Hello dear readers, Rose202 here! After the overly long wait, here is the prequel to my other story, 'Why Does it Hurt?'. I'm sorry this took so long to get out, I've been insanely busy. But here it is I'm still not done writing it, but I have a good seven chapters or so written with more coming. The first chapter is more of a introductory chapter, and it gives most of Rin's backstory and how she ended up at Ouran. Chapter two will actually have her at the school with the host club, so if you don't like intro chapters then please just stick with me : ) I've based this story on one of my favourite poems by Fannie Heaslip Leah, consequently called The Dead Faith. Also I decided to challenge myself and write it in first person, from Rin's POV. Anyhoo, I shall stop rambling now so that you can actually start reading. Enjoy : )

She made a little shadow-hidden grave,

The day Faith died;

Therein she laid it, heard the clod's sick fall,

And smiled aside -

"If less I ask," tear-blind, she mocked, "I may

Be less denied."

She set a rose to blossom in her hair,

The day Faith died -

"Now glad," she said, "and free at last, I go,

And life is wide."

But through long nights she stared into the dark,

And knew she lied.

I was never an ordinary girl. I didn't fawn over hot guys, I didn't enjoy doing make-up and hair, and I abhorred shopping. I didn't listen to the popular music, I only watched action films (romance movies made me feel sick) and I hated sitting still, so I didn't watch much T.V. When I was little and people bought me dolls for my birthdays, I would thank them and, when they left, stuff the disgraceful things away into a dark corner for later use. By 'later use', I mean that once I'd forgotten who had given the doll to me, and therefor wouldn't feel guilty about its destruction, I would cut its head off and use it to play baseball with the neighbourhood kids. It was one of our favourite games – Smash the Doll. I never liked the normal things; while other girls spent hours obsessing over appearances and their latest crush, I would go for long runs around the lake and practice my Judo and Karate till my mother would make me stop.

I was nothing like either of my parents; they were fair with light hair, whereas my hair and eyes were black. They were also more sociable – where they were nice, if not overly warm, I was cold and much more calculating when it came to being friendly.

I loved to spar and run – those were my favourite things to do. I was very fast; when I had first moved to the town I grew up in, I always used to race the neighbourhood kids. It wasn't long before they all learned that turning me down when I asked was better than loosing spectacularly, as they were sure to do if they accepted. So I ran alone. Sometimes I would let someone else win, but I loved the feeling of speed so much that those times were few and far between. I was very good at Karate, and just okay at Judo. I'd been taking them both since I was four, but my instructor said that I had a talent for Karate especially. When I was eight my instructor and my parents tried to get me to compete in Japan's National Karate Competition for Children, but I didn't feel like going up against Japanese children who'd been taking Karate since before they could walk.

When I got a bit older, around age nine, I began to sense a withdrawal from the neighbourhood kids. My father said that I intimidated the other children with my speed and height – I was very tall– but I remained convinced that the reason that they suddenly didn't want to be around me simply because I was different. I was fast and they weren't, I was tall and they weren't, they had friends and I didn't. They were able to make friends and share their feelings, while I could do neither. I was convinced that they drew away because of the lines between us – lines that had always existed, but that had never gotten in the way before.

The thought refused to leave me, and despite my family's half-hearted efforts, it grew and twisted in my mind like a poisonous weed in a garden full of flowers. Eventually, the weed began to crush the flowers; I fell away from my acquaintances completely, and I severed all contact with them when we moved away. The second time we moved, we stayed in Japan. We just relocated to a different city - my father had inherited my grandfather's big medical company when he died, so we all dragged ourselves halfway across the country to go with him. I was twelve then.

I wasn't upset about moving – on the contrary, I was ecstatic. I was glad to move – at the old place, people knew me. They had their misconceptions, and they didn't bother to ask for anything more. To them I was just the fast girl who dressed like a boy, played with the boys and had suddenly been diagnosed with depression at age nine. They had no idea that the diagnosis was self-proclaimed, but that bothered me little. I didn't care what they thought.

When we moved, I decided to come out of my shell and give the people in our new city some additional misconceptions about me to worry about. My idea was that if they weren't going to bother looking for the real me, then I might as well encourage them.

The first thing I did when we arrived was find a store in the mall – oh, yuck, shopping – that sold leather clothes. Leather pants, leather jackets, leather, leather, and leather. All black leather. I bought four complete outfits, all comprising of a black tee shirt, black leather gloves (Two pairs were knuckle-length), black leather pants, and black boots.

The next thing I did was go to the hairdressers. My hair was very long and naturally jet black, even though I wasn't Japanese – I was western by blood, even though I spoke, ate and breathed Japan. The midnight locks of hair hung in a straight curtain to just past my elbows, just like they do today. I asked the hairdresser to get me the brightest, most crimson blood red she could find and put thick streaks of it in my hair.

