Chapter Text
There is only one day in a whole year in which residents of the Rukongai and of Seireitei are equal— the longest day of the year, summer solstice. Day of the Gods, or dubbed “Day of Misery” by Rukon residents. As one person explained to him, it was like having a whole feast available, but you could only go and have one plateful of food, once a year.
Kisuke had asked why they bothered to go at all then, if all there was to have was pain and suffering. He had gotten a look, and “You’ll understand when you’re old enough”.
He did not look forward to the day he would be expected to start going, he liked rifling through the bins in peace, without being scolded or chased away for being a thieving brat. No celebration could possibly be better than guaranteed food for the month. No celebration in the Rukon, where they can barely scrape together enough food to give each living being a piece of bread anyways.
It’s not that he doesn’t think that they should just be happy for a day, but he knows there are wealthy, rich and well-fed people, one comes and visits every once in a blue moon, dressed in weird clothing and brandishing swords. Really, a sword, what do they do, cut each other up for fun?
-
Kisuke thinks he’s about fifteen when he’s first told that he’s expected to attend the solstice celebration. He doesn’t know how the district even keeps track of their ages, especially since they don’t care about them otherwise. Kisuke knows he isn’t the only starving child in the village, but there’s nothing he can do about it. He can barely scavenge enough for himself, much less provide for anyone else.
And yet, for some reason, celebration is the only thing that forces the wealthier to keep tabs on everyone else. It’s a bad joke. Except when he digs his heels in and refuses to go, a strange man in a big white jacket pulls him along, and for the first time ever, he can’t squirm out of someone’s grasp.
While he’s busy trying to free himself, he doesn’t notice his surroundings blurring around him. All he can see, feel, is this man and his strange aura. No one else seemed to notice it, but Kisuke can feel it, there’s something more to this man and he doesn’t think he wants to find out what it is.
He’s unceremoniously dumped at the end of a line of kids who look nervous and scared.
“You’re not the only first timer here, now shut up and get in line.”
Kisuke does as he’s told. He’s learned the hard way that it doesn’t do any good to draw unnecessary attention to oneself. Not in the Rukongai. Not when you’re a nobody standing in the palm of a giant waiting for any excuse to crush you.
Everyone averts their gaze once the white-caped man leaves, looking down at their feet, or at the trees that line the path they’re queued up on, or up at the sky. There’s an understanding between them all, they’re equals in every sense of the word, that even if they wanted to fight each other for whatever reason, it would only give the wealthy more reason to despise them.
He counts two hours of those around him shifting on their feet before people begin to sit. Kisuke refuses. He’s had it worse, been on his feet for so long that he had to duck into the cover of forest before collapsing from sheer exhaustion. He can see more now too, that the line before and after him stretch until he literally can’t see any more.
The line shifts as if one entity, drawn to the shade of the forest as the sun glares at them from overhead with no sign of any progress or reason. Mutters break out as the sun begins to fall, never towards one another, but unanimous all the same. Kisuke stays silent, but he agrees.
The sky is full of orange by the time the first movement forwards happens. Voices turn from grouchy to excited, everything from hopes of finally partaking in celebration to tales of meeting beasts being proposed. Kisuke just wants to leave.
The line moves, and then it moves, large gaps beginning to form as people struggle to keep up. Kisuke sighs, and follows exactly five paces behind the equally scrawny boy in front of him who talks far too much. Around a lake and then through a forest, almost like a bad joke where they’re being led around by their noses for something that isn’t really there. But no one is brave enough to step out of line, and every if they were, no one had any way back to where they came from.
They eventually begin to hike up a mountain, one that they hadn’t realized was there because it had been obscured by thick forest and trees twenty times the height of any building they’d seen.
Kisuke counts the criss-crosses their way up the path, before he gets bored and loses count after a hundred-odd. They’re not even close to the midway point, nevermind the top. He hopes they don’t have to go all the way to the top. Kisuke idly wonders what happened to those who weren’t strong enough to make it to the end. No one guides them, so no one would know if anyone just passed out along the trail, or even rolled down the whole mountain after tripping.
And then as abruptly as it started, the line stops again. They all almost crash into one another as they run out of places to go. Complaints arise around him, and Kisuke wonders how everyone else has the energy to spare. His lips and throat are dry from the summer heat, even though the sky is dark now. He licks his lips nervously. Nighttime is not when he wants to be out in the open, with no trees or anything for cover.
