I felt guilty, I really did.

I had noticed the lack of Suzumi’s presence as soon as I woke up, and had spent quite a few hours letting her be alone after… everything.

It’d felt awkward to be so far away from her, to knowingly give her some space to work through what I’d had to work through not so long ago. Learning that you have something else living inside of you was a whole mental trip you had to embark on. and it was quite the ride to do so, as evidenced by the little trip into the waters of my soul.

But her situation was slightly different than my own.

Inside my soul was, in essence, another version of me. Different, but similar. Grayhom is me, and I am him, but we are just separate. Now, with yesterday’s grand fiasco and accompanying laser light show, we were closer than ever, working in even greater sync towards the greater whole of our selves.

Suzumi had something else lurking inside of her, a malicious and self-interested being who is willing and intends to take control. A Hollow, legitimate in every way.

The first sign for me was the ribbon, but as soon as I entered the ritual room that Tessai had created, the bubbling white liquid that spewed forth from her body gave me ever assurance that Suzumi was hollowfying, for real.

When I had stabbed the mysterious silver blade into her chest, I had found myself inside her mind, coming intimately close to her soul itself. In there, I had seen her spiritual body as a war was being waged over it as her inner Hollow found its moment of dominance and took full advantage.

Her skin had been turning an ashy white, her eyes glowing with black irises and black sclera, the almost snakelike look she had given me had almost floored me.

In that moment, I had understood that this Hollow was something more than all the other’s I had faced in combat. The Hollow was more akin to what Phantom was, though I hadn’t ever been close enough to Phantom, or conscious long enough, to truly gauge its power.

Her Hollow was just as smart as her, just as self-aware as a human, and clearly capable of wielding spiritual energy and pressure with more skill than Suzumi—something I attributed more to the instinctual understanding that came with being a Hollow.

I tore myself from my own thoughts for at least a little while, knowing myself well enough that I was prone to overthinking and, worse, getting caught in a thinking loop.

I had dressed myself in the casual clothes that Suzumi had prescribed me for the time when I wasn’t doing some sort of training. She had commented on it after reading an article on compartmentalisation on her phone one day and had instituted it as law the very next. I was strictly forbidden from spending any excess time within my training clothing, under the penalty of severe punishment.

I wisely didn’t let my curiosity get the better of me, otherwise I’d infringe on the law purposely just to find out what the aforementioned ‘punishment’ would be.

I was slowly meandering across the rooftops, it having become night hours ago at this point. I had left Suzumi to roam free for the day, but that didn’t stop my anxious mind from checking where her ribbon was every five seconds.

The anxiety, while it’d always been present, had made itself more prominent throughout the course of the day, and I was starting to see the cracks in my own façade. I liked to give off the impression of a strong and reliable character, just a personal preference of mine, but the downsides were clear. In short order, I’d found out that maybe I wasn’t so strong after all.

Anxiety is the killer of the mind, and as I traversed the rooftops with an idle mind, plagued by the irrational anxieties that had plagued me my entire life.

It was all too easy to forget the wounds that you’d accrued over your life when things were going well, but now that I was placed squarely into a strange spot of ‘distance’ from Suzumi, I found the anxiety rise to a whole new level.

I had never truly dealt with the separation anxiety I’d accrued over the years of emotional torture that was the foster system. In the end I’d gotten off lucky, with the last of my childhood being spent with some of the most reliably ‘there’ people I could have asked for.

Ray and Sera… well, they’d saved my life. In more ways than one. I’m not afraid to admit that if I’d never found a home to stay in that I would have found myself knee deep in shit. There were so many ways to go wrong; ‘trying’ drugs, getting the wrong friends, lack of opportunity, lack of education, inability to deal with the financial burden that’d come along with all the doctor visits.

How long would it have been until I was truly hopeless, on the streets somewhere and totally alone, my childhood worldview only confirming itself to the nth degree.

Nobody cares.

How easy it was to believe that, as a child pushed from home to home, taken from friends that I’d loved, schools I’d found a home in. How long had it taken until I’d given up entirely, waiting for the care worker to knock on my door and whisk me away with my whole life wrapped in a thin, plastic garbage bag. How fitting that’d felt.

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Yet, even after the years of healing I’d done underneath the stubborn persistence of Ray and unendingly loving care of Sera, I still held a portion of that little child within me in a white knuckled grip.

If I were being honest, I was wasting time, pussyfooting around what I really wanted to do right now. All I was doing was circling around Yua’s flower shop over and over like a timid cat would around a toy mouse.

All I was doing was working myself up further, the anxiety increasing with every gentle leap I made from each rooftop, my eyes fixated on Suzumi’s gently swaying ribbon. At least I could tell she was relaxed, but it certainly didn’t assuage my own deep-seated fears.

“Are ya ever gonna go down there, kid?” A voice rang out from a man I should’ve noticed the presence of. The suddenness of my break from the never-ending thought loop was harsh enough to make me literally jump a little.

“Jinta.” I breathed out, a little exasperation in my voice from being spooked so thoroughly. I did a doubletake, trying to reconcile the man’s sudden appearance, but couldn’t quite find a logical leap to make, “What’re you doing here?”

