Chapter Eleven: The Tamaki Residence
Saelind was pissed.
Beyond pissed.
So pissed that steam should have been shooting out of her ears.
And the reason?
She was currently sitting in the back of a limo that was heading towards Suoh Tamaki's house.
"Don't worry, Sael-chan, you're going to be just fine," Ami murmured, giving her a soft smile. "Trust me."
"If you hadn't noticed, I'm the farthest thing from fine right now," Saelind retorted lifelessly, staring out the window. "Tamaki is the bane of my existence, and right now I'm on my way to his house. How is that okay?"
Ami didn't respond, and she instantly looked uncomfortable: Saelind closed her shimmering teal eye as the buildings flashed passed the window: she had to be ready for the mental strain that would be waiting for her, but all she could focus on was the fact that she was about to enter the home of a boy she thoroughly disliked.
In truth, the limo ride was a silent one.
The radio was on low, a soft background noise solely to keep Saelind from going crazy because of the silence.
Luckily, Tamaki's mansion was close enough to the school to not seem like a long drive.
When the limo driver halted outside the gates, Ami lowered her eyes with a sigh.
"Home sweet home!" she murmured, leaning back with a wince. "Welcome to the Tamaki residence?"
"We're here?" Saelind deadpanned, pushing herself up in the seat a little so she could attempt to stare out the window. "Really?"
"Yup, this is Suoh's 'humble' abode," Ami sighed, shrugging in embarrassment. "I live with my mother in the servant's quarters."
When the chauffeur parked the limo and killed the ignition, Saelind rolled the window down and peeked at the house in front of her. Not far behind, however, was another limo: inside it was the Host Club, as well as a flushed-cheeked, sniffling Haruhi. They were all peering through the windshield and trying to see what was going on. However, that's when Saelind's mouth popped open in shock.
"You live here?" Saelind instantly squeaked, frantically groping for the door handle: with an amazed expression, she slid out of the car and stumbled back a few steps tilted her head back to stare. "Are you serious?! Suoh Tamaki lives in a mansion?!"
"Yes," Ami admitted, slowly getting out of the limo and primly folding her hands. "I'm sure you know this already, but his family is very, very wealthy."
"Yeah, I did, but still!" Saelind whispered, shaking her head in awe and pulling her hood off. "This is almost equal to the house I grew up in!"
Ami's eyes slowly widened behind her glasses when the clouds above them suddenly shifted, bathing the the frail girl in a golden glow. Saelind's glossy black hair immediately caught the light like a mirror, and her pale skin only seemed that much whiter due to the stark contrast. The brunette raised her eyebrows in surprise when she realized something.
Because of how dark it looked, nobody had ever realized just how luscious Saelind's hair was.
"This place is a traditional Japanese manor," Ami explained, crisply nodding her head. "It's just as majestic as the ones in Kyuushi."
"Wow," the smaller girl whispered, voice coming out like a prayer as she stared up at the house. "It's something all right."
It was true: the manor was beautiful... the building was made of white brick and practically loomed over them like a castle. Huge windows glittered in the sun, and a balcony had been wrapped around the entire second and third floors. There was a garage off to one side, and a pool house on the other: even though it wasn't visible, Ami began to wonder how Saelind would react when she heard about the guest manor out back.
"Anyway," Ami finally sighed, looking at the black-haired girl. "Would you like to come inside?"
"Might as well," Saelind murmured, blinking before her enraptured look smoothed over into the usual uncaring expression. "That's why we came here."
So saying, Ami hurried up the steps and unlocked the giant double doors.
"Um... one more thing? Tamaki likes to decorate," Ami sheepishly admitted, awkwardly rubbing the back of her neck before she stepped inside. "Sorry."
Honestly, that much was an understatement.
Saelind was legitimately stunned to her core once she saw the manor's interior: the entryway floor was made of checkerboard tiles that had been colored a pristine black and white, and the walls were painted a toast-colored yellow brown. After a few moments of gawking at the plush furniture, intricate carvings, beautiful velvet drapes, and stained-glass windows, Saelind's attention was drawn to the walls.