Monsters come out at night, Kisuke’s learned. Not every night, not even every week, or month. But they come, always at night. They seem to chase him, as if he’s got a target on his back, just like the way hunger seems to never be a problem for the other children. He thinks he might just be extraordinarily unlucky, but the grownups just look at him with pity and there must be something that he just doesn’t get.
Kisuke waits, ready to run at sound of those horrible shrieks that the monsters have, but none come. They should though, with this many people all in one place, wouldn’t it be a feast for them?
He peers down the mountain at the surrounding forest, lights bright on the horizon on the left, and then dim and scattered towards the right. He can make out the patten of tall buildings on the left, and he figures that must be where the capital is, where the wealthy live. There’s several bands of light that he figures must go all the way around the capital, like rings, even if he can’t see them.
Vaguely, he processes that he’s never seen anyone come down from the mountain. The only thing that keeps him from worrying too much is the fact that the adults always came back the next day, smug and secretive.
It turns out they didn’t have to climb to the top, there was a series of caves that they were lining up to enter. He can’t tell how high up they are, but judging by the fact that his feet hurt like a bitch, they’d been standing and climbing for quite a while. The closer to the front of the line he got, the shorter it seemed that the time between people being allowed to enter was.
There was a man standing just inside the cave, that could only be seen by the first few people in line. Kisuke cautiously entered the cave once he got a nod from him. It was lit by gas lanterns, ones of substantially higher quality that the ones that they used back in his district. It is dim inside, and only becomes dimmer as he travels deeper, and lower into the cave. He hears dripping, and looks up to see water beaded on the rock above him. He wonders where the water is coming from.
He comes across a bend in the tunnel, and realizes it’s guarded by a woman sitting behind a table. There’s no other way out. Kisuke grits his teeth and approaches her.
She’s beautiful, there’s no doubt about it. She has long brown hair that’s tied up a messy bun and seems to glow even in the dim light, and a cheery grin that only makes him wearier. Few smile in the Rukongai, even fewer really have anything to be so happy about.
“Hello, Kisuke.”
Kisuke’s blood runs cold. He takes a step back.
“How do you know my name?”
The woman just continues smiling. “It’s my job to know the names of everyone that comes through here.”
“How do you know my name?”
The smile doesn’t falter. It’s unnatural, Kisuke thinks. “I can see it.”
Kisuke doesn’t believe her. She doesn’t even look like she’s looking at him. Maybe through him, can she do that?
“Do you believe in Gods, Kisuke?”
“No.” He doesn’t have to think about it. If Gods were real, or God, or whichever one, then why were they all still starving in the Rukongai? Shouldn’t they be saved by now?
Or did he not deserve it? Had he done something, in a past or future life, that was keeping him tethered to this hell, instead of the haven of the afterlife for “good samaritans”? No. This is just the way things are. There is no such thing as God. This is just the afterlife for all. Gods are not real.
“Gods are real, Kisuke,” the lady hums. “But they’re also not Gods, not in the sense that most believe.”
Kisuke is ready to turn and leave, but curiosity keeps him rooted to the floor.
“There are eighty patron Gods, and countless others. Each person that comes through here is assigned to one. Here,” the lady waves her hand over an ornately carved bowl on the desk before her, “is an essence that will allow you to meet the God most compatible for you.”
“And then what?” Kisuke asks wearily.
“Whatever you discuss with your patron God is up to you and them, each person’s relationship with theirs is different. For some, they are an ear to listen and eyes to watch, for others, they’re a companion, and for others, they almost don’t exist at all.”
“And if I choose to not acknowledge the existence of mine, do I still have to come back here every year?”
“Yes. It’s tradition to meet with your God at least once a year.”
It’s tradition, Kisuke almost snorts. Why couldn’t it be tradition for the Gods to actually do something, other than sit and watch as innocent people starve to death and have to fight just for a single morsel of food to live on?
“All you have to do is touch the liquid in this bowl. It won’t hurt, and nobody else will know who your God is, or what you discuss with them. Kisuke, this part is important, do not tell anyone who your God is.”
