Morning light flooded the training grounds of the Kuchiki manor. The pale gray earth was pocked with dense clusters of small dents from wooden clogs, and the crisp crack of two practice swords rang out across the courtyard.

Seijūrō gripped his wooden sword with both hands, shifting his footing rapidly, trying to cut in from Byakuya's left. His breath was already running short. Fine sweat beaded at his temples, his casual sleeves rolled past his forearms. Byakuya held his sword in one hand, posture upright and unhurried, the Kenseikan securing his black hair neatly at the back of his head. The moment Seijūrō's blade tip probed toward his shoulder, Byakuya turned his wrist. His wooden sword caught Seijūrō's at a tiny angle, not hard, but precisely placed. With a sharp CLACK, Seijūrō's sword went flying. It flipped through the air twice and bounced off the gravel.

"Let us end here for today, Teacher." Byakuya tucked his sword into his sash, walked over, and handed Seijūrō's back to him.

They settled beneath the veranda. A maid brought hot tea and a few dry sweets. The tea swayed gently in the cups, catching the reflection of an ancient pine. Seijūrō took a sip and flexed his numbed wrist. "I originally planned to spar with old Master Ginrei. Being a captain must keep you busy."

"Not at all." Byakuya lifted his own cup, tone flat. "Things have been exceptionally quiet lately. Reports of missing souls in the Rukongai have dropped below historical averages, and Hollow incursions are within normal range. I have time to spare." He paused, glancing at Seijūrō. "You, on the other hand, look far more relaxed than before."

"The Grand Kidō Chief isn't supposed to show his face unless something major happens." Seijūrō set his cup down. "I wear casual clothes almost everywhere now. The ceremonial robes are too conspicuous. I have no idea what the Vice Kidō Commander thinks about all day, but his work efficiency is surprisingly good. I've dropped in for surprise inspections and never found any real problems."

Byakuya nodded. After a brief silence, he asked the question he'd been holding back all morning: "You are an expert in Kidō, Teacher. Why spend time practicing swordsmanship when it isn't your strength?"

Seijūrō's hand stilled on his teacup for just a moment. He looked toward the old pines in the courtyard, their needles swaying softly in the breeze. The mastermind behind that Hollowfication incident was still out there, unidentified. Where the Reishi drained from those souls by Mahiru Tokito had gone, who the moles planted inside the Technological Development Bureau were really serving, none of it had answers. He turned to look at Byakuya.

"Best not to leave yourself with obvious weaknesses. If I ever run into someone who can stop me from using Kidō, at least I can quietly fall back on a bit of swordsmanship."

Byakuya didn't answer. On his teacher's face he saw that familiar silence, unchanged since the earliest days he'd known him. Not contemplation. Preparation. Just then, an elderly Kuchiki servant came hurrying down the corridor, his pace quick enough to abandon all his usual composure. He dropped to his knees before Byakuya, his voice barely holding steady: "Lord Clan Head. This year's enrollment roster for Shin'ō Academy has been confirmed. There is a female student named Rukia — her appearance is nearly identical to the Lady's."

Byakuya rose. The tassels on his Kenseikan swayed once. "Let us go see." Seijūrō set down his cup and followed.

The enrollment registration area for Shin'ō Academy was set up in the courtyard just inside the main gate. New students clustered in small groups before the bulletin boards, searching for their class assignments. Their white uniforms blazed in the sunlight. Byakuya stood behind an old pine at the edge of the courtyard. Seijūrō stood beside him.

Then they saw her.

A girl with short black hair stood at the bulletin board, holding a freshly issued enrollment form, her head tilted up as she searched the class lists for her name. Her frame was a little smaller than her peers. She stood straight. Her eyes were large, their purple irises nearly the same shade as Hisana's. The contours of her profile, the slope of her nose, the line of her jaw, the way she pressed her lips together in concentration as she studied the roster, the likeness was close enough to make you look twice, certain for just a moment that Hisana was standing there in the sunlight.

"What an uncanny resemblance," Seijūrō murmured.

