I awoke earlier than Suzumi did, as has become the norm. I went and took my customary morning toilet trip, and quietly making my way across the cool floorboards I traversed back to the room. When I quietly slid the door open, I saw Suzumi sitting upright in her futon, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and stretching. I grinned at the sight.

“Morning, Suzumi.” I whispered quietly. I got a weary grunt in return. “You up for a coffee? Hot chocolate?”

“Chocolate.” She grunted out, as she dragged herself out of bed and began to do some basic stretching that she always started her day with. A tradition she shared with her mother, apparently.

I walked back out of the room, making sure to close the door to keep the warm air inside and travelled down a long hallway to the small kitchenette. There was probably a bigger kitchen in the place, but this was the closest one.

I boiled the kettle and relaxed for a moment as I listened to the whine of the heating coil, then the bubbling of the water. I grabbed the milk from the mini fridge and the packet of hot chocolate mix in the cupboard.

I quickly mixed the drinks and picked them up, carefully balancing the cups evenly, making sure not to accidentally tip them on my way back to the room.

When I finally returned, Suzumi had finished with her stretches and looked considerably more awake while sitting up against the wall, cross legged. I carefully handed her a cup and sat beside her, taking a tentative sip of the too-hot liquid.

We sat close to one another in the ten minutes that it took us to finish the cups in silence. We hardly ever spoke over our morning beverages, content to sit in silence and enjoy the quiet company. But soon enough, the cups were empty and sitting on the floor next to us. There was still a good forty-five minutes until we were expected to properly be up and out of bed, ready for the day’s training.

“Suzumi.” I said quietly. She turned to look at me questioningly and I just sighed wryly.

“You know yesterday, when Tessai brought up all that stuff about spirits. You froze when he asked about if you’d ever seen any.” I could feel her stiffening, but I placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It just made me realise… that we don’t know each-other that well.” I turned to her and smiled, but I could tell from the way her ribbon moved that she was uncomfortable.

“I… I don’t know, Grayson. I’m not really comfortable with that memory…” I shook my head, and wrapped an arm around her body, pulling her closer, her head resting against my shoulder.

“No. I thought that maybe we should start with my past.” Suzumi shifted against me with some surprise and I chuckled softly.

“I never even thought about it. We’ve been so busy that I’ve forgotten to ask about you.” She said, her tone apologetic. I huffed with laughter as I rubbed her shoulder consolingly.

“It’s fine. To be honest, I forgot to bring it up. We’ll chalk it up to us both being at fault here.” We both giggled stupidly together, dying down into a contemplative silence. I took a deep breath in and prepared myself.

“My parents were amazing people.” I said simply, but Suzumi embraced my side, supporting me already. “They weren’t always my parents. But they took me in when I was thirteen. A blind child that surely had no future in anything and had upwards of five specialist appointments a month, a massive financial burden.” I paused for a moment to think, letting my thoughts properly coalesce into something capable of verbalizing.

“I wasn’t always in their care. I was shuttled from one foster home to another, the system so intent on keeping me out of an orphanage. I’m not sure what I would have preferred honestly.” I chuckled humourlessly, and Suzumi intertwined her fingers with mine. “I don’t know who my real parents are, but knowing the area I grew up in, they were either too young, too poor, or on drugs. Probably all of the above. The foster parents weren’t much better. Though they weren’t abusive monsters like you see on TV, I’m not sure they really cared either.”

“When I was a younger kid, I loved making friends. New school, new home, new friends. Apparently, I was a high value friend, being legally blind. Got you out of classes whenever you wanted.” I grinned, and I could feel Suzumi grin, her cheek pressing into my arm. “But time after time, I’d move. New school, new home, new friends. And I slowly grow to care less and less. I stopped paying attention in school, closed myself off from friends, learned to hate my fosters. After years and years of festering, I became the child no one wanted. Being blind and all the medical testing and special needs requirements didn’t exactly help.” I could feel Suzumi’s thumb slowly drawing circled on the back of my hand, fingers intertwined with hers. I let out a long, suffering sigh. There was that bubbling feeling of emotion at the bottom of my throat, threatening to make itself known.

“I was a little monster at that age. Vehemently nasty, terrible in any way I could think up. All I wanted was to be alone.” I heard a sniff from Suzumi, as she pulled my hand up to her cheek, pressing it against her face consolingly. I smiled.

“And then they came. They were just another set of foster parents to me. They lived far outside of the city, well and truly into the countryside. They were the only ones who would take me, after all. On the car drive there, I felt the most abandoned I ever had. Sequestered out to the middle of nowhere, to never be seen or heard of ever again. I remember when I first pulled up to the small farmhouse and as soon as I left the car, I felt a large hand wrap around mine and give it a firm shake. ‘Welcome, son.’ Ray had said.” I laughed as tears slowly began to trickle down my face before I could wipe them away. “I’d have never admitted back then, but that’s when I knew something was different. That they weren’t the same as the other fosters. Even so, for about a year I was a terror. But every single time I acted out, screamed at someone, broke something; I was never yelled at, never physically disciplined, never preached at. I was met with the disappointed voice of Sera and told to go to my room and to come down when tea was ready.”

Suzumi pulled herself up and hugged me powerfully, her face firmly planted into my neck, the wetness on her cheeks telling me she was crying as well.

