FicWad

Class D in the Ouran Academy might be higher than most classes anywhere else, but it's still Class D. You might eat the same food in the cafeteria as the A students, you might have the same classes and clubs (assuming they'll let you in), but people's expectations of you aren't the same at all.

Most of them are too polite to come out and say it; in fact, they're good at acting like you get the benefit of a doubt. But Kasanoda was brought up among rough-edged plain speakers, and he knows that no matter how you dress it up, Class D is for the misfits and losers, and kids who wouldn't even be in the school if it weren't for money, and the fact that Class D automatically gets graded on a curve.

He works up the nerve to approach Morinozuka by telling himself he's got nothing else to lose (or so he believes, until those twins come out with the samba dreads and the maid outfit. At which point Kasanoda has to wonder whether the A Class first-years are really as smart as they're supposed to be). He fully expects Morinozuka to yell at him, knock him to the curb, tell him to get back where he belongs. It's what the senpai in D Class would do, and even the teachers and students who don't yell have their own ways of making sure you keep your place. But Morinozuka doesn't turn him down or kick him out, which tells Kasanoda that if nothing else, he might be a halfway decent judge of character someday.

Morinozuka isn't much of a hands-on teacher, but that's all right. A good apprentice is supposed to keep his eyes open and his mouth shut, and the rest of the guys in Morinozuka's club are more than hands-on enough to make up for it.

And as it turns out, Kasanoda learns a lot.

He learns that the Class A kids get up to some weird shit after school. He learns that crimped dreads are a bitch to comb out. He learns that tights chafe, and that putting cat ears on a scary-looking guy makes him look terrifying. His grades aren't at the bottom of the D Class curve, but he's not exactly breaking the curve either, so it takes him awhile to filter out the actual useful stuff the Host Club teaches him.

Friendship is a lot different from the inside than he'd expected. It's less work than he'd thought, which is probably why he doesn't recognize it for so long. A lot of it is just talking and listening to people, and when he forgets to be embarrassed about people talking to him, and quits expecting them to flinch or run off scared, it's really not that hard at all.

It doesn't take an A Class brain, or A Class confidence just to sit around, talking and listening. Kasanoda learns that anybody can do it. Even a guy like him.