'Essential Reading' Note: Oh fuck, an Ouran fic.
Typical. Two words in and Kiski's already swearing.
Well, we all see where this is going. (Shit, fuck, Jesus Christ on a Crispy Crunch, bitch ain't goin' nowhere but hell on a hardtack hammock.)
This story contains spoilers from the manga: In the last couple of volumes, Hunny and Mori graduate, Tamaki reconciles his relationship with his grandmother, he and Haruhi finally get together, Haruhi is revealed as a woman and then goes to Boston for a year of school-funded overseas study- only to be followed by the entire Host Club without warning, of course. There's even a sign on the Third Floor Music Room's doorhandle saying 'The Host Club Goes Abroad!' Pretty adorkable.
The romance in this piece of fiction operates on the reasonable pretence that most relationships do not end in marriage. The timeline is approximately one year after the end of the manga- Hunny, Mori, Kyoya and Tamaki have all graduated and gone on to more worldly things. Mostly. It's verifiably impossible to make Tamaki act like a sensible human being, and that is another major factor in this weird tale- with the Host Club persisting after Tamaki's graduation, he would feel compelled to meddle in it whenever possible.
This takes aspects from both manga and anime: For those of you who don't remember them, Yasuchika Haninozuka and Satoshi Morinozuka are Hunny and Mori's younger brothers, respectively. The physical descriptions of them are based on the anime; though mentioned briefly, they don't appear in the manga.
For the benefit of all of us: Satoshi's more cheerful and sociable nature and admiration of his brother compelled him to join the Host Club- and his and Hunny's overbearing good intentions dragged the begrudging and over-serious Yasuchika into the mess. They're the only two new members; otherwise, the line-up is as before: Haruhi, Kaoru and Hikaru, with Renge still attending to her… 'managerial duties.'
Uki Doki Memorial does not count as a valid research tool; I don't care what anyone says.
Rating: Mature because I swear like a motherfucking sailor and so do some of my characters.
Synopsis: Devils. Kings. Puppeteers. Younger brothers; Family politics. Two years later, the Host Club persists- and Tamaki insists on visiting. But this year, Ouran has adopted a new pet- and she comes with more than instant coffee. Spoilers! TamakixOC, KyoyaxOC
Disclaimer: Hatori Bisco is the sole proprietor of the Ouran High School Host Club manga series; Viz Media claims partial ownership of the Ouran High School Host Club animated series in North America. I am not affiliated in any way with either party.
Dolls and Despots
Episode One:
Echopraxia - A Face of French Bisque
Lucie Charlotte Oake, nineteen.
An arguably talented singer- good control, good range, strong sense of pitch.
A deep love of the art.
She guessed that it wasn't really arguable at all- acceptance to one of Japan's most esteemed private educational facilities was a fair indication of that.
And beyond acceptance, she was on scholarship.
A scholarship extended only once a year to only one extraordinary student.
A scholarship typically only extended to one extraordinary local student.
A scholarship generously extended across half of the world to her by Chairman Suoh himself.
It didn't matter that she'd already graduated from high school; even if it was just one year in the music department, any connection to Ouran was a winning ticket into the business she'd longed to be in since childhood.
It was a business that took more than talent to break into.
She would have to have been incredibly stupid to refuse.
She was not.
Her future was bright, but in the more lukewarm present, she wished that some of that natural talent and hard-earned proficiency would extend a generous finger into her social skills.
Even just fluency in Japanese would do.
The hard fact was that even after almost two months into her first semester and a warm welcome from the majority of her classmates, there was still an indelible wall alienating her from even the most obliging of the Japanese students.
That wall was composed of a handful of things:
Lamentable shyness. Most of her existing friends were hyper-social creatures defined by their unusual tendency to simply adopt others without any choice on behalf of the adoptee; the few who defied this definition were just kindred victims of these eccentric personalities.
Naturally docile and obliging, she'd always allowed herself to be spirited to and fro between dynamic family and dynamic friends. Unfortunately, she'd left both behind- all but one of her audacious souls- and her deficiency was quickly becoming painfully obvious. Even that one soul, her last threshold of audacity, couldn't revise this; the twenty-three year old was teaching classes, not taking them.
And, at only twenty-three, she certainly wasn't qualified to be teaching at Ouran.
Here, Lucie was alone.
