Ichigo x Rukia x Orihime

Silhouettes against a Sunset

Orihime walked slowly down the road, her inner thoughts all debating with each other. What was she going to make for dinner? On the one hand, it could not be leek pie again, she had had that way too many times this week. Then again, if it wasn't leek pie, it would have to be something with bean paste in.

She was really craving bean paste.

"Orihime?"

She whipped round, the voice interrupting the ones in her head, causing her to jump with surprise.

"Oh, hi Ichigo!", she exclaimed, waving enthusiastically.

"Hey. What are you doing out so late?", he replied, walking next to her, his bag, as always, causally slung over his shoulder.

Orihime looked at him in confusion.

"It's not late", she smiled. She had only gone shopping after school, she could only have been an hour at the most...

"It's getting dark", Ichigo stated, as if to justify his earlier statement. Orihime looked up at the sky. Sure enough, deep reds and oranges were leaching across the blue, the sunset a cocktail of colours.

It was beautiful.

Why was her heart beating so fast all of a sudden? And why were her hands aching to reach out and take hold of Ichigo's? It was just a sunset, she had seen them before, just a beautiful, gorgeous, romantic sunset... "Orihime?"

She jumped and stared deeply into his eyes. She could see the breathtaking sunset colours reflected in his iris'... "Isn't this the wrong way to your house?", Ichigo asked.

She gasped and realised; this was indeed the wrong way. There was a turn that she should have made back a while ago, but ever since Ichigo had caught up with her, she had completely ignored it to prolong the time spent with him.

But she couldn't tell him that.

"Oh... so it is!" Why did she never have any good excuses for anything? She sucked at lying.

To her relief, Ichigo laughed a little.

"Don't really care, huh? Fair enough. But you know, you can't stay out too long, it will be dark before you know it."

His concern for her nearly brought her to tears, it was so unexpected. He was such a caring person.

No wonder she was in love with him.

She could feel her cheeks burning, and she struggled to think of something to say to distract herself. This was the first time she and Ichigo had walked like this in a long time, perhaps ever. And why? This was when she noticed a distinct lact of short, dark-haired girl that was usually by Ichigo's side.

"Where's Rukia?", she finally asked. In her peripheral, she noticed his fists clench a little.

"The Soul Society. She has... stuff to do there." At first, Orihime felt a little sad that she wouldn't get to see her friend at lunch and tell her all about this meeting, but then she slowly started to realise something.

"How long for?"

"I don't know."

She had Ichigo all to herself for as long as it took Rukia to finish the business she was attending to in the Soul Society.

Orihime knew Rukia had started some competitive thing where she seemed to always be with Ichigo, but it was all for fun, right? Rukia didn't love Ichigo. The problem was, if Ichigo loved Rukia...

But, now that she was gone, it was Orihime's chance to finally confess to the man she loved.

Nerves built up inside her, she knew now was not the right time to do it, but just looking around at the sky (which by this point had darkened to a sapphire blue) and seeing Ichigo's tall, handsome, protective silhouette against it, she wasn't sure.

"Ichigo!! What are you doing?! Dinner's getting cold!"

Yuzu's shrill voice shocked her out of her thoughts, and she turned to see that they had made it to Ichigo's house.

"Orihime, should I walk you home? It's too dark for you to go by yourself." She blushed.

"N-no, it's okay!", she insisted. There was no way she was brave enough for that. And she didn't want to inconvenience Ichigo. And besides, it wasn't like she was completely helpless, she had her hair slides.

"Is that Orihime? Hi!", Yuzu waved from the doorway. Orihime waved back. "Come on in, Orihime! There's no way you can walk to your house now, it's way too dark! I've made enough dinner for everyone, so it's okay! Come on in!"

"Oh no, thank you so much but I couldn't! Don't worry, I'll be fine -"

"No arguing! Come in you two, you'll catch colds!"

Ichigo, with his hand resting on the back of his head, shrugged a little.

"You can come in for a bit, it's fine."

Luckily no one noticed how red her cheeks were when she followed Ichigo into his house at such a late hour.

What were the chances of this?!