So, I hope Kaoru isn't OOC. But it's clear where the manga's going, and I always wondered – why did he never really show any emotion about giving up Haruhi that easily? He did love her – I think nearly as much as Hikaru. And probably still does, even when it's Chap. 80 and ------ I won't say any more, don't worry.

This might be just a one-shot, and this might be longer. I don't know. But for now, it's just the one chapter.

Thankies for reading!

DISCLAIMER: I don't own OHSHC. I do own the coffee shop attendees and employees, though. *beady eyes*

Red Raincoat
by Shu of the Wind

No matter how many reasons he came up with, it was impossible for him to stop.

Sometimes, he would lie awake after staying up for far too long, and watch the sun come up out of the corners of his eyes, and try to erase the image of her, burned into his eyelids. It was eminently illogical, and frustrating, and in a way extremely dehumanizing, because whenever he thought of her he was no longer a person. He was no longer the twin; he was no longer the quieter one. He was a bundle of yearning and rage, longing and that single, solid truth – it can never happen.

And he knew that. He knew that it was impossible; he knew that while it was never something he could change, he could dream of it; imagine that she had chosen him – not his best friend, but him, the person she had analyzed so carelessly. She had stripped away the layers they had built up against the world, simply, deftly, and seemingly without any pain; she had scrutinized him – them – under a microscope and pinned him/them down to the corkboard, and instead of pain it brought nothing but a sweet, unnatural contentment. The contentment first, and then the happiness and the wonder, and then the warmth in his face and the air in his stomach whenever he thought of her, like he was stepping on clouds.

And then he had realized how his brother, his friend, his closest companion had felt, and he had stepped aside. He had thrown out hints before that, and she had never noticed. (We always have the same tastes, we always like the same thing.) After that he had done more than hint, and she hadn't understood. (It would have been good if there were two... exactly the same, like these two cans of fruit juice...)

(But what do we do when there's only one and we both want it?)

One of us gives up. That had been the answer then, and if he had a chance to revisit it, it was the only choice they had. Both of them striving for it meant even more pain. Both of them stretching out their hands, pulling what they wanted this way and that, meant that the thing would break in two, and neither of them would get anything. It had made sense then and it made sense now, and no matter how much he threw that reasoning at himself, trying to find a loophole, he could never get himself to deny the reasoning of it.

But she was with neither of them, now. Even when he had stepped aside, even when his brother had made it clear to her how he felt, she had still chosen someone else. And the worst thing was that he was happy for her. In a bittersweet, knife-in-the-gut kind of way, whenever he saw them together he had a surge of happiness. A sense of truth. This is how it was meant to be. And the bitterness he felt was pushed aside until he was alone again – because even with his brother, he was alone with this – because he was the one who hadn't made himself understood.

He was the one who had played down his own feelings and stepped aside, and every day he thought back to that moment and wondered –

Should I have done that?

He took to wandering around the town on his own, usually when Hikaru was still asleep, or, perhaps, if he was in the dojo with Hani-senpai and Mori-senpai. (Hikaru had decided to learn karate, and only from the masters, of course). He never mentioned it to Hikaru, either. It was part of no longer being them, but being he and I, that kept it a secret. He wandered without knowing exactly what it was that he was looking for, but with that ultimate sense – I have to find it.

Find what? Truth. An end. Something to stop the bitterness and the ache that clenched at him in the middle of the night, claws in his stomach and ribs. There were shops that he enjoyed exploring, trying harder to expand his world – like she was always saying – and he liked using his own two feet to go places. It somehow made the rest of the world seem a little less dark and imposing, a little more accessible. Something that he could learn to understand.

Rainy days were particularly nice, as it meant that he could stretch his legs on empty streets. People didn't like going out in the rain. He did. It was soothing, gentle – it would kiss his face and neck and soak into his coat and weigh him down with something that he could understand, that he could heal himself of. And when the rain was over he usually found that Tono had sent him a message, with a location, and they usually ended up puddle jumping, and he went to see the adorably exasperated affectionate look on her face when Tono drenched her with puddle-spray like a child.

