Gipsy

By Zhong Wanting

 

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach.

She says she’s a gipsy. He understands only too well. (Took place several years after Urahara and Yoruichi’s exile) UraYoru

-

‘So in one word, it’s elopement.’ Jinta remarked pithily.

‘Not in the least.’ Urahara turned a reproachful eye on him.

Jinta returned the look with a dubious one of his own.

‘You see the way she just flits in and out of here? That proves it.’ Urahara sighed. ‘And you’ve no right to talk about it, you’re just a kid.’

Jinta now appeared thoroughly disgruntled.

Urahara cast a sideways glance at the boy and chuckled. ‘Well, to satisfy your curiosity, you know what the most romantic thing she had said is?’

‘What?’ Jinta’s eyebrows twitched, meaning ‘yes please go on’.

‘”If we ever get out of this alive, I’ll wring your neck in jail for this messy affair you have landed me in”. When we were running away from Soul Society. Well, something vaguely like that, I can’t remember clearly.’

Jinta looked somewhat disappointed at the drab answer. He had been anticipating something meatier. Leaning back against the wall, fingers crossed behind his head, he tried again:

‘Who in the world is that woman anyway?’

Jinta threw the question at his boss, who was now absent-mindedly twiddling with his battered hat in his hand, and gave the unmistakable impression that he had completely lost track of their haphazard conversation.

‘Hmm?’

‘The dark woman who flits in and out of the place. Who exactly is she?’

‘Oh that?’ The shopkeeper rubbed his chin. ‘Well, as I’ve always told you, she’s an old acquaintance of mine.’

Jinta’s eyebrows were raised incredulously.

‘Definitely not as simple as that.’

‘Well, to put it another way, she’s my next of kin.’

Jinta’s eyebrows were raised so high now they disappeared into his hair altogether.

‘Hmm…That’s some explanation…’

-

‘You’re back.’

As always, these succinct words fell from his lips to welcome her return when she skipped adroitly onto the shop’s floor from the windowsill.

Her tail flicked. ‘Well, you’re not quite so enthusiastic about my return.’

He sized her up and down. Rather windswept, he thought, and thinner, but above all in excellent shape. ‘Well, that’s because I’m now pretty accustomed to your flashing in and out of here like a hurricane.’

‘Not a good metaphor, dude. Has your brain gone rusty?’ The black cat leapt on to his shoulder nimbly and started wrapping her tail around his neck.

He ignored her. ‘How long are you staying?’

She amused herself by leaving a wet paw print on his new shirt.

‘Hmm…it depends…on my mood.’

At that moment Ururu burst into the room, Jinta hot on her trails brandishing a broom. Both stopped dead in their tracks when they caught sight of the black cat now dangling playfully from their boss’s neck.

‘Well,’ Jinta demanded. ‘Has your family returned for a visit, tenchou?’

Ururu shot him a ‘why-are-you-always-so-tactless’ look, but Urahara didn’t seem to care much about it. Instead, he patted Jinta’s head and said pleasantly, ‘Now, won’t you like to return to work, Jinta-kun? You’ve maltreated Ururu-chan long enough to get down to some decent work.’

Jinta grunted audibly as Urahara straightened up and walked cheerily out of the room. The cat detached herself from his shoulders and landed lightly on the floor. She disappeared into the shadows along the man’s strides, not before flashing a fleeting, keening look at the boy and girl left behind.

-

The moment the cat positioned itself in the futon opposite the man, its shape dissolved into a puff of smoke, only to be replaced by that of a gorgeous honey-tanned woman.

And she was scantily dressed…

‘Say, Yoruichi.’ Urahara raised his eyebrow. ‘You still haven’t grown out of the habit of stunning people in the most shocking manner.’

‘Haven’t I?’ The nude woman seemed perfectly at ease. ‘On the other hand, you are not even remotely surprised.’ She ended this statement with a curt jerk of the chin. Urahara interpreted that to be ‘now fetch me clothes, you idiot’.

‘Is that so peremptory?’ He took this scarce opportunity to tease her. ‘Honestly, you don’t usually mind popping out of nowhere in your birthday suit.’

