I started at the man dumbly.

“What… what’s that even supposed to mean?”

“It means exactly what it means. Tell me, have you had a chance encounter with anything powerful recently?” I looked at the man oddly, though my confused silence only made the bizarre looking man grin widely.

“Well, I guess I ran into that strange Hollow, Phantom. Then Inoue more recently. I didn’t get into any fights though.” Shinji shrugged; the mass of cloth that covered his body shifted to exaggerate the motion even further.

“Hardly matters. Point is, in Karakura town, things rarely stay quiet for long. I and the Visards know this, Kisuke and Tessai know this. Even newcomers like Jinta, the Kurosaki twins, and their band of high-spec humans know this. Soul Society had been keeping an eye on the goings on here for just as long, even if they do suck at it.”

“I knew Karakura had a lot of spiritual activity, but is it really that bad?” I asked. Aside from the chance encounter with Phantom, not all that much had actually happened while I was here, unless I counted my own personal ‘events’.

“Oh boy is it bad. Sure, it might not seem like it to someone that hasn’t stuck around for a century or so—but Karakura has the most ridiculous things happen in it, for seemingly no reason at all. If Tokyo is the capital for human activity in Japan, Karakura is the capital of the spiritual world.” Shinji stopped for a moment, reaching underneath his large white overcoat, and drawing a sword from almost thin air. He placed the blade to where the tip of it only just rested on the carpet, holding it up its weight.

It was clearly a Zanpakutō, and a powerful one at that. The blade itself slowly exuded its own spiritual pressure, clearly a thing made with the flow of spiritual energy in mind. Maybe that was why it was so much easier for Kisuke and Tessai to wield their spiritual pressure as a weapon, because instead of having to cover your body with increasingly large amounts of spiritual energy and creating a technique to achieve that—they simply had a convenient tool that is already created for the purpose of utilizing large amounts of spiritual energy, naturally creating the spiritual pressure by existing at all.

Before Shinji could speak, his wide crescent moon smile gaining a sharp edge—Orihime popped her head into the room with a curious expression, the grandmotherly wrinkles and lines on her face only adding to the effect. She had obviously felt the change in spiritual pressure from the room, twice after the mask earlier. As soon as she saw the drawn sword her eyes became piercing, even if her expression didn’t overtly change.

“No swinging that thing around, alright Shinji?” For his part, he nodded mutely, his theatrics and grin dulling slightly underneath the grandmotherly woman’s powerful gaze. The woman receded back into the other room, leaving us behind in an awkward moment before Shinji coughed.

“Anyway. I assume you understand the basics of Soul Reaper powers, yes?” I nodded.

“Vaguely, yeah. You have your normal sealed state, Shikai and then Bankai. All of which are increasingly powerful and more difficult to master. Other than that, I’m in the dark about it.” Shinji snorted.

“I thought that Kisuke would at least give you the luxury of knowing more about Soul Reapers, but fair enough.” I had to agree with the man, and we shared a moment of kinship over having to deal with the man one too many times. “Regardless, you won’t technically find any earthshattering new information that changes everything, but there are a few titbits that you might find interesting. First of all; Soul Reapers aren’t fundamentally different from the regular soul.” I nodded, already knowing this, even if it hadn’t been explicitly stated.

“The only real difference between the normal soul and a Soul Reaper’s soul is the presence of their Zanpakutō—or the binding of an Asauchi. When they do so, the Asauchi binds with the soul and they become one and the same, in their own special ways that are usually unique to the Soul Reaper. I hear that you are capable of reiraku?” With a nod, he continued, “That’s why a Soul Reaper’s ribbon appears as red, mostly because the Asauchi is now a significant being within the soul, giving mind and presence to important or unique features already there. So in a nutshell, Asauchi are reflections of the soul, and understanding them is the same as understanding yourself.”

Well, that was certainly informative. I had gotten the gist of it from just bits and pieces that Kisuke would tell me, but I wasn’t sure if Kisuke was capable of actually telling the whole truth. Maybe when he was drunk, but he’d be more likely to talk about the principles that govern the Asauchi’s binding with the soul in the most technical way he could.

“So, wait. In my soul there is another identity. Does that mean that he is my ‘Asauchi’ or whatever you call them after you bond with them?” Shinji scrunched his face together, the ever-present grin quickly turning the other way in an uncanny display of facial muscle control. He didn’t respond for a moment, but I felt a wave of gentle spiritual pressure waft over me, almost as if it were poking and prodding.

“I– Well, no. I don’t think so.” He said, his voice confused, “It sounds remarkably Quincy-like. Does the identity appear as a tall black-haired figure, sometimes wearing glasses or moustache?” I shook my head.

“No, no. I think you’re talking about that genocide guy that tried to blow up the world?” Shinji snorted with amusement, regaining some of his grin, “Kisuke already went through that with me. The other identity is named Grayhom, rather than Grayson. He just appears as a golden ball in my soul.”

“In your inner world?” Shinji asked thoughtfully.

“I don’t think so? It’s just a massive ocean that represents my soul. Its not a world or anything, I think its just a literal embodiment of my soul. My soul is a mess of bloated ‘materials’ that I’m trying to get back into working order. Its just soul soup.” Shinji hummed thoughtfully.

“Interesting. Not a Soul Reaper but exhibiting the ability to interact with your own soul on likely a higher level than normal. Not a Quincy but has an identity within that isn’t a bonded being or thing. Not a Hollow or Arrancar, or even hollowfied, yet your soul is ‘soul soup’ as you say.”