Byakuya didn't answer. He watched the girl. The courtyard sunlight reflected in his pale purple eyes, and the line of his mouth softened, just slightly, from its usual set. "Teacher, I must return for a moment."

He turned and was gone in a flash of Shunpo.

Seijūrō watched his silhouette vanish over the academy wall. The corner of his mouth curved upward. In all of Soul Society, this was probably the only thing that could make Byakuya Kuchiki use Shunpo in public in the middle of the day.

He turned back to Rukia. She had found her class and was heading toward the classrooms, steps light, purple eyes sweeping across the academy grounds with the particular curiosity and slight nervousness of someone on their first day. As she passed the old pine, Seijūrō caught a faint trace of Reiatsu on her, still very raw, but the frequency of its fluctuation was clean in a way that was unmistakable. That kind of purity only came from Reishi pathways refined by noble blood. This child has a talent for Kidō, he thought. Then he turned toward the academy's rear gate. He had no intention of interrupting her first day.

A few days later, the news had spread across all of Seireitei. The Kuchiki Clan had adopted a commoner girl. The application had been submitted personally by Byakuya Kuchiki to the clan elders' council, pushed through by force of his authority as clan head, against enormous resistance. First a commoner wife in Hisana, now a commoner ward in Rukia. Noble circles churned like boiling water for weeks. Word was that several Kuchiki elders shattered their teacups in fury. After this, Byakuya Kuchiki stood before the clan assembly and made a public vow: he would never break another rule for the rest of his life.

A few days after that, Seijūrō came to the Kuchiki manor again. Hisana sat beneath the veranda with Byakuya's coat draped over her shoulders. Her color looked a little better than before, but her body was still slowly losing ground. Byakuya and Rukia were talking in the adjacent courtyard, his voice too low to make out, but Rukia's clear responses carried through the paper sliding doors, full of the easy energy of someone newly enrolled. On the other side of the thin screen, Hisana listened. Her eyes were closed. Her lashes trembled faintly. At the corners of her lips, there was a smile, barely there, but real.

"Teacher." Her voice was very quiet. "What right do I have to face her, looking the way I do? When I left her behind in Inuzuri all those years ago, she was so small she hadn't even memorized her own name. Now she's grown, and she's standing right there, and I can't even bring myself to say I'm sorry." She opened her eyes and looked at the blurred shape on the screen. "Byakuya told me Rukia doesn't know I'm here. She only knows her elder brother has a frail wife — someone she can only see from a distance, through a screen, each day. That's enough. I don't want her carrying the weight of the past. It's enough if she can live out the rest of her life without that burden."

Seijūrō looked at her for a long time. Then he nodded. "Your sister has real talent for Kidō. I'll guide her."

Hisana turned toward him and bowed low, her forehead nearly touching the tatami.

Not long afterward, Hisana was gone. Byakuya sat before her spirit tablet for a very long time.

Later, he told Seijūrō what she had said in her final days: watch over her sister, let her live out the rest of her life in peace, and never tell Rukia the truth, no point giving her grief she didn't need to carry. Her voice had been soft but steady. She hadn't shed a single tear. When Byakuya told it, his tone was no different from his usual squad briefings. But the knuckles of the hand gripping his teacup had gone white.

In the first-year hallway of Shin'ō Academy, Rukia walked alone toward the dormitory, textbooks tucked under her arm. Her swordsmanship scores weren't pretty, her protective gear had more dents than anyone else in the class. Renji had been placed in the next class over and had spent time bragging about his talent for Kidō, only to get shut down by the instructor on the spot. She couldn't help smiling at the memory of how he'd looked: puffed up one moment, flattened the next. Then she pulled a slip of paper from her sleeve. She'd written down several questions about incantation abandonment for Bakudō. Her Kidō grades were decent, but she hadn't fully grasped the last instructor's explanation on dropping incantations, she'd rewritten her notes multiple times and still couldn't get it to sit right.

She stopped walking. Stared at the scattered points on the page, mind drifting. Then she noticed someone sitting under an old pine nearby. She'd barely shifted her gaze when he spoke first.

