I don't own Ouran High School Host Club.

This short drabble was written for a challenge on SHINE, the challenge being "mental disorders". I noticed it before but never really wrote anything on it, but the Hitachiin twins seemed to be sociopaths in the making at the start of the series. They viewed other people as playthings, had no boundaries, and were cruelly manipulative.

They still were in some later episodes/chapters, but it seemed to start to go down, that behavior. Ah, don't kill me for this story...the twins are my favorite characters, after all. Kaoru, more specifically, but...both are cool.

Disorder: Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)

Characters: Hikaru & Kaoru (first person POV; one or both twins)

Toys

People aren't toys.

That's something we eventually learned when Haruhi joined the Host Club.

But, it wasn't always like that. We didn't always think that.

It was the opposite, in fact.

People were strange…they weren't us. They didn't understand, and would never understand. So, what did other people exist for, then? They were stupid, annoying, and close minded.

They couldn't even tell us apart.

So, we figured we didn't need them.

Yet, we were bored.

Toys and video games can only go so far.

Even if we didn't like these outside people, they were still there, so there must be a way to look at them without getting depressed.

That's when we met her.

The maid…or, would it be more accurate to just call her a thief? She was both. When we found out she was a thief, we didn't turn her in, because it was more interesting than the boring people around us.

Rather, we learned something very important from her…the ability to lie and manipulate. The ability to produce crocodile tears and sway hearts.

And that's when people became play things. When we were in middle school, girls started to write us love letters. Only, like the rest of the world, they couldn't tell us apart. So, we'd use that to our advantage and let them believe that they were with one twin, when they were really with the other.

They didn't even know.

It hurt us, so in turn, we had to hurt them. Because they were too stupid to realize that they were being tricked. If one of them hadn't fallen for it, maybe it would have been different. But, nothing turned our belief.

Tono had made a wild guess on who was who at the beginning, even. So, we were a bit more interested in him than those dumb girls. Perhaps that's why we made our way up to the Third Music Room.

We still used that, even when we joined the Host Club. Perhaps that's even why we're so successful in the club, itself. A little act here, a tad of angst there, and a tear now and then, and the girls completely eat it up.

Even Tono seemed to realize that we had that ability. So, he and Kyouya-senpai agreed on our act when the club was first put together.

Yes, it was an act…but a believable one. We believed it. Deceiving those people was an easy thing to do, just like back in middle school. They were there for our amusement, those people. They were our toys.

We still aren't sure exactly when it happened…when it stopped…but up until a certain point, we believed the same for Haruhi, too. Manipulation was easy for us to do, and she fell for it just like everyone else did.

Only, something changed.

She was able to tell us apart.

Even when we tried to lie and say that she had it wrong, she could boldly declare which one was Hikaru and which one was Kaoru. That confused us, because that wasn't like anything we had ever encountered before.

Tono had just guessed back then, and Haruhi didn't. She was certain of it. We were cautious around her…perhaps because we were afraid. There was an unknown in front of us, now. Someone that breached the world of 'us'.

And after a while, it wasn't just Haruhi. Everyone else in the club were able to tell us apart. Hani-senpai, Mori-senpai, Kyouya-senpai…even Tono. They could all easily state which one of us was Hikaru and which one was Kaoru.

And suddenly, the world wasn't just 'us' and 'them'. These people weren't just folks to manipulate and string along. Perhaps, we'll always have some of those traits. Those manipulative tactics.

But, something has changed. Not everyone is stupid. There are other people in our world…it's no longer just 'us'. It's not as easy to play with someone as we had in the past. Because…it's true.

People aren't toys.

END