Author's Note: I do not own Bleach or its characters. This is AU.


It's Not That I'm Sentimental

Nanao knew that at first glance no one would believe her desk was her own. It was a chaotic mess between her class work, her dissertation research, and the administrative work for the English department. Her laptop wasn't covered by papers, but that was about the only thing. The walls around the desk were covered with sticky notes of various colors. It might be an odd way of keeping track of things, but it worked for Nanao.

With a sigh, Nanao cleared a space for her cup of tea before pulling up her spreadsheets for the conference preparations. While things were going well so far, Nanao was concerned about keeping things ahead of schedule. She really didn't need a thousand things to do at the last minute. Letting out a wistful sigh as she moved some of her research, Nanao settled down to see what was left to be accomplished for this week. She had promised herself that she would only work on the conference preparations for an hour, and then she would get some work on her dissertation done.

She wasn't willing to admit it to anyone, but the combination of her classes, writing her dissertation, running the English department, and getting the logistics for this conference set up were wearing her out. Nanao was used to hard work, but this was a little much. Still, it wasn't as if she could really pass most of the work off on to someone else. She had already delegated as much of the English department work as she dared off to the few professors in the department that could be trusted to actually get things done. And thankfully, she had already reserved all the rooms and facilities necessary for the conference. What she had left was organizing the catering, the get all the necessary materials like welcome packets and programs taken care of, arrange for the set up and the clean up, and make the arrangements for the housing and transportation of the main speakers and dignitaries.

At least the university that had originally been hosting the conference had the decency to send her their original plans. Most of what Nanao had to do now was either editing of already created materials or importing spread sheets of conference attendees to create name tags and the like. It was still time consuming and at times frustrating. Nanao would be more than glad when it was all over. Unfortunately for her, she had awhile before that yet.

When her self-enforced time limit was up, Nanao turned her attention from the conference to more interesting matters, namely her own research. Nanao's dissertation was looking at literary retellings of fairytales and their use of folklore motifs. It was fascinating, and quite honestly, Nanao was having a great deal of fun working on it. Dr. Kyoraku had been right about the fact that she was ahead on her work for the dissertation. If Nanao kept progressing at the rate she had been working on it, it would be ready for her to present and defend by the end of the summer.

Quite honestly, Nanao would like that. Knowing her friends, Nanao was fairly certain that once she had her doctorate Rangiku would drag her out for a night on the town, and maybe if she was drunk enough and no longer his student, Nanao would have enough courage to ask Shunsui Kyoraku out on a date. Nanao shook her head to clear it. All the stress must be getting to her. Firmly putting those thoughts out of her mind, Nanao turned her attention to Cinderella and her various incarnations and lost herself in her work.