Dude. This is sad—even Google is against Ishida-Inoue love. I looked up "IshiHime" one day with a friend and it redirected me to "IchiHime". It's like...ah snap, a total slap to Ishida's face. But IshiHime has more search results. Haha, Ichigo got owned...ok, yeah, I'm a dork. (Said friend stated above gets some conversational credit, due to many discussions about a topic Orihime will bring up in 'Part Two'.)

And so, just to be safe from lawsuits once more: I do not own Bleach or its (sexy) characters. That awesome fool Kubo does, not I, the Otaku Samurai. Though, I honestly wouldn't mind owning Ishida-kun...

*grin*

The sun shone bright and mild yellow as Ishida Uryu briskly walked out of a small brick building with a little white plastic bag in hand. Twisting to a quick left off the street, he habitually adjusted his glasses to the brilliant gleam of sunlight now penetrating his keen, dark blue vision, while his white shoes tapped lightly on the equally white concrete curb; he made a predominant pace back to his apartment in a contending speed.

Uryu's navy blue eyes slowly trailed down to the austere ground as he made a right turn, apathetically crossing the non-busy street. His walking was mechanical, predominant—he knew his way, and so he stuck to his course, never waiving, never straying.

A slight breeze ruffled his dark hair, and it shined with a breezy sleek shimmer.

He lived in the uneventful suburb area of town—away from the main part of Karakura—so he had a while until he got to his home destination. But, despite the superfluous time he acquired when going to town, Uryu always preferred things that way. It was rather enjoyable walking alone in the tranquilities of himself, of his suburbia nature, of his vast mind—just to be deep in thought of things, alone in a thorough reflection of himself, and the world around him. Thoughts of nothing in particular flooded his vast mind, but they were thoughts of just anything that entered into his psyche. He would ponder the thought continuously until it strung out into something else, and so on. Uryu's mouth tilted up at the sides, and his glasses gleamed with a flash of sun.

Indeed.

It's intellectual snowballing.

Uryu's white shoes clicked along the ground in an austere metronome.

Gratefully, he grinned at some of his most recent thoughts.

Of all the things he had been thinking of lately, most of them had been of his friends—or, by essentially technical and paradoxical means, his enemies. But friends—yes, they were undoubtedly his friends—were such wonderful things to have. It was quite different from when he was just the loner, the quiet one, the solitudinarian in the endless sea of students and people alike; he was the Quincy, and one of the last living and fighting on, so he felt that he was destined to be alone. But then—Uryu chuckled lightly—he gained the friendship of Ichigo, Chad, Rukia, Orihime...and after them, many more "friends" and acquaintances beyond belief.

And it was a great feeling to have these friends of his—it was a feeling like no other. No matter how many times he would try to mentally explain it, he would always come to the definite conclusion that the feeling was totally indescribable; some things were never meant to be explained, so he was content with the unknown—and it didn't perturb him at all.

Uryu crossed another street, made an immediate left, and softly smiled as familiarity engulfed his senses—taking a deep breath, he inhaled the fresh scent of grass as his ears pricked to the soft sounds of free flowing water, and he instantly knew that he was approaching the river that gracefully cut through Karakura.

His feet stopped with their stride and he came to an immediate halt. Within a sudden blink, with the sun starting to dim with a dense shadow now covering his skin, Uryu curiously looked up into the sky, reflecting the peculiar matching bright blue celestial heaven with his own bright, yet dark blue gaze.

Clouds.

There were endless clouds. They timelessly filled the sky, these clouds, like mass multitudes of blanched fish in a wide aquatic abyss of cerulean blue. Each puffy billow floated in their own unique shape, each moving at their own carefree pace of the wind—they were beautiful white pillows of fluffy cotton air, and he was completely taken aback by the glorious sight that tenaciously captivated him—that firmly planted him to the ground. A slight breeze blew through his shining black hair as the sun reappeared once more, washing his body with warmth and comfort, setting his heart afire in a blithe radiance.

All was quiet, and all was free, and he humbly concluded that it was, undoubtedly, a good day.

