Chapter 3

The twins woke themselves up sluggishly the following morning and grumbled at the light that seeped through the curtained windows beside their beds. Hikaru looked over to the clock that sat on the nearby end table while Kaoru rubbed the sleep from his amber eyes.

"Nine o'clock," Hikaru said groggily.

The two jumped out of bed and got dressed into one of the fashionable attires that filled their walk-in closet, combed their bed-head, styling it into its usual spiky manner and parting their hairline opposite of each other's – Hikaru's to the right and Kaoru's to the left.

Hikaru placed his hand over his growling stomach and turned to his brother. "Let's go get that girl and eat breakfast," he suggested.

Kaoru nodded and they went their way to her bedroom and knocked an upbeat pattern on the door before entering. They found her lounging on the bed casually, still wearing the nightgown given to her the night before, engrossed in a thick book she found on one of the shelves in the room. She was so engrossed that she didn't hear the door open and didn't notice the twins when they walked right in front of the bed.

Kaoru raised an eyebrow at the chunk of pages she had already read - it looked like she was around the middle of the book. "You couldn't have read all that since you've been here," he said in disbelief.

Sam looked up sharply in surprise of hearing someone's voice, but her expression soon lifted into a smile. "No, I started reading it about three hours ago after I woke up. It looks like a lot, but the words are a little big and I'm a fast reader anyways," she explained.

Now it was Hikaru's turn to gaze at her skeptically. "Three hours ago? You mean you got up at six? Why would you wanna be up that early?"

She giggled, thinking back on how her father would ask her the same question frequently. "I always get up that early, as soon as it's not dark outside anymore."

Hikaru felt his stomach complain some more and sighed exasperatedly. "Well, we came here so that we can go downstairs and get breakfast," he said, brushing the previous subject off impatiently.

Sam gasped with excitement, hoping that the breakfast will taste just as great as her dinner did. When she did taste her breakfast, she was not disappointed. She hummed in delight while she chewed her food with a grin. "You guys are so lucky you get to eat this stuff everyday!"

The twins an eyebrow at how fascinated she still was with the food and then quickly concluded that it had something to do with her being a commoner.

"Man, what's up with commoners and food?" Hikaru murmured to Kaoru.

"It's like watching Haruhi eat fancy tuna," Kaoru added in amusement.

Sam didn't know if she should've felt offended by those comments, but at the moment she didn't care. She didn't want to make a fuss about it and let the bad emotions ruin such good food. "So, what time are the cops coming to ask me questions?" she asked when it came to her mind.

"Around noon," Kaoru confirmed. "They have to talk to me and the driver as well about what happened."

"I think they'll be wasting their time talking to me. I hardly remember what happened or even what the guy looked like. All I remember is that I walking on my way from buying groceries –" She then cut herself off with a quick gasp. "Oh, no…"

The twins leaned in with interest. "What?"

Sam shook her head frantically in panic and felt as if she were going to cry. She wanted to cry after what she had just remembered. "He stole m-my grocery money… I'm not going to get another payment for another month!" she exclaimed to herself in her native tongue, confusing Kaoru, but made Hikaru sit expectantly with a smirk on his face.

"By the way, she speaks English," he told Kaoru.

"I can tell," Kaoru said as he watched her panic and grab handfuls of the light brown hair on her head.

"What the heck am I going to do now?" Sam continued, not realizing that the twins were talking about her or that she was even involuntarily speaking English.

"She's still speaking English," Kaoru said. "Are you getting any of this?"

Hikaru shook his head. "She going too fast and I can't keep up."

Kaoru nodded understandingly.

Although they, along with the other Japanese students, had to take English since middle school or even before, it was still difficult to understand and carry a vocal conversation in English. It was far much easier to read and write it than to actually speak it.

"You're better in English class. What's she going on about?" Hikaru asked.

"There's no guarantee that the school will give me another payment and I don't even have one single grain of rice at my place!" Sam went on.

