Latte Love
An Ouran High School Host Club Fanfiction
Pairing: Tamaki & Haruhi
Disclaimer: I do not own Ouran.
Chapter One
Another Tokyo Café
Latte fact #1:
The beverage of mixing coffee with milk,, first debuted in Italy where the Italian origin defines simply as milk after shorthand for the longer name of 'caffelatte' or 'caffellatte'.
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The morning classes were over for the day for the little brunette of the third year law student. While a lot of people finds it being a relief to not have to study or to not attend classes at noon, she would always finds herself being the last one to exit the class with a frustrated look on her face, whereas always compelling an attempt to let her professor to teach her more. But as usual, even though the professor loved her enthusiastic character and fond for her love towards studying, he is incapable of giving extra tuition classes for her due to the imprinted rule that everyone will have an equal education together.
By means that, if you want to learn extras, you need to pay.
And in order to pay, you need money.
And it just so happens that this innocent petite girl has everything but.
"Welcome, sir."
It has been a month now that Fujioka Haruhi had became one of the workers at the Hitachiin's newly built classical café. Although it's a small café that fit a merely about sixty people per house, but the way the inside and the outside of the café looked were incredibly beautiful, decorated with a combination of the vintage Western and early Eastern styles. Since both fashions differ from one another, the Hitachiins had made an absolute perfect choice of choosing the patterns of the floor and the materials for the curtains, and so does the well-furnished furniture.
'The Hitachiin' is strategically situated near to many of the famous hotels and apartments in Tokyo and it is also located a few blocks away from the University of Tokyo, which enables tourists, local Japanese people and students to have the opportunity to enter the Hitachiin's world of serving and services.
However, despite everything is looking and running good for the new café, they needed workers as not many of the people are interested on becoming waiters, waitress and cooks nowadays. In a long shot, people would usually went on being salespersons rather than being waiters in a restaurant.
Then walked in a university student, claiming that she needed a part-time job to gain extra tuition money for her course. The Hitachiins looked to it as a one-time chance and they quickly hired her the next day.
Haruhi walked on her normal pace on the same pedestrian road that she had been walking on for the past month. She had her book-filled bag on her back and an Isetan paper bag on her right that contained clothes for work. Truly this had been her routine for every day of the week except on Sundays. The Hitachiins close their café on that day, giving her some time to rest and to study. Although they are a very hardworking and strict managers, they are not that cruel towards their workers.
The pay that they gave to them monthly was more than the workers wanted. Due to this, their respect for the Hitachiins grew more and more and most of the workers became their loyal associates. Not that Haruhi is one of them, but she respected them for everything they'd done for the café.
Haruhi smiled as she waved to an old florist who was busying rearranging the carnations and tulips, but then stopped to reply her wave. Knowing Mr. Ukada, the florist, had some advantages for her. On occasions, he will give her a bouquet of his best flowers for free. Or at that one time, he insisted her on taking the new freshly cut red roses and presented her a cylindrical vase for the roses to be placed. Of course, Haruhi, being the kind that she's always been, would so often helps him arrange the flowers or even helps him with his groceries even though she had got no much time on her hands. She owes that much to his kindness.
"Ah, Haruhi. Going to work, I see?" his husky voice called her cheerfully.
Haruhi's tracks stopped and faced the smiling florist. "Why yes, Mr. Ukada. I'm heading to The Hitachiin."
"You sure are a very lively young woman to be working so hard while pursuing her studies." He continued with a the same broad smile carved upon his genuine face.
"I need the money, Mr. Ukada. I need for my education, that's why I'm working..." Haruhi said softly, covering her sorrow with a fake smile for him.
"Well, I know you'll do well at both. Work hard then!"
When Haruhi made her first step into the café for the first time, no one was there to greet her like they had greeted her that afternoon.
"HARUHI!! YOU'RE LATE!" a chorus sounded from the counter of the café, realizing that the voices belonged to the managers of The Hitachiin. In the past month, no one had even bothered to welcome her when she entered the café. So, seeing the managers greeted her so suddenly surely had surprised her in a way or two. Two pairs of hands slowly emerged and followed by two orange heads from the counter. Finally, the two managers of the café showed their evil sneaky faces to their favourite worker of all time.
Haruhi shrugged to this.
