Takeda

Shuichi drew his Zanpakutō once more.

"Bloom, Flawless Flower."

The release command was quiet. The red faded from the blade, replaced by a jade-white hue.

White Blade.

Of its four abilities, this one enhanced Reiatsu perception and filtered out illusions.

He spread his Reiatsu perception over a wide area.

The boundaries of his perception continued to expand outward.

Then he touched something.

Inside the mortal army's camp,

the ordinary soldiers were faint presences, souls without spiritual power, like guttering candles in the wind.

At the same time, one soul was extraordinarily dense and full, its Reiatsu like tightly compressed cotton suddenly springing open.

It was to the north of the camp, not too far from him.

Shuichi's perception lingered in that direction for a while, as if confirming that he had not seen wrong.

A little girl.

She wore ragged clothes, with messy hair hanging loose. Here, she was merely a refugee girl whom no one would notice.

As the mortal army cleared the ruins, it was also taking in refugees. This little girl should have been one of them.

But the spiritual power on her was wrong.

It was not merely that she "had spiritual power." It was "dense."

So dense that Shuichi felt no one would find it strange if she were the daughter of a Soul Reaper.

But she was alive—a living little girl who still breathed, whose heart still beat. Her spiritual power was so dense that her Reiatsu could be clearly sensed. Yes, Reiatsu. The Reiatsu of souls with ordinary spiritual power was either imperceptible or extremely faint.

Shuichi frowned slightly.

How could a living person possess such dense spiritual power?

And if her spiritual power was so dense, there was no reason Hollows would not be drawn to her. Menos Grande could sense High-Reishi Units far better than ordinary Hollows. This Gillian had likely appeared in Kaimachi because it had been attracted by some High-Reishi Unit.

He had previously assumed it was something left behind in the ruins, or perhaps some secret facility. But now, it seemed...

The little girl crouched beside a tent, head lowered as she hugged a rag doll. No one knew what she was thinking. She showed no reaction to the chaos around her, like a wildflower growing on a battlefield—abnormally quiet.

No.

There was not just one.

Shuichi's perception continued searching that area.

The little girl's Reiatsu was so conspicuous that he had initially overlooked the other person beside her. Less than ten paces from the girl stood a man dressed as a samurai, wearing a black haori over a dark blue kimono, a family crest painted on the haori.

This mortal, dressed in a haori, should have been someone important. A general, perhaps?

His Reiatsu was unlike that of a Soul Reaper, unlike a Quincy's Reishi armament, and even less like a Hollow's murky, decaying aura.

It was a kind of Reiatsu he had never sensed before. It was not a matter of strength or weakness, but of "texture." Like a piece of fabric he had never touched before: it looked ordinary on the surface, but once his fingers touched it, he would realize it was not fabric at all, but something else pretending to be fabric.

The general stood beside the tent with his back to the little girl, facing the ruins of Kaimachi. Moonlight fell across his profile, concealing his expression, but Shuichi could see his Reiatsu slowly rising and falling in a steady rhythm, as naturally as breathing.

The little girl's spiritual power was abnormally dense, while the general's Reiatsu had a texture so different that it did not seem human.

These two—no, at least that general was no ordinary person.

That general was clearly sensing the surrounding Reiatsu as well. He was curious about the Reiatsu of the newcomer who had slain that giant monster, yet he did not probe it out of curiosity. Instead, he tacitly allowed the other party to probe him.

The samurai general in the black haori stood before the tent, his hands clasped behind his back, facing the ruins of Kaimachi.

A guard hurried over from the edge of the camp. The iron plates of his armor made soft clattering sounds in time with his steps. He stopped three paces behind the general and bowed, his breathing slightly unsteady but his voice kept low. "Lord Takeda, that strange army has left."

He meant the group dressed in strange white uniforms and carrying strange weapons.

The guard did not know who those people were. The general had not told him, and he had never asked. He only knew that the army had appeared at the same time the earthquake began, stationed west of Kaimachi, neither approaching the ruins nor making contact with anyone from their own forces.

Now they had left, silently, as abruptly as they had arrived.

Takeda did not turn around, nor did he ask where that army had gone.

He nodded lightly, as though confirming something he already knew.

"The earthquake should be over."

The guard froze for a moment. He had said, "That strange army has left," but the general had replied, "The earthquake should be over."

He could not understand what connection there was between those two things, but he did not ask. The general never repeated himself. Everyone in the Takeda Army knew that.

"Rebuild this town as soon as possible," Takeda said.

"Yes." The guard bowed again, then turned and ran toward the camp to relay the order.

Takeda stood there alone. Firelight from the brazier flickered across his face as his gaze passed over the ruins of Kaimachi and settled somewhere farther away.

Of course, he knew that had not been an earthquake.

He had seen Hollows.

More than once. He simply did not know what those monsters were called, and he knew that only he could see them. No—now the little girl beside him could see them too, just like him.

There was also a group of superhumans, visible to him but invisible to the soldiers, dressed in black and wielding swords as they fought those monsters.

They could even use sorcery. They were practically gods from legend...

Of course, the soldiers had not seen any of that. They did not need to. They only needed to know that this was an earthquake, a fire, a flood, a natural disaster—not something else.

If one day they needed to know of the Hollows' existence, the imperial court would tell them. Since the court had said nothing, there was no need to say anything.

As for that strange army, all the daimyō knew something, and some daimyō were even among their people.

After Takeda entered the tent, he did not sit down.

He stood in the middle of the tent. Before him was a crude campaign table, spread with a hand-drawn map of the area around Kaimachi, its corners slightly curled by the wind.

A civilian official traveling with the army sat kneeling beside the table, a brush in hand and a document already more than halfway written spread before him.

"Write," Takeda said.

The official moistened the brush tip in the inkstone and waited for him to speak.

"Adoption document. Orphan of Kaimachi. Name... unnamed. Age unknown. Appearance approximately seven or eight years old. Takeda Nobumoto adopts her as his daughter. That is all."

The official lowered his head and wrote several lines. His brush moved swiftly, his handwriting so neat it did not seem as though it had been written inside a tent.

After finishing, he raised the document and read it once by the brazier's light. Once he had confirmed there were no errors or omissions, he presented it with both hands.

Takeda took it, glanced at it, then drew a seal case from his sleeve. He opened it, dipped the seal in red cinnabar paste, and pressed it onto the end of the document.

The little girl was still where she had been.

Takeda crouched before her. He looked at the little girl for a while, then extended his hand—not to pick her up, nor to pull her along, but to take the adoption document from his sleeve and place it on the ground in front of her.

"From now on, your surname is Takeda," he said.

Elsewhere,

under Shuichi's perception, he led the Soul Reapers over to confirm it.

One of the stationed Soul Reapers said, "Looks like this girl with abnormal spiritual power is going to be adopted by that guy with the powerful Reiatsu."

Another stationed Soul Reaper beside him added in a softer voice, "It will be decades before we can retrieve her."

No one thought those words inappropriate. In Soul Society, such conversations happened every day. Humans with abnormal spiritual power were either descendants of Soul Reapers, or souls who had gained powerful spiritual power through some coincidence.

While alive, they would pose no threat to Soul Society, but after death, their spiritual power would enter Soul Society along with their souls.

When that time came, the Thirteenth Division would perform Soul Burial, guide them, recruit them—everything would proceed according to protocol. A few decades were nothing more than the flick of a finger to Soul Reapers with long lifespans.

Shuichi did not respond.

Decades.

"The others, return to your original posts. Local stationed personnel, keep an eye on this girl," Shuichi said.