Kaoru's eyebrows furrowed in confusion when he heard what he thought he heard. "I think she just said that the school might not pay her and that she doesn't any rice at her place."

Hikaru facepalmed at the seemingly ridiculous translation his brother came up with. "We need to pay more attention in class…"

Kaoru rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to Sam, who was still talking to herself in panic. "I think she's broken."

Hikaru saw what he meant and began saying things to her to try get her attention, but it was like she was wearing invisible earplugs and couldn't hear a thing he said to her. When seeing that that didn't work, Kaoru considered something else she might respond.

"Hikaru, say something to her in English," he suggested.

Hikaru shrugged and shouted a single "Hey!" for Sam to break away from her own fearful thoughts and look up to them. Hikaru laughed under his breath. "Wow, I can't believe that actually worked!"

"W-What?" Sam stuttered, now back in Japanese.

"You started speaking English on us," Kaoru told her.

Sam mentally slapped herself on the wrist as a way to scold herself and apologized to the twins for getting carried away with herself.

"That's okay. Kaoru tried translating what you were saying, but he said that you said something about a school not paying you and not having rice at home," Hikaru said with doubt.

"Oh, I did say that…" Sam admitted, embarrassed at how strange it must have been to hear her say something so weird without knowing the background details.

"Told you," Kaoru muttered to Hikaru and went back to Sam. "Why would you say something like that?"

"Well, I just got a scholarship and the school pays for my apartment and sends me a check for groceries and stuff every month. Last night, I think the mugger stole my money and probably the groceries I had with me… Now I don't have any food and I'm not going to get another check until next month…" she said with her head hung and shoulders slumped in shame.

The twins glanced to each other, sharing the same thought. "How much?"

"You mean how money the school gave me?" Sam asked to clarify. The twins nodded. "Like four thousand yen…" she mumbled, thinking in the back of her head of how large of a number that seemed. She was so used to the value of American currency, but in reality, four thousand yen equaled a little more than five hundred dollars.

The twins smirked deviously and said, "We can give you the money."

Sam's eyes widened in hope and gratitude. "R-Really?"

"But there's a catch," Hikaru added.

Her face fell and she groaned. "Oh, God… What do I have to do?"

"You have to let us come over to your place after all of this is over," Kaoru said with a grin.

"Why would you two want to come over to my place?" The idea didn't make much sense to her. Why would two rich boys want to go to an apartment when they already live in a luxurious mansion?

"We're curious to see where other commoners live," Hikaru answered.

Kaoru propped his elbow on the table and cupped his cheek. "Besides, Haruhi never let's us go over to her place because she says we cause too much trouble."

"We don't know how she could've thought of something like that," they said in unison with a shrug of the shoulders.

Sam sweat-dropped at their contradictory remark. Her eyes glanced down at her breakfast and sighed when she saw that her plate was empty. She then heard the sound of the twin's chair legs rub against the floor as they were pushed back. She blinked up at the boys, who were now standing. "Something wrong?"

They smirked. "No, but we have to get you out of that nightgown."

"W-What?" she stuttered with a red face.

They laughed. "We meant that you have to change clothes!"

"You could've just said so…"

The twins then appeared beside her and each took one arm and dragged her through the mansion to another, brightly lit room with hundreds of mannequins staring them down. Sam didn't like the way they seemed to creepily stare at her and felt her body shiver.

"What are we doing in here? I thought I was just going to wear what I had on yesterday," she said.

"No way!" Kaoru protested. "Do you even remember those raggedy jeans you were wearing yesterday? And you had absolutely no accessories too!"

"I had a ribbon in my hair, thank you," Sam muttered.

"Besides," Hikaru said, opening a double-door that revealed a collection of outfits, "we never have anyone different to dress up!"

"I'm not a doll, you know!"

"You're our toy, so that's close enough," they said together.

Sam could feel her whole body boil over with annoyance of the two boys.

They flashed a casual, white, ruffled dress with a denim jacket in front of Sam's face. "Try these on!" they commanded.

"I'm not a doll!" she repeated.

"Try them on!" they insisted.