And, worse and worse, the language barrier held no promise of relief. Despite her quickly increasing ability, she was constantly caught off-guard by colloquialisms, unspoken tensions, and the frequently surfacing common knowledge that every culture holds unwritten.
She didn't want to risk the kind of major offense that could be so easily incurred by an unknowing comment. Ultimately, however, that meant that her already lagging motivation to join the social fray was further impaired.
Generously, her nervous impairment took the liberty of insinuating itself into every aspect of her daily life. Though by no means poor herself, Lucie found herself perpetually puzzled and awed by the sheer lavishness that both composed and followed Ouran- unfortunately, that scale of grandeur also seemed to apply itself to a large portion of the student body.
This was not something that assisted her in overcoming her shyness.
The result was discomfiting, but by no means tragic. Her days generally passed in a state of surreal detachment punctuated by a few rewarding or uncomfortable moments in which she grew closer or farther away from her classmates.
Today seemed to be the same.
Beside her in English- naturally, a subject she could have slept through with no ill effects- sat Momoko Tamiya, a sweet-faced girl with bleached brown hair who endeavoured to make friends with the same urgent awkwardness as she did- an occurrence that frequently caused both of them to lapse into quiet companionable giggling, followed by awkward silence. There was a mutual understanding that between them they shared an integral common something that would eventually break the ice- but, as of yet, they hadn't found it.
Today, she and Tamiya were trying again.
It was during this that it became perfectly obvious that whatever it seemed like, today was not the same.
Lucie Charlotte Oake's first reaction to Tamaki Suoh was a strange mixture of puzzled amusement and girlish infatuation.
The second was because the young man who had just burst into her classroom was a very handsome specimen of his sex and wore a suit very strikingly.
The first was everything else.
His abrupt entrance was marked with such a flurry of unabashedly flamboyant gestures- all joyously sweeping arms, glistening blue eyes and expressions of heartfelt emotion- that were she less entranced, she would have been surprised to see that her classmates seemed remarkably unfazed by the sudden intrusion. In fact, they seemed strangely accustomed to it.
Whether fortunately or unfortunately for her, Lucie, if she had even noticed this fact at the time, would not have had, and did not have, any idea as to why. Her classmates, concerned as to how a foreigner would react to the concept, had neglected to inform her of the existence of Ouran Academy's legendary Host Club.
But, as previously stated, Lucie did not notice any of these subtle emotional shifts- or lack thereof- in the people around her, nor did she draw any conclusions therein.
Instead, Lucie was watching Tamaki in a state of awe arguably more rapturous than that which overtook even his most dedicated fans- the only truly arguable fact of this chapter.
So enraptured was she that she almost failed to notice the rapid beeline he made towards one of her previously unknown classmates.
Almost.
Tamaki instantly identified himself as someone who made such approaches impossible for those nearby to miss.
"Haruhi! My Haruhi!" He said- no, sang, he was fairly singing at the sight of her- and, demonstrating surprising strength for one so slim, swept the poor unassuming brunette out of her chair and up into the air.
Lucie was unsure how to feel about that. Despite understanding that it was perfectly reasonable that a man- and a man who looked like that, no less- she had encountered less than twenty seconds earlier was otherwise engaged, she couldn't suppress the familiar sinking feeling of inadequacy in her stomach.
It was that feeling she hated the most. No matter how long it had been; no matter how much support she had or how many reassurances she received, she couldn't shake the unhappy sensation of having been bested by the whisper-thin thighs of the girl who was expressing exasperation a hand's-breadth from the ceiling.
She hated to admit it, but that was an integral part of the wall, too.
Japanese girls all seemed so thin.
"Tamaki-senpai, please put me down," the girl- Haruhi, wasn't it?- deadpanned.
Tamaki Suoh- the long-established blonde-haired poster-child of whimsical misinterpretation- missed the point. Dropping the petite brunette only to sweep her up again and around with added exuberance- remarkably like a doting father playing with a giggling toddler- his face showed no trace of awareness that further jostling was not what she had been requesting.
"Haruhi!" he cried joyously, holding her close to his chest, "My Haruhi!"
Haruhi's deadpan expression hadn't shifted. Her thin legs and arms hung limp in his tight grip. "Senpai, please put me down."
He did.
His demeanour changed with such speed that she had to blink to comprehend it.
