2: Snow White and Rose Red
"I'm still not sure this is okay," Haruhi said, her ice-skates dangling from one hand.
"But—but—ice-skating! It's so romantic!" As usual, Tamaki had already gone into an anticipatory seizure.
The twins both popped the collars on their dark peacoats and looked askance. "Ice-skating is secondary." "Espionage comes first."
"You look just like spies!" remarked Hunny. "But that… might not be very effective."
"We look like regular skaters," said Kaoru. "Perfect undercover disguises, right, sarge?"
Kyouya realized he was "sarge"; he made a noncommittal sound.
The few real friends he had, preparing for their all important mission at the skating rink, a crowd of boys and one clumsy girl attracting the speculative gazes of those around him—damn it all, he should've just gone alone. The meet-cute would still work without a cadre of idiots and moralizing Haruhi making a scene and embarrassing him in front of his future fiancée. He never would've mentioned it in the first place, except that Tamaki and Haruhi had drawn it out of him. They, out of all people, had the knack of catching him off-guard. One slipped remark became another, and soon they had charmed, harassed, nagged, and bribed the whole story out of him.
Of course, if Tamaki knew, the entire host club knew.
"This really isn't any of our business," Haruhi tried again.
"Not our business! Mother getting married certainly is our business!"
"Oy, you're not still on the Mother thing, are you?" That was, Kyouya figured, Kaoru.
"And we haven't even met yet," remarked Kyouya. "Look, just don't do anything rash."
"Okay!" Hunny smiled. "What's the plan?"
"Very simple. All of you stay quietly on the other side of the rink and keep the idiot muffled. I'll meet her."
"This is all very stalkerish of you," Haruhi inserted again. "Can't you just meet her in two days, at your omiai?"
"Certainly not," Kyouya said.
"Kyouya is being his usual scary self," Tamaki intervened. He had already pulled on his shoes, although the rink wasn't officially open yet. "But there's method to his madness! First impressions are everything, you know, and our Mother comes off as such a cold fish in formal, stifling situations."
"I'm not your Mother."
"Just in formal situations?" The twins.
"But you don't even want to marry her. Why go to all this trouble?"
There was a stretch of awkward silence, while Kyouya smiled. Classic Haruhi, always cutting right to the quick of everything.
"True, but perhaps I will when I meet her. And how can I know, under the formal, stifling lights of the conference room where they will likely introduce us?"
It had not been just curiosity, however. He needed to see the girl in a situation where she behaved naturally, like herself, which was more likely at her favorite haunts than at the omiai. He had researched her enough to know her foibles, hobbies, and background—but none of these compared to understanding her temperament. For that, he needed to meet her. Or at least observe her. It wasn't just about making a good impression. It was about finding his advantages.
She was a horse fanatic, but also an ice-skater who had once debated becoming professional. Although she had her own skating rink in her family home abroad, she liked to come to this one while she lived in Japan. According to the company who employed Saitou Yori's personal trainer, she regularly frequented this rink in the winter months, coming when it opened at noon and leaving two hours later. It was also, strangely enough, the one place where she was not tailed by her personal guard. According to a servant at the house, her guard typically spent this time eating lunch and betting on horse races on the level below the rink, allowing her trainer to be her protection while at the rink.
A young girl, barely twenty-one, and she needed a personal guard? Kyouya had begun to speculate about the Saitou secret.
Kyouya's shoes were just laced when the ice machine had finished prepping the rink and the early arrivals began to file onto the rink. Tamaki, for all his usual enthusiasm on the ice, was chivalrously holding Haruhi and making sure she didn't slip. Haruhi didn't skate, though all the others did, and was sorely embarrassed by that fact. She reluctantly allowed her husband to support her, spending much of her time on the ice snapping at the others to "get away and let her be" while holding onto the outside wall for support.
Ahead of her, just starting to skate from another entrance in the rink, was a girl in a cream colored frock. The center of the rink was empty, the sides accumulating with people. The girl skated out, gliding easily to an unpopulated spot. She paused, tucked her hair up in a bun, and held her arms aloft. Around her, people began to stop and stare.
There she was, the Saitou heiress.
She began to sail across the ice. Her turns were perfect, and she began to do tricks that caused the people around her to gasp with delight: toe jumps, salchows, double axles, double loops. Even Tamaki and the twins calmed down long enough to watch her leap on the ice, loose strands of brown hair fluttering against her cheeks.
"The picture of grace," an older woman next to Kyouya said under her breath.
There was scattered applause when she came to a stop, and she bobbed a curtsy in a breathless way that screamed, even from that distance, of false modesty.
