She Was Always the Woman
A/N: This is dedicated to a special acquaintance of mine. Enjoy. Please read and review! Beware of allusions to Sherlock Holmes, A Walk to Remember, and The Catcher in the Rye.
Disclaimer: I do not own Ouran High School Host Club
"We continue that cutting edge research proudly to…" The video paused. The raven-haired man closed his silver laptop shut. It was idle to continue watching it, and it would only further cause him to burn time. The videos were becoming redundant and lackluster; he saw chrome machinery here, and some scientist diligently measuring out sulfuric acid there. The graphics designer of the company had sent him yet another advertisement for the new line of medical supplies. Rationally, he knew people were interested in that boring design. People were compulsive liars, after all.
The man had a complacent look on his face. His promotion only further pushed his ennui, though he expected to feel stress and pressure. He was quite fond production pressure, actually. But a feeling of demotion grasped him, because his promotion only increased in boring advertisements and accounting scut work. He gazed out the window, waiting for some enlightening epiphany to hit him. Nothing did. Kyouya preferred the confines of his office to the fair weather outside. Kyouya discovered fair weather to be annoying and superficially happy. People expected to feel good just because of some sudden, capricious weather condition. He preferred the confines of his office because nothing changed.
Every day, he saw the same oak desk and the same black executive chair. The light green walls gave him a feeling of peace of mind and nothing personal inhibited his work. His laptop was nearly almost always open for new business emails or the newly assigned accounting scut work. He lived in his office, and he glorified the loneliness that came with it. He opened the thick, yet small notebook to the right of his laptop, the black leather notebook just above his receipt at some dining restaurant. The way his hands handled the fragile notebook was light and careful.
Perusing through the contents of the book, the later dates appeared as clear, neat notes for business protocol and appointment dates for customers. Thoroughly predictable. But as he flipped back, the lettering became a bit scrambled, a bit messier and more abundant in size. And the notes seemed to be taken from self-interest. After all, self-interest was the best motivator.
"May 20, 2003—
She attended the festival. Debt nearly paid off. Odd girl, but she's an interesting study." A receipt for a fast food chain fell out. He remembered when the host club childishly pulled him to the commoner mall for some study of commoners. They left him, and he ended up with her somehow. He flipped back.
"December 20, 2002—
She's not here. President doesn't seem too content…"
An old photograph of a teenage girl fell out. She was around sixteen or seventeen years of age. She looked rather plain, but her eyes gave off this certain protuberant light, and you'd get the skeevies if you looked at the photo too closely. She chopped her brown hair short, but she was not so boyish. She had a girly face, but it wasn't too round; she had a pretty chin and a nice sharp nose after all. The photo cut off at her upper torso; she wore a puffy yellow dress with a lacy white color. It didn't seem to fit her at all; it looked rather tacky from a certain angle. She was the kind of girl who looked much nicer in jeans and loose clothing. She looked a little serious in the photograph, though she was smiling and all. But he treasured the picture, nonetheless. He gently placed the photograph on his laptop and closed the leather notebook shut.
Haruhi Fujioka interested him. Her personality reflected his own, though not exactly. They were both calm and tenacious. They both had goals and dreams and people they looked up to. But she wasn't selfish or insecure. She didn't manipulate others to get exactly what she wanted. All in all, Haruhi was quite a frank girl, never as sharp or calculating as the cool vice president, but multiple of times more passionate.
"So you really don't care what people think of you?" Kyouya asked with a disconcerting air. She retorted his disconcerting air with a sharp look of defiance. She wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she was just as intelligent as Kyouya, perhaps even more. He blunt, intuitive intelligence stymied him.
"No." It was a plain, monosyllabic answer, but it was concise, plain, direct. Kyouya disliked direct answers. He was a shrewd character, and he enjoyed looking at people at every possible angle to efficiently learn a way to compromise with them. What character she showed. There was no way around her, yet every observation he made with consideration of her complexity.
She filled out her own applications to the rich, elite school. She took care of financial obligations that her father failed to. Haruhi worked hard to earn her position, but she never fell into the unscrupulously dug ethical traps everywhere around the school. When she failed, she tried again, until she found the answer. Haruhi was nothing short of a strong woman.
Kyouya had an aversion against strong women. They were stubborn and sometimes very asinine. Most of the time, he saw them as hypocritical. Why, if they were trying to stop bigotry against their kind, why did they only support strong women? The vague rationalization behind such a movement stymied him.
Kyouya was a secret masochist; he found reassurance in the idea that he was in the position of power and control. He enjoyed seeing pain, and then he enjoyed taking away the pain. He needed someone to need him. Patronization was just Kyouya's way of showing altruism. The bespectacled young man had a dirty martyr complex. Labeled as the cool type, he seemed callous and uncaring at first, but perhaps given a bit more time to "respect," he would sacrifice his life and pride. He was the chivalrous, mysterious rosebearing knight every girl dreamed about, only if they cared enough to see it. He feared having less power.
Oddly, he found her an amusing, if not anomalous, study of human behavior. He supported his interest with every rational and cool piece of evidence the machinery of his mind could concoct.
To Kyouya Ootori, she was always the woman. The way she directed her stares reminded him that she declared respect and independence. In his retrospect, the brown-eyed girl predominated and stood for her entire sex. It wasn't that he felt any sentiment of love towards her. At least, he had convinced himself that he was not good enough for her soon after their acquaintance.
