Sunday's child does not stand for anything dull or ordinary.
Akosua Owusu - also known as Lisa due to her mother's shoddy pronunciation of Ghanaian names - was a studious girl. She felt she had to be really. It would be unfair to her parents to become some kind of layabout bum, as dearly as she often wished to become one. The fantasy tended to include the idea of hoping onto the back of a train like a vagrant and letting it take her all the way to Ghana. Of course, this was stupid, reasons being that most trains nowadays were high speed (most likely resulting immediate death if she attempted to jump one) and that no train - ever - took someone all the way from Japan, across seas and continents, to Africa. So this particular daydream was boxed up into the portion of her mind where most outlandish thoughts were sent. She was quite dismayed, in her first year of high school, to see that box beginning to overflow. She would have to send in a waste control team.
Once the waste control team had come through, an effective self-induced memory removal service, she was able to make the room she needed for all the educational, sometimes nonsensical, facts, figures and theories school was sure to teach her. So in her bizarre yellow dress, she sat and became educated. Being educated gets you the big shot jobs, they would all say, especially when you receive your education from a prestigious academy. But then her father had never needed any grades or degrees. He had become a big shot. The argument to that would most likely be: look where he is now.
He couldn't help the fact the economy was a bitch. He was just a victim of the system, as Akosua would probably be one day. Although they all seemed to like looking upon her life with unlimited optimism while she was still in her youth.
So thus went by her first year at the pretentious school Ouran Academy, a rather uneventful year, in which she idly (almost without realising it) went around masquerading as one of the rich kids. It might have been more fun to impersonate a delightful homeless bum. Needless to say, she wasn't in attendance at Ouran for enjoyment, but yes, it certainly would have been fun. Instead, when feeling overwhelmingly bored and simply couldn't find it within herself to swot up on knowledge in school time, she would indulge her vagabond fantasy in the form of an imaginary tramp squatting in her head. Gorou the failure was his name. Once a successful business man, he became a poor hobo who had quite the unhealthy drinking habit and remained in a constantly drunken state. She chose to ignore the parallels that could be drawn from him to her own life. Despite him often being fairly delirious, Akosua enjoyed her conversations with Gorou. He made for some interesting company and added some amusing commentary to her everyday life. He lived in one of the cardboard boxes that had been emptied by the waste control team. At some point in the year, Gorou had nearly been booted out by them, but Akosua had cut in and kindly allowed him to stay.
In that first year, her life had been a monotonous cycle of study, chores and the redundant passing of time. She would, on a much too regular occurrence, simply lie in bed and think about all the desserts she could no longer eat. Gorou would normally laugh at her at this point and wave a near-empty bottle of alcohol around, claiming that if she became a drunk like him she wouldn't have any cake-craving problems. She then reminded Gorou that he was destitute middle-aged man hiding out in a teenager's head and this knowledge both shut Gorou up and made her new lifestyle seem slightly less tedious. Slightly.
Akosua's second year of schooling at Ouran soon rolled around and she left her substandard middle-class home after receiving a harried hug from her mother who was off to work and a sloppy rum-smelling kiss on the cheek from her uncle, and felt endeared (as she felt whenever she saw her new house from a distance) to know that she was one step closer to becoming a better version of Gorou. She took public transport to school, which was probably one of the most exciting parts of the day as people would ogle her (most likely because of her peculiar appearance of being a rather foreign-looking girl in a fancy vibrant dress sitting on a dirty back-seat of a bus) and she and Gorou would make witty observations about passersby.
His moustache looks like a caterpillar, Akosua remarked, watching a man who had been gawking at her for the last few minutes, it might just crawl off his face.
He looks like the kind of man who would try to molest you, Gorou said.
Oh, gross, Akosua wrinkled her nose in distaste, I do hope not. Though I only think you say that because you have personal experience with the type of man who would molest someone.
Oi, Gorou shook an angry fist and nearly toppled out his box home, I'm going to pretend you didn't just insinuate that.
Your go now, She told him.
Fine, right, Gorou grumbled, taking a swig from his beer can, that woman. There. She's wearing way too much makeup. Looks like a proper whore.