Yoruichi’s cat-like eyes narrowed dangerously into slits.

‘Well, I do not in the least fancy the idea of making your kids scandalized.’

‘Aye, aye, yes madam.’ Urahara bowed his head in mocking submission before retreating into another room to gather some clothes.

After Yoruichi had dressed herself properly (in Urahara’s old robes), Urahara lounged himself on the settee and said lazily, ‘Well, and they are not “my kids”, to be exact. They’re my employees to help get the business going.’

‘Ah…’ Yoruichi cooed, ‘Not out of the habit of exploiting even little kids aren’t you, greedy merchant?’

Urahara seemed to totally neglect her words.

‘Honestly…my kids aren’t even born.’

He fixed her with a long, meaningful look.

Yoruichi, a little taken aback by this unexpected remark, returned his gaze with an adamant eye.

Then, putting on a look of utmost disinterest, she waved off his words with an altogether dismissive gesture.

‘That,’ she said airily, ‘is of no importance.’

-

Urahara brought up the old topic once more when they were ensconced in the cozy sitting-room, drinking sake together.

Setting down his drinking cup, he leaned across the tea-table towards Yoruichi.

‘Why on earth won’t you settle down, Yoruichi-san?’

There was a faint trace of plea in his glib voice. Yoruichi eyed him up and down from over the brim of her cup before taking another sip. Urahara sat patiently, waiting for a reply.

Yoruichi, having drained her cup, set it down on the table too. Then, she crossed her arms in a decidedly offhand way.

‘And I suppose you knew all along, Kisuke.’

She tilted her head in a cat-like manner.

‘Do you think that I look like a noble?’

‘What?’ Urahara scratched his head. ‘A noble? You? Definitely not. Haven’t you said so yourself, that you prefer to be a lovable stray cat rather than a stiffly formal princess?’

‘Indeed, indeed, Kisuke.’ Yoruichi helped herself to some more sake. ‘And me, I guess I’m a gipsy at heart.’

Urahara goggled at her.

‘Honestly, since when have you become so romanticized, so to speak? I mean, really…a gipsy cat? That’s some metaphor, Yoruichi, you have always defined yourself as a stray.’

Yoruichi refilled her cup in silence. Then, raising the cup to her lips, she murmured, ‘I’m a gipsy, hoping to see the world.’

Her voice held Urahara in mesmerized transfixion.

‘…all those years I had been brought up in a strict, well-disciplined environment…and I hated that…I was not born to be a noble, yet my family was a noble one…and I had wanted to run away…

‘Deep down at heart, I wanted to be a gipsy…in her caravan, longing to journey in the world.’

‘Where’s your caravan then?’ Urahara humored her.

Yoruichi cast him an icy look. ‘Naturally, that would be redundant because I am the Goddess of Flash.’

Urahara made a mental note that Yoruichi had never once been beaten in the game of tag. Silently, he poured himself another cup of sake.

‘Sometimes,’ he mumbled, ‘I wonder just how I have accomplished such a feat.’

Yoruichi cocked her eyebrow in mild bewilderment.

Urahara peered at her sideways. He thought it was the alcohol getting to his head, for he felt tipsy…dazed…he didn’t quite know what to say to her, and he was equally unsure of his own voice, for as it came out, it felt alarmingly foreign to him…

‘In the past…’ He said softly. ‘I remembered how you had always been marched on in those splendidly magnificent royal coaches…and I was only a boy then, and I could only watch from gaps in the crowd, and think…what a gorgeously pathetic doll that was…because when you looked out from those tinted windows I thought I saw that you were not happy…because you weren’t free…

‘And I never thought…that we would have met in the first place…would have become best buddies…and I never dreamed that you would have helped…and become an outcast in the meanwhile…that now I would hold the only roof to shelter the gipsy cat roaming the world…

‘But at least…I thought…maybe you are liberated…’

This sudden flow of sentimental speech really was uncharacteristic of him. Perhaps it was the sake addling his brains. With a great jerk, Urahara drew out of this protracted trance. He checked himself, and looked across at Yoruichi. She looked quite shaken.

