Chapter 269: A Trip to the Living World
"Mr. Kurosaki, regarding your wife's recent condition--"
Kurosaki Isshin held up the scan results, rubbed the back of his head, and nodded along with the approximate energy of someone who had followed roughly one word in five.
Right, right, uh-huh, yeah.
What is any of this. There are too many technical terms. I can't follow a single sentence.
And why is everything in katakana? Write it in normal kanji like a reasonable person! Who is this even for?!
That was the internal reaction. The external one, because this checkup had cost a significant amount of money, was a quiet sigh and a small sip of tea before he made himself look at the report again.
So. Bottom line.
"Your wife's recovery is going very well. At this rate, she should be able to go home tomorrow."
The cloud that had been sitting on Isshin's face cleared completely. His entire expression transformed.
Then, almost immediately, he remembered something and pushed forward with the follow-up.
"And the--"
"The newborn's observations have all come back clear. You'll be able to take the baby home at the same time."
The white-haired doctor with the glasses shifted his gaze away from the screen. His mouth worked for a moment. What settled on his face was the particular relief of someone setting down a weight they had been carrying for longer than they expected.
"The newborn's initial numbers were a little unstable -- trending high across several indicators. But through the adjustments we made afterward, that's essentially been resolved."
Isshin sat there holding the report, lips trembling, until two tears tracked down his face in quick succession.
"YES! That's amazing, that's -- that's incredible!"
"There's no need to get that worked up. Both mother and child were never in any real danger. What came up was within the range of what you'd expect with a delivery like this. Just -- take a breath, alright?"
The joy of becoming a father for the first time had a way of moving people regardless of circumstance.
That principle, it turned out, applied equally to captains of the Gotei 13.
Compared to the sharp, composed figure who had stepped out of Soul Society not so long ago, the man now known as Kurosaki Isshin had developed a distinctly rounder face, and his general presentation had softened in ways that years of civilian life tended to produce.
Though in fairness, set against the chest-hair-and-stubble version who would appear in the later story, the current version still had something resembling a put-together adult human being.
He stood up, visibly emotional, and bowed to the doctor with genuine depth.
"Thank you. Truly."
"Not at all. Just make sure you stop by the front desk on the way out."
Occupational experience. You got used to it.
Isshin walked out of the room still wearing his feelings on his face. After working through the administrative steps, he made his way back to the inpatient ward.
He had been thinking he would check on the baby first, but once he confirmed that Masaki was conscious and doing well, he went to his wife instead.
In the strictest sense, the child had not been unplanned. But both of them had wanted this.
Kurosaki Isshin had put down roots in the living world after leaving Soul Society, and several years had passed since then.
Back in Soul Society, for souls, years of this length amounted to something barely worth noting -- a handful of pauses in a current that ran for centuries. A small and unremarkable portion of something much larger.
But for the people of the living world, a stretch of time that passed in the blink of an eye could represent half a lifetime.
Isshin had felt that difference in ways he hadn't expected. Maybe it was exactly that understanding which had made him decide to grow old alongside her.
Deep sentiment, of course, held no particular relevance for certain other individuals.
The newborn nursery.
"I'm going to grab something to eat. I'll be back to swap with you."
Two nurses were in the middle of a shift handover. The one staying on had just rotated in and should have been at full energy.
And yet, for some reason she couldn't quite place.
She found herself suddenly, inexplicably unable to--
It wasn't just her energy. Her body had taken on a strange, deep heaviness that had no clear source.
Like someone had quietly poured several tons of iron into her from the inside. The sensation was disorienting and wrong in a way that produced a genuine expression of distress, and she found herself pressing her body low without meaning to.
She was about to go down entirely.
Then a pair of hands came out of nowhere from the side and caught her before she hit the floor.
"What a hassle. I really thought I was suppressing it properly."
Matsushita Yusuke looked at the completely ordinary person in front of him -- who appeared to be hovering somewhere between fine and not at all fine -- and let out a quietly resigned sigh, reaching up to scratch the corner of his mouth.
Leaving Soul Society. Arriving in the living world.
That was Matsushita Yusuke's particular arrangement for today.
There had been no grand plan behind it and nothing that deserved the word "preparation." He had made the decision the way you made a decision when something surfaced unexpectedly and refused to let go -- on impulse, following a loose instinct rather than a formal agenda.
Under ordinary circumstances, tracking down someone like Kurosaki Isshin -- a figure who had disappeared without a trace and left behind no reiatsu signature to follow -- should have been an extremely difficult task.
But having the information advantage changed that completely.
Matsushita Yusuke already knew Karakura Town existed. A small amount of advance research was more than enough to pull one specific face out of the crowd.
If he had shared that information with Aizen at the time, or with the Gotei 13, the current situation would almost certainly look very different.
He hadn't. For reasons that made sense to him.
Still breathing?
He checked quickly. Pulse, breath. Confirmed.
Matsushita Yusuke applied a basic healing Kido, selective and light, doing just enough to bring her vitals back to something stable.
The gap between spiritual beings and ordinary people, when the difference in scale was large enough, produced literal, physical danger simply from proximity. No intent required. Ise Nanao getting one look from Yamamoto in the original story and crumpling on the spot was an accurate illustration of how the physics worked. For a normal person, a captain-level reiatsu wasn't elevated energy -- it was a black hole. Standing next to it was enough to feel the pull of something trying to swallow you.
He had accounted for this before leaving. But theory and first attempt were different things. There were gaps between preparation and practice that only experience could close.
Next time would be sharper. More precise.
After all, his reiatsu was capped out, and at that level, the ability to control his own output was its own form of power.
Compress. Settle. Hold it down to something that registered as close to neutral as he could get it.
With that handled.
Everything else was simply a matter of following through.
Matsushita Yusuke exhaled quietly, took careful steps forward, and made his way toward a particular spot in the room.
Toward a specific small shape in a specific small bed.
When he could see the outline of it clearly, a quiet smile settled onto his face.
This was why he had come.
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