Typical Disclaimer: I do not own Ouran High School Host Club, nor Disney.
Thirty-Seven: The Trouble With Being Helpful
'Seriously, one of these days I'm gonna tell Tamaki that if he wants me to do something with them, it better not require me getting up in the single digits'
the female host wearily thought as she threw her swimsuit and beach towel into a brightly colored, vinyl, tropical Stitch bag. It was 6:30 in the morning and the day of the hosts' excursion to the Ootori water park. The non-morning person, Michelle, was hurriedly grabbing everything she needed so as not to be late when the boys arrived to pick her up.
'I know if I'm not outside when they get here, they'll barge in and bother Fr. for a while and while he might not mind it, I don't want Kyouya to be prodding into my life further. That bastard's becoming a real annoyance, I mean why can't he leave me alone?' she thought as she recalled how Kaoru recently divulged to her that it was Kyouya who told the host club that she wasn't living with her aunt and uncle.
"How'd he know that anyway?"
she muttered to herself as she ran down the stairs to the humble kitchen in the rectory. Seeing that Fr. Kichi wasn't awake yet since the downstairs lights were still shut off, Michelle quietly grabbed a muffin and gingerly opened the front door. Being in stealth mode getting out of the house, the female host didn't see the frightened, battered, raven haired boy down the street that was running full speed towards her. As she turned to walk down the stairs, proud that she made it out of the house without waking her guardian, Michelle immediately spotted Kurama rushing to her, crying his eyes out. Upon seeing him, her heart melted and she dropped her bag without a thought, opening her arms for him to rush into. As soon as the young boy collided into her, the two of them sat on the bottom step of the rectory and neither of them spoke for several minutes. Cradling the boy and trying to comfort him as much as she could while stroking his hair, the blue eyed girl's maternal instincts were truly kicking in and she started to think,
'this has been going on long enough, I need to get him to tell me what is going on so I can help him get out of this horrible situation'.
After five or so minutes, Michelle spoke up as she lovingly lifted the boy's face so she could look at him, eye-to-eye.
"Kurama, you know that you're safe here. What happened?" she asked while praying that he would finally give her an answer that she could take with him to the police.
"No'fing"
the little boy sniffled as he meekly wiped the bottom of his nose with the back of his right hand. Without saying anything, the strawberry blonde reached into the Disney bag that she dropped off to her side, grabbed her beach towel, and used it to carefully wipe the crying child's eyes.
"Kurama, this doesn't look like nothing"
she said, oozing with concern, as she noticed that his lip was cut open, his right eye had a shiner, and a small portion of the hair on his left temple was pulled out. Before she could say anything else, a large white limo screeched to a halt next to the two.
"MICHELLE-SAN!"
Tamaki exclaimed as he leapt out of the vehicle, "Are you ready for a day of—"
he excitedly started to say, but stopped as soon as he noticed the small boy who dived even further into the girl's arms due to fear at the sight of the limo.
"Who's the little kid?" the two doppelgangers asked as they leaned out of the open door. Now literally trembling in fear at all of the commotion around them, Kurama started to cry into Michelle's shoulder again.
"Guys, cool it" the strawberry blonde quietly barked at the hosts, while gentling whispering to the little boy that they were her friends and that they were also safe and nice people.
Instantly realizing that the little boy was petrified of them, Tamaki gently knelt down next to the two sitting on the last stair and sweetly said, "Hey there, my name's Tamaki, what's yours?"
Since Michelle said that the other people were nice, Kurama cautiously looked up from the girl's shoulder, still clutching onto her for dear life, to see who was talking to him. Softly answering for the boy, Michelle said, "his name's Kurama and he's a good friend of mine Tamaki".
"Well it's always a pleasure to meet any friend of the fair Michelle's. Hey, do you like magic?" the tall blonde said with such ease that the female host wondered if he had some sort of younger sibling or something that made him so good at talking with children.
'I mean, I always thought he did an amazing job with the kids during the toy drive, but he actually has a real talent for working with children' she thought as she felt the chocolate eyed boy's grip on her loosen as he nodded his head yes.
Out of nowhere, Tamaki magically produced an origami frog while thousands of bubbles floated around them. Both Michelle and Kurama looked at the host king in childlike awe at the feat he had just performed. The little boy, with Michelle and Tamaki's encouragement, slowly reached out for the paper amphibian and quickly pulled it close to himself so he could examine the 'magical' object closer.
