The silence after Kokuto's arrival didn't last.
Aizen's smirk faded. His eyes gleamed with a calculated chill.
"Show me," he said, voice like silk sliding over a dagger's edge. "What value does a jester have on the battlefield?"
Kokuto's eye twitched in delight. "You want a joke, my lord? I've got a good one. It kills."
A single figure stepped forward from the gathered Espada. Slender, smirking, with narrow violet eyes and hair like drifting smoke.
Zeffar, the self-proclaimed Warden of the Unseen. An Arrancar known for testing intruders with illusions so powerful they drove some mad—if they didn't rip themselves apart first.
"You won't survive five seconds inside my world," Zeffar purred. "Your mind's already broken. All I need to do is tip it."
Kokuto clapped. "Oh, I like you. You sound like the kind of person who brings a gun to a punchline."
Zeffar didn't wait. His hand flicked upward, and the world fractured.
The white walls of Las Noches shattered into a swirling abyss. Kokuto was no longer standing—he was falling, endlessly, into a kaleidoscope of memories that weren't his. Screams, laughter, death. Again and again. A cacophony of wrongness.
But Kokuto…
He didn't scream.
He stood still in the void, the distortion crawling across his skin like ink—and he smiled.
Then his eye twitched.
Just once.
A sound echoed in the distance.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Suddenly, he wasn't in Las Noches anymore.
He was somewhere real.
______________________________________________________________
A dim hospital room. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. On the bed lay a boy—no older than seventeen—barely conscious. His face pale. Tubes in his arms. Machines beeping.
In the corner, a figure stood. Kokuto.
But not as he is now. Human. Still. Empty-eyed.
No mask.
He watched his reflection in the window, distorted by the rain outside. Behind the glass, his sister lay dying in another room. They'd told him it was a car accident. A "tragedy." No one spoke of the drunk driver. No one admitted she'd been running from someone.
From him.
He'd made her laugh once. That was the last time they spoke. Then… the screaming. The crying. The words he couldn't unsay.
He never meant for it to end that way.
And yet, he remembered thinking:
"If I were funnier… maybe she'd have stayed."
That's when it started.
The need to make everything funny.
Even death.
Especially death.
______________________________________________________________
The illusion broke.
With a scream—not from Kokuto, but from Zeffar.
He stumbled back, clutching his head. Blood ran from his nose. His power cracked around him like shattered glass.
Kokuto stood still in the center of the chamber, shadows flickering around him like black flame. His grin was gone.
Only silence remained.
He walked slowly toward Zeffar, dragging one foot lazily behind the other, as if mocking the very idea of walking straight.
Then he knelt beside him.
"You thought I didn't have nightmares?" he whispered, voice as soft as dust. "I live inside one. Every day. Every breath."
Zeffar trembled, unable to meet his eye.
Kokuto leaned in closer, smile returning—this time smaller, sadder.
"But you were right about one thing," he said, gently tapping Zeffar's forehead.
"I'm already broken."
He stood, turned back to Aizen and the silent Espada. He extended his arms wide, like a ringmaster presenting the next act.
"So," he said, the grin growing back like a scar rehealing. "Did I pass the audition?"