When she was done, I looked at myself in the mirror. Black leather, black and red hair, black, angry eyes and a twelve-year-old face to top it off. The look was right, but I was still wrong. I hoped that maybe the new me would be different enough to convince the outside world that I really didn't care if they accepted me or not.

When I got home, my parents… well, you can imagine what they did. They screamed, they yelled, they demanded to know what I had been thinking. I didn't know, but I did know as sure as anything that I loved what I'd done to my look, and I said so. They grounded me, but I didn't mind. It was hard not running, but soon enough school would start, and then they couldn't keep me inside.

It was around then that they decided on the 'H' word. Homeschooling. Ugh! It was torture, specifically designed to keep me at home on a leash where I couldn't get into any trouble. I overheard my parents one night, talking about my schooling and my dad's business. At first I didn't understand how they were related, but as I listened it started to make sense.

"I don't think I can handle having Rin at home any longer," my mother said. "Honestly, I know you're worried about having her in normal school, but it's driving me crazy shut up here with only her and the staff for company."

"I know," my dad replied. "But we haven't got a choice. I am a member of the International Medical Board of Japan. If anyone of note knew that my daughter is only thirteen and depressed, and that she only wears black leather and that we're hiding her, I could lose my job."

"I still don't understand how Rin has anything to do with your job." My mother's voice was irritated now. "Sure, she has problems. But it's not the world's business."

"It is here," he said gently. "Ami, I know this has been hard for you. I know you've had trouble adjusting. But things are different in Ouran, and I promise you, if anyone knew about Rin and word got around, things could get bad for us." Ouran was the name of the city we'd moved to.

My mother sighed.

"Alright," she said softly. "But if she gets any worse, I swear I'm not going to watch her. She can go to a private school. Maybe that would straighten her out."

My father was silent, but I could imagine his familiar, cold smile that showed too many teeth.

"Alright. Maybe private school."

I crept back to my room and sat on my bed in shock. They were keeping me locked up and I hadn't even realised it! I mean, sure they picked a house in the middle of nowhere with no other kids around, and they made me do my running in the deserted parts of town, but I'd never guessed they were hiding me.

A slow grin spread over my face as I realised the implications of my current situation. And there it is again; the normal thing. You see, the reaction I had to my new information was not that of a normal thirteen-year-old girl. I didn't cry or freak out or slip deeper into depression. No, I revelled in it. I realised, as no normal child would have, that the circumstance I found myself in gave me a certain degree of power over my parents and their decisions.

Over the next few weeks after I'd overheard them talking I could tell I was scaring my parents, especially my mother. I would be puttering around doing something, and I'd catch her staring at me. When she saw me she'd look down and hurry away. I thought I must have been smiling a lot, because the housekeeper kept asking me what I was so happy about, my reaction to which was that I yelled till she stopped pestering me.

My problems got worse over the next two years. Part of me just wanted to be bad and have fun, but mostly I was hoping that my parents might actually become concerned. The hope was short-lived.

I started going out to parties I'd see advertised in the paper. I wasn't legally allowed in, but I could pass for nineteen and anyway, the tattooed guy at the front never asked for ID. The parties were raunchy, and the people at them smoked a lot. They probably did other things to, but I stayed away from the really bad crowds.

Things went on that way for a while, and it was just before my sixteenth birthday that I made my first big mistake. It wasn't really intentional; it just seemed like the Bad Girl scheme wasn't working on my parents, so I thought I'd hammer it up a bit and get into a fight.

I'd been in a few before, most involving drunks at bars, but all of them had been in self-defence and had never lasted for longer than a few punches. This time, I wanted to initiate something bigger that nobody would try to break up.

Conflict wasn't difficult to find for me, probably due to my aggressive and confrontational nature. Plus the fact that I looked tough, which was practically a written challenge for any hot-headed guy.

It was late at night, around midnight. I was at one of the biggest parties in the town, one of the parties that no one with any sort of good reputation would ever show his face at.

I was lounging in a dark booth, alone as always, when the far door opened. No one else noticed who walked in, but I did. I was here to observe – it was my second favourite hobby next to running.

I leaned forward and cupped my neck in my hand, squinting to see through the smoke-filled air. The loud rap music they had playing was deafening, so I shifted and got to my feet smoothly, my intentions of picking a fight already clear to anyone observant enough to note my body language.

Looking back on it, I guess I must have looked pretty intimidating. I was very tall by that point, around 5'10", and I was still in my tight-fitting leather number with a cute pair of black, lace-up snakeskin gloves that ended at the knuckles to top it off.

I stalked through the swaying mass of people on the dance floor and made my way slowly over to the man that had entered.

