The first time it happened nobody saw his hand move.
The alley, Like most alleys in outer Rukongai, was little more than a crack between leaning shacks. The sky was a thin, dirty strip overhead. the ground was hard pact, scattered with broken pottery and rotten scraps that didn't even deserve the word food.
Three boys had him boxed in against a wall. All older. All bigger.
"Hand it over, brat."
The tallest one shoved him, arm pressing into his throat. Youngster's shoulders hit splintered wood. He kept his hands at his sides, fingers relaxed, not even curled into fists.
He didn't look scared. That irritated them even more than begging would have.
"I don't have anything," he said.
It was the truth. Today, he'd gone hungry.
The boy in the middle, the one with his front teeth missing, sneered. "Then we'll take your time instead."
The shorter one stepped in, fist cocked back.
The punch came in slow.
not because the boy was slow.
Because, for Youngster, everything always slowed down right at this moment.
The sound of the boy's breath turned into a drawn out hiss. His fist swam through syrup thick air. The muttered insults from the street beyond the alley stretched like they were being pulled at the edges.
Youngster watched the punch travel the short distance between them. His eyes tracked the path, the angel, the way his shoulder rolled ahead of the knuckles.
He did nothing.
He didn't flinch.
The fist connected with one side of his face.
White pain burst across his vision. His head snapped sideways. the world sped back up.
The taller boy laughed. "Look, he's too dumb to even block."
"Try again," the one with the missing teeth said.
The short one grinned. His second punch came faster.
Everything slowed again.
This time, something strange happened...
For a split second, Youngster saw something else; something faint, almost transparent, standing exactly where he stood, matching his posture.
An outline. A ghost...
It looked back at him. Like a reflection that had somehow stepped out of the surface of still water.
You're in the way, the thought drifted through his skull. he couldn't tell if it was his voice or someone else's.
The fist came closer.
Youngster stepped sideways.
He didn't think about it. Didn't plan it.
He was just... somewhere else.
The punch hit the ghost that was still there.
Except it wasn't a ghost. it looked like him. it felt like him. when the knuckles struck, he could feel the impact-For a heartbeat-with weird double sensation, like his body was in two places.
Then his fist was already moving.
He didn't remember deciding to throw it.
He was just behind the short boy now, watching his own arm blur as it swung in perfect mirror timing, Crashing into the boy's ribs at the exact same moment the punch landed on the afterimage.
Two sounds overlapped.
THUD----THUD.
The short boy screamed, choking on spit. his knees buckled. He dropped, clutching his side.
The other two stared, eyes wide.
Youngster blinked. The afterimage was gone. Only the boy on the ground remained, wheezing, rolling in the dust.
"H-HE moved," the toothless one stammered. "Did you see---?"
The tall one snarled, more confused than angry. "Shut up. He just got lucky."
He lunged in, swinging a wild hook. Then another. Then a knee.
Youngster slipped past each blow without quite knowing how. It was like he'd already seen where they'd be and simply chose not to be there.
The forth attack, a clumsy elbow, triggered that strange double vision again.
The world went syrup slow. the air thickened. for the second time he watched his own blurry outline stay put, taking the hit on the jaw.
He moved through it.
The elbow passed through the ghost.
His heel slammed into the tall boy's knee at the exact same moment.
THUD----CRACK.
The tall boy howled and collapsed.
The toothless one backed away, hands raised. "H-Hey. Hey! it was just a joke, yeah? We're done. We're done!"
Youngster's vision snapped back to normal. the weird second body feeling vanished.
His cheek throbbed. the inside of his mouth tasted like blood.
He stared at his own hands half expecting to see someone else's fingers there.
They were just his.
"...We're done," he said quietly.
He stepped over the short boy and out the alley, not looking back.
He didn't feel proud. He didn't feel strong.
He just felt... tired.
"Hey. You're back early."
Old man Takuro sat on the overturned crate he called a chair, outside the leaning shack that served as their shared home. He scratched at his gray stubble with broken fingernails, squinting at youngster with one eye half closed from an old scar.
Youngster shrugged and dropped to sit on the ground beside him. The wood was rough through the thin fabric of his clothes. His face hurt every time he blinked.
"Did you at least get something?" Takuro asked.
"No," Youngster said.
Takuro grunted. "Figures. The market's been picked clean by the outer district gangs."
He turned his head, finally really looking.
"You got hit."
Youngster lifted a shoulder. "They hit me first."
Takuro chuckled, a dry dusty. that's how it usually starts."
Youngster didn't answer.
He kept replaying the fight in his head.
The slow motion punches.
The ghost.
The way his body knew where to be.
Takuro leaned back on the crate, staring up at the thin strip of sky.
"You remember what I told you about this place?" He said.
Youngster frowned. "You've told me a lot of things."
