since september 10 last year (thank you oomf for digging our whatsapp gc :3) so it hasn’t even been a full year yet… though before i told my friends, i had been Marinating him for a little over a month lol. i didn’t want to add another yumeship so soon after i had just started watching bleach + i was already shipping koyuki with shuhei at the time, so i wanted to wait and see if it was just a one-off “huh, now that i think about it, byakuya and koyuki make a good couple” thing or if it was going to stick. it turned out to be the latter, as you obviously know.

what attracted me to him… believe it or not, it was initially not his looks (LMAOOO) because even though i just started watching bleach last year, byakuya was popular enough that i knew of him back when the OG bleach anime was still airing. back then i thought he had weird hair (sorry lol), but then i saw that art of him giving rukia away at her wedding and was like huh, he actually looks kinda nice here. but i didn’t give it any further thought until the start of the soul society arc, when like everyone else, i was frustrated when he seemed indifferent to rukia’s looming execution until we learned Why he was acting like that. thinking back, i think it must’ve started around here? when we learned about his promise to hisana and his late parents. i have a soft spot for characters internally tormented by their sense of justice and an even softer one for characters who canonically Love/have loved if that makes sense. i just appreciate it when they’re allowed to love and be vulnerable in a story where that’s not really highlighted.

this turned out to be such a wordy answer sorry anon jdjdjsk