The evening seaside was bathed in a gentle breeze, carrying with it the salt-tinged, faintly bitter scent that belonged only to the ocean.
A bonfire crackled at the center of the beach, orange-red flas dancing and leaping, casting the figures seated around it into shifting patterns of light and shadow, while the irresistible aroma of food roasting over the flas drifted through the air.
Seven of them — Soifon's group plus Candice, the Quincy — sat gathered around the fire. Skewers of various ats and vegetables lined the grill, fat dripping onto the coals with a steady, satisfying sizzle.
Soifon occupied the central spot, unhurriedly working her way through a freshly grilled skewer, the juices from the at still glistening at the corner of her mouth. Momo Hinamori and Rukia pressed in close on either side of her, their knees practically brushing against Soifon's legs.
Unohana Retsu sat cross-legged with characteristic poise, the firelight casting soft, gentle shadows across her face.
Rangiku Matsumoto lounged lazily against a boulder at her back, skewer in one hand and, in the other, a bottle of wheat juice she'd sohow produced from thin air.
Isane Kotetsu knelt in formal seiza diagonally across from Soifon, stealing occasional glances before quickly averting her gaze.
Candice sat on the far side of the fire, knees drawn to her chest, watching this group of Shinigami with a complicated expression she couldn't quite put into words.
"Speaking of which..." Soifon blew lightly on her skewer, glancing toward Isane and Rangiku. "That magazine you two were trading in the changing room today — what was it? I could've sworn I saw soone I recognized on the cover."
There was no mistaking it. The paper quality of that magazine had the unmistakable feel of Soul Society — nothing printed in the World of the Living could ever carry that density of spirit particles.
And as for the bespectacled figure on the cover — Soifon would recognize them anywhere.
"Ah...?" Isane stiffened imdiately, waving her hands in frantic denial. "There's absolutely no magazine, Captain Soifon, you must have imagined it..."
Stare.
"No, there definitely was one. And unlike Rangiku, Isane — you are a terrible liar."
Soifon took a clean bite off her skewer, residual juices still at the corner of her lips, and leaned forward, fixing Isane with an unblinking gaze.
"Huh —?!"
"What's that supposed to an?!"
Rangiku thrust her skewer accusingly in Soifon's direction; the dripping juices hit the fire and sent up a hissing plu of white smoke.
Ignoring Rangiku's sputtering indignation entirely, Soifon simply kept her eyes on Isane — and kept them there — until the latter reluctantly fished a thin, folded magazine cover out from the front of her swimsuit.
While she was at it, Isane also dabbed the corner of Soifon's mouth clean of the at juices.
Soifon accepted the cover — warm from body heat and faintly scented with milk — and looked down at the rankings printed across it. A wave of bewildernt washed over her.
Who on earth put this trashy list together?!
1st Place: Jūshirō Ukitake
2nd Place: Soifon (Lesbian Icon)
3rd Place: Sōsuke Aizen (Captain Era)
Soifon's eye twitched. Setting aside first place, the other two entries in the top three were hardly what anyone would call normal choices.
Although... compared to herself in second place, Captain-era Aizen was actually the saner option of the two. After all, the persona Captain Aizen had crafted for himself — scholarly, gentle, and universally good-natured — gave people absolutely no reason not to vote for him.
"My, my~ Quite the popular one, aren't you, Captain Soifon~"
The mont Soifon's attention wavered, Rangiku snatched the cover right out of her hands and passed it around to Unohana and the others, the catty comntary already flowing freely.
Soifon responded with a private eye-roll and changed the subject, shifting her gaze to Candice.
"Speaking of which."
"How are you Quincy getting along out here in the World of the Living?"
Candice blinked, then idly poked at the fire with her spent skewer, sending a scatter of embers spiraling upward.
"It's fine, I guess."
"We've been working at the Ishida family's hospital. The job's easy enough, it's just..."
"Liltotto — that girl blows through her entire paycheck on food every single month, and then the rest of us have to cover her. It's infuriating."
With their level of ability, those few Quincy could more than support themselves working in the World of the Living. If they put their minds to it and studied up on modern dicine, they could make respectable doctors.
Soifon was quiet for a mont, then her gaze sharpened abruptly. "What about Bambietta? Has she settled down at all?"
Out of that bunch, Bambietta had always had the worst temperant — the one most prone to killing at a whim.
Candice's skewer slipped from her fingers with a soft thud into the sand, and her complexion went slightly pale — she'd clearly been reminded of sothing she'd rather not revisit.
"Teacher Soifon, you really don't have to scare people like that."
Rukia, seated beside Soifon, reached over and rested a hand lightly on Soifon's thigh, her fingers discreetly tracing the firm, toned skin beneath her fingertips.