"The important one." Takuro tapped his temple. "In places like District 78, kids like you die first. Because you're soft. Because you care. Because you think there's a choice."
"I didn't" Youngster started.
"You didn't choose to hit back?" Takuro cut in.
Youngster hesitated. His hand tightened around a stray rock in the dirt.
"No," he said. "It just... happened."
Takuro watched him for a long moment.
Then he smiled faintly.
"That so?"
Youngster nodded.
"Good," Takuro said.
Youngster turned to stare at him.
"Good?" he echoed. "You just said kids like me die here."
"I said kids who think they have a choice die," Takuro corrected. "You?" He jabbed a thumb at Youngster. "You don't think. You just survive. Then maybe you'll live long enough to be bored of it."
He laughed, then coughed, the sound rough and deep.
Youngster looked down at his own hands.
They were still shaking. Not from fear. From the echo of that strange speed, that doubled sensation.
He didn't like it.
He hadn't wanted to hurt them.
But the moment they'd attack, it was like someone else had drawn a line, and all he'd done was step over it.
If they swing... Imove.
Simple. Ugly. Necessary.
He let the rock fall from his fingers.
"...I don't like fighting," he murmured.
"Then find a way to make other people regret starting it," Takuro said.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, as if that settled the matter.
Years blurred
Rukongai had a way of making days blend together until you weren't sure if you'd eaten yesterday or last week. Time wasn't marked in calendars. It was marked in scars.
Youngster got taller. stronger. Faster. Deliberatly or not, he became a rumor.
Don't swing first on that kid you won't land a second hit.
He doesn't move until you do.
He doesn't miss.
He never sought fights.
They still found him.
Every time, the same pattern repeated. slow motion. Afterimage. Counter. Someone on the ground, staring up at him with confusion and pain and something that looked disturbingly like fear.
He never swung first.
Not once.
Not even on the day that would bury itself in his spine like a thorn he couldn't pull out.
It started like most bad days: with shouting, and fire.
District 78 was burning.
Thick black smoke clawed at the sky as if trying to drag it down. People ran in every direction, clutching whatever they could carry. the air tasted like ash and old hatred.
Youngster stood at the edge of the crowed, watching the flames chew through the shacks that had been "home" to more people than he could count.
"Territory dispute," someone muttered beside him. "The gangs finally snapped."
A group of men three streets over were already tearing into each other with broken spears and rusted swords. Blood darkened the dusty road.
In the middle of it, a little girl stood frozen, too shocked to move. She couldn't have been more that six.
A man swung at another with a jagged blade.
The second man ducked.
The blade's path changed, wild, uncontrolled and headed straight for the little girl.
The world slowed.
Youngster's eyes locked on the arc of steel.
His body moved he didn't think.
He stepped in front of her.
He didn't feel surprised.
He waited for the ghost to appear.
It didn't.
For the first time in his life , there was no afterimage, No second body. No sense of being in two places.
It bit into his side.
Pain exploded, white hot. The girl screamed behind him.
Youngster staggered, breath knocked out of him. The man with the sword stared at him, equally shocked.
"You... idiot," the man muttered. He yanked the sword back, already turning to return to his real enemy.
Youngster's knees buckled.
He watched the girl sprint away, tripping on ash, scrambling to vanish into the crowd. Good.
He put a hand to his side. Blood soaked his fingers.
The ground tilted.
For a moment, he thought he might fall.
Then a hand grabbed his sleeve, hauling him upright with surprising strength.
"Stupid," Takuro hissed in his ear.
Youngster blinked, vision swimming. "Old man?"
Takuro's face was lined deeper than before. his eyes were clear.
"I said make them regret starting fights," he growled. not bleed out for strangers."
He half dragged, half supported Youngster away from the main street, into a narrow passage between collapsing houses. smoke clawed at their lungs.
"You're going to die" Takuro said bluntly.
Youngster gave a humorless laugh that turned into a cough. "Thanks. That helps."
"Shut up."
They collapsed just inside the shade of a crumbling wall. Youngster slid down onto his back, staring up at the thick, smoke stained sky.
The wound wasn't immediately lethal. But Rukongai didn't come with field medics.
Pain pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
The world faded at the edges.
"...Why didn't it work?" he murmured.
Takuro frowned. "What?"
"My... thing," Youngster said. "The ghost. The... whatever. It always moves me when they attack. But today..."
He swallowed. His mouth was dry.
"Nothing happened."
Takuro looked at him for a long time.
Then something rare crosses his scarred face.
Sympathy.
"You ever think," he said slowly, "that your little trick only cares about you?"
Youngster blinked dumbly.
Takuro sighed.
"You stepped in front of someone else, "he said. "Maybe that's not part of the deal."
He tilted his head back, leaning it against the wall.
"Sometimes, karma is selfish."
The word stuck in Youngster's thoughts like a hook.
Karma.
