Chapter Forty Six
Let's Blow This Popsicle Stand
Somebody had filmed it. Some gleeful lackey of Tsubame, who I wasn't sure whether to love or hate, had stuck it out to keep recording around the edge of the building even as the host club was clearing the crowd, documenting every blow and every word and posting it online. Not on the tracking site, though. There was a whole other hate group made solely for those who actively despised me. That was where they'd organised the 'demonstration', knowing that their tracking site was compromised. It had been smart, I'd give them that. The video played against the background of a familiar broken and bloodied mirror. For the others, who hadn't seen anything until Yuri had called them in a panic, it was apparently painful to watch and not because I got beaten to the ground. I didn't watch it but I could hear the point at which I snapped. The quiet. The water. The laugh. It sounded horrible, even to me, and I'd lived it. And the memory of that feeling was worse.
It wasn't the video though, Tamaki said, that had forced Chairman Suou's hand, because it didn't exactly cast me in a good light. It hadn't been when he'd brought Tsubame and a wounded Akemi into his office, who maintained they were doing what was best for the school. It hadn't even been Tamaki himself.
It was Dr Yukimura.
Apparently she'd burst into the office without so much as a by-your-leave and started laying into the chairman about child endangerment and turning a blind eye towards student victimisation. Tamaki hadn't had to do anything, he said, except stay out of her way. She'd asked, yelled, what the point of her damn reports were if he wasn't going to do anything about any of her concerns. She'd looked at Tsubame and Akemi, glowering in a way that I imagined would make me proud, and shoved the tracking site in the chairman's face, citing multiple instances of stalking and threatening behaviour. When Tsubame started stammering about 'attempted murder', Dr Yukimura had whipped around to face her and hissed that she would stand up in front of the school governors and explain how that was simply a result of repeated goading and torturing a student suffering from severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to a widely-known and intensely traumatising experience, and that the school had allowed this torment to continue. She'd reduced the girls to tears but they didn't elicit any sympathy from her. The chairman had every report on her diagnoses from the moment I'd set foot in her office and if he expelled me now, Dr Yukimura swore up and down that she would help me petition the school board for wrongful expulsion. According to Tamaki, she was terrifying.
She was my new favourite.
But I wondered if she was right. Was that all it was? PTSD? I didn't know. It hadn't felt like PTSD. It had felt like… a beast. No, that wasn't right. It wasn't something living inside me had reared up. That would have been better. It had felt like… a mask had slipped. Like that was who I was. Like I'd finally relaxed into the real me.
I was terrified of the real me.
Someone poked me in the side of the head and I blinked, looking up.
"She broken again?" Hikaru smirked. I batted his hand away, resting my head on the glass. As it was, I was technically suspended for the rest of the week, although the reason on the books was for recovery instead of being under investigation, pending an action plan from the best doctor ever. Certain other people hadn't been so lucky. In the face of such damning evidence, and the testimony of multiple students who desperately wanted out of the blame, Tsubame and Akemi had been expelled effective immediately. I could see them below me, being escorted home. Akemi was wailing as they were escorted towards the gates but Tsubame… she walked with her head held high, like a martyr into the arena, her severely cut hair flying in the window. She looked up once at the window of the third music room as she passed. The pure, twisted loathing on her face could have struck me down, had I not already been in total shock and wrapped in a blanket on the window sill. I wondered if she could see me staring back, her pretty face marred by the snarl of hatred. Losing hadn't dampened her disgust for my very existence but clearly the increased distance between us had given her back her bravado. She wasn't that brave when my hands were inches from her throat. Remembering the cold inside me, I shivered. Kaoru noticed my sightline and turned my face away from the window. His twin leaned in, peering at whatever I'd been looking at, and made a gagging sound.
"Ha, good riddance," Hikaru said, sticking out his tongue. They both made an obscene gesture in her direction and I felt a smile tug at the sides of my mouth, hoping to hell she could see them. My brain still hadn't caught up with the fact I wasn't leaving. The twins exchanged a glance and started pulling faces at the window, each more ridiculous than the next, trying to one-up each other until I dissolved into laughter and they high-fived with a smirk. I stopped quickly. I didn't deserve to laugh. Haruhi called to Hikaru and he disappeared, summoned to the High Table.
"Better?" Kaoru grinned. I nodded, releasing the death grip I had on my knees, and swept my hair out of my face. It had dried in slightly crunchy strings. I didn't want to think about what must have been in that fountain water but wondered briefly if Akemi was going to get some sort of gross eye infection.
You know, from when I'd almost drowned her.
"I don't know what to do," I muttered, touching my feet to the ground and feeling the ache in my thighs.
"What do you mean?" I jumped. I hadn't realised I'd been speaking out loud. I looked at him, at his gorgeous amber eyes, and I knew. I couldn't tell him. Everything about him was light. His carefree attitude. His easy elegance. His smile when he looked at me. I didn't want to break it with my darkness. Not again.
So I lied.
"I don't have anybody gunning for me," I said, smiling ruefully. "It's… unusual." There was a sort of truth to it. I touched my knee, already turning a deep purple under the red. Kaoru stared at me for a second and then he started laughing. I grinned at him, shrugging off the blanket and stretching. I winced. He looked up at me, his laughter fading slightly.
"You alright?"
"Just sore," I assured him. He stood up and I couldn't help myself. I glanced sideways as his lithe body unfolded upwards and revelled in two facts. Firstly, that he was still there. And secondly? I watched him as he linked his hands behind his head lazily, my eyes sliding over him before I forced them away. Everything came so easily to him. I crossed my left arm across my chest to stretch it out and flinched at the stabbing pain. Rolling his eyes, Kaoru lifted me up and deposited me onto a chair, ignoring my grumbled protests.
"Just sore," he snorted, clearly disparaging my good word. Good? I snorted inwardly. What the hell did my word mean anymore? He collapsed into a chair next to Hikaru, arm lying easily over the other's shoulders. He looked so relaxed. I smiled at my hand as I stretched it out.
"I'll be fine," I mumbled. "I just need a break."
"That," Kyoya said from the other end of the table. "We could probably arrange."
"Club trip!" The twins cheered as Honey bounced onto his feet on the chair, clutching his bunny in excitement. I glanced at Haruhi.
"Don't you have classes?" I murmured. It was only Wednesday.
"They've suspