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The scene shifted.
Karakura Town, inside the high school campus.
Up on the rooftop of the classroom building, Ichigo's horrified yell echoed across the breeze."Are you kidding me?! What the hell was that? Don't tell me I got killed by a bunch of floating cherry-blossom blades!"
The screen before him had gone pitch-black.
Ichigo was drenched in sweat, legs so weak he almost plopped straight onto the floor.All his excitement, all his anticipation, instantly vanished.
His dark eyes held nothing but raw panic.The air felt icy.
Realizing something was seriously wrong, Chad swallowed hard and asked carefully,"Uh… Ichigo? You okay?"
"What do you think?" Ichigo shot back, rolling his eyes. "Did you not see that? Future me shows up for like two seconds and then immediately dies!"
Chad: "…"
Orihime: "…"
Neither of them knew how to comfort him.I mean, who wouldn't freak out after watching their own death play out in front of them?
Meanwhile.
Urahara Shop.
The atmosphere here wasn't any better than on the rooftop.
"Boss…"Tessai's throat bobbed as he forced down a nervous gulp. "The feed cut off, but… it really looked like Isshin's kid got taken out at the end."
"…"
Urahara didn't say a word.
Under the brim of his green-striped hat, his usually cheerful face was weighed down with tension.It was obvious he couldn't stay calm this time.
Half an hour ago, he had just finished a phone call with Isshin.If everything went as planned, Isshin was on his way to the shop right now.
And suddenly… the screen shows Ichigo dying.
Urahara could already imagine it: once Isshin learns his son is dead, the man might faint on the spot.
"…sigh."
After several long minutes of silence, Urahara finally shook his head with a heavy, resigned breath."I really don't want to admit it, but I'm absolutely certain these scenes are real."
"In other words…"
"Someday in the future, Kurosaki Ichigo awakens Shinigami powers, fights Kuchiki Byakuya on Sokyoku Hill… and ends up being killed."
He said it with a complicated expression.
During the previous ranking video, he had only watched out of curiosity.But after witnessing the fight just now, one thing had become clear to him:
None of the footage was fabricated. It was all showing actual future events.
"So it really is like that…" Tessai murmured.
He had suspected it for a while, but hearing Urahara confirm it still felt unreal.
With the last flicker of doubt, Tessai asked," If this theory is true… doesn't that mean Ichigo will actually invade the Soul Society in the future?"
It sounded insane.
A regular human high schooler storming the Soul Society head-on?If he hadn't just seen the video, Tessai would've called the idea ridiculous.
"That's what it looks like…" Urahara answered, eyes narrowed to slits. "Maybe something huge happens in the future… something that forces Ichigo to go."
He didn't have hard evidence, but his intuition filled in the missing pieces.
"Something huge?"Tessai's frown deepened as a sudden thought hit him."Could it be… Aizen?"
Aizen was the first name to jump into his mind.That constantly-smiling, constantly-pretending man absolutely had the ability to toy with all of the Gotei 13.
"Unlikely." Urahara shook his head. "I don't believe he's behind this. And honestly, if Aizen wanted to lure us out, he wouldn't need to go through something this flashy."
Aizen's style was subtlety, shadows, manipulation.A giant glowing display broadcasting worldwide didn't fit him at all.
Urahara paused, then added with a faint, joking tone,
"Although… I guess it's possible that right now, Aizen is standing in front of another glowing screen somewhere, watching the exact same video we are."
5th Division, underground facility.
Urahara had been right.
In front of a snow-filled, static-covered screen, Aizen and his two subordinates stood silently, each wearing a different expression.
"My, my…" Gin drawled with his foxlike smile. "So even Kurosaki Ichigo shows up now. Guess things just got a lot more interesting, huh, Captain?"
He had never met Ichigo, but the boy was no stranger to him.
Over a decade ago, under Aizen's secret orders, the Hollowfication experiment White had slipped into the human world on a rainy night and slaughtered people.It had clashed with Isshin, who'd gone to investigate.
Then Ichigo's mother Masaki intervened.White self-destructed, and part of its fragmented soul invaded Masaki's body.
Because of that, Ichigo was born with Shinigami, Hollow, and Quincy powers all at once.And from the moment he was born, Aizen had been watching him from the shadows.
"Gin, you're right," Aizen said softly. "Things are evolving in unpredictable ways."
For once, emotion flickered behind his glasses.
Just like Urahara, Aizen had already deduced the truth: these were images of the future.
Ichigo's Shinigami awakening.Tensa Zangetsu's Bankai.The battle on Sokyoku Hill.
All of it reignited Aizen's long-dormant curiosity and only strengthened his resolve.
His whole reason for sending Rukia Kuchiki to the human world had been to get close to Ichigo and trigger his powers.And clearly… in the near future, the plan succeeded.
Gin sighed in mock pity."Shame though. Looks like Kurosaki Ichigo got taken out way too easily."
The final frame—Ichigo being buried under thousands of cherry-blossom blades—made Gin assume the boy had died for real.
"Doesn't matter," Aizen replied coolly. "No matter how special he is, in the end he's just an experimental subject. If he dies that easily, then that's all the value his life ever held."
To Aizen, Ichigo wasn't even fully human—just a rare specimen.
What bothered him more was something else entirely:Why did Byakuya make the ranking at all?
Just Senbonzakura's second stage?That alone wasn't nearly enough.
"..."
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