A/N: It's amazing what kanji practice can lead to. 'Zoku' is the second character in 'kazoku', meaning 'family'.

He is working on his homework when the door to his bedroom opens. For a split second, he thinks Sensei will be there, slipping in while Father is away to teach him the ways of the Quincy. But no- Sensei is dead, and it is all his fault. Already, he can feel the tears bubbling up in his eyes, his nose threatening to start running. Gripping his pencil tighter, he bites the inside of his lip and tries to focus on the neat lines of kanji that have begun to blur with his attempts to hold back his sobs. He mustn't let Father see him cry- he would be scolded again, and without Sensei's warm presence to run back to, the admonishments seemed a hundred times colder. There is no such luck for him today- Father catches the signs at once.

"There's no sense in crying over it, Uryuu. It was his own stubbornness that led him to his death."

The words are worse than a slap to the face, but he keeps his head down, determined to focus on his homework. His hand shakes as he moves down to the next column and slowly begins to compose the next character.

"At this point, you would do better to forget everything he taught you. You're young enough to find yourself a better purpose."

He wants to scream at Father, to hit him, anything to make him stop. Before, he always wondered how a son could hate his father so much. Now, he thinks he's beginning to understand.

"Do you understand me, Uryuu? He clung to outdated and impractical traditions, and this was how it ended. Is that what you want as well?"

The chair screeches with the force of his movement, and he drops the pencil, not caring that he's just ruined the kanji he had been writing.

"SHUT UP!"

The room is deadly silent in the moments after his scream. Father's expression is shocked, like he'd never heard those words before. He realizes now that this is the first time he's ever talked back to Father like this, and he wonders if he'll be punished. Something in the back of his mind reminds him that if he can't even defend his Quincy Honour in front of Father, how will he be able to do it anywhere else? He knows he is still crying, though the fat teardrops feel insubstantial against his burning cheeks. Father watches him standing there, hands curled into fists so tightly that his knuckles are going white. Then he opens his mouth as if to say something, but instead turns and leaves the room, shutting the door behind him. Breathing heavily, Uryuu slowly turns to sit back down, tugging the chair back into place and sitting down. His whole body is shaking, and he is in a daze as he picks up the pencil and tries to restart the kanji for "family". After a moment, the throws his pencil to the ground and buries his face in his arms so Father will not hear him cry.

Ryuuken can hear his son's sobs from the other side of the door where he stands. Something in the boy's outburst compels him to linger and wonder what sort of switch had been thrown. He does not mourn his father's death. The man was a fool, to cling to a dying ideal, and even more so for dragging Uryuu in as well. This is what he tells himself as he removes the plastic from a pack of cigarettes and a lighter he bought at the convenience store on the way home. Lighting one, he brings it to his lips and inhales his first breath of poison in fifteen years. He is unused to the raw scrape of the smoke in his throat, and coughs, once. This is the cause of the single tear that comes to his eye, one that he promptly wipes away before exhaling, sending any shred of remorse out into the air with the fumes.