She gave in and flashed them a scornful look before snatching the clothes from their hands and changing behind a curtain set up in the corner of the room. She soon came out and the twins clapped at their wonderful choice of attire for her. She didn't want to admit it, but she really liked the outfit they picked for her. While she touched the ruffles on her dress in adoration, Hikaru pulled out a pair of white, open-toed flats for her and Kaoru held a dark green belt to accompany the dress.

Sam gazed at herself in the mirror and felt something missing in the outfit. "Do you guys have any hair ribbons?"

They showed her to the different colored ribbons that sat next to piles of unused fabrics. She scanned them and selected and big, dark green ribbon and pulled her hair into a ponytail, leaving her fringe to frame her face, and tied the ribbon around the ponytail. She walked back in front of the mirror and smiled with satisfaction. She didn't know what it was, but she always felt weird and out of place if she didn't wear a ribbon in her hair.

"You know, I just realized that you never told us your name," Hikaru informed her out of the blue.

"Hmm? Oh, my name is Samantha, but you can call me Sam if you'd like."

The air was suddenly filled with an abrupt cheerful tune. Hikaru and Kaoru's faces turned sour when they recognized the tune.

Hikaru reached for the cell phone in his pocket. "Yeah?" he said into the phone. The voice from the other side of the phone call shouted loud enough for Hikaru to have to hold the phone a few inches away from his ear. "Calm down, Boss. We were just hanging out."

Another loud response from the other end, which Sam could have sworn said, "You're not going to corrupt my little girl!"

Hikaru sighed and turned to Kaoru and Sam. "I'm going to take this out in the hall. I'll be right back."

When Hikaru was out of the room, Sam sat down to think to herself. Seeing someone use a cell phone made her think about how much she wanted to talk to her Mom and Dad. The idea of living alone without them was too surreal and not being able to conveniently visit them made it worse. She didn't have a phone or computer yet and didn't know for sure if a pay phone would let her call someone in America. The only communication she had with her family and friends at the moment was writing letters.

"So, I'm guessing you're not from around here," Kaoru said when he saw her sitting quietly, staring at the ground.

She snapped out of her thoughts and looked up. "You're right. I just moved here from America. Did my English speaking ways give me away?"

He smirked. "Major. Your accent is a little weird too when you speak Japanese."

She sighed. "I know. I've been teaching myself for almost three years now, but it's really hard to transition from English to Japanese. I always catch myself speaking in English on accident like what you saw earlier."

Kaoru sat down beside her, tired of standing while sitting looked much more comfortable, even if it was on the floor. "I wouldn't worry about it too much. You speak pretty well for learning it in only three years."

She smiled. "Thanks, Kaoru! Speaking of learning languages, don't schools in Japan require you to take English classes?"

"Yeah, starting in middle school and on."

She grinned largely in excitement. "Can you understand what I'm saying, then?" she asked him in English.

"Yes," he replied in English after briefly laughing under his breath.

She giggled. "At least I know I'll have an easy time in the English classes. To be honest, I'm really nervous to start school here, but at the same time, I can't wait for the first day!"

Kaoru couldn't honestly agree with her. He and Hikaru have dreading the end of vacation break to go back to school. School was the one boring thing they couldn't ditch without consequence. They only looked forward to their school club to make the classes less unbearable.

"'Kay, I'm back," Hikaru announced, making his way back in the room.

"What did you tell him?" Kaoru asked him.

"Nothing, really. He just kept babbling about how Haruhi is his precious daughter, so I hung up on him."

"He's just going to call back."

"That's why I turned it off," Hikaru said with a smirk.

"What?" Sam looked back and forth between the two, puzzled about what they were talking about.

"Oh, it's nothing important," Kaoru assured her.

"Anyways, a maid came up to me while I was in the hallway and said that the cops just got here," Hikaru said.

Kaoru sighed and picked himself off the floor. "Let's get this over with."

