Disclaimer:
Beach and Ouran High School Host Club do not belong to me.
Plus, due to some swearing and probable fighting, this is will be set at M for Mature (Personally I'd set it as T/Teen, but for safety's sake alone I will). Still, it should get long and 'heavy,' since I have a long-long plan for this storyline...
Getting off the shinkansen was a relief to Ichigo and Karin. So many people and yet they had a wide berth around the four of them during the ride. Ichigo frowned and pulled the hood of the red sweatshirt over his orange spiky hair.
'Damn people not minding their business.'
With his, Inoue's, and Yuzu's hair the four of them stuck out like a haystack on top of a moving car. Not only did it not fit in, people had no way not to notice the falling and flying hay. Meanwhile, Karin got pulled in just by association. Her reaction was to ignore the stares their way. Ichigo's was to scowl at those who continued past two seconds. In this way, Yuzu and Orihime remained oblivious.
Now out they walked while Ichigo relayed the next part of their instructions, the sheet of paper gripped in his hand.
"Oni-Chan, this will be fun!" Yuzu says excitedly, the backpack she carries bouncing a little on her shoulders.
He grunts. "That would be nice."
"Kurosaki-kun, it's a shame Ishida-kun couldn't come." Inoue laments, raising her forearms and closing her hands into light fists, "but that just means we'll have to tell him all about it when we get back! Yuzu-chan, do you have a camera too?"
Yuzu smiled. "I always bring it when we go out!"
"Yuzu's in charge of taking pictures." Ichigo commented, looking back and forth at the map and where they were.
On the way they'd come to an area much like theirs back in Karakura town. Older homes and apartments sat on either side of the road instead of high rises.
He checked Uryuu's instructions to make sure they were right; wondered if he made them take a wrong route, or a long detour. Ichigo stopped before he could again question why the bastard even knew how to get there. 'Ouran's too far for it have been an option for him, right?'
"Hey, almost there?" Karin asked from his other side, looking bored.
"Yeah."
"I hope the food stalls have chocolate yakisoba. Or…"
Ichigo didn't care to see what Ouran's High School Festival was like; he'd rather train or buckle down on a growing need to study to pass his own school. His school's cultural fair had been last week, his sisters next week, and in result had free time enough to spare. Inoue had asked if his sister's wanted to go with her. She asked about him as well.
He had been suspicious from the start, and also knew Inoue and his sisters liked similar things at times. Yuzu especially seemed randomly in tune with what Inoue liked.
Whatever Ishida's plans were, he had Inoue as the messenger. He accepted the invite worried Inoue would go and forget what she'd come for, be bullied, or get lost. So he got involved whether he liked it or not. His sisters had even come, since being in the same room at the time, they overheard; left no way to keep them out of it.
While closing the distance between themselves and Ouran's public cultural festival, Ichigo decided on how he'd act. It came down to two situations: If they were anything like Byakuya, Ichigo would wait outside. If they were like Keigo, then he'd stick to their side like a Hollow invasion and be damn if anyone even looked their way. He knew Yuzu and Inoue were both oblivious to such things. He didn't want someone eyeing his sisters, and Karin wouldn't be able to handle more than a couple of annoyances at a time.
Meanwhile, the closer they get to the driveway's entrance, the less remains in Ichigo's mind until there's only one impression. This impression is not of admiration.
'Damn.' He silently inhales, with a body full of tension.
All four of them stop. Before them are huge black iron gates open wide. The drive is long. Unbelievably green grass is perfectly trimmed on either side of the drive. On it, a few limo's are casually moving to the large building complex in the distance, traversing a span of at least four football fields. The goal is the main building out of several connection ones. What took him by surprise was that the buildings were built from stone, in a a pale pink, from top to bottom.
From where he stood Ichigo attempted to peer through some of the many windows. His usual frown only slightly deepened in his concentration.
Inoue and Yuzu marveled at the place with huge eyes, standing closer to each other and at times on tiptoe. Karin instead stared in more of shock and disbelief than excitement.
'This is Ouran…and Ouran has a clock tower?'
Personally, Ichigo knew he has met some pretty strange people. In fact most of Seireitei could be classified under the label. Odd personalities and aesthetics weren't what gave him shock. It was the shock of seeing that pink and instantly recalling all the strange characters making up the shinigami squads in Soul Society. Rich people, like Byakuya, would be far more refined based on experience with him alone. This building did the opposite as it hurt his eyes almost mockingly.
A sense of dread sparked in him, and he did not look kindly upon the campus.
His eyes glance in some concern at his family and friend. 'Usually the smart are weak physically. But who knows now? What if the worst ones turn out like Yumichika, that feathered narcistist…or even Ikkaku, full of battle lust?'
Clenching the fist that held their instructions, he shoved the paper in the pocket of his hoodie and glanced around them. He even eyes the driveway. No one walked in favor of being chauffeured, but they would have to.
"Annoying," he says to himself in a sigh.
"Pink equals rich?" Inoue asks to no one in particular, "think everyone wears it?"
One hand fiddles with a blue flower hairpin in her long orange hair, her other hand lightly gripping the ankle-length skirt she wore.
'The huge campus must get to her.'
Yuzu didn't look too hyper either anymore. Then again, despite pink being her favorite color, she stood confused over Orihime's unease and Karin's dark leer at the place. Karin must have seen the difference in wealth just by what populated the driveway other than who; no walkways for pedestrians were evident until what looked like feet from the buildings. She picked up on social cues more like he did than their sister.
Karin caught his look, relaxing visibly enough to shrug off-handedly. "Pink, huh?"
Yuzu did the rest, naturally smoothing things over with a smile toward her sister. "Inoue-san, it's rich equals pink. it's got to be. What do you think Karin?"