Candice collected herself, bent down to retrieve the fallen skewer, and took a slow breath.
"It's fine... Bambietta's a lot more normal now. She still loses her temper sotis, but nothing like before — the killing on a whim stuff has mostly stopped."
A few seconds of silence settled over the group.
Beside them, Unohana Retsu's gaze had drifted — from the small hand resting on Soifon's thigh, up along the arm, all the way to Rukia.
"By the way, Rukia, Momo..." Unohana Retsu cradled her cup in both hands, her expression in the firelight uncommonly gentle. "You've both been calling Soifon 'Teacher' this whole ti. Is that... really all right?"
Rukia and Momo both froze in unison. Rukia didn't even think to pull her hand back.
"The Seireitei is a very open-minded place, of course, and romances between teachers and students aren't exactly unheard of, but..."
The rest of Unohana's not-so-subtle provocation hung unspoken in the air, needing no further elaboration.
"Captain Unohana, what are you even saying?!"
"We have no idea what you're talking about! None whatsoever!"
While the two of them vigorously shook their heads in denial, Unohana Retsu simply smiled and shifted her gaze toward Isane Kotetsu.
She'd already laid the answer out in plain sight. The question now was what Isane would do with it.
Would she muster the courage to confess to Soifon? Or would she bury her head in the sand and spend the rest of her life as Captain Soifon's devoted good friend?
The smile Isane had been holding on her face began to crack at the edges.
She lowered her head, chanically chewing on her skewer — the at had gone a little cold by now — and though it should have tasted savory and rich, all she could register was a mouth full of bitterness.
— So that's how it is...
— Everyone can see it — the Captain, all of them — that Rukia and Momo have feelings for Captain Soifon.
— And then there's ...
Isane's heart sank quietly. Her thoughts drifted back to the evening of the Shihōin Estate banquet.
That night, egged on by her younger sister Kiyone, she had leaned into the cover of alcohol, feigning unsteady steps, stumbling and swaying her way toward Captain Soifon.
And then... in a dim, shadowed corner, with an act even more shaless — a stolen ambush — she had kissed her.
Everything after that was a blur. She only rembered the chaos of sensation — warm, confused, overwhelming — and a breathless, trembling feeling, as though her very soul were lting.
In truth, with a spirit body as powerful as a Vice-Captain's, ordinary alcohol could never truly cloud her judgnt.
But perhaps — she simply hadn't wanted to be clear-headed.
— Hadn't wanted to face, with full clarity, just how cowardly she really was.
— Hadn't wanted to admit, stone-cold sober, that she'd only been able to do sothing like that at all because of the drink.
The bitterness at the corner of Isane's mouth threatened to overflow.
She was still lost deep in her own thoughts when sothing gently nudged her side.
"Isane?"
Isane snapped back to reality to find Unohana Retsu tilting her head slightly to look at her — with eyes that seed to see straight through every tangle in her heart. On reflex, Isane looked away.
Unohana smiled pleasantly. "Looks like we're running low on skewers. Would you mind going to fetch more?"
Isane blinked, then nodded with the relief of soone handed a lifeline, scrambled to her feet — not even rembering to brush the sand off her legs — and turned on her heel, all but fleeing toward the small hill behind them.
[Sothing feels a little off about Isane tonight.]
Soifon paused mid-chew, her gaze following Isane's tall silhouette until it disappeared into the shadows of the trees, her brow furrowing slightly.
She was still turning that thought over when she felt an unabashedly pointed stare land on her.
She glanced over.
Unohana Retsu was looking right at her, chin lifted slightly, gesturing toward the direction Isane had vanished.
Soifon blinked and raised a hand, pointing to herself — a silent question: too?
Unohana's smile deepened. She gave a firm, decisive nod. Yes.
Soifon let out a quiet sigh, stripped the last of the at clean off her skewer in one go, then stood up and addressed the group: "I'll go help Isane fetch the supplies. There's a lot to carry — she probably can't manage it all alone."
Not waiting for a response, she set off, following the path Isane had taken.
The dense forest was dark as ink, moonlight sifting through the gaps in the canopy and dappling the ground in patches of silver. For two people of their strength, the darkness posed no difficulty at all; the sound of Soifon's footsteps rang out crisp and clear in the forest's quiet.
Within a few breaths, she caught sight of a tall, slender silhouette up ahead — lonely-looking, half-swallowed by the tree shadows.
Isane heard the footsteps approaching and stopped. She turned around.
Moonlight fell across Isane, washing her silver hair in a soft, luminous glow. She looked at Soifon, who had co to a stop a few paces behind her, and her lips parted slightly — words forming, then dying unspoken.
