Disclaimer – I don't own Bleach. This is a continuation of Understanding.

Understanding II: School Daze
~Prolog~

What if the neighbors report a silver haired elementary student burglar?
~Renji~

The early morning was calm and silent when Hitsugaya Toshiro woke up. He stared at Kurosaki Isshin's ceiling as he lay on the futon at the foot of the young man's bed. This allowed him to think in his mind and try to sort things out. The truth of the matter was that things weren't exactly straightening out in his mind. Then again, he had a week's worth roughly of bad luck which he hoped would get better.

It started with Aizen's betrayal and the fact that the person he grew up with and thought of as his sister felt that all of this was his fault. She said some things that were very hurtful to him, and had caused him to lose his usual mental calm which in turn made the decision to send him to the living world with the substitute soul reaper to come about.

It should have been something that should have been easy and not that bad, but Toshiro now had to think that he had come to make things difficult for himself. He had a problem wrapping around his emotions and keeping them locked inside. He had more mental breakdowns in a short period of time then he had in quite some time.

The last period of time in truth was possibly all the way back when he had seen his former taicho who had in fact turned out not to be dead. The man was actually the father of the substitute soul reaper. Toshiro had at first been hot headed with the man, but due to some circumstances he stopped to think about things and came to realize that his actions were in truth not very good ones.

After lying awake on the futon he had decided that he needed to try harder to try to fit in at the Kurosaki household then he had been. He got up from where he was before anyone else did and headed downstairs. When he got down there he began to pull out things out of the cupboard in the kitchen and began to set up to cook. Smells soon began to fill the kitchen drifting upstairs.

The first to come downstairs was the substitute shinigami who happened to rub his eyes sleepily. "Smells good Yu… Toshiro?"

"Is something the matter?" the boy asked. His mood rather seemed different from the way it had been the last few days.

Ichigo stared for a few minutes with wide eyes. "Yuzu does the cooking. This is just weird." This caused Toshiro to pause as he was scrambling the eggs in the pan. The teenager walked over and shook his head. "How many eggs did you put in… and bacon and toast too?"

"All of it…" the boy stated with his attitude rather on the calm side of things.

"Toshiro… there is only five of us. Even I know this is enough for two or three meals," Ichigo stated just as Yuzu came down the stairs with Karin. Yuzu rubbed her eyes. "Is Daddy having the meeting this early in the morning because he forgot to last night?"

"That is a first," Karin snorted. She then flinched. "If Yuzu is with me, then who is it that is cooking?"

"Toshiro," Ichigo stated, getting the milk out of the fridge, and setting the table.

"Oi! That's Yuzu's job!" The dark haired tomboy looked like she was ready to hurt the small taicho while her sister had a look of utter rejection.

"Sorry. I didn't know. Is it really fair to let her do the cooking all the time though?" Toshiro's comment caused Karin to flinch and hurry back up the stairs. He had the feeling that his words stung the preteen female big time. Yuzu looked like she was going to cry but bit back what she was going to say and simply headed over to see what Toshiro was doing.

Her eyes suddenly turned wide. "We can't eat all that! That isn't healthy!"

Toshiro reached up and scratched his head. "Usually when I cook I end up cooking a lot more than this."

"But… it's just you your sister and your grandmother. Daddy said so," the small girl frowned.

"They own a family restraint," Ichigo blurted out quickly covering for Toshiro.

"I'd love to see it some time! I think I might want to be a professional cook when I grow up," the girl stated as she clapped her hands together. Toshiro threw a glare at Ichigo. Both knew that this wasn't the truth.

"So… what is this meeting that your sisters are talking about," the small boy asked.

"The planning of family outings," Ichigo sighed.

"There is something planned today?" Toshiro began to dish the food onto serving plates.

"Before school starts up for the semester we go to the temple," Yuzu smiled just as Isshin came down stairs.

The man scratched his head. "Yuzu… I know we have two boys in the house but you didn't have to fix this much food."

"Gomenasai Isshin-san. I'm the one who cooked this morning. I miscalculated," the boy stated firmly.

"Well, you haven't eaten for a few days, so that is understandable," Isshin started up a pot of coffee.

"I thought it was because Toshiro-kun's family owns a restaurant," Yuzu's statement caused Isshin, who was in-between Toshiro and Ichigo, gave the smaller of the two a look of shock.

"Used to is the key word," Toshiro stated as his dragon laughed in the back of his head. The cold hard fact was that Toshiro's background story kept getting more and more complicated.

"It's nice to see you fitting in," Isshin smiled. "Where's Karin?"

"In her room sulking because Toshiro decided to cook instead of Yuzu and he made the comment it wasn't fair to make it so that Yuzu does all the cooking," Ichigo's statement caused Isshin to give the small charge an exasperated look.

Author's note – This was written 6/1/2010. I'll post when I can, but who knows, as I am in the middle of a move with my family.

2-7-2012 – I am slowly working my way through editing the chapters of this fanfic. I may make updates but between updates I feel I need to get some chapters up and fixed so the grammar is better.