Kisuke’s attention snaps away from the grooves in the stone floor and back to the lady.
“People will ask, and people will judge. Don’t tell them a word, trust me.”
There’s a sudden intensity that has him on edge, and he nods quickly. Then the intensity disappears, leaving behind only the kind lady that had first greeted him.
“Now hurry, put your hand in the bowl.”
Kisuke shuffles forward, almost like a “do I have to?”, but he puts his hand in the bowl anyways, because he figures that there’s no other way out.
He lands on his feet, he can feel the impact but he never jumped, and his knees never bent, so he couldn’t have truly landed.
The room that Kisuke finds himself in is dark, illuminated only by the dying embers of the fireplace in the corner. A fireplace! Kisuke has only ever heard stories of the wealthy having their own personal fires within their houses.
He can see half of the sunset through a big open window, grassy green hills not far from where he stands. How odd, the sun had set long ago, and the mountains in the Rukongai are only rock and clay, so he’s not in the Rukongai. Then where is he?
“Hello?” Kisuke calls out softly, only to be met with soft breeze.
He wanders around, poking his head into rooms, all seemingly recently abandoned. There’s a big bedroom, and another smaller bedroom, and when he reached out to touch one of the fabrics draped across the bed, it was soft in a way that felt heavenly. He had only slept in a bed a handful of times when he had gotten so injured that the older Rukongai residents felt bad for him, and treated him to clean cold water and rest he desperately needed for his body to heal itself.
There was an absolutely massive closet, the same size as the guest bedroom, which was ridiculous to even think about. Inside had been full of clothes of all types, just as smooth as the sheets he had touched had been, some beaded with precious metals and others laced with patterns he had never seen before. The only pattern he had ever seen was the odd patchwork blanket that he had made himself with old fabrics he had found.
Still there was no one there. The sheets in the larger bedroom had been rumpled, like someone had slept there the night before, and he didn’t dare touch those, but now there was no one in the house that he was in.
Kisuke pocketed a fruit that had been left on the table. Fresh fruits were hard to come by in the Rukongai, the good ones had already long been picked for the wealthy to buy, and all that was left were the ones full of holes and bugs, rotted from the summer heat.
Eventually he had tired himself trying to explore the whole place, and he only ended up very confused at the long hallways with too many doors, and whether or not he had actually been through rooms, or if he had just come into the same room from a different direction. He made his way back to one of the unused bedrooms, curled under a light sheet in comfort he had never felt before.
Abruptly, Kisuke found himself awake again, standing with a hand still in the bowl, back in the cave he had almost forgotten about with all of the exploring he had done. He was in reality, with nothing to his name and nowhere nice to rest at night.
“So, who’d you meet?”
He had forgotten about her. She was far too cheery for his liking.
“Didn’t you tell me not to tell anyone?” he deadpans.
She shrugs. “Sometimes people tell me anyways. Or they just don’t care. I like to know everything, it doesn’t hurt me to ask.”
Kisuke just shifts his weight from one foot to the other, watching her warily. “Can I go now?”
“Follow the tunnel behind me, it’ll take you out to the back. Someone will pick you up and send you back to where you came.”
He obliges quickly despite the fact that his feet ache from being on them all day. The rest of the tunnel is not as long as he thought it would be. He exits the back after only a few steps, only to be met by another man in black robes.
“What district,” the man grunts.
“Fourty-three, west.”
His arm is grabbed roughly, before he’s jerked away, the way he ended up here. He flinches, trying to tear his arm from the man’s grasp before he realizes what’s happening.
Kisuke lands in a heap on the dirt, already ragged clothing becoming dustier and dirtier than they already had been. It takes his eyes a few moments to adjust, he hadn’t realized just how bright it had been inside of that cave until now, when there were only dim lanterns and moonlight for guidance.
Nobody notices him, not the way they normally would had he been walking through the street, spitting at him and calling him a street rat, chasing him out of town and into the forest. Nobody notices him, and he doesn’t know if that’s a blessing or not.
It’s great, he sneaks an apple into his sleeve without anyone noticing, and then another. And by the time he reaches the outskirts of town, where his little hideout is tucked in between two run down buildings, his pockets are full of actual real food that isn’t scraps that he scavenged for.
Maybe the wealthy should hold more celebrations. At least he’d be able to eat better.
