Bleach: The Forgotten Captain - The Memoirs of Akari Miyazaki

Chapter 18 One Hundred Years Without You - Part 9: Rule of Thumb #3

I slumped disappointedly into my chair. Sato sat across from me, shoulders slouched. He gave me a sad smile, and I struggled to return it. He had found nothing new about the black Emyr. The numerous scrolls and books Rangiku and I had brought from the old Rukongai library yielded no new insights either.

"Akari, we need to be more cautious. You must have wondered why I was often not to be found here."

My hands clenched in my lap. I tried to keep my expression controlled and unaffected, but suspicion had already been awakened within me.

A few weeks ago, I had decided to trust Sato, but his recent absence had made me wary.

"What happened?"

"Shinigami have been snooping around here. It could be pure coincidence, but if not..." He left the sentence unfinished, shrugging.

"If not, it's probably Aizen spying on us and planning his next move soon," I muttered softly. Sato grimaced and emptied his glass.

"You have to be careful. Maybe you should lay low for a while."

I smiled at Sato, and we bid farewell.

I heeded Sato's advice and returned directly to my family's house. I was alone that day. Shin, Byakuya, and Rangiku had taken turns supporting me in my research, but Shin and Byakuya, as captains, had too many duties to be absent constantly.

Yawning, I walked through the hallway and pushed open the door to our kitchen when something caught my eye. I froze. An icy feeling gripped me, and I had to swallow a lump in my throat.

With slow steps, I moved away from the kitchen and turned to the door that I always kept closed. I hadn't opened it in years, yet a tiny gap now allowed the light from the hallway to seep into the room. With trembling fingers, I pushed the door open.

The room remained exactly as it had years ago. The bed was neatly made, documents on the desk were alphabetically arranged, and on the wardrobe hung my brother's dark going-out robe on a hanger. Yamachi's room.

Since the day of his death, I had not changed anything in there. I wanted to leave it as it was, to be able to remember him, to feel close to him when I needed to. But most of the time, I avoided it, avoiding the pain of loss that I still hadn't overcome.

I stared into the room for a while, then sighed, and the tension left me. Everything was just as I had left it. Perhaps Byakuya had taken a look in here for old times' sake; I would ask him about it.

I turned around when it hit me like a lightning bolt.

With bated breath, I approached the desk. My trembling hands reached for the picture frame that had always displayed a photo of Yamachi, our mother, and me.

It was empty.

Dizziness overwhelmed me. I gasped for air and couldn't hold back the tears that welled up in my eyes, hot and streaming down my cheeks. They dripped onto the desk, onto my brother's well-sorted documents, warping the paper.

I put the picture frame back, pulled the chair back, and sat down. The tracks on my cheeks, still wet from tears, felt cool and damp. I swallowed, wiped my cheeks, and reached for a piece of paper and a pen.

With a shake, I tried to rid my hand of its trembling before delicately writing "#3?" on the small piece of paper and wedging it into the picture frame. If Yamachi were truly still alive and had been in this room, he would understand the message. I lingered at my brother's desk for a long time, and it was well past midnight before I fell into my bed and into an uneasy sleep.

Weary and unfocused, I embarked on the next day. My thoughts were consumed by Yamachi, and the idea that he might be alive, hidden from everyone, gave me no peace. I toyed with the notion of leaving my estate, simply to afford him the chance to revisit his old room and see the message on his desk. However, I couldn't shake Sato's words from my mind—that Aizen's people might have already discovered me. As long as they believed I was hiding in my old house because I didn't know where else to go, Aizen might leave me in peace.