Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Just a Normal Girl ❯ Chapter 1

Title: Just a Normal Girl

Author: Skimmilk

Pairings: Light IchigoxRukiaxIchigo

Rating: G

Spoilers: first five manga

Disclaimer: I don't own `em.

 

Just a Normal Girl

 

Rukia had a game that she liked to play. She liked to pretend that she was a normal girl. Simple…right? The gigai that she wore was her real body, and the uniform that she wore, she would wear until she graduated in two years. When she spoke with her classmates, they were her peers, they would grow old with her, and they would be forever friends—whatever that meant.

 

But, she knew that she was lying to herself. She wasn't human; she was a soul reaper. She was only stuck in the human world until she got her powers back, and then, she would return to the Soul Society. These children—with their petty problems and earth shattering trials—that she had befriended for the time she was here they would be long dead before she had even lived half of her life. They wouldn't even remember Kuchiki Rukia, a sweet, happy, and normal girl, who never really existed. And to her, the months she lived in the closet of Kurosaki Ichigo were just an eye blink in the centuries of her life.

 

But part of her liked to pretend. She liked to pretend that the looks that Ichigo shot her mean something. That that endearing look he shot her—that made her knees weak and he stomach drop like she was on a roller coaster—was one that you would direct towards a lover. That they had the chance to fall in love, and Rukia could someday marry and have children with Ichigo. Because, ever since she first saw Kurosaki Ichigo don the uniform of a soul reaper, she knew, she just knew that he was born to be a soul reaper, and she was born to show him the way.

 

Only, he was a fifteen year-old boy, and human to boot. Humans were weak, fragile creatures, and not Shinigami. And Rukia had always been possessive when it came to her things. With Ichigo, she would want and want, and no one could touch him. What would that do to a boy like him? It would stifle him; make him want to free himself from the ties that bound him to her. It would make him resentful, then he would come to hate her, she could never deal with something like that, because that face that scowled and frowned, if it were to send her the glares of hatred that were set aside for the hollows, then she would never know what to do. She would rather not have him at all, than have him dislike her. And that would be a very human emotion.

 

So, for now, she will just let herself pretend. She will pretend that she had a future with this man-child, whose heart was so big, this man, who would fight to the death for what he believed in, family and friends. She'll stay at his side for now, a moth that keeps coming back to the flame, and oh, how it burns. And she'll just pretend that the strength that she feels coming back to her doesn't mean that her time in the fragile world of Kurosaki Ichigo is slowly falling away, like fistfuls of sand that keep slipping through her fingers, with every breath that she take, the strength returns to her soul, she can feel it from the tips of her very human, blue painted toes, to the ends of her flyaway hair. Almost like a blowing wind, the slight chill in her limbs, every hair on her body in tingling alertness, the disembodiment that she constantly feels, all of it means that soon, very soon, Kurosaki Ichigo will be someone of her past, not her future.

 

She'll pretend that the love that he had for her now, is just part of her game, and he's only human, so he'll soon forget the black swallowtail butterfly that came into his room one day. He'll forget sitting on the school rooftop, eating lunch, he'll forget spending nights talking to her through the too thin barrier of his closet door. He'll forget the time he spent during high school being a soul reaper. Most of all, he'll forget that he ever met a tiny woman named Kuchiki Rukia.

 

So, later on, she'll have a new game. She'll pretend to have forgotten the strength of the boy, Strawberry. She'll pretend to forget reading trashy, romance manga to learn the proper vernacular of modern day. She'll forget Orihime, Chad, Mizuiro, Kon, and Tatsuki. She'll forget Ichigo. The life of a soul reaper is long, and it would not be that strange to forget the few months that she had spent as a teenager in Japan.

 

And in her mind, some obscure corner of her mind that she can pretend never existed, she'll pretend that she is happy. That she didn't forget, and neither did he.

 

But right now, she just has to pretend, because she's just not a normal girl.