Upon looking up at the sky, he went back to his soft rumination. Uryu never really had much time to relax in the day. Lately, "relax" wasn't even included in his vast vocabulary. First there was school, then there was the never-ending pursuit against the hollows, and then more fighting, fighting, fighting—and then, in an anticlimactic downturn of unanimously climactical events, more school. The only time there was rest was when one of the group would get hurt, but even then...

Orihime would heal the wounds, they'd recuperate, and they'd be back on their way.

Suddenly, the image of a certain gingery auburn haired girl appeared before him in cerebration; lightheartedly, he sighed and smiled once more—his mind built up with a lax bliss.

Inoue-san.

Much like the clouds overhead, she had been floating in and out of his thoughts the most out of everyone, with her bubbly personality, her ever growing love and compassion, and—how out of character it would be, Uryu would always want to laugh out loud at this—her randomly, irrationally unsavory taste in food. Most found it revolting, and most would tear just at the thought of her odd concoctions, if not fully vomit. But, that was one of the many things he liked about her.

In fact...he liked...just about everything about her. Her hair, her smile, her overall personality, her eyes, her compassion for all things, that small way she crinkled her nose when she laughed and the glitter in her eyes...

With blue eyes wide, Uryu's face reddened a blush of crimson, and he continued walking, gripping the small plastic back tighter. He revved his pace.

Like? No, it was more of a...

Love.

He negatively shook his head with the fervor of a violent, denying back draft as soon as the word entered his mind—he, Ishida Uryu, had no chances whatsoever with her, Inoue Orihime. It was written out plainly with black and white in front of his bespectacled face, and she was totally out of his league. Yes, he may have a little "crush" on her, and yes he loved every single minute he spent with her—but no, it just wasn't remotely possible. Over the years it seemed that his feelings possibly have blossomed to love, but with a squelching stomp of denial, he always managed to suppress his feelings back into their dormant state.

She couldn't love him back; no, she didn't even like him that way...

And "love" is a torturous thing.

A dark shadow fell over him, but it wasn't—yet partially—a shadow of dire emotion; pausing his lanky stride once more, he looked back up into the sky.

He soaked in, examined, analyzed, dissected, every line of each cloud—cumulus, cirrus, some wispy stratus, and even their own subgroups were out—and he couldn't help but get mesmerized by the beauty of the white epic sight that beheld him. And once more as the sun appeared he thought back to Orihime, and Uryu grinned sadly to himself as forgotten warmth washed over him once more.

Orihime was his cloud; the cloud that he could see and observe, but the cloud that he couldn't reach. No matter how high he would run and reach for her, she would still never be his. Orihime was unattainable, impossible…and he was just utterly hopeless. This was something he just couldn't help—besides, she had another love in mind. And even if she thought nobody saw it, Uryu still did.

He sighed desperately.

Orihime was slowly floating away from him, and soon, she would be gone, away from sight, away from the very space which Uryu was present. He almost chuckled sadly to himself—it was just only a matter of time.

Uryu sighed once more, and turned back around continuing his walk. Now fully downcast, he inhaled deeply—but his blue eyes dilated and he gulped; his heart skipped a beat, his steady breathing ceased and were now replaced with a fervor of desperate snorts for oxygen. He was suffocating—the laughing air evaded his lungs in a breathless tiptoed skip. Wheezing and gasping on some unknown fuzzy substance that had flew up his nose, he barely managed to gulp as he violently huffed out air.

"T-The—hell—?"

He caught the sight of a familiar gingery auburn haired figure appear in his keen bespectacled navy blue peripheral vision.

"Oh, Ishida-kun!"

Knowingly (and not in the very least surprisingly), Uryu covered his nose with a hand and whipped his head over to the bubbly voice—as if that lovesick bastard Fate had it, Orihime was sitting on the slope of the grassy hill, holding a dull green stem of a dried dandelion. The soft sounds of clear water echoed around her, and she happily looked up with a carefree smile as the sun reflected off each wave, showering her in the radiance of a heavenly glow. Uryu quickly gulped—Orihime gave him a salute after tossing the dandelion stem, and cheerfully waved with her opposite hand.

So it was dandelion he had so gracefully choked on.

Damn it all.

