"Big sister... who are you?"
A precious promise made with someone whose face and voice had vanished into the depths of oblivion. Excruciating pain coursed through his entire body. As consciousness blurred and the terror of dissolution consumed him, a hazy memory from long ago suddenly flickered through the boy's mind.
***
In the vast underground space beneath a certain suspicious shop, commonly known as the Training Room. At the bottom of the great pit called the Shattered Shaft, a soul was on the verge of becoming a Hollow. Seventy hours had passed since his Chain of Fate was severed. The sixth stage of chain erosion had finally begun, and behind the grotesque white mask formed by Hollow essence, the boy screamed in terror.
No, he didn't want to die. He didn't want to disappear.
His own desires, the precious benefactor he needed to save, his friends, his family... everything was being painted over with despair. His falling consciousness could endure no more and finally gave out, or so it seemed.
The next moment, the boy awakened in a strange world composed entirely of blue and white.
"Can you hear me, Ichigo?"
A distant voice reached his eardrums. Brought into this bizarre space of endless blue steps where sky and clouds were inverted at right angles, the boy encountered a man dressed all in black.
"Who are you?"
The man introduced himself with melancholy in his voice. No matter how much he shouted, only his name wouldn't reach Ichigo. He said that Ichigo should know him better than anyone else.
As the man spoke with such disappointment, the boy was first shocked not by the content of his words, but by his posture.
Why was that old man standing perpendicular to the ground? The moment he realized this fact, the boy's body was enveloped by an intense sensation of floating.
"What! Ahhhhh!"
What he had been sitting on wasn't a step in the ground. It was one of the walls of countless giant skyscrapers.
Gravity returned and shattered the illusion, sending the boy plummeting toward the ground of the empty metropolis. The black-clad man flew alongside him.
"Don't worry. A Soul Reaper governs death and commands many spiritual beings."
"I'm not a Soul Reaper anymore! I'll die if I fall! All my power was taken by the guy who dragged Rukia away!"
Even as he reflected on his situation, his swirling humiliation couldn't be suppressed.
The boy had recently been attacked by evil spirits called Hollows, only to be saved by the desperate fight of a girl who called herself a Soul Reaper, Rukia Kuchiki. Though the boy inherited her power when she was injured, she was inevitably taken away for punishment by her noble brother, Byakuya Kuchiki, who had come to retrieve her for breaking the law. Byakuya had stripped away the boy's Soul Reaper powers.
"That's not true, Ichigo."
"What?"
The man spoke to him as he was consumed by helplessness.
Byakuya Kuchiki had only disposed of the power that his sister had given to the boy. But he had been careless and overlooked one possibility: that Ichigo himself had possessed Soul Reaper power from the very beginning.
That power, which had begun to awaken due to the strength given by Rukia Kuchiki, had hidden itself in the depths of the boy's soul before Byakuya's blade could reach it.
"Now, search! If there's ever a time to find that hidden Soul Reaper power, it's now, when this world has begun to collapse!"
Then, countless small boxes began falling within the boy's field of vision.
His innate Soul Reaper power slept in just one among those countless millions. Faced with this impossible task as the world crumbled and sank beneath the waters, Ichigo searched with a detached, almost resigned hope.
Then he remembered the words of that annoying, bespectacled classmate.
"That's it!"
The method he thought of was sensing spiritual ribbons. The vivid red spiritual ribbon of a Soul Reaper was unmistakable to his eyes, surrounded as it was by ordinary white bands.
"Found it..."
But as he pulled on that red spiritual ribbon he had grasped, the boy suddenly noticed another distant, blackened red ribbon hidden among the mass of white bands, as if concealing itself.
It held no special meaning.
Simply drawn by unconscious attraction, the moment he touched that ribbon of ominous color that resembled wine or blood...
"Big sister, who are you?"
At the farthest reaches of distant memory.
A question from his young self that seemed somehow familiar... no, that he had asked before, echoed in his mind.
"Big sister is someone who loves books."
A nostalgic, gentle young woman's voice resonated in his ears.
A dark memory of a young boy who had lost his beloved mother, waiting endlessly for her return at the riverside where they'd shared their last moments together. A small extraordinary event in the midst of unchanging, empty days.
Ah, he remembered now.
On that afternoon of cold, drizzling rain during the same rainy season, the boy had met a mysterious older girl. A middle school-aged big sister in white kimono-like clothes who smiled and said she loved books.
"It's okay. Don't be afraid."
The young boy gazed at the girl with his hazy mind. As she slowly approached, she held a beautiful, glittering key unlike anything he'd seen on television...
Huh?
That hand reached out and sank smoothly into his chest, into the center of his being.
Click.
A strange sound echoed deep within his body.
There was no pain, no fear, no strange sensation. But after that sound reverberated throughout his body, something that had been restless in his chest ever since his mother disappeared became mysteriously quiet.
Huh? What was I...?
When he looked again, the girl's left hand that should have been buried in his body was no longer there. Instead, it was gently stroking his head.
"That's a charm. Until you become fully grown, it will carefully protect you so you won't hurt yourself. Big sister's protective charm."
A... charm?
The boy asked back with his dazed mind. The girl smiled brightly and put her finger to her lips in a gesture of secrecy.
"Yes. So until then, it's our secret, okay?"
She held out her pinky finger, making the sign for a pinky promise. A secret pact with this mysterious older girl that no one else knew about. The boy felt he had gained a small measure of joy and courage from this strange experience...
"I'll... keep it... secret..."
Perhaps it was that day's encounter that helped his young self emerge from the grief of his mother's death.
Like a phantom that vanished without a trace, the boy whispered those words toward her with a little excitement in his chest.
"Don't touch that, Ichigo."
Suddenly returning to his senses, the boy looked around. The scenery had returned to the great city sinking beneath the waters, and that rainy riverside from his memories was already gone.
Looking at his hand, he saw the dark red spiritual ribbon he had touched was severed partway, its continuation disappearing into the depths of countless white bands.
"Remember, Ichigo. What do you fight for?"
Behind him stood the black-clad man, watching him with sad eyes. Why ask such an obvious question? The boy put strength into his words and declared once more:
"That's obvious. To save Rukia!"
He wanted to save his benefactor, his comrade. That single desire was why he was here.
"Yes. You fight to help and protect your comrades. The power you wield exists solely for that purpose."
The boy was confused by those words. The black-clad man treated that dark red presence as if it were forbidden, keeping it away from Ichigo.
And embedded in the first red ribbon's box that he pointed to was the hilt of a Zanpakuto.
"This is..."
"You should be able to wield that one. You can save Rukia Kuchiki without destroying yourself, without losing what matters. Go ahead and swing it to your heart's content."
"Without destroying myself..."
"When you're fully grown."
That voice suddenly returned to him. Just as he tried to search for the memory of something important he was still forgetting...
The world began to shake with an especially tremendous rumble.
"What are you doing? It's collapsing!"
"!"
"Hurry up and pull me out, Ichigo!"
Fighting against the rushing current, he desperately reached for the Soul Reaper's Zanpakuto with its red aura. Grasping the hilt that emanated a powerful wave, the boy thanked the black-clad man and drew forth his new Soul Reaper power.
All while never letting go of the remnant of that other spiritual ribbon clutched in his left hand...
***
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[10 Advanced Chs] [14 Chapters/week]