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Sophie: Eh...Heh...(twitch twitch) This is quite a vicious cycle, eh? I wait for more emails about reviews but secretly I know that I won't get any more unless I UPDATE! WAHHH I'M TOO LAZY FOR THIS CYCLE!
This Extra sidestory/that/is/a/sad/filler/because/I/haven't/gotten/a/response/from/Leo/yet takes place between the shower scene chapter and the bully/Mizukiisactuallyagirl episode. ^-^
Anyways, I was re-reading ALL of the reviews and I was mentally chucking cookies (In a good way) at all of the super-nice things everyone said! There was this one person who kept reviewing in the beginning and I think I TOTALLY forgot to mention them in that one chapter where I was being a bubbly overadoring writer. (hehe) ALSO TO THOSE PEOPLE WHO HAVE RECENTLY REVIEWED AND/OR ADDED TO ALERTS AND FAVORITES...MON AMI! (Kyouya!) Mon AMI! (or Mon Amie as I just learned from Google...)
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I hopped into the club room, holding two water bottles- one for me and one for Mizuki, of course.
When the jingling rang out, it was a reflex to mentally tone the sound out. Even if I had taken notice of the sound, I wouldn't have thought anything of it. This was a sound I was so used to, that it was like second nature to hear the ringing.
Unfortunately for me, this was not the case for everyone else in the world. Specifically, Ouran Academy's Host Club. All heads turned to me as this all-too-familiar ringing was overlooked for the last time. [I really can't think of the right words for what I mean here. This is the final time the Host Club will overlook the ringing. You get it, right?]
"Chiaki?" I looked over to Tamaki. His eyes were so curious it made me uneasy.
"What?" I asked, somehow maintaining my nonchalance.
The twins advanced on me. I stood my ground, once again fighting the urge to step back.
Leaning forward and squinting, Hikaru and Kaoru examined my neck. Hunny looked innocently over at me.
"That's a cute necklace you have there, Chiaki." The twins put the sentence out into the open. The statement was almost a question already. 'Why are you wearing a girly necklace, Chiaki-chan?'
By now the whole entire Host Club was speculating. Of course it all had to do with my one and only permanent accessory.
What the club was looking at was my innocent cat-tag necklace.
My necklace was your average collar tag- the kind that you would use to identify your pets, on a long chain. The tag was a pale red metal tag shaped like a heart. Obviously not the manliest piece of jewelry around, but this could be accounted for by my tsundere act.
The main problem was the name 'SOPHIE' engraved on the surface of the now-lethal tag.
"Sophie?" The twins chorused. I fought the instinct that told me to answer to their call. I rushed to clear my throat and come up with a brilliant explanation for this slip-up of mine.
"I got this necklace from somebody who was very close to me." I muttered, looking down to hide my panicked eyes. This was, thankfully, taken for an action of sorrow.
"So who is this Sophie girl?" Tamaki asked, his eyes wide and expecting. The Host Club King's head was tilted ever-so-slightly to the right. Oh gosh. He probably expects me to say she's my sister or something.
The ill-behaved part of my brain started to churn, while the rest of my brain started to devote itself to stopping the latter from reaching its goal. There was a long moment of silence, in which the club looked at me, keen interest in their larger-than-humanely-possible eyes.
Was I in trouble?
This was about the time when the respectable parts of my brain shut down.
"Sophie was the name of my girlfriend." I declared evenly to the small crowd. My eyes blinked slowly, sealing the quickly turning gears in my head behind a sincere face. A fake sounding gasp filled the room, as if from a recording that only I could hear.
Mizuki was staring intently at me, her eyes giving off a strong 'Oh, I hope you have a clever way out of this one'. vibe.
It seemed Kyouya was extremely interested in this subject. This guy was a freaking sadist at nature. Tamaki started to protest about me 'hurting my current relationship because of ties to the past' and such when Kyouya broke in with a devilishly observant question.
"Was the name of your girlfriend?"
My guilt almost made me squirm. I promptly squished my pitiful feelings and continued to spew 'my story'.
"Was the name of my girlfriend. I believe she's dead." I confirmed Kyouya's question.
Tamaki was suddenly in my face with tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. Though it was easy to spot the comedic side of Tamaki at all times, his face seemed truly distressed. My horrible guilt was only momentarily sidetracked by the unusual faces of the rest of the club. Hunny had the most innocently worried face I had ever seen. Mori was concentrated. Haruhi was serious, her eyebrows knit together. Hikaru and Kaoru's faces held looks of mild confusion.
"Chiaki. Feel free to tell your story to us." Tamaki, probably trying to be considerate, told me softly. Like I could stay silent.
"I might as well, seeing how Kyouya will probably research up on her if I don't." I added a kind of sneer at the end, directed at the black-haired fiend. Kyouya kept a straight face, but pushed up his glasses. Can you guess? Yep, they glinted.
Here we go. I inhaled deeply.
