Chapter III
While Karin is still zooming across Rukongai, we now delve into the life of a young man named Hitsugaya Toushiro.
Orphaned as a 3-year-old boy by an accident in the sea, he was raised by his mother's busty cousin Matsumoto Rangiku. It was quite a humourous occasion when Matsumoto demanded to care for her cousin's son since she was only three years older than her nephew. Matsumoto though, young as she was, was deeply moved by what had happened to her nephew, having lost her own parents as a young girl in a bandit raid.
Her guardians and the other elders had been reluctant to give Matsumoto her way, but in the eventually did, since Toushiro did not want to go to anyone else. Matsumoto tried to mother her young nephew but in the end she was only a child, causing her and Toushiro to have more brother-sister moments than mother-son. They were close, and most of the maids would have a hard time parting them.They were especially a force to reckon with when the mischievous Matsumoto would come up with pranks for them to pull.
Fortunately, Sereitei's laws were unlike Karakura's when it came to marriage and inheritance, so Matsumoto was able to her inherit her father's title - becoming a viscountess when she was sixteen - and was also able to get away with being unmarried at twenty-two.
Toushiro, now 19, has become a duke, a title he got from his father, and took over his mother's lands in the big province of Rukongai. He is of some importance in Sereitei, being the youngest person to hold the title duke, and is considered to be the land's ultimate catch since Kuchiki Byakuya, who was and still is the duke of Sereitei. However, despite the many girls who desperately try to catch his attention, his eyes only see one woman, Hinamori Momo, who in turn has eyes only for one man, Sousuke Aizen, who is the duke of the vast plains of Hueco Mundo.
We then come to know that Hinamori is a distant relative of Shiba Kaien, the dashing lord of Kaji province who was once touted to marry Kuchiki Rukia until he surprised everyone by marrying his childhood sweetheart, Miyako. Likewise, Kuchiki Rukia also married someone else(who everyone noted looked somewhat looked like Kaien), and the two have remained good friends.
Now that we have some knowledge of Toushiro's life, we arrive to a point in his half-filled canvas-like existence when fate decides to start painting again.
End of Chapter IV
Kaji is Japanese for fire, and I wanted to add some pun there since Kuukaku, Kaien's sister, has some affinity with it. Review!!