Categories > Anime/Manga > Ouran High School Host Club > Dressed
Dressed
Part Two
Clad only in her underwear, Haruhi stood on the chair on tiptoe and reached as far as she could, toward the bookshelf where Hikaru had left her school uniform. She was going to kill Hikaru. She was going to get dressed, and track him down, and kill him for doing this.
Her toes were cramping, and her right arm burning, it was stretched so high. But her clothes remained just far enough out of reach to tease her. If she wasn't so angry at the moment, she thought she might cry from sheer exhaustion. That afternoon, she had finished her last exam of the year, and she could hardly remember what life had been like before Finals Week, back when she slept more than three hours a night.
With a frustrated groan, she relaxed her stance in the chair, let her arm fall, and thumped her forehead gently against the lower shelf. Her nerves were shot. All she'd wanted was to make it through this party, and go home and rest. But no. Of course the twins had to have their last prank, and of course Hikaru would decide to be stubborn about it, and keep pushing even when she was well out of patience with him.
What was wrong with them? Didn't they understand that sometimes a person--even someone as passive as she--reached the point where they'd been pushed around and coerced enough? Granted, there were issues at work here, that both the twins had somehow imprinted on her as the only thing outside their narrow world worth their time. But hadn't she earned a little empathy from them, in the arrangement?
"It doesn't matter," she said aloud, staring at the books in front of her. "I don't care." To hell with the twins, and to hell with the party, and the rest of the Host Club. She was going home to rest. As soon as she got her clothes.
The shelf above her was two, maybe three inches higher than she could reach on tiptoe. No doubt she'd fall and kill herself, if she tried to climb the shelves; there had to be some other way to get those extra inches. Too bad the books didn't have any answers--
Oh. Wait. The books....
******
Kyouya approached the Third Music Room, checking for the documents folded in the pocket of his tuxedo. He'd intended to postpone giving them away until after the party, preferably in private, when the contents could be explained. Unfortunately things weren't going as planned, and thanks to Hikaru's interference, it would take considerable leverage to keep Haruhi from abandoning them altogether.
The irony was not lost on him, that the gift he'd meant to give her freely would become a bribe instead. Evidently that cliché was proving true, about old habits being hard to break. What a nuisance.
Facing the door, fingers poised on the curved brass handle, he readied himself for the important scene to follow. It was safe to assume she'd be irate, barricaded in the changing room and ready for siege. He should take care to be understanding, but not patronizing. Cool, but not intimidating. It was pointless to expect gratitude for his offer; this would be an exchange after all, and she was certainly astute enough to see that. The most he could hope for was that she'd choose to focus on the fairness of the arrangement, rather than--/Oh merciful ancestors she was naked./
He'd entered the room wholly absorbed in his logic, and failed to register that he wasn't alone. Unexpectedly, Haruhi was not barricaded in the changing room, but instead out in the main room, climbing the bookcase in her underwear. The discovery was a shock for them both.
At the sound of the door, she gasped and wobbled dangerously on the chair she'd used for a ladder. A stack of books slipped from beneath her feet, and Kyouya darted forward instinctively to catch her, as they thumped to the floor. But she grabbed a shelf and righted herself just in time.
For five full seconds, they stared at each other across the space of a meter or two. Both of them frozen, unblinking, hardly daring to breathe. Then Kyouya's brain kicked violently back into gear, and he squeezed his eyes shut and spun about on his heel.
His first thought was, I am a victim of cliché. And his second, I should have stayed at the party. Meanwhile, Haruhi's bare legs and shoulders were blazing off his retinas, and he felt his cheeks flaming outrageously.
"I beg your pardon," he managed, flailing for his composure. "You weren't where I expected you to be."
Her apology sounded a little breathless. "Sorry, Senpai. I was trying to reach my clothes."
He removed his glasses to polish them, as if doing so might erase the diabolical slide show running behind his eyes; bare feet, slim ankles, the velvet curve at the backs of her knees--/stop this right now/.
"Your clothes are on the bookshelf?" he asked. He could hardly be blamed for not noticing.
"Hikaru put them there. I couldn't reach."
He was going to kill Hikaru. If Kaoru found it impossible to live without his twin, so much the better.
"Will it do me any good to ask where your outfit for the party is?"
"I'm not wearing that dress to the party," she said, with some asperity. "Especially not after all this." Oddly, the firmness in her tone steadied his own nerves somewhat.
"I didn't mean the dress, I meant the tuxedo that was made for you. Do you know where that is?"
"Oh. No, they didn't tell me."