"We're going to a water park today my little friend, would you like to come with us?" Tamaki gallantly asked with a truly sincere smile upon his face, a smile so sincere that one would wonder if he saw the obvious signs of abuse on the boy's face or not.
"I don't know…"
the little boy meekly said in reply, afraid of what his dad might do if he found out.
"We can have so much fun!" the twins joyfully said as they approached the trio, "there are water slides, wave pools, and we can even have a water gun fight!"
Upon seeing the injuries on little brunette's face and his wince at the last word, Kaoru instantly regretted saying the words gun and fight and quickly added, "and they'll be a water roller coaster and all the snacks you can eat!" hoping that that would not scare the child and encourage him to actually join them.
Looking up at Michelle inwardly questioning whether he should go or not, the blue eyed host saw the slight hesitation in his brown eyes and sweetly said, "c'mon, it'll be fun Kurama". Seeing the happiness in her eyes at the hope that he'd join them and feeling safe at the thought of spending more time with her, Kurama hesitantly nodded his head yes as he looked at the three boys who had gathered around them.
"Great!" Tamaki exclaimed as he reached out his hand for the little black haired boy's, "Let's get going then". Still holding onto Michelle with his right hand, Kurama slowly reached out his left hand for the tall blonde's and the three of them walked over to the hosts' limo. Hikaru followed immediately behind the trio, but first Kaoru grabbed the Stitch bag and towel that Michelle had left behind before he scurried after them.
~**9:00 AM—At the Water Park**~
'I'm really glad that the boys got Kurama to come here', Michelle thought with a smile as she watched the little brunette play with Tamaki, the twins, and Hunny. 'He needs to know that he is loved and worthy of love' she thought as she lounged on a nearby beach chair. 'Also, I don't think he's been exposed to fun that much, and if there are any experts on that topic, it's the Host Club,' the strawberry blonde thought as she brushed a strand of hair from her eyes before she quickly added, 'minus Kyouya that is.'
When they arrived at the park and much to the twins' dismay, the female host turned down their offer to dress her up in one of their mother's ultra girly swimsuits because of her ever present tomboyish attitude. Instead of being clad in some sort of stylish two-piece suit that the twins wished her to wear, she was comfortably wearing her modest one piece suit, complete with a pair of bright, baggy, men's swim trunks. At first, Tamaki was opposed to her wearing any sort bathing suit in front of them, muttering something about how young women should not show so much skin before she is married, but as Michelle quickly pointed out, she was more clothed in the purple one piece and swim trunks then she was when she wore the diamond covered, flapper style, strapless leotard that she wore when she performed 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend' at the Valentines performance. That seemed to shut him up, to her delight.
'What is up with this place though, 'the blue eyed host thought as she looked around at her current tropical surroundings. 'I mean I've been to many water parks in my time, but this place is massive! It's like three times the size of Typhoon Lagoon and it's entirely enclosed in glass. I was not expecting a structure like this to be in the middle of a city and I definitely wasn't expecting Kyouya's family to be the owners of a water park', she thought as she puzzled at the idea of the Ootori medical group being able to write the park off as a medical expense as the shadow king made his way over to the area she was sitting in and proceeded to sit down under an umbrella covered table next to her.
"The glass panels that surround us are not only one sided, meaning that no one on the outside can see the inside, but they are also infused with solar panel capacities and are part of the newest scientific study of green electricity" he said in his normal silky smooth voice as Michelle gazed at the mentioned objects.
"Wow, I wasn't thinking about them, but that's really actually… cool" the female host said as she put on a precious pair of sunglasses, ones that she received as a birthday gift from a cast member when she was staying at a Walt Disney World resort. The sound of giggling caught her attention and she turned to face the laughing group of boys who were currently making a large sand castle by the edge of the wave pool.
Seeing the smile creeping onto his annoyance's face as she watched his friends flinging sand at each other, for some reason only the Buddha would know, made Kyouya feel a strange sort of happiness stir inside of him. To brush off that obnoxious feeling, the bespeckled Ootori spoke up again to defer his attention from Michelle, "It seems as if the others are enjoying themselves".
"Yeah, it does doesn't it? It's been a while since I've seen him smile with such ease", Michelle replied as her heart ached at the thought of the little raven haired boy's abuse.
Knowing who she was talking about without even needing to ask, Kyouya instead asked, "Do you know who's harming him?" as he casually reached for the laptop that was next to him on the umbrella covered table.
"No and I wish I did. I mean he's been visiting me for a while, but he won't tell me what's going on". Sighing with frustration she continued, "Uggh, it's killing me seeing him like this and I need to put an end to this. He deserves so much more out of life," was the response she gave Kyouya as she worriedly gazed at the small boy.
