Compendium | Short Stories and More

little things | commission [bleach]

Ichigo Kurosaki hadn't imagined, what felt like such a short while ago now, that he would ever be married with a kid running around.

Not that he'd ever disliked kids, or the concept of marriage, or anything like that. He'd just thought that the opportunity would never present itself— that he was too stubborn, or too busy, or too hotheaded, too distrustful, too something.

Now, if there was too much of anything, it was love. There was so much of it in their crowded home that he felt like there wasn't enough room, somehow. Even now, he had a bad habit of waiting for when he would screw things up and it would all come crashing down. He was always waiting for the next big bad to appear, too. He had to unlearn those things. A family feast seemed like a good enough place to start.

Once, the Kurosaki clan had all eaten their dinners together at one table. With time, and with lives that became more and more hectic and with the addition of two more family members, they had fallen away from doing so. But Ichigo wanted to re-establish that tradition. More than ever now that he had a daughter. He wanted her to fondly remember those evenings as she got older in the same way that Ichigo still treasured similar memories of his mother. He couldn't deprive his own daughter of those precious moments of closeness.

Ichigo had presented this concern to his sisters, and together they had all reached an agreement that once a week, one of the siblings would be charged with preparing a huge dinner for the whole family. It seemed like a large undertaking, but with practice, Ichigo hoped that it would feel normal. And that it would become more common from there, until they could no longer remember a time when they'd eaten a quick dinner prepared with the rice cooker alone in their own bedrooms.

It was Ichigo's turn this week, and so he had been tasked with supervising his daughter and getting her ready to go on a grocery run while his wife procured some extra medical supplies for the supply closets.

"Chizue. Don't run," Ichigo warned the frantic girl. There were too many walls and sharp table edges in the clinic for that. "Get dressed."

"I can't find my ribbon!"

"Which one?"

"The blue one!"

"I'll help you look for it. We can cover more ground if we split up."

Chizue was always losing things. Ichigo would have feared that she'd inherited her Uncle Pesche's forgetfulness if not for the fact that he wasn't technically her uncle in the biological sense. The ribbon was under the kitchen table. That was where it always ended up.

Once the kid was properly dressed, Ichigo sat her down on a wooden stool and took her ribbon and more pins from the top of the dresser than he would probably need. He could manage the maintenance of her hair without his wife's help. He'd done that much for his sisters growing up.

"Well... how are we doing your hair today?"

"I want the braid bun!"

"Alright." He had expected that answer. Hence the bobby pins. "Remember to sit still."

Chizue, honestly, was more well-behaved than any kid he could have asked for. He knew that it must have hurt to brush through some of her knots, but she stayed motionless and didn't make any noise. He felt a bit bad about the way that she was wincing. It was time to get her talking.

"Maybe momma will let you get a new toy," he suggested, watching her instantly perk up. "You've gotten really good grades this year."

"You'll be on my side?!"

"Aren't I always?"

"No!" Chizue crossed her arms and pouted, pulling her hair from Ichigo's hands in the process. He recaptured the half-formed ponytail and scoffed.