"The key to abandoning the incantation for Bakudō Number Four, Hainawa, isn't about cutting words. It's about which part of the target's body you want the rope to bind. Drop the phrases describing the binding method. The targeting and the Kidō's name can't be cut."

He was wearing plain gray casual clothes, dark hair, no Zanpakutō at his hip, leaning easily against the rough bark of the pine. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, with a lean face, a calm expression, and something in his eyes that suggested he'd only just woken up.

"First year?" he asked. Rukia blinked, then nodded. "How did you know I was thinking about this, Upperclassman—" "It was written all over your face," he said.

Rukia turned the paper slip over in her fingers. He was wearing casual clothes, not a uniform, but he looked young, not like a teacher. Probably an upperclassman who didn't like the dress code. She crouched down, spread the slip on the gravel, and pointed out the parts she couldn't work out. He answered each one. Not the kind of flat recitation you'd get from a textbook. The kind that took complicated theory and broke it down into something you could actually use.

He said: "Reiatsu needs to gather half an inch in front of your fingertip, not on it. Otherwise Byakurai fires past your fingernail — and it hits your finger along with the target."

He said: "Rikujōkōrō doesn't lock the person down. It locks down their retreat. You have to read where your opponent is going to pull back to before you release it. Otherwise you're just locking empty air."

After the last explanation, Rukia jumped up from the ground, brushed the gravel dust from her knees, and bowed. Her eyes were bright. The smile at the corner of her mouth wouldn't stay down.

"Thank you, Upperclassman! Rukia will head back to the dorms now—"

He just raised a hand and gave a lazy wave, like he was shooing away a fly that wasn't there. She took off down the corridor, notes tucked against her chest, footsteps fading as she turned the corner.

Seijūrō watched the direction she'd gone, then leaned his back against the pine again. The corners of his mouth finally curved into something real, not the polite expression he put on for colleagues, but a genuine smile, with just a trace of exasperation and a trace of warmth.

"You could stand to take a little initiative yourself," he said.

Behind him came the soft rustle of cloth against pine branches. Byakuya Kuchiki stepped out from the trees, Kenseikan sitting neatly in his hair, the hem of his Squad 6 captain's white haori drifting in the breeze. His expression was exactly what it always was at squad meetings, composed, controlled, not a flicker of anything extra.

"Such is the etiquette of the Kuchiki Clan. She has been adopted as my sister, so I must conduct myself as her elder brother. It is not appropriate to approach her privately within the academy."

Seijūrō stood and brushed the dust from his clothes. Byakuya said nothing more. Wind moved through the pine grove. The needles rustled. Seijūrō walked past him toward the main gate of Shin'ō Academy.

He saw it clearly. He left it alone.

➤ Next: Substitute Shinigami — Face to Face

Chapter 43 - Substitute Shinigami — Face to Face

Emiri sat in the Vice Kidō Chief's office, folding fan spinning once between his fingers. He set the writing brush on its rest, finished with the last barrier patrol assignment roster, then stood and straightened his white outer robe. There was a routine Senkaimon maintenance task this afternoon. Sending subordinates would have been fine, but he'd decided to go himself, at minimum, let the Grand Kidō Chief see him putting in the work.

The Senkaimon stood at the end of a dedicated corridor in the Seireitei's southeast corner, its towering stone frame dense with carved Kidō runes. A few Kidō Corps members were running final adjustments before opening it.

Emiri unfurled his fan. The ink-wash landscape on its surface caught the gate's cold blue light with a faint gleam. He checked the reishi stability, verified the transit logs, and was about to close the fan and call it done when he felt it, a thin thread of Hollow Reiatsu, drifting from beyond the gate. Almost nothing. Nearly swallowed whole by the dense reishi pouring off the Senkaimon itself.