He was going to kill Hikaru /repeatedly/. "I'd like to look for it, if you don't mind waiting in the next room." Adding, "I'll retrieve your uniform, as well."
There was a pause for decision, and then she sighed, "Fine."
******
Damn. She was trapped in the changing room again.
Listening to Kyouya-senpai's footsteps across the marble floor, as he looked for her tuxedo, Haruhi knew there would be no arguing her way out this time. Even if she had the nerve to try, he would only remind her that she'd already agreed to join the party as a Host. And if she put up a fuss after that, he'd find some way to bring her debt into it. Which was usually humiliating, and sometimes intimidating too; especially if he stood with the light refracting off his glasses, hiding his eyes and making him look like a Force or a Being instead of a person.
If there was any bright side to the current situation, it was that she wasn't angry anymore. Somewhere in the surprise and embarrassment at being caught without her clothes, most of her bad mood had disappeared. And out of all the people who could've walked in on her, at least Kyouya-senpai reacted sensibly. He didn't stammer nonsense, or collapse, or otherwise act like his brain had fallen out. There was that long moment when they'd stared at each other, dumb with astonishment, but that was....what?
She'd almost thought normal, but Kyouya had never looked like that before, had he? His expressions were either cool, or amused, or intrigued, and very often they were simply unreadable. Blank. But what about his face a few minutes ago?
Out of nowhere came the strangest idea. He looked like he'd been caught undressed, too. Unprotected. Vulnerable. Without a single mask or calculated response to stand in for him.
Leaning against the door, she shivered a little. That was a deep thought. And intriguing as it was, there was no way it could lead anywhere good. She wasn't one of the Host Club's pretty, idle customers. She was a poor scholarship student working off an enormous debt. Sure, the Host Club men were beautiful, rich, and much admired. But she had to be immune to their charms, lest she forget who they were, and who she was, and one day find herself hoping for impossible things out of the arrangement. That was just plain common sense, and the only chance she had of keeping her sanity.
But this new idea was persistent. It had been Kyouya looking vulnerable, and wasn't that against the laws of physics, or something? What in the world would make him look at her like that?
When he knocked at the door, it gave her a guilty start, as though she'd been interrupted snooping somewhere she shouldn't.
"I have your clothes," he said.
She opened the door a crack, saw only his hand, dangling the hanger with her tuxedo. It took her a second to understand why he went to the trouble of standing beside the door, facing away for the handoff. And then she had to grin a little. In the end, you could always count on the Host Club for chivalry. Kyouya would go to the trouble to give her privacy in the changing room. And he probably didn't even think twice about it.
"Thanks," she said, and took the hanger.
Before she could close the door, she heard him say, "One other thing," and the hand was back, offering out her folded school uniform.
She took it from him, confused. Surely he wasn't giving her a choice, was he?
"I should return to the party as soon as possible. It would help if you decided quickly," he said.
Maybe it was some kind of test, or yet another of his games where only he knew the rules. Attempting to shake off her perplexity, she said, "I'm....um. You can go ahead, Senpai, if you need to."
"I think it's best I wait." His tone suggesting he knew something she didn't.
With a certain amount of foreboding, she shut the door and turning, heard something fall out of the tuxedo jacket.
"Eh, Senpai, there are some papers with this suit." She bent down to get them, heard him saying, "They're yours."
"Mine?" After setting aside her clothes, she unfolded the papers for a closer look. They weren't anything she recognized. The top sheet was heavy linen paper, with a printed border, and official-looking script, like a certificate of some kind. Stamped at the bottom, in red ink, were the words:
/PAID IN FULL/.
At first, she couldn't make sense of it. And then when she read more carefully, she couldn't believe it.
The next papers were graphs and charts; Kyouya's projection of the Host Club's earnings for the next school year, with estimates on costs and profits, organized by member. There was a column with her name, and rather a large sum of money at the bottom, listed as PROJECTED NET EARNINGS.
Earnings? she thought. Her head was beginning to felt queer and off-balance, as though her brain was revolving slowly inside her skull.
The final page was a simple contract. Very simple. A few sentences, and a place for two signatures, and the date. Ootori Kyouya was one signature; the other space was blank.
There was no telling how long she stood there, staring at the papers, her eyes going back and forth from the PAID IN FULL to the PROJECTED NET EARNINGS. The logic was all there, she understood what was written. She just couldn't absorb it; couldn't fit both the information and herself into the same context. So she kept looking, from the certificate, to the projections, to the contract.
Eventually it was too much to take. Her knees wobbled, and she slumped to the floor like she'd been poleaxed.