He didn't understand how he could make himself stop loving her, but he knew he had to, because otherwise he would probably end up ruining everything the club had worked for all this time.

He always wore a red raincoat when he went out to get caught in the rain. He would stand on the edge of the road and let the water pour down on his head, trickle down his collar, and rest on his eyelashes. It turned the world into a simple drizzling mist that was somehow soothing. People would hurry by him, some quickly, some slowly, some staring at him as they passed.

On the day of the biggest rainstorm of the year, someone touched his sleeve as they brushed past, a strange tugging sensation. It caught his attention like nothing else had, because no one had touched him (except his brother) in a very long time. When he still didn't move, the tugging became more insistent, and finally he let them pull him along the road, through the rain, into the coffee shop. And the instant he was brought to the door, the person brushed his hand with a fingertip, turned, and ran away through the rain.

It was a place filled with a cross between commoner's instant coffee and the stuff he had at home, with the warm smell of coffee beans and hard wooden chairs that supported his back better than the cushy couches in the third music room. He never came on rainy days, because that was when he stayed out in the downpour, but when it was cloudy he liked to come into the shop and order something different each time, trying to find something that suited him. It was an epic failure, but it distracted him, and it was interesting because to the people in that coffee shop he wasn't a host; he wasn't a Hitachiin; he wasn't a rich boy slumming it. He was just someone who had been led here to take refuge from the possibility of rain.

He never came when the sun shone.

Eventually he started putting names to faces, of regular customers and coffee shop employees. There was Shy Little Yuki, who came in every Thursday and ordered something with caramel mixed into it and blushed whenever she met anybody's eyes; there was Bossy Ryuuji and his girlfriend, who seemed to be falling apart at the seams; and the Non-Genetic Triplets, Mari, Hotaru, and Jun.

He knew he'd never introduced himself, but he'd become a regular all the same, because sometimes one of the Non-Genetic Triplets (usually one of the two girls) would grin when he came in and ask, "So, what are you picking today?" And he always answered – "Surprise me."

There was something about that place which calmed him, let the coils inside him loosen slightly. It gave him a refuge, an escape, other than the third music room, which had become somewhere where he was always acting. Pretending that he wasn't upset. Pretending that he didn't see his brother attempting to act like Haruhi and Tono weren't happening. But Hikaru was recovering, he could see that too. But somehow it hurt even more than it had when he had stepped aside for his twin. It twisted and turned inside him, a tapeworm he couldn't rid himself of. When he was in the shop, he didn't have to feel that. He didn't have to think about the relationship that was torturing him even when it shouldn't have been – because even though he'd rooted for Hikaru, he could see how happy it was making both Haruhi and Tono, and he wouldn't have taken that away from them for anything.

He didn't realize that there was another person who came in the same way he did – only on cloudy days – until the day Bossy Ryuuji knocked a bunch of pages off of a nearby table and didn't stop to help collect them. One of them landed on his foot, and he bent over and picked it up, turning it over in his fingers. It looked like a piece from a sketchbook – something very gentle and artful in pencil, with a lot of shading for rain and no color but for the bright red raincoat. Without a word, he offered it to the person, who turned out to be a fairly badly dressed girl with a hat crammed onto her head.

"You dropped this."

Nothing. He waved it at her, and she jumped badly enough to make her chair screech across the floor. Then, with a hateful glance, she snatched the paper from him as though he'd committed some mortal sin, and crashed out of the coffee shop.

It shouldn't have bothered him, but it did. Somehow. Maybe it was the fact that he was so used to charming women that to have one react with such violence had startled him. Maybe it was because she hadn't even looked him in the face before taking off. Maybe it was because she had been dressed so sloppily, baggy pants and a too-big sweatshirt.

But there had been something of her in the suddenness of the movement, the possessive way she'd torn the paper out of his hands. He had almost been able to hear her, transported to another moment in time. Don't sell other people's belongings on the black market! Wasn't that what she'd said? Or something similar? The mechanical pencil.