-
Kisuke is pretty sure he’s forty years old. He loses track of the seasons sometimes, lost in his own thoughts of how everything could be better. His clothes look half decent, he taught himself how to sew at some point, and how to survive in the forest so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the wealthier members in the district.
He’s noticed that some of them have seemingly disappeared, another one filling the space they used to occupy. The strangest bit, is that no one else seemed to notice, or care. They just kept going, living through every day as if there was an end goal they were working towards.
Except there wasn’t, because in all of his years he’d never seen someone become wealthier, never seen an ounce of money shared with those less fortunate. Poor people stuck together, fended for each other. Not that there was much to fend for really, since no one seemed to starve the way he did.
Kisuke hungered, his stomach gurgled and growled and demanded he eat, and there were days where he couldn’t get his hands on enough food and only had the energy to sit in his alleyway.
He’s different from the rest, he knows that. From the insatiable need for food to the fact that he never had a patron God to meet, Kisuke is different. Maybe he’s cursed, it would certainly explain how trouble seems to follow him no matter were he hides or how he avoids everything as much as he can.
He doesn’t want to go steal food from the merchants, no one does. But he does because he has to in order to feed himself, and the children that come and go from the run down houses around him. Most are taken in by one of the adults sooner or later, and the rest band together.
Nobody ever refuses when they ask for food, nobody ever punishes them for being a burden, nobody pushes them out of the streets then sends rocks flying at them to get them to leave faster.
What a miserable existence, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
-
“How’d you do that?”
Kisuke jumps. There hadn’t been anyone else around. He had checked it, not once, but twice. That is how he lived, counting on the unobservant nature of the shopkeepers who didn’t know he was waiting around the corner.
Behind him, a dark skinned girl with short black hair is crouched in the shadows, peering at him curiously.
“When did you get here?!”
They stare at each other for a moment.
“I asked first.”
Kisuke opens his mouth to retort, then pauses. She’s not wrong. He knows exactly what she’s referring to, how he had nudged the food into conveniently falling into his sleeves and patchwork of pockets as he walked by one of the stands, all without touching the stall or the owner noticing because he had been too busy gossiping with others. Truth be told, he doesn’t really know either. There’s a feeling he gets in his stomach, and it rises from inside of him out through his skin, and things simply do what he wants them to do.
He’s gotten better at it over the years. The first time it had happened, he had been sure that it was just an accident, or the universe playing tricks on him once again. He had been close to death, or at least passing out from the hunger, when he had felt it. And then suddenly, scraps from the trash heap that he could see just out of the corner of his eye slipped down the pile, and a gentle breeze had pushed them towards him.
He could tell her the truth, or the half truth, or lie. He’s going to lie, because nobody ever believes the things he says anyways. It’s safer to lie.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your pockets are bulging with foods that you never even physically touched.”
Kisuke shrugs.
“What is all the food for?”
Kisuke looks at her like she’s grown a third head. “To eat, obviously? What else do people do with food?” He abruptly realizes that she’s not dressed in clothes that are made out of a patchwork of old clothing, and that there’s a gold band around one of her fingers. He wants to laugh in all of the absurdity of this situation. “Nevermind, you probably throw it all always when you don’t want it.”
The girl rolls her eyes. “I meant, what do you need so much of it for? Souls rarely get hungry.”
“I guess I’m a special case.”
He doesn’t know whether he expected her to laugh at that, or to brush it off, but she tilts her head to the side and stares right at him.
“Who’s your Patron?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Are you not old enough to have met yours?”
Kisuke just shrugs. “Maybe I just didn’t want to.”
He gets a weird look, before the girl is distracted by something. What exactly, he doesn’t know.
“Well I gotta go, I hope you can show me how did you did all that sometime!”
A wave, and then a blur, and she’s gone, like she was never even there in the first place.
For a moment, Kisuke wonders if it really happened or if she had just been his imagination, but quickly dismisses that idea. Kisuke hopes that he never sees her again.
-
“Yo!”
Kisuke groans. It hasn’t even been a full day.
“What do you want?”
“Teach me how you did the stuff with the wind!”
“I told you! I don’t know how I did it, it just happens! And don’t sneak up on people like that, you’re going to get a fist to the face one day.”