I knew a fair few of those words, though most of them meant nothing to me. Arrancar were still a bit of a mystery to me, though I only really understood that they were better and more dangerous Hollows. Quincies I hadn’t even heard of, though I could only assume that the genocide guy was a Quincy and the generations of people he spawned were also Quincy.

“Well, then I have one tip for you to learn. Something that might aide you in understanding your soul further and that is an invaluable tool for Soul Reapers no matter the situation.” I pulled my attention from the questions I had in my brain, abandoning them easily in lieu of the far more salient information that Shinji was offering me.

“Sword meditation.” He said simply, “We use it to get into contact with our Zanpakutō’s spirit, and while it has the fancy name, all we are really doing is trying to establish a line of communication between us and our inner world—where our Zanpakutō’s spirit resides. It seems that you’ve already met this other identity, and I don’t see why this meditative technique wouldn’t work for you just as it works for us.”

Shinji took a deep breath, before lifting his legs and curling them underneath himself while he sat on the couch. He flipped the blade in his hand to point towards the roof, and waited for me to look closely, only then closing his eyes.

As soon as I realised that he was going to give a demonstration, I opened every sense I had to perceive what was happening. At first it didn’t seem like all that much was going on, but as I let my mediocre spiritual sense perceive the man, he was letting the spiritual energy leak out of him and then summarily taking it back within himself along with the pattern of his breathing.

While the blade itself was synchronised with Shinji’s breathing—releasing spiritual energy at the same rate as the rest of Shinji’s body was—it didn’t seem to be important to the process. The atmosphere was calm and gentle, a synchronisation of the body, spirit, and mind in one. Shinji’s ribbon wavered slightly, as if it was searching for something. It was after a minute or two that the ribbon went ramrod straight.

Just a moment later, the meditation stopped with Shinji’s eyes opening, a humour dancing within them.

“Hello there, Sakanade.” He said softly, and there was an overwhelming moment of resonance from the thin sword, the air shaking around it, as if in response. It died down after just a moment, leaving the air to settle back into its status quo. Though, the sheer power of the moment left eh air truly electrified.

“That was… new.” I said, trying to place the sensation of feeling the sword’s presence—finding a place to slot it into the library of important information and memories I’d formed. Shinji chuckled harshly.

“You didn’t even get to meet her, she is extremely confusing to be in the same room as, trust me. I can’t materialise her like some other Soul Reapers can, not without special technology to do so anyways. Some Soul Reapers are quite literally capable of materialising their Zanpakutō’s spirit as a fully realised being, though that’s so incredibly rare.” I tried to recollect myself after that, my mind whirring with the possibility of actually materialising Grayhom into existence. That’d be… weird.

“Grayson.” Shinji said, snatching my attention away from my thoughts get again. “I’m not sure if you’ve been told yet, but you are going to inevitably be brought into the fold no matter what you do. Kisuke, for all his faults, is doing his best at giving you more time than if you’d simply walked around Karakura’s streets and lived here normally.”

I was coming to that exact realisation now that Shinji had planted the seed. I could see why Kisuke was so paranoid about my existence and what it meant, especially with Ichigo Kurosaki’s saga happening only so long ago. I was just another strange being with no clear link to any known threat, and it just seemed that I was simply the taste of what was to come.

“What am I even supposed to do? How do I know when this’ll happen, or how strong I’ll need to be to face it?” I asked, but the powerful Soul Reaper Captain just shook his head.

“None of this will matter when it all begins. As you are now, you are weak and fragile—I could end everything that you are right this very moment. Kisuke and Tessai certainly could, and Orihime could likely destroy you so hard that it’d be like you’d never existed in the first place. But,” he said, interrupting the snide remark I was going to make, “that doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed when impossible odds are placed in front of you. You only need the foundation—with it, you’ll be surprised just how quickly you can grow from what you are, into what you can be.”

Shinji let the moment linger for just a little while longer, the seriousness on his face remaining for just a moment longer before it reverted into a silly grin. He rose from his chair with a spritely hop and bowed theatrically.

“How’d I do as the ‘wise mentor’?” He said sarcastically, and I forced myself to roll my eyes in response.

“Well enough. I only have Kisuke to compare you with, so don’t get too excited.” He barked out a harsh peal of laughter, though ending with a satisfied smile.

“You’ll do just fine kid, trust me. Soul Society is warming up at the moment and big shit is going to go down. Just a heads up, of course. I have a sneaky feeling that you’re going to end up involved.” Then, with that little bombshell of a sentence, the man walked out of the room silently, his footsteps making no noise regardless of his seemingly thoughtless movements.

I sat there for a moment, trying to process the new deluge of information. But something I didn’t expect was a newfound sense of peace. It was something about having pure confirmation from Shinji that something was going to happen. That the eventuality was a surety, rather than something lurking in the dark. In a way, it made me feel like I couldn’t be surprised by it now that I knew it was there—past the initial, instinctual surprise.

I poked my head into the dining room and saw Suzumi chatting with the rest of the women, all of them their own versions of boisterous. After a shared glance between us, I let her know that I was going out for a while. I needed some more time to just think, and I hadn’t spent as much time walking the streets of Japan as I wish I had.

Leaving the warm Kurosaki household, I let myself begin my aimless wandering—not quite knowing how long I would be wandering for.