Karin scratches her head. Her face is more neutral but she still eyes the building. "You'd think with money they'd do…something else." It seemed like Karin no longer cared her tomboy attitude, temper, shorts and T-shirt might make her stand out on her own. "Shouldn't it be green? Money is green. Ichi-ni? Even Tou-san says so."
They turn to him and he blinks. Ichigo didn't care. Inoue's expression however, could have pleaded, 'please tell me they're too interesting to be so, and not to mess up my day's ideals and dreams for this place which I'll only get to see once, because you're too nice to discredit something before seeing; that you're not so narrow-minded...'
Rather, that's what he imagines Keigo would see; That loud annoying friend of his could match the place and the ridiculous exaggerations he could so far see. In reality, she's just looking at him with an intense interest to hear his opinion, while his thoughts make him want to turn around.
'Just like Keigo? So annoying, but I better hold back my punch reflex.'
"Depends. Let's go see." He nods toward the driveway and takes his first steps to the (he believes) hideously pink building.
He checks the windows once more and increases his guard, still too far away to see through them. Truthfully he really should be back home. He was now an official substitute shinigami and the only one capable and with clearance in Karakura to take care of Hollows, since Zeno-kura? Koma?-something appeared too useless to do anything but run.
Here he didn't sense a single Hollow, Plus, or abnormally high reistu that could signify immediate and possible danger. Though he had his extreme doubts to what would happen once entering the cultural festival grounds, danger for a whole other reason when it came to his family if at all, he felt left out for having Chad and Ishida take care of things without him. Not to mention Aizen's betrayal to join Hueco Mundo and the mess Soul Society has become.
"…Oni-Chan?" He turns to Yuzu who looks up at him expectantly.
"Yeah?"
Yuzu smiles. "Do you know what they're like?"
He shrugs, "No. Know something Inoue?"
"Huh? Oh yeah…Ishida-kun told me something really interesting! It's about the club of the person Ishida-kun asked me to bring this over!" Momentarily, Inoue finds whatever she's looking for in the bag slung over a shoulder. It is a white manilla envelope stuffed rather full.
'Ishida made Inoue a messenger, despite her supporting herself by only part-time work she probably had to request off for today...Just for a package. Why?'
"It's a host club, Kurosaki-kun!" Inoue excitedly says, trouncing all of his confusion.
His thoughts still and he whips his head over at her, seeing in the edge of his vision that Yuzu looks at her quizzically while Karin grows slightly red in the face.
"What kind of hosts are they?" Ichigo growls, now finding grounds for his suspicion and concern.
"Oh, you don't know?" Inoue asks back, a look of complete innocence on her face, which doesn't waver as she continues. "Ishida-kun says, to find this person I have to go to the Host Club and he'll be the one with the glasses. Said to take my time because the people there are so nice and-um-" she glances at the words written on one side of the letter, "Ootori-san will act like Rukia-chan. They have tea, and there might be one of my favorites because of all the types Ishida-san said they had! It seems like they make sure girls have a good time! Doesn't that sound interesting?"
A tick mark plastered itself to Ichigo's head.
"They have tea." Karin states, an eye twitching at Inoue's word choice and possibly annoyed at being mislead, "That's it?"
His black-haired sister also didn't like to just sit and have tea.
"Yep!"
"This will be so fun!" Yuzu cheered, rasing one fist in the air. "I thought you meant it's for exchange students and their hosts, but I like tea. They must be really nice people!"
"Wait, whose Rukia?"
Both Ichigo and Inoue pause, forgetting his sister's haven't actually talked to or met her visibly. Plus, Karin still looks upset at doing something that requires sitting for a good amount of time, when she could be outside playing ball back home as Ichigo knew she did.
"Why she 's a good friend to Kurosaki-kun and I, is really nice and she draws really pretty pictures that are really cute! And…"
Ichigo bows his head quietly trailing after them. Without the others knowing, he gives one of his darker scowls at the main building in general before he does.
He doesn't see if anyone is watching. In truth there are people, clusters of them merely acknowledging the wonder that was of them walking then driving. Not many people outside of school came for the cultural festival anyways. Though always public in the later half of the second and third day, when the parents and special guests have left, no current student could remember having an outsider visit.
Either way, most of them don't notice or look long enough to see the scowl of death directed in their direction. They start gossiping excitedly instead, not sure how to respond while instantly consulting each other on who they knew in school. Since no commoners had come before without a purpose, Fujioka Haruhi being the one exception as a scholarship student, they couldn't believe the small group came on their own. So the question was who they knew, something no one could decide on even if wrong, because it's not like they of the rich class would get to know someone of a clearly different station so well. It spiked everyone's interests.
One person who checks out the window scowls himself, wondering if the stranger's coming to challenge him but confused as to why he isn't alone or didn't come with real backup. 'He must be strong to not care about his image. Wonder why they come with him…Wonder how they're his friends, irritating! Why is it so easy for him!? Dammit. Just ignore him. Not. My. Buisness…' he clenches a fist and forces himself to move along and forget them.
Another sees Ichigo's expression and freezes in awe. She has never seen such a scowl and the sheer difference it made on a person's face. Her eyes widen at seeing his attire, overall look, gait, hair and eye color as she scurried window to window. She watched him as long as she could, inwardly collecting all the details she found in this stranger visiting with what looked like his family, and when he finally entered the building below her and out of sight, did she conclude something.
"Punk. Yazuka. We don't have the scary type…angry type?" It left her sniggering to herself, plans forming and running in her mind. SO many things popped up for her to do, so many possibilities that this girl started cackling. "Hohohohohoho!"
Cutting her chortling off, she rushes over to her cosplay closest hidden under the 3rd music room.
"Just wait everyone. A new star is born!"
Suffixes like chan, ni, kun, etc, will be explained in the next chapter if you don't know.