Author's Notes: After this, the only pairing HaruhixHost pairing that I have not written is MorixHaruhi. Yay!
His twin brought in the mail given to him by the servant, and set it on the table next to Hikaru. "There's another invitation for you," Kaoru simply said. "For some party."
"Thanks." It was an automatic reply after the many years of childhood etiquette lessons, said politely but with no sense of graciousness.
It was to be expected. The end of Hikaru's extensive and strenuous battle with the divorce courts was finally over, and for once, he could be breathing freely again.
Once again, he was single, but strangely he felt no need to be finding someone new; he didn't want to find another girl to fill his needs.
He wanted to be alone, and that was why he sent a reply, politely declining the invite to one of the largest galas in Japanese fashion industry.
"You know," Kaoru tried, "you can't be moping around forever."
"I know."
"Then don't just sit here doing nothing."
"I know."
"Poor, poor Hikaru, not even listening to me at all," he said sadly. "I'm leaving pretty soon; I've got to meet Mine for some consulting. Wanna tag along?"
"No. I'd rather stay here."
Kaoru sighed. "Look, just because you don't have to worry about your bank account all the time now doesn't mean you can waste your time doing nothing. Isn't that bad for your health or something?"
"Does that matter?" Identical amber eyes met each other; one pair closed in defeat.
"Call me if you need anything." Kaoru headed out, then stuck his head back inside the room. "And don't do anything crazy, okay?"
"Okay," he drawled back. As if he was going to do something stupid. Kaoru was the one that being stupid.
--
He'd married young. To one young rich girl or another. The debutantes were all more or less the same, eager to be his fiancée, eager to take the Hitachiin name as their own.
Somewhere in all of this, Haruhi had disagreed with this. He remembered how she pursed her lips and looked down on the ground silently as if that was her way of protesting.
She said nothing though. He knew that she never believed in these arranged marriages, but what would she know? She was a commoner.
She lived her life the way she wanted to, not because it was to be expected.
The wedding was an expensive affair; the Hitachiins had not held back. Invitations had the force of royalty, and so no guest turned down the offer. There were only about a hundred or so people there, which made it all the more exclusive.
Haruhi had been there, and though her eyes spelled disbelief, she'd seemed genuinely happy for them, congratulating him and his new bride. She had been hanging around the buffet table almost the whole time, and Hikaru and Kaoru had made sure that she got all of the leftovers, of which there was plenty.
Christmas had come early that year for Haruhi.
And as to be expected, his new wife wasn't that interested in him. She liked his money, and she was always on the phone talking to her family, perhaps selling out Hitachiin secrets for some more cash. She really liked money, he thought.
She never could tell the difference between him and Kaoru. Now that was funny. She would call for him, Kaoru could go, and she would never know.
There was a prank the two played. Once, Kaoru had gone into her room at night, and his wife didn't realize it. "You're right," Kaoru later noted, "she only goes through the motions."
On the whole, the marriage could be called successful. She appeared by his side for all of the important events, and with his money and her "natural" charm, the company was reeling in millions.
Her drug addiction was kept from the media, and her admittance into rehab a year later was also a well-kept secret.
On the other hand, Kaoru was fine with being a bachelor. Marriage wasn't as strongly stressed, with him being technically the second son. Mostly, he spent his time working. Kaoru loved working for the company, and his views were widely respected. His passion for making designs translated into top runways shows.
Hikaru managed the business aspect of it. It had been expected of him to overtake that helm from the beginning, but early on, Hikaru realized that he didn't like it.
Attending meetings and conferences made him no different from the average businessman, even if the topic was fashion.
Marketing was a boring subject. Finance was torture. When he was given the opportunity to look over the latest floral textiles with Kaoru, he was eager to take it.
Times like those did not come often enough.
His wife was released from rehab six months later, but she didn't really change. Drugs turned to alcohol, and she spent her days lying about, ordering the maids to bring her another Dom Perignon or to make sure (for God's sake) that the scotch was chilled.