Now that he'd realized her existence, he noticed her out of the corner of his eye in the coffee shop. She sat in the corner now – apparently the drawing incident had scared her out of the middle of the room – and kept her eyes focused on her sketchpad, always with her hat on her head, a soft black felty thing which was the wrong shape for her face and completely, criminally ugly. Somehow, she looked vaguely familiar.

Sometimes he would wonder what she was drawing, and immediately felt like a traitor for it. This person, with abysmal fashion sense and less social etiquette than a horse, did not belong in his world. He didn't need to think about her. He didn't have to think about her drawings. She did not factor in this life he'd carved out for himself. She was just someone random in a coffee shop.

But he could see the Haruhi in her, and that scared him. It scared him out of his wits, and it kept him coming back to the coffee shop, trying to scope out when she was there and when she wasn't. He couldn't go during school hours, but she seemed to be a student – at least, she was never there until after five. By that time, she was always in her grunge outfit, crammed under that awful hat, head down, a mug of cocoa – not coffee, but cocoa with a twist of caramel in it, despite the fact that this was a coffee shop – in front of her. And she always carried her sketchbook, close against her chest, like a security blanket.

The more he studied her, the more he realized that she actually wasn't like Haruhi at all. She was too tall, for one thing. He couldn't tell what color her hair was, but it was pretty much a guarantee that it wasn't that soft brown. She clung to the shadows like an orangutan to its mother, viciously refusing any attempt made to interact with her.

And she drew. It was incredible to watch her rate of production where drawings were concerned. Sit there for an hour and half the table she chose would be covered with papers. Sit there for another hour and the entire table would be layered with papery icing. Her cloth bag was always full to the bursting when she left the coffee shop, and flat with the lack of paper when she came back the next day. He wondered what she did with them all – sell them? Put them in notebooks? On her walls? There seemed too many for her to do anything else with them.

It was strange. He was able to be so talkative in the host club – do the strangest and most obnoxious things. And here he couldn't manage a single word.

And then, one day, she came in with the bag and she set the box of paper in front of her, like she always did, but she didn't put pencil to it. She didn't touch it. She simply studied the box and crossed her arms over her chest and did nothing.

And as she stared at the blank paper, he could see tears shimmering on her cheeks.

Very non-Haruhi.

He thought, for a long moment, about that. Then he stood, coffee mug in his hand, and took the chair opposite hers, and the girl flinched back automatically. Her eyes were wide and very black.

"Sorry." He said, automatically. "I didn't mean to startle you. I was just wondering if you were all right."

The girl stared at him, swiping at her cheeks. Then she shook her head, in confusion, he thought, an uncomprehending and frustrated look flashing across her face. She snatched a piece of paper from her box and wrote, in sloppy Japanese – I'm sorry. I can't hear you very well and I have laryngitis. What did you say?

Considering the acoustics in the coffee shop were better than in the third music room, that was surprising. But he played along, anyway. Wondered if you were all right.

I'm fine! It was underlined three times. She glared at him. Why does it matter to you?

He could feel his eyebrows traveling up his forehead, and he nearly stood and left right there. But there were still tears on her eyelashes. Why wouldn't it matter to me if a girl is crying in the middle of a coffee shop?

No one asked you to talk to me. She scrawled, and pulled the paper away, stuffed it into her box again, and stood. She clearly meant to leave.

"Wait." He said – the word left his mouth without his being aware of it. She shook her head and started to pull back, and he reached out and grabbed her wrist, in a very Hikaru-ish way. "What's your problem? I was just asking if you were all right!"

The girl wrenched back, and stormed out of the coffee shop, and he was left standing there, his hand still outstretched. Over behind the counter, Jun, holding a coffee mug, shook his head.

"If you think she can hear you, I'm not surprised she ran away."

He turned. "What do you mean?"