"H-Hello, Inoue-san," Uryu greeted after clandestinely spitting out the remaining flower debris that had traveled from the inside of his nose to his mouth. He was glad she didn't catch him spitting—that was rude, of all things. Not to mention unsanitary. "How,"—he gulped dryly—"a-are you?"

Orihime laughed lightly, and dreamily sprawled herself down on the soft slope of green grass. She sighed with limitless pleasure. "I'm absolutely wonderful, Ishida-kun! It's so pretty out today, I just had to go out and watch the clouds...they're just so beautiful."

As Uryu gazed down at her unworried state, it brought him an inner peace, and he smiled slightly to himself. There was no doubt about it:

She is beautiful.

"Indeed, they are." Uryu's voice was gently lucid as he spoke with the smile still written tangibly on his free lips.

He continued gazing down at her, not even daring to look at the clouds—she was all he needed.

Still lying on the grass, she looked up at him with a big grin, and in return, he brightly looked into her upside-down face. Her gray eyes examined his glasses, his wind-blown hair, his mouth, his eyes—but then quickly shifted to the white plastic bag slung around his wrist. Orihime pointed at him with her head slightly tilted to the side, watching him.

"Oh! Did you go into town?"

Adjusting his glasses, his face slowly flushed with color.

"Y-Yes, Inoue-san, I did."

She scrunched her eyebrows together, a hasty question being processed and pondered on the tip of her tongue, but she blurted it out nonetheless without fully ingesting the simple thoughts of personal boundaries.

"Whadjaget, Ishida-kun?" She found the little smiley face saying Thank You in red print on the plastic bag highly amusing.

Uryu wasn't fully taken surprised by the question; it was very typical of Orihime—her bold inquisitiveness—but he couldn't help but blush a little deeper. That was another small aspect he liked about her, among all of the other things. But, the idea of her actually interested in his meek little personal life was what thrilled him the most. It was exceptionally nice that she cared about his life and the small menial things he did in his free time.

"I just happened to have purchased some different types of threads—two spools of point five thread, precisely—since I need to make certain repairs on some of my apparel. That last hollow battle we had did rather subduing damage on my mantle..."

A toothy grin formed on her perfect face—a flash of insecurity cut through his soul. Was she laughing at him? Uryu nervously gulped—it was the mantle, wasn't it?

Orihime giggled.

"Ishida-kun! You're so cool!"

Uryu raised his sleek black eyebrows in cynical speculation. Wow. No one had ever told him something like that before. Really?—he was never really the "cool" one—and the loners never really got any of the credit...besides, it was always Ichigo who got all of the glory, and Uryu was just in his damned mask-and-sword shinigami shadow.

Uryu's heart skipped multiple beats, and with a dark blue gaze he eyed her skeptically. Well, this circumstance was definitely new—he felt a sudden need to justify himself.

"Why?—H-How?"

"Aw, come on Ishida-kun, you're one of the coolest people I know! You can make anything from sewing, you're crazy smart, and plus you have an awesome Quincy bow that you fight with...oh-oh-oh, and you're new Seele Schneider sword-thingy!—that's the coolest, you know! It looks like it glows in the dark...like a giant glow-stick...and when you twirl it around when you're all dramatic, it looks like you're a rave dancer.How are you not cool? Plus," she giggled, "I do like your cape."

His black eyebrows crinkled and his mouth pursed in humor. If anybody else would've said that, Uryu would have probably been pissed—they would be insulting his Quincy weaponry, his whites and blues, and it would have been along the fine lines of stomping dirtily on his pride—but she was Orihime, and oh how he wanted to lightheartedly laugh at her statement.

It was just so cute.

Forcing himself to keep his stoic composure, yet obviously giddy, he grinned down at her.

"Really?"

Her face was sincere, and her voice was equally as sweet—it melted his thawing chivalrous heart with a smile.

"Uh huh," she threw him a hearty thumbs up, "really really."

Uryu laughed silently, but just like that, against his wishes, the conversation instantly died.

On cue, the breezy air immediately turned awkward while the lone Quincy stood there; neither of the two emitted a single word as the slight breeze blew against them. A few seconds flew by, torturous tick by tick, white, puffy cloud by cloud—should he say something? Should he just leave? Should he just stay? What he would do just make a simple move—the things he would give just to be with her, by themselves, and with nobody else there to ruin his one in a lifetime moment of bliss.