Multiple pictures hung on them, which made her curious: she looked at all of the older ones first, and she was relatively amazed... but then she paused, since one of them caught her eye. Saelind tilted her head before walking over to one photo in particular. After a moment of staring, she frowned in confusion: a young Tamaki and a young Ami were standing together with a brown-haired little boy who looked about two or three.
Behind them stood four adults... two men and two women.
And yet, for some reason, both of the women's faces had been cut out of the photo at some point.
After a moment, she glanced at another photo with the same people... and then another, and another.
Saelind felt increasingly disturbed when she realized that both women had been cut completely out of every single photo.
"Ami, who are those ladies?" Saelind asked, glancing at the brunette with furrowed brows. "Why have their faces been cut out of the pictures?"
When Ami saw what she was looking at, she winced and averted her eyes.
"They bring back some bad memories, I guess," Ami mumbled, giving a little shrug that made the black-haired girl quirk an eyebrow. "The blonde one was Suoh's mother, and the brown-haired one was my birth mother. My mother died a long time ago in a horrible accident, but nobody knows what happened to the young Mistress: everyone says she simply disappeared one day."
"Oh," Saelind murmured, teal eye suddenly becoming far away as an odd emotion flickered through her. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," Ami sighed, shaking her head before she glanced at the little boy in the photo. "My little brother, Ryuji, is still alive and happy: he's probably playing with a friend outside right now, so we don't have to worry about interruptions. He's always getting into trouble... even when we were little."
Saelind's heart skipped a beat and she almost remembered something.
She didn't know why, but she suddenly felt that there was a powerful connection between her family and Ami's family. Something about all of this suddenly felt very off... but the feeling of nostalgia slipped away and she was left with nothing but confusion. Ami looked away from the pictures and opened her mouth to say something, but she paused after seeing Saelind's expression. The girl looked like she had just seen a ghost, and the visible part of her face was bone white,
"Are you all right?" Ami asked, stepping forward and leaning down. "You look kind of pale."
"Yeah, I'm fine," Saelind snapped, defensively pulling her hood up again and shrinking into it. "Let's just start studying!"
"All right... let's got to my room," Ami sighed, shrugging a bit before heading up one of the double grand-staircases. "Follow me."
However, when they made it to the top of the stairs, the door Ami stopped in front of opened wide before she could pull it back and an elderly woman stepped through it. However, she jerked to a halt and blinked at Saelind since the girl jumped behind Ami in surprise; then she bowed her head in a respectful manner. The old lady was wearing a traditional maid outfit, her face was as creased and wrinkled as a dried apple, and her hair was completely gray. A typical grandmotherly woman with an expression that clearly said 'STERN' in bold fashion.
"Welcome: I presume you're the one that our young Master told us about?" the old lady asked, slanted brown eyes flashing with distaste when she took in Saelind's somewhat grubby appearance. "Tsk... Kikiroshi-san, you really do have bad taste in friends."
"It's a pleasure to meet you too, Oba-sama," Saelind sarcastically drawled, giving the old woman an airy salute. "S'cuse me for dressing comfortably."
"Well, I never!" the woman gasped, looking distinctly ruffled and surprised. "How dare you call me an old woman!"
Ami stepped between them when sparked started flying from their eyes: she looked extremely uncomfortable.
"Miss Morikawa," the brunette sighed, lifting her hands in a soothing manner, "this is Saelind Heseroph, daughter of the Grand Duchess of Russia. This outfit is her disguise so people don't recognize her. Surely you can understand that?"
The woman in front of them paled before bowing low with her hands folded together.
"Forgive me, Milady! I have been terribly rude!" the woman stated fretfully, not raising her head. "Would you please forgive me for such an atrocity?"
"Um, okay?" the tiny girl snorted, not sounding as though she really cared. "It's really no big deal. I dress the way I want because it's within my rights. You are also entitled to your own opinion: you're a maid who was offered employment, not a slave who's being forced, so lift your damn head already! I'm not one of those stingy blue-bloods who constantly looks down on other people!"
