Chapter 271: Suspicion
From Matsushita Yusuke's perspective, there had been more he wanted to look at.
But the three colors swirling around Ichigo made it clear that staying any longer was going to cause a problem.
I could handle whatever comes out of this. But someone else is about to arrive.
Running into a person on top of everything else would complicate things considerably. Matsushita Yusuke pressed his lips together, accepted the situation, and used the backward momentum of his retreat to slip out of the room entirely.
His presence disappeared from the nursery completely.
Two seconds after he was gone.
The sound of running footsteps came from outside the door, and a moment later it was pushed open hard. A figure stood on the other side of the isolation glass, breathing hard, eyes scanning rapidly across the interior.
Kurosaki Isshin.
In theory, Isshin operating inside a human body should have had no access to reiatsu whatsoever. But this was an early version of the technology, a prototype, and the prototype came with gaps that a finished product would not have had.
This was one of them.
"Why is there a reiatsu leak?!"
Faced with a situation he couldn't account for, his immediate instinct was to get it under control. He knew exactly what this kid was capable of. Left alone to keep escalating, the entire hospital floor was at risk.
Being a father gave you a specific kind of knowledge about your own child.
Something like this had happened before. Isshin pressed himself against the window frame and swept his gaze across the room.
He confirmed the medical staff were unconscious. Then he stopped thinking about it and forced the door open. He was in rough shape, but there was no time to care about that.
"You."
He moved fast, pushed his own captain-level reiatsu outward, and pressed it down against the three forces stirring inside Ichigo.
Actually suppressing them was harder than it sounded -- because as Matsushita Yusuke had discovered at the door moments earlier, any one of those three forces was genuinely difficult to deal with on its own. There was nothing passive or gentle about any of them.
But then, unexpectedly, under the pressure of Isshin's reiatsu, all three forces softened. Quietly. Like ice in warm water, they thinned and dispersed and withdrew, sinking back inside Ichigo without resistance until they were gone entirely.
Isshin's expression did not relax.
If anything, it went more serious. He pushed through what he had started, reinforcing the containment in a different direction, careful and methodical in his movements. The look of someone doing precise repair work who could not afford to rush.
He kept at it for a while.
When it was finally done, he let out a breath and sagged slightly, releasing the tension he had been holding.
Then pulled in air in several large, working gulps.
The pressure involved had been real.
Before he had a chance to sit with the feeling for even a moment, the space beside him shifted slightly, and a fashionable middle-aged man in a green shop coat and a low-pulled hat appeared at his back.
"I really didn't want to have to ask, but what exactly just--"
Isshin wiped the sweat from his jaw, pressed his lips together, and nodded.
"It was power leaking from Ichigo. I've pushed it all back down."
Urahara Kisuke.
He had been living in the human world long enough to be fully settled into the rhythms of it. He and Isshin had been in each other's orbit for years now -- a shared history of displacement giving them common ground, certain specific concerns keeping them in contact. The relationship had settled into something that was part mentor, part friend, operating in the particular register of two people who had been through the same strange thing.
That kind of bond meant he could say what was on his mind even when the timing was awkward.
"I don't mean anything unreasonable by this, but -- Isshin. Don't you think--"
"My child is not a dangerous object."
Isshin didn't look up. He sat down on the floor, still catching his breath, and looked at the crib in front of him.
Like something said half to himself, like emphasis, he said it again quietly.
"My child is not a dangerous thing. He just hasn't learned to control it yet. He'll get there. He will."
Difficult situation.
The first time something like this had happened was at the birth itself. Three forces colliding simultaneously had been enough to give both of them, two captain-level figures with extensive experience between them, genuine trouble.
Once the situation had been fully stabilized, Urahara had conducted an analysis from multiple angles at nearly the same time.
Three separate power systems integrated into a single body, perfectly balanced, held in stable coexistence.
Honestly, from an experimental standpoint, this was the kind of result that existed only in theory. The kind of thing that was supposed to be impossible.
But just as every researcher who worked with energy dreamed of finding a perpetual motion machine, having witnessed this three-in-one existence firsthand, Urahara found it difficult to remain entirely without curiosity.
If it could be studied, this particular life form might push the understanding of all three worlds in a direction that hadn't been mapped yet.
Of course, that thought was exactly where it stayed.
Because since fully relocating to the living world, Urahara had set down everything that had defined his approach as a researcher.
Pursuing ends through any means necessary -- that was a way of thinking that had belonged to the Director of the Research and Development Bureau. The person he was now was just an eccentric middle-aged man running a corner shop.
Urahara glanced sideways at Isshin and quietly lowered his hat brim.
"I think you might be misreading me. I haven't said anything unreasonable. What I'm actually getting at is--"
A brief pause. Then a quiet exhale.
"Your ability to handle his education on your own is going to have limits. When he's old enough, would you want me involved in teaching him anything on the Soul Society side of things?"
"Uh? Ah -- that, I'd have to think about it."
"The way you said that -- you really don't want Ichigo exposed to anything from Soul Society, do you?"
"Pretty much."
Isshin looked somewhere in the middle distance, let out a slow breath, and said in a low, heavy voice:
"The situation over there still hasn't been resolved. If I'm being straight about it -- I still find the whole thing genuinely unsettling."