"Sophie and I had dated for a year, more or less. Even before dating we were good friends. She was somewhat of a tomboy and one of the only people I knew who could keep up with my romping."
"Chiaki romps?" the twins turned to each other and blinked questioningly.
"You romped?" Tamaki asked, pitiful cartoon tears already about to flow from his blue eyes. I had to suppress the natural facepalm impulse.
"I romp." I corrected him, looking into his eyes. Just in case you guys wanna go outside and romp together with me later...I went on with my story.
"It was around July that her symptoms started to show. Although it took me a while to figure it out, I could tell something was wrong when she could no longer catch up with me. She started to fall asleep more often during movies. Fina-"
"Wait. More often? Your girlfriend fell asleep at the movies BEFORE she was sick?" Hikaru couldn't help but speak without his brother on this one. I glared at him.
"Shhh! Only during the boring ones!" I tried to keep my girlish-defense voice to a minimum. Dumb curious Hikaru. (Aw hell, it wasn't like I was THAT mad. It was Hikaru Hitachiin after all!)
I tried to grasp my solemn attitude once more.
"Finally, when we were on her porch, in the middle of her sentence she stopped dead."
"De-dead?" Tamaki asked, spilling tears by now. "That was it?"
My head boiled. WHY DID THEY HAVE TO KEEP INTERRUPTING ME?
"No IDIOT! It's just a figure of speech!" I snapped. Without waiting for another interruption
"She slumped, and fell off of her porch onto the ground. I ran to her and asked if she was okay. She didn't respond." I paused dramatically.
"She was examined that time, but I had to leave halfway through the examination. The next time I saw her, she had told me she was fine. 'Exhaustion, stress' just the basic kind of stuff. All she needed was rest is what she told me. Her eyes were reassuring. If I had taken more notice of the little spot of fear inside her eyes, then maybe our situation could have been happier."
I looked around. It seemed there would be no interruptions again. No more making fun of my fake dates with myself. I held in my tired laughter. This is ridiculous.
"About three weeks passed and I heard nothing about it again. Sophie seemed to have less time to spend with me lately." Tamaki took my pause to sniffle. I guess I was a natural-born story-teller.
"One day she was silent for the whole day. I asked her what was wrong and she handed me a sheet of paper. It was her medical sheet. She told me she had some complicated disease."
"Some complicated disease?" I think is was Kyouya who asked this. I was looking down to keep my face out of view.
"Which do you think was more important to me at the moment, my girlfriend's life or the name of the illness that would take it?" I snarled. Point proven.
"The next week or so I hardly saw her. The next time I saw her was the last. She needed a few surgeries to fix her up. She had a 20% chance of surviving. Divide that by two and that equals 10% chance of surviving. It was almost like she was a lab rat destined to be a statistic." Shaking my head, I put my hand over my face. Was this even acting anymore? I seemed more depressed by my own story than most of the host club. Tamaki not included. That boy was blubbering.
"The last time I saw her was when she was in bed. She wasn't supposed to talk, but she sang a song for me. She told me she would die."
"But she didn't know that!" Haruhi protested. I felt bad for bringing up some bad memories about her mom. Maybe she was thinking about her mother now?
"She had been known to be quite intuitive. She was also lucky, but I knew I could trust her judgment. When she said she would die, I won't lie-I doubted it for a moment, but I trusted. She told me she would die, so she wanted me to leave after our talk, and never come to the hospital to see her again. She wanted me to have my last memory of her a living one."
"You never saw her after that?"
"Nope. A few months passed and I heard nothing. Saw nothing." I affirmed. This was so sad. Normally I tried to avoid sad things as much as possible, but I needed the subject of death to deter any further questioning from the club. Especially Kyouya. I shouldn't have even worn the necklace, though it would hurt a little to part with it.
"So how did you get the necklace then?" The twins asked, sounding a little bit too innocent.
Oh, crap, the necklace. Right.
"I didn't say that? (insert quiet under-the-breath nervous laugh here) She gave me her necklace after she sang me a song in the hospital on the last day."
"Oh."
And I supposed that was how my stressful situation ended.
At least, for the time being.
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Sophie: Well I took FOREVER to write this extra/sidestory/filler/that/actually/might/go/somewhere and I was feeling pretty bad about it UNTIL-I was listening to this one thing and it was somewhat informative but my mind just interpreted it as 'Do whatever the hell you want! Other humans don't MATTER!' (The audio didn't actually imply that directly, but that is how I translated it)
ANYWAYS. I actually got in touch with Leo during this chapter, but I dunno if she understood all the info that I blasted at her. She left for dinner, and never returned. (Hoo, that was ominous, huh?) But I actually got a- scratch that- not one but TWO good ideas on short kinda plots/arks that I could do in future chapters. It'll be good. Trust me. You won't even guess that I ran out of Nutella. Goodness that stuff is so good...REVIEW. Was that too demanding? Well then...this is a little bit awkward. (Please review? I'll share some Nutella?)
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