Ding!
The elevator doors parted. Watching the stream of people filing out, Shuuichi felt a little dazed.
Why was he here?
This… looked like the office building from his previous life?
He turned. The first-floor lobby overflowed with people; a long snaking line stretched behind him.
Some stared at their phones, some clenched bread between their teeth, some flipped through files, some popped mirrors to touch up makeup.
Everything felt so familiar—and so strange.
"Hey, you getting in or not? If not, move. Don't block the door, okay?! People are gonna be late!"
A building guard barked from behind, and Shuuichi, on reflex, followed the crowd into the elevator.
He was… commuting?
It seemed so. Up at six every morning; catch the earliest subway; hit the building at 8:51; spend eight minutes in line; wait for one elevator; clock in just in time.
Every day. No exceptions.
As the doors began to close and the guard kept cussing at him, the lights inside flickered. A violent lurch—then, without warning, the elevator dropped.
Screams filled the car in an instant.
An accident? But… weren't they on the first floor?
A dozen questions flashed through Shuuichi's mind in the same heartbeat, but for some reason he felt no panic at all.
His pulse shot up from the free fall—
But his head stayed crystal clear, weirdly calm.
Almost as if guided by his subconscious, his right hand snapped down as he chanted:
"Bakudō no 37: Tsuriboshi (Suspending Star)!"
Beyond the car's view, in the black shaft, a reishi net bloomed and scooped the plunging elevator, trying to slow it so it wouldn't slam the bottom at free-fall speed.
It didn't work. The car still hit floor.
Lights died. Darkness fell.
A brutal impact seized his body. In his vision—blood. Meat. His brains splashed across steel.
Death had never come so fast—or so unstoppable.
When he next had awareness, he was still in the elevator. Someone begged for help; someone prayed; someone sobbed; someone started recording a last message on their phone—
Shuuichi raised his right hand before his face. "Bakudō… Tsuriboshi…"
The sudden collapse of his body—then the inexplicable return to consciousness—jogged his memory. He had crossed into the Bleach world, become a Shinigami, thrown in with Aizen as a plant, aided Kisuke's escape, then willingly triggered Hollowfication.
Which meant right now he ought to be inside the inner world his Hollow had spun for him.
Normally, there shouldn't be memory loss in here. But he had entered Hollowfication after totally over-drafting his strength. Maybe that explained it.
But what had just happened?
A memory glitch?
Or something that really happened?
He didn't know. His recollections had only just re-stitched, and he couldn't judge whether that split-second death was illusion or not.
Because there was no blood in the car. No limbs. As if nothing had happened at all; as if his Tsuriboshi had simply given them a soft landing.
He patted his hip. As expected, his Zanpakutō (Soul-Cutter Sword) was there.
He'd merely, by reflex, ignored its presence.
Soon, amid the noise and churn, the doors pried open—and there it was: those friendly, familiar orange uniforms.
He didn't force it open with his blade or blow it with Kidō.
This world was odd. Nobody found it strange that he carried a Zanpakutō. Everyone took it as normal.
And the Hollow inside him was odd too.
Even now Shuuichi couldn't find it.
True, you don't always have to "battle" your Zanpakutō to reach Bankai (Final Release).
Mastering Bankai is, at bottom, a process of knowing the full shape of your own power.
Like his own: each step of release came via trial after trial.
He hadn't expected Hollowfication to be like this as well.
But, really, Shikai (Initial Release), Bankai, Hollowfication—all of them are a journey to recognize your own power.
And that journey doesn't care about form.
So Shuuichi wanted to know what the Hollow in him was—and what it wanted from him.
A suspicion pricked him.
Maybe it wasn't that a half Hōgyoku (Breakdown Sphere) couldn't complete perfect Hollowfication. Maybe it was that a half Hōgyoku couldn't force a Shinigami to recognize and fully understand the whole of their Hollow power.
Resurrección (Return to Blade) is, in essence, returning to your original form.
For a Shinigami, that's akin to the "know your blade completely" part of reaching Bankai.
If he could complete that recognition and comprehension, then even with Hollowfication born from a half Hōgyoku, he should still be able to achieve a perfect Hollowfication—his own version of Resurrección.
With that hunch, he decided to play along with the Hollow's world.
See what quality his Hollow had.
"Give me your hand!"
The orange-suited worker reached, and Shuuichi took it.
A tug—and he was out of the stalled car.
It was a middling incident—big enough but not catastrophic. With no casualties and no serious loss, the police surprised him by taking statements and waving them off.
Where else would he go after that?
To work, of course.
Even after that scare, the bosses demanded butts in chairs. They even docked his attendance for a late punch-in.
Good thing this was only an inner world, not reality.
Otherwise he'd have had words.
"In Seattle, at The International 6, the Chinese team Wings cut a path through and took the championship…"
"In the man-versus-machine go match, the latest AI 'AlphaGo' from XX Corporation defeated the current world number one…"
"In the twentieth World Cup, Germany lifted the trophy…"
Back at his desk, Shuuichi happily slacked off and surfed this world's "news."
Just as he guessed—this world had been built by his Hollow from his memories.
So nothing outside his memory could exist here.
Which is why the info was scrambled and out of order.
"So what is it actually trying to do?"
With that settled, he was more puzzled.
This Hollow's logic was… odd.
A moment later, another possibility nudged him.
What if this "logic" was the shape of its Resurrección—its return-form ability?
He had a reason to think so; his own Bankai worked like that.
If so…
He glanced at the neighboring "coworkers," all apparently hard at work, then slowly drew his Zanpakutō.
"Advance, Heisha! Shōhei-sha, Yujin! (Commander of Soldiers—Command Men!)"
He thrust the blade into the "coworker's" chest.
Nothing happened.
No Reishi construct appeared. The "coworker," chest skewered, didn't even notice—just looked up mildly and asked, "Standing there—do you need something?"
Shuuichi shook his head and withdrew the blade.
The coworker toppled and vanished.
A heartbeat later, a brand-new, identical coworker respawned and kept working where the last left off.
"So this is a world that runs entirely by fixed rules?"
Watching, Shuuichi felt a click of understanding.
In this world the Hollow built, his own abilities couldn't break its rules of operation. Only when the world tried to drag him—an outside variable—inside its process could he nudge it at all.
But that nudge…
He had a few ideas about what it meant—but he'd need more "incidents" to test them.
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