A/N: I'm going to have to explain this one. It seemed odd to me that, while Arai/Haruhi and even Nekozawa/Haruhi are reasonably common on Fanfiction, Kasanoda/Haruhi is not. Now, I have a one-shot planned for that very pairing, but today I found that there were none at all! I felt a little sorry for Kasanoda (he has a scary face!) and so I thought I'd address it. Even though I'm a bigger fan of the more 'conventional' pairings, I do have a soft spot for Kasanoda! I dribbled out this drabble in twenty minutes or so, and so I'm still planning on doing a proper one-shot eventually. Yes. Still, this was quite fun to write! I apologise for the OOC-ness in places (aka, most of it), it is late at night and Kasanoda doesn't have much to work with. XD Just kidding. Any OOC-ness is totally my fault. But why am I putting you off in the A/N? Let's just press on, before this note is longer then the thing itself…

Disclaimer: I do not own Ouran

Bonsai

When something small has the characteristics of something bigger

Things were not going well for Kasanoda.

In actual fact, things had probably never been better.

But still, they weren't going well.

Kasanoda had a small problem. Well, a small problem that actually felt rather large. In comparison to the few scary days when he had believed Haruhi to be a boy, and therefore what his own feelings would have entailed, this was a much smaller problem. Thankfully, some unconscious part of him had known what his brain hadn't. And thus leading to his smaller, larger problem.

Haruhi was a girl, there was no doubting that. Yet, now that he knew, there would be no reason to fight his feelings. Surely, it was almost cowardly to deny them. Yet, there were two very good reasons why he was forced to hide them:

He had sworn he wouldn't tell anyone, and he was far too cowardly to admit them anyway. Especially not when he had come so close and been beaten down with the 'just friends' line before he even gathered sufficient courage. This had saved his the fate of being beaten to death by the overprotective hosts, not to mention his reputation, but had also thrown him into tumult.

He liked her a lot.

And, though he was loathe to admit it, he missed her.

It was alright for her other admirers. They were all at, or could go to, the Host Club. But he, Kasanoda, was not welcome there; and he really didn't know what he would say to her anyway. He wasn't even in her class, and he wasn't ever likely to be.

He was in class 1D, and she in class 1A. Opposite ends of the scale. The only way the classes were anywhere near each other was if someone wrote them out in a circle.

And nobody ever wrote them in a circle.

So, failing a circular scale, what could he do? Watch, mostly. Watch as she got closer to those other boys.

He felt a little jealous… but he was glad to see her happy.

Wasn't he?

He told himself that it wasn't like he loved her. He told himself this was just a crush, and he told himself it was just because she was the first girl to see past his scary demeanour and smile genuinely at him. He told himself the reason he'd started leaving school at the South exit was because it was easier for his driver, not because it gave him chance to pass the door. He told himself over and over again that he needed to stop thinking about it. He told himself a dozen different things, and all any of them did was make him howl in frustration. He didn't want to ruin things for her. He didn't want to fall for her anymore, nor to have him fall for him. He wasn't entirely sure what he wanted. To speak to her, to not let her see him; the embarrassment of her rejection still fresh. To see her, and imagine; or to not let the thoughts hurt him. He was confused. He didn't really know what he felt or what he wanted. He'd just known, like the others, that she was… different to the other girls at the school. He'd known when she'd smiled at his 'scary face'.

It was such a small gesture, but it seemed so much bigger.

Whereas, when he'd seen her in her underwear, it had been a big thing that she had made very little out of. She really was different.

Kasanoda would almost have been happy to let the twins beat the memories out of him. It would have stopped his now small-or-large problem from developing.

He worried about what to say to her, but he never spoke to her. He worried about what he'd do if she smiled at him again, but their paths never crossed. He wanted to have something, but he didn't want anything except the memories he already had.

His head was a muddled mess.

Perhaps this was the reason he quite literally walked into her that afternoon.

He'd been in detention. She'd been in the Host Club. How different they were.

But then, she was different.

She smiled at him again, and he carefully reminded himself that was how she smiled at everyone. Yet, he noted, that didn't stop it being so ridiculously cute.

"Kasanoda-kun, it's been a while." She said, simply. "How are you?"

He almost laughed. He wasn't quite sure what to say to that. 'Things had never been better, but they weren't going well' probably wouldn't have made much sense to her. Besides, she was only asking out of politeness for a casual acquaintance who might have been a friend had he not all but disappeared. No-one had made an effort to ask how he was for a long time, though, and like all the small things she did, it meant something a lot more. His bonsai.

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A/N: Cheesy endings, yay! XD Ha ha… hope everyone enjoyed. I'd be grateful, if anyone does know of any Haruhi/Kasanoda on this site to tell me. I want to find people who agree that, although he's not as 'right' as the host club, he deserves a little bit of a look in. Hee. I enjoyed writing this one… I think Kasanoda was a great character and it was a shame he didn't have a little more of a role. Who knows? Maybe he really could have been Ouran's Casanova! (Unlikely, if he's as shy as he seems to be, but…) I shall stop rambling now and go. Thanks for reading!