And I thought this day would never come, Haruhi thought seriously and sighed.
The managers, Hitachiin Hikaru and Hitachiin Kaoru then went towards her and gave her a sudden tight hug that supposedly had crushed her bones and would have suffocated her. They released her after knowing that they had hugged her long enough. Both of them, Haruhi could see, looked alike to each other but as she studied their personalities in a month while working under the same roof, she had finally know that even with such same faces, they tend to have different personalities.
And somehow that had made her feel warm inside.
"Hikaru, Kaoru, where are the others?"
To have realized that there were no customers in the café and no workers other than herself, Haruhi felt that something bad had just slammed into The Hitachiins café. No, the windows weren't broken at all, but the café seemingly to be feeling rather gloomy unlike the days where the place was truly happening.
The twins did not answer her right away. There was a really long pause before Kaoru broke the silence between them. His voice echoed in the empty, lavish café of theirs. He looked to the checkered marble floor while he said in a tone so soft and low that it can't possible be a whisper or murmur. But somehow, with the law of Physics on their side, his voice echoed, resulted a clear meaning of what he meant for Haruhi and Hikaru's ears. Haruhi's brown eyes grew bigger.
"They quit."
Haruhi doesn't know what to feel about the situation then. Angry? Sad? Frustrated? Disappointed? Furious? She only wanted to cry.
No, I can't cry over this. It's too pathetic if I do, Haruhi's thoughts ran amok in her head. Clearly devastating with the news, she gripped her inside pockets of her pants and hid her eyes underneath her bangs.
How could they possibly quit a great job, although it's not a fancy one, at a time like this? I mean, the café's doing swell for the past month, can't they see it? How can they not see the efforts and the hard works that these two knuckleheads put up to make everyone happy? How could they be so selfish of themselves?
Haruhi thought madly. She knows that it wasn't in her power to stop them from quitting but this is just too much! And to think that how would she ever find another job that pays her monthly with the same amount of an average teacher's salary? Then with that, she'll have no way to continue her extra tuition of law studies.
Haruhi slumped into a nearby chair, trying to calm down herself with the news that she'd just heard from one of the twins.
"Haruhi, cheer up. It's going to be okay." Kaoru said softly, possibly an attempt to get her spirit soaring again.
"Yeah, the café's just our side idea of doing business. It doesn't mean that much to us, right Kaoru?" Hikaru lied.
"Right. You know, we could always try something new and different, Haruhi."
Haruhi kept silent for a moment. Fingers lacing and unlacing uneasy together in her hands. Her gaze was kept onto the oak table in front of her.
Hikaru and Kaoru then gave up and left Haruhi's side, leaving her alone in her trail of thoughts of finding a way to save The Hitachiin from being closed down. There must be something that she could do for them. After all, they gave her the job that she needed at the time. And they didn't complaint about her carelessness yet making her their most favourite employee in the café.
The Hitachiin twins, she remembered, was her saviour to happen to appear in her life at the very moment when she needed help with her financial needs. And it all went well when they hired her to be their staff in their café. Never did she knew that they actually have the same age as hers and happened to be in the same university as her. Only to be separated by the kind of courses each other pursue.
Fujioka Haruhi made her decision on taking law.
While Hitachiin Hikaru and Kaoru went off with fashion in arts courses.
It was that one day that her realization for the both of them came into being when her gaze was caught by theirs in the cafeteria. Then, they marched right up to her and started to acknowledge her as a worker, a university-mate and a friend. And all that time, Haruhi kept thinking that working under a same age people would be something incredibly new to her.
She could still remember their words from before, telling her that they accepted her as a new friend in their little world.
"You're our new friend, Haruhi!"
Typical Hikaru and Kaoru, Haruhi thought.
"Haruhi, did you know with all the money that we had, we could actually conquer a bunch of things?" Hikaru said immaturely.
Well, duh, Haruhi thought again. You guys are most probably one of the richest guys that I know. Of course you can do anything that you want.
"And we can establish anything as long as we're together." Kaoru then said, continuing to what his brother had left off.
Hold it. What Kaoru had said could have a point there. As long as we're together, we can do anything that we want… and as long we have faith in ourselves, nothing could go wrong. And as long as we set our minds to it, no one's going to stop us from doing what we're doing then!