"You were trying to talk to Shiratori, right?" Jun shook his head again, clearly attempting to commiserate. "People try sometimes. She runs away like that every single time. Considering what's wrong with her it's not much of a bombshell to see her run away like that. She might be a college freshman, but I've never seen anybody so shy."

Something astonishingly like anger was filling him like boiling water. He was so rarely angry that it was always startling when he was, and he wasn't quite sure how to calm down again. I have to be missing something. "What. Are. You. Talking. About."

"Shiratori." Jun repeated, as though he was thick. "The girl you were trying to talk to. She's deaf."

Deaf.

It hit him like a punch, every time he thought of the word. Deaf. Unable to hear. What would it be like to hear nothing but silence, and to see people's lips moving and be unable to absorb what they were saying as they were saying it? He knew deaf people could read lips – right? And that there was sign language. JSL.

It felt strange to think about his idiocy in approaching that girl like that. She'd clearly been scared out of her wits, having someone come up and try to talk to her when she was so evidently wishing to be left alone. And she had also – obviously – been putting up that wall to prevent anyone from talking to her.

She didn't come back to the coffee shop for a while, or, at least, not when he was there, and he felt even more guilty for scaring her off like that. He wasn't sure how to act if he saw her again. Apologize? Or would she see that as demeaning? He'd never dealt with this kind of person before – he'd never met someone who was deaf, or blind, or even really disabled. Typically those people in the families his parents spent time with were kept away from the public light, either out of the regret of the parents, or the shame that they had produced this aberration while they were so much in the eyes of the country. Sometimes politicians would use their children or cousins or siblings as tools to earn the votes of their populace, but it had never really been something that had affected him.

He didn't discuss it with Hikaru, and he didn't bring it up with Haruhi, though he very much wanted to. This was something that he had to deal with on his own.

But he did inform Yuzuha, a week after trying to catch her in the coffee-shop again, that he wanted to learn sign language. She had blinked a few times, and asked why, and when he hadn't explained, she had agreed and hired one of the best tutors she had been able to find.

He didn't quite know why he was going so far to talk to this person, other than the fact that she reminded him of the way Haruhi had been, before the host club – that person who had dressed in bad clothes and kept 'him'self apart from the rest of the class, probably in an effort to simply study, not much else.

Hikaru would notice him signing sometimes, and ask, "What are you doing? Is there a bug or something?" And he would always roll his eyes and say, "No, but I'm practicing," which Hikaru, who didn't know about the JSL lessons, never understood.

He didn't practice in front of Haruhi. For some reason, he felt guilty even thinking about it. He shouldn't have, but he did. The thought of interacting with someone female other than the girl he loved – because he did love her, there was no way around that – made him feel guilty and all of its synonyms – blameworthy, at fault, culpable, censurable, unworthy. Though she probably didn't even notice, because she and Tono were so happy. She was still startlingly perceptive and would often ask him why he was so down, but he never told her the truth and she never pushed him. In a way, that was worse.

It was nearly a month before he caught sight of her – Shiratori – again, on a park bench on the way to the coffee-shop, and he hesitated. He wasn't sure she would take this the wrong way. She seemed to be an incredibly prickly person, even pricklier than Haruhi had been, and she had been avoiding him for over a month now. There was no guarantee she wouldn't just run.

But he went and stood in front of her anyway, palms slightly damp, and stuck his hands into his pockets. She glanced up at him, scowled, and turned back to her paper again, making long smooth strokes with her pencil across the page.

"At least you're not running away." He said, and Shiratori glared at him again. He remembered that a lot of deaf students had learned to lip-read – they had to – and shrugged. "You ran away last time."

Shiratori shook her head, adjusted the headphones in her ears, and turned back to her paper, and he wondered – again – whether this was a bad idea. Then he took a breath, pulled his hands from his pockets again, and signed – I'm sorry.

Her pencil fell to the ground. Her mouth fell open. She stared.

He felt unmistakably smug. I'm sorry for the last time I tried to talk to you. I was being stupid.