In the end, she managed only a strained little smile.
"Captain Soifon..."
"Did you co to help carry things too?"
Soifon didn't answer right away. She stepped forward, crouched down in front of Isane, and carefully brushed the sand from her legs.
Since this stretch of beach was temporarily deserted, none of them had bothered to change out of their dayti swimwear.
And so Isane stood there, staring blankly down at Soifon crouched before her.
"I thought..."
"Isane seed a little unhappy. So I ca to check on her."
Soifon's voice drifted up from below. She lifted her head, and her gaze t Isane's flustered, uncertain one.
On instinct, Isane turned her face away and took a half-step back.
But then it hit her — had her mood really been that obvious? Obvious enough for Captain Soifon to notice?
And yet, at the sa ti... Captain Soifon had co after her.
Because she'd seed unhappy, Soifon had co after her.
That thought made her heart beat faster — and stirred sothing warm and quietly sweet deep in her chest.
Soifon finished brushing away the sand and rose to her feet, taking Isane's wrist gently in hand. "Co on then."
"Mm."
Isane answered in a small, low voice.
Side by side, they started back up the path together.
The lights of the villa at the top of the hill were already dimly visible ahead — close enough that a single flash-step would have them there in an instant — yet, without any word between them, both instinctively chose not to.
The sound of their footsteps and quiet conversation drifted softly along the forest path, and now and then a night bird, startled awake, would flutter up into the dark sky with a rush of wings.
Walking at Soifon's side, the restless turbulence churning inside Isane gradually, without her quite noticing, began to still.
She found herself starting to sink into the mont — this rare, precious ti alone between the two of them — and her gaze drifted, almost of its own accord, to the figure walking beside her.
The adorable, rounded shape — rising and falling gently with each breath — and the perfectly defined abs, honed through years of training...
She really wanted to touch them.
The thought surfaced without warning. By the ti she'd registered what she was thinking, her hand had already moved of its own volition — pressing lightly against the smooth, firm skin along Soifon's side.
Her fingertips traced slowly upward, following the sculpted lines of the muscle, until they reached the edge of the swimsuit fabric — and that was when she jolted awake.
[— What on earth was I just doing?!]
Isane's mind went completely blank. She scrambled to pull her hand away.
But in the next instant, a hand shot out and caught her by the wrist, stopping her retreat cold.
The forest had gone utterly still. Nothing but the rustle of wind through leaves — and the sound of two pairs of breaths, suddenly, startlingly audible.
"Isane."
Soifon spoke softly.
"Captain Soifon..."
Isane's voice trembled. She stood frozen to the spot, afraid to move a muscle.
"You rember, don't you." In the shifting moonlight, Soifon's expression flickered between light and shadow. "That night, at the banquet at the Shihōin Estate... we kissed."
Isane bit down on her lower lip. She forced herself to hold Soifon's gaze, to not run from it — and gave a small, quiet nod.
The next instant, the world seed to blur at the edges, and they were standing on the villa's top-floor balcony.
In one corner sat an old-fashioned rocking chair, swaying gently in the night breeze.
With a light push from Soifon, Isane lost her balance and tumbled backward into it.
The chair rocked, carrying her body with it in a slow, even rhythm — mirroring the wild rise and fall of her heart.
Before she could recover her wits, Soifon was already there, leaning in above her, both hands braced on the armrests, caging Isane between her arms and the back of the chair.
That familiar face, close enough to count every eyelash. Warm breath and the heat of skin, mingling together through the thin fabric of their swimsuits.
"Soifon..."
Sothing in Isane's voice carried a faint, unmistakable thread of hope — she had even forgotten to add the word "Captain."
Could it be... was this the mont?
Soifon looked down at her, eyes softening. "I'm not quite sure how to say this, but — I want to apologize to Isane first."
"...?"
Isane faltered. An apology?
This wasn't how she'd imagined things going at all...
"Tonight — for not noticing sooner, and for failing to take proper care of Isane's feelings — that was wrong of , as your..."
Soifon's words caught in her throat. Her brow furrowed slightly, as though she were searching carefully for the right word.
Before she could finish, Isane raised a hand and gently smoothed back the few strands of hair the night wind had blown across Soifon's ear.
"...Lover?"
Isane whispered it like a question, her voice still carrying the faintest tremor.
"Yes."
Soifon's pupils contracted — just a fraction — and then she gave a firm, certain nod.
And then Isane felt warmth draw close — familiar, and faintly sweet-scented.
Isane Kotetsu leaned forward, gently, and kissed Soifon.
Moonlight poured down, silvering two figures folded together into one.
The rocking chair swayed on, soft and steady, keeping its quiet, rhythmic ti.
____
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