And when another high-scale party was announced, she stopped drinking and eating. She would wear a Hitachiin original, and she was the media darling and the talk of the night.
She was always a strong believer of public image.
Perhaps that was why the press had always placed the failure of their marriage on him, Hikaru thought. Both he and his wife knew, however, that it was her.
That was another secret.
He had so many secrets, Hikaru decided, that he could have written a tell-all autobiography for a six-figure price maybe. His wife would have tried to finagle for something higher.
Still, their marriage lasted ten years, which might as well have been a million. Marriages coming from the entertainment and fashion industry usually lasted only one to two years.
What finally did it was when he found out about her affair. That was what did it. He remembered it clearly. He was so angry at her when he found out. He wanted to hit her, to ruin that perfect face of hers and scar her with large and purple bruises.
But it seemed wrong. She was the angel, the media claimed, and he was the devil. He was always the devil. It was a label, hanging onto him for years and years.
However, it was she made a big deal out of it, more than it should have been. She hired the big-shot lawyer, who painted the picture of a helpless and obedient wife who desperately wanted to leave her marriage with an abusive and alcoholic husband, that man called Hitachiin Hikaru.
He hated it. He hated the courts. They were so naïve, they were all under that spell of hers, that angel who promised entrance to heaven with bribes of money and power.
The jury (he would always be convinced that she had it rigged) was ready to give the advantage to his wife. They were prepared to give her a compensation too much to imagine, and which would cripple the financially sound Hitachiin Co.
He shouldn't have gotten it, really. Perhaps he needed an angel, too.
An angel on jury duty. That angel called Fujioka Haruhi.
He owed it her. Really, he did. But after the case when the reporters were all pushing to get his comments, Haruhi left.
She was never one to ask for unnecessary attention, was perfectly content with being left out of the limelight. She was also a good citizen – a lawyer who willingly did jury duty was almost unheard of.
She truly was Hikaru's angel.
He never really got around to thanking her. Come to think of it, he didn't see her after that, not in person at least. She worked in her own firm for a welfare agency, and so their paths never crossed.
There was a note sent, but he never received a reply nor did he hear any sign back from her.
His only source of news about her came from the papers, which would ever so often mention the words 'lawyer Fujioka Haruhi said…'
He liked her. Really, he did. He had always liked her, right from the moment they met in the first year of Ouran, when she'd entered the Third Music Room clumsy and all.
He would never convince himself he loved her, but then again, none of them did. The Host Club, that is. Haruhi still wasn't married; Ryoji, Hikaru was sure, was panicking.
But as day passed to night, and night turned to day again, he thought about her. He tried to think of every detail about her, everything that he liked about her. Every memory that they shared together or with Kaoru, good or bad.
It relaxed him. It was a soothing thing for him to do, something that brought him more joy than anything else.
He remembered a good one:
They were both eighteen. Studying at the library was inevitable when you knew Haruhi, and he was only there to be with her. Kaoru was in class still; he had wanted to take an economics class out of a sudden impulse.
Early December brought in chills and the heaters, but the one in the library had broke. He was cold, shivering, wishing he had brought a thicker jacket or sweater.
Haruhi seemed to be fine. Perhaps she did not feel the cold when she was studying.
When she finally looked up at him (really, she was in her own world when she had her nose buried in a book), she saw that he was, well, freezing.
"Jacket?" She was prepared to give him hers.
Five minutes of no thank you's and please do so's later, he had a jacket on, five sizes too small. She laughed because of that, and after that he didn't mind the cold so much anymore.
It was heavily lined with down, but because of the size difference between them, he could only wrap it around his shoulders, hoping to shroud in the heat.
Physically, he was still cold. His heart, not as much. Her warmth was still lingering within the sleeves, and he touched it with his finger. It brought shivers to his spine. Haruhi was always thoughtful like that.
He remembered a bad one:
He was laughing at something. He couldn't remember what, but it was something that should not have been laughed about. Something about a train crash in the Kyushu Prefecture.
