Blooming Under a Cold Moon

In the Tenth Division barracks, Rangiku Matsumoto mistakes a wrapped gift in Momo Hinamori's hands for her own, only to be reminded that her birthday already passed in September. The present is meant for Hitsugaya, and Hinamori is dismayed to learn Rangiku prepared nothing for their captain. Later, Hitsugaya finds a note from his lieutenant summoning him to the west barracks training facility at nine that night, irritated that she abandoned her paperwork to arrange it.

On the rooftop he discovers Rangiku and Hinamori seated with Aizen, and after some prickly words about formality, a firework blooms overhead. Rangiku delights in seeing fireworks in winter, wishing only that it were snowing, while Hitsugaya notes that would make it freezing. As Aizen wishes him a happy birthday, Hitsugaya explains that those raised in the Rukongai place little weight on birthdays, since they never truly knew the day they were born and must take one another's word for it. Rangiku recalls Gin simply declaring the day they met to be her birthday when they were children. Aizen offers that accuracy hardly matters, believing that merely having a birthday makes a person happy. Watching the sparks rise, shine, scatter, and fade, Hitsugaya privately likens people to fireworks that should burn bright until they vanish, and quietly thanks the three of them.

The chapter is a tranquil character piece rather than a plot beat, celebrating Hitsugaya's birthday and deepening the friendships among him, Rangiku, and Hinamori. It touches on the Rukongai-born Shinigami's uncertain relationship with birthdays and revisits Rangiku's childhood with Gin. Its warmth is laced with dramatic irony, since the volume it opens ends with Aizen, seated here as a gentle friend, revealing himself as a traitor.

This half-numbered bonus chapter opens volume 20, end of hypnosis, which carries Gin Ichimaru on its cover. Its Japanese title is 寒月に咲く, translated by Viz as Blooming Under a Cold Moon. It was adapted as part of Episode 60, Reality of the Despair, the Assassin's Dagger is Swung, and stands in deliberate tonal contrast to the betrayal that follows across the rest of the volume.