The girl snorts. “I can beat you at hand-to-hand any day, no one is landing a fist anywhere on me any time soon.”
Kisuke doesn’t question it. He’s a scrawny little thing that might get blown away by the wind for at least three months of the year, it wouldn’t take much for someone to best him in any sort of combat.
“You’re special, by the way. Like you said last time, you feel hungry when no one else does. That’s a trait that only spiritually aware souls have. There aren’t many, at least not out here in the Rukongai.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you have a spiritual core, and can sense other spritiually aware beings, and use your spiritual power. Like the wind thing you did, that’s usually a technique we call kido, and it usually takes people years and years to learn. But you did it like it was nothing!”
“So you’re saying that I have some sort of power that no one else has? Yeah right,” Kisuke scoffs. He’s not stupid, that’s something that only happens in books and stories.
The girl peers at him. For some reason, it distinctly reminds him of a cat.
“I didn’t say you were the only one ever to have these powers, just one of few in the whole Rukongai. And that’s usually because most of them starve to death before they ever realize they have powers.”
Oh, how lucky he must be then, Kisuke thinks to himself, must be so fortunate to be the only one to starve to death in the district.
“I have them too, c’mon, I’ll show you!” she says, gesturing at the forest.
Kisuke hesitates to follow. What if she decides to murder him, and leave his carcass in the forest? Or whatever happens to dead souls. What happens to them? Do they reenter the reincarnation cycle, will they become new people?
He’s only pulled from his thoughts by an impatient cough. He’ll go, he decides, anything that could happen is better than living like this anyways.
“Yeah, yeah, alright, I’m coming,” he mutters, moving towards the edge of the forest.
He doesn’t have good memories of the forest, only hard trees and bugs that crawl on him if he lays on the dirt. Kisuke swears that he’s seen glowing eyes before, but he hasn’t been in the forest in decades. It might just be his imagination.
Still, he recognizes the dirt paths that he’s led down, remembers exploring them when he had no other choice other than to search the bushes for berries and hope a bird had died and that he could figure out how to start a fire to cook it.
Then the girl leads him off the path, and he starts to wonder if this really is going to be his end. Maybe he wouldn’t mind it, after all, there’s nothing else to look forward to. A next life, that could be interesting.
“Under here,” the girl ushers him, signaling that he’s to crawl under a low branch that she holds up.
He just looks at her warily. He doesn’t want his already unclean clothes to become even messier.
“I’ll get you a new set of clothes later, just do it!”
Kisuke does not believe that, but he gets on his hands and knees anyways, crawling under the brush, and into a clearing he never knew existed.
“Nice, isn’t it?”
“How’d you find this place?”
“Well… I was on the run from my own family ‘cause I thought the exercise they were forcing me to do was boring.”
“Exercise? They make you run?”
The girl laughs. “No no, exercises, like training exercises. I’m from the Shihoin family, we specialize in stealth, tracking, and hand-to-hand combat. They wanted me to shadow one of the patrols, with the reasoning that ‘you need experience’. But I slipped away while they weren’t paying attention, which means they’re the ones that need more experience!”
Kisuke snorts. It sounds a lot like the way the older people in the village act. Except now, he’s dealing with not only one of the wealthiest families of Seireitei, but also the one in charge of security. How ironic that it’s all the same.
“Anyways, watch, I’m gonna blast a hole in that tree,” Shihoin… Shihoin-sama? Shihoin-sama says to him.
Kisuke steps to the side, disbelieving.
Shihoin-sama points her index finger at the tree. And then before his eyes, a pale bolt of energy shoots from her forefinger right at the tree, blasting a neat circle right through the bark, and he can see the surrounding forest through it.
Wicked.
“Teach me how to do that!” Kisuke exclaims, eyes bright with excitement.
“I asked first!”
She cocks her head, squinting her eyes at him. “Will you teach me first if I let you move into one of our guest rooms?”
Kisuke opens his mouth, then closes it. He almost immediately agrees, but then his common sense kicks in in time to stop him. Is it really possible for him to just, leave? District 43 has been his whole life, even if it has been terrible. And the city center, where the Shihion… mansion? Probably is. He wonders what it looks like.
“How do I know this isn’t a trap?”