The woman blinked before slowly lifting her head and staring at her with an intense frown.
"Are you really the daughter of a duchess?" she inquired, sounding extremely skeptical. "You seem rather deprived of proper... etiquette."
"I'm not deprived of anything," Saelind yawned, shrinking within her hood and flapping her arms; the ends of her long sleeves flopped around with the movement, which made the woman blink and frown even more deeply. "I know everything there is to know about high class society. Does that mean I'm going to enforce it to the point where my relaxation time becomes stressful? No. I'm pretty sure that there are moments when you let yourself become lax in how you address certain people, as well. Everyone has moments like that, but right now, this is one of mine."
"As you wish," Old Lady Morikawa murmured, pursing her lips together as though she'd swallowed a prune. "I must be going now. Please excuse me."
With that, she hurried down the stairs, not even noticing the group of spying teens who'd hidden behind some suits of armor. The Host Club was watching everything with curious eyes, and they were trying their very hardest to make sure that they didn't get caught. However, when Saelind was finally welcomed into Ami's room, the girl's teal eye snapped open wide at the marvels around her and she gawked in awe: gorgeous carvings and the finest wood made up the raw basics. Not even counting the beautiful decorations.
"Wow..." Saelind whispered, looking around at the girl's bedroom. "This is, like... every girl's dream come true."
"You think so?" Ami giggled, blushing and looking down in embarrassment. "I honestly thought you wouldn't like it all that much since... well, you know."
"Excuse me, but let's pretend I don't," the smaller girl droned, giving her a half-lidded expression. "Why would you think I wouldn't like your room?"
"Well, because it's... really, really girly?" the brunette hesitantly suggested, making the Russian quirk an eyebrow. "Oh, come on! You know what I mean!"
"So, basically," Saelind sighed, folding her arms and cocking her hip, "you're saying that you thought I wouldn't like your room because I'm not girly. Right?"
"Pretty much," Ami bluntly replied, giving a short nod. "That about sums it up."
"Meh, whatever," the smaller girl yawned, pulling her hood down yet again before she flopped down on the plush carpet. "You got a point. My tastes don't match my personality."
"Which is why everyone thinks you're a Tsundere," the taller girl groaned, smacking a hand against her forehead. "You're annoyingly and bitterly adorable."
"I'm not sure whether I should take that as a compliment or an insult," Saelind snickered, rolling her teal eye as she flipped her book open and put the ingredients for the dinner she was planning on the floor. "Anyway, how many rooms does Tamaki's house have? This room is so big that I could fit my entire apartment inside of it!"
"There are a total of seventy two bedrooms," the girl promptly replied, making the girl's already-pale face turn bone white with shock. "Not counting the eighty nine bathrooms, sixteen dining halls, five kitchens, nine leisure rooms, and all of the secret passages that wind about this place. There are about three hundred rooms and corridors, total."
"Yep... that's about as big as my old house," Saelind muttered, scribbling some notes in her school journal. "It has three hundred and eighty nine."
"I wish I could have seen it," Ami dreamily sighed, pulling her own school things out of her bag. "Russian architecture is so beautiful and unique."
"Don't make me laugh," the Russian girl snorted, rolling her eye with an extremely sour expression. "Big houses are worthless, and I honestly hate them. It figures that Tamaki's home would represent everything that bothers me, especially since he and the Host Club members are nothing but a nuisance. Big houses like this may be pretty to look at, but they're really not my thing."
"Eh? What do you mean?" Ami asked, looking up from her own textbook in surprise. "I thought you liked the way this place looked, didn't you?"
"Well, yeah, but that's my point: big houses are for nothing but show," Saelind bitterly retorted, hand coming to a halt as she glared at her textbook. "What's the point of living in a house with three hundred rooms if you've got nobody to share those rooms with? Being in a house like this isn't fun for me: it does nothing but bring back unneeded memories."
"I see," Ami sighed, shaking her head in dismay. "Sorry... maybe I should have chosen another place."