There had been twenty-five casualties, and later it was realized that the crash, dubbed the worst in thirty years, had been caused because of the engineer.
Who had been calling someone on his cell phone only moments before impact.
Hikaru wondered what that was like. What if you were the person on the other end?
Suddenly, the line was cut off, but it wasn't because of a signal loss or a dropped call.
No, no. The person had merely just crashed and burned and died. That was all.
Perhaps that was why he had been laughing. It was ironic, it was dark humor. He laughed again.
Haruhi didn't. She only walked away, and when he saw her again she had that newspaper curled up in her hand, and she looked like she was ready to hit him. She didn't.
One of the passengers who had died, it turned out, was her former classmate in middle school.
Without even realizing it, thinking had brought a tear down his cheek. Unconsciously, he rubbed it off, and he went on staring at the wall. There was another good memory, but because he became too tired, Hikaru fell asleep.
--
Kaoru came back late that night, and when he entered the house, Hikaru was still asleep, hunched over on the dining room table, ruining the expensive lining with his drool.
He looked at his older brother and smiled. Hikaru, it seemed, was going to be okay. He brought a quilt over to the room, and draped it over Hikaru. He turned off the lights and left the room with the door closed.
Hikaru slept on.
And life goes on, fashion styles enter the door and exit out the window five seconds later. The economy worsens, the prime minister resigns, there are murders, and so goes.
Hikaru learned to forget rather easily. He found that the past ten years had, unexpectedly, not brought a terrible amount of emotional attachment. When there was nothing to think of, he thought of Haruhi.
Her smile, her frown, her laugh, her face. Details became all the more important, and her image could be conjured instantly in his mind when he thought of her.
Maybe he was maturing. Maybe he was not as childish as he was, say, fifteen years earlier. Maybe, dare he imagine, he was growing up. Growing up at age thirty-two.
Haruhi's name was mentioned in the paper again. This time was different. It was not talking about her viewpoint on the health system or on the corruption of officials.
In fact, it only barely mentioned her profession as a lawyer. And Haruhi, Hikaru found out, was getting married.
He worked as a medical advisor for a drug company, and with her in welfare, the two had met at a convention. It mentioned that the wedding date had yet to the set, but there was an engagement party. It mentioned that Fujioka had sound connections, that the party was being held by Suou Tamaki, the young chairman of the Suou Corporations.
That was that.
He set the paper down, gently, smoothly almost, on the granite countertop. Then, inside, everything came hurling down. From emotions to anger to happiness to sorrow and finally, defeat.
He did not curse, did not scream. There was no obscenity to it at all. He thought he had composed himself very well through it all, but there was still hurt in the idea that his first, unspoken love had been lost.
He wondered what would have happened if he'd only say three words to her earlier.
Wonder. Wonder. It did not, and could not, change the facts.
When Kaoru came home, he told Hikaru what he already knew. He mentioned that the wedding date was being set for the summer of next year, and did he know that the engagement party was today?
No, he did not know, Hikaru said. There was an unsaid expectation that they would go. Kaoru seemed sad as well, but he nonetheless braved the smile. "Come on," he said, patting Hikaru on the back, "let's go. Let's see her. Let's wish her congratulations. We haven't seen her for so long."
"No." The answer was simple.
"Why not?"
Again, the reply was succinct. "No need."
Kaoru said nothing. He knew what his brother was going through, to suffer a love lost after a divorce. To see no optimism in this often cynical world. Nothing can be changed, one chance is sometimes all you get.
After that, he did not try to change Hikaru's mind. He went to get prepared, and when he left, he asked Hikaru to lock the door after him.
So Hikaru stayed home by himself where he wondered if this was what he was destined to. To live in his memories, to rack his brain for all the moments with her he could think of.
It wasn't so bad, was it?
To live this way. He would live in his memories of Haruhi. He would live in his memories of himself, the Host Club, of life. Because that was a much better alternative, he decided, than to live in reality itself.
I hope it ended okay, but I guess it wasn't really HikaHaru. Read and Review!