Disclaimer: The only kind of bleach I own keeps my underwear nice and white.

Summary: At a masquerade ball held for the company she works for, Rukia meets her prince charming, who she soon discovers is her boss from hell. When she begins to learn more about him, she quickly falls for the orange haired jerk. (IchiRuki).

Ok guys, I have this bad tendency to start fics, and then delete them, and I really don't want that to happen for this, because I've been wanting to write something like this. So please review!! The reason I lose interest in stories is because people don't review to them, which I assume is because my stories aren't that good… So please read and tell me your thoughts!

I like to call this an office fic, because everything (well not everything) happens at a corporation. Just read and you'll understand :)

Hierarchy

Prologue: Misleading

Her fingernails tapped nervously on her small and ordinary office desk. "Come on, come on." She whispered.

It was 5:29, and in one minute, she would be free to leave her hell hole, and travel far away. "Home, I want to go home." She sort of wished she wore red ruby slippers to tap them three times.

The minute she heard lots of bustling and talking, Kuchiki Rukia stood, and slung her bag over her arm. The hallways were pretty crowded, but Rukia was small and good at weaving when needed.

Seireitei Inc. had a lot to offer a 23 year old, experience, respect, gratitude, but now, as she had only been working for the corporation for a good two months, no, she was definitely not liking how things were going.

After avoiding just about every person Rukia could remember, she opened the door to leave. Even her boss hadn't managed to catch her eye. Honestly, she had never met such a man, and she hoped there would never be another one like him.

Two Aizen Sousukes might create a World War III. Rukia actually shuddered at the mere thought.

"Already off?" Renji asked. Rukia kept her eyes forward, keeping her peripheral vision out for any strange hair colors that could destroy her path. "Yes." She replied quickly.

The door finally came into view, and she smiled. "You seem pretty anxious." Renji muttered humorously. "Yes." Rukia replied again. Renji didn't act too surprised either.

Rukia always acted that way, in a rush. He chuckled slightly as he walked next to the woman that barely reached his shoulder.

"What are you doing tonight?" He asked. Rukia snapped away from her attention for the door and sighed. "Stuff." She replied. "Well look, I'm going to see this band tonight, and I have two tickets —"

"Really Renji, I'm extremely busy." She didn't look at Renji's face, but she knew he wouldn't give up just yet.

"You're not busy, so stop lying to me. I would rather you say you don't like me than your busy." Rukia rolled her eyes, looking ahead to see who blocked her from the doorway.

"Fine, I don't like you." Renji laughed a little, and sighed. "You're hopeless you know?" Rukia smiled. "I'm not hopeless, just not interested." Renji didn't laugh, and Rukia finally made her move to walk out the exit door.

She felt a little bad for saying such harsh things to the guy, but she was sick of him always offering. Rukia figured after the fifth time of saying no that Renji would get it, so she finally went with the cold approach.

Hopefully, it worked.

Her fingers finally touched the handle to the door, and as her hands began to push onto the doorway, a hand fell onto her shoulder.

"Renji, I told you —" She quickly turned around, and wished she hadn't.

"Rukia-san, I wanted to have a word with you before you left." Rukia looked outside the door, actually considering shaking her head no and walking out, but after quickly remembering who the person was before her, she simply nodded and pulled away from the eager crowd of leaving employees.

As the two walked further back into the building, Rukia fought the urge to sigh rudely. She wanted to go home, she needed to. There was a big barrel of ice cream she had bought from the night before, and she could hear it calling her name.

They turned down a hallway and walked into a designated office, one of the biggest, Rukia might add, of the entire corporation.

"What is it you wanted to ask me about Kurosaki-san?" Rukia asked politely, trying not to stare at his head of flames. Kurosaki Ichigo didn't move from the spot in front of his desk.

"I wanted to ask you about your last report." Rukia cringed slightly. What had she done wrong? "Yes, what about it?" She asked calmly, as if she didn't know what he spoke of.

"The graphing was completely inaccurate, so I'll need you to redo the entire report." Were his cold and cutting words.

"And I'll need it by nine tomorrow morning. Yamamoto's coming in, so we need all the reports done." For a second, Rukia actually thought everything was just a sick and twisted joke.

But once again, she remembered that Kurosaki Ichigo didn't laugh, didn't smile and act polite, he only got straight to business, not giving a care in the world to how other's below himself felt.

"Of course Kurosaki-san, I'll have it here." After he nodded, Rukia bowed and left the room, nearly power walking to exit. She hoped that no one would bother to say a single word to her; otherwise they might get a large bruise to the eye.

Rukia was furious, pissed, angry, whatever people wanted to call it.

She didn't even bother calling for a taxi. She needed to release her steam, or she might end up rambling onto whoever the poor taxi driver was.

People gave her weird looks, and she didn't care. Rukia hoped they would look at her so that she could glare angrily back. "How dare he!" She whispered furiously. It amazed her at how one man could infuriate her with the smallest amount of words.

Even Renji, a guy that never knew when to shut up, rarely got her ticking the way Kurosaki Ichigo did.

Rukia's apartment approached much too quickly, and when she unlocked the door to her shabby little home, she slammed the door closed, causing her home living room to shake.

"How am I supposed to type this entire report all over? I double checked everything!" She chunked her bag down, hoping nothing broke.

And finally, Rukia sank into her soft and luxurious couch, taking an extremely deep breath. The day had been horrible, and now, the weekend she had so longed for was practically ruined because of one stupid report.

"I should just quit." She muttered negatively. Nobody, minus Renji, would miss her. It would be easy. Rukia would walk in, hand over her two weeks notice, smile politely, and walk out. Heck, she wouldn't even have to see that devil of a human being, but Aizen Sousuke, smiling kindly.

