A/N: I have held onto these two vignettes for a very long time, and somehow I felt like posting it. This still is my most special story and I have been playing with the idea of telling two sides of this story, each from Ichigo and Rukia's perspectives, for quite a while now.

Their personal stories may not be as jarring and dramatic as the tale that you have read already, but each moment has the potential of greatness if only it is told.

I guess I just want to thank you all for your support for this story all these time.

Ichigo stood in front of his forgotten lunch on the kitchen table, still holding the glass of water he had just poured, it was just beginning to dawn upon him whose lunch he had eaten today. He had just assumed that their perspective bento boxes were mixed up in the morning rush, but it was blatantly obvious his had been sitting on the table for the whole day and whose lunch he had eaten.

The pain in his back from Rukia's shove on the way home lessened somewhat as he opened his untouched lunch to heat it up. Carrying the plate up the stairs to her room, Ichigo fought to consolidate the look of annoyance on his face, but to no avail as it nagged at him that she had not eaten anything all day because of him. He opened her bedroom door and found her bending over her math homework with a vengeance. Laying the plate down beside her, he caught her eye and asked:

"How did you sneak into my classroom?"

She dazed for a second, not realizing what he was talking about, but she soon caught on with a slight blush and turned her face away at an angle.

"I gave it to Inoue," she tried to keep her tone light, but her darting glances at the plate betrayed her hunger, "I wasn't hungry."

Ichigo knew that she wouldn't eat as long as he was there, so he got up to leave.

"Eat your lunch next time, you need it more than I do. I mean," he paused with a serious glance, "you'll never get any taller if you don't."

Ichigo closed the door just in time to hear her textbook hitting against it. He winced nonetheless, imagining if it really made contact with his head like it was meant to.

For the first time in her six years on this earth Rukia realized how big the world in fact was, and how grossly she overestimated her own abilities. Looking at the countless faces looming so far above her head, panic began to inflate uncontrollably in her chest. As the world became endless, without any boundaries, the primal fear rose that she could just get lost in it without the anchorage of her name or anyone who can tell who she was.

People, dressed so colourfully that Rukia felt scorned for a moment by their utter ignorance of the seriousness of her predicament, streamed by her small figure. She tried to compensate for the height difference by standing up on her toes and pulling her neck as tall as it would go, but the sight of her parents remained elusive. Apprehensive of the endless flow of the crowd before her and with a sensibility premature for a six year old, Rukia found a slightly quieter place and sat down in wait. Despite all, she still could not help but tense up the slightest whenever anyone looked as if they were approaching her waiting place. They will find her, she told herself.

The pain of being alone at a summer festival is one that even a young child would understand, a far too early taste of how it felt to be an outsider to a world of happiness. Ichigo's appearance at that moment, thus, could not be anymore timely. She saw his back first, the orange mop on his head separating him from the crowd, but she did not need that to recognize him. The shape of his hair, ears, the white of his neck and shoulder peeking through the collar of his disheveled yukata, they all came together to make one image that needed no processing in her mind, which at a mere glance transmitted to her that at least someone still knew who she was. She sat still in her place even as he came into view, waiting for him to find her. He would turn around, he would.

"Rukia!" He called when he did.

She stood up and tears fell, as she realized the need to do so for the first time that night. Like the moment Helen Keller finally understood "water", it became a tangible idea to her then that he was her brother, the reliance of a lifetime tied by blood. The idea stood clear in her mind for the rest of her life. Rukia asked if Ichigo remembered that day years later, and was disheartened when he shook his head. That moment was of such brilliance to her that she thought he saw it too against the night sky, the moment as "brother" sparked to life in her mind.