The Pink Cheeked Parakeet

One night beside a construction site, Yasutora Sado accepts a caged parakeet that his friends believe is cursed, since every prior owner has died. Sado, fond of cute things, takes the bird just as a falling steel beam threatens the group; he braces it on his back without serious harm, astonishing everyone. The parakeet thanks him and introduces itself as Yūichi Shibata, speaking so naturally that Sado's friend Ide is stunned.

The following day on the school roof, Ichigo finds his acid burns fully healed, which Rukia credits to her top marks in the Academy's Kidō studies before fumbling with a juice box. Their easy closeness draws teasing from Mizuiro, and a run-in with the hair-obsessed bully Ōshima escalates until Sado hurls the boy across the roof. Sado reveals a string of injuries, including the beam and a collision with a motorcyclist he then carried to the hospital, unsettling his classmates with his durability. When Yūichi greets the group, Rukia privately tells Ichigo the parakeet houses a harmless, lonely soul they should send onward that night.

At the Kurosaki Clinic that evening, a multi-car wreck floods the family practice with patients, and Isshin argues over the phone for spare beds at the nearby hospital. Ichigo is startled to find that the injured man his father needs help with is Sado himself, whose back bears a still-bleeding burn. Sado tries to leave but collapses in the doorway. Later, as he rests with Yūichi at his bedside, Rukia confirms the wound was dealt by a Hollow, and Sado slips out the window with the bird before anyone can stop him.

Sado is introduced along with his extraordinary toughness and the talking parakeet Yūichi. Rukia identifies the burn on Sado's back as a Hollow's handiwork, marking the pair as the quarry of a spirit still on the hunt as Sado flees the clinic.

The final chapter of volume one, set within the Agent of the Shinigami arc, this installment brings Sado into the story and sets up the Shrieker confrontation of the following volume. It was adapted as the anime's fourth episode, Cursed Parakeet. The Viz edition keeps the original title.