"I'll take care of it", the grey eyed boy bluntly said as he turned on his computer, "don't worry about it anymore".
Michelle quickly whisked around to face Kyouya, an obvious look of disbelief and questioning on her face. "Why would you do that? I mean how could helping a little kid like Kurama be beneficial to you?" the female host asked.
Not looking up to answer her questions, Kyouya coolly and indifferently said, "Well it isn't beneficial to me at all, but knowing my softhearted best friend, he won't let me rest until I take care of a situation like this so I might as well get a head start before he turns to me with his pathetic puppy dog eyes".
Since the raven haired boy's eyes were not hidden by a sunlight glare from the direction Michelle was in, she could tell that there was more to his reasoning than he was letting on. 'He responded way too quickly for that to be the real reason. I know 'cause I've done that to when I've tried to lie my way out of something. That means… he might actually care about seeing someone abused' the girl calculated as a wave or admiration, a strange feeling when it comes to the Ootori boy, started to come over her.
'Nah,' she thought as she immediately dismissed such a thought, but wanting to annoy Kyouya anyway, she coyly said, "Uh, huh. Sure. That's why", as she turned around to face the wave pool in front of her. Before Kyouya could retort her smug comment, the twins descended upon Michelle from out of nowhere and whisked her off in the direction that the others were heading in, saying something about not wanting to try the water roller coaster without her. With the strawberry blonde gone, Kyouya reached for his cell phone from the shirt pocket in his cool blue, Hawaiian style shirt and speed dialed Asunna. Within three seconds, the guard answered his phone and asked how he could be of service to the young Ootori heir since the person he was assigned to watch was currently with Kyouya.
"I need you to make a visit to Fr. Kichi and find out as much as you can about the young street urchin who has been visiting Michelle. Call me as soon as you find out anything."
"Yes sir," the guard answered, not even pausing to second guess the somewhat odd assignment before be hung up the phone and sprinted to his car to carry out his orders.
Within five minutes, and much to Kyouya's surprise, his phone rang again and Asunna's name flashed across his cell phone's screen. Answering immediately, quite impressed that his guard found out something so quickly, Kyouya said,
"Hmm, you already found out something? What did you…"
Almost as soon as the black haired employee began to speak, Kyouya's face grew pale. The more Asunna said, the paler Kyouya's face grew and the wider his grey eyes became. Shaking his head after a minute or so, the be-speckled boy's face returned to normal and he responded simply with,
"we're on our way"
before he hung up on his guard.
Standing up so quickly, his computer almost fell to the ground before he managed to snatch it in mid-air, Kyouya rushed over to the edge of the pool which his fellow hosts were about to emerge from the slide's tube. As soon as the raft filled with the laughing hosts and Kurama popped out of the roller coaster's track and plopped into the water, the raven haired Ootori barked to the female host and his best friend,
"Michelle, we are leaving now, grab your things. Tamaki, you guys keep an eye on Kurama".
Everyone looked at him, quizzical at what happened to make Kyouya act like that, but Michelle just shook off the happiness that she got from the recent ride and glared at him as she said, brimming with annoyance at the tone of voice he just used on her,
"Excuse me? What the hell are you talking about and who the hell do you think you are to order me around like that you…"
she started to say, but caught herself as she remembered that they were in the midst of little and impressionable ears. Wanting to get away from Kurama before she started to chew out her protagonist, Michelle politely excused herself from the others as she hopped out of the raft and stomped over to catch the rich jackass who was gliding away to the front door. Grabbing her stuff for her in the process, knowing that she was going to argue with him some more once she actually caught up with him, Kyouya only paused for a second after he lifted the Disney bag, to make sure that the female was following him. Sprinting after him, Michelle roughly grabbed the handles of her Stitch bag and opened her mouth as if to yell at Kyouya when he cut her off just in time. The next few words out of his mouth had the same effect on the girl as they had on Kyouya moments ago.
"The rectory of Heavenly Savior is on fire".
Hey everyone! Summer's finally here! :D I feel slightly bad that I'm ending with another cliffhanger about the church, but trust me, it will all make sense when I'm finished with the next chapter. Just be ready for some fireworks is all I'm saying.
Btw, thank you so much Cream-Pie13 and the Guest that left a comment in April. You, and all those you follow/read/comment really mean the world. As always, I want to thank all those who have signed up for story alerts and so on :) See Ya Again Soon!