Just One Last Time [Toshiro Hitsugaya] (DISCONTINUED)

[Renji Abarai & Byakuya Kuchiki] o16

"Ichigo…"

My thoughts strayed to this boy as I ran. I could only hope he'd heed our warning and stay hidden and not come after us, but if I knew Ichigo at all, I knew it wouldn’t be that way. Ichigo wasn’t the type to sit back and let his friends deal with anything alone, he'd want to help in any way he could.

I remembered the day I met him. The carbon copy of Katsuo and Kaien.

Ichigo yelped back in his chair and shot a finger at my crouched, grinning figure on his windowsill. "You're that new girl! Rukia's cousin, right?"

"The names Akane Shihoin, Lieutenant of Squad 10!" I finished off my introduction with a wide grin and sticking up two fingers to make a peace sign.

Ichigo stuck his hand out towards me and I grasped it. "Ichigo Kurosaki."

I remembered the day he questioned me about my love life.

Ichigo smirked down at me and ruffled my hair, "If I didn’t know any better, I'd think you were in love with this guy, squirt!"

My face flushed and rapidly waved my hands about in front of me, in protest. "No! You're wrong! He's just a crush!"

"Yeah, right, and I'm a girl." He snorted, an amused glint in his eyes. There was no lying to Ichigo, my big brother figure. 

I remembered the day Orihime brought me to her apartment for dinner and almost gagged at the taste of her meal. Instead of telling her it was atrocious, I told her it was a bit too…exotic for my taste buds to handle.

I remembered the day Chad had helped me reach for something in the classroom that was on a high shelf. No words were exchanged between us, but a smile of gratitude from me and a nod from him was enough for me to label us as friends.

I remembered the day, yesterday, that Uryu (reluctantly) and I established our sort of friendship between each other and that I could relate to him on some level of familiarity.

I remembered the day Ichigo taught me how to open a juice box.

Tentatively, shyly, I turned to the teenager beside me. Oh man, what if he makes fun of me because I don’t know how to open such a contraption that is easy for him to open, yet such a complicated thing for me to accomplish. "Uh, Ichigo, how do you open this thing?"

He looked in my direction with a confused expression, but it disappeared and he smiled when he saw what I was holding up. "You just use the straw,"

"What's a straw?"

"Here," Ichigo plucked the juice box from my hands and tore off a plastic stick from the side of the box and poked it into a hole that sat on top of the box. "Don't worry, Rukia also had issues getting it open."

I remembered the day we all went to see Don Kanonji. I remembered the day I met Kon. I remembered the days we constantly had to make up a lie leave class because of a Hollow alert. I remember the day I met Tatsuki, Keigo, Mizuiro, and the other girls in our class.

I remembered and remembered until my brain was overloaded and then stashed them all the way, deep, deep, down in the dark crevices of my mind. If I am to leave here tonight, then all these memories would just be a burden to me, stalling me from moving on to my inevitable fate, preventing me from accepting of what is to come.

Compassion, friendship, and affection…

I've never had any trouble with these feelings as a Soul Reaper, they were apart of who I am and that's what made me so strong to this day. I've become close to Ichigo and his friends and somehow I've seemed to think that I was human. Lost in the human life, forgetting that I was soon to be hunted down.