Bandage it in Paper (Bleach OC-Centric Fanfic)

Chapter 2 | Into the River

The following day, Lyn set out to the mountains with a small onigiri in hand. She chewed it slowly with lightly pinched eyebrows. It was the first time she had felt hungry in over a week.

'I only feel a little hungry, so I probably won't develop high spiritual energy or anything, right?' Lyn devoured the last of her onigiri and finished the few pieces of rice stuck to her fingers. 'It's probably just my brain thinking I'm hungry or something; I've only been dead for a week.'

As she climbed over a rotting log, she felt a stirring in her chest - a buzz of static almost in a show of refuting her hopes that nothing was wrong.

Lyn crouched by a large patch of lichen and began to carefully harvest pieces. So far, Lyn had yet to stop for a sudden nose, eye, or ear bleed or the numbing, pulsing pains that usually came with them. It took a few hours, but eventually, her chest thrummed in warning before her knees buckled beneath her.

Lyn wheezed out, "Yep, looks like that's still a thing."

Once her fingers solidified entirely and her skin no longer felt like it was violently pulling itself in different directions, she shakily stood and grabbed a bloodstained cloth from her pocket. Lyn wiped the blood from under her nose in a practised movement. Hopefully, her improved condition would continue for the rest of the day.

'The konpeito only helped the first time, but at least they were tasty,' Lyn lamented dramatically in the confines of her mind. Unfortunately, she had run out after the third day. 'If they were more than sugar, I might have joined the Daken just for another handful.'

Once Lyn had completed her checklist of herbs for the day and the sun had begun to set, she started the long walk back. She expected to trip at least a couple of times, to perhaps have another episode, or for her grumpy old man of a boss to be waiting at the edge of the village to complain about how long she had taken to return.

She didn't expect to be jumped the second she stepped out of the tree line.

"Good evening. Lyn-san, right?"

"Ah!" With a warbled shriek, she wheeled around.

Lyn's soul quivered with excitement.

Akon towered over her in all his 6-foot glory. Three small horns protruded from his forehead, and his black hair was spiked with tufts raised on either side like his manga counterpart. However, this Akon was real - animated beyond the anime and breathing the same air as her; a person, not a character.

'Wow, the horns and lack of eyebrows stand out way more in person.' Lyn pursed her lips together to keep a childish grin from breaking across her face. 'And his deep voice sounds so serious and cool!' She bit the inside of her cheek. 'Wait, no! He's threatening my peaceful afterlife with his Shinigami nonsense. Why is he here?'

Lyn gripped the end of her samue jacket, torn between drinking in the sight of her first cannon character and fleeing.

▯▯▯▮

Under the sunlight and cleaned of blood, Akon could now see just what made his subject so hard to find. She was absolutely plain. Hundreds of girls and women had the same inky black hair in fringes, pointed side bangs framing their faces, and low ponytails. Akon had even given up trying to find out what her face looked like since anyone who might have been talking about her couldn't decide if she was Caucasian, Asian, or something else - an ambiguous mix.

Despite that, Akon was sure that the young soul in front of him was his subject: Lyn, the unassuming employee of a traditional medicine shop. There was no mistaking the unnatural, radio static-like nature of her presence. Where others had a clear reishi signature, hers felt like an amorphous dispersion around her general vicinity, murky and constantly flickering in and out of his senses.