[fic] The Newcomer

[kiyala.livejournal.com]

Title: The Newcomer
Author: kiyala
Word Count: 587
Fandom: Bleach
Pairing: Kurosaki Isshin / Kurosaki Masaki (before she is a Kurosaki ♥)
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Kubo Tite owns Bleach
Notes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY hidden_gems ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
You are still probably the only person I'd write het for :) And I LOVE writing Isshin/Masaki for you, because it's a pairing I wouldn't think about even half as much if it weren't for you.

This is also written as part of the 500themes challenge, using prompt #8 – breathtaking reality

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When she first sees him she sees something beautiful, and terrifying. The most gentle person she has ever seen, dressed in ominously dark robes, carrying a sword with a wicked-looking edge.

When he first sees her he sees beauty and innocence. A young girl lost in thought, staring off into the distance with a book left open in her lap. Then he realises that she is looking at him.

- - -

It’s eleven in the morning. She has an hour-long break following her Studies of Shakespeare class and sits in the park just down the road from the Karakura University campus with a book in her hands.

She is always here.

He is new here.

She isn’t sure what happened to the one before him – the one who would spend most of him time reading the dirty magazines he’d hidden in the pockets of his shihakushou – but the new one looks entirely different to what she is used to.

She is used to laziness, disinterest, an absolute disregard for the people who (supposedly) couldn’t see them. They’d lounge in the middle of a park bench, reading hentai, and everyone else – everyone else normal – would just unconsciously avoid the person-sized space that was being occupied.

This new one has a look of intense concentration in his eyes. It makes him look sad. Like something bad is going to happen and he doesn’t want it to. It makes her feel frightened.

He looks at her.

Unlike the previous one, who would look at people as if he was looking through them (the way most people did, through him), this man actually looks at her, considers her. Considers the fact that she is looking back at him.

His eyes widen and she quickly looks back at her book.

He knows.

He knows that she can see him.

- - -

It is days – weeks – before they talk.

It’s one in the afternoon and she hurries back to the bench she usually sits on, looking around frantically. She turns and he is there, one hand resting on the hilt of his blade. The other holds her glasses case.

“You dropped this before.”

He doesn’t hand it to her, but places it on the bench. So, to the others in the park, it doesn’t look as if she is interacting with an imaginary person and gesticulating in the air.

She stares at it for a moment and then picks it up.

“Thank you.”

She takes the glasses out of the case and puts them on, dropping the case into her backpack and then hurrying off to class.

“You’re welcome,” she hears him say, quietly.

- - -

He stands at his ever-present post, just by the trunk of the maple tree, always on guard, ready to react to the slightest signal.

She sits on her usual bench. It is two in the afternoon, after her Creative Writing workshop. Her bento box is bigger than usual today.

“Do you eat?” she asks quietly. He is looking in the distance and she is looking at her seasoned vegetables, but she knows that he hears her.

She feels the added weight of the bench when he sits down beside her.

“Well, if you need help finishing that…”

She looks up and smiles, handing him the extra pair of chopsticks.

“I’m Masaki.”

He gives her a curious look and then gives her a smile that she always thinks of as beautiful.

“Pleased to meet you, Masaki-chan. I’m Isshin.”

x