~Jaded: a love-hate story~

Love was cheap; there was no doubt about that.

True love was a maxim for sentimentalists whose minds were still in the days of sonnets and troubadours singing below balconies to swooning women.

Love could be bought.

He knew that.

On street corners or in expensive private rooms with silk screens and a painted woman ready for the night, all for a couple of thousand yen. It was easy to not be alone.

He stared at the young couple walking past, hand in hand, smiling into each others' face, perhaps imagining this to be a lifetime love: a love that would never be die.

Everybody was afraid of dying alone.

He wasn't.

Money could buy all the companionship he wanted, even past the time when his looks faded; women were always ready to sell themselves for payment. And lord knows, he had enough of it.

Walking.

Thinking.

Walking.

And then…

"Oh, I'm sorry," a woman's voice apologized coolly, making it seem the opposite.

Their shoulders had collided, sending a large amount of sticky dark liquid onto the front of his suit. "Watch where you're going, woman," Ulquiorra replied coldly, taking in the sight of the diminutive figure of a skinny girl in a yellow sundress glowering at him.

"Shouldn't it be the other way around? Like maybe stop daydreaming about your girlfriend and like watch where you're going?" her tone was impudent and her look saucy.

"I don't have a girlfriend," he said blandly.

"Oh…don't tell me you're—"

"No!" Ulquiorra rubbed his forehead where a headache had begun to develop, foolish trash.

"You must be." She added with a knowing look he found irritating, "only ones on the verge are so defensive about it."

"Listen woman, my prefer—"

"Rukia," she interrupted impatiently.

"What?"

"My name. Idiot. See there I told you, now would you please stop calling me 'woman'."

It was rhetorical and he knew it.

And had she just called him 'Idiot'?

"You know what, this conversation is meaningless," he spun on his heel; ignoring the pout she gave him. "I don't make a habit of speaking with trash like you."

"Why you—" her eyes flashed and her hand flexed, hurling with perfect accuracy the rest of her soda onto his back as he strode away.

Bastard…Rukia thought.

Damn woman…Ulquiorra cursed in his thoughts.

~*~

At the top floor of the Las Noches towers, Ulquiorra entered the conference room sans his suit jacket. The wet stains had nearly faded by the time of the satellite meeting between the Executive and the interested party from overseas came in.

The screen flashed and a man, he recognized as being Byakuya Kuchiki, head of Kuchiki Enterprises, appeared, sitting in a palatial Hotel room.

"Good afternoon, Kuchiki-san," Ulquiorra began respectfully to which the other merely nodded curtly in acknowledgement. A small movement to the corner of the screen made the older man motion to someone else just out of the web cam's view to get closer.

"Before we discuss anything, Schiffer-san, I'd like to introduce my daughter, Rukia. She'll be handling these annoying affairs here in Japan," Byakuya draped his arm around the slender waist of a familiar petite girl wearing-you guessed it-a bright yellow sun dress. Violet eyes stared into the laptop screen into that of emerald green.

"You…it can't be…" he barely restrained the horror in his voice.

"Oh, but I am," Rukia smoothly replied, allowing a triumphant smile that could only be termed as an evil smile grace her face.

~~~*~~~

Disclaimer: don't own Bleach.

A/N: I've taken the chapter 12 of Butterfly and decided to expand it. ;P yeah I've done the same with the KenseixRukia one-shot. CH.2 of that one is in the works. ;) Thanks for reading and more love-hate stuff is in store for Ulqui next chapter. ;D Reviews are always appreciated.

No flames or idiotic spammers.

Note: I am better from my cold though earlier I was still having sinus problems. :P