“It took me a year to realize that I wasn’t going to be sent away. Ray taught me everything he could, despite my blindness. I could never fix a car, or machinery, but I managed to learn to cut wood, to tend to chickens and horses, even how to ride a horse a few, very frightening times. He taught me that putting effort in the right place could overcome my disability.” I grinned as I remembered the old, leathery hands teaching me how to swing an axe safely and helping lift me up to sit on the saddle of a small horse.

“Sera taught me to cook. The kitchen was a dark and scary place for me, filled with hot surfaces, sharp implements, and breakable things. The kitchen had always been a place that was severely off limits to me. I was told over and over that I would hurt myself in there. So, when she asked me for a hand in washing up, I was flabbergasted.” I laughed heartily, getting a small sound out of Suzumi. “I learned from her that being afraid of something was normal. You need to be afraid of some things. But it’s how you choose to interact with them, and how you go about it that is important. That kitchen was specialised so that I could cook in it. Appliances that I had never heard of that gave me that tiniest bit more safety when cooking something, small optimisations in where I placed things. That’s what she taught me.”

There was silence for a long time after that, a quiet contemplation of the warmth that life had given me, every single day. I can remember the worried hug I received when I was having a bad day, the smell of lavender from her perfume as she did. Not to mention the strong and determined grip around my wrist when I almost cut my pinkie finger off with a chef’s knife. I took a deep breath in and sighed, smiling sadly.

“I saw it in their ribbons first. Something I wasn’t comfortable with at the time. I had always been told that it was an illusion that my mind created to reinterpret the signals my eyes were sending my brain. But I could see this strange… detachment happening to their ribbons. But I ignored it, day after day. For months I saw it getting worse and worse and did nothing. Both of their ribbons slowly drifting further from their centre. It was only when Ray began to cough blood did I realise what I had been seeing.” The silence was longer this time, a harrowing thing, me desperately trying to hold down the pain I felt resurfacing.

“It was skin cancer. Both of them had it, and it was already everywhere. Ray had it in his lungs and liver, and Sera had it in her bones.” I choked back a sob and continued forth. “They… they chose against treatment. They were already old, almost in their nineties by that point. They had adopted twelve children during their lives, lived to grow old together and decided that they would die together to complete the package.” The tightness of Suzumi’s hug was almost painful at this point, but in a way it reassured me more than anything. I wrapped my arms around her, nestling my cheek against the back of her head.

“Maybe I could have done something, maybe I couldn’t have. I’ll never know. But never again. I decided the night that they died that I would never disregard a sign like that”

“Never again.”

Sobs and cries reigned between us for what must have been hours, until we were simply hugging each-other. I waited for eternity for the knock on the wooden doorframe, Tessai’s large form lurking on the other side of the sliding door. But it never came.

We laid there in a mutual embrace, disregarding the world. At least for a while.

“Ray and Sera Carter. Died at 87 and 85 respectively. Their entire history is accounted for, every step of the way has proper documentation. The same goes for every foster parent and official that Grayson ever interacted with.” Urahara recounted to Tessai, who was just coming down from an impassioned rant about how he shouldn’t have put secret cameras and microphones inside of their room. Apparently, that was breaking ‘privacy laws’, not that it bothered Urahara. Who were they going to report them to, exactly? The Soul Reapers?

“So that leaves his parents then?” The taller, and much angrier Soul reaper asked, clearly not happy about having this conversation.

“You’d think so. Except they check out as well. I cross referenced Grayson’s listed birthday with births in the area. His biological mother even gave him his name.” Urahara tapped his lips in thought while Tessai sucked in air and huffed out a suffering sigh.

“What then, Almighty Kisuke Urahara, is the missing link?” The blonde-haired man gave an insufferably shameless grin and widened his arms theatrically.

“Absolutely no idea!” Tessai let out a deep, rumbling groan, making Urahara cackle like a madman before suddenly growing completely serious. “There is, however, only one lead. His name.” Tessai raised an expectant eyebrow, pushing his rectangular glasses up his nose ever so slightly, regarding the wily man.

“His mother gave him a name, much like everyone else on the planet. What is new or interesting about this one?” Urahara sprung from his chair and began to pace.

“Well, for one. She was massively addicted to methamphetamines, reportedly not stopping her usage throughout her entire pregnancy. Grayson should have suffered severe effects from this, possibly death immediately, or in the next few weeks after birth. However, he was born perfectly healthy. In fact, extraordinarily healthy.” Urahara turned quickly and paced the other way. “However, his mother was not so lucky. Not minutes after his birth, she died. After giving birth she immediately began to seize, only mumbling about being told by ‘God’ that his name was Grayson. She apparently said this a total of ten times before she stopped breathing and died regardless of treatment.” Urahara grinned widely.

“So… you think there was an interloper in Grayson’s birth itself?” Kisuke shrugged heavily.

“As I said, no idea. I’ve never heard of anything like this before. Even through my contacts in other spiritual organisations and Soul Societies. To be honest, I’m not sure that it wasn’t just a junkie’s rambling.” Tessai sighed, unamused.

“So, what are we going to do with this information, Kisuke.” The blonde-haired man snatched his bucket hat off of the table next to his keyboard and dropped it onto his head, adjusting it till comfortable. He turned to grin at his large partner.

“We have been teaching them the bare minimum so far, testing and observing. We’ve done all that analysis we can for now. The only choice we have is to teach them more and see what happens then.” Tessai nodded, in agreement with the infuriating man he called is partner.

“It’s time to teach them to fight!”