That was not a figure of speech. His brow was knotted as he said it.
Both of them had left Soul Society, but Urahara's various channels meant keeping up with developments there was still relatively manageable from this side. That access was part of why Isshin currently looked the way he did.
Because it didn't make any sense.
How have they still not found who's responsible?
"I gave a full report to the Captain-Commander myself, and the Gotei 13 still hasn't made a move. I don't want to believe it, but it seems like the investigation has produced nothing useful even after all this time."
He paused, then turned his head.
"Speaking of which -- what's the Shihoin family situation?"
Urahara shrugged. His tone carried its own brand of resignation.
"Same as ever. Yoruichi is working through multiple channels to get a read on things, but the results are probably about the same."
Even the Shihoin intelligence network coming back empty-handed meant something. In any practical sense, this was not something that ordinary people had any ability to touch.
The conversation pulled Isshin's thinking into a clearer shape.
The problems in Soul Society were stacking up.
Until things were resolved, he had no intention of letting his child get tangled in any of it.
Ichigo didn't need to carry the Shiba family's obligations. He had even changed the surname -- partly for cover, partly to make a clean break with the past.
Here. Now. This was what mattered to Kurosaki Isshin.
"Anyway, this kind of thing is still a long way off. Coming to conclusions now doesn't help anything."
Something in those words seemed to reach Isshin. He sat with it for a moment, and then a quietly relieved expression settled onto his face.
"You're right."
He was no longer in the Gotei 13. These weren't his problems to solve.
Yamamoto was more than capable of finding his own way through it.
As Isshin talked himself back to something more settled, Urahara considered for a moment and then asked quietly:
"But setting aside the official story -- what do you actually think about the attack? Do you have any theories of your own?"
It was a sensitive topic, and Urahara had spent years carefully steering around it out of consideration for Isshin's state of mind. The timing had never been right.
Today felt different.
A rare opening. Or genuine curiosity. Probably some of both.
Either way, Isshin heard the question and his expression shifted into something thoughtful.
He weighed it carefully for a moment. Then, with some hesitation, he half-turned and looked at the person beside him.
"I can only say -- I have a theory, but it might not be very accurate."
Urahara laughed easily.
"Say it anyway. Neither of us belongs to any organization right now. We don't have to be careful about every word."
Isshin nodded slowly. He looked at the floor in front of him and spoke in a measured tone.
"I suspect -- Captain Matsushita might have something going on."
Just the statement. No elaboration that followed it.
Isshin had put it out there and was waiting for a response.
Urahara gave a small, visible nod. The brim of his hat made it difficult to read his expression clearly. When he spoke, his voice gave nothing away.
"Matsushita Yusuke."
A mutual, understanding silence passed between them. Then Urahara said quietly:
"What's your reason? Do you have one?"
"Honestly? No."
"I see."
"Strange, right? I think so too."
After he said it, Isshin gave a short, quiet laugh, like he had surprised himself a little.
But the shape at the corner of his mouth had nothing to do with the blankness sitting in his eyes.
Isshin turned it over, thinking it through carefully, and then spoke in a tone that was genuinely confused by what he was saying.
"Captain Matsushita's work was excellent. I spent time alongside him -- he handled administrative work with real precision, and his strength was in a different bracket entirely. Back when he was active in Soul Society, I knew even at full output I wouldn't have been a match for him."
Strong. Reliable. Capable.
Every positive description that existed seemed to apply, stacked on top of each other, and none of it felt like an exaggeration.
"Without overstating it -- at his level, I don't actually think Squad 11 was the right place for him."
The phrasing was awkward, but Urahara caught the meaning immediately.
"You're saying Matsushita Yusuke was capable enough to be running something considerably more critical."
"Exactly."
The different squads of the Gotei 13 each covered different responsibilities. Within that structure, there were naturally roles that carried more institutional weight and roles that carried less.
Compared to managing intelligence, overseeing the Imperial Guard, or holding other key operational portfolios -- the "combat-exclusive" designation, looked at honestly, came out somewhat lower on the hierarchy of things that actually mattered.
"I had a conversation with Captain Matsushita once about something similar to this. His answer was that he wasn't interested in any of it."
Which, in its own right, was perfectly normal.
People without that kind of ambition were common. Measuring everyone against your own standards was a mistake. The explanation worked.
And yet it was exactly why Isshin found the whole thing puzzling.
"He seemed completely without direction. Whatever he was doing, he had this quality of not being particularly invested in any of it."
And yet his actual output was exceptional in every area he touched. In Isshin's estimation, you couldn't reach that level on talent alone. Matsushita Yusuke had put in real work to get there.
"He's clearly someone who works hard. But he presents himself as though nothing matters to him. Doesn't that strike you as genuinely contradictory?"
A man who was diligent and completely indifferent at the same time.
Urahara didn't answer directly. He turned the words over slowly, chewing through them, working them apart and back together.
Then he opened his mouth and said quietly:
"Maybe he just hasn't found the thing yet that's actually worth being serious about."
Which left the question sitting in the air between them.
Matsushita Yusuke. What exactly was he looking for?
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