He tilted his head, walked through the blue reishi curtain, and followed the corridor all the way to the World of the Living side. A desolate stretch of countryside opened up beneath a living-world sky. A man in a Shihakushō was swinging a greatsword-shaped Zanpakutō through a medium-sized Hollow. Clean, efficient, the blade fell, the Hollow's Reiatsu collapsed instantly, its remnants still dissolving in the air.

Not a face he knew. Emiri closed his fan and walked toward him.

"Excuse me, colleague." His voice was measured, but it carried. He stepped between the man and the dissipating Hollow and tapped the fan lightly against his palm. "I am the Vice Kidō Chief of the Kidō Corps, Emiri Tsunayashiro. I noticed you slaying a Hollow here — forgive my ignorance, but may I ask which squad you belong to, and your seated rank?"

The man swung his Zanpakutō up onto his shoulder and turned around. Tall, short black hair, a cocky grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. He glanced at Emiri, then fished a palm-sized wooden badge out of his robes. The front was inscribed with the words "Substitute Shinigami." The back bore the official seal of the Seireitei. He waved it in front of Emiri's face with all the gravity of someone mentioning what he'd had for lunch.

"Substitute Shinigami — Kūgo Ginjō. Jūshirō Ukitake gave me this, said it means I can move freely in the World of the Living and cut down any Hollows I come across. What did you say you were in the Kidō Corps again?"

Emiri stared at the badge for a long moment. His fan rested still against his palm.

Substitute Shinigami.

"...My knowledge is limited," he said at last, opening his fan slowly, then closing it just as slowly. "It seems this arrangement does exist. I was mistaken. Forgive the intrusion. Farewell."

He turned and walked back at an unhurried pace, long green hair swaying behind him. Kūgo Ginjō rested his sword on his shoulder, watched him go, and scratched the back of his head. "What was that about? Does this thing actually work? From his face, it looked like he'd never heard of it."

When Emiri returned to the Kidō Corps headquarters, he didn't go to his own office. He went straight to the Grand Kidō Chief's and reported the encounter with Kūgo Ginjō at the Senkaimon from start to finish. Seijūrō was quiet for a moment after he finished.

A Substitute Shinigami. Badge personally issued by Jūshirō Ukitake.

"I'll go to Squad 13." He stood, took his plain gray coat from the rack, and settled it over his shoulders. Emiri raised the fan to cover half his face, leaving only those pretty peach-blossom eyes visible above the edge.

"Do you need me to come?"

"No. Finish reviewing this afternoon's barrier patrol roster." Emiri closed the fan and acknowledged him with a quiet sound.

The Squad 13 barracks sat deep inside a quiet courtyard in the Seireitei, traditional wooden construction, maple trees and dwarf pines lining the corridors on both sides. Seijūrō had just reached the main gate when a tall man with spiky black hair came out holding a stack of mission briefs. Their eyes met. The man grinned.

"Hey, isn't that Teacher Kidōin? It's been a while. What brings you to our squad?, Actually, wait. I should be calling you Grand Kidō Chief now."

More than 50 years ago, in the underground cistern in the World of the Living, this Squad 13 lieutenant had moved with sharp, decisive energy and a voice that filled a room. That energy was still there in his eyes. The lines of his face had just settled into something steadier.

"Titles don't matter." Seijūrō stopped. "I'm here to see Captain Ukitake. Something I need to confirm."

"He's in his office at this hour. I'll take you." Kaien turned and led the way, sliding open the wooden door and heading down the corridor. The interior of Squad 13 had barely changed in the past few decades. Even the old maples in the courtyard were the same.

Jūshirō Ukitake was behind the desk in the captain's office, draped in his haori, white hair falling to his shoulders. A cup of still-steaming medicinal tea sat by his hand. A thick register of Shinigami deployments to the World of the Living lay open on the desk. He looked up at the sound of the door, his face carrying the particular pallor of someone whose body had been wearing him down for a very long time.

"Teacher Kidōin. It's been a while. Please, sit." He gestured to the chair across the desk. "What can I help you with?"

"During Senkaimon maintenance today, the Kidō Corps encountered a man claiming to be a Substitute Shinigami, Kūgo Ginjō. He was carrying a badge issued by you."

