Given Choice [Byakuya x OC]

7

Ichigo Kurosaki became a substitute soul reaper after that. He did the job that Ora was supposed to do since he had drawn out almost eighty percent of her spiritual pressure, Ora couldn't do much. She got a gigai, a method used only in cases of emergency or lack of strength. She kept herself inside the gigai almost all the time, she had enough energy to only perform small kido spells. Her reiatsu was restoring slower than it should, probably because she was in the world of the Living.

Ora became somehow a human. She started to attend Ichigo's school in order to warn him in case if Hollows showed up. Ichigo's friends soon became comfortable with her presence, after all, it was not usual to have a foreigner transfer student - like their teacher had introduced her as. She didn't have a family name, Ora didn't want to use her grandfather's name, much less Kuchiki's. People thought it was weird, but soon the topic dropped low when she entered the classroom. The boys wowed by her physical appearance, she was indeed a beauty. Blonde wavy hair that flowed until her waist, average height and curvy body, dark lavender eyes, and soft facial features. It made her look like she came out of a painting of a goddess.

Ichigo also thought she was pretty, but he didn't think of her with any other interests unless friend.

At that moment, Ora was having lunch with the girls of her class, Inoue Orihime was the friendliest with her and soon Ora and her turned friends. They were having lunch when a girl with red hair and red glasses - that Ora didn't remember her name - looked at her and smiled.

"Do you have a boyfriend, Ora?" She asked mischievously.

Byakuya came into her mind for a long second, but she shoved though of him aside. "Not quite."

"You and Ichigo are always together, I thought you guys were lovers or something." She laughed.

"Don't be silly, Ichigo and I are just friends." Ora tried to open her juice, but it had some sort of mechanism that Ora couldn't decipher how it worked.

"Here, you put the straw in this plastic and pierce it." Inoue showed her how it worked. "Now you drink the juice for the straw."

"Thank you, in my house, there's not something like this." Ora giggled, it was true, in Soul Society there wasn't something similar to that invention, humans really were amazing.

"Are you rich?" She red-haired girl asked.

"Well, my grandfather is some kind of ruler in my hometown" Ora stated.

"Oh, a president?" Her eyes twinkled. "A CEO? A king?"

"Just stop." Tatsuki knocked her head.

Ora laughed at the girl's behavior, they seemed like they were good people, but she just couldn't understand what they were talking about. Ora looked up to the cherry blossom tree above them, it reminded her of Byakuya and Soul Society, the place that she belonged to. She was an outsider here and soon she needed to come back, but how was she supposed to return when she didn't have reiatsu to open the gates to Soul Society?

Δ

It passed a week, Ora's reiatsu was still the same as it was. She felt helpless and useless, it hurt her pride as a lieutenant to let Ichigo do her work. And she was sure that Soul Society knew about that by now. She had ominous feeling that something was about to happen, something bad.

She clutched Kon against her chest. Kon was a mod soul that took care of Ichigo's body while he was on his shinigami duties. Kon became one her companions when she was feeling down. He listened to her and - as a stuffed toy - comforted her. She knew that Kon was a pervert mod soul, but she couldn't help to embrace him.