******
Part Two
Clad only in her underwear, Haruhi stood on the chair on tiptoe and reached as far as she could, toward the bookshelf where Hikaru had left her school uniform. She was going to kill Hikaru. She was going to get dressed, and track him down, and kill him for doing this.
Her toes were cramping, and her right arm burning, it was stretched so high. But her clothes remained just far enough out of reach to tease her. If she wasn't so angry at the moment, she thought she might cry from sheer exhaustion. That afternoon, she had finished her last exam of the year, and she could hardly remember what life had been like before Finals Week, back when she slept more than three hours a night.
With a frustrated groan, she relaxed her stance in the chair, let her arm fall, and thumped her forehead gently against the lower shelf. Her nerves were shot. All she'd wanted was to make it through this party, and go home and rest. But no. Of course the twins had to have their last prank, and of course Hikaru would decide to be stubborn about it, and keep pushing even when she was well out of patience with him.
What was wrong with them? Didn't they understand that sometimes a person--even someone as passive as she--reached the point where they'd been pushed around and coerced enough? Granted, there were issues at work here, that both the twins had somehow imprinted on her as the only thing outside their narrow world worth their time. But hadn't she earned a little empathy from them, in the arrangement?
"It doesn't matter," she said aloud, staring at the books in front of her. "I don't care." To hell with the twins, and to hell with the party, and the rest of the Host Club. She was going home to rest. As soon as she got her clothes.
The shelf above her was two, maybe three inches higher than she could reach on tiptoe. No doubt she'd fall and kill herself, if she tried to climb the shelves; there had to be some other way to get those extra inches. Too bad the books didn't have any answers--
Oh. Wait. The books....
******
Kyouya approached the Third Music Room, checking for the documents folded in the pocket of his tuxedo. He'd intended to postpone giving them away until after the party, preferably in private, when the contents could be explained. Unfortunately things weren't going as planned, and thanks to Hikaru's interference, it would take considerable leverage to keep Haruhi from abandoning them altogether.
The irony was not lost on him, that the gift he'd meant to give her freely would become a bribe instead. Evidently that cliché was proving true, about old habits being hard to break. What a nuisance.
Facing the door, fingers poised on the curved brass handle, he readied himself for the important scene to follow. It was safe to assume she'd be irate, barricaded in the changing room and ready for siege. He should take care to be understanding, but not patronizing. Cool, but not intimidating. It was pointless to expect gratitude for his offer; this would be an exchange after all, and she was certainly astute enough to see that. The most he could hope for was that she'd choose to focus on the fairness of the arrangement, rather than--/Oh merciful ancestors she was naked./
He'd entered the room wholly absorbed in his logic, and failed to register that he wasn't alone. Unexpectedly, Haruhi was not barricaded in the changing room, but instead out in the main room, climbing the bookcase in her underwear. The discovery was a shock for them both.
At the sound of the door, she gasped and wobbled dangerously on the chair she'd used for a ladder. A stack of books slipped from beneath her feet, and Kyouya darted forward instinctively to catch her, as they thumped to the floor. But she grabbed a shelf and righted herself just in time.
For five full seconds, they stared at each other across the space of a meter or two. Both of them frozen, unblinking, hardly daring to breathe. Then Kyouya's brain kicked violently back into gear, and he squeezed his eyes shut and spun about on his heel.
His first thought was, I am a victim of cliché. And his second, I should have stayed at the party. Meanwhile, Haruhi's bare legs and shoulders were blazing off his retinas, and he felt his cheeks flaming outrageously.
"I beg your pardon," he managed, flailing for his composure. "You weren't where I expected you to be."
Her apology sounded a little breathless. "Sorry, Senpai. I was trying to reach my clothes."
He removed his glasses to polish them, as if doing so might erase the diabolical slide show running behind his eyes; bare feet, slim ankles, the velvet curve at the backs of her knees--/stop this right now/.
"Your clothes are on the bookshelf?" he asked. He could hardly be blamed for not noticing.
"Hikaru put them there. I couldn't reach."
He was going to kill Hikaru. If Kaoru found it impossible to live without his twin, so much the better.
"Will it do me any good to ask where your outfit for the party is?"
"I'm not wearing that dress to the party," she said, with some asperity. "Especially not after all this." Oddly, the firmness in her tone steadied his own nerves somewhat.
"I didn't mean the dress, I meant the tuxedo that was made for you. Do you know where that is?"
"Oh. No, they didn't tell me."
