—And so, Tenjin granted my wish.
Ever heard a phrase like that before?
It’s the sort of expression you sometimes run into in rakugo or classical literature.
Put simply, it means, “I prayed to a god, and something impossible happened.”
And in stories, once something impossible happens, that tends to send everything else rolling off in all sorts of directions.
After all, if a god is granting your prayer, then things that should be absolutely, completely impossible can happen without batting an eye.
Objects or animals turning into humans is practically an everyday occurrence.
Then again, stories from Japan have always been full of some pretty outrageous material.
Our oldest historical chronicles have tales of cross-dressing and siblings marrying each other.
Move forward a little to the Heian period and you get stories about men and women switching places.
By the Edo period, somebody had even taken a famous foreign story and turned every major character into a woman.
There was also apparently someone who dreamed that a famous figure from the past appeared before him and said, “If you wanna do something lewd, I’ll turn into a woman, so come on and sleep with me!!” and somehow attained enlightenment because of it.
For that matter, Tenjin himself basically came about through the logic of, “That guy turned into a vengeful spirit, so let’s build him a shrine, worship him as a god, and maybe get some blessings out of the deal.”
So if you really get down to it, I suppose anything goes.
…What?
You’re wondering what any of this has to do with anything?
All right, then.
Let me describe the scene in front of me.
An enormous crowd of people had formed one long line.
At the front stood several men dressed in black kimono.
One by one, they checked the numbered tickets held by the people in line, called out things like “South” or “District Twenty,” and sent them off in different directions.
Oh, and every last one of those men had a Japanese sword at his waist.
By the time I’d taken in that much, it clicked.
Ah.
This wasn’t the World of the Living.
This was Soul Society.
I was in the world of BLEACH.
Well.
Since I’d already figured that out, I’d spent the last little while enthusiastically trying not to face reality.
Apparently, though, it was about time I accepted it.
I mean, this sort of thing has been happening in stories forever.
I’d just gotten dragged into HENTAI culture, that’s all.
In modern Japan, premises like this are practically ten a penny.
With no better option, I accepted half of it and resigned myself to the other half.
As one final act of pointless resistance, I tried to work out what had caused all this.
The usual possibilities would be dying in an accident, walking through some mysterious gate, drinking weird red water, sacrificing a little girl…
that sort of thing.
Except none of those rang a bell.
When I went back through my memories, the most plausible cause I could come up with was a visit I’d made to a certain god’s shrine.
It wasn’t as though I was especially religious.
New Year’s shrine-visit season had long since passed, and it was already getting warm enough to feel like summer.
For no particular reason, the idea had popped into my head, so I took a few trains and went to pay my respects.
It was hot, so on the way home I stopped somewhere to get something to eat and drink before heading back.
That was it.
Nothing unusual.
Nothing worth making a fuss over.
And yet that shrine visit was the newest memory I had.
I couldn’t think of anything else that might qualify as a cause.
My days had basically been routine after routine, and this was the only thing that stood out enough to be suspicious.
And no, before you ask, I did not stand there praying with all my heart, “Please send me to the world of BLEACH!”
I prayed, like a perfectly normal person, “Please let me live a peaceful life.”
I swear I did!!
“You all right?”
“…?”
One of the men in black had suddenly spoken to me.
There was something oddly concerned in his voice, so I found myself looking around.
“No, I mean you, miss.
You were really spacing out.”
Well, well.
I hadn’t expected him to be talking to me.
Only when I looked around did I realise just how deep in thought I’d been.
There was no one left nearby.
Every single person from that enormous line had already been sorted.
So I was the last one.
Sorry for holding up the job.
Still—
“…Miss?”
—yeah, no.
The moment the word left my mouth, my own voice startled me more than anything else.
It was supposed to be my voice.
So why was it so high?
“Huh?
Of course.
Anyone can see you’re a woman.”
The man in front of me—the Soul Reaper—looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about.
“Hmm…
Wish I had a mirror or something…
Ah, whatever.
This’ll do.”
After thinking for a moment, the Soul Reaper drew the sword at his waist and held it up in front of me.
For a second I had no idea what he was doing.
Then it clicked.
Oh, right.
He was using the blade like a mirror.
Thanks.
Let’s have a look, then.
The woman reflected in the blade was someone I had never seen before in my life.
She looked about twenty.
Her eyes were black.
Her hair was black.
Both were ordinary enough in this world.
Her skin had the sort of colouring you’d expect from a Japanese person too.
At first glance, she had the standard sort of appearance you might see on any number of characters.
At first glance.
Her hair was long, black, and tied into twin-tails.
It was almost perfectly straight, and even tied up, the ends still reached all the way down to her waist.
The hair itself was beautiful enough to draw attention.
Her face was well formed too, giving her the air of some elegant, well-brought-up young woman.
More than anything, the slight downward tilt of her brows and eyes made her look sleepy…
no, soft.
Gentle.
And since I wasn’t deliberately making any particular expression, this was apparently just how the face looked at rest.
To other people, I probably looked like one hell of an easy mar—
Ahem.
Approachable.
“…Huh…?”
Before I knew it, I’d practically snatched the sword out of the Soul Reaper’s hand and was staring at my reflection again.
This time I didn’t stop at my face.
I checked everything.
First of all, I was really tall.
Compared with the Soul Reaper in front of me—and the others I’d seen earlier—I stood a good head or two above them.
I was probably much taller than the average man.
And if you’re that tall, your arms and legs are going to be long too.
Honestly, the proportions put most models to shame.
Also, my breasts were huge.
Seriously huge.
When I looked down, I couldn’t even properly see my feet.
Even if I shaved my head completely bald, nobody was going to mistake me for a man with a chest like this.
In fact, how had I not noticed until now?
They were absurdly heavy.
