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Paired with side-A, this side story shifts to Soul Society as Rukia prepares for a month-long posting to the living world, is seen off by Ukitake, and reflects on fate as a turning millstone while Renji's promotion goes unspoken.

A quiet interlude, side-A drifts through an ordinary day in Ichigo's life as he muses on a constantly shifting world, the Pluses who vanish before he can help them, and his wish for a blade strong enough to break fate.

The opening chapter of Bleach introduces Ichigo Kurosaki, a teenager able to perceive spirits, whose ordinary life is upended when the Shinigami Rukia Kuchiki appears and a Hollow named Fishbone D attacks his family.

In the second chapter, Rukia reveals she has lost her Shinigami powers to Ichigo and presses him to take up her duties, a burden he resists until a Hollow's attack in a park forces him to decide what kind of protector he will be.

The third chapter pairs Ichigo's early Shinigami training with Rukia against ominous signs around Orihime Inoue, whose string of accidents culminates in a nighttime Hollow attack that reveals a painfully familiar face.

In this chapter the Hollow Acidwire, once Orihime's late brother Sora, storms her apartment and gravely wounds Tatsuki, while Rukia explains the grim origins of Hollows and Ichigo races across the rooftops to intervene before it is too late.

The fifth chapter of Bleach brings the clash between Ichigo and the Hollow Acidwire to a boil. Battered by acid and a lashing tail, Ichigo watches the monster peel back its own hair to bare a human eye, exposing the creature to Orihime as the brother she thought she had lost.

The sixth chapter closes the tragedy of Sora Inoue. As Orihime embraces the Hollow devouring her, her forgiveness restores his sanity, and the siblings share a final farewell before Rukia quietly rewrites the night out of Orihime's memory.

The seventh chapter shifts focus to the towering, gentle Yasutora Sado, who adopts a parakeet said to doom its owners. When the bird speaks with a boy's voice and Sado turns up wounded at the clinic, Rukia senses a lonely soul, and something far worse, lurking within.

A lighthearted extra chapter, this side story rewinds to the first day of high school and follows the easygoing Mizuiro Kojima as he crosses paths with Ichigo and Sado, framing their meeting through his private metaphor of severed and reconnected cords.

Opening the second volume, the chapter follows Sado as he flees both his friends and the Hollow stalking Yūichi. Ichigo discovers a new sensory power to track the boy's soul, while Karin, burdened by a vision of Yūichi's murdered mother, pleads for his rescue.

The Hollow Shrieker corners Rukia while her gigai leaves her weak, but rescue comes from an unlikely source: Sado lands blow after blow on an enemy he cannot even see, guided only by Rukia's shouted directions.

Shrieker springs his true trap, unleashing a swarm of frog-like servants and explosive leeches that turn the fight against Rukia and Sado, until a bloodied Rukia digs in her heels and Ichigo drops out of the sky to challenge the Hollow.

As Ichigo battles Shrieker, the Hollow lays bare his monstrous past: a human serial killer who murdered Yūichi's mother, then trapped the grieving boy's soul inside a parakeet, taunting him for months with a false promise of resurrection.

Ichigo finishes Shrieker only to learn that a soul reaper's blade cannot save every spirit. The Gates of Hell yawn open to claim the Hollow for his crimes in life, and Yūichi is at last sent onward to his waiting mother.

Needing supplies for her failing gigai, Rukia visits Kisuke Urahara's shop and leaves with a mislabeled, defective soul candy. When Ichigo swallows the pill, a mischievous modified soul named Kon seizes control of his body.

Kon runs wild through Karakura High in Ichigo's body, his superhuman legs vaulting between floors as he pesters the girls of class 1-3, forcing Ichigo and Rukia to race back before his borrowed reputation is ruined for good.

Chasing Kon through town, Ichigo learns the truth of Project Spearhead and the modified souls it condemned, wrestling with the injustice of destroying a being that only wants to live, while Kon witnesses the casual cruelty of children.

A bonus story tucked into the thirty-second volume, this chapter rewinds to Tōshirō Hitsugaya's boyhood in Rukongai, where a chilling voice haunting his dreams, a friend leaving for school, and a pushy stranger named Rangiku set him on the road to becoming a Shinigami.

The volume closes as Kon and Ichigo grudgingly join forces against a Hollow menacing schoolchildren. Kon's refusal to take any life, even to spare a column of ants, reveals the conscience beneath his mischief and wins him Rukia's protection.

Another negative-numbered side story, this chapter follows a young Renji, Hinamori, and Kira through their Shin'ō Academy days and onto a routine field lesson that turns deadly when cloaked Hollows ambush the class, until Aizen and Gin arrive to save them.

Fed up with the rough handling he suffers from Ichigo and Rukia, the modified soul Kon walks out of the Kurosaki household to find someone who will treat him kindly, only to discover that every girl in Ichigo's orbit is even more dangerous than the home he abandoned.

A wildly popular televised exorcism program hosted by the flamboyant Don Kanonji sets its sights on Karakura Town, dragging a reluctant Ichigo and his spirit-obsessed family to a haunted hospital where a hidden earthbound soul lies waiting to be provoked.

As the chained soul haunting the hospital screams into the night, Rukia teaches Ichigo how a lingering spirit decays toward becoming a Hollow, moments before Don Kanonji makes his televised entrance and recklessly jabs his prop staff into the very wound that should never be disturbed.

Don Kanonji's grandstanding accelerates the bound spirit's corruption while a small army of the show's security guards physically prevents Ichigo and Rukia from stepping in, forcing an unexpected rescue from Kisuke Urahara.

