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Kurosaki Ichigo and Kuchiki Rukia had been the subject of gossip in Soul Society for years . In the fifteen years since that first fateful night in Karakura, shinigami had wagered hundreds of thousands of kan: on whether he would save her, first, and then on another wager: when the petite shinigami and her handsome substitute would finally start dating.
For ten years, the Seireitei endured all the drama of a soap opera: longing looks and fights for vengeance, a sacrifice of power and seventeen months of separation, a reunion out of a fairy tale. A war that nearly destroyed everything. And once Ichigo took up residence in Soul Society permanently, a game of will-they-won’t-they that rivaled any romantic comedy.
When Ichigo and Rukia were finally caught kissing by Rangiku on Ichigo’s twenty-sixth birthday, it was no surprise at all that enough kan changed hands to fill a stadium.
Soul Society didn’t have a tradition of wedding rings, but the gensei did. Rukia couldn’t stop thumbing at the band on her left ring finger, unused to the weight of cool metal.
“Careful, you’ll twist it off,” Ichigo teased, and wrapped his right hand around her left. “And I don’t want to dive for it in the koi pond.”
“Fool,” she muttered. It wasn’t like she could help it: the weight was weird , but more importantly, they were nearly to the Kuchiki manor. They’d agreed to tell her brother and ask for his blessing, but as they drew closer Rukia’s anxiety rose. Yes, it had been years since Ichigo and Byakuya had been at each other’s throats, and after the fall of Xcution they’d reached an understanding , but…
Ichigo squeezed her hand. His shoulders were tense, and he kept darting looks at her, standing nervous yet straight as could be when the Kuchiki guards waved them through the gate. “It’ll be okay,” he said, reassuring her – or himself. Or both. “Byakuya and me – we understand each other.”
“Do you?” Rukia arched her brow.
“Che.” His grip tightened.
They took off their waraji and set them side-by-side before Ichigo rapped on the shoji door concealing Byakuya’s office. “ Enter , ” his solemn voice called from within, and Ichigo squeezed Rukia’s hand one more time before he slid the door open.
Byakuya’s office hadn’t changed much since she’d first seen it decades ago. His bundai was the same lacquered black, and the shelves behind him were still filled with history and record books.
“Rukia. Ichigo,” Byakuya said with the slightest lift of one eyebrow. They hastily bowed in greeting and, at his gesture, knelt in seiza on the tatami floor.
“Nii-sama,” Rukia murmured at the same time as Ichigo said, “Kuchiki-sama.”
His eyebrow rose higher: Ichigo never addressed him so formally, even now that he was a member of the Gotei Thirteen officially. “You have something to tell me,” he guessed, and watched with interest as Ichigo reached for Rukia’s hand.
Her cheeks heated. “Ichigo has asked me to marry him,” Rukia said firmly. “And I have said yes. We would like your blessing, Nii-sama.”
Byakuya’s expression softened. “You have my blessing, imouto,” he said. “I am very happy for you both. And I am certain, Kurosaki Ichigo, that you will be a good husband to my sister.” There was an implied threat in his voice: Ichigo would answer to him if he wasn’t.
Years ago, that might have frightened Ichigo, but today he squeezed Rukia’s hand. “I will,” he agreed, and the smile he offered her was something only she ever saw: warm and tender, with his amber eyes focused solely on her.
Byakuya nodded once, firmly, and rang a bell. “Have celebratory refreshments served immediately,” he ordered when a servant appeared in the doorway, and stood. Ichigo and Rukia exchanged a puzzled look as he reached for two large binders, high on the shelves, and gestured imperiously for them to follow him.
They scrambled to their feet and followed him through two more rooms and down a long hallway. Behind one last set of fusuma was an elegant room with walls covered by silk screen paintings and a long, low table upon which servants were already placing tea and plates of snacks: nerikiri wagashi, dumplings, mochi, and more.
“How – how did they do all this in the time it took us to walk into the room?” Ichigo hissed at Rukia.
“Perhaps Nii-sama ordered the food prepared when he was informed we were coming to the manor,” she murmured. “Nii-sama plans for everything.”
They sat across from Byakuya and he set the binders down on the table, each thicker than a dictionary, with a loud slam . “I have been waiting for this day for many years.”
“You – have?” Ichigo ventured as cups of tea were set before each of them.
Another nod. “I have known for a long time that you would someday marry my sister,” Byakuya explained calmly, and opened the first binder. He turned it towards them, and Rukia reached for it; it was so bulky that Ichigo helped, pulling the other side closer.
“Nii-sama, these are…” Rukia turned the pages slowly, “extremely detailed plans.”
The binder was separated into color-coded sections: shrine locations, reception venues, sketches of wedding regalia, menu options, san san kudo sets, celebratory displays for their zanpakutō, and even an entire section on monogrammed napkins.
They paged through it slowly, taking in the sheer enormity of the work Byakuya had done. “This is all in Soul Society,” Ichigo said after a while.
“Hn. This binder contains options for the gensei, as I am sure you will wish to be married before your friends and family there, as well.” Byakuya placed a hand on the second binder.
“You’ve really thought of everything, Nii-sama,” Rukia said, a trifle breathlessly. She’d had no idea he had done any of this – or that he had strong opinions on, of all things, table linens ( a cotton blend will resist wrinkles , read one page, with twelve colorful fabric swatches pinned to the paper).
“This must have taken you a long time,” Ichigo said. “Just how long have you been planning our wedding, Byakuya?”
Was that a smirk? Surely Rukia was hallucinating. “Since the moment you landed upon that bridge, I have known that if you survived, you would marry my sister.”