He let his eyes close.
For a moment, the sounds of fire and screaming were far away. There was nothing but the echo of his own breath.
Then, faintly, he heard another voice.
Cold.
Amused.
"You chose differently, this time."
His eyes snapped open.
The alley was gone.
He found himself standing on the surface of a perfectly still, ink black lake. The sky above was empty, no clouds, no sun, no stars, just blankness.
The water beneath his feet rippled once, then went still.
A figure stood across from him, reflected upside down in the lake's mirror surface.
At first, he thought it was himself.
The details shifted.
The figure wore a tattered robe that might have once looked like a shihakusho but was now little more than fabric shadows. Its face was hidden behind a mask shaped like a fox's skull, long and narrow with no eyeholes.
Where its sword should have been, there was only a shattered hilt, glass-like fragments floating lazily around it.
Youngster swallowed.
"...You," he said.
He didn't know why, but the word felt right.
The masked figure tilted its head.
"you bleed for a stranger," it said. the voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere at once. "That was not in the pattern."
Youngster frowned. "Sorry to disappoint you."
He tried to take a step and realized he didn't feel his injury here. or his body, really. Just a kind of weightless awareness.
"Where is this?" he asked.
"Inside." The masked figure turned faded with the ripples in the water.
Now, in the lakes surface, he was reflected; on his back, bleeding in the alley, Takuro hunched beside him.
"This is the ledger."
"Ledger?"
"The place where your debts are recorded."
It appeared in the water again.
It lifted a shattered hilt in its hand. The floating fragments glowed faintly.
"I am Karuma no Kami," it said. The God of karma who answers your instinct. The one who moves when they swing. You already called me. You just don't know my name."
Youngster started.
Somewhere far above, a plank creaked as a building collapsed. The sound reached them like a whisper.
"You only move for me?" he asked.
The masked thing chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound.
"I move for the one whose actions the debt belongs to."
Youngster thought of the girl.
He thought of the blade.
He thought of his own body stepping in front, deciding- for once- to act before the attack reached its target.
"That girl didn't owe you anything," he said.
"Correct."
"And I... put myself between her and the debt."
"Correct."
The figure lifted a hand, fingers trailing lines of ink-black light in the air.
"So the debt became yours."
Youngster exhaled slowly.
"...So when they swing at me, you help me survive."
"I moved your body into the proper place to return what they chose."
"And when I moved for someone else..."
The masked figures head tilted.
"That... is not part of our agreement."
Youngster snorted.
"Then we need a new agreement."
For the first time the figure went still.
The water beneath their feet rippled once, as if something large had shifted deep below.
"Interesting," Karuma no Kami said. "You are still bleeding, you know."
"Yeah," Youngster said. "If you want a debt repaid, I need to not die yet."
The fragments around the shattered hilt spun faster.
"Very well."
A second figure stirred in the reflection of the ink-black water.
Youngster saw a second silhouette, smaller, thinner, standing beside his own bleeding body. He squinted hard.
A kid.
A boy.
The same age he'd been in that alley, fist up, eyes too old for his face.
Without thinking, Youngster reached toward the reflection.
The moment his fingers touched the water the boy's outline merged with his own.
Pain vanished.
The weight of exhaustion lifted like a suffocating blanket being peeled away.
He woke with a sharp gasp.
The alley rushed back in.
Smoke. heat. The distant roar of fighting.
Takuro jerked upright.
"You're alive," he said flatly.
Youngster blinked at him.
His side didn't hurt.
He pulled his hand back, checking his clothes.
The tear was still there.
the blood was still there.
But the skin beneath was whole. Tender, neither freshly wounded or scarred.
Takuro squinted. "...Huh."
Youngster pushed himself upright, dizziness fading quickly.
He remembered the mask. the ink. the voice.
Karuma no Kami
"Hey, old man," he said.
"Hm?"
"You ever hear of Shinigami?"
Takuro snorted. "What dead soul hasn't? They keep the wheels turning. Why?"
Youngster stood.
He looked down at his hands.
When they swing, I move, he thought.
When they start it... I end it.
But for the first time, there was another thought layered under it:
What if I could choose when tomove?
He exhaled slowly.
"Nothing," he said. "Just thinking."
Takuro grunted. "Dangerous habit."
Youngster's gaze drifted past the burning rooftops toward the distant white walls of the Seireitei. They were barely visible through the smoke.
He'd never cared much about them before.
Now, they looked less like distant structures...
...and more like a distant open door.
Years later when he stood on a clean, sunlit rooftop in the Seireitei with a captain's haori fluttering below him and his Zanpakuto's name etched into his bones, he would remember this day.
The day he bled for someone else.
The day the God of karma introduced itself.
The day he decided, without quite admitting it:
If this world is full ofdebts...
Then I'll be the one who sends the bill back.