Jeez, harsh much. That's going too far, Gorou. Stop taking your inner anxieties out on others.
Gorou the failure had already been rather upset with her after the molester comment so it didn't at all surprise Akosua to watch him retreat back into his box in a sulk. She passed the rest of the journey to the academy in mental silence, with no one to play her regular observation game with. Akosua didn't really mind though. Sometimes Gorou was a bit much.
She arrived at the academy after fairly lengthy walk from the bus stop to the school gates. Such an esteemed facility surely would not want commoners' vehicles stopping outside; it would be a flood gate to the peasants, the people like Gorou. Hey! But past that, the idea of a bus stop was simply inane for those well-heeled. Why go by bus when you can go by chauffeur? Though Akosua had never much liked her old chauffeur; he had made too many poorly timed jokes (poorly executed too), and he had always tried to initiate staring contests with her whenever they were waiting for her father to finish a meeting. He said it was to improve her socialisation skills but really it just made her want to avoid people like him all the more.
And while she no longer had a chauffeur, the walk did not make her appreciate his memory in the slightest. That driver had been a harasser in the disguise of a conversationalist. So the walk became something lovely in her mind. She found it rather invigorating in fact. It did her good to recite the study stating that exercise before learning was beneficial. It increases brain activity. Akosua would simply have to ignore the slowly shrinking fat reserves on her inner thighs and hope that there would not be an apocalypse anytime soon, one that would require her to hold out through the onsets of starvation.
She had gotten to school early, as she did every day. She found that it was an effective method of avoiding the congestion in the entranceway when the other students arrived either on time or 'fashionably' late. She was able to smoothly glide through the halls, up the stairs, and all the way to the most far-flung library in the building (that remained empty in these early hours). The room would be teeming with teenagers at break and lunch, but for the moment it was quiet. Besides the lull in students, the early morning library routine also offered a way for Akosua to squander some time before lessons began, time that would have otherwise been spent at home listlessly watching her uncle open up another bottle of cheaply bought booze. It was not the quality stuff. Her uncle would seemingly settle for anything, much alike another drunkard Akosua knew.
Somewhere at the back of her mind Gorou shifted, mumbling grouchily.
Tucked away in a corner, with a random book picked off a nearby shelf, Akosua read. It was a book on modern warfare. It was a fairly interesting read. All about the new tech savvy, chemically complex, and biologically alarming ways whole races of people could be wiped from the face of the Earth. Akosua supposed if all else failed her she could now become a warlord dictator and engage in whole world domination. She had the knowledge for it certainly, but then again, she had garnered the knowledge for many a subject from her mornings in the library. She could just as easily become a botanist. Besides, the life of a mass murdering tyrant did not beckon to her like the life of a street urchin did. It was a morally challenging job and did not hold the prospects of quite so many ascetic life choices. Akosua considered it simpler to live in a homespun fashion. After all, if you're going to be poor you might as well go the whole hog. To not go the whole hog, as was Akosua's state of wealth at this present time, was simply a lack of conviction. Unfortunately, her mother was ever so desperately trying to keep them afloat and Akosua was not one to bring ruin upon someone's efforts (wherever they may be directed towards). Akosua could do nothing else but remain in her position of apathy.
The school bell rang and Akosua put away her book on the darker side of humanity, scuttling away to homeroom before the last chime had even sounded. Class 2-A was where she had been delegated. She was a second year, well versed in the ways of an ordinary Ouran student, in spite of her apparent lack of interest in anything beyond class studies and the occasional indiscriminate book in the morning. Akosua had the time to observe you see, especially in homeroom, and through observance she could then emulate to an extent. To continue her posh pretences she needed to stand poised, dress neat, speak soft, eat delicately, nod graciously and if in doubt merely smile through it all. That was what she had observed. Of course, if anyone had once upon a time seen the size of her family bank account they surely would have concluded that Akosua should know her way around being 'posh'. Yet, it should be noted that posh does not necessarily equate to wealthy. Wealthy the Owusu family had been, but posh - they had not had that sophisticated air about them, not in the slightest.
