Heroes

Chapter Eighteen

“No, for real!” Orihime cried. “A yakuza gunman totally came in and, like, blasted a huge hole in my wall!!”

We were at school, during a break period. Orihime was telling us her story about what happened last night, us being me, Chizuru, and a few other girls in our class. To be honest, I was only listening because I was curious about what memories she ended up getting from Rukia’s memory-replacement gas.

“Whatever, space girl,” one of them said.

“Orihime…” another spoke worriedly. 

Chizuru just grinned at Orihime’s silliness. “That childlike mind of yours is really cute, princess.” 

I shivered a bit. That girl was really starting to creep me out. 

“It happened! Didn’t it, Tatsuki!”

“Y-yeah,” she answered hesitantly.

“You saw it too, Tatsuki?!” Orihime clapped her hands excitedly. 

“Yeah, I guess,” Tatsuki said quietly, scratching the back of her head in confusion.

I smirked. If only they knew the truth.

I left the group and went over to Ichigo and Rukia, who were looking over at us, but standing a good distance away, enough to where we couldn’t hear their conversation.

“So,” I said. “I guess that stuff worked; she’s got no idea whatsoever about last night.”

Ichigo sighed and put a hand to his face. “That’s good. I was afraid the memories would be to vivid for the gas.”

I smirked. Turning to Rukia, I asked her about her extened stay here.

“Well,” she said. She glanced over to Ichigo and grabbed my arm, pulling me away from him. 

“Look,” she hushed. “I don’t need Ichigo knowing that I’m in trouble. He’ll take way too many chances and risk his own life. I’m not sure how you know about this, but please, keep it quiet. It’ll just make everything easier for me. Please.”

I looked at her skeptically, but decided to follow her request. We walked backed nonchalantly to Ichigo, who was looking at us extremely suspiciously. 

“What was that about?” he asked, giving us both looks that said: Something’s up here. You’d better tell me the truth, or I might just break 

your face in.

We decided to lie anyway. “Oh, just girl stuff,” I said lightly. “Nothing you’d be interested in, trust me.”

“Really…” he said. 

“Seriously,” I said. “You don’t want to know.”

He gave us another strange look, but let it slide. He turned to Rukia. “So what was that about an extended stay? Whatever Adel was saying?”

She started to sweat nervously, unsure of how to answer. Thankfully I had forseen it and had an answer prepared. “It’s girl code!” I said. “For that…thing you don’t want to know about!”

Ichigo just looked at us angrily, cursed under his breath, and walked away. I snickered. Stupid boy.

Rukia looked at me with pure gratitude. “Thank you so much,” she said, loosening up. “That really freaked me out for a moment.”

I shrugged. “No big deal, it’s fine.” I waved it off. “Just think of it as a thank you for helping me protect Orihime.”

She smiled. “Okay.”