He was tall and muscular, even for a man, and appeared to be around thirty. His arms were huge and brawny with muscle, like a sailor, and his light brown hair was cropped short. His eyes were dark – maybe brown, I couldn't tell – and they looked mean. I sized him up, calculating. I'd have to move fast to avoid a direct hit – there really was a lot of muscle on those arms – but I wasn't worried.

I'm not sure why I chose that particular man to pick a fight with. I knew I could handle him – running had made me very fit, and I had taken karate and judo all my life – it was more like there was something about him that made me want to punch him. I'd never lost a fight, and I was confident who the winner would be, even though it went against what you'd expect. The fifteen-year-old girl winning a fight against a man in his thirties who looked as mean and tough as a cougar.

I smiled as I drew nearer.

I was never one for wasting words, so when I came to a stop in front of him, I didn't bother speaking. I just let my fist speak for me.

My first punch caught him square on the nose, and I heard a satisfying crunch and felt something snap before he went down.

To give him some credit, he wasn't slow on the draw, or squeamish about fighting a girl. Hardly had he hit the floor when he was scrambling to his feet, fists clenched and eyes wild. When he saw me – black leather, red hair, angry black eyes and all – he hesitated for a heartbeat.

That was all I needed to split his lip open when my knuckles connected with his teeth.

In the fight that ensued, he swore enough to give the entire scene an R+ rating. I just laughed at him.

I don't know what I was thinking – looking back, it was really stupid – but at the time I enjoyed it. It had been years since I'd been properly challenged physically; it was nice to have someone twice my age and a head taller than me trying to beat me up. It was exhilarating.

I blocked, dodged, missed a block and tasted blood.

At least I'll have something to show my father when I get back.

The fight went on that way for a while, but eventually I got tired of his cussing. A girl can only be called so many dirty names before she snaps.

As he spat a particular nasty expletive at me, I drew back. Misperceiving my slight and temporary withdrawal as hesitation, he smiled – one tooth missing and three crooked – and lunged for me. His momentum carried his jaw right into my oncoming foot. The heel of my leather boot struck him straight on, and I heard gasps from an audience that I hadn't realised we had when something in his face cracked with a sharp snap.

He was hurtled backward to the floor and came to a sprawling stop. That time, he didn't get up.

I glared down at him, not comprehending that the fight was over. My heart was still pumping blood through my veins at the fastest possible rate, and my breathing came and went in short gasps. As I thought of it I tried to slow my breathing.

I transferred my basilisk glare from the man on the floor to the people surrounding us. They were muttering amongst themselves and casting me nervous glances. I sniffed in calculated disdain and spun on my heel, striding off the patch of floor that had become centre stage.

I smiled as I went over the night's accomplishments in my head, then held back a wince at the motion. Blatantly I realised that my mouth was bleeding. I altered my current course – heading for the door – and turned towards the washroom, intending to get cleaned up a bit.

No need to scare Ami more than necessary.

You're probably wondering why I was intentionally traumatising my parents. Well, I suppose I'd better tell you now and get it over with – after all, it is a fairly important part of my story. The answer is because I was an accident. A woopsy. My parents' biggest mistake. You see, Ami and Kaito never intended to have children. I was the complication, the unwelcome baby that ruined the young couple's happy, romantic days of early marriage. They wanted to wait till they were in their late thirties to have kids, and I was born when my mother was just twenty. They told me repeatedly from age four that I was an unwanted burden and an intrusive presence in their household. I can't count the number of times when I was little that my parents brushed me off, not wanting to even be around me because I reminded them that their lives had changed with a single mistake – a mistake named Rin. All my anger and angst, all the toughness and aggression comes back to the hurt I felt the first time my mother looked in my eyes and told me that she wished I'd never been born. And she did tell me that – when other mothers kissed their kids goodnight, Ami would remind me that I hadn't been wanted in the first place.

So there I was, almost sixteen years old, getting into fights and hanging around in the same places as drunks and drug lords.

I didn't care that I was unwanted. I still don't. That was my number one objective all the way; to stop caring what people thought.

It's better now. Now, I have real friends, and I'm not as angry all the time. But my fifteenth year was one of the darkest.

When I got home that night, I found my parents up and the police waiting.

I stopped when I saw the police car and considered bolting, but they'd already seen me and anyway, I'd known this might happen when I'd thrown the first punch.

The scene waiting for me inside looked like it came straight out of a movie. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her arms. My father sat beside her, a comforting hand on her shoulder but murderous anger in his eyes, and two bored-looking policemen lounged at the entrance.

I won't go into detail about what happened, but pretty much the guy that I knocked out had suffered a sever concussion, a broken nose and fractures all over is skull.

The police needed an official-looking document signed by my father and I, and a promise from my parents that they'd watch me more closely in the future.

