is bleach episode 16 filler?

As Rukia Kuchiki runs away from the Kurosaki Clinic, she recalls the night that she gave her Shinigami powers to Ichigo Kurosaki, Mahana Natsui asking her if she likes Ichigo, joining Ichigo's class as a student to work with him, and various other interactions with him and his fellow classmates, which she asserts will be a burden if she has to leave. Lieutenant Renji Abarai confronts Rukia.

Remembering how she assured the other girls in her class that Ichigo was just a friend to her, Rukia mentally declares that compassion, friendship, and affection are bothersome and unfit for a Shinigami before verbally observing that she may have stayed in the Human World for too long.