Chapter 294: Birth
Matsushita Yusuke returned to Soul Society and kept a low profile.
Ichigo was ten now. By rough count, only a few years remained before the main story began moving.
That meant a final push was needed.
He kept running the squad, kept finding opportunities to sharpen himself. But as had been observed before -- at his current level, meaningful advancement was genuinely difficult to come by. There were no obvious paths left.
So he waited. He kept going. He let the days move.
Time passed with its characteristic speed.
And then one evening, Matsushita Yusuke was not in bed at his usual hour.
He was pacing back and forth in front of a Squad 4 emergency ward, expression tight, unable to stay still.
Nobody was with him. He was alone with his own thinking -- though that quiet didn't last long, because footsteps came from behind him, and he half-turned to look.
Gin Ichimaru was approaching at a fast walk with two trusted squad members behind him.
"Captain. What's going on?"
He had been working through some administrative tasks when other squad members mentioned that Matsushita Yusuke had left the compound in a sudden hurry. Concluding something unexpected had happened, Gin dropped everything and followed, moving quickly enough that he had arrived at Squad 4 with a visible light sweat.
Matsushita Yusuke saw him, and his response was somewhat distracted -- he looked down, gave a simple acknowledgment.
"Yeah... something came up."
He didn't say what.
Which made it more interesting. Things that could actually produce this particular unfocused quality in Matsushita Yusuke were not easy to find anywhere across three worlds.
Gin was working through whether to press further when the emergency ward door behind them swung open hard.
Hinamori Momo came out quickly, still wearing gloves and a mask, and her gaze landed on Matsushita Yusuke immediately.
"Captain Matsushita. Good news!"
She was clearly in high spirits. She pulled off her gloves and said in a voice that matched her expression:
"Mother and daughter are both fine! And you can go in now!"
Matsushita Yusuke was through the door before she finished the sentence.
Gin stood where he was. He processed the information for exactly one second, and then the realization finished arriving.
"Captain -- wait, vice-captain -- she already had the baby?!"
"That is a very indelicate way to put it, Gin-seated-officer!"
Hinamori was in an excellent mood and made no effort to disguise it.
As Soifon's dedicated support over these past weeks, she had performed her role well, and the outcome was the best possible one. So her tone carried a small edge of genuine pride, and the smile on her face was the kind that didn't require effort to maintain.
"Vice-Captain Soifon started showing signs suddenly, and we made the call to move quickly. Looking at the result, it was exactly the right decision."
"But -- but--"
Gin rubbed the back of his head, reaching for something he had half-heard while talking with Matsumoto Rangiku a few days back.
"Wasn't Vice-Captain Soifon's due date supposed to be--"
"A due date is an estimate of approximate timing, not a specific prediction. After about eight months of development, labor can begin at any point. The actual date is always approximate."
More information that would probably never come up again.
Though for reasons Gin could not immediately explain, his mind went directly to Matsumoto Rangiku.
He pressed his lips together, tapped his own forehead lightly, and made a deliberate effort to stop the direction his thoughts were heading.
"So right now -- wait. Hold on a moment."
The information had come in several pieces and the pieces hadn't finished assembling themselves.
"You said 'mother and daughter?'"
Hinamori's eyes seemed to light up slightly. The way she said the next part had the quality of someone sharing a secret.
"That's right! Mother and daughter are fine! Captain Matsushita has a daughter, and she is very cute!"
Inside the ward.
Soifon was lying in the hospital bed, her expression unusually soft, looking at the small shape near the headboard.
Matsushita Yusuke was trying to produce a similar expression and finding it harder than expected.
What did a newborn actually look like?
He had seen one before -- at the hospital in the living world, years ago. But seeing it again now, the feeling was the same: a small, curled, slightly compressed shape that looked less like a person and more like something that had not quite finished arriving.
So even when it's my own child, it's not going to look any different, is it.
He came forward slowly and stopped at the edge of Soifon's bed.
"Look -- isn't she absolutely adorable?!"
Facing Soifon's tone of undisguised excitement, Matsushita Yusuke scratched his head and produced a helpless smile.
There was an honest gap in how they were experiencing this moment. She had carried this for nine months. He was looking at a small stranger for the first time.
What he was actually feeling, looking at that small shape, was a mixture of things: curiosity about the fact that life came into the world like this -- complicated and specific and small -- and a quieter, more uncomfortable awareness that as her father, he could not fully guarantee her safety.
In this particular world, the only being with the kind of authority that could truly shape everything from above was the Soul King. Everyone else, including him, was operating without that guarantee.
But the thought didn't have time to fully settle, because Soifon suddenly turned her head and made a small sound of discovery.
Before he could respond, she had reached over, taken his right hand, and carefully separated out his little finger, pressing it against the baby's palm.
A beat.
The small hand closed around his finger.
Grip reflex. Standard newborn behavior. An entirely instinctive response, the body doing what it did before the mind could participate.
But Matsushita Yusuke, feeling the force of that grip -- small and yet somehow absolutely there, present in a way that was difficult to explain -- went still for a moment.
Something remarkable.
This tiny, fragile thing. And there was no distance between them at all.
Just thinking that produced an expression he hadn't planned on.
Warmth. Anticipation. Life.
The words came without his choosing them, and Soifon looked at the baby, then looked at him, and said with a smile:
"So? This is our child."
Our child.
He repeated the words quietly, half-formed, and without entirely expecting it, felt something sharp at the bridge of his nose.