‘Well well well, seems as though I have talked too much.’ Urahara was quick to resume his normally slick self. ‘Gipsy cat. Like the name?’

Yoruichi ignored him.

‘Well, how about staying with me for a while, gipsy cat? There’s so much world to see it won’t be done in a few days.’ Urahara beseeched. ‘It doesn’t hurt to stay in a cozy little shop for some days. At any rate, we are…we are…’ He struggled for words.

‘Partners in crime, perhaps?’ Yoruichi suggested mockingly. ‘Sounds fantastic to me.’

Urahara nodded. There was a long silence in which Yoruichi drained her cup of sake. Then she raised her head, and her deep dark eyes bore steadily into his. For a moment neither of them said anything. But it was Yoruichi who broke the hanging silence with her soft voice:

‘But I’m very afraid…that I won’t have the momentum to go on from here if I remain here…’ With a sigh, Yoruichi set her cup on the table gently and stood up. ‘Thanks for the treat, Kisuke. But I…I have my own business to attend to…and…and…’ She stopped mid-sentence. ‘I’m sorry, Kisuke…’

Urahara considered her. She did look like she was sorry.

‘Well my…not even…for one night?’ Urahara tried to sound hopeful. Pleading hopefully.

Yoruichi had to muster all the determination she had to shake her head at this tempting suggestion.

‘Ah…so it’s always been like this.’ Urahara shook his head gently. ‘Felines, they’re horribly independent and individual creatures. And always stubbornly insisting on having their own way. I never know how to cope with a willful kitty.’

Yoruichi thought she caught just the tiny bit of bitterness in his tone. She moved around the table to stand in front of him. For another moment they looked into each other’s eyes, the blue into the black. Then Yoruichi reached up, and gave Urahara a light peck on the lips.

‘What’s with that forlorn look of yours?’ She hung onto his neck, laughing softly. ‘You know that you’re my only family in this world. You know that your shop is my only shelter. You know that I’ll always return to your place, be it months, years, or decades. Don’t you always know?’

‘Know? What?’ Urahara was slightly dazed by the intoxicating, exotic taste of her breath.

‘Really, how dumb can you be? We are partners. And I still want to wring your neck for all the injustice you had done unto me. But anyhow… you are the only place I belong, even though I’m a roaming gipsy.’

She kissed him again, this time more demanding, more passionate. Urahara reached out his arms to clasp her in his embrace, pressing her exquisitely dainty form into his broad, firm chest. And the next moment her warmth had gone from his grips, and he opened his eyes, and fixed his eyes on the form of a lithe black cat on the ground.

‘So very unsporting, Yoruichi.’ He said morosely. ‘So this is judgment. How very relentless of you.’

‘You know me.’ She said, and the ghost of a laugh lingered on the feline face. ‘Next time, I would want some fresh good milk. The food I eat on my journeys really don’t reach up to my nutritional standards.’

‘Demanding to the end, Yoruichi. It’s fortunate I don’t keep a kitty as a pet.’

‘Say anything you like. Am I free to go?’

‘You are free to come and free to go. Just as you please, gipsy cat. As always.’

The black cat jumped on to the windowsill in a flash of fur. Then, turning around, she asked with almost childlike capriciousness.

‘Kisuke, you will wait for me, won’t you?’

‘But of course, Yoruichi. Most courteously.’

He made a mocking little bow. The cat swished its tail, and when Urahara straightened up, the window sill was left deserted. Only the moonlight was shining through the open window.

‘Sometimes,’ he sighed. ‘I do think that I have spoiled you, gipsy.’

.Fin.

-

Well, I didn’t realize it would get so long in the end! The gipsy notion had been there in my head ever since I read Agatha Christie’s The Man in the Brown Suit, so I finally decided to plot it out, though it’s quite simple really.

The dialogue between Urahara and Jinta is a bit disconnected with the rest of the one-shot but I just wanted to write an exchange between the two of them…quite fun indeed…and the mood of the piece is a bit inconsistent, but I can’t help it.

Well, to sum up, I just hope you can like it…

Reviews are warmly welcomed, ta! Thanks

 

- hell butterfly

 

Reviews for: Gipsy

 

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