6 days until Central 46's trial of Seijūrō Kidōin.

Morning light crept over the walls of the Kidō Corps compound and fell across the stone path below. Seijūrō stepped out of his office with the Vice Kidō Commander's armband on his sleeve and the last barrier inspection report from the previous night in his hand. Passing the Grand Kidō Commander's lounge, he caught the rhythmic thudding through the gap in the door, and Mahiru Tokito's lazy, drawn-out cooing. He didn't pause. He didn't frown. He walked straight past.

The morning had been quiet so far. No anomaly reports from the East District, no Hollow sightings in Rukongai, not even a message from Soi Fon's side. He filed the report, went back to his office, and changed into a plain gray Shihakushō with a Zanpakutō at his hip. Patrolling Rukongai didn't require the Vice Kidō Commander in person, Mahiru's position on that was consistent: leave the small stuff to the underlings, let the people above enjoy themselves. But he didn't like that.

He crossed the stone thoroughfares of the Seireitei, passed through the Hakudō Gate, and walked into Rukongai. Today he went farther than usual. Through the East District markets, through the North District farmlands, deep into South Rukongai. The stone path became packed earth, and the packed earth became a dusty track. The wooden houses on either side grew shabbier as he walked, some barely shacks, a few planks held together against each other. The air tasted of dry dust and something faintly rotten underneath it.

South Rukongai, District 78. Inuzuri.

One of the most remote corners of Rukongai. Worst public order. Lowest Reishi concentration. Most of the souls living here had no spiritual power at all, hollow-eyed, gaunt-faced. When they saw someone in a Shihakushō with a blade at his waist, they dropped their heads and didn't look up again.

Seijūrō stopped at the mouth of a narrow alley.

At the far end, by the earthen wall, a slender figure was braced against the surface, inching forward one slow step at a time. Plain clothing soaked through with sweat, clinging to thin shoulders and a thin back. Her breathing was fast and uneven. Her legs were shaking.

He moved quickly and caught her arm. "Hisana."

Hisana Kuchiki lifted her head. Her face was so pale it was nearly translucent, white lips, fine cold sweat across her forehead. When she saw who it was, she tried to smile. "Teacher... what are you doing here?"

"Don't talk yet." He steadied her out of the alley, found a flat stone by the road, and got her seated. Even sitting, her hand stayed locked around her collar, knuckles white. Her wrists were thinner than they'd been years ago. The blue veins under her skin were visible through the surface.

He turned to his escort and told him to go notify Byakuya at Squad 6. Then he lifted Hisana onto his back and started the walk back to the Seireitei.

Byakuya arrived fast. He hadn't even had time to put on his Captain's haori, he came straight through the door in his Squad 6 Shihakushō, breathing a little harder than usual. He crossed the room in a few strides, crouched in front of Hisana, one hand supporting her back and the other pressed to her forehead. His voice had lost some of its steadiness. "Did you go to Rukongai again?"

Hisana looked down. Her voice came out in fragments. "I'm sorry... I..."

"I'm not blaming you." Byakuya's voice dropped. His fingers moved to the corner of her brow, carefully tucking the strands of hair the sweat had plastered to her cheek back behind her ear. His movements were slow. Like he was touching something that might break. "Your body hasn't recovered. Walking that far — I was worried."

Hisana's eyes reddened. She didn't say anything else. She leaned her forehead against his chest.

Seijūrō stood off to the side and watched Byakuya use his sleeve to wipe the dust from her face. Hisana had been married to Byakuya for five years. Every year her health was a little worse than the last. Captain Unohana had examined her personally and said it wasn't any known illness, and it wasn't ordinary malnutrition. This was what happened to the frail souls of Rukongai in the end, they dissolved into Reishi, slowly, until there was nothing left. Not even a trace.

Back at the Kuchiki Clan manor, Byakuya settled her into the bedchamber. A maid brought hot water and medicine. Byakuya took the bowl himself and fed her spoon by spoon. Every few sips, Hisana had to stop and breathe, her chest heaving, her cough muffled and exhausted.

"I don't understand," Seijūrō said from the doorway. "Why do you go to Rukongai every time you recover even a little?"

The medicine spoon went still for a moment. Hisana opened her eyes, looked at Byakuya, then at Seijūrō. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

"Forgive me, Teacher." Her fingers curled against the quilt. "I want to make amends..."

She spoke slowly, stopping every few words to breathe. She and Rukia had been brought to Inuzuri together, Rukia still in swaddling clothes. The conditions there were brutal. She couldn't survive on her own while caring for an infant, and in the end, she left her sister behind. She had carried that for years. It was only after marrying Byakuya that she finally had someone to carry part of it with her. Now she wanted to find Rukia. Whenever she felt a little better, she went looking.

"I've already sent people to search," Byakuya said quietly. No blame in it. "You don't need to go yourself. Your body—"

"It's been so long. If my sister is still alive, she'll have grown up by now. I don't know what she looks like anymore." Her voice was soft. "But what if she remembers me?"