He was staggering backwards, away from her, away from Haruhi, in pained, lurching movements- like a person stabbed viciously but still struggling in vain to keep his feet. His back hit the windowsill, his arms spread, splaying out to grip the polished marble edges of the window with a sort of shivering desperation that made Lucie profoundly concerned. The late afternoon sunlight behind him made him a dark shadow; his joyful countenance was gone, leaving his expression teetering dangerously on the edge of despair. "Haruhi, why must you address me so coldly?"
She didn't even hesitate. "You're still my senior, senpai."
The theatrics of his distress far outstripped those of his joy.
His hands flew up in what could only be a vain attempt to blot out the sun-like wrath of a disapproving god; his head arched back beneath them, eyes squeezed shut in what seemed to be indescribable pain; his lean, suit-clad torso sunk towards the floor, pulled down by long legs inexorably folding under the weight of his agony.
Haruhi sighed.
It was at this point that Lucie noticed that, aside from Haruhi, herself, and- to her surprise- Momoko Tamiya, no one else was watching.
She turned to the quiet girl with the bleach-lightened caramel hair inquisitively.
The two of them discovered the something.
The ice finally broke.
(Dolls and Despots)
Lucie tugged on Momoko's sleeve urgently.
"Isn't that..?"
Momoko turned- peered in- almost giggled; the puffed yellow shoulders of her dress shook with silent laughter.
"That is Fujioka-san," she affirmed quietly. Her dark eyes smiled under shrugging black brows; an expression of silent apology that was quickly growing familiar. "I'm afraid I'd forgotten to mention it; I'm sorry, Oake-san." Lucie reassured her quickly- perhaps even slightly impatiently- and beseeched her to call her by her first name.
Momoko smiled again, but it was with a confused mixture of discomfort and tentative joy. Lucie wondered anxiously if she'd inadvertently done something wrong.
She hadn't.
The young brunette bobbed her head in gentle concurrence. "I'm sorry," she repeated, "…Lucie-san." Lucie laughed at the idea of being anything so formal as a 'Miss Lucie' and then implored her to continue her original thought. Momoko bobbed again.
She explained; Lucie struggled.
"Fujioka is… uh, excuse my rudeness… Fujioka-san's a… cross-dresser? And everyone knows? I... but… she seems so normal," she protested, feeling the confusion flit across her face.
Another of Momoko's subtle little laugh-smile-apologize moments. "I know it sounds strange; maybe even stranger to a foreigner such as yourself." A sheepish little amendment. "But I assure you that it's true. It seems that Fujioka-san is not very attached to her feminine identity," she explained, "and it was originally thought that she was a young man." A look of even more poignant sheepishness. "…A mistake that was perpetuated by Suoh-sempai."
One that had only been corrected a little over a year before, preceding her semester of overseas.
Lucie battled confusion.
A baffled "What?" escaped her mouth before the intended "How could he do that? Why didn't she say anything?" and then a "But if that's why, why is she still dressed like a boy?"
Laugh, smile, nod. A mounting flush of vicarious embarrassment.
Explaining the attachment of the female portion of the student body to Haruhi's male persona was a difficult task, even for the most straight-forward and unabashed of speakers.
For the irretrievably shy and tongue-tied Momoko Tamiya, it was a harrowing experience.
It was with admirable effort- effort that went unthanked by a Lucie entirely too confused to do any thanking at all- that she carefully detailed Haruhi's position of debt in the Host Club, the climbing incline of her relationship with Tamaki, the sharp, traumatic fall of its end- initiated, of course, by the steadfastly realistic Haruhi, whose judgement had called into question the practicality of caring for two ardent practitioners of melodrama whilst pursuing a law degree- and the girl's decision to maintain her dubious position as a male host despite her now debt-free existence.
Lucie's head spun.
In class, Haruhi had been wearing the same buttery yellow silk and frothing tulle as Lucie herself. Now, she was wearing the boy's uniform- the striped tie peeking out from between the lapels of her periwinkle blue jacket- the immaculately pressed black slacks hanging straight on the girl's thin frame- 'Merino wool,'Lucie mused suddenly, identifying the fine fabric with a trained eye.
A very expensive and very high-quality uniform.
A perfectly average and level-headed seeming young woman.
Her train of thought skidded off-track again.