"That's it!" Haruhi suddenly shouted, causing the twins to hurriedly come back to her side from the kitchen.
"Haruhi, what is it?" Hikaru panted beside her.
"I know a way that we could put an end to this mishap." Haruhi said nicely.
"But, we've got no workers, Haruhi. What do you expect to gain from what we have here?" Kaoru voiced out his opinion. Haruhi couldn't blame him though. She's aware that her idea might not be as successful as she imagined it to be. But it was worth of shot and that she had nothing to lose from it.
"Well," she started by stood up from her seat and pranced over to the center of the room. She knew that she's doing a right thing. "since we've got no employees and there's only the three of us, I've decided that all of us should work as both managers and workers of the café. That means that none of us will be slacking around, disturbing each other where everyone will be busy fulfilling the customers' orders and managing the café."
Hikaru and Kaoru felt like they're hearing foreign words coming out from Haruhi's mouth. Their eyes didn't blink and just kept staring at the woman who somehow thought of an idea to save the café from closing.
And they thought her idea was ridiculous and soon they laughed it out in her face.
"Yeah, right Haruhi!" They said between laughs.
"Then who's going to cook?"
"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. I know you guys could come up with someone." Haruhi said while giving them a death glare that she never thought she would give to anyone in her life.
"And the dishes needed to be cleaned and the floor needed to be swept right after closing time, which would be at 5.30 p.m." Haruhi continued.
Shocked to this, both Hikaru and Kaoru came out to protest.
"5.30? It's too early for the shop to be closed, Haruhi!" Hikaru exclaimed by pulling her closer to him with his hands on her shoulders.
"Is there a problem, Hikaru…?" Hikaru could sensed a threat lacing through her every word and then reluctantly backed away from her to reach for a pen and a piece of paper from the counter.
"Do you think the three of us could do that?" Kaoru said, concerning to the fact that the idea might not go as the way it planned.
"Yes, I'm pretty sure we can."
They started to outline their plan. Lots and lots of protests were coming from Hikaru but often calmed down by his brother. Haruhi felt that it was a good idea to be having just the three of them working together in a business. Even though she never runs a business before, but with the twins' help, she knows that she is able to do good there.
Of course, there'll always be a time where logic turns down the factual.
"Haruhi, you should wear a really sexy outfit. It might probably attract more male customers than usual to our café."
"Yeah, she could like wear that bunny suit we saw from the fashion show, Hikaru."
"Totally agree. We should jot that down –"
But their act was blocked when Haruhi's fist banged on the table, crumpling the paper in the middle. The both orange heads stiffened in their seats, absolutely noting the fact that they're going to get slaughter by their new female boss and the employee. If only God could answer their prayers in their hearts. Please, have mercy!
It was then that Haruhi's about to give them a piece of her mind when the bell on top of the door of The Hitachiin chimed lightly and a man walked into the café with a suitcase in his left.
All commotions stopped and the three of them quickly regained their posture before welcoming the said man into their café.
"Welcome, sir."
The man smiled merrily and went to occupy a seat near to a window. Haruhi could tell that confusion stroked in the man when he realized that he was the only customer in a such exclusive café. And that there were only three other workers who were not even in their uniforms.
Grasping to the truth, Haruhi fumbled around for a paper and a pen before half-heartedly headed to the man to take his order. While walking to him, Hikaru and Kaoru couldn't stop themselves from giggling and grinning for what will happened to their poor little Haruhi when she finds out who the man really is.
"I'm sorry that the uniforms were off-placed, sir. We had some difficulties not too long ago." Haruhi faked a smile before continuing. "So, what will it be?"
Haruhi was holding onto a paper and a pen, impatiently waiting for the customer to tell her what he is craving right then. His slender fingers went up to his chin, swiftly making his thinking remark and this had annoyed the little brunette girl who was standing still beside him, tapping the pen onto the paper.
The blonde hair of his just made her even annoyed than before.
"I would like to have one of your best!"
Before she could jot anything into her paper, Haruhi could have sworn that his violet eyes were twinkling so bright that somehow at one point, she thought that a full grown man had somehow magically turned into a really, irritating, juvenile kid.
A/N: Please tell me what do you think of it. :] Reviews are much much much appreciated.