The older man grinned at me boisterously, though he didn’t yell like he might’ve were it any other meeting between us. The man was wearing surprisingly normal clothes, rather than the combat ready ones he normally wore. The outfit was simple, only a regular red tee that matched the colour of his hair and a pair of loose-fitting cargo pants that were held up with a wide belt that sat somewhat slanted on his hips. He crossed his arms across his chest, showing off the impressive muscle he had even despite his age.

“Better question is what you’re doing here?” he tilted his head to the side, his fiery red hair bright enough in the dark night to pull attention, especially with such an odd colour to see within Japan’s relatively mundane regular fashion.

“I, uh.” I began, trying to come up with a good reason that wouldn’t expose the borderline stalker behaviour, but Jinta grinned with a full set of teeth.

“I’m having you on. Yua called me out ‘cause she could sense you circling the house for hours, Grayson.”

“Yua could?” I asked dumbly as Jinta gave me an amused look.

“Hey, I was as surprised as you when I heard that Yua’s little one was being trained by Urahara and Tessai. Been giving her updates throughout your training the whole time.” The man grinned at my flabbergasted expression before he sat down on the edge of the roof we were currently standing on, patting a spot near him for me to sit as well. It wasn’t long after I settled down next to Jinta before he spoke again, in a more thoughtful tone than I’d have expected from the brash man.

“You guys are going to be in for a lot.” There was no question to the statement, but it was just another assurance that something would happen soon, and I just couldn’t be sure of what that’d be. I nodded to the rhetorical statement, staring sullenly in the direction of Suzumi’s beautiful white ribbon.

“Things are already starting to happen, Grayson.” The man continued, his voice dry of its normal humour, “Attacks are getting more frequent, stronger Hollows are worming their way out of the cracks of Karakura’s streets, ones that even Soul Society don’t have on their stupid records.” He ran a hand through his red hair, scratching wearily at the scalp beneath.

“The team of newbies whose asses you saved a while back are just the start. High-spec humans just don’t get that strong, not strong enough to contest with Hollows like Phantom. Maybe my wife and I could deal with a fair few strong ones, but even we’re only comparable to a mid-level Soul Reaper, when it all comes down to brass tacks. But when missing peoples reports are rising through the roof, and any of the spiritual sensitives strong enough are getting spooked by the rising fatality of patrols, we’re going to lose out.”

“But Suzumi and I can’t take care of them all.” I said worriedly, but the man just shook his head.

“That’s not what I mean. Kisuke and Tessai will help us with that, they’ve been taking care of Karakura for as long as they’ve been here.” He waved his hand dismissively, “I’m talking about what all this build up leads to. I’ve seen it way too many times to be flippant about it anymore. I can almost feel it in the spiritual energy.”

“But we don’t know what it leads to.” I said quietly, but Jinta failed to nod along. The lack of affirmation made me screw up my eyes at the man sitting beside me, looking at the side of his morose expression.

“Phantom has been here for far too long.” The sudden change in topic confused me for a moment, but the man continued onwards despite the bizarre switch, “Its an Adjuchas level Hollow, something that you’d only see in Hueco Mundo. There’s a reason for that.”

“They need power to sustain their form.” I responded, recalling the barest memory of Kisuke saying something along those lines. Jinta nodded.

“If Phantom was trying to sustain its power, even with its signature of only eating other Hollows, it’d be causing massive damage. Hollows of that level only come out of Hueco Mundo if they feel high value prey, but Phantom, as far as we know, hasn’t been to Hueco Mundo for years or possibly even decades.”

“So how is he sustaining himself?” I asked genuinely, though Jinta grimaced unsurely.

“I think the question is ‘What happens when a Hollow of that power starts to destabilise?’”

My mind began to whirr as I thought on the topic. This sort of topic would have been way over my head not a few days ago, something I’d have bet that Grayhom would know something about. But things have changed since we built our soul back once again and having built a tower within out soul to reach the peak of its tallest mountain.

I looked at Jinta with that new understanding, seeing something entirely different than what I’d been capable of my entire life. My eyes focused on his ribbon, which lead me down deeper and deeper into his soul, like a safety rope connecting you to the surface of the sea while being hundreds of metres below.

I saw his soul in truth, then. The glittering gold crystalised core of Jinta’s being. I observed the golden crystal and stone mass and found myself thinking with two minds, one of my own and one of Grayhom’s, discussing and explaining and expressing to one another in abstract ways that wouldn’t truly make sense if formed into literal speech.

I found myself with a surety of what would happen, as Grayhom and I both came to analyse the structure of a soul and relating it to what a Hollow’s mishmash of combined parts would look like.

“There would be an internal war between the components in the soul that are vying for dominance over the Adjuchas’ main function, over its identity. I don’t know how quickly that’ll happen, but if Phantom has been denying itself the spiritual energy and souls it needs to function for as long as you think it has, and the identity that’s driving it is strong willed enough to have held it off…” I swallowed heavily, looking towards Suzumi’s calm ribbon, uncomprehending of the understanding that I’ve come to, and the imminent danger I was suddenly realising that Karakura would be in.

“If Phantom’s main identity is that impossibly strong willed, then Phantom may just become the Hollow equivalent of a controlled bomb as its soul eats itself.”