She gritted her teeth as her brother's face popped into her brain. "Rukia, the business world calls to you."

If Kuchiki Byakuya wasn't the success she knew him to be, than Rukia would have quit the first day of walking into Seireitei Inc.

"Alright, should I one, get the report done without any sort of break at all or two, have a break now, and then start the report later?" She asked herself. Rukia knew her best option was to go with choice one, but sitting down, just for an hour or so, sounded like heaven.

Agreeing mentally with herself, Rukia stood and walked to her black refrigerator. She pulled out a frozen lasagna dinner and threw it in the microwave. "I worked on that report for three days straight." She muttered as she walked from the kitchen to the living room.

Rukia plopped onto the couch again and turned her TV on. Just as she began to channel surf, her phone rang.

"Hello? Renji? No, I can't. I already told you, I'm busy and this time, I mean it. I know I said I wasn't interested earlier, but seriously I can't. You really want to know why? Because that prick at work decided that one of my reports didn't sound good enough, and he wants the report done by tomorrow morning." Rukia paused, listening to what Renji said.

"What? I know, but you couldn't. Yah, I know your good. Renji, you would really do that, come and help? What about the concert? Uh, fine. Ok, ok, bye."

Rukia hung up the phone, a little frustrated. Not only was Renji now coming over in thirty minutes to her house, but she looked like a zombie, as did her apartment.

Sure she had just seen him fifteen minutes ago, but humidity was a very bad thing for Rukia, or any other normal woman who liked to try and stay at least descent.

She quickly got to her feet and pulled the lasagna from the microwave, throwing it slowly into the fridge. Her main concern was her living room, where her computer was located.

"Why did I ask him to come?" Rukia asked herself. She closed her eyes to cool herself. If she didn't calm down, then she might have some sort of heart attack. She could feel her heart beating loudly in her chest.

After shoving clothes, meaningless papers, trash, and random underwear into her bedroom, she quickly dusted and vacuumed, hoping her home looked presentable.

Almost instantaneously following, there was a knock on her door. "Coming!" Rukia called out.

Renji smiled when she opened the door, and politely stepped inside after being invited inside. "So, Kurosaki asked to you to redo an entire paper?" Renji asked. Rukia nodded and walked further into the living room.

"Do want anything to drink? Water? Strawberry lemonade?" Renji looked curious.

"Strawberry lemonade?" He asked. Rukia nodded. "It's homemade."

"Alright, then I'll have some." Rukia grabbed two cups from her pantry, and poured the lemonade. "It's a recipe from my family. It's pretty good." She was already getting off task. Luckily, Renji saved her.

"Alright, so do you have the report?" Renji asked. Rukia nodded and the two traveled to the computer. "Here's the file." Rukia said, pointing to the screen.

"Ok, well let me read this. I'll let you know when I'm finished." She didn't know what was making Renji so nice and different, but she was grateful.

Maybe it was why he was the main guy for editing reports.

Rukia finished heating up her lasagna, and silently ate her food while Renji worked his magic. "Are you serious?" Renji asked. Rukia stood from her couch and walked to her desk.

"What is it?" Renji had reached the graphing part. He pointed to one of the numbers. "You misplaced a comma for this number, and he wants you to redo everything?" Renji asked mockingly. Rukia squinted hard at the page.

"Have you read through everything?" Rukia asked. "Yah and this is the only thing I see."

"Well it's only been a few minutes, so you could have missed something…"

"Rukia, I edit this kind of stuff all the time, I actually looked over this slower than usual." Rukia rolled her eyes.

"This report is fine. Just change the comma and it's perfect." If Rukia weren't so worried about her paper, she might have realized Renji's strange compliment.

Too bad she didn't.

"Alright, well it looks like you just need to print out everything again, and your good to go." Renji said, grinning oddly.

Rukia nodded. "Thanks Renji, you really saved my butt. Well look, I'm really tired so if you don't mind, I would like for you to leave." She tried to say it as kindly as possible.

"Um Rukia, don't you remember my little agreement to coming over here? You know, about the date?" She rolled her eyes. "Yah, but I never said when." Renji rolled his eyes, but looked straight at Rukia again.

"Hey, I got it, the ball next Saturday night, why don't you be my date?" Rukia fought against the disgusted look on her face of bringing that up.

The masquerade ball on New Years Eve.

She didn't give Renji a second chance to say anything as she pushed him out the door.

"How come you're so mean?" He asked sarcastically. "Hey, I just gave you some homemade lemonade; I don't do that for everyone."

"That's because nobody else comes over here." If Renji had been a little closer, she probably would have smacked him on the head.

"Talk to you later Renji, and thanks so much. I can now have a much less stressful night." Renji shrugged his shoulders.

"Ah no problem, those kind of things just come naturally to me." She smiled, waved at him one last time, and shut the door.

Rukia laughed a little bit, realizing how easy and simple her problem had been. She could now enjoy her night with her large bin of ice cream, and possibly sleep in a little late.

She stomped her foot on the ground. "Why does he need it by nine tomorrow?" She muttered.

Rukia wanted to seriously know why Aizen had hired such a horrible person like Kurosaki, but seeing as how the fire man held somewhat power over her, there wasn't much to be done.

And there never would be.

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A/N: I know, short, but a little plot-like right? Ok, well don't worry folks, this is IchiRuki, but there will be a little RukiRenji, just not a lot. And as for Ichigo being a jerk, you'll find out more later as to why. This was the prologue, so I hope you all liked it. Review and I'll update soon!!

Just a hint, next chapter will be the ball!! Yay!!

LOVE YOU.