He was going to kill Hikaru /repeatedly/. "I'd like to look for it, if you don't mind waiting in the next room." Adding, "I'll retrieve your uniform, as well."
There was a pause for decision, and then she sighed, "Fine."
******
Damn. She was trapped in the changing room again.
Listening to Kyouya-senpai's footsteps across the marble floor, as he looked for her tuxedo, Haruhi knew there would be no arguing her way out this time. Even if she had the nerve to try, he would only remind her that she'd already agreed to join the party as a Host. And if she put up a fuss after that, he'd find some way to bring her debt into it. Which was usually humiliating, and sometimes intimidating too; especially if he stood with the light refracting off his glasses, hiding his eyes and making him look like a Force or a Being instead of a person.
If there was any bright side to the current situation, it was that she wasn't angry anymore. Somewhere in the surprise and embarrassment at being caught without her clothes, most of her bad mood had disappeared. And out of all the people who could've walked in on her, at least Kyouya-senpai reacted sensibly. He didn't stammer nonsense, or collapse, or otherwise act like his brain had fallen out. There was that long moment when they'd stared at each other, dumb with astonishment, but that was....what?
She'd almost thought normal, but Kyouya had never looked like that before, had he? His expressions were either cool, or amused, or intrigued, and very often they were simply unreadable. Blank. But what about his face a few minutes ago?
Out of nowhere came the strangest idea. He looked like he'd been caught undressed, too. Unprotected. Vulnerable. Without a single mask or calculated response to stand in for him.
Leaning against the door, she shivered a little. That was a deep thought. And intriguing as it was, there was no way it could lead anywhere good. She wasn't one of the Host Club's pretty, idle customers. She was a poor scholarship student working off an enormous debt. Sure, the Host Club men were beautiful, rich, and much admired. But she had to be immune to their charms, lest she forget who they were, and who she was, and one day find herself hoping for impossible things out of the arrangement. That was just plain common sense, and the only chance she had of keeping her sanity.
But this new idea was persistent. It had been Kyouya looking vulnerable, and wasn't that against the laws of physics, or something? What in the world would make him look at her like that?
When he knocked at the door, it gave her a guilty start, as though she'd been interrupted snooping somewhere she shouldn't.
"I have your clothes," he said.
She opened the door a crack, saw only his hand, dangling the hanger with her tuxedo. It took her a second to understand why he went to the trouble of standing beside the door, facing away for the handoff. And then she had to grin a little. In the end, you could always count on the Host Club for chivalry. Kyouya would go to the trouble to give her privacy in the changing room. And he probably didn't even think twice about it.
"Thanks," she said, and took the hanger.
Before she could close the door, she heard him say, "One other thing," and the hand was back, offering out her folded school uniform.
She took it from him, confused. Surely he wasn't giving her a choice, was he?
"I should return to the party as soon as possible. It would help if you decided quickly," he said.
Maybe it was some kind of test, or yet another of his games where only he knew the rules. Attempting to shake off her perplexity, she said, "I'm....um. You can go ahead, Senpai, if you need to."
"I think it's best I wait." His tone suggesting he knew something she didn't.
With a certain amount of foreboding, she shut the door and turning, heard something fall out of the tuxedo jacket.
"Eh, Senpai, there are some papers with this suit." She bent down to get them, heard him saying, "They're yours."
"Mine?" After setting aside her clothes, she unfolded the papers for a closer look. They weren't anything she recognized. The top sheet was heavy linen paper, with a printed border, and official-looking script, like a certificate of some kind. Stamped at the bottom, in red ink, were the words:
/PAID IN FULL/.
At first, she couldn't make sense of it. And then when she read more carefully, she couldn't believe it.
The next papers were graphs and charts; Kyouya's projection of the Host Club's earnings for the next school year, with estimates on costs and profits, organized by member. There was a column with her name, and rather a large sum of money at the bottom, listed as PROJECTED NET EARNINGS.
Earnings? she thought. Her head was beginning to felt queer and off-balance, as though her brain was revolving slowly inside her skull.
The final page was a simple contract. Very simple. A few sentences, and a place for two signatures, and the date. Ootori Kyouya was one signature; the other space was blank.
There was no telling how long she stood there, staring at the papers, her eyes going back and forth from the PAID IN FULL to the PROJECTED NET EARNINGS. The logic was all there, she understood what was written. She just couldn't absorb it; couldn't fit both the information and herself into the same context. So she kept looking, from the certificate, to the projections, to the contract.
Eventually it was too much to take. Her knees wobbled, and she slumped to the floor like she'd been poleaxed.
******
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