"Ding~ Taoyuan Road stop. Passengers who need to get off, please take your personal belongings and exit from the rear door."
Choosing not to meddle with the world's gears, Higashino Shuuichi stayed at the office until the familiar nine p.m., then ambled out, boarded the bus that ran straight to his rental block, and headed home.
That had been his little quirk in his former life. In this city the subway was king; buses—with their detours and traffic—had been abandoned by most young commuters. Which meant that every night after work he could have an entire bus to himself and cruise across half the city. For someone living alone, it was one of the few joys he'd found.
In this Hollow-built world, he got to savor it again.
After getting off, he slipped into the corner convenience store and bought an instant noodle cup with practiced ease. While paying on his phone, he bumped a young guy; in the edge of his vision he caught the man's phone wallpaper—Rangiku from Bleach.
So even here I can run into a hot-blooded fanboy, huh?
He swiped into the complex, rode the elevator, keyed in the door code—a routine he knew by marrow from his past life.
But when he pushed the door open, he froze.
At the entryway stood Rangiku in an orange plaid apron, spatula in hand, bare legs tucked into orange house slippers.
"Shuuichi-sama?! You're home tonight!"
She squeaked, dashed into the kitchen to put the spatula down, then hustled back with house shoes for him.
Her voice drew Sayako out of the bedroom—white casual T-shirt that did nothing to hide soft lines, a pink mini-skirt below.
Deja vu nagged at him. He'd seen this tableau somewhere—though in the memory Rangiku wore even less, and Sayako was more Yamato nadeshiko than glasses-clad girl next door. And in the living room, the small figure glued to a PS4 fighter… was that Soi Fon?
"Long day at work, ne~ Shuuichi-kun~"
Sayako's warmth made him wonder just what parts of his memories the Hollow had peeked at.
Soon the kitchen filled with dinner's scent.
Finishing her match and taking the W, Soi Fon called out, bright, "Shuuichi-sama!"
Talking with Sayako, Shuuichi confirmed what he'd suspected: these familiar faces were illusions stitched by the Hollow from his memories and some "reasonable" fantasies. They didn't have memories of their own, much less Shinigami abilities or Zanpakutō.
NPCs wearing faces, voices, and quirks.
Even so, the senses were convincing, and the nightly "exercise" before sleep proved dangerously moreish.
He set a warning Kidō and was ready to turn in when the doorbell rang.
In the still of night, it was needle-sharp.
"Who is it?"
He dressed, grabbed his Zanpakutō (Soul-Cutter Sword), and checked the peephole. A man and a woman stood outside. The man was mid-twenties; the woman older, mid-fifties, in pajamas—freshly woken.
"I'm Auntie Gu, from the owners' committee. This young man says you were making too much noise—kept him from sleeping!"
Before she finished, the young man thumped both fists against the door, impatient and loud.
"Open up, damn it! If you're doing work, do it earlier! It's late and you keep going in rounds—trying to keep people awake, huh?!"
Shuuichi frowned.
Auntie Gu rang a bell—so did the kid, faintly. Maybe they were just faces the Hollow sculpted from passersby in his memory.
Whatever the mouth said, the hands gave him away. The point wasn't to complain—it was to get him to open the door.
Why must I open the door?
He refused to be fooled by surface. In a fabricated world, "accidents" exist for reasons. The Hollow wasn't here to let him live sweetly ever after. Either it devoured him, he mastered it, or he beat it back enough to steer the Hollow power. Only those three.
As he weighed whether to open up, the door… unlocked itself.
And he suddenly remembered why Auntie Gu looked familiar: she was his landlord's partner.
"Damn!"
Hearing the last digit of the code and the latch click, he knew it was too late to block the entry; barging the doorway would only invite unknown risk.
He took half a step back.
Reiatsu (spiritual pressure) rolled loose. As the door swung—
"Nadegiri (Clean Slice)."
He didn't care about collateral. He only wanted to kill the intruder at the threshold.
And then—familiar wrongness.
Just like in the elevator.
He'd used Bakudō no 37: Tsuriboshi (Suspending Star) there. With his output, he could slow even a ten-thousand-meter drop, much less a few dozen floors. But the spell had felt dead, the car plummeting, smashing, wiping everything.
Now, the same.
The strike that could meet Kenpachi's full blade—and, in Bankai (Final Release), had nearly carved him apart—hit the young man like tofu.
"Is my reiatsu the problem?"
Watching the youth barrel in, Shuuichi didn't hesitate.
"Heisha—Bankai, Warawazu no Tsurugi (Laughing-Edge Hidden Blade)!"
Power exploded, rattling the whole building—yet it didn't budge the young man an inch.
"No—this isn't my reiatsu."
He saw it then.
The "young man" was a rule.
Bungetsugiri (Split-Moon Cut). Yakuryū (Flow Choke). Hadō no 99: Goryū Tenmetsu (Five Dragons Annihilation)—
He threw everything—and couldn't move the man at all. He could only watch the hands clamp his throat and squeeze until breath failed and the world slid away.
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