#you are not immune to the persimmon scene

[giri-giri-waifu]

[recurring-polynya]

Re: Hold On, Hold On outtake. Hrgjgks academy squad depression book club and Momo's Book Opinions. To be fair I too am not immune to battle scenes where insides become outsides, lovingly described. If I can double dip deleted scenes I'm gonna ask about What We Do With Our Hearts.

Thank you!! My husband read a lot of David Eddings in his teen years, and I was a Mercedes Lackey girl, and the Kira-Hinamori literary feud is based very specifically on the way we lovingly rip each other for our respective tastes in trashy late 80s/early 90s fantasy.

Haven't had any Hearts requests yet, so here's a proto-version of Byakuya's childhood memory of his Memorable Outing with Grandfather.

🍃 🍂 ❄️

Grandfather smiled back, his mustache curving upward. “Alright, we’re here! Are you ready to answer some questions and show me how hard you have been studying?”

“Yes!” Byakuya grinned. 

“Down at the bottom of the hill we just climbed, did you see the tunnel? Big enough for two carts to go through side-by-side?”

“Yes! There was a cart with vegetables coming through it!”

“Do you know where that tunnel leads?”

“Red Hollow Gate!”

“Exactly right! Now, look out that way, my boy!” Grandfather frowned. “Can you see past the wall?”

The big embankment they were standing on abutted the outer wall of the Seireitei, which protruded about a meter above the earth, presumably to keep people from toppling over the edge. 

“Yes, of course,” Byakuya replied, going up on his tippy toes.

Grandfather raised an eyebrow at his efforts for a moment, before scooping Byakuya up and settling him on his shoulders. “There we go, is that a little better?”

“Yes! Thank you, Grandfather!” 

“Look out. What do you see?”

“South Rukongai!” Byakuya declared, gently holding Grandfather’s soft, beautiful hair. He was extra careful not to pull. 

“How did you know?” Grandfather asked, sounding skeptical, as though Byakuya must have cheated somehow.

“Because it’s the closest gate to our house! We walked away from Soukyoku Hill to get here, and if this were one of the other gates, we would have had to walk around it!”

“Very good,” Grandfather replied softly. “Now here is a hard one. What is that, out at the edges?”

From his lofty vantage point, Soul Society stretched out before Byakuya, painted in brilliant reds and golds, even though the leaves were only beginning to turn inside the city. The further districts dulled into brown, and at the edges of what he could see, a soft, white fog hung in the air, obscuring what lay beyond. Byakuya squinted at the mist, trying to figure out what it might be. “It’s clouds, Grandfather!” he realized. “It’s snowing!”

“That’s right!” Grandfather agreed.

“But it’s not even November!” Byakuya gasped. He couldn’t imagine it snowing so early. 

“Winter starts early in the outer Rukon and moves inward,” Grandfather explained. “It’s very easy to see on a day like today, eh?”

“Will it be over earlier, too?”

“Later, actually. Winter is just longer on the periphery, and summer is as well. Here in the Seireitei, we get a long spring and autumn instead.”

“When will the snow get here?” Byakuya asked. “Tomorrow?” Already, grand visions of sledding and snowmen were filling his mind.

“It will be a few weeks yet,” Grandfather chuckled. 

“They’re lucky,” Byakuya pouted.

Grandfather’s hands patted against his knees. “Rukon winters are long and harsh. They probably think you are very lucky to live here in the city, where the persimmons are still ripening.”

“I don’t like persimmons. They’re too sweet and they feel squishy in my mouth.”

“Ah, that’s right! Well, we have other nice things here. Chestnuts?"

Byakuya continued to gaze outward, imagining what other strange wonders Rukongai might contain. Byakuya himself had never left the protective ring of the city walls. He was still at an age where he occasionally conflated his geography lessons with his storybooks, and to him, the Rukon was the place where samurai traveled out to fight demons and rescue kidnapped princesses. “It’s so big,” he gasped. 

“It is. It is vast,” Grandfather agreed. “It is impossible to protect, Byakuya, but it is our duty to try. It is easy to forget that.”

“Why can’t all the people there just move to the city?” Byakuya asked, wrinkling his nose.

“There are many reasons. The city is not big enough. The journey is dangerous. Most importantly, it is not proper for weak souls to linger in Soul Society. They have new lives awaiting them in the World of the Living. For them, Soul Society is like a road. A place to pass through. In fact, that is the entire purpose of Soul Society. We, those born of this place, are given power so that we can defend and preserve it.”

“Then why don’t we live out there, with them, then?” Byakuya suggested.

“Because there aren’t enough of us. In the city, we learn and train and grow strong, and teach our children how to carry on in our work. We also have many precious things that are kept in the city-- portals to the Living World, and all our knowledge in books and archives, and of course, our friends and families.”

“The people out there don’t have families?”

“They make little temporary families, but remember, they aren’t supposed to stay for long."