(Formerly Genie!Erich, but I decided that Erich is actually a captured fae, not a genie, so the name is different between tumblr and wordpress)

Kisuke absently poked through the cluttered back corner of the shop, occasionally picking something up to look at it closer before setting it back down and moving on; he had nothing better to do, after all, so he might as well… acquaint himself with the local shops.

(Anything to keep his mind off what had happened.)

(Anything to keep his mind off of how little he could do…!)

Kisuke pursed his lips and forced himself to bend over the table in the very back. Forced himself to pay attention to the detritus of human life that this old, cluttered, human shop sold—

A spark of reiatsu caught his attention, blinding bright against the dull hum of Karakura’s reishi, and he snatched up whatever it was instantly, desperate for something to remind him of Seireitei, desperate for something to investigate—

It was a glass bottle. Old and scuffed, deep blue-black with an odd metal stopper and flaking fragments of white… glaze? Paint? Something… across it, though what design it used to be he couldn’t tell. The glass was so dark that he couldn’t tell if there was anything in it even when he held it up to a nearby window; nothing seemed to move when he shook it, either, and the weight of it was… odd. His senses said it was heavy, said that there was more weight to it than just glass and a metal stopper could account for, but… it also seemed to weigh little more than thick glass and a metal stopper.

(The incongruity made him wary, made him curious, because how could his senses fail him so?)

(Was he holding something heavy or something light?)

(He had no idea.)

He’d never seen a bottle like it in Seireitei, and now that he was holding it in his hand, he couldn’t sense a trace of reiatsu—

Power sparked across his senses, bored-offended-exasperated, and Kisuke gave a start, bottle nearly slipping from his hand in shock. He gripped it tightly with both hands and brought it up to eye level, scowling at it as he did. “Do that again and I’ll drop you,” he murmured at it, shoving aside the embarrassment of talking to an inanimate object in public; the thing had reiatsu, had emotions, and that was good enough for him.

(The neighbors thought he was eccentric already anyway, what was one more piece of evidence?)

(He didn’t care about their opinion anyway.)

Boredom-exasperation-longing was his only answer, and Kisuke’s scowl faded into a puzzled frown as he tipped the bottle one way and then the next, trying to understand what he was sensing; the bits of emotion he was catching implied some level of sentience, but… he didn’t think it was coming from the bottle. Not exactly.

(Was there something inside the bottle?)

(Something… intelligent?)

(Interesting.)

Mind made up, Kisuke turned from the cluttered corner and wended his way back to where the old shopkeep was sitting. “This, please,” he said as he held out the bottle towards the man.

The man eyed the bottle with exasperation and then said, “Just take it. But if you bring it back, I will charge you.”

“Pardon…?” Kisuke asked, wondering if he’d actually heard the man right.

“That damn bottle’s been in and out of this store for years,” the shopkeeper explained with a sigh, then made a shooing motion towards him. “So unless you want to buy something else, just take it. I’ll take your money when you eventually bring it back to me.”

“Why do people bring it back?” he could help but ask, even as he lowered his hand and took a slight step back.

The man shrugged and lifted a hand, counting on his fingers as he recited, “Can’t be opened, can’t be broken, one person said it followed him throughout the house, another reported she heard a voice coming from it, another said it felt ‘evil’, I’ve had multiple claims that there’s a yokai trapped inside of it. Take your pick, I’m exhausted of dealing with it.”

Kisuke frowned down at the bottle thoughtfully, turning it over in his hands as he did; would a yokai account for the flashes of reiatsu he kept sensing? He’d… never met one, if he was being honest, and had always thought them just superstition, but maybe… maybe there was something to it?

“If you don’t want it—”

“No, no, I want it still!” Kisuke quickly answered, taking another step back from the man and flashing him a sheepish smile at the flat look he got. “I like mysteries!”

“Well, have fun with that one. I’ll see you in a week or two. Bring twenty yen with you when you do.”

Kisuke huffed at the thought that he would give up on such a potentially interesting mystery so quickly, but still gave the shopkeeper a shallow bow, murmured his thanks, and wandered out of the shop.

He had a mystery to unravel at last.

Hopefully it would be a good one.

Hopefully…