Ukitake set down his teacup. He was quiet for just an instant, his gaze steady, but something shifted across that habitually gentle face, not the look of someone caught off guard. The look of someone who had just made a decision. Laying the full plan out before Teacher Kidōin was the right call. He stood, moved to the side of the desk, and when he spoke, his voice was a shade quieter than usual.

"You remember Isshin Shiba."

An image cut through Seijūrō's mind without warning, Engetsu's flames splitting the gravel floor at the abandoned node in Inuzuri. "I remember. Captain of Squad 10. We crossed blades."

"He's gone missing in the World of the Living. A Squad 10 captain staying there for an extended period was already irregular, and now his whereabouts are completely unknown." Ukitake turned toward the window and looked out at the Squad 13 courtyard. "Right now, only captains and lieutenants are aware. The Kidō Corps operates under a different structure from the Gotei 13, so you weren't notified immediately, that was an oversight on my part. And this isn't something that should travel widely." He came back to the desk and pressed a finger to the open deployment register. "The World of the Living is unstable. Hollow appearances are increasing. Abnormal reishi fluctuations keep growing denser. We need more people who can operate freely there, and we need a mechanism that can move reinforcements faster. The Substitute Shinigami Badge is part of that. I've formally reported to Captain-Commander Yamamoto and received authorization." He looked at Seijūrō then, and his eyes carried the quiet, settled certainty of someone who had already made their decision before walking into the room.

Seijūrō didn't answer immediately. He looked at the stack of reishi monitoring reports from the World of the Living on the desk. After a moment, he nodded.

"I accept it. The Kidō Corps' Senkaimon operations will coordinate with the Substitute Shinigami project. For the technical details, I'll send Emiri to liaise with your people." Ukitake smiled, small, unhurried, and some of the tiredness around his eyes went with it.

Outside the captain's office, Kaien didn't manage to stay quiet for long. He talked as they walked down the corridor, gesturing freely, saying that back when he'd seen those incident files in Squad 13, he'd already thought Teacher Kidōin's progression was obscene, like a single year for him was worth decades for anyone else.

"I told Captain Ukitake then, anyone who could get back on their feet that fast after everything that happened was not an ordinary person." He clapped Seijūrō on the back, hard, with the exact same force as that day at the edge of the underground cistern in the World of the Living when he had said, this is your greatest success as a teacher. Seijūrō stumbled half a step forward but didn't comment. He was quiet until they reached the corner of the corridor.

"Your name is Shiba. What is Isshin Shiba to you?"

"My uncle. My father is the current head of the Shiba clan, he's my father's younger brother." Kaien's voice dropped, not from grief, but from weight. "He taught me a lot of swordsmanship when I was young. I didn't end up following his path — pure combat, nothing else — but whenever I did well in the squad's sparring matches, he was always the first person I'd go drink with. He was always glad to see me. Never once played the senior card." He paused. "Lately Captain Ukitake's been sending people to find him, but the interference in the World of the Living keeps cutting the signal. I'm waiting on news from my end too. When something comes in, I'll notify his Squad 10 right away." His eyes dropped to the Shiba clan crest tattooed on his wrist. The smile returned to the corner of his mouth. "My uncle is hard to kill. He won't go down easily."

Seijūrō looked out at the dappled light falling through the maples outside the corridor. He thought about the fight in Inuzuri. Engetsu's flames splitting the gravel floor. Isshin Shiba, pinned down by Bakudō, kept permanently off-tempo by Hadō, frustrated enough that he'd still been sulking in the hot springs by the time it was over. A man built like that, with that kind of stubbornness running through him down to the bone, he didn't fall easily.

"That uncle of yours." Seijūrō turned his gaze back and said it plainly. "Even with his Reiatsu suppressed in the World of the Living, that Engetsu of his could still tear the ground apart under the whole area. Don't worry about him."

Kaien stared for a beat. Then he laughed, full and loud, and the sound rang down the entire corridor.

➤ Next: Kindness and Backbone