“Hey there! You’ve reached Tatsuki,” Tatsuki’s voice rang out of the answering machine through the now half empty bedroom. “and Orihime’s answering machine!” Orihime laughed cutting off Tatsuki.

“We can’t come to the phone right now!” Tatsuki laughed. “So leave a message, and we’ll get back to you ASAP!!” Orihime said.

Tatsuki had been hesitating to press the delete button. She sighed as she pressed it, the machine beeped.

“Recording deleted.” The machine said.

Tatsuki pressed the record button, and recorded her new message.

“This is Tatsuki, apparently, I’m unavailable at the moment…leave me a message and I’ll try to call you back.” She said in a mono tone, unlike the one lively one before.

“New message recorded.” The machine said.

She looked down at the machine on the table by her bed; she sighed again and sat down on her bed.

“It used to be our bed, where we would both sleep at night. Where I would hold you, hug you, kiss you. Before…you...left me.” Tatsuki quietly muttered under her breath.

She heard foot steps come into her room, she looked up. It was Ichigo.

“Tatsuki, you…are still upset with all this?” he said standing in the doorway.

She nodded, “Yeah, wouldn’t you be!”

“No need to get all defensive about it. I was just asking my friend how she was. Apparently still not over it.” Ichigo said then folded his arm and leaned against the door way.

“Hmm…Maybe you should come hang out with me and some of the gang tonight? Take your mind off things?” He offered.

“Thanks Ichigo but, isn’t ‘The Gang’ her friends too! She’ll probably be there, and I’m not in the mood to…hang to anyways.”

Ichigo poked his lip out, “Well what are you going to do tonight?”

“Not sure… hey? Why do you care about me all of a sudden!?” she asked sitting up straighter.

“Tatsuki, you’ve always been my friend. Just, I don’t know, I’ve never seen you like this. I’m worried about you.” He said putting his arms by his side.

“Thanks…I’ll do something tonight, maybe go to the park, or get some coffee. Something like that.” She said standing up.

“Alright then, I’m going to go.”

“See ya Strawberry.” She said as she picked up her shoes.

He grunted and walked to her front door, “Yeah make sure you do something to get over this, so we can all have Tatsuki back.” He said and went on his way.

Tatsuki smiled at her friend, but soon frowned.

“I’ll try, but I doubt I can ever get over it.”