In this bonus chapter, I'd like you to congratulate
D_h123, who has currently contributed 101 power stones and has supported this story from the beginning. This chapter is for you.
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The stills that went public weren't just a single glamour shot of Alex as Sosuke Aizen.
Aurora Entertainment dropped a full batch - clean, sharp, unmistakably expensive - and right after Aizen's throne shot came the Arrancar faction in force, one after another, like a deliberate warning: this arc wasn't here to play nice.
First came the Primera Espada.
On camera, the actor's body language did most of the work. He stood slightly hunched, shoulders loose, posture lazy in that way that looked almost disrespectful. His eyes were half-lidded, the kind of tired gaze that didn't beg for attention because it assumed the world would offer it anyway. It was a strangely specific flavor of charisma - washed-out, worn-in, like a man who'd seen too much and stopped bothering to pretend he cared.
Then came the Third Espada.
Her high white collar swallowed the lower half of her face, hiding everything that would normally sell a close-up, and somehow that only made the image hit harder. Short hair dyed a bright, striking blonde, green eyes sharp enough to hook you by the spine - no one doubted what kind of beauty was sitting behind that fabric. And under Alex's insistence, the styling didn't soften her edges. It leaned into them.
There was something almost unfair about how well she carried that look. That skin tone - rarely pulled off at this level in Hollywood - only amplified the contrast. Instead of diminishing her, it gave her presence a danger you couldn't look away from. And the outfit itself was engineered like a trap: revealing without feeling cheap, suggestive without giving everything away. A design that understood one simple truth - half-hidden always pulls harder than fully exposed.
The internet didn't even pretend to be subtle.
People were already losing their minds in the comments, swallowing their thirst like it was oxygen.
Compared to that, the reveal for the former Third Espada - now the guide who would pull the protagonist through the madness of Hueco Mundo - felt quieter, but no less effective.
Margot's Nelliel was wrapped head to toe in a pure-white, form-fitting suit that covered everything except her face, and yet it still couldn't hide what it was supposed to hide. Perfect lines, perfect proportions, the kind of silhouette that cameras loved even when the costume tried to be modest. Add the antelope-like skull mask perched on her head, the slightly blank, innocent gaze, and she brought a totally different kind of beauty than the queenly dominance of the other reveal - less throne, more dream.
And then came the one fans circled like sharks.
Ulquiorra.
Timothy's still was almost offensively simple: a tailored white coat, a cold stillness, and those distinctive dark tear marks under the eyes that made him look like he'd been carved out of regret. No fireworks, no theatrics - just a face built for camera worship.
Handsome. That was it.
Handsome enough that the rest didn't matter.
Aurora Entertainment's caption made sure to underline what the audience was already feeling: these weren't random additions. This was Aizen's side. His faction. His soldiers.
In other words - his.
That single framing choice poured gasoline on the fandom.
International timelines ignited. Forums and comment sections turned into stampedes. The discussion wasn't even about plot anymore; it was about aesthetic dominance, about how the "villains" were walking onto the screen like the story belonged to them.
And, inevitably, Alex caught shrapnel from every angle.
He always did.
"Whatever else you say about Alex," someone wrote, "his taste has never missed."
Another replied instantly, meaner: "Of course it hasn't. Look at his dating history. Tell me one woman he's been with who wasn't top-tier."
Then the thirst comments got worse, louder, more shameless, until the whole thread felt like a room overheating.
Somewhere in the mess, a fan half-joked that they were "about to defect from the Soul Society" because the antagonists were too hot to hate properly. Someone else asked if Aizen picked his subordinates based on power or if it was purely a face-check policy - because everyone on that side looked like they belonged on a magazine cover.
And then, because the internet can't go ten seconds without being the internet, someone dropped a nasty comment about "the ugly one" like they had to drag somebody down just to prove they were still themselves.
The wave didn't stop. It didn't slow.
But while the fandom was busy thirsting and arguing, a different kind of audience - local gossip addicts who didn't care about Bleach at all - noticed something else.
There was no Rebeca Verne.
Not a single official still.
And that absence was loud.
