By the end of the week Rangiku was exhausted. Every waking hour was spent either at work or at the studio with Toushirou. She wasn't used to waking up so early combined with her usual hours. She was accustomed to sleeping in until early afternoon and beginning work in the evenings, waiting tables at a local pub. Late nights were spent closing up and then the occasional night out. Toushirou had managed to catch her on one of her few nights off the night they met at Fait Accompli. Soon enough she got used to waking up early and riding with Toushirou to the studio, being dropped off around two or three, and then going into work between four and six. She got done between eleven and two. It wasn't the most rigid sleeping schedule, but her body had grown used to waking at eight thirty every morning, so it didn't matter how many hours she got. She was always up and ready on time, even if she was usually grumbling.

Toushirou had learned a lot about Rangiku in a week's time. She was a recent university graduate, with a Masters in the Fine Arts in Music Education. She hadn't gotten a job teaching yet, hoping to move on into a Ph.D. Program before she did so. She claimed that she'd rather deal with adults than insubordinate kids. She wasn't a morning person and didn't have the patience for kids just yet, she said. As such, she was willing to wait another year or two until getting a "real job".

Her studies had been more in string teaching, specifically violin. She was hoping to find a job as an orchestra teacher somewhere, but she knew and enjoyed enough music theory to teach that as well. She claimed that her vocal training had been minimal, though Toushirou wasn't sure he believed her. She had too much control to not have been taught for at least a four year stretch. He wondered if it had been in her younger years and she considered it insignificant. She had mentioned that the only person who'd really taken any interest in her voice had been an old music teacher in her high school, but she hadn't seriously pursued anything other than violin.

Her first day at the recording studio had surprised everyone. No one had really known what Toushirou had unearthed until Byakuya Kuchiki had declared, "You've found a diamond in the rough, this one. She'll need some polishing, but I think you can do it." Toushirou had blinked in surprise and merely nodded.

At first no one knew what to do with her talent. Usually new talents were predisposed to some genre or another. Rangiku Matsumoto was not one of those talents. Byakuya had initially been summoned to make the final decision. In the end it had been Toushirou. He heard something in her voice that no one else but Byakuya seemed able to pick up on: he swore she had a southern accent. Everyone else thought he was delusional, until Byakuya had said so, too.

He hadn't looked away from the redhead in the window since she'd started singing. "Southern. Not the Carolinas or Northern Georgia. It's not that delicate. She's not from the mountains either. Lowlands. She's from the Gulf: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or Florida."

Ichigo had looked incredulous. "Floridians have southern accents? No way."

Toushirou had tilted his head back to look at him. "You'd be very surprised. People that live in the panhandle or Tallahassee area have some of the thickest accents ever. It's all pastureland and it's so close to Alabama that no one really notices. It's not until you get south of Gainesville or Daytona that it changes."

Byakuya had nodded in agreement. "I think you should pursue that with her. I know I've discouraged it in the past, per our bad luck, but I think it's worth a shot. She's very talented. You've found a diamond in the rough, this one. She'll need some polishing, but I think you can do it."

He had patted Toushirou on the shoulder and left.

Since then they had been working on a demo album, all cover songs for the time being. Toushirou and Rangiku had carefully chosen the songs to fit her voice, staying with ranges she was comfortable with. When they weren't recording and she wasn't working, she was training with her new vocal coach: Juushirou Ukitake.

He was a tall man with long, white hair. If Rangiku hadn't known any better, she would have thought that he was Toushirou's father. It seemed that he and Kyouraku were the best of friends. The gentler man liked to indulge Rangiku about Kyouraku's relationship with Nanao. She had at one time been the producer's assistant. She had done so well organizing Kyouraku's life that Byakuya Kuchiki had asked her to handle the affairs of the label. She had readily accepted and Kyouraku had begrudgingly let her go. She still reorganized Kyouraku's life every couple of months, but other than that she was well tied up with the label's affairs.