And as some kind of bonus—or punishment, or whatever—I was at least wearing clothes that looked vaguely like a burial shroud.
I was wearing them, yes.
The problem was that they clearly weren’t made for a body this size.
The clothes themselves looked like they were screaming for mercy.
“No…
way…”
The words escaped me with a sigh, and once again that voice reached my ears.
Completely female.
Clear and dignified, yet somehow sweet at the same time.
You’ve got to be kidding me…
I’m a man…
I desperately swallowed the urge to shout it out loud.
Because after checking this much, what else was I supposed to say?
This was one of those TS gender-bender reincarnation situations.
TSF, was that the proper term?
I’d never paid enough attention to the fine definitions.
“See?
Told you.
You’re obviously a woman.”
Easy for you to say, Mr Soul Reaper.
You have no idea what I’m going through over here.
“Oh!
Wait.
Did you lose your memory or something?”
Maybe he couldn’t stand watching me sink any further into despair, because the Soul Reaper suddenly came up with another explanation.
“Happens sometimes.
Some people can’t accept that they died, or they don’t want to remember it, so they forget.”
“R-Really?”
Huh.
So that could happen too.
“I get that it’s hard, but this is my job.
You’re gonna have to accept it sooner or later.
Anyway, you can at least tell me your own name, right?”
“My name?
Uh…”
You can’t just spring that on me!
My name from when I was alive was immediately out.
It was blatantly a man’s name.
Besides, I was a woman now.
At this point I might as well think of it as being reborn.
Maybe taking a completely new name would help me turn over a new leaf and get my head around this whole mess.
The problem was that I couldn’t exactly come up with a good name on the spot.
And if I took too long, the Soul Reaper standing there waiting for me was definitely going to get suspicious.
Something.
Anything.
Come on, give me something good…
“Yu…
Yuka…wa…”
After agonising over it, I ended up using the place name connected to the god I’d been thinking about a moment ago as the basis for my surname.
Using it exactly as-is felt like it might be a little too much, though, so I twisted it slightly.
If it’s crane, think turtle.
If it’s up, think down.
That sort of thing.
You take the original word, associate it with something else, or swap one character for something with the opposite meaning.
A standard trick for making up a name when you’ve got nothing better.
In this case, I went from island to river.
Close enough.
And it didn’t sound unnatural.
Right.
Surname sorted.
Now for a given name.
Something feminine…
Using the god’s actual name felt a bit much, so what else was there?
Then it hit me.
I’d eaten ice cream when I stopped for a break!
Perfect.
I’d use that!
“…Airi.”
I said it.
Too late now.
Guess I was committed.
“My name is Yukawa Airi.”
“Oh, so you do remember.”
Apparently relieved that I’d managed to introduce myself properly, the Soul Reaper broke into a smile and started saying something else.
I wasn’t listening.
My mind had already wandered somewhere completely different.
It wasn’t like I’d ever desperately wished, “I want to go to the world of BLEACH!”
But if someone asked me whether I wanted to visit it?
Well…
I’d probably lean a little more towards yes than no.
I knew perfectly well there were wars and disasters waiting in this world.
It was dangerous.
Of course it was.
And yet…
Anyone who knows BLEACH has probably had the same thought at least once.
There is one very particular reason I’d want to come here.
Sosuke Aizen once said:
—I will stand in heaven.
In that case, I too shall make a declaration.
—I will grasp the peak in these hands.
By which I mean…
I’m going to grope some boobs.
…
…
…
…Look, it can’t be helped.
Orihime Inoue.
Rangiku Matsumoto.
Tier Harribel.
Bambietta Basterbine.
And plenty more besides.
This world is overflowing with women blessed with magnificent mountains.
Boobs.
Wouldn’t you want to climb one of those mountains at least once?
Give it a nice squeeze?
I would.
I’d thought about it far more than once or twice.
And let me be clear: women without particularly impressive mountains are perfectly fine too.
Tall mountains, low mountains—it makes no difference.
The very idea of choosing between them is arrogant.
This series is full of sexy women.
Ask me why, and I’ll give you the only answer that matters.
Because the mountain is there!!
All mountains are equal!!
And when you look at it that way, being turned into a woman isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
If anything, it’s an enormous advantage.
As another woman, they’ll probably lower their guard around me.
And even if I do make a move, there’s a decent chance they’ll just laugh it off as a joke.
Better yet, most of the serious problems in this world will work themselves out as long as the protagonist, Ichigo Kurosaki, is around.
That man is the ultimate all-purpose protagonist, blessed with an absolutely ridiculous bloodline, potential, and talent.
A little unfairness here and there will get blown away by his protagonist plot armour.
So even if an irregular element like me exists, there’s no need to start panicking about the future going completely off the rails.
Sure, there’ll be plenty of crises.
I just have to avoid getting too deeply involved, dodge them as best I can, and devote myself to mountain climbing.
When you think about it calmly, this is actually fantastic.
In that case, there’s only one thing to do.
I’ll become a Soul Reaper too, and dedicate myself to achieving this modest little dream of mine.
God…
Thank you!!
“By the way, can I have my sword back now?”
“Oh.
Sorry.”
I apologised profusely.
Author’s Note
Ah…
So that’s what “peak” means…
And that’s what “grasp” means…
Title drop.
● The Name
The Sunday after I came up with the name, I went to a certain place involving “Yu”, “shima”, “Ten”, and “jin”, said a prayer—or rather, apologised—and came back.
As compensation for the trouble, I shoved a thousand-yen note into the offertory box.
(I came up to street level from Exit 3 of the Metro, got a little lost, made a full loop, and eventually arrived at the torii gate.
Would it have been better to climb those steps facing the national highway and come around through the shrine grounds instead?
More importantly, will a thousand yen be enough to earn forgiveness?)