Oh no, I'm late!
Haruhi burst into the music room turned host club room, breathing heavily. She had all but sprinted but still missed the meeting time by a couple minutes. Knowing Kyoya, he would probably find a way to use this as an excuse to increase her debt…
"Hah… Hi, guys. Sorry I'm late."
"Never to fear, my dear princess," Kyoya smiled.
Haruhi did a double take. "Kyoya…? Are you feeling alright?"
"Just being in the presence of an angel such as yourself cures all ills," Kyoya whispered in her ear. Haruhi discreetly pinched herself to make sure this wasn't some weird dream. She would expect this from Tamaki, or maybe even the twins, but Kyoya?
"Ah, Haruhi. I see you've finally decided to join us." Honey's eyes glinted, an expression on his face that was usually reserved for Kyoya in the midst of his scheming calculations. Meanwhile, Tamaki and Mori seemed to be planning pranks to pull on the others, while Kaoru cuddled a stuffed bunny and devoured cake and Hikaru sat in silence with a somewhat intimidating stare.
"Ah… Haha, very funny. Can you start acting normal now? This is a little weird," Haruhi laughed awkwardly. She was met with blank, confused stares.
"What do you mean by that?" Tamaki and Mori asked in unison.
Something strange was definitely going on here, and she seemed to be the only one who noticed.
"Now, if Haruhi will stop staring at us like we've all grown extra heads…" Honey gave her a pointed stare. "We're meeting to make plans for the Christmas party we're holding this Saturday."
"A romantic party on Christmas Eve under the starlight!" Kyoya chimed in.
"With lots of Christmas cake!" Kaoru beamed.
Haruhi sank into a chair and pressed her hands to her temples. This out-of-character nonsense was giving her a headache. Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of motion—the door to the Black Magic Club was ajar, and someone had been peeking out. It didn't take a genius to guess who. With a quick glance at the rest of the host club to make sure she wouldn't be missed—now they were discussing who should play what parts in the reenactment of the nativity scenes—Haruhi slipped quietly over to the occult club, the room's interior lit only by a few flickering candles.
"Nekozawa?" she called softly.
"Hello, Haruhi. Would you like to buy a Beelzenef curse doll?" the club's president asked, Beelzenef in its usual place on his hand.
"You're trying to sell curse dolls at a time like this?" Haruhi asked incredulously.
Nekozawa had the decency to look embarrassed. "I assume you're referring to...the unusual behavior of the rest of the host club."
"What did you do?"
"It was just a little curse-"
"A 'little' curse?"
"It got a little out of hand," the black-robed student sheepishly admitted.
"And I thought it was all just superstition," Haruhi muttered. "How long is this going to last?"
"... A day?"
"You have no idea, do you?" Haruhi's accusation was answered with a shrug and a bowed head.
She really hoped it wouldn't last for more than a day. Could she even survive twenty-four hours of this insanity? Then again, she thought she same thing when she first was forced to join the host club.
"I'll do everything in my power to fix this," Nekozawa promised as she left. It seemed that even he was unnerved by the hosts' swapped personalities.
Suddenly, it occurred to the tomboyish host that there was a fairly urgent problem. We've got guests coming soon! Should I tell them…? Cancel?
No, canceling wasn't an option at this point. It was far too late for that. All she could do was try to make sure nothing went too terribly wrong. Maybe she could pass it off as an event or something...
Haruhi took a deep breath and went to open up the club.
=^w^=
Kyoya slowly blinked his eyes open. The club room, mercifully, was dark, but for some reason, he had a splitting headache and felt terribly ill. He groaned aloud and curled into a ball on the sofa. He gradually became aware of footsteps and looked up to see Haruhi standing over him with a glass of water and a small red pill.
"Here. It's an aspirin," she offered.
Kyoya gratefully accepted the painkiller, downed the water, and then returned to a fetal position. After what seemed to be an eternity, the pain in his head dulled, and he pushed himself into a sitting position. If he didn't know better, he'd swear this was some sort of hangover, but he definitely hadn't been drinking. Actually, come to think of it… He didn't remember anything after walking into the club room earlier. Judging by how dark it had gotten outside, that had been at least a few hours ago. What on earth had happened…?
"How are you feeling?" Haruhi again, unsurprisingly.
Kyoya responded with nothing but a half-shrug and a sharp "Explain."
"Well… To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what happened either, since I wasn't here when it started," Haruhi hesitated at the male's fierce glare, then hurried on, "but I think it might've been a personality swap curse. It only lasted for about… four hours, I think, and then it wore off, and all of you passed out."
"A curse?" Kyoya's words dripped with skepticism. "There's no such thing."
"That's what I thought, but when I got here, everyone was acting like someone else… You don't remember any of it, do you?"
"... No, I don't," he grudgingly admitted. Looking around, he noticed that the other hosts were all seemingly asleep on their own chairs. He still doubted that this "curse" was actually a thing, but whatever happened, he hoped he hadn't done anything too embarrassing. Suddenly, he was struck with worry that he had made drunk posts on social media that could completely ruin his reputation. He instinctively reached for his laptop before realizing that it wasn't where it should be.
"Looking for this? I moved it earlier, before our guests got here," the girl confided as she handed his laptop to him. "I should warn you, though…"
Whatever she said after that, he wasn't paying attention, as he rapidly logged in, opened his social media pages, and began checking to make sure he hadn't posted anything in those few hours. He hadn't, but as he looked at other posts from that time frame, posts with photos and stories attached…
Was that him? The person in that picture had his face, his hair, his glasses, his build… But he wasn't acting like himself in the slightest. His first thought was that Tamaki had dressed up as him for a joke, but upon closer examination, the photo was clearly Kyoya himself.
Part of the cool host immediately began trying to calculate how this personality swap (he couldn't deny that it happened, whatever the reason, not with photographic evidence) would affect the numbers. Perhaps it'd confuse and amuse, bringing more visitors, or perhaps it'd drive away some because they didn't get what they expected in the slightest. He supposed only time would tell.
A much larger, angrier part wondered what he would have to do to get those images removed from the internet before they destroyed him completely. It'd probably be impossible. Maybe it was already too late. Maybe all he could do was find someone to blame.
Haruhi, glimpsing his face, darted off to tend to another stirring host who was conveniently on the other side of the room. She didn't want to die yet. With how things were going, she'd be surprised if she got off with so little as a few thousand yen tacked onto her already-massive debt.
"Haruhi… What happened…?" a half-asleep Hikaru mumbled.
Haruhi groaned inwardly. Here they go again.
=^w^=
After the initial shock wore off, the hosts seemed surprisingly accepting of the fact that they had temporarily had their personalities swapped.
"So… It was good for business?" Tamaki asked.
"It appears so," Kyoya confirmed. It had taken him a while to get over the fact that he had been acting like Tamaki, but he had continued to read what their guests had posted about what they referred to as a "personality-swap event" and noticed that, interestingly, they had almost completely positive opinions. "'A creative new event', 'unexpected and unique', 'best Christmas present ever'..."
"Alright, men, listen up! From now on, the Ouran Host Club is going to have planned personality-swap events once every Christmas, and also at Easter!" Tamaki's eyes flashed with determination.
"You got it, boss!" Hikaru and Kaoru chorused.
No one had the heart to refuse him, or to ask why Easter.
A/N: Merry Christmas, guys!