I laughed out loud at that part.

When the police left, I remember being more frightened than I had been all evening. My father's eyes were bright, almost crazed, and he was glaring at me like he'd enjoy wringing my neck. I'm sure he would've.

For some unknown reason, I remember the next few seconds in horrifically clear detail. Maybe because they marked the beginning of the blackest chapter of my life. Maybe because I'd never imagined what was about to happen. But mostly, I think it was the shock of having my father get up, cross the room, grab me by the front of my shirt and slap me.

I reeled for a moment. Before I could recover he hit me again, a punch this time, and instinctively I lashed out with my feet. I wrapped my ankle around his leg and twisted in a classic judo move. He tumbled, off balance, and I shoved free, ending my manoeuvre with a sharp high-kick to his chest. He fell back onto the table, and I recall the cold feeling of ice trickling down my spine as I saw the new look of absolute hate and unreasonable rage on his face.

Without another look at him or my mother I bolted, my only goal to get as far away from him and his frightening glare as possible. I leapt down the two flights of stairs and made the hallway in record time. I stopped at the front door, ready to flee – then logic caught up with me. Again with the not normal! Anyone else would have run and thought about food, clothes and money later. Not me. I made a split-second decision and ran upstairs to my room, taking the steps three at a time. I threw the door shut and bolted it, profoundly grateful that I'd thought to have a lock installed.

Frantically I pulled out my black backpack and started throwing stuff into it. My spare jacket, two pairs of black jeans, shirts, my wallet with all my money in it and an extra pair of shoes.

I was just zipping it up when a knock sounded on my door. I jerked in surprise, then growled,

"What?"

Nothing for a moment, then Ami said,

"We don't want you to go." No extra words there; Ami was like me in that she always got to the point. I could hear the lie – and the fact that she was literally spitting the words through gritted teeth – but it was enough to make me pause.

"We?" I grunted. "Ha."

I slung my backpack over my shoulder and crossed to my window. I threw it open and looked out. I was well practised enough in climbing in and out of this window that getting out now would be a cinch. I'd always used this window for sneaking out to parties.

Ami, hearing the window slide open, started speaking again, faster.

"I have a deal for you," she said.

I paused, the immediately regretted it as she went on.

"You stay here," she said. "We send you to school. A good school. You try to stay out of trouble with the police, and we'll leave you alone."

They'd send me to school and leave me alone.

"Where?" I demanded.

"Where what?" Ami said, confused.

"School," I grunted. I hated having to explain things – it was a waist of time and breath. "Where?"

"Oh," Ami said. "Well, maybe, if you pass the entrance exams… Ouran Academy?"

I froze for a second, then fell to the floor, shaking with laughter.

"Ouran academy? Are you crazy? Me, at that snot factory? You gotta be kidding me!"

"I'm not," Ami said. "With Kaito being the new company head we can more than afford it, and we'd really like it if you'd go. Besides, with his new position the family is expected to be more upper class, and Ouran is a fitting school. You're more than smart enough to hold your own there, and we don't mind paying."

"In other words, you're actually willing to pay money to hand me over to someone else and ask them to deal with me."

Ami's silence in response to my assessment was confirmation enough.

I laughed without humour, one cold, short sound.

"Alright, fine," I snarled. "But you can tell Kaito that if he ever hits me again I'll do whatever I can to make trouble for him. Tell him that he'd better keep his distance."

There was no reply, and I heard Ami's footsteps retreat down the hall.

I sighed, and the tension drained out of me, leaving me feeling limp and lifeless. I flopped down on my bed. Still fully clothed, I flipped the light off and pulled the covers over me.

I lied and told myself that I didn't mind the fact that Ami and Kaito were obviously trying to get rid of me. That was fine.

What I did mind was the school they were sending me to. All I knew about Ouran Academy was that it was some fancy private academy, probably full of rich snobs. Apparently my parents thought that maybe a learning environment full of goody-too-shoes kids would cure my… aversion to anything normal. My depression, in other words. Of course, I reflected, the root of my problems wasn't really depression – more like an active hatred of anything mundane, safe, domestic or boring. Plus the fact that no one on earth wanted me to be alive, and that included my closest relations.

I mentally ran over the calendar in my head. It was the end of the school year currently, which meant that I would be starting at Ouran in – I counted quickly – three weeks.

Three weeks?

I groaned and pulled a pillow over my head. What had I gotten myself into?

Woo, that was long. The next chapter is shorter, I just had to get all the background stuff out of the way. What did you think? It is okay? Good? Terrible? I'm aiming for three reviews before chapter two comes out, so please tell me what you thought :) I do appreciate your feedback. Thanks so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed! Arigato, and see you next time.

- Rose