Ryuken Ishida sat alone in his office, staring at the folded sheet of paper which lay, unread, on the desk in front of him.

Ryuken was a clever man; he knew all too well that late in the afternoon his son had been paid a visit by Kisuke Urahara, and soon enough, Uryu's distinctive spiritual pressure had simply vanished, along with the Kurosaki boy's and a spiritual pressure which smelled vaguely hollow-ish.

It had not been necessary to read the note that Uryu had left in the hospital basement to deduce that his son had leapt at the earliest opportunity to take advantage of the loophole Ryuken had left open for him. The boy had even helped himself to his father's intentionally poorly-hidden supply of Quincy weapons.

Ryuken couldn't decide whether he was more upset that Uryu was so willing to disobey his father's wishes and put himself in danger, or proud that his son had taken the initiative to be autonomous and make his own decisions.

Even if those decisions happened to be very bad ones.

Well, a father's job was to give his child freedom, while simultaneously doing his best to steer the child away from harm. Ryuken had done the best he could.

Ryuken reached out his hand and tore the folded sheet of paper in half, before letting the pieces fall into the small waste-paper bin by his feet.

As the paper fluttered down, Ryuken caught a glimpse of two words along one of the torn edges.

'... rescue her.'

"A girl?" Ryuken muttered to himself. "How disappointingly clichéd." He fished the paper out of the bin and placed the pieces back together, curious in spite of himself.

'Orihime taken by arrancars. I can't not rescue her. Ichigo would only mess it up and get her killed if he went alone.'

Ryuken raised an eyebrow, unimpressed by his son's not-so-subtle way of hanging a lampshade on the loophole. It was almost as though Uryu had really been saying 'ha ha, I outwitted you!'

If only you knew, boy, Ryuken thought.

Still, it was moderately interesting that Uryu had chosen to make a girl his reason for disregarding Ryuken's wishes.

Ryuken took a piece of tape from a roll in his drawer and carefully smoothed out the paper before reattaching the two pieces. Taking out a small box from the very back of the drawer, the one with Uryu's childhood photographs inside, Ryuken carefully stowed away the taped-up note and resolved to find out as much about this Orihime girl as he could.

After all, she must be special indeed if she had managed to catch his son's attention.