He extended a hand to help Sam off the floor and the three went to the main living room of the mansion to meet the police. There, they asked Sam, Kaoru, and the driver that was with Kaoru that night questions about what had happened and if they remembered what the mugger looked like. The police officers nodded they heads, hearing what they wanted and asked them to come with them to the station, claiming they might have already caught the mugger.

"But how?" Sam asked in astonishment.

"We got a call from a man last night that claimed to be mugged by a man with the same descriptions," one of the officers said. "We need you three to come and confirm the suspect as well."

"Can Hikaru come too?" Kaoru asked, pointing at his mirror image.

Knowing that he was obviously family to him, the officers approved, but stated that he couldn't be in the room when they confirmed the suspect. All of them then went to the station.

Sam, Kaoru, and the driver were led to a room and then shown the mugger through a one-way window. Seeing the mugger in the light made Sam wince and look away. She didn't want to look at this disgraceful excuse for a human and turned her head.

"That's him," Kaoru confirmed to the police. The driver nodded in agreement.

"Miss," an officer said gently to Sam, "is this the man that attacked you?"

"Y-Yeah…" she answered, her head still turned the other way.

After, they left their contact information in case they would ever need to get a hold of them and were free to leave.

"Masters," the driver said to the twins, "are we to take your guest home now?"

"Oh, yeah. I forgot that that I was only staying until we talk to the police," Sam said.

Sam gave the drive the address to her apartment and sat in the back of the black limo in between Hikaru and Kaoru.

During the ride, Hikaru pulled out a check from his coat pocket and handed it to Sam. "Here," he said.

Sam read the check and saw that it was made out to her four thousand yen. "You both weren't kidding? So, that means that the other part…" she trailed off.

"Now we get to go over to your place!" they both sang.

Sam groaned. "Fine, a deal's a deal, but you're not coming over tonight."

"Why not?" they asked.

"Because I'd like to be alone and process everything that's happened to me in the span of only two days, if you don't mind!"

"Miss, we are here," the driver said when the vehicle stopped.

"Well, I guess I'll be going now. My apartment number is twenty-three, you know, for when you come to visit…" Sam said with a face that showed a mix of cheerfulness and disappointment. Even though these twins were a handful, she had to admit that she had fun while staying with them. "Bye Hikaru, Kaoru," she said, pulling the door open and getting out.

"Bye, Sam," Kaoru said, his mouth falling to a straight line.

Hikaru watched his brother as he gazed out the window at Sam while she made her way to her door. He noticed that the corners of Kaoru's lips curved up slightly when Sam he saw Sam finally opened her door and went inside.

Kaoru couldn't help but feel better now that the mugger wasn't on the streets anymore and she was safe at home. He felt relieved.

"Back to Hitachiin Manor?" the driver asked.

"Yes," Hikaru said, still watching Kaoru and observing much more relaxed he looked. He thought back on when Kaoru urged Sam to stay the night she was attacked and how frightened and pleading he sounded. "Kaoru, why did you want her to stay at our place last night?" he asked to confirm his suspicions. "You were very persistent when you asked her to stay at our place."

Kaoru looked at him, taken aback by his question. He sighed and looked down where his hand held each other in his lap. "I just…I was a little freaked out, that's all. It made me uncomfortable to think that she would be out of my sight while that creep was still out there… Almost as if she would get attacked again if didn't…"

Hikaru took in what he was saying understandingly. "I get it. Now that that creep is locked up, you feel better?"

Kaoru smiled. "Much better."

Meanwhile, Sam stared at the check Hikaru gave her. She couldn't believe that so much already happened within only two days. What if ever day was as eventful? It would be overwhelming for her. She never experienced eventful things in America. She experienced working hard in school.

She placed the check down on a table and made way for her acoustic guitar. She held it close as if it were a baby and strummed its strings and sang a song her father used to always play and sing to her before giving her his beloved guitar. The melody calmed her and reminded her of her family just enough to not miss them terribly.

** Hmm, I don't think I have anything to say... Weird. :P

I hope you guys liked it! And thank you so much for reading and reviewing! **