Kyouya frowned.
He slid into the rink. He wasn't a great ice-skater, but he wasn't bad either. He was merely—indifferent. He'd trained up until he knew the basics and could stay upright and relatively dignified on ice, but lacked the interest to keep practicing. The Saitou girl overshadowed him in this respect. He could pretend to bump into her, but that would be too straightforward. He thought to go a few turns around the rink, and give himself time to work out an appropriate response, when suddenly a blur of red shot past him, throwing Kyouya off balance.
He slipped, his feet sliding out from beneath him. The ice met his ass with a cold smack.
"Sorry!" shouted the blur of red over her shoulder.
Kyouya blinked. The rude person who had pushed him turned out to be a young woman in a red woolen coat, rushing toward the Saitou heiress. She'd pushed him out of the way, he realized, and now she was going to barrel straight into Saitou Yori. "Careful!" he yelled, anticipating their collapse and fall.
It didn't happen. Yori swung to her side on the ice just as the girl in red caught her and they spun around twice, arms locked together. Yori seemed bemused and kept glancing back at Kyouya; the other girl, who was taller and more solid-seeming, merely laughed.
The Saitou girl cocked an eyebrow. "You're late."
"I know, but I'm here now!"
"You pushed over that young man over there."
The young woman in red looked back and waved at him from a distance. "Are you alright?"
Kyouya had straightened up, and was brushing the ice off his normally immaculate pants. The twins slid up behind him, and one propped his elbow on Kyouya's shoulder. "Geez," the other shouted back. "How rude!"
"Oh pssh. He's fine!"
The young woman in red beamed and grabbed Miss Saitou's arm, dragging her over to Kyouya. They bore an uncanny resemblance to each other, Kyouya noted. He could now see why they called Miss Saitou horse-face—her face was uncommonly long, with sloping cheekbones and a flat nose. The other girl had a prettier, oval shaped face, though her body was a little heavier. They had the same eyes, however—slightly narrow, long-lashed, glaringly black.
"You didn't break any bones, did you?" the girl in red said.
"Gomen!" Saitou Yori snapped. "You are so rude sometimes, ane-chan. My sister apologizes sincerely for being such a klutz."
Kyouya's mind snapped into overdrive. Yori was the sole heiress of the Saitou business, the only daughter in the records that his associate Nixon had found in the Saitou records, and the only family member who stood to have anything to gain when the Saitou patriarch stepped down. There was absolutely no mention of an older sister, biological or adopted.
And yet the evidence of his eyes was incontrovertible. There was another Saitou girl out there.
He smarted at the fact that his information was not only incomplete—but that the hole was so wide, so gaping.
"I'm not a klutz, just in a rush to see you," the girl in red told Saitou Yori as they glided away, arm in arm. "We only get these two hours a week anyway, and the rink will be closed starting next month."
"Kyouya-san," Mori said, joining the three. "You're alright?"
"I'm fine, just fine," Kyouya shrugged off the arms of his friends. That was not the meeting he'd hoped it would be. He looked neither composed nor charming, just… off-balance.
"They're getting away!" hissed Hikaru.
"Let's go," replied Kaoru, and they launched themselves toward the two girls, only to be held back by Kyouya, gripping their collars with both hands.
"No, not right now," Kyouya said. "I don't think interrupting them is a good idea today."
"We can still listen in!"
Kyouya looked around. There were people watching them curiously. A few girls were pointing at Mori and giggling. Hikaru was still blaring music from his headphones and Kaoru was liable at any time to trip over his unlaced skates. "We're too conspicuous. Let's just forget about surveillance."
"Sir, we can do this sir!"
Kyouya sighed and resisted the temptation to put his head in his hands. They were waiting for the code, he realized. Reluctantly, he squared his shoulders and said, "Abort mission, soldier."
The twins grinned at him evilly.
"Very good, sir!"
"Sorry to have let you down, sir!"
They spent the rest of the two hours dicking around, the seven of them, as if it were just like old times. Haruhi seemed satisfied that they'd given up the ridiculous spy game, though the twins sometimes broke out again into spy lingo around each other, having seen too many foreign movies in preparation for their "operation." Haruhi eventually was capable of skating around the rink by herself, Tamaki glowing next to her. Kyouya, bottling his frustration, eventually left the rink and took off his shoes one by one.
But then, as he sat quietly tying the laces on his black oxfords, he began to laugh. It was a quiet laugh that shook his shoulders and changed his dour expression to one of exhilaration. He'd just been played a powerful wild card. He'd have to think carefully about how to play this one.