Chapter 331: Rangiku and H'el

Girls' dormitory, bathroom.

Hot water poured down from the showerhead like rain, quickly filling the shower room with a misty haze.

"Ah..." Rangiku, with half-lidded, tired eyes, stepped under the shower. Her fair, well-developed body let the warm water rain down on her orange hair.

The damp, wavy orange strands clung to her scalp, cheeks, chest, and smooth back. Droplets of water splashed on her fair skin.

As the hot water soaked her body, it warmed her tender skin, soothing the sore muscles from overexertion, and bringing comfort deep into every pore. She couldn't help but let out a soft sigh of relief, a mix of weariness and relaxation, along with an overwhelming sense of mental fatigue.

Lately, Rangiku had been pushing herself to the limit, working out more intensely than ever. She was exhausted.

Seeing Gin achieve his Shikai and graduate from the Shin'ō Academy had made Rangiku uneasy. She felt as though she was drifting further and further away from H'el and Gin.

Honestly, Rangiku had made many friends at the Academy. She studied, had fun, and worked hard with them, spent nights chatting in the dormitory, listening to their stories of different lives, and gossiping about their classes or other things. It was a life far removed from the one she knew before, where survival was uncertain from one day to the next.

Compared to her past, this life was truly wonderful.

So much so that she had almost forgotten the hardships of her earlier life—how she had struggled to survive in the barren districts, starving and emaciated, barely human, suffering from both hunger and cold.

But she never forgot that it was H'el who had saved her, who had brought her out of that hellish poverty in the barren districts to the Seireitei, a place only the elite could reach, and into the Shin'ō Academy.

Rangiku had always thought she, H'el, and Gin would be friends forever.

But then Gin achieved his Shikai, quickly graduated from the Shin'ō Academy, joined the 5th Division, and became an officer. The distance between them suddenly felt like a vast chasm, far and unreachable.

She had always believed that the three of them would study together at the Academy for six years, then go their separate ways, pursuing their own futures, and occasionally meeting up in their busy lives to share stories of the past. It was a beautiful and hopeful future.

But something had gone wrong.

Everything seemed to be happening too quickly.

So quickly that she wasn't mentally prepared for it. It felt as though the small boat carrying her friends, H'el and Gin, was being swallowed by a thick fog, leaving her alone, standing on the boat, watching them disappear.

They weren't disappearing—they were moving out of the fog, while she remained on the boat, searching, looking, until she fell into the lake, and there was no H'el to save her this time.

Rangiku wanted to keep up with them.

She wanted to remain their friend, to stay by the side of her companions from the barren districts, to walk alongside them.

But... Gin's talent was simply overwhelming. He had achieved Shikai the first time he wielded a Zanpakutō, cutting down half of the teaching building, graduating from the Academy, and joining the 5th Division.

As for H'el, Rangiku never expected to catch up to him. She just didn't want to be a burden to him again, didn't want anyone to use her to threaten H'el.

Because H'el would cut down both the enemy and her if it came to that.

To avoid being left behind by her friends, Rangiku's heart had been filled with anxiety, and she had been training tirelessly, practicing the breathing techniques and Zanjutsu, Hakuda, Hohō, and Kidō that H'el had taught her, exhausting herself to the point where she had little time left to hang out with her friends.

"Sigh..."

Rangiku sighed deeply under the showerhead, feeling helpless. No matter how hard she trained, she still couldn't catch up to Gin and H'el. These two monsters were truly despair-inducing.

Rangiku felt lost and didn't know what to do. In the steamy, misty bathroom, she opened her tired and confused eyes, only to see H'el appearing through the mist.

'An illusion?'

Rangiku was stunned for a moment. She was in the shower; was the hot water making her head fuzzy?

She didn't think of H'el appearing like a mirage in the steamy bathroom. But then, through the mist, she saw H'el's eyes, and her body trembled involuntarily, the water on her skin shaking into droplets that splashed around.

H'el's eyes reminded her of the time when she had been threatened by Aizen, of that cold and indifferent expression that would kill her along with the enemy.

He... was going to fight!

H'el had placed a small world within Gin and Rangiku's bodies, only to prevent the two friends he had in this world from dying, allowing him to save them in time.

In terms of relationships, Rangiku naturally had a closer bond with him than Gin. Rangiku was also more intimate with him, and unless necessary, H'el didn't want to disturb Gin, so he chose to emerge from Rangiku's side.

He just hadn't expected Rangiku to be in the shower.

But it didn't matter; H'el was a gentleman. He nodded to Rangiku and turned to leave the shower, about to open the door and exit.

He was in a hurry to reach the Tsunayashiro family and kill Tsunayashiro Tokida.

Thanks to Tsunayashiro Tokida's interference, the book H'el had Aizen place in the Great Spirit Library Corridor were damaged, and the small world inside was destroyed. He could no longer enter the library to read.

Since that was the case, he would personally eliminate anything that prevented him from reading.

As H'el turned to leave the shower, Rangiku suddenly felt a surge of panic. Panic that H'el would leave and never return, panic that H'el would, like Gin, leave the Shin'ō Academy, and she wouldn't know what to do.

H'el's place in her heart was unmatched.

Rangiku, trembling, lunged forward and hugged H'el tightly around the waist as he was about to leave the shower. Her wet body pressed firmly against his back, water splashing around them.

Rangiku's orange hair clung to her fair face, the wavy, waist-length strands sticking to most of her delicate back. She held onto H'el tightly, her body trembling as she said, "H'el, I'm a little scared. Are you going to fight?"

The look in H'el's eyes was the same as when he had fought Aizen—focused and merciless, willing to cut down even her, which made her feel scared.

She wasn't afraid that H'el would kill her; she was afraid of H'el ignoring her.

"?"

H'el found Rangiku's reaction somewhat baffling.

He could only guess that his sudden appearance had frightened her. After all, it's best not to guess at a girl's thoughts, and H'el didn't want to try.

"Yes," he answered.

H'el could feel Rangiku pressing tightly against his back, her muscles and trembling body in close contact with him.

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