“Gosh, you’re so suspicious. Do I seem like someone that would trick you like that?”
“I dunno, that’s why I’m suspicious. No one gives anything for free, that’s just how things are. We’re treated poorly here,” Kisuke says, gesturing vaguely around them. “Do you think we’re treated with kindness for being poor? Someone like me, who lives off the scraps of others?”
“I— I’ve never thought about it.”
Kisuke just stares. How can you simply not think about the literal majority of everyone’s lives?
“I guess, when you put it that way, it makes sense. Sounds a lot like the stuff my family says, actually. We’re supposed to be deeply suspicious of everyone, waiting for them to slip up and then punish them for making the mistake.”
“You… You’re the law enforcement? Like, the people who put others in prison, and give them public lashings if they act against you?”
“What?”
“How are you from a wealthy family and know nothing about everything?”
“I mean, it’s not really my job to? I’m supposed to do my studies and follow the trainings to eventually take headship of the family. No one has really ever taught me anything about the Rukongai, and honestly it’s rare that I come out so far. We usually stick to the inner districts, and they’re… not what you described.”
“Did you not see when you were sneaking around in the shadows to scare the living daylights out of me?”
“Well, I was more watching you ‘cause you were acting kind of funny. Though, yeah, that makes sense now, the clothes, the stealing food, the awful looking stash you have in that alley. But I promise! No strings attached, no backstabbing. I’ll make sure you have a place in my wing, if you teach me how you did the wind thing!”
Kisuke sighs. It’s not a bad idea, really. He can’t do much worse, he already mostly lives in a makeshift little hut made of sticks and wood in the alleyway. What’s the worst that could happen, they toss him back out, maybe in a further district? He’s already learned how to become self-sufficient, as long as he has access to the trash and travelling merchants that pass through the districts.
“And how exactly am I supposed to get to wherever you live?”
“I’ll help you move, you can’t have that much stuff, right? Or you could just leave most if it for someone else, we have more than enough to take care of you.”
“And your family will just… let you? I find that hard to believe, given how greedy wealthy people are.”
She shrugs. “They can’t really stop me, and they’ll be too impressed by your skill to complain much. If there’s one thing that everyone understands, it’s power.”
“I can’t even do that much, not like what you did.”
“Worst case, they’ll give you an ultimatum. Learn something in a span of time or else be kicked out. I think you can do it, you’ve pretty much mastered the skill anyways all on your own, with no coaching or help.”
Kisuke nods, relaxing a bit. That sounds more like it, a transaction rather than free handouts. “Okay, let’s go.”
“Call me Yoruichi,” the girl says, a predatory grin spreading across her face.
-
Kisuke moves into the Shihoin complex the next day. He watches the servants, wondering if life would be better or worse had he been raised to be one. It didn’t seem that bad, but then there were moments where they obeyed Yoruichi’s every command that left him wondering just how powerful the family really was.
He had nothing to compare them to really, anyone would seem obscenely rich to him, who hadn’t been able to even afford his own real food. He had always known the idea of luxury, concept so absurd in his mind that he couldn’t even imagine what it really meant. One touch of the sheets on the bed in the room he’s told is now his, and it’s so— everything, and he understands, this is what it’s like living with one of the wealthiest families of the world.
Kisuke hadn’t even had a bed, let alone bedsheets, let alone bedsheets made of silk, with velvet drapery and a closet full of clothes that hadn’t been crudely stitched together with the remains of old clothes.
There is a mirror framed with what looks like gold, and he’s too afraid to touch it in case he breaks it. He stares at himself in it. He’s seen himself in the reflection of ponds and dirty windows, but this is different. He can see the dirt on his face, despite the fact that he’s learned to live with it, it came back just as fast as he could wash it off. He can see the greyish tint to his hair, and on his clothes, and the fact that his hair is just as stringy as it feels.
Kisuke carefully sheds his clothes, making sure they don’t touch anything, leaving them in a pile on the floor by the door. He enters the attached bathroom, marvelling at the collection of soaps and perfumes available. They’re labeled, but he still doesn’t know what most of them are even for.
He ends up smelling all of them, picking one he hopes is soap and scrubs himself raw under the spray of hot water. Hot water was nothing new to him, they had used pots to boil water, but a constant stream of water, that he didn’t have to run back and forth from the river to get? Unheard of. At the end, he dried himself off with a soft fluffy towel, one that wasn’t falling apart at the seams and full of holes, or greyed by dirt and age.