“But that was more than ten years ago!” Rukia breathed.
“That was when I knew,” Ichigo said, and bumped her shoulder with his. “But I thought you hated me.” Byakuya had done his best to kill him, after all, and Ichigo had done the same to him.
“Tawake,” Rukia muttered, and squeezed his hand.
Byakuya took a sip of tea. “I saw your determination to protect my sister,” he said simply. “You need not make any decisions regarding your wedding today. There will be an appropriately long engagement to allow you time for planning.”
“Good, because there must be fifteen different menus in here,” Ichigo joked.
“There are twenty-three,” Byakuya corrected blandly, and offered them mochi.
After their tea with Byakuya, they took the binders with them. “We can store them in my rooms,” Rukia said as she led Ichigo along the engawa; he carried one under each arm like sacks of flour. “Nii-sama’s foresight is excellent, and his taste is impeccable, we will surely have a magnificent wedding with his help!”
Ichigo huffed out a breath but smiled down at her tenderly when she glanced back towards him. “Yeah,” he agreed softly.
“Ichigoooooo!”
Instinctively Ichigo dodged the outstretched foot that tried to kick him and retaliated with a spinning kick of his own. “What the hell, old man?!” he shouted as Kurosaki Isshin landed with a crash in the courtyard. He winced. Those were Byakuya’s prized andromeda; he’d be pissed when he found out Isshin had crushed them.
“Ichi-nii, Rukia-nee!”
“Yuzu-chan!” Rukia blinked, surprised, at the sight of Ichigo’s younger sister. “It’s wonderful to see you! But – what are you both doing here?”
Yuzu hugged Rukia before she beamed down at her and hefted a large bag. “We found out you and Ichi-nii got engaged. I’m so happy for you!” she exclaimed.
“My son is finally marrying my third daughter,” Isshin sobbed happily as he picked himself up from the crushed flowers. He wore his shihakusho and the old captain’s haori hung from the pauldron around his shoulder, swaying in the light breeze. “You’ve made me the happiest father in the world, Rukia-chan,” he cried, and swept her and Ichigo – and the binders – into a crushing hug.
“How – ack – did you even find out so fast?” Ichigo asked, struggling to breathe.
“Good old Lieutenant Matsumoto told me. Why did I have to find out from my old subordinate? Are we not good enough for you anymore, Lieutenant ?” Isshin carried on.
With a shove, Ichigo pushed Isshin off him and rescued Rukia from his father’s clutches. “That’s not it! We were going to visit you later!” he shouted indignantly. “We’ve only been engaged for a day.”
“Already a day and you hadn’t told us?” Yuzu pouted. “No fair, Ichi-nii!”
Rukia exchanged a look with him, cheeks warm. They’d had a private celebration of their own, first. “What do you have in that bag, Yuzu-chan?” she asked to distract them. “It looks heavy!”
“Wedding plans!” the younger woman exclaimed cheerfully. “You’re always so busy with work, so I put together some ideas.” She dropped the bag with a loud thud and pulled a hefty black three-ring binder from inside. “See?”
More wedding ideas? Rukia took it with a touch of trepidation and flipped through it. It was as organized as Byakuya’s, with an entire section devoted to wedding cakes and a second to passed desserts. “This is incredible ,” she breathed, and smiled up at her future sister-in-law. “Thank you for doing this, Yuzu-chan!”
Yuzu waved her hands, cheeks flushed pink. “I want you to have a happy wedding! Ishida-san added some pages on wedding clothes. He offered to make your dress for you, too.”
Ichigo paused in the act of pounding his father into the ground. “Wow, that’s really nice of him,” he said.
Isshin twitched and added a weak, “He’s a good boy.”
“Here,” Yuzu said, offering Rukia the bag. “Daddy said we need to pay Kūkaku-nee a visit.”
“Will you come back for dinner?” Rukia asked. “And is Karin-chan here too?”
“Karin’s visiting her friend Hitsugaya-san,” Yuzu said with an affectionate roll of her eyes.
Ichigo’s eye twitched. “Her friend ,” he repeated. “Ow!”
Rukia lifted her foot from his toes. “She’s twenty-four, Ichigo,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered.
Isshin dusted himself off. “We’ll let you two love birds pick out wedding music,” he said with a leer, and grabbed Yuzu. “Be back for dinner!”
Rukia looked in the bag. “Ichigo, there are two more binders in here,” she whispered in horrified awe.
He glanced at the one under his right arm. “…Guess we’ll have plenty of ideas?”
Hours and hours later they sat in overwhelmed shock in Rukia’s rooms, surrounded by binders and with cups of tea forgotten on a nearby chabudai. Rukia’s head fell against Ichigo’s shoulder, and he tucked her closer against him.
The binders from Yuzu and Isshin were tomes. Yuzu’s contained more than fifty pages devoted solely to cake flavors, and half a binder focused on their honeymoon, with helpful notes about how a private location would give them plenty of opportunities to start making grandchildren.
“Can’t we just elope?” he grumbled.
“My brother will kill you,” Rukia pointed out.
“Eh. I beat him as a sixteen-year-old, I’ll be fine.” Ichigo shrugged and dropped a kiss on the crown of her head when she scowled up at him.
“Your father will kill you.”
“Nah. He wants grandkids.”
“…Yuzu will cry,” Rukia said wryly.
“…Damnit.” Ichigo lifted a hand to tilt her head towards him as the other held her closer. “Fine, we won’t elope. But this can all wait until tomorrow,” he muttered, and kissed her until they both forgot all about napkins, linens, and invitations.