Byakuya didn't answer. He set the medicine bowl on the low table, bent down, and pulled the thin quilt back up over her where it had slipped. Then he stood, said a few quiet words to the maid, and walked out.

In the corridor, Seijūrō was looking out at the dry landscape garden in the courtyard. Byakuya came to stand beside him. Neither of them spoke for a while. The white gravel caught the midday sun and threw it back hard. Then Byakuya said, "Is there really no way to treat Hisana's illness?"

"What did Captain Unohana say?"

"Not an illness. Not malnutrition. Not any known cause." His voice was low. "Her Reishi is leaking away. Slowly. The same as the frail souls in Rukongai. In the end, she'll dissolve and scatter."

"I'm looking for the source," Seijūrō said. "What's happening to souls in Rukongai isn't random. Someone tampered with the barrier. It's accelerating the Reishi loss — the weakest ones go first. If I find the source, I can stop it."

Byakuya turned to look at him. The light purple of his eyes caught the white gravel below. "Teacher. Let me help."

"The Kuchiki Clan has already done enough holding off Central 46's pressure. Going any further means a direct confrontation with whoever is behind this. You're the head of the Kuchiki Clan. You're the Captain of Squad 6, "

"Right now, I'm neither." Byakuya cut him off. His voice wasn't loud, but every word landed like a blade held in a perfect guard, nothing wasted, nothing yielding. "I'm Hisana's husband."

Seijūrō looked at him.

Over 50 years ago, this boy had stood on the Kidō Corps training grounds and taken a Byakurai to the chest. He'd gone skidding across the gravel and landed flat on his back, looked up at the sky, and said I lost, not with fury, not with defeat, but with something he probably couldn't have named himself. From a kid who knew only to draw and charge, he had grown into a man who carried both the Kuchiki Clan and Squad 6 on his shoulders. The man standing in front of Seijūrō now wasn't a captain. Wasn't a noble.

Just a man who wanted to save his wife.

Seijūrō was quiet for a long moment. Then he smiled.

"Then we do it together."

➤ Next: A Trick Seen Through

Chapter 35 - A Trick Seen Through

Five days until Central 46's trial of Seijūrō Kidōin.

When the knock woke him, the sky outside was still a murky gray. He'd spent half the night approving reports and finally passed out face-down on his desk, cheek pressed against an unsigned East District barrier patrol log. The knocking was measured and steady — three taps, a pause, then three more.

He sat up and rubbed his cheek where the sleeve crease had left a red mark. "Come in."

The door opened. Nemu Kurotsuchi stood at the threshold, her short black skirt jarringly out of place in the dim corridor of Kidō Corps headquarters. She stopped in front of him, bowed slightly, and spoke without inflection. "Vice Kidō Chief. The Director asked me to deliver this."

Seijūrō took the case. Far lighter than expected. He lifted the black cloth. The inner lid was covered edge-to-edge in carved reishi circuits, and the interior was divided into three tiers. On top: a thumb-sized substitute puppet, faint silver light drifting across its surface. In the middle: a thumbnail-sized Reiatsu-shielding device on an extremely thin black cord. On the bottom: a palm-sized detector, its screen flickering with live reishi fluctuation data. The puppet was slightly warm in his palm. The moment it touched his skin, the silver light stirred and grew active, as if reading his Reiatsu signature.

"The Director says that once activated, the substitute can simulate your Reiatsu signature and basic speech and behavior for five days. The shielding device completely blocks captain-level Reiatsu perception. The detector's precision is several times greater than standard-issue. The Director also says he hasn't been sleeping well lately and doesn't wish to be angered by you again. He asked me to relay a message: let him see what kind of interesting invention the current Squad 12 Captain can produce."

The corner of Seijūrō's mouth moved. Faster than expected, too. "Thank him for me."

Nemu bowed once more, turned, and left. Her footsteps were quiet and even, identical to how she moved in the lab when she'd been told to get out. Seijūrō set the case on the desk and was just reaching for it to begin a proper inspection when hurried footsteps came pounding down the far end of the corridor. Not Nemu's steady, lab-trained gait. This was stumbling and breathless. A Kuchiki clan attendant appeared at the corridor entrance, collar soaked through with sweat, face white.

"Vice Kidō Chief—"

Seijūrō locked the case in the cabinet and walked out with him.

The bedroom of the Kuchiki manor was thick with the heavy, stale smell of medicinal broth and sickbed linen.

Hisana Kuchiki lay against the bedding, a thin quilt drawn to her chest. She was paler than the last time he'd seen her. Her lips had gone nearly the same white as her skin, and her cheekbones pressed sharply against the flesh beneath. Her eyes were closed, lashes trembling occasionally, breath shallow and rapid, each inhale as if she were trying to pull something from the air that was no longer there. Byakuya Kuchiki sat beside the bed. His posture was as straight as always, but the hand holding Hisana's was trembling.

Retsu Unohana stood on the other side of the bed. The Squad 4 Captain's three-strand braid hung over her chest. She had just lowered the stethoscope from her ears, her fingers drawing back from Hisana's wrist. She looked at Byakuya Kuchiki, her gaze calm, her voice kept very low. "Her reishi is draining away. Like a vessel riddled with countless invisible cracks, reishi leaking through all of them, little by little. The frail souls of Rukongai all end this way. They drift into deep sleep, and then they dissipate."

