Fun fact #16: Kosuke weighs 101 pounds.

bored411: Thank you. And yes. Jealousy is goooood~. :3

BlackCrowsFrostDragons: Thank you! Just curious, but how did you imagine Kosuke? :)

Talyn Dais: Thank you. And yes. Yes he does~.

The Yoshinator: Thanks. *wipes eyes*

FIRST EPISODE IN THIRD-PERSON! WOO!


NO ONE'S P.O.V.

"Rituko, sweetie," Kayoko Nakahara, mother of the four Nakahara children, calls as she steps down the hallway of her manor. "Someone's at the door. Can you go see who it is?"

Rituko shuts his Spanish copy of Inesperadamente, a book he had been assigned to read for class, sets it down on the mahogany nightstand, and swings his legs over his plaid-quilted bed. He opens the white door of his room and takes a brief look around the open doors of the second floor landing. Soft pop music drifts out of Minami's sticker-covered, gray-lined doorway. She's practicing for her dance class, and everyone now and then, her hand or foot quickly appears and disappears from view. Honami's door, which she had long ago slapped an official 'Ms. Nakahara' gold plate onto, is open just enough so that he can see her working on an arrangement of make-up color palettes. Today, she seemed to be trying to fit gold, green, and blue together. Kosuke's door is wide open, but Rituko can't see her. She's probably at her desk, working on her homework, he decides.

Rituko pads down the polished spiraling staircase, makes a turn to the right, and waves the maid at the door away. She nods him goodbye and he takes her place in the doorway.

"Hello~!"

Rituko's face doesn't change as he takes in the seven people in front of him: A tall blonde boy with violet eyes and a same-height boy with jet black hair and onyx, glasses-covered eyes, both of which he recognizes from his class. A boy taller than himself, with black hair and gray eyes, with a little, golden-haired and brown-eyed boy on his shoulders. Two boys with light auburn hair and gold eyes who look exactly alike, apart from clothes. Finally, a rather short boy with big brown eyes and short brown hair who looks oddly feminine. He's the only one who looks rather annoyed to be here, or at least not slap-numb-happy.

Rituko continues to stare them all down with his bright aqua eyes, lidded with his eyebrows still. All seven visitors sweat uncomfortably. Finally, the blonde guy, Timiki, or something like that, smiles and waves gracefully. Rituko takes note of the guy's clothing: red cotton button-up shirt, denim shorts and leather sandals, all looking like they just got taken out of the store. "Good morning, sir! Is Kosuke home by any chance?"

Rituko stares at him a long moment in utter silence, causing the blonde to stiffen uncomfortably, then finally turns and calls over his shoulder. To a nearby maid. "Can you call for Kosuke, please?"

He turns back to the others as the maid hurries up the staircase. He stares at each at them for one second each before speaking. "You're the guys in Kosuke's club, right?"

The blonde guy glows with joy and chirps, "Yes, that's us!"

Rituko's half-lidded, expressionless stare doesn't change in the very slightest, but somehow, it turns icy. He slowly walks away from the doorway and vanishes from sight. The Host Club members shudder.

Finally, Kosuke walks into view. As usual, her dyed red hair is in a messy, slung-over-shoulder braid. She's dressed accordingly for the heat wave that had arrived overnight, in a peach-and-sky-blue striped tank top and sapphire shorts. She pauses when she sees her fellow club members, aqua eyes wide.

"Good morning, Kosuke~!" Kaoru, Hikaru, Tamaki, and Honey greet joyfully.

"Good morning..."

"We're here to play Suikawa!" Honey chirps excitedly, bouncing up and down on Mori's shoulders with Usa-chan under his chin. He's in an orange T-shirt with khaki shorts and blue sneakers. Mori holds up an emerald watermelon as long as a teens' elbow-to-shoulder-length, and as big around a child's wrist-to-elbow-length. It almost blends in with his green button-up, accompanied by jeans and sandals.

Kosuke pauses on sight of the watermelon and looks up at the group with unsure eyes. "Pardon me...Suikawa?"

"You hit the watermelon with a stick," the twins say, pointing down at the watermelon. They're both clad in the same blue jeans, but Kaoru's in a black T-shirt and purple-gray tank top and sandals, while Hikaru's in a light blue, #1 basketball jersey and red high-tops.

"Yes, I know, but if I may ask, why are we doing it here? Isn't Suikawa an activity to do as the beach?"

"The beaches have been packed the entire week," the twins explain in unison. True to their wood, every weather broadcast that had appeared over the week's news stations had depicted at least one shot of overcrowded beaches. There seemed to be more people than sand.

"It'd be better to do this somewhere air-conditioned, as well," Kyoya adds. Kosuke's Victorian mansion felt like perfect heaven in the 97°F humidity.

Haruhi scoffs at these three excuses, her arms crossed over her charcoal cotton T-shirt. Her toes curl in her flowery flip-flops. "They just want to see how you live every day while they torture your family."

The Hosts don't even deny this.

Kosuke steps aside to allow the seven into the manor. They look around the foyer. The floors are made of polished hickory, the walls covered in elegant emerald green wallpaper striped with snowy gardenias and small, pale purple campanulas. A small gold chandelier hangs above, the spiral staircase just ahead. The floor stretches to the other end of the mansion, to a pair of clear glass doors.

"So what's up with your brother?" Haruhi asks, taking off her shoes and putting them aside with the others. "He looked like he was thinking of 99 different ways to murder us."

"Rituko can be...protective of me at times," Kosuke explains as she closes the door. Her fingers begin to twitch, a sign the Hosts learned a while ago meant that she's shy or nervous. "He's only heard vague details of you..."