He retained a profound sense of respect and admiration for her, despite his own personal preference for, from a lack of a better word, deprived women. He wanted to find another who would let him take the pain like a man. He liked a woman who could not worry about anything but him, while she waited for his resurrection demurely. He liked damsels in distress who would see him as their hero. The old photograph reminded him of her, her personality anyway. A soft spot in him grew for her, and her only. Her defiance and harsh rebuttals only made her more attractive to him. He never spoke of anyone with a softer passion, without glib remarks or snide description. She was her own heroine, and she made it clear that she needed to assert her declaration of self-independence. Every virile, rational, altruistic bone in his body hated that. He had genuine feelings toward her.
Kyouya spoke tactfully and tentatively most of the time. He spoke with caution, careful not to offend anyone or give a wrong impression. His phony, sycophantic chuckle resonated in the minds of those who offered him merit. His heart had disinterest, but his eyes feigned self-interest. More often, he acted politely. But when there was no merit, Kyouya was indifferent. There were few people he showed true respect for, not a superficial air of nonchalance. As repeatedly mentioned, she was one of them. Around her, he had no control over his emotions, but she cleverly enticed him into falling hard for her every time.
He also respected his two older brothers, very exceptional young men. His life was already framed for him, the moment he took his first breath in the world. And no matter how beautiful the intricate artwork looked, it could only stay within the confines of the canvas. Why? He never chose it to be like that. But for the entirety of his life, he lived trapped in a pressure-filled world.
"It's pitiful, I find the third son so interesting, but he could never do much because of his birth…" The elderly chief of medicine coughed from a minor grippe, and he walked away with his beautiful wife. They both had a regal air to them, very fancy and fine.
But it didn't take people like them to see his predicament. His father knew the exceptional powers of his two elder sons. He knew the alternating despair and motivation his youngest son received from the never-ending heat of competition. The senior Ootoori intimidated this child, denigrating any feeling of hope he had left. He bullied the young boy into executing considerably exceptional actions above his brothers, above his own.
Kyouya desired to be more powerful than them. His motivation for everything in life was to exceed his brothers. With close observation, his seemingly kind actions were selfish. His competence and ambition had no aim. Every move he made, he made for his own selfish desires, the selfish desires that spawned out of his fear of rejection from his father, his brothers, the world. But with closer observation, Kyouya acted quite altruistically.
Back to the topic of respect, though he gained no merit from her, he found her admirable at the very least.
He digressed. Kyouya heard of those wild radical feminists, and often scoffed at their drastic measures. But she wasn't like that. No, that girl, she had spirit, but she epitomized refinement. In many ways, Haruhi contradicted herself. She directed her actions with rational measures but she asserted her arguments with passion and indignity. And Haruhi, she was the only one to outwit him.
"That lady at the counter, you couldn't see her ring. It was covered by the directory map." He had shown an elderly woman the "antique" bowl she almost bought was counterfeit. The young girl was taken by surprise. Odd, he gained nothing in return. He reassured Haruhi that it was a selfish action; the elderly woman wore a bright ruby ring on her left finger. It was the ring of one of his father's business partner's, a very remarkable ring the young teenager realized from "refined upbringing" and "cautious breed." Haruhi realized his dirty selfishness, but she gazed at the map in front of them.
"Well, that's an interesting observation." Kyouya rubbed his glasses a little. He was taken by surprise. Odd, that she should notice that. Truth be told, he hated to see an old woman being scammed by avaricious scumbags. She looked up at him, throwing off a pregnant pause before beginning again.
"It's counterintuitive of you to act so indifferent if there's no merit because if you just drop this selfish bastard mask, your actions are pretty altruistic. Oh, whatever, you're really confusing, you know?" Haruhi pierced his eyes. "You're patronizing when you're nice. You're selfish when you're nice. You try to rationalize everything you do, but most of the time, you do things because they're right." Haruhi looked purely bemused, but she had solved an incredible enigma. Kyouya Ootoori was at the deepest, a selfless man.
He was layered like an onion. He seemed cool and collected most of the time, but beneath that, he felt constant pressure to pass rejection. But even beneath that, he was honest and good despite all the rational layers before him.
He softly stroked the corners of the picture. He gave it one last nostalgic glance and wedged it between two random pages of the notebook. She was seeing Tamaki now, and that didn't really bother him. He respected both of them dearly, and they were both very close friends. He did not feel enough passion towards her to be in love, but he had enough reverence to wish her the best. And he didn't see her with only a corner of his heart. He looked at her completely, beyond his rational observations. He cared, even if it was a very meager slice of caring.
She was in law school now, and he had barely kept any contacts with her. He reasoned that the best things in life, they had to be let go of at some point in life. He would always miss her a little, but the wistful feeling opened up a bit of the cold creature's heart, if only a little. Haruhi Fujioka changed his life, and he would always remember her.
He opened the laptop again.
A/N: I really did not want to read The Catcher in the Rye again for English. There were points in this fanfic when I sounded like Holden, perhaps a little wishy washy. Basically, some amphigory to get me back into my writing groove again.
Haven't written in a while, you know? Logic doesn't really flow, but I hope you enjoy it, because I really enjoyed writing it. I've been avoiding the emotional process of editing my novel in addition to not fretting about the upcoming AP exams. PROCRASTINATION LOVES COMPANY. (And since I have no friends I write.)