#quincyspride

     their last meeting was under rather unfortunate circumstances, but now      there was an air of uncertainty about how this would play out. nelliel was      not oblivious to the happenings in hueco mundo-- how could she be? each     day more and more lives were snuffed out and the desert that had always       been rather desolate began to feel even more lonely and to see such a      familiar face that she had held so highly left her feeling uneasy. 

    The monsters had been, as far as the child could tell, a part of his life from the very beginning. He couldn't figure out exactly how far back into his memories they began to appear, just that he'd discovered, one day, that most other people weren't actually able to see them. That apparently monsters weren't real, and that Gin had, according to an overly concerned second grade teacher, an overactive imagination that had begun to impede upon his school performance and his ability to make friends.

    But no amount of argument from teachers or parents or peers would ever able to convince Gin that the monsters did not exist- particularly when he stood, frozen to the spot, in the shadow of one.

    It was a massive creature- far larger than any he'd ever seen before, with a white mask and a rattling, moaning roar that spurred fear up from the very depths of his soul. He'd always seen them in passing; from car windows, from the roof of his school, from far, far below on the ground as they soared so high in the sky that their forms seemed hardly larger than that of a pigeon or a dove's. And, always, they had never noticed his presence.

          Until now, anyway.

「겨울」”Ishida Uryuu.”

A rather awkward silence would waft betwixt the duo -- clear animosity present upon countenance at the sight of the latter. 

                      “Okay, you seem like a guy with an eye for fashion. Would I look good with an eye patch? I need to know for science.”

     Ichigo raises a hand to press the elevator button only to hesitate again with a curse, bringing it instead to shove through already disordered strands of orange hair. It shouldn’t be this hard. He’s fought wars. He’s crossed worlds. He kills  monsters  for a living. Yet, every time he somehow talks himself into pressing the number that will take him to Ishida’s floor, the image of rejection and the subsequent humiliation he’s likely to face has it lowering again. Dammit.

           This is ridiculous. He can’t stand here all night.

     Chad is who he would rather crash over with, except he’s gone again to who-even-knows-where-- probably working another offbeat job just to make end’s meat, and so Ichigo finds himself sinking to new lows to find a place to rest for a few hours. There’s no way he’ll try Urahara’s. He’d even, for a very brief instant, considered texting Inoue before scratching that idea out altogether. Even if it was innocent, something of that nature could ruin her reputation permanently if word got out.