Her vocal coach was delicate and easy to get along with. He didn't push her further than she could go; didn't ask for more from her than she could give. She was grateful for that. Her years in school had been trying and she was looking for a little bit of a break before she started back. She wouldn't tell anyone where she had graduated, though. There were no signs of her studies anywhere in her apartment as far as Toushirou had seen on his brief trips to get her in the mornings, and she absolutely refused to tell anyone her origins.

Rangiku had blushed furiously when Ichigo had first asked her where she was from and refused to answer directly, vaguely replying, "Down south somewhere; it's not really important." After several more attempts by everyone she had met that first day Rangiku had confided in Toushirou, her new producer and manager.

"I'm from a small town in Florida along the Alabama line. I don't know why everyone keeps asking!"

He had smiled knowingly and replied, "It's in your voice. You can hide everything with the way you dress, walk, and speak, but you can't change the way you sing. That's all natural."

She had tilted her head in wonder. "Is that why Iba Tetsuzaemon sounds so bad? Is he trying too hard?"

Toushirou had huffed. "We won't go there. Not now."

Rangiku had shrugged and continued eating her sushi. When meals were free, she knew not to push buttons.

Since that first day Rangiku had successfully recorded four of the ten songs selected for the demo. Things were running surprisingly smoothly and Rangiku finally felt like she belonged somewhere.

Rangiku had somehow earned a very much needed few days off from work at the restaurant and was spending the day at the studio with Toushirou. He had insisted that she bring her violin and she had reluctantly obliged. They were starting a new song today, and as much as Kuchiki Records' musicians had been helpful, they didn't really have a full time string section. Any violinists that Toushirou had called on before were tossed to the wind in favor of Rangiku. He figured that if she vested more interest and work into her demo, it would sound better and thus do better.

She hadn't expected that everyone in Toushirou and Kyouraku's little posse would be there to listen to her play. Even Byakuya Kuchiki had stopped by to "check on her progress". Nanao had conveniently dropped in to leave some papers with Toushirou and decided to stay if she was "already going to be playing".

Rangiku gritted her teeth as she pushed the door to the recording room open. There was a straight backed chair in front of the microphone, a music stand ready and waiting for her. She laid her violin case on a table and opened it, well aware of the unseen eyes on her back as she tuned her violin and warmed up. Finally she moved to the chair and sat down, glancing quickly at the music. She flipped a page or two, and then moved back to the first. She looked up at her face in the window, meeting stark teal eyes with her cool, calm blue ones. "I'm ready," she said, not really caring if he could hear her or not.

"Alright. It's the same thing as before. Just relax and play. If you need to rest, just stop. We'll follow your lead."

His voice filtered through her headphones and she noticed that her body involuntarily relaxed. She didn't know if he was aware of it or not, but his constantly cool and collected demeanor had its effect on everyone. She had noticed it in the past few days, but never had it been this effective on her. It surprised her.

She nodded and waited. The music started and she waited two counts before she started.

If they had thought her voice was phenomenal, then her violin playing was apocalyptic. Toushirou was stunned, his jaw slack and lips parted slightly. Byakuya blinked and uncrossed his arms to lean forward on the monitoring station. Nanao adjusted her glasses, and Ichigo just said, "Whoa."

She played the whole song through perfectly. What Toushirou didn't know was that Rangiku had learned how to read music after she'd gotten her Bachelors degree. It had been one of the prerequisites for entering the Masters program she'd gotten into. Her professors at her undergraduate university either hadn't noticed or cared that she couldn't read music. The admittance board for her graduate degree, however, had been more meticulous and much stricter. They had noticed immediately at her audition that she hadn't once looked at the piece of music and had demanded that she learn to read music. They had been willing to bend the rules for her in order to keep her there.

Since then Rangiku had learned to associate the notes on paper to sounds in her head. Since she was naturally auditory, it came like second nature. She could read a piece once and know how it was supposed to sound. It only helped that she had heard this music before and knew how to imitate those sounds with her violin.

When Rangiku was finished recording for the day – having played all the necessary violin pieces in a matter of hours – the effect on her friends was visible. She was proud of herself, that she could make Byakuya Kuchiki blink owlishly at her. But she was also shy. She didn't want her talent to affect how they saw her.

It had happened before and Rangiku didn't want to have to face that again.