CHAPTER 1

Kyoya's POV

It had begun like any normal day: I had gotten up, eaten breakfast, been driven to Ouran Academy, attended my classes, and worked on the Host Club's finances in the back of Music Room 3. But when I got a call from my father as I was leaving the Host Club for the day, I knew this would not be like any normal day.

I flipped open my cell phone and pressed it to my ear.

"Kyoya Ootori speaking," I addressed the caller.

"Kyoya," my father's voice said through the phone, "please come to Jotanu immediately. I have a favor to ask of you." A click informed me that he had hung up. I shut my phone and placed it back into my jacket's pocket as I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose. My father was perpetually blunt, but he was an excellent businessman. When I slid into the car waiting for me I told the driver to take me to Jotanu.

Jotanu General Hospital was one of my family's most loyal customers, so it did not surprise me that my father would ask me to visit it. What did surprise me was the diction he used. "Favor" was not a word often used in my family. It implied some kind of personal connection, connections of which my family had very few. I deduced that it must be regarding my status as an Ouran student, as he could have easily requested the favor from one of my older brothers. The exact nature of the favor, however, I could not fathom.

I pulled up in front of Jotanu exactly twenty-two minutes since leaving the school. I got out of the car, pulled my school satchel from the seat nearest me, ascended the steps, entered the building, and approached the woman who sat behind the front information desk. I greeted her with an obligatory smile.

"Hello, ma'am," I addressed her. "My name is Kyoya Ootori and I am looking for my father. He said he had a favor to ask of me." She smiled back and pointed me in the right direction: down the hall to the left, to the elevator where I would go to the basement.

After following her directions I found myself in a sterilely-lit basement with foam-tiled ceilings. My father, surprisingly, was there to greet me.

"Hello, Father," I said.

"Kyoya," he addressed me. "I told you I had a favor to ask of you."

I nodded once. "You did indeed do as such."

"Come with me, then," he told me. He began to walk down the hallway before him, so I followed, always walking slightly behind him as was custom. He stopped before a set of large steel doors and slid a keycard through the scanner mounted to the wall beside them. The doors slid from view and allowed us to pass. Behind the doors lay another hallway lit by harsh fluorescent light bulbs, a hallway which ended, once again, in a pair of steel doors. Upon arriving at the doors, he turned to me.

"What you are about to see behind these doors must never be revealed. Not even to Fuyumi must you speak of this. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," I answered. With that he swiped his card and allowed me entry.

Behind the set of doors was what appeared to be a police interrogation observation room, only this room was equipped with a row of bulky Ootori medical equipment at its front. The room was dark; the only light came from the small LEDs and screens on the equipment and from a long window that ran above it. I knew that the window must be a two-way mirror so as not to alarm whatever, or whoever, sat in the room. My father entered behind me and closed the doors with another swipe of his card.

"This is an observation room, Kyoya," he said. "On the other side of that two-way mirror lies the favor I wish to ask of you."

Through the window I could see nothing complicated as I would have thought. There was no computer to program or check to balance, no Tokyo socialites to greet or equipment to pitch. Rather, there was only a young woman in a black sweatshirt and slim jeans lying on a small cot. She crossed her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling. I looked to my father for clarification.

"This is Oleander Konanawa, an American girl here to partake of a Japanese drug trial," he explained. "The trial has been deemed a success, so she will begin attending your school tomorrow. I would like you to be her guide tomorrow and to look out for her for the rest of the semester."

"I will do my best, sir."

"I am not finished," he glared from the corners of his eyes. "She has a condition which changes the color of her eyes. If you observe that her eyes have turned red, immediately remove her from whatever situation she is currently in and return her to this facility. We will take care of her from there. All other information is to be withheld from you and only introduced on a need-to-know basis. Now I am finished."

"Thank you, Father," I responded. I followed him back to the basement's lobby and rode the elevator up to the main lobby. I would then slide back into the car which waited for me and return home to complete a slew of homework and begin working on the Club's finances once more. The girl slipped completely from my mind.

Little did I know just how much trouble she would be.