That was the extent of the complicated JSL he knew, and had forced his teacher to tell him. The teacher had smiled, shaken his head, and hadn't asked questions.

Her fingers were suddenly a flurry of movement, and he had to squint to pick out certain words, tripping over each other – What are you doing? Stupid. Why?

"Slow down." He said, in frustration, and she probably read the words on his lips because she stopped for a moment and studied him. Her expression was shrewd.

Do you understand? She asked with her hands.

Yes.

How much?

Simple sentences were easy. He smiled wryly. Not much.

She looked at him for a long moment and then reached out, took his hands, and corrected the position he'd put them in, completely un-self-conscious. He winced a little. She'd pushed his fingers backwards a little too far, and it was clear from the expression on her face than she knew it – she looked pleased with herself for it. Then she shook her head. You're not very good at this.

This was nearly too much for him to understand, and she laughed, the first noise she'd actually made in front of him. It was clear, and rang through the park like bells; the fact that she could actually make a sound startled him. He'd never thought of it. Why?

I don't understand.

She scowled again, took out a piece of paper, and scrawled – You're really weird. How long have you been practicing that speech? It's more practiced than everything else you sign.

"A few weeks." He said, and she shook her head again, frustrated.

Why are you following me?

"I'm not. I wanted to apologize. I acted like an idiot."

I don't like people talking to me. You shouldn't have tried. She regarded him for a moment, clearly thinking. Why did you learn that? The sign language.

He took the pencil from her; the back of her hand was cool and smooth when his palm brushed across it. I wanted to apologize. And I wanted to talk to you.

This time she simply signed the word. Why?

He thought about that for a long time. He hadn't been able to explain it until now, but something was clearer for him to think about, now that he was sitting on this bench with a deaf girl. The world seemed a little clearer, a little more understandable.

You remind me of someone I know. He wrote, in pencil, and she scoffed.

You know any other deaf anti-social freaks?

She didn't smile, or make a sound, but there was a spark in her eyes that said it was a joke. He felt himself smile – it pulled at his face and made it difficult for him to see for a moment. To his shock, he found he couldn't remember the last time he had smiled.

She squeezed the pencil thoughtfully between her fingers for a moment. I know you asked Jun my name. He told me. He can't sign. She added, after a few seconds of tapping the lead against the paper. He writes on napkins sometimes for me though. He doesn't move his mouth enough for me to lip-read. Like a turtle.

Jun did look like a turtle. His mouth quirked.

He could have told me about you before now, or I wouldn't have made an idiot of myself trying to talk to you.

Her hair practically bristled. You can talk. I can read what you're saying. You're not a closed-mouth idiot like Jun.

Then why did you run away?

I don't like talking. She made a face, and added, You've been too annoying. Go away.

"I said I was sorry." He said aloud. "And I happen to like this bench."

Shiratori scowled at him again, but leaned back and closed her eyes, pulling her ugly felt cap off her head. There was sunlight breaking through the clouds now. Her hair was black, and cut badly, but it was longer than Haruhi's was. Had probably ever been.

I saw you before. She wrote, almost lazily. You were the boy in the red raincoat.

And you put caramel in your cocoa, and that you draw. He scribbled back. Another smile cracked his face. I know that much from keeping an eye on you. So that's all we have to know, right?

Immediately she looked wary. All we have to know for what?

To be friends.

Again the appraising look. I don't have friends.

Yet. He wrote, and tossed the pencil down into the box again. Turned to her. Signed: I'm Hitachiin Kaoru.

He had to go slowly through his last name, using the individual characters, before understanding filled her face, and she signed back. Anzu.

Anzu. He fumbled it the first time, and without a word she corrected his fingers again until he managed to get it right. Anzu. Right?

She nodded, stood, and walked away, and he let her, simply watching as she ducked around the corner, cramming her hat back over her hair.

And when Haruhi asked, the next day, why he looked better, he shrugged, and said, "I don't know. It's a nice day today."