His phone, relentless and insistent, vibrating against his thigh like a mosquito with a personal vendetta. He already knows who it is because she is predictable as the sun rising and inevitable as taxes. He fishes his phone out, his thumb hovering above the screen, knowing full well the impending doom even before it flickers to life.

Rukia.

The message appears, stupid and completely void of sense:

🍓+👸=🍆💦

He snorts in dismay, drawing the brief attention of a nearby student who peers at him with a mixture of concern and curiosity. He shrinks back, hoping they don’t notice the absurdity of his life.

And he tries to make sense of it, he really does, but there’s nothing noble about Rukia, save for the lineage of her brother and her last name—an entire family tree overshadowed by this emoji-mad tyrant.

What fresh hell is this?

Ever since Orihime introduced her to the pixelated sorcery of emoji texting, he’s been effectively imprisoned in this digital purgatory.

Someone, anyone, should be paying for this. Preferably someone who hadn’t just endured a lecture on the existential dread of 18th-century poetry.

A rebellious flick of his thumb that might momentarily provide him solace—he swipes her into the digital abyss; he blocks her.

He knows with grim certainty that Orihime will orchestrate a rescue mission later, unblocking her as if she’s some tragic hero in a soap opera.

But for now, he shoves the phone back into his pocket, the lecture suddenly feeling marginally less torturous. Just another small victory in the endless war of trying to maintain dignity in the face of absolute madness.

AO3: