Love is stored in the Leafeon

The digital artist still had to study the fundamentals.

The digital artist still had to study color theory.

The digital artist still had to study anatomy.

The digital artist still had to put hours of their limited free time to craft their work.

The digital artist still had to work under pressure to meet a deadline.

The digital artist still had to struggle with making a certain piece look right.

The digital artist is still at risk for losing their work and having to redo it if their system crashes and they forgot to save.

Long post ahead

1) He lets Rukia see him at his most vulnerable

Rukia was the only one that Ichigo told about 17 June being Masaki’s death date. He has talked to no one else about Masaki – not Inoue, not even Chad. More importantly, Rukia was the only one he talked to about “killing” Masaki. Imagine: this guy has been going about the past 6 years blaming himself for his mother’s death and has told NO ONE about it, not even his family. Yet he’s able to unburden himself to Rukia, someone he met mere days ago, and this later enables him to talk to Isshin about it at Masaki’s grave.

2) He threatened Byakuya over Rukia

Ichigo fought both Rukia’s and Inoue’s older brothers and takes both of them to task for wanting to kill their sisters but ONLY takes the threat towards Rukia personally. He spends more than 2 pages vowing to make Byakuya “cry while apologising” for saying he’d execute Rukia because HE “DIDN’T LIKE IT”. Pffft boi you’re so in love. 

“DON’T EVER SAY THAT IN FRONT OF RUKIA AGAIN I WILL DESTROY YOUR BANKAI” 

vs the fight with Sora:

3) Reflected in his eyes

Alright, maybe being reflected in someone’s eyes is more a narrative trope than how Ichigo is shown treating Rukia differently from Inoue, but you know what I mean. Inoue becomes part of the scenery to Ichigo whenever Rukia’s around (I’ll link again to this excellent post that has examples). Heck, even when Rukia’s NOT around he ignores/shows no interest in Inoue. 

seventeen. months. He had seventeen Rukia-less months, with Inoue - the hottest girl in school - thirsting after him, and he was STILL indifferent towards her and unaware of her very obvious feelings for him. That’s how little interest he has in her. Also, did you guys notice that in ch 423, he didn’t even acknowledge Inoue once after waking up from his post-dangai coma, despite her shouting his name after he woke? His focus was 100% on Rukia.

Inoue herself laments that she cannot see herself reflected in K-kun’s eyes during the Grimmjow fight. whereas for Rukia:

(Also, gonna go off on a tangent and talk about the “five lifetimes” confession. If being reflected in someone’s eyes has romantic connotations, what does it mean for Inoue to be confessing to a SLEEPING Ichigo? Not only is she not “being reflected”, his eyes aren’t even open to her. The narrative emphasises over and over that Inoue’s feelings are “one way sympathies” and are not being reciprocated.)  

4) Ichigo thinks about Rukia CONSTANTLY

He repeats words Rukia said to him to Isshin,

he constantly tells people Rukia is important (“She changed my destiny”)

he’s tsundere about Rukia’s absence in the FB arc, fooling absolutely no one, 

and his fullbring is activated while thinking of her

I can’t think of any instance where he’s had something similar for Inoue. No internal or external dialogue about what she means to him or anything to show that she held a significant position in his thoughts or heart. 

5) romantic gazes and eye smex

Ichigo gives straight-up romantic, tender gazes to Rukia with Inoue excluded in the background. Both instances here are CLEARLY romantic. The Farewell Swords/Bleach My Soul scene was so romantic that Jump Shop plastered it on their wall :’) 

We know the trifle one is romantic from Inoue’s reaction. The  Farewell Swords/Bleach My Soul one has shoujo bubbles around BOTH ichigo and rukia. I can’t think of any scene that has Ichigo giving romantically-coded gazes to Inoue. Not even in 686, which is especially hilarious.