Byakuya Kuchiki's voice came out hoarse, barely audible. "How long."

"The cracks have already spread throughout her entire body." Unohana was quiet for a moment. "Days. Just these next few days."

Byakuya Kuchiki didn't speak. He only gripped Hisana's hand tighter. His knuckles went white.

Seijūrō stayed by the door. He looked at Byakuya Kuchiki's back, the back of the boy who had grown into the captain of Squad 6, completely still now, like a blade driven into stone.

Hisana's lashes moved. Then her eyes opened, slowly. They weren't as bright as they'd been when she first married into the Kuchiki clan. Her clouded pupils drifted to Byakuya Kuchiki, then to Seijūrō by the door. Her lips moved.

"Teacher came too..."

Seijūrō walked to the bedside. Hisana looked up at him and forced a small curve to the corner of her mouth. Her voice was thin, stopping to breathe after every few words. "Teacher... what I mentioned before... my younger sister, Rukia..."

"I remember," Seijūrō said.

"If... if she's still alive... please help Byakuya look for her..." Her fingers curled slightly in Byakuya Kuchiki's palm, the most she could manage. "Byakuya... he carries everything alone..."

Byakuya Kuchiki's throat moved. No sound came out. Seijūrō looked into Hisana's eyes and nodded.

Her lips curved faintly once more. Then her eyes closed, and her breathing gradually evened out, not recovery, just the slow pull of sleep. Unohana bent down again to check her pulse, then raised her head and said nothing, only giving the attendant at the door a few quiet instructions.

Seijūrō didn't linger.

Back at Kidō Corps headquarters, he went into his office and shut the door. He took the case from the cabinet, opened the lid, and lifted the substitute puppet from the top tier. He set it on the floor in front of the desk, formed the hand seals, and activated the preset technique Mayuri Kurotsuchi had built into it. The puppet swelled and shifted. A few breaths later, another Seijūrō sat at the desk, same face, same Shihakushō, same Vice Kidō Chief armband, posture identical to his own, turning through a barrier maintenance report.

He set the loop commands for the next several days. Reviewing documents in the morning. Walking the corridors. Eating at the cafeteria. Returning to the office and turning out the light. All of it cycling on his usual schedule, timed to the minute. If someone came to report, the substitute would look up and answer. If Mahiru Tokito came looking for trouble, the substitute would frown and say nothing. It would hold.

He put on the shielding device next. The thin black cord settled against his collarbone, cold for just a moment before his body heat absorbed it. He felt his Reiatsu wrap closed under a layer of something impossibly fine, like oil sealed across the surface of water, nothing leaking through. Then the detector. The screen refreshed in real time, its resolution several times sharper than standard-issue; barrier nodes across the East, North, and South Districts blinked to life one by one, every reishi concentration curve flowing quietly beneath his fingertips.

He tucked his supplies into the hidden pockets of his plain clothes, changed into gray civilian attire, strapped his Zanpakutō to his waist, and blew out the lamp. In the dark, the substitute kept turning through that report.

Night had completely settled by the time he stepped outside. He stood on the steps and looked up at the sky over the Seireitei, that color that could never decide if it was dusk or dawn was swallowed entirely by the dark, only a scatter of stars blinking through the gaps in the clouds. He started walking toward Rukongai. The flagstone path gave way to packed earth, then to a dusty trail. No lights out here. He moved through the dark alone, and the few specks of deep red on his sleeve, Hisana's blood, from when she'd coughed, caught the starlight filtering through the tree shadows for just an instant. He didn't wipe them away.

On the rooftop across from Kidō Corps headquarters, a figure crouched in the shadow of the ridgeline. Silver-gray hair drifted in the night wind. Narrow eyes had squeezed down to two curved slits, and the smile below them was the kind no one ever managed to read. His Zanpakutō rested across his knees, the scabbard catching moonlight. When the plain-clothed figure had come through the Kidō Corps gate a moment ago, he'd tilted his head and watched through those slits until the shape disappeared at the far end of the stone boulevard.

He pulled a portable communicator from his robes and brought it to his lips. His voice was soft and unhurried, edged with a Kyoto lilt, the end of each phrase lifting just slightly.

"Captain Aizen. He's stepped out. Alone. Civilian clothes. That Vice Kidō Chief substitute is still in the office going through paperwork, Mayuri Kurotsuchi's work really is something, isn't it. Mm. He's headed toward Rukongai."

Silence on the other end. Then a voice came through, measured and gentle, the kind of voice that belonged in a classroom.

"No need to intervene. Tell our people they can move."

Gin Ichimaru tucked the communicator away and rose from the ridge. His silver-gray hair swayed once in the wind. Then he was gone, swallowed without a sound into the dark.

"My, my. Such a simple little trick. As expected — you really are better suited to going back to teaching."

➤ Next: Mahiru Tokito