Then the question was: why did Akosua continue with this imitation game?
She seemed to be doing fairly well in it. Surely if someone were to perform the Turning Test upon her she would be near indistinguishable to her real counterparts - the real adolescent aristocracy of the world. However, doing well was not a reason to continue.
Yet really, she mused, I cannot fathom a true reason for it.
Perhaps it was her everlasting quest for belonging, a sentiment she had a thirst for ever since infancy. It was something most people wanted. Though she considered herself to have a smaller sense of belonging than most people and should accordingly have a stronger drive to obtain it.
In the Class of 2-A, where she sat at the back, always observing, she was one of many children of a sundry ancestry. Having a baby of two nationalities seemed to be becoming a fad. No longer were they considered mongrels. They were élites, hybrids, the best of both worlds. And Akosua was one of them. So it was indisputable that she should belong here, among her fellow fusion children. But somehow Akosua 'Lisa' Owusu still remained an odd one out. When she looked around at the school's populace she discovered that if you were not Japanese you were Eurasian, and if you were not Eurasian you were part American (Northern American to be precise). There were no other Japanese-Ghanaian students, not even a part African one here. She was a person of a different crossbreed, one that had clearly not caught on in the initial craze.
It was sometime near the end of the day, after a series of simplistic introductory lessons that elapsed without any mental strain on Akosua's behalf, when Akosua was, for the first time in a long while, snapped from her apathy.
She had just been released from her last class and was beginning to absent-mindedly think ahead to what microwave dinner she would pick out today when she stumbled across it. It was just laying there, in the hall, box half-open but unspoilt. Someone must have been smiling upon her kindly because she had not had such good fortune for some time.
A cake, Gorou... She reached out to the intoxicated man at the back of her head, possibly searching for confirmation that such a thing could be sitting there for the taking.
Yeah. A cake. He responded, not at all enthusiastically, but he had responded. That was all Akosua had been looking for, because now she could be sure that there was indeed a cake on the ground.
Akosua shuffled her feet forwards uneasily, taking surreptitious glances back and forth. There was no one in the hall, no one would see her break the ruse of upper-class elegance and reach for the cake. No one would even know.
You take too much care in something you seem to have no interest for, Gorou muttered, just pick up the damn cake.
Gorou was quickly shushed and Akosua decided to go for it. Slowly, almost as if moving too fast would wake her up from this dream-like moment, she reached down to the neatly boxed cake, looking within its clear top at the caramelized swirls and fluffy white frosting. She was nearly drooling at the thought of being able to consume something so divine. Surely this was proof enough of a higher being. They must have sent it to Akosua in an attempt to convert her to the holy ways. If this was going to become a regular offering then she would be more than happy to start up a cult dedicated to this blessed cake-giving overlord.
"You found my chocolate cake!" At the sudden sound of the voice Akosua nearly jumped out of her skin, but visible reactions was not quite her thing, so instead she turned smoothly to face the one who spoke. It was a girl, a student like her but evidently rich enough for a personal stylist based on the complexity of her hairstyle, and apparently she was the owner of the cake. It was not a gift from a transcendent overlord then.
The girl stood before her, arms outstretched and waiting for her dessert. Akosua felt a little piece of her soul break away.
Without as much as a resigned sigh she gently passed over the cake to the girl, even smiling as she did so (albeit it being more reminiscent of a grimace) because a smile made everything just a bit more gracious. "Thank you so much," The girl seemed to miss her anguish in her elation, which she couldn't really be blamed for. It was a minimal expression, despite how the actual feeling was crushing her insides. "I can't believe how lucky I am. I thought this was gone for good. You are absolutely amazing- er-um... Sorry, I don't know you're name. We're in the same class, aren't we? I'm afraid I never quite caught it though..." The girl trailed off with an awkward laugh.
"It's okay," Akosua told her as melodiously as she could manage - she wasn't quite use to having her grandiose deception tested so directly - and struggled not to fidget under the pressures of a one-on-one situation, "I don't know yours either."
The girl stopped laughing and stared at Akosua, temporarily frozen it seemed.
