change the world should not be forced to rot in mediocrity.
Each world was a fresh painting. New colors. New scenery. Waiting for him to step closer.
The loneliness that once crushed him had turned into longing for the unknown, and hunger to see what lay beyond the next door.
What if the people of Soul Society learned chakra?
What if everyone could reach a better future?
It was as if, even while he walked his own path, lights had been lit in every direction. One figure after another advanced along the narrow mountain trails those lights revealed, moving toward the vast, deep universe ahead.
When he looked back now, he no longer saw a grotesque and bewildering darkness.
He saw a sea of lights.
Perhaps I am not a good person.
But I do not want to be truly alone on the road ahead.
Aizen's lips curved into a faint smile.
"I still have one regret. Only one."
"This world did not need to be like this. I used to imagine a different world."
"If everyone had the courage and determination to step into a new world, then I believe everything would be different."
"Whether it is the Soul King, the Five Great Noble Families, Soul Society, or the Land of Naruto, no matter where, no matter who, no one should lack the courage to move forward."
"Fighting spirit and perseverance are what support our determination to continue."
His gaze lowered slightly, and for the first time, his words felt less like a speech and more like confession.
"Yao. You once felt pain and despair because of nobles. I once felt bored with the world because of my own experiences, and yet still clung to it."
"I was like a child who knows every corner of his home so well that he becomes disgusted with it, yet cannot bring himself to leave. I did not have the determination to move forward."
"And now, Yao, even if you are still shackled by death, I want to tell you what I have seen."
"The world is vast. We must believe in ourselves."
"Whatever our beliefs may be, courage is the one thing we must never betray."
"Captain Aizen…"
Kaname was stunned.
He could not understand why Aizen was speaking like this in Central Forty Six, at a moment when they should be facing a political storm from every direction.
Unlike Aizen, Kaname had responsibilities, tasks, cover to maintain. Yet he had been dragged here to watch over Central Forty Six, a fatal flaw if Seireitei launched an internal search. If they were discovered, there would be no escape.
And yet Aizen did not move.
He did not even act as if he needed to.
As if to answer Kaname's silent question, a cough came from the corridor.
"Hm. I thought it was a small matter," a calm voice said, "but I did not expect such a large loophole."
A third presence stepped into a place that should have been empty.
Shunsui Kyōraku walked in, wearing a pink floral haori over black robes, straw hat shadowing tired eyes.
His gaze drifted over the corpses, then settled on Aizen.
"You are going to be locked in the Abyss now, Aizen," Shunsui said, voice light, yet sharp underneath. "Before you are captured, is there anything you want to say?"
Aizen sat on the steps, the bodies of Central Forty Six strewn below him like a carpet of silence. He adjusted his glasses and smiled gently.
"You are joking, Captain Kyōraku."
"If you truly came to capture me, would it not have been better to use your Bankai from the beginning, to warn everyone in Seireitei?"
Aizen's smile did not change.
"Captain Commander Yamamoto is still stationed nearby. Even if I wanted to confront him, I would pay a price. Yet you have come alone, and you have not attacked. You only speak."
He looked at Shunsui as if examining a student who had presented an incomplete answer.
"What do you want to know?"
Shunsui let out a long breath, lifting his straw hat slightly.
"Ha… Honestly," he said, "I just wanted to get some information out of you, whether you believe it or not."
Aizen's smile deepened, as if he had heard the funniest thing imaginable, and yet his eyes remained calm.
Shunsui's gaze slid to Kaname, sitting with sword in hand, then returned to Aizen, sharper now.
"What do you want from me, Aizen, that you chose to draw me here?"
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