Chapter 292: Birthday
By the time Matsushita Yusuke brought Hinamori back to the squad compound, another half hour had passed.
He handled the immediately necessary administrative items, gave a brief situation rundown to the relevant people, then walked her over to the residential wing.
Hinamori, carrying her bag, was looking around with her mouth slightly open.
"The interior design here is so modern -- and everything looks fully equipped?!"
She stepped a little faster to come alongside him and lowered her voice as if sharing something private.
"Captain Matsushita, how many people can your compound actually accommodate right now?"
The vice-captain instinct at work.
A normal person's reaction to seeing a well-appointed dormitory was not to immediately think about housing capacity numbers.
Matsushita Yusuke gave a resigned smile.
"We expanded to about one-and-a-half times the original headcount, so it does come out looking very spacious."
"That dramatically?! What about the budget? Squad 1 approval for something like that isn't easy to get, is it?"
"You pick up some side work. Security details for noble families, that kind of thing. Squad 11 costs a lot to run -- they're always looking for a fight, so putting that energy to use generating some external income made sense."
"Wh -- but -- doesn't the Captain-Commander have standing rules against Shinigami conducting private business dealings with outside parties--"
"Captain Matsushita?"
"Vice-Captain Hinamori. The adult world is complicated."
In any case. They had reached the destination.
"Because of the relocation, I ended up just living in the compound directly -- makes it easier to stay connected with the squad members day-to-day. And you know how they are. They require a certain amount of monitoring."
Nobody had asked him to move into the squad compound. But the moment the squad members learned their captain intended to live on-site, they had responded with something approaching unanimous enthusiasm and immediately cleared out an entire fifth floor -- all of it -- as dedicated captain's quarters.
Entirely unnecessary.
But the gesture had communicated something that Matsushita Yusuke had not been unmoved by.
Hinamori, a few steps behind him, was nodding steadily and appeared to be taking notes.
"Living alongside the squad members improves cohesion!"
Had I said that out loud?
He raised a hand. Three knocks.
"Soifon? Soifon? I'm back."
A brief wait, and then the door swung open.
Soifon was standing in the entryway wearing home clothes, arms crossed, with the expression of someone who had been working herself toward saying something for a while and had the full speech ready.
Her cheeks looked slightly fuller than usual. That was partly the early pregnancy, partly the disrupted sleep -- hormonal fluctuations and difficulty sleeping went together during this period, and the combination left its mark.
Her hair, which she normally kept precisely maintained, was loosely gathered at the back of her head in a rough bun that clearly hadn't taken much effort. The whole presentation communicated a particular kind of tired comfort that she would never have allowed outside the squad quarters.
The home clothes concealed any significant physical changes -- at this early stage, that was entirely normal.
"You said just a moment ago -- how is it already this--"
The sentence stopped.
Because her peripheral vision had caught the second figure standing beside him.
Like hitting a sudden brake. She swallowed what remained of the sentence, her expression doing a small complicated thing at the corner of her mouth, and half-turned.
The professional face came up. Her voice went automatic.
"Vice-Captain Hinamori. What brings you here?"
Work instinct and natural reaction in direct conflict.
Which meant the priority was controlling the situation before Soifon caught up to it.
Matsushita Yusuke used the opening, slipped past her into the room, and moved quickly to put things down while he could.
Early pregnancy hormone fluctuations had been making Soifon's moods run unpredictable in a way that was, in the most clinical sense, not her fault. Many instances had been genuine nothing-moments that somehow generated friction anyway, and every time it happened he reminded himself of the circumstances and kept his mouth shut.
On the positive side, pregnancy was ten months. Not eleven. Not twelve.
Whether Soifon was going to be fine by the end of it was an open question. Matsushita Yusuke was relatively certain that his own mental equilibrium was going to require careful maintenance by then regardless.
"I have some other things to handle. You two take your time -- oh, Hinamori, your room is the one right next door. I'll check with Gin so you can move in by tonight."
As for Matsushita Yusuke himself.
Priority: move. Quickly.
Leaving the Squad 11 compound, he had originally planned to find someone to spend an easy hour with -- tea, or a quiet drink, the kind of low-stakes company that suited the current stretch of time well.
The Seireitei had been in a genuinely settled state lately. Part of that was because Aizen's experimental program had run through its available approaches, and with the Hogyoku still split, there was no clear path to the breakthrough Aizen was working toward. The other part was simply that Matsushita Yusuke himself had reached a point where the urgency that had driven the previous decades had naturally diminished.
It felt like a farming game that had developed past the active early phase -- the daily tasks were still there, but the player logged in, completed them, cleared the fatigue meter, and logged back out. The main content was on hold pending the next update.
Was this coasting?
There was an argument for it. But the argument had an answer.
Look at the current version. Look at where I'm sitting in terms of strength. I've hit the ceiling of what the current state of the world can support, and I know Yhwach is not going to be a manageable problem with what I have. What exactly am I supposed to do about that while the main story hasn't started? Wait for the update.
So this period was, by any honest accounting, one of the first genuine stretches of breathing room that Matsushita Yusuke had experienced since arriving in this world. He was not going to let it go to waste.
The problem was finding company. Aizen appeared to be occupied. Ukitake had started coughing again and been admitted to Squad 4 -- again. Kyoraku had apparently been caught skipping work by Nanao and was currently under a drinks prohibition.