You're not meant to tell a high-born you don't know their name; Gorou was apparently not sulking anymore and was instead at the forefront of her mind, shaking his head in dismay.
Why not? She didn't know mine.
And why do you think she was so uncomfortable when saying she didn't know yours? Gorou asked her, then you just come straight out with bluntly saying that you don't know hers. That's snooty behaviour even for snooty people!
Though it did cross her mind that somehow Gorou had a strange understanding of the upper-class (and it didn't cross her mind that his knowledge should in fact be hers as he was only a manifestation of some of her less cognitive brainwaves), she was much more preoccupied with her current downward spiralling conversation.
Luckily for Akosua, the girl she was talking to was making heroic attempts to salvage it. "My name is Felicia Allegra Gentile, daughter of the president of Giardino Vino." Felicia remained in a firm smiling stance, looking towards Akosua expectantly, but when there was a lack of response she elaborated. "It's a company that makes wine... It's been ranked the most exquisite vino in all of Europe you know."
Actually, Akosua didn't know, but she wasn't about to tell Felicia that, so she merely nodded her head as if she knew all about it.
'Most exquisite wine in Europe'... Gorou grinned, you've got to befriend her Lisa. She'll give us free tipple.
Akosua ignored Gorou and tried to keep her attention on Felicia, who appeared to be growing increasingly uncomfortable. Perhaps it was time for Akosua to give her name in return. That had been Felicia's original question after all.
"I'm Akosua Owusu."
"O-Oh... Uh," Felicia stammered, seeming somewhat out of her depth, while Gorou droned, You're meant to give titles and positions with your name. That's how rich kids and their parents network. "It's a pleasure to meet you Ako...Akosowar-Ako-"
"But everyone here struggles to say it so they call me Lisa."
Blushing embarrassedly, Felicia nodded quickly as if to brush over her mispronunciation, "Well then, uh, it was wonderful meeting you Lisa. I must thank you again for finding my cake. In fact, where did you find it? I've been searching all over."
"There," Akosua said, pointing to the patch of glossy floor where she had found it.
All of a sudden, nearly making Akosua dive for the nearest cover, Felicia squeaked loudly, dropping the box like it was hot coal. Upon impact the box burst open and, much to Akosua's despair, the cake became splattered all over the floor. Akosua stared at the sweet mess on the ground unbelievingly. Felicia was still flailing about.
"Eww, ew, ew! Oh, why did it have to touch the ground? Now I don't have a present for Honey," She lamented, furiously wiping her hands on a pocket handkerchief. "And he loves it when I bring him cake. I bet the others will have brought cake. Maybe I can request a delivery... But the host club starts so soon! What to do, what to do..."
More cake? Akosua's attention finally snapped away from the mushy remains of the once beautiful treat and began to watch Felicia keenly. She didn't feel quite so dejected anymore. She actually felt rather perky.
Felicia threw her arms up with a frustrated groan. It was hardly ladylike, but somehow this respectable young woman had been driven beyond a refined conduct. It was all very peculiar, but if it was for cake Akosua could understand it. "I'll just have to go without it today." She said in reassignment and Akosua wondered if it was stranger for Felicia to talk aloud like this or for herself to chat with a tipsy man inside her head.
The girl began to rush off but quickly she turned, clearly only just remembering the manners she had been raised with. Cake could do some powerful things to people. Akosua had never seen it from an outside perspective before. "Our talk was, uh, interesting. Take care, Lisa!
While watching Felicia disappeared off down the hallway Akosua mused to herself with a pensive look upon her face. A host club, eh? And more ladies with cake...
Oh no you don't, Gorou intervened, I said manipulate girls for alcohol, not go on a search for cake.
Cake is my alcohol, Akosua said sharply before rushing after Felicia.
A/N: This was written a rather long time ago and I found it in my documents recently so I thought "Why not post it on fanfiction now?". So here I am. I have lots of notes on this story too so I can continue it and know what I'm writing. Always a good thing. Though this won't be my top priority at the moment. And no matter to Honey's cute little black magic love interest in the manga. This is Akosua interception.