Coming into this world. Finding a way to survive. Building strength. Making a life that could actually hold.
The whole long trajectory of it -- every step, every difficulty, all the years of careful, grinding work -- had been aimed at something. And somewhere along the way he had stopped fully realizing what it had been aimed toward.
But right now, holding a grip so small he almost couldn't feel the weight of it, the connection was concrete in a way it hadn't been before.
Someone carrying my bloodline, closer to me than anything else in the world, is alive and here.
Something landed in his chest like a stone dropping into deep water -- the impact spreading outward, the weight of it settling.
"What? Are you actually crying?"
Soifon was looking at him with an expression halfway between teasing and something softer.
Matsushita Yusuke turned his head to the side without letting go.
He pressed the fingers of his free hand to the bridge of his nose.
His voice, when it came out, had a slight roughness to it.
"No. It was the wind."
"There are no windows in this room."
"Then the air conditioning."
"It's November. Late autumn. What do you think the temperature is."
...Infuriating.
"..."
"Just admit it!"
Tap tap tap.
Quick, soft footsteps from behind.
He half-turned. Kotetsu Isane was standing in the doorway holding a clipboard, smiling and giving a small wave to both of them.
"I'm sorry to interrupt -- but we do need to run some follow-up checks and handle a few things, so could I ask Captain Matsushita to step outside for a little while?"
The process in Soul Society was not identical to the living world, but care for a newborn still involved multiple steps -- screenings, ruling out various conditions, all of it necessary.
And Soifon, captain-level constitution notwithstanding, had just done something that cost considerable energy. She needed to rest.
Matsushita Yusuke turned back to her one more time, and reached over to pat her head -- a little awkward, a little clumsy.
"You did well."
She raised an eyebrow. Her mouth started to open. Then it closed again.
She turned her head to the other side.
"Hmph."
He left the room.
And in the short time that brief exchange had taken, the hallway outside had filled up.
Squad 11 members were lined up in neat rows along the corridor, led by Gin and Zaraki, who surged forward the moment he appeared and all started talking at once.
"Captain! How is the vice-captain?!"
"You just left without telling anyone -- that's too much! We're not outsiders!"
"Next time something like this happens you have to say something -- at least let us help clear the way or something!"
"It's the middle of the night -- clear the way for what exactly?"
The squad was composed mainly of people who could fight but had limited ability to manage a calm conversation. What they were saying was not particularly organized.
The female squad members in the group were somewhat more practical about it -- several had apparently already submitted requests to serve as caregivers over the coming days.
The enthusiasm was genuine and it showed. Matsushita Yusuke's expression shifted, and he gave them a small nod.
"Thank you. I appreciate it."
Beyond his own squad, there were unexpected arrivals.
"You got here faster than anyone."
He said it with something approaching wonder, and gave the youngest captain currently present a smile and a pat on the shoulder.
"Hitsugaya. You're not busy tonight?"
The recipient of the pat looked extremely displeased with the greeting, leaned away from the hand, crossed his arms, and turned his head to the side.
"How could I be busy?! I heard the news and thought -- I don't know, I should come. It seemed like the kind of thing you come for. Because -- because..."
He trailed off, gaze dropping, and finished the sentence quietly, more to himself than anyone.
"The two of you looked after me. When I was getting started."
Matsumoto Rangiku appeared at his shoulder, smiling.
"The captain wanted to come straight over, but I told him there was no point rushing in on this kind of thing, so we stopped on the way and bought two baskets of fruit. Nutrition after delivery is very important!"
Matsushita Yusuke thanked them, pulled Hitsugaya under his arm, and gave the white-haired head a rub.
"Ha. I'll tell Soifon. Good of you to think of it."
"Let GO -- my hair -- my hair is getting messed up!"
After that the visits kept coming.
Captains. Vice-captains. Representatives sent on behalf of those who couldn't come themselves.
As had been said before -- a new birth in the Gotei 13 was an event that hadn't happened in a very long time. What it stirred up was proportional to how rare it was: one wave after another, each arrival sending out the next.
"The captain originally wanted to send a sake set, but I considered it genuinely impractical as a gift and took the liberty of substituting this complete skincare collection. And given Vice-Captain Soifon's current situation, I specifically selected formulas confirmed safe for mother and infant use!"
Ise Nanao pushed her glasses up with distinct pride.
Matsushita Yusuke's expression in that moment was approximately identical to those of the other male squad members standing around him.
What is she talking about.
But when Kotetsu Isane and the other women in the hallway saw what was in the collection and immediately reacted with audible admiration, the significance of the gift became somewhat clearer.
"In any case -- I'll thank you on Soifon's behalf."
The hallway stayed lively well into the night.
Given that the birth had happened around midnight, Matsushita Yusuke had assumed the impact would be limited. He was wrong.
Close to half the Gotei 13 seemed to be in some kind of heightened state. Visitors were still arriving at nearly four in the morning.
Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni arrived with Sasakibe.
He came quietly. No formal procession. Just the two of them, and what he carried was considerably simpler than his usual presentation might have suggested.
"These are the children's clothes I mentioned. From birth through approximately three years -- they cover that whole range. Works for a boy or a girl."
He had actually done it. Matsushita Yusuke had assumed it was a passing comment.
"How is Soifon?"
Matsushita Yusuke glanced back toward the room.
"She's asleep. She looked exhausted. Probably won't be up before noon."
"Ah."
A sound of quiet disappointment.
The old man had been hoping to look in on the baby.