Ichigo Kurosaki realised something was wrong when he didn't flinch.
A glass slipped from his hand in the kitchen and crashed against the tiles and the sound echoed throughout the house.
He looked down.
Only then did his heart race.
The reaction was late - not absent, not dull, just... delayed. Like thunder after lightning that had already passed.
Ichigo frowned and bent down to clean up the shards. His fingers hovered over the broken edges for a moment longer than they should. He knew they were sharp. He knew he had to be careful.
Ichigo's urgency came a second later:
"What the hell...?"
The Kurosaki house was warm. Normal. Too normal.
Yuzu hummed somewhere upstairs. Karin's door slammed with familiar irritation. Isshin laughed at something on the television, loud and unrestrained.
Ichigo felt like none of it was pressing on him like it usually did.
He wasn't numb.
He wasn't synchronised.
Later, outside, the night air brushed his face as Ichigo stepped out onto the porch. He leaned against the railing, exhaling slowly, trying to feel the world as he always had.
The street was silent. A passing car. A dog barking in the distance.
Normally, his senses would have instinctively cataloged everything - threat, presence, imbalance.
Tonight they were left behind.
A pressure settled in his chest, not sharp enough to hurt, not strong enough to alarm him. Just present. Constant. Like standing in water that reached higher than before.
Ichigo pressed a hand against his sternum.
It wasn't pain.
It was drag.
His Substitute Soul Reaper badge lay cold against his skin.
It doesn't shine. It doesn't vibrate. Just cold.
Ichigo pulled it out and stared at it. The skull emblem faintly reflected the light from the porch and its surface was flawless. For a moment, just a moment, he thought he looked thinner. As if something had been microscopically worn away.
Ichigo shook his head:
"Get it together."
The irritation also came late.
Across the street, a cat knocked over a dumpster. The crash should have scared him.
It didn't.
He felt the jolt afterwards - a late spike of adrenaline that came like an echo with nothing to reflect.
Ichigo slowly stood up.
This was not exhaustion.
This was not stress.
It felt like being too close to something huge, something that exerted pressure without intention. Like gravity - indifferent, inevitable.
And somewhere deep in his soul, a familiar bond tightened, no pulling, no knocking...
...but giving feedback.
Ichigo's breathing clouded slightly as he exhaled.
He stood looking at it.
The air wasn't cold enough for that.
The fog disappeared almost instantly, leaving nothing behind.
Ichigo clenched his jaw and muttered:
"Rukia...
Immediately he felt foolish. There was no voice. No vision. No message. Just that old connection, strained and humming weakly, like an overloaded cable.
He was not being summoned.
He was being affected.
Within the Soul Society, the swords resisted the silence.
Within the Rukongai, cold shadows taught the souls to rest.
And here, in the World of the Living, Ichigo Kurosaki was perfectly safe, perfectly alive, and a little slower to feel what mattered.
The anger still came.
The fear still continued.
The resolution is still burned.
They were simply a moment too late.
And Ichigo understood, with a clarity that required no panic:
Whatever was stabilising on the other side was starting to come through the link.
Not to talk.
Not to ask.
But to balance... using him as weight.
He walked back in without another word and the door closed behind him.
The house was warm.
The night was quiet.
And somewhere far away, a system that didn't think about him at all adjusted... and found that he was moving a little slower than before.