"People still…" She searched for the word and couldn't find it. She sent Momoko a helpless look. Another silent Momoko apology. Momopology, her brain provided nonsensically.
"Designate," she provided helpfully.
Bafflement. She could feel it on her face. In some ways, she understood; in others, she absolutely didn't. Normally, Lucie approached such things with an instinctive reaction and a careful mulling-over of reason, but the sheer and sudden volume of oddity she'd exposed herself to over the last few hours was starting to feel overwhelming. She shook her head helplessly.
Momoko looked on helplessly.
It was a very helpless moment.
The sudden pain of a hard shove jolted her out of her confused reverie; another pair of yellow-clad girls pushed past, one already with her hand on the doorhandle. The second sent her a photographic moment of scorn- a briefly visible brown eye, sheltered by sweeping black bangs, contemptuously narrowed.
She shrank back from the music room. Momoko mirrored her reflexively before sending her a tentative look of concern.
Lucie smiled unhappily at her before glancing through the door, still ajar, once more.
She'd go in one day, she told herself.
That day would not be today.
(Dolls and Despots)
Something fundamental had changed in Lucie's life.
Though she'd found herself consistently unable to muster the courage to enter the bustling third music room, she and Momoko had gone back several times that week to peer in at the goings-on within.
Both hopeless romantics to the bone, they'd bonded quickly. Their shared weakness for the sickeningly cute and kitschy allure of the Host Club- especially apparent this week, as its various themes all seeming to share a swoon-inspiring common thread of returning heroes- had revealed to them a huge range of overlapping interests. From there, the gauze of detachment had begun to lift.
Lucie's days at school suddenly seemed to flit by like short words in a sentence- essential and ultimately forgettable but somehow dear. She spent her lunches on the grounds, instead of the cafeteria, enjoying the cooling fall air. She was sometimes late to her vocal lessons. She texted Momoko in Mathematics. She accidentally burned things talking to her in Home Economics. She feared retribution from the teachers.
She worried less.
People suddenly seemed more like people and less like classmates.
The chairman's son, returned to Ouran for some unclear business on behalf of his father, was not involved with the stick-legged Haruhi Fujioka of the Host Club.
Not anymore, at least.
It wasn't as though it mattered. It was personal. It was just reluctance. It was an unmentionable something in that girl's seemingly boneless petite frame. It wasn't anyone's fault.
Momoko noticed. Momoko insisted that Haruhi was, indeed, a very nice girl. Momoko assured her that Haruhi's nature was not one given to cruelty or scheming. Momoko inquired, visibly concerned, about Lucie's reticence on the subject.
Lucie politely declined to talk about it.
She'd go back there one day, she promised her.
That day would not be today.
(Dolls and Despots)
Friday.
Lucie felt a strange pang of regret at the prospect of the weekend. It was a foreign feeling. The weekend usually heralded relief for her; a brief lifting of the curtain in which she could pretend that she hadn't left home. Two days to stay home. Two days to cook familiar food in; two days to fill the apartment with familiar smells.
Two days for Jordan to berate her on her lack of social life.
Two days for Jordan to try and usher her out into the city, out among people; two days for Jordan to try and fill the holes in her life with just one new friend.
She wasn't annoyed to discover that Jordan was right. She'd already been resigned to that. Jordan was usually right when it came to things like this.
Lucie moved her fingers in absent-minded circles, pushing outwards from her nose across broad cheeks. The foundation had a light, almost creamy feel to it; she wondered briefly if the Japanese formula was different from the North American one.
The colouration was a little different, she noticed; slightly darker. She wondered if that was surprising and decided that it wasn't. She'd been surprised- delighted- to find it in her shade. It wasn't too dark. 'It could just be the lighting.'
Blush. Pink. Always pink. She didn't feel complete without it.
Eyeshadow. More pink. She was feeling a little more daring today. It wasn't as pink as what she'd worn at home- 'hot pink when we were celebrating- or was it turquoise?- God, the things I missed out on when you were around'- but it was pink.
Eyeliner. A flick up at the corners; easy and quick. A habit she'd picked up from Jordan. She didn't draw the wings out quite as far as her roommate did, but they were there. 'How long has it been since I had to use my own brush for this? I should make sure this isn't expired…'
Fake eyelashes. She didn't have to dare for these. Familiar feathery synthetic fibres under her fingertips; it was beautiful, familiar alliteration. The instant they were on, she realized how naked she'd felt without them.