Ever since the rumor had broken that Rebeca might be joining the project, the debate had never really cooled. People could mock her recent film streak all they wanted, but her face was still untouchable. Peak-era visuals, the kind of beauty that didn't need defending. As long as she stayed stunning, the "angel" image would keep feeding her relevance for years.
Her acting, though?
That was where the knives lived.
The people against her casting weren't just haters. Plenty of them were genuine fans, terrified of one thing: that her reputation as a "box-office curse" would somehow infect this series too. It didn't matter if that fear was rational. Fandoms weren't built on rationality. They were built on love, and love was possessive.
So when the first batch of stills hit and Rebeca wasn't there, a huge chunk of the internet relaxed like they'd finally unclenched a fist.
See? She's not in it.
The rumor was fake.
Everything's fine.
They celebrated with a kind of ugly relief, like they'd personally defended the franchise from disaster.
And all of that would've been almost funny - if they weren't so painfully young about it.
They had no idea Alex had done it on purpose.
Because The Arrancar Arc wasn't a one-week shoot. It was months. The marketing couldn't be dumped in one explosion and then allowed to rot. It had to breathe. It had to drip-feed. It had to stay alive.
Rebeca's name carried heat, the kind of heat you didn't waste.
Alex would never burn that card early.
Not when he could hold it, sharpen it, and drop it at the exact moment the conversation started to drift.
And if anyone wanted to pretend he'd offered her a role out of pure kindness - some noble, gentle professionalism - they were giving him far too much credit.
He wasn't a saint.
He was strategic.
The thought landed in his mind with a brief, almost inconvenient flicker: this was the second time he'd used Rebeca to push momentum.
For half a second, he considered whether that made him an asshole.
Then he "reflected" for three whole seconds - one, two, three - and the moment was gone.
Work was work.
Back on location, Alex continued filming in steady, controlled beats, the production moving like a machine built to ignore outside noise. But for Rebeca, the noise didn't fade. If anything, it got louder, because she was the kind of person who stayed home and doom-scrolled when she wasn't working, the kind of quiet, slightly introverted temperament that didn't protect her from the internet - it fed it.
She sat with a laptop open, a cat somewhere nearby, and watched strangers write her obituary over a casting rumor.
When the first batch of stills dropped without her, the entire world seemed to decide she obviously wasn't involved. The haters threw a party. Even some real fans acted like they'd dodged a bullet.
As if her mere presence would doom the show.
As if she was some contagious disease.
Rebeca read it all, and the anger burned so hot it made her hands shake.
It wasn't even about pride anymore. It was the cruelty of how easily people celebrated her exclusion, how gleefully they treated her like a threat that needed to be removed.
The irony was, Alex hadn't even asked her to clear her schedule for this.
Her role was small. If everything went smoothly, she could film her scenes in two or three days. Even if she accepted another project, she'd only need to take a short break and fly in.
And offers were still coming. Big ones.
Because whether people respected her acting or not, the industry respected math. Her face and her fanbase were worth tens of millions in guaranteed attention. Producers didn't have to love her to want that.
Her mother had brought her scripts too - packages stacked with big names, "safe" productions, the same kind of glossy projects they'd chased before.
But Rebeca didn't bite.
She chose, stubbornly, to do nothing for a few months. To drift. To breathe. To finish this small part in Bleach first.
Somewhere along the way, she'd started trusting her mother's instincts less.
And then, because she couldn't help herself, she searched Bleach again.
Scrolled.
Clicked.
Watched the reactions loop like a fever dream.
Until she saw it - Aizen's new look.
Alex, without the glasses. Hair swept back. That single strand falling in just the right place, like it was scripted by fate itself. The white coat. The throne. The lazy, godlike calm of a man who didn't need to raise his voice to be obeyed.
Rebeca stared longer than she meant to.
Then, almost unconsciously, she pressed her teeth lightly to her lower lip.
Even if she wanted to be stubborn about it - wanted to scoff, wanted to roll her eyes and pretend she didn't care - she couldn't deny the truth sitting in her chest like a guilty confession.
He really was…
Ridiculously handsome.