The Butterfly Effect

Chapter Seven: Permeate

Permeate: intransitive verb, \ˈpər-mē-ˌāt\

1. to diffuse throughout or penetrate something
2. to pass through something, esp. a membrane, porous barrier, etc.

***

"You didn't have to help me make dinner, Ishida-san." Yuzu, washing vegetables in the sink, set a cabbage to the side. Uryū picked it up and started slicing, shredding the leaves into thin slivers.

"Saves me from having to do it," Karin put in from behind them. She sat perched on a stool in front of the island, her chin in one hand where she slouched over, watching them with dull interest. The modernity of the kitchen by comparison to what he'd have expected in the rest of Soul Society only lent credence to his theory that there was something different about these three.

He shrugged, swiping fragments of cabbage stuck on the end of the blade into the pile of the same with sure, practiced movements. "It's really not an inconvenience, Kurosaki-san. I find it familiar, actually." Not much around here was—even his own body felt strange, in ways he was still attempting to quantify.

Yuzu nodded, apparently satisfied by the explanation. "So I guess you're from the living world too, then?"

"Yuzu!" Karin's voice was sharp, and her sister flinched, but the damage had already been done.

"Urahara said he'd used his gate a few years ago. I thought he meant for Yoruichi, but it was your family, wasn't it?" He'd had a feeling he recognized Isshin, though he still couldn't say how exactly.

Karin sighed. "Yeah, it was us. We moved here like five years ago." She didn't elaborate further, and Uryū chose not to push.

"What does your father do here?" he asked instead.

Yuzu picked up the conversational thread, flowing easily with the change in topic. "He's a doctor. People from all over the Rukongai come to see him. There's a clinic attached to the back of the house—I'm not sure if you could see it when you came in."

Uryū wasn't sure, but he supposed there might be something ironic about that. He debated mentioning his father's occupation, trying to determine if the potential follow-up questions would be worth it. Karin saved him the trouble of deciding.

"We help him sometimes, but he's probably going to have to hire some people in a couple years." He could hear her prop her second elbow on the counter, the backs of her heels thudding periodically against the crossbar of her seat.

"Why's that?"

"Because Yuzu and I are going to go to Shin'ō and become shinigami."

"Well," Yuzu amended, with considerably more circumspection, "we're going to take the exams, anyway."

Uryū suppressed his immediate negative reaction to that. Hadn't they just heard that he was going to be breaking into the Seireitei to release a prisoner? "Is there some reason you want to do that?" he asked instead, exerting considerable effort to keep his voice politely interested.

"To fight Hollows and protect people, obviously," Karin replied. A glance back over his shoulder confirmed that she was looking at him with one eyebrow lofted and her mouth pulled to the side.

Yuzu handed him a pair of clean tomatoes, which he started cutting automatically. "Well... it's also basically the only way anyone in Soul Society with any reiryoku can get training to deal with it." She was staring at the onion she held in one hand, brows furrowed, though he wasn't sure she actually saw it. "Even dad says it's better to learn from the instructors there than him, and he knows a lot."