"Don't worry about it," Saelind muttered grumpily, scratching at her ear with her pencil. "Let's just finish the notes for the project."
Neither girl realized that the entire Host Club was listening outside the door, or even that Tamaki himself looked extremely depressed by Saelind's statement. After about an hour of sitting in silence, however, there was a commotion from outside the door and several people unexpectedly burst in and fell in a tangled heap. Saelind glanced up with a start when she saw the Host Club members getting back to their feet. However, Ami instantly twitched and got to her feet as well, slowly folding her hands and bowing her head.
"Suoh-kun, how can I help you?" she asked, looking up at the blonde boy with startled eyes. "I wasn't expecting you!"
"Oh, there's nothing I need right now, Ami-chan," he stammered, turning bright red when Saelind glared daggers into his face. "I was just..."
"Hey, Ami?" Saelind muttered, giving the girl a dark expression, "I'm going to go put the ingredients in the kitchen. Mind telling me where it is?"
"It's... down the staircase and... through the left main hall," Ami mumbled, waving her arms. "Make three lefts, a right, and then a left."
With a curt nod, Saelind stomped past Tamaki, the Twins, Mori, Honey, Haruhi, and Kyouya without so much as giving them a second glance. However, once she was out of sight, her shoulders sagged and she covered her face, feeling out of sorts. For a while, she'd thought she might have been able to get away from them for at least one full day... but apparently, no matter what she did, they would always be looking for ways to bother her. After a few minutes of sulking, the girl hefted the grocery bag and was just about to leave when something caught her eye.
A dark room with something sparkly.
When she opened the door... she found what appeared to be a beautiful stain-glass mural inside a dimly lit lounge.
After a moment, Saelind decided to take a break in there since it seemed like it was her style.
Soon after that, she was sprawled out on one of the sitting room's chairs, leisurely fiddling with one of her sharp teeth and studying her textbook. However, when she heard the footsteps and looked up, Mori was folding his tall frame into one of the chairs: Saelind's eyebrows lifted in shock, and she stared with an enormous teal eye since there was a sketchbook in his lap, he had one pencil in his hand, and there was another behind his ear. His slanted grey eyes narrowed in dismay when she stared at him.
"Don't move," he murmured quietly, tilting his head from side to side as he looked at her body. "Okay?"
"Uhhh..." Saelind whispered, staring at him with startled eyes. "O-okay?"
After a moment of feeling uncomfortable, the girl shifted slightly and decided to ignore him before returning to what she was doing. When Mori's pencil started scrawling across the notebook, Saelind hesitantly peered up at him before she realized that her hood was still down. She instantly gasped and tilted her head, regarding him with a pained expression that made his face freeze for a moment.
That expression seemed to burn itself into his retinas: then her hair slid away from her face, which only made the sight more profound.
His eyes instantly flicked downwards since Saelind pulled her hood up and hastily went back to working.
Even though she was uncomfortable, there was something in the way Mori was sketching that made him interesting to watch.
"Hey, Beanpole," she grumbled, poking her tongue out with a gleaming teal eye. "Can I talk?"
"Nhn," he vaguely murmured, glancing at her then back at the paper. "I already have what I need."
Of course. Good thing Saelind was used to people being cryptic with her.
"I still haven't decided to forgive you for hitting me, you know," Saelind stated sourly, making the skritching noise pause; Mori slowly lifted his head and regarded her with an equally blank expression. "My jaw still hurts because of what you did, and the bruise is still just as bad as the day I got it. You seriously hurt me."
For a long moment, nothing happened... but then, Mori set the pencil down and stood up, making the girl twitch and draw back.
Saelind blinked when she realized he'd crossed the carpet in order to stand in front of her... and with apprehension in her gut, she slowly looked up until she could see his face. His eyes were narrowed and he looked somewhat intimidating, which made her clamp up in fright. When he slowly leaned down and lifted his hand, Saelind's face twisted up and she abruptly flinched away with both of her eyes squeezed shut.
With a silently impulsive person like him, it was too hard to understand what he was thinking.
