Chapter 1: What a Coincidence, I'm a Soul Reaper Too
[Volume One: Default]
World of the Living
Karakura Town
Eight or nine at night. From a distance, darkness had swallowed the small town whole. The daytime bustle was gone, replaced by an eerie stillness, like some pitch-black beast slowly opening its jaws to devour everything. Scattered streetlights dotted the shadows here and there, a last flicker of resistance.
Then a black butterfly drifted past. Moonlight caught its wings, and for a moment they blazed translucent blue, the whole creature turning ghostlike.
SWISH.
Along the path the butterfly had traced, a slender figure flickered into view. Black kimono. Wooden sandals. A blade at her waist. The curve of her silhouette made one thing clear: a woman.
"Hm?"
Moonlight lit her face. She looked young, too young. Fifteen or sixteen, maybe even twelve or thirteen. Her hair was cut in a style vaguely reminiscent of an onion, her features delicate. But frost covered her expression, and her tightly knit brows announced in no uncertain terms: keep away.
"Strange. What's going on here?"
"The spirit particles in this place... something's off. I can't put my finger on it." She stared at the butterfly fluttering before her, brow furrowing deeper. "Could it be because I just came from the Soul Society and haven't adjusted yet...? No, that's not right either. Thin spiritual power doesn't feel like this."
The fledgling Soul Reaper pressed a hand to her chin, muttering to herself. Small head. Big questions.
Bzzzt,
A nearby streetlamp began to flicker, bright-dim, bright-dim, with an almost rhythmic pulse. The girl glanced at it, thought nothing of it, and went back to puzzling things over.
"Hey! What're you doing out here!"
A rough voice rang out behind her. She looked up. A middle-aged man was striding toward her, brow creased, already running his mouth. "A little girl out in the middle of the night in weird clothes—what's wrong with you!"
His righteous tone caught her off guard. For a second she wondered if this uncle was actually talking to her. At the same time, her hand drifted silently to the sword at her waist, and the confusion in her eyes sharpened to a blade's edge.
Strange. This human has no spiritual power at all. So how can he see me? And besides...
"I'm talking to you! Don't just stare at me! Get home, now!"
Just as she'd suspected—though it still caught her off guard, the man brushed right past her, as if she didn't exist at all, and kept walking straight ahead. A wave of alcohol fumes followed in his wake.
"Hey! Uncle! You a cop or something? Mind your own damn business!"
The girl turned. A young woman stood under a streetlamp not far away, dressed in flashy clothes with heavy makeup caked on her face, like she'd stepped out of an anime. A mirror in one hand, a powder puff in the other.
"It's dangerous out here! Whose kid are you! Don't you know girls have been going missing lately! That's the third one already!"
The man was straining to get a good look at her, but judging by his unsteady footing, he'd had plenty to drink. Even if he'd seen her before, there was no way he'd recognize her in this state.
"Tch!" The made-up girl clicked her tongue, stuffed her things away, and stormed off. "Freak! If you're drunk, go home, old man! Can't you see I'm heading out on a date!"
She vanished into the night, still cursing, leaving the man standing there in a daze. It took him a moment to collect himself before he staggered on his way.
So he really couldn't see me... but something's still wrong. I can't shake this feeling.
She let go of the sword hilt, thinking. The situation had moved beyond anything she understood. No obvious problem, and yet the sense of wrongness pressed down on her, heavy and undeniable.
Bzzzt,
A faint electric sound. The streetlamp sputtered. The air itself seemed to freeze, the atmosphere tilting toward something unsettling.
FLAP FLAP,
The black butterfly beat its wings and picked up speed, as if it had found its target, flying off behind her.
"Sensed something, did you? As expected—at times like this, I can always count on the Hell Butterfly."
She followed. The butterfly's speed seemed leisurely, but it was deceptively fast. Within moments it had crossed several streets and come to a stop in front of a building.
[Kurosaki Clinic]
The Hell Butterfly dissolved upon the sign above the front entrance. The girl's furrowed brow eased, just slightly.
The building was modest, a two-story house. The front door on the ground floor was shut tight. She pressed a finger to the glass, and something strange happened. Her body turned translucent. Black ripples spread across the door's surface. In the space of a blink, nothing remained but a black hole in the glass, and the next second, that too was gone, as if it had never been.
But the girl now standing on the other side of the door was silent proof that everything had just happened.
Faint moonlight revealed a simple clinic. Beyond it lay a living room steeped in the warmth of daily life, a stark contrast to the clinical space behind her.
The Hell Butterfly vanished here... so the source of the anomaly is this household...
A sliver of light spilled down from the staircase, along with faint, intermittent sounds. The layout was clear enough: ground floor for the living room and clinic, second floor for bedrooms.
Her mind made up, the girl no longer hesitated. She climbed the stairs with light, careful steps, slow, but with every muscle coiled, alert to everything around her.
On the second floor, she swept her gaze across the hallway, then closed her eyes and focused. Her brow furrowed deeper. Still nothing wrong. And yet the wrongness in her chest only grew.
She stopped before a door marked with a plaque reading [15]. That plaque was what had drawn her, none of the other doors had anything on them, and people instinctively gravitate toward the thing that stands out.
Click,
The knob turned. She pushed the door open slowly.
No surprises. An ordinary room. A single bed, an old box TV, a desk, a wardrobe.
A simple boy's room, clearly.
An orange-haired boy sat cross-legged beside the bed in plain house clothes, eyes shut, back straight, expression calm. Meditating.
The sparse furnishings and clean white walls spoke of an unremarkable, normal occupant. But the meditating boy shattered that ordinariness entirely.
"Yo!" The boy opened his eyes and looked at her. "Who're you?"
"Huh?!" The girl blinked, thrown off, then crossed her arms and lifted her chin with practiced arrogance. "Get this straight, human! I'm not just anybody! I'm a Soul Reaper!"
"A Soul Reaper, huh."
He repeated the words, and the tone, half questioning, half certain, with something complicated underneath, made her freeze.
"What a coincidence!"
The boy smiled faintly and rose from his seated position. In the next instant, before her suddenly constricted pupils, his house clothes transformed into a black kimono identical to her own. And at his back and waist appeared two blades, one long, one short.
"I'm a Soul Reaper too."