He turned the options over and found himself settling on a particular image.
The last time I went was over half a year ago. Let me go check again.
Decided.
He found a quiet corner of the Seireitei with no foot traffic, extended his right hand, and pushed it into the air in front of him.
Crk.
Rip.
A ripple pattern spread outward from the point of contact.
As the distortion fully opened, something invisible gave way, and the air in front of him began to fold. It inverted, collapsing inward, until the space tore open along a slow spiral seam.
A spatial rift.
Or something close enough to a wormhole to use the same description.
Opening a path between worlds at this level of casual efficiency was something Matsushita Yusuke had not been capable of for a long time. In earlier years it had required the Hollow alt's assistance just to execute the technique at all. The accumulated work of these past decades had produced results that were, in their own way, quietly significant.
Stronger.
That was the general statement. The specifics of what that actually translated to in combat would take real engagement with a genuine opponent to determine -- and at this point in the story, finding someone at that level was not a straightforward task.
He didn't linger on it. The ripple had spread into a gap tall enough to walk through.
He stepped in.
His figure disappeared from Soul Society without a sound -- seamlessly enough that even Yamamoto, for all his centuries of experience and the breadth of what he could perceive, caught nothing.
The old man was currently visiting friends, receiving an assortment of small children's clothing being produced from storage boxes, and nodding with visible satisfaction at each piece.
Only Aizen Sosuke, in the middle of some pleasant conversation elsewhere, seemed to register something -- a slight shift in his attention, his head half-turning toward the location Matsushita Yusuke had just vacated.
A brief, contained silence.
Then the warm smile returned, and whatever had crossed his face in that instant settled back into the same pleasant surface as before.
Two figures at the top of their respective abilities, and the gap in perception between them was still visible. Did that mean Aizen had surpassed Yamamoto?
Not necessarily.
What it demonstrated, more precisely, was the depth of Aizen's groundwork in the Seireitei. The years of careful preparation had produced a degree of observation and control over the city that was difficult to overstate -- not full surveillance, not every moment, but at this point roughly ninety percent of meaningful changes within the Seireitei were within his detection range.
A spatial rupture of the kind Matsushita Yusuke had just created was naturally within that scope.
Matsushita Yusuke had used precautionary concealment. Against Aizen's current level of saturation, that was not enough to fully hide it, and on some level he knew that.
What it actually functioned as was a form of reporting. A way of communicating -- indirectly, in the particular register the two of them had developed over decades -- that Matsushita Yusuke was leaving and that Aizen could note it if he chose.
Matsushita Yusuke had left Soul Society.
Where was he going?
Aizen considered it for a moment.
Then he stopped considering it and returned to his conversation.
Not every subordinate needed constant direction. Matsushita Yusuke had his own motivations, his own approach to things, and the trust between them had accumulated over a hundred years. Aizen could afford to let him handle his own movements.
That was fine.
And on the other side of three worlds, in the living world --
A figure in a Shinigami uniform that looked completely out of place against the contemporary backdrop dropped lightly from above and touched down on the ground.
Matsushita Yusuke.
The rain was coming down in a light, scattered way, small drops raising a continuous soft noise where they hit the pavement.
Karakura Town. Living world.
He looked around for a moment, orienting himself. It took a little longer than it might have -- spending extended time in the Seireitei tended to recalibrate your internal map toward a place where very little ever changed. Following a route there just required remembering a fixed pattern once. The living world changed with enough regularity to require actual reorientation each time.
A genuinely lively place.
Direction confirmed, he followed the locating measure he had laid in place earlier and found the destination without difficulty.
A relatively ordinary two-story building.
Nothing visually remarkable about it at first look. Some modifications had been made to the lower level, and a sign was mounted at the front facing the street.
Kurosaki Clinic.
That sign was enough to identify it. A private medical practice, community-clinic style. Matsushita Yusuke stood outside for a moment, just taking it in, and hadn't done anything further yet --
When he heard a commotion starting up inside.
"I said -- I already said, today is an important house call day--"
Bang!
The front door pushed open hard.
Kurosaki Isshin, dressed in a white coat with proper shoes on, walked out at pace, one hand snapping an umbrella open above his head, his briefcase tucked under his right arm.
Kurosaki Isshin.
It was another meeting, of a kind.
And looking at him now -- the change since the last time was visible.
The energy that had defined his earlier appearance was gone. What had replaced it was something more worn -- stubble, deeper lines around the eyes, the particular texture of a man who had settled into middle age in a way that didn't fight it.
Without Shinigami power to anchor him against the natural processes of the living world, Isshin was aging the way ordinary people aged. The years were showing.
Matsushita Yusuke had no intention of making his presence known. He stepped back quietly, moved into the shadow of a corner nearby, and watched without intervening.
Isshin came out at a run, and behind him came a second figure.
"Hey! Wait -- today is different, today is--"
Isshin grabbed his briefcase, put his head down, and pushed into the rain.
Only his voice carried back through it, with a particular texture of someone who had made the calculation and accepted the outcome.
"Karin's birthday, right? I know! But I'm sorry -- this one's going to be tight. We'll celebrate properly next time!"
He knew.
He just did it anyway.
Which, if anything, made it worse.
The figure standing in the doorway clenched his jaw and yelled after the disappearing shape in the rain.
"You absolute idiot!!!"