I had to admit, whatever their shortcomings, the Host Club guys worked together almost flawlessly when it came to decorating Music Room Three. This time, they had joined forces to create a perfect winter wonderland. Granted, it wasn't exactly original, but it was tastefully done so that it was eye-catching but not too much. The guys were good at that. They'd chosen to go with a color scheme of red and gold, with accents of silver thrown in here and there as they thought necessary.

The pillars were now wrapped in scarlet and gold garland that had just a bit of sparkle and shine, catching the fluorescent lighting without seeming obnoxious. And that was coming from me, so you know it was pretty subtle for the rest of the guys. To get to the tops of the pillars, I at first had to climb onto Kyoya's shoulders like Hunny always did to Mori, but when that didn't reach all the way to the top, I tried to stand on them. I wasn't exactly graceful enough to pull that off, though, so we found a ladder. I thought Tamaki might have a heart attack or else start breathing fire when I climbed on Kyoya's shoulders. The cool guys just pushed up his glasses and ignored his friend's insults of Traitor! Whatever that meant.

Once we had the ladder, we took huge lengths of green garland that, apart from being way too long, looked exactly like pine boughs and stapled them in the corner between the ceiling and the wall. We also put it at the top of the pillars. Hunny wanted to hang ornaments on the green garland, but Mori talked him out of it. It seemed they already had an idea of what they wanted to add to the garland, which did in truth look a little plain.

Hunny and Mori had done a great job of setting all of the tables. They had taken red tablecloths and gold ones, mixing them up throughout the room so that there were never two of the same colors beside each other. Hunny had found Poinsettias from somewhere and arranged them artfully in crystal vases as centerpieces for the tables. Mori had actually picked out the tea sets, though he didn't actually take any of the credit. They were really pretty: white china inlaid with delicate gold filigree in amazing designs. The only problem with the tea sets was that I'd be too afraid to touch it or get it dirty.

Tamaki had finally come out of his shell to help the twins cover the place with fake snow that had silver sparkles in it for an extra bit of flare. The entire floor was layered with the stuff, thick enough that you couldn't make out the color of the carpet. It lay like a thin blanket over the chairs and benches, and they'd even managed to get it in the fake pine boughs on the ceiling. It looked really cool, but something was still missing. Not the trees, which would be delivered.

"You know, Haruhi," said Kyoya speculatively. "It helps to have a girl's point of view. Since you started helping with the decorating, we've been getting more customers than ever before."

"Yeah, well, I am a girl," I laughed softly. "I know what girls like. To some extent, anyway. Some of it I don't understand, but the rest is a piece of cake."

Kyoya nodded in understanding.

"Yes, I think it's safe to say that you're hardly like most girls we know," he acknowledged. "But I had a point to this."

"Sorry," I said, blushing. I talked to much. I already knew that. Kyoya chuckled.

"It's quite alright. I was going to ask you what you thought so far?"

I blinked and looked over at him. He watched me with those cool, dark eyes, his expression bland.

"Well, it looks fine," I allowed. "Just not finished."

"We have five trees coming in," he reminded me. "They should be here any time now."

"It's not the trees that are missing," I shook my head. "It's missing that…I don't know, that holiday spirit, I guess. It's missing some warmth. It looks great, but it also looks kind of…shallow, like it doesn't have any depth, know what I mean?"

Kyoya looked at me thoughtfully, then around at the room. He nodded and wrote something down on his clipboard.

"You may be onto something, Haruhi," he said with another nod. "I'll go speak with Tamaki. The twins can go ahead and show you where we store the ornaments."

Like he summoned them, the twins apparated before us, their hands already up in salutes. I sighed, feeling my shoulders slump. Other than the fact that he was the Icy Shadow King, I could hold relatively sane conversations with Kyoya without fear of losing my mind to madness. Unfortunately, the same did not hold true for the twins. I loved all of them, truly I did, but some of them I loved in…smaller doses. The twins were in that category. Oh, well. Might as well have some fun.

"C'mon, Haruhi!" said Hikaru, looping his arm through mine.

"The storage area is through here," elaborated Kaoru, linking with my other elbow.

Together they didn't lead me so much as drag me to the storage area, skipping and whistling as they did. Behind me, I heard Kyoya relaying my observations to Tamaki, who agreed loudly and a little too readily after he caught my name. I shook my head. That guy needed to get over that daddy-complex thing he had going on.

"Each tree normally has a different theme, and there's one for each of the Hosts," said Hikaru.

"Yeah. Me and Hikaru get one, Mori-senpai and Hunny-senpai share, then Tamaki-senpai gets one, Kyoya-senpai gets one, and so do you. That's five this year."

"It's a pain in the butt getting Tamaki-senpai to just pick a theme for his tree," sighed Hikaru. "Kyoya's is usually pretty boring, but kind of cool, I guess."

"The only say Mori gets on his and Hunny is which ornaments go up high," laughed Kaoru. "He's just in charge of putting stuff up top. Not that he cares much either way. If he got his own tree, he probably wouldn't do anything to it anyway."

"And what do you two do to your tree?" I wondered, a little hesitantly.

They gave me what I could only describe as damn creepy smiles, and winked at the same time. A chill travelled down my spine, although I knew that they were just trying to scare me.

"You'll see soon enough, won't you Haruhi?" they leered.

I shook my head.

"Whatever. I'll see for myself."

The twins pouted.

"You're no fun," Hikaru whined.

"She's too used to us," Kaoru sighed.

"And I'm assuming that's never happened before?" I guessed, laughing at their crestfallen expressions.

I already knew that those two hardly had a lot of experience letting people get close enough to them to get used to their antics. They still managed to get under Tamaki's skin, but Mori and Kyoya were completely indifferent. Hunny was hard to scare, but on occasion the brothers managed just fine. They weren't horribly sadistic—only a little—but they did get a pretty huge kick out of freaking others out.

"No, it hasn't," they chuckled together.

"You're the first person we've actually let into our little world," Hikaru said.

I smiled.

"I'm glad you did," I said honestly.

It looked as though, for a change, I had managed to catch them completely off their guard. They gave me the strangest look, and tightened their arms in mine. Then they burst out laughing.

"That's enough of the deep stuff," Kaoru said, still grinning.

"Let's show you our stash," his brother smirked.

Together they opened the double doors into the prep room, where they kept most of their things. I blinked. Someone had clearly already pulled out the Christmas stuff. And there was a lot of it.