Understanding without agreement

Fifth Division, captain's office.

Under the soft light, a man sat upright at his desk.

With his trademark gentle smile on his face, Sosuke Aizen worked smoothly through a mountain of paperwork, patiently giving quiet instructions to his lieutenant captain, Momo Hinamori, beside him.

Watching this warm, harmonious scene from his hiding place in the corner, Kurosaki Ichigo could not help giving a strange little smile.

He remembered clearly that his teacher had specifically mentioned this lieutenant captain during their special training.

According to Aizen, she was a young woman whose admiration for him bordered on blind worship.

Yet even then, Ichigo had keenly sensed that his teacher did not enjoy that admiration nearly as much as he appeared to. There had even been a faint, almost imperceptible distance in his manner.

The reason was simple, just as Teacher Aizen had once told him:

"Admiration is the furthest thing from understanding."

Blind admiration only turned someone into a myth, dressing them in every imaginable perfection they did not possess. In the end, it drove two people further and further apart in spirit, making genuine understanding impossible.

Kurosaki Ichigo understood that feeling. In fact, he had experienced it himself.

It had caused him no end of trouble during high school in Karakura Town.

His cool-looking delinquent style, coupled with the perfect scores that kept him at the top of the rankings year after year, had earned him a group of wildly devoted fangirls.

Those girls had no idea what kind of person he was. They did not know his likes or dislikes, or even why he fought. They simply praised him blindly as their perfect idol.

Being put on a pedestal and showered with hollow praise was genuinely irritating—and exhausting.

To him, Teacher Aizen might have been smiling now, but his