The twins give her identical looks of suspicion, gold eyes slightly narrowed. "How vague?"

"I'm quite sure all he's heard of you, or, rather, the things I've done in the Club as of yet, are: me being beaten by Osamu, thus having a heart attack, me being involved in a criminal's act, me almost being sent to jail, and me being caught in the Sabiro Dentoutekina cave-in."

At this, each of the Hosts gives her a 'that's-a-little-too-vague' look mixed in with a 'you-told-them-everything?' look. Kosuke stiffens under their stares and quickly adds, "But I haven't told them anything I've promised not to tell them."

At this, the Hosts stop looking at her. But just a millionth of a second later, there's a clanking thud, a harder thud, a small scream and the sound of shattering glass. The Hosts scramble into the dining room, in the direction of the noise.

The dining room has smooth ceramic tiles and beige-painted walls. The dining room portion has a rectangular mahogany table with fourteen matching, white-cushioned chairs. The table has a bronze vase in the middle, out of which spewed several curling wires with soft-colored crystals dangling from them. Two cornucopias sat on either side of it. A chandelier hung above, and there's a bas relief painting of doves on the right-hand wall. The windows have ivory curtains.

Kayoko Nakahara seems to share Kosuke's clumsiness. It seems that she was attempting to replace the vase atop the table with a different one. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what had happened next. Kayoko seems to have slipped on the jutting stand of the table, sending her crashing. Now, shards of painted glass lay everywhere, and Kayoko is sprawled on the floor. Her bare feet are undamaged, but there are two small cuts on her left hand, across the back her index finger and from her thumb's base to her middle fingers. You can practically see her eyes spinning as she lays on the floor. The maids and cooks are frantic with worry.

Immediately, Kosuke rushes over to help, making sure not to step on any glass shards or as she does so. "I'm fine, sweetie," Kayoko sighs as Kosuke and the maids help her sit up.

"Are you alright...?" Honey stops mid-question, as he doesn't know Kosuke's mother's name.

"You can call me Kayoko, dear," Kayoko replies with a sugar-sweet smile that would make you forget her disheveled appearance entirely.

Kosuke felt grateful that the others were acting perfectly, normally calm. There were only a few instances when boys her age (or at her school) had seen her mother. Several had been at her childhood birthday parties. Even at the ages of four, five, and six, boys had blushed when her mother offered them more cake or thanked them for their presence. Others had only been at her previous school, when her mother picked her up at the same time as everyone else. Those boys had dropped backpacks, spilt drinks, and swallowed flies at the sight of her. Once, a guy actually sprained his wrist from walking right over the edge of the stone steps into the bushes, and three times, guys had lost their girlfriends because they were gawking so much. Kosuke didn't know how many times guys had asked her for her mother's number. She lost count after seventeen.

So, needless to say, Kayoko Nakahara is very beautiful. Kosuke isn't exactly as breathtaking as her mother, but she inherited a few of her traits. Their eye shape seems the same, the structure of their faces appeared the same, and they shared the same loose earlobes. Colors aside, Kayoko is slightly tanner than Kosuke, and taller, with thicker, longer hair and more prominent cheekbones. Kosuke must have inherited her thick eyelashes, blue eyes, and thin nose from her father.

Kosuke quickly takes the extended paper towel from one of the maids and presses it to her mother's wounds. "You are the gentlemen in Kosuke's club, right?"

No sooner does Tamaki let out a gracious "Why, yes we are!" than Rituko and Honami Nakahara come dashing into the kitchen. Honami is more alike to her mother than Kosuke. She has the same nose, prominent cheekbones, small eyelashes, and eye color. Her skin tone is slightly paler, however, and her hair is jet black. Rituko is the least similar to his mother. Perhaps their only remarkable similarities are their nose shapes and earlobes. And perhaps their chins.

"Mom! Are you OK?" Honami pants as she dashes to her mother's side. She gingerly takes her hand away from the paper towel and inspects the cuts. Rituko observes over her shoulder.

The Hosts gawk for several long, silent moments before they exclaim in a loud chorus, "'MOM'?!"

"We thought you were Kosuke's sister!" the twins exclaim. Both have their fingers pointed and jaws dropped to the floor.

"Oh!" Kayoko lets out a soft chuckle and sighs. Her smile itself is similar to Kosuke, but lacking the dimples, "No, no. Not possible. I'm forty-five."

You can practically see the Hosts' belief shatter.

Honami looks up at the Hosts through her short eyelashes. Her eyes flicker with suspicion, and she asks, "Who's this?"

"These are my fellow colleagues of the Host Club," Kosuke explains, gently dabbing Kayoko's cuts with a wet tissue. The cuts were blood-free now, leaving very pale pink lines.

The Hosts get another wham of obvious relation between Honami and Rituko then. Honami's gaze turns identical to Rotuko's previous one, deathly icy and chilling, but with a bit more emotion: narrowed eyes, slanted eyebrows. She looks over at Rituko, busy fishing some BandAids from the supply cabinet. With the same expressionless face as before, he exchanges silent words with her until they look back at the Hosts. The seven said teens shiver.

Finally, they get the BandAids on Kayoko's cuts, and Honami and Rituko slowly walk away, lagging in the doorway a bit to stare at them icily before leaving.

The Hosts have a feeling this is going to be a very interesting day, good or bad.


And there you go. Sibling drama, pretty mothers, watermelon games. Everything that should be in a perfect chapter, eh?

Anyway, Toboe'sSoulmate is to be credited for this one.

EPISODE SUGGESTIONS ARE STILL BEING ACCEPTED.

Bye

~LunarisAmor