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Renji reread the note attached to the engagement gift three times. He still didn’t get it. Byakuya warned him to be prepared for all sorts of awful puns and insults, but this sounded kind of pretty--almost like a melding of their names.
Or, at least, it might be if one of Byakuya’s snotty-ass relatives knew about Zabimaru.
Giving up trying to parse it himself, he handed the note to Byakuya. “I don’t get it. Why am I supposed to be offended by… uh,” he leaned forward and squinted at the characters again and made a guess, “Pale Lightening Circle? Guessing pronunciation here… Byakuraimaru.”
The slip of parchment immediately crumpled in Byakuya’s fist. “My childhood nickname.”
The rain had stopped mid-morning. Even though the sun already heated things up making the air muggy, it wasn’t stifling yet. Below them, the cherry trees’ leaves glistened a deep green. Lured out by the quintessential summer buzz of cicadas and the bright song of warblers, the two had decided to have lunch on the veranda. Actually, Renji had advocated for lingering in bed, but Byakuya insisted that they start responding to the various gifts that had begun to arrive in advance of the yuino, their official engagement ceremony.
As Byakuya casually tossed the crumpled parchment aside, his expression tightened in a way that had Renji even more confused. Normally Renji would wait out this kind of silence but his curiosity burned. “Childhood nickname?” Renji repeated. “Byakuraimaru is a shitty nickname. For one, it’s longer than your actual name and, honestly, it’s kind of hard to say. Aren’t nicknames supposed to be, I don’t know, cutesty?”
“Shitty.” Byakuya’s thin lips went even thinner. He seemed to be answering something else as he agreed grimly. “Yes, precisely.”
Renji set down his tea bowl on the low table Aio had set-up for them. Sucking in a breath, he rested his elbows on his thighs and leaned over the short table. He was missing something that was supposed to be obvious.
That could only mean one thing.
It was something to do with being noble.
Byakuya ignored Renji's intense gaze, continuing to sit in his usual ramrod-straight seiza. He took a long pensive draught of tea and then managed to unwind enough to sigh. “I’m surprised any of my extended family was even aware of my… traditional baby name.”
Okay, finally, a fucking clue, albeit one that Renji’d already guessed. “Okay, taicho, buy me a damn vowel. What the fuck does it even mean?”
“Buy you a vowel?” Byakuay repeated, confused.
“Something I picked up from Ichigo. Just tell me what the hell has your britches in a knot.”
Byakuya carefully set down his tea bowl in a clear spot. They’d made short work of a meal of miso and tofu soup, rice, pickled cabbage, and ebi furai, fried prawns. “As you know, children born into the Soul Society are tricky business. There was an ancient belief that because we live in the land of the dead, it might be possible that there are only a limited number of pure souls and that the Soul King might, therefore, hoard them as precious. People feared that if he was feeling extra stingy, the Soul King would, instead, offer the soul of a demon, a Hollow--something weak, sickly, or evil. It was believed that the best way to avoid getting a ‘bad’ soul was to give an infant a nickname that would be so unappealing to a demon that it would refuse to inhabit the child, thus forcing the Soul King to send a pure soul.”
Renji nodded along. This all sounded like the kind of standard myths people told themselves when there was a lot of infant mortality. Not that anyone in the Rukongai had to worry about that, but he did know people who thought maybe if they changed their name that--well, shinigami, angels of death--might pass them by. Which, you know, worked on a practical level when you were a wanted criminal.
“Okay,” Renji said slowly when Byakuya didn’t offer anything further. “I still don’t get what’s so awful about those characters.” He pointed to where Byakuya had tossed aside the note. “Did I read them completely wrong? I mean, I guess I assumed that I should read the first two Kanji the same way that Hadō 4 is said, since it sounds like your name.”
“You read it correctly.”
Renji tugged at his ear. “And?”
“It’s the ‘maru.’”
“Circle,” Renji offered, just as Byakuya explained, “Shit.”
Renji sat bolt upright. “Wait, what?”
Byakuya, who had managed to hold Renji’s gaze throughout this discussion, let his eyelids flutter downward. “Yes, the character for ‘maru’ can be read as ‘shit,’ particularly in this context.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Renji said, holding up a hand, palm out, in a gesture to stop for a second. “Are you fucking telling me that Zabimaru--” a rattling hiss shook Renji’s core. Renji let his mouth snap shut, unwilling to insult his zanpakutō out loud. “What the heck are you telling me?”
“I tell you nothing.” Byakuya’s storm-gray eyes snapped up. “Demons are also afforded this… honorific.”
Renji pointed a finger at Byakuya’s chest, “You always acted like Zabimaru was an animal.”
“Even though I knew better,” Byakuya agreed. He very deliberately picked up his bowl of tea and took a sip.
With a scrub of his hand over his face, Renji let go of his anger. Byakuya was right. No one was insulting him or Zabimaru. One man’s honorific was another’s insult, apparently. “Okay, fine,” he said, letting his hands drop into his lap again. “So your sixteenth cousin once removed is sending us a really nice, white fan while calling you shit?”
Byakuya nodded like this was an everyday occurrence, but then seemed to need to add the correction. “Actually, Tsubame is my grandfather’s sister’s son’s child which makes him a first cousin, once removed.”
“Whatever,” Renji said with a little shrug. “The fan was nice enough.”
“The suehiro,” Byakuya nodded again. His tea bowl being mostly empty, he refilled it from the pot. Renji could smell the nutty notes in the steam. “It is given to symbolize the family’s expanding happiness. The one he gifted to Hisana and I was threadbare and moth-eaten. I daresay he approves of you.”
Renji couldn’t help but let out a snort. “That’d be a first.”
“To be fair, Tsubame prides himself as a warrior, despite never being called to Academy. He is an expert in yabusame, horseback archery. Many of the horses in my stable come from his studs. It is possible that he sees your physical prowess as admirable.”
“Or maybe he knows we ain’t having kids, so the symbolism is kind of useless in this case?”
Byakuya hid his frown behind a sip. “Or that.”
Renji glanced again at the crumbled note where it lay just inside the veranda’s sliding doors. “So, what’s the reply? Do we just ignore the insult or what?”
Byakuya lifted shoulder delicately. His eyes seemed to shift a bit uncomfortably under the cover of his lids. “It is traditional for the wife to reply. Perhaps I shall compose the note just to unnerve him.”
Because the Kuchiki clan can’t think of nothing worse than their precious scion getting fucked by a man like me, Renji thought but didn’t say. The whole wife/husband thing was such bullshit anyway. “Nah, I can do it. My handwriting alone should set him back.” Renji ran fingers through his still unbound hair, “I think I’ll act like I don’t get what he’s done and compliment him for his clever combination of our names. Like he’s done us a great honor.”
“Indeed.” Byakuya smiled slightly. A thought occurred to him and he added mischievously,, “We could use the name on the wedding invites.”
Renji’s grin was toothy as he leaned across the table to steal a kiss, “Heh. Now you’re talking.”