When he finally exited the bathroom, wrapped in a big towel that was almost twice his height, there was a small parcel and a piece of paper on top of his bed. “Put this on, and then come to the training room. From your room, go left down the hallway, and then take a right. Once outside, take a left, and then a right, and then enter the big black building - Yoruichi”, the note read.
Kisuke slipped into the clothes, fumbling with the obi a bit before tying it neatly around himself. Belatedly, he realized that this was the same outfit that the people who police the Summer Solstice rituals. There’s no doubt, this is the land of the wealthy now.
He makes his way to the training room, slipping in and heading to the back of the room where Yoruichi stands next to another boy, her arms crossed as she watches. There’s others around too, training by themselves with bags hanging from the ceiling and designated sections of the room with targets scattered around.
She turns just before he gets there, and for a moment he feels a sinking feeling in his stomach like he’s forgotten that he doesn’t belong. But then a wide grin splits her face, and she waves and shouts “Yo, Kisuke!”, and Kisuke exhales a sigh of relief.
“Kisuke, this is my friend Tessai, he’s good at doing the same kind of stuff you did! You need to show him!”
The boy turns to him, waving, but Kisuke just blinks at him. He’s big, bigger than Kiske is, broad shoulders and muscles large and obvious. He remind Kisuke distantly of the “large” shopkeepers that used to chase him away from their stalls.
“Hi,” Kisuke squeaks out.
Yoruichi sets some spare materials on a crate, oblivious to Kisuke’s practically shaking in his new shoes.
“Move the stuff off of the box, Kisuke!”
Kisuke looks at her wearily, but thinks of the wind and air just as he normally does. Nothing happens. Kisuke remembers the feel of the breeze against his skin, the way it blows his hair into his face and the idea that it can give him what he wants if he wants enough.
He hears one of the knives clatter on the floor, and his eyes open to see Yoruichi give Tessai a shit-eating grin and Tessai’s shocked face.
“Intent based kido, untaught, untrained!” Yoruichi crows at him.
“I think…” Tessai trails off, studying Kisuke. “I think he can master Kido in a year.” Kisuke wants to ask what Kido is. “I also don’t think he can teach you how to do that, it’s something you have to be extremely in tune with yourself and your surroundings to do, and apparently, not everyone can manipulate reaitsu without a premade incantation and handmovement. I’ve personally only ever done it once, and it was… an accident.”
-
Kisuke masters Kido in a year. He passes his exam with flying colors, and then impresses another master, one of Yoruichi’s teachers, all in the span of six hours.
And then he moves on to master kaido, and then hakuda, and then Zanjutsu, all in equally terrifyingly quick succession, and would be unparalleled if Tessai hadn’t managed to master Kido in eight short months of study.
But more than that, he finds that he’s fascinated by everything. In the library there are hundreds, thousands of books on ideas and things he’d never even known existed. And because he passes the “tests” that the Shihoin trainers give him, with a bit of Yoruichi’s influence, he gets his own room to learn and make things.
Kido may have come first to Kisuke, but he had to work at it once he had to learn how to focus his energy into something that resembled an existing, precise object, like ropes binding the arms of a person. Hakuda is where Kisuke excels, naturally.
He’s small, light on his feet, and ridiculously fast for someone who was starved his whole life. He wins duels on pure speed and agility, years of stealing food and dodging the merchants translating into intuition and skill. But when he loses, he loses hard. He can’t escape a chokehold, or flip his opponents, because he’s too small and hasn’t trained enough to outmaneuver them.
Zanjutsu was even harder. The concept of a zanpakuto had been completely foreign to him. Everything about it was weird to him, the woman in his soulscape a terror for him to manage. He comes out on top, only by brute force and innovation, only achieved thanks to the Seireitei library, he does not get along with her in any sense of the concept, but his shikai is there, the asauchi melds to her shape. Once he has his blade, things become easier. She does not cooperate, but he still masters the physical art of swordsmanship.
Yoruichi and Tessai are there by his side every day, challenging him to become better, faster, stronger, and they grow together like that, always right in step with one another.