Mascara. Open-mouthed, head tilted back so the bristles of the brush wouldn't touch skin and leave pinprick points of black below her eyebrows.
'Damn it.'
Cotton swab and spit. Blending with her fingers. She could see the pink patch of semi-exposed skin, but no one else would.
Lucie sat back and took stock.
She still startled herself sometimes.
The triangular point of her chin; the edge of her jaw. Heart-shaped was the term. It still caught her off-guard. Sitting cross-legged in front of the mirror, she saw a long-haired stranger with narrow shoulders and thin wrists staring back.
Staring back with large, familiar eyes. Round greens, golds and browns; hazel-flecked irises sheltered by eyelashes- fake and real alike- swathed in shiny black.
Dark hair, the colour of coffee with a dash of cream. Shiny, too. It was almost waist-length, now. She remembered when the hair behind her ear had been just peach-fuzz; regretful regrowth.
She hadn't been able to imagine the now, back then. She wished she couldn't remember the then in the now. It seemed unfair, somehow.
Her finger caught between tightening ribbons as she tied Ouran's red bow around her throat; she had to stop. Retie. Whisk her finger out of the way before the knot skewed. The tails of the bow lay flirtatiously on the white collar of her uniform.
Friday.
Lips. Pink, but not too pink. Jordan would tell her that she looked like an advertisement for cotton candy if she was too pink.
It was Friday.
Pink eyeshadow; black eyelashes.
Friday wasn't so bad.
Pink lips.
She could do Friday.
(Dolls and Despots)
Friday-
The day of departure- of ultimate abandonment- of impending despair.
Like a singing cry of mourning let loose by his beloved, la belle Notre Dame de Paris, Friday's last bell rang with a condemning sound of finality.
Tamaki Suoh had spent the past week in paradise.
Now, in the last hidden grotto- in this tenuous pocket of warmth- in the last of the few places left on his beloved Mother Earth where the sweet strains of Eden still filtered, unheard, through the air like undrinkable ambrosia, Tamaki was holding his last supper.
Haruhi wasn't impressed.
"Senpai, it's only the weekend."
Her cruelty cut a cold swath through his shroud of love.
"We'll still be here on Monday. You will, too."
Talons of blistering cold burned deep into his tender heart.
"Didn't you say that you were helping your father for the next two weeks?"
Icicles were forming in the frigid cavern left within him.
He heard her sigh, watched her turn.
A spark of light- the flint-spark of righteousness- the fire of indignation.
"Haruhi!" he cried desperately, staring up at her from the floor. "To be two days away from beloved disciples- how can you expect me to survive without the healing prayers of my apostles of love? Haruhi!" he wailed, reaching for her receding back with a shaking hand.
Today, his dramatics went largely unnoticed.
A spectacularly unobservant human being, Tamaki Suoh was as easily distracted as a child and often as enraptured by his own theatrics as Lucie had been.
As such, he failed to notice the obvious on a fairly regular basis.
Today, 'the obvious' was a visibly perturbed Yasuchika Haninozuka and a decidedly unreadable Satoshi Morinozuka, both of them wrapped in creamy beige swatches of thick cloth.
As accustomed to partial nudity as any serious practitioner of martial artists, the increasingly grumpy, heavily sweating younger Haninozuka's discomfort seemed, instead, to be based in the fact that his glasses were sitting abnormally. The reason why wasn't difficult to guess.
Suffocating Yasuchika's feet, heavy black hooves, split like toes. Below his wrapped waist, hiding muscular thighs, dense brown fur; above, skin.
On either side of his head, displacing tousled brown hair, huge, fancifully curling horns.
Very fancifully.
Yasuchika's satyr horns were curled so fancifully, in fact, that the formidable points sat parallel to his cheekbones, pushing the arms of his glasses insistently upwards.
He corrected them again, scowling.
Yasuchika Haninozuka was not impressed.
Satoshi Morinozuka's opinion of the current theme was less obvious.
He was buried, head and shoulders, inside an enormous and elaborate Minotaur headpiece. If Tamaki had thought about it, he would have wondered how Satoshi could see.
In fact, he would have wondered how Satoshi could breathe.
Tamaki did not think about it.
Tamaki did not often think about such trivial things as breathing.
Instead, he crawled along the floor after the still uniform-clad Haruhi, complaining bitterly.