The spirit that seemed destroyed instead reassembles atop the hospital as a full-fledged Hollow, and when Don Kanonji foolishly offers to face the monster himself, Ichigo is forced to draw his blade and shield the deluded celebrity from a creature far beyond his understanding.

Ichigo hauls the reckless Don Kanonji into the abandoned hospital to keep the crowd safe, and inside the cramped corridors the medium reveals why a man who claims to hate conflict still refuses to ever turn his back on an enemy.

Kanonji's improvised energy blast frees Ichigo's pinned blade and lets him finish the Hollow, but the victory turns bitter when the monster crumbles to reveal the very spirit the host believed he had saved, exposing the tragic truth behind his exorcisms.

The morning after his nationally televised outburst, Ichigo faces a furious teacher and a scheming classmate, then finds Don Kanonji cheerfully turning up at his front door, all while an unseen watcher continues to shadow his every move.

Ichigo and Rukia keep arriving at Hollow alerts to find the monsters already gone, and the mystery of the vanishing prey is answered when a bespectacled classmate reveals himself as a Quincy, an archer of spirit energy who openly despises Shinigami.

Startled to learn that the Quincy who ambushed him is a quiet top-of-the-class classmate, Ichigo trails Uryu home, only for the archer to expose just how carelessly Ichigo leaks his spiritual power and to challenge him to a contest over whose way of fighting Hollows is superior.

As Uryu goads Ichigo into accepting a deadly contest, Kisuke Urahara recounts to Rukia the tragic history of the Quincy, a clan of Hollow-slayers whose thirst for vengeance led to their extinction two centuries ago.

With Hollow Bait scattered on the wind and no way to recall it, the contest between Ichigo and Uryu begins in earnest, and across Karakura Town the friends who have quietly grown sensitive to spirits feel the sky itself begin to warp toward disaster.

Chapter 38 of Bleach tightens the Hollow-bait crisis into its most frightening stretch, as Rukia grasps just how many monsters are pouring into Karakura while Yasutora Sado, barely able to see his attacker, tries to draw a newborn Hollow away from bystanders.

Chapter 39 turns a hopeless mismatch into a partnership. Karin sees the Hollow that Sado cannot, and together they survive long enough for a memory of his grandfather to awaken the armored right arm that gives the volume its name.

Chapter 40 closes Sado's debut brawl and opens the next threat. His new arm finishes Bulbous G in a single blow, while across town Orihime, sensing the lurking Hollow Numb Chandelier, scrambles to steer her friends out of danger.

Chapter 41 exposes Numb Chandelier's cruel method. Only Orihime can see the Hollow, whose seeds turn her own classmates into puppets, forcing Chizuru's hand against her before Tatsuki charges in to defend her friend.

Chapter 42 pushes Orihime to her breaking point. When Numb Chandelier seizes control of Tatsuki as well, the memory of the friendship that once saved her ignites Orihime's dormant power for the very first time.

Chapter 43 introduces the six spirits of the Shun Shun Rikka and shows Orihime learning their three arts on the fly, shielding herself, healing Tatsuki, and destroying Numb Chandelier before exhaustion finally overtakes her.

Chapter 44 lays bare the stakes. Urahara reveals to Orihime and Sado why their powers stirred, while a weakening Uryu and a Gigai-drained Rukia battle the endless Hollows until Ichigo finally reaches them.

Chapter 45 splits between Urahara marshaling his crew toward the gathering rift and Ichigo's stalled confrontation with Uryu, ending as the Hollows and the cracked sky begin converging on a single ominous point.

Chapter 46 gives both sides of the Quincy tragedy. Rukia explains why the Shinigami culled them, and Uryu recounts his grandfather Soken's death, before Ichigo cuts through the grief to insist they fight together.

Chapter 47 seals the alliance between Ichigo and Uryu as Ichigo shares why he fights, and just as the two steel themselves a colossal Menos Grande tears open the sky, prompting Urahara and his crew to storm in.

Chapter 48 pits Ichigo and Uryu against the towering Menos Grande while Urahara's crew handles the swarm of smaller Hollows, and a chance touch of Ichigo's blade hints at how the giant might finally be beaten.

Chapter 49 has Uryu decode Ichigo's runaway spiritual power into a usable weapon, while Orihime and Sado watch from cover as Ichigo blocks a point-blank Cero and cleaves the Menos Grande from top to bottom.

The wounded giant Hollow flees back through its own portal, but Ichigo's victory sours fast when the enormous power he loosed spirals out of control. Uryu shreds his own arm bleeding off the excess, wrestling all the while with the guilt buried beneath his crusade against the Shinigami.

The Kuchiki captain and his lieutenant slip into the living world to hunt a fugitive, while an ordinary school day unfolds for Ichigo and his friends, none of whom can know that their gentle classmate is about to be dragged home to die.

Cornered in the dark, Rukia looks back on a lunchtime her classmates spent teasing her about Ichigo, a warmth she has trained herself to call worthless. Then the swords come out, blood is drawn, and an archer steps from the shadows to answer for her.

An unlikely rescuer plants himself between Rukia and her captors while, across town, Ichigo pieces together a coded farewell and discovers he has lost the very means to fight back, right before a certain shopkeeper appears at his window.

Ichigo trades his first blows with the Sixth Division's lieutenant, whose whip-like blade and open contempt lay bare just how little the newly made Soul Reaper understands about the weapon he carries.