Damn his insecurities. And her gray eyes were still on him.

Uryu glanced away, and cleared his throat before dryly gulping; warily, he inhaled a deep breath of grassy scent. He clenched, and then unclenched, his fists. His heart galloped into a hefty beat as he noted that his already small possibilities were extremely limited with Orihime, and he was about to excuse himself to leave—a cowardly move, this he already knew—until she timidly spoke up, cutting him off. It inwardly overjoyed him as she did.

"...Ishida-kun, would you like to join me?"

Uryu's heart almost stopped, and his already blanched face went totally blank. Overjoyed as he may be, her question still took him greatly aback. She was inviting him—on that beautiful sunny day—to spend time with her, and to just watch the clouds. He could have died due to the inevitable stun. In fact, he almost did.

Orihime quickly noticed his look of surprise and utter lack of enthusiasm, and deep feelings of anxiety shivered through her spine. She could feel a warm blush of pink spread across her face.

"Oh, w-well you know..." Orihime said hastily, sheepishly looking away, "...it's been kinda lonely, y'know, all day by myself. And since you're here, I would really enjoy your company, since nice days like this should be shared with o-others—um...and..."

Orihime looked back up at him, deep pigments of red now painted on her full cheeks, and he returned with a small blush of his own. He was puzzled as to why she was blushing, but how could he deny her? Besides, deep down in his heart, he had wished to stay. He gulped nervously, wishing that his stolidity would return, and not that damned anxiety that he always held dormant until he was around her.

"A-Ah—"

"Of course, you don't have to! I don't want you to feel obligated, since you were already busy until I stopped you with your shopping and stuff. You don't have to stay if you don't want to. But...it's always nice...when...we...hang out...together."

It was as if she was trying to find the right words to say, and despite her uncertainty, he grinned at the rationale of it all. Why not reap the ultimate benefits of his obvious cowardice and her oblivious audacity, and just go with it? This was his chance—and besides, he never had any relaxation time anyway (this was his loophole-scapegoat)...and when he did he was either finding some way to train, patching up impatient zipper transplants to his shirts, or re-bleaching (haha) his Quincy outfit of blood or those intolerable grass and dirt stains.

So, Uryu would assertively take this moment to his full advantage, and savory it fully. Of all things, he sure as hell deserved it. Being with her might increase the points on his low blood pressure, but what harm would it really do? Besides...

The way she looks at me...I can't ever deny her.

He finally grinned.

"If you wish, Inoue-san, I will stay since you so generously proposed it."

"Y-Yes, of course, Ishida-kun! Oh yay!—This will be so fun, thank you!"

"There's no need to thank me, it's really no problem..."

Anything for you, Inoue-san.

She plopped back down onto the grassy slope, looked up at him as she laid there, and patted the grass next to her, motioning him to come sit beside her—and submissively, Uryu nimbly walked down, loosening the bag at his wrist. The wind softly blew through his black hair as he lightly trudged lower towards the river, engulfed once more with the utter stupor of the beautifully subliminal weather. Finally, he arrived where Orihime sat and gently followed suit, easing himself down next to the carefree girl. Setting the plastic bag next to him, his heart skipped a beat.

They had been in close proximity before, but now, with everyone home and resting, it felt so different. More intimate. Sort of like...

...a date.

His blush couldn't have reddened deeper until she broke the silence—in a flash of Hime quickness, she pointed up at the sky with reverence written plainly upon her bright face.

"Lookie, Ishida-kun! That cloud right there looks like a big giraffe! Oh-oh-oh, and that one over there! It looks like one of those steam engine locomotive-thingies—ah, and that one! A bonsai tree!—and, oh my...a cute little rainbow trout holding an umbrella while drinking iced Chai tea and riding a dwarf-leopard!"

He couldn't help but sense the tremors of intense euphoric emotion shiver through his spine—it confused him—but Uryu knew with a slight hint of mental unconsciousness that it was the newly formed roots of the deepest of inevitable affection.

And that was love.

Uryu's head tilted up immediately, a laugh at his lips which reflected the silent love he felt for her, and the wind blew carelessly through their hair as he relished his sweet time with Orihime.