She honestly didn't know what to expect, aside from what had already happened... so she braced herself to get decked in the face a second time for pushing his buttons. In truth, because of how hard he'd hit her in the jaw, the only Host Club member who genuinely frightened her was Mori. She alone knew just how much muscle he had on his body: she'd felt it when he'd hit her. If he wanted to do something else, there was no way her measly Akido lessons would help her. Narrowing his eyes even further, Mori leaned closer and stared at the girl with a frown: frankly, all he was trying to do was apologize, but this wasn't the reaction he'd been expecting at all.
Her face had gone so pale that her skin was almost see-through.
Frowning, he gently set his hand on her shoulder and ignored the snarl of protest she let out: the girl's body was shaking violently.
Saelind twitched when Mori let out a choking sound and seemed to struggle with something: however, when his frustration became apparent, he stood up tall and awkwardly ruffled his hair. The tiny girl shivered when the boy's huge shadow completely obscured her: he was too enormous for his own good. It made her feel even more helpless than usual, and she hated it. However, when Mori blinked and slowly leaned down again with both arms outstretched, Saelind's small shoulders locked up and her face froze.
Oh, God... the girl whimpered inside her head, squeezing her teal eyes shut in terror. He's gonna kill me!
The Russian girl flinched when the Asian boy grabbed her green-clad wrists, expecting him to do something violent.
However, when she was pulled clean off her feet and straight into a bear hug, time slowed down.
For a long moment, Saelind's mind went out and her fear blanketed her mind: she couldn't even let out a hiss because the shock had paralyzed her.
Is he going to strangle me?! she wondered blankly, not able to form a comprehensive thought. I can't feel what he's doing... someone... please! Get him off!
Just as Mori opened his mouth, however, Honey's silhouette appeared in the doorway.
"I'm sorry," the giant rumbled quietly, speaking in a voice that vibrated her entire body. "I'm sorry that I lost my temper that day. I was wrong."
Saelind's visible eye widened in startled surprise: he was apologizing?
If that was the case, then had he really needed to go as far as touching her?!
"L-l-let me go!" Saelind squeaked, finally flailing around and struggling to get free. "If that's all you wanted to say, you should have done it without touching me! Get off!"
When he jumped and hastily set her back down, Saelind shakily dusted herself off and tried to keep her knees from buckling.
"Sorry," he wheezed, flailing his arms with a helpless expression. "Sorry."
"Whatever: just forget about it!" Saelind snapped, giving him a wide berth as she bolted out of the sitting room. "I... I'm heading for the kitchens!"
"Hn..." he acknowledged, staring at the ground once the girl was gone. "Fine."
After a moment, Mori stoically returned to the couch and started sketching again, but when Honey popped up beside him with wide brown eyes, the wild one wasn't really surprised.
"What was all that about, Takeshi?" Honey asked innocently. "I've never seen Saelind like that before! She looked ready to cry!"
"I was apologizing," the giant quietly explained, drawing on the paper with deft strokes. "It was for doing something I shouldn't have."
"What did you do?" Honey quipped, sliding onto the couch beside him and swinging his legs. "Can you tell me what you did?"
"I hit Saelind," Takeshi droned, not even letting himself think about it. "I misunderstood and hit her. On her first day."
Honey's eyes flooded with realization and he looked a little subdued, subconsciously hiding his long-healed hand.
"What'cha drawing, Takeshi?" Honey asked, leaning over his arm and peering at it. "It's been a long time since you've drawn!"
"Something broken, but very beautiful," Mori stated simply. "Nothing more."
"Oh," the blonde mumbled, blinking a few times before his stomach growled. "Well, I think I'm gonna go ask Tama-chan for some cake!"
"Don't forget to be polite," Mori stated calmly, not lifting his eyes from the paper. "Remember that."
When Honey giggled and left with his stuffed rabbit, the blonde didn't even realize that the sketch he'd asked about was already taking shape.
It was an image of a young girl with burn scars holding an eye-patch.
A girl who was looking at the world as though she were the saddest human being ever to have walked across the face of the planet.