"Haruhi, in this, my final hour, you would refuse me the joy of seeing my beloved daughter, Aphrodite, in all of her beauty?"
He reached for her with failing strength, a mere ghost in his radiant purple robes, heedless of himself, heedless of others, heedless of the fact that she was entirely too far away for him to actually reach-
She wasn't listening.
A snigger behind him.
It could have been one particularly ill-intentioned snigger or just two in perfect sync; with them, there was no telling.
A head of gingery hair stole silently around him, creeping into the right edge of his vision.
"Aphrodite is the goddess of love, tono," the gingery head said. Its voice carried a musical note of malicious expectation. "She loved Hephaestus…"
Another head of gingery hair to his left, this one with a luminous hazel eye. A replay of that expectantly teasing voice.
"And Ares…"
The mica-bright glitter of deceptive yellow-gold eyes to his right-
"And Poseidon…"
A flash of pale, barely freckled skin to his left-
"And Hermes…"
The tell-tale flutter of pale blue cloth to his right-
"And Dionysus…"
Tamaki wailed.
The twins' laughter was never as simultaneous as their speech. Their rolling chuckles and piquant giggles rose and fell, intertwining melodically as they clung to one another, a mishmash of laughter- of gingery brown hair- of pale blue and orange robes. Artemis and Apollo, the Host Club's appropriately circadian twins.
He was starting to wonder why he'd picked this theme.
Haruhi made a strange sound of recognition. He looked up, brooding thoughts forgotten.
An unfamiliar hand was lingering nervously on the edge of the door to the third music room.
Haruhi smiled at it. "Oake-san, I've never seen you here before," she commented guilelessly.
From her hesitation, it seemed as though the girl was considering escape. Only one foot was only through the door, and that, barely. Beside her in that sliver of visible hallway, he saw a flash of light hair.
Tamaki felt the familiar call of gentlemanly duty.
If asked, Lucie would have insisted that he'd moved with inhuman speed.
She was not asked.
He clasped her tentative hand in his with own. Behind her, somebody squeaked.
She looked terrified.
She looked beautiful.
Smooth dark hair, pulled over one shoulder in a shining cascade- not thick, but as undeniably lustrous as the porcelain complexion of the face that it framed.
There was something that he couldn't put his finger on- something about her round face and her round eyes- something about those rosy cheeks and rosy lips-
The gauzy opalescent bubble of his thoughts popped- a paradise of euphoria blossomed once again in his chest- he suddenly, absolutely, inarguably understood-
She looked French.
"Ah! Mademoiselle, vous êtes plus belle que les étoiles!" he exclaimed, exalted. "Bienvenue, mon petite lapin! Mille fois bienvenue pour vous!"
The girl blinked.
"…Ah, uh- M-merci beaucoup, Monsieur Suoh," she stuttered, looking- quite understandably- baffled. Her French was slighting lilting; musical, but slanted with an unfamiliar accent. "Vous aussi êtes belle comme les étoiles, je suppose que?"
The starry-eyed male beauty in question went off into- exceptionally French- ecstasies of joy.
Lucie giggled.
(Dolls and Despots)
End Note: I promise it'll get more exciting. Things may be picking up slowly, but they'll reach whiplash speeds.
Also: Writing Tamaki is simultaneously super fun and incredibly nauseating. I wrote 'the healing prayers of my apostles of love', looked at it, knew that it was 100% Tamaki, and promptly wanted to vomit.
I chose one of his French phrases by typing 'Ridiculous French compliments' into Google. It was this one:
"Mademoiselle, vous êtes plus belle que les étoiles!"
It means "Miss, you are more beautiful than the stars!"
Seemed Tamaki -approved, fo' sho'.
The others:
"Bienvenue, mon petite lapin!" means "Welcome, my little bunny!" (Calling someone a bunny or a kitten in French is complimentary.)
"Mille fois bienvenue pour vous!" means "A thousand welcomes to you!"
"Merci beaucoup, Monsieur Suoh." is, obviously, "Thank you very much, Mister Suoh."
"Vous aussi êtes belle comme les étoiles, je suppose que?" is "You are also as beautiful as the stars, I guess?"
Blargh.
Please review! This is my first piece of Ouran fiction and it's rather ambitious; I want to be absolutely certain that everything is comprehensible.