Sitting with hands cupped under her chin, elbows resting on her knees, Rukia tried not to make it blatently obvious that all of her attention was focused on the metal box attached to the side of the doorway that led into the Kurosaki household. The box -- mailbox, they called it -- had been there since she first came here 5 years ago, and she'd never paid it much attention before. But then... she hadn't had any reason to. But that was before the events of last week.

Last week, when she'd stood there with the rest of the Kurosaki family and watched a taller, less-lanky substitute shinigami give one last farewell wave before walking down a long tunnel into one of those horrible huge flying machines. She didn't trust them, was determined that she would NEVER set foot in one, and why the hell couldn't he just go to school i here /i like he'd been doing? What was wrong with the college he was going to, the one a few towns over? At least then he was home on the weekends and she wasn't so damned i bored /i .

He was supposed to be writing to her, she'd i demanded /i that he do so, and he'd promised -- after a few kicks and threats and some creative blackmail -- that he would. So where was the letter. He'd been there a week, it didn't take THAT long to get settled in, did it? She'd overheard Isshin reassuring Yuzu that America was a very nice place, that it wasn't some horrible place where he'd get mugged or killed, and Isshin wouldn't lie about that. So what was he i doing /i ? Irritating her, that's what.

Musings were interrupted by the arrival of the familiar white truck and the shuffling of feet. Yanking her head back from it's vantage point on the roof, she watched with rapt interest as the uniformed man rummaged around in the truck and made his way over to the metal box, lifting the lid and dropping a sheaf of papers into it. As soon as the truck rumbled away, she dropped to the ground and stuck one greedy little hand into the box, yanking out everything and flipping through before tossing it back in with a grin, one stamp-covered envelope clutched in her fist. Finally.

Glancing around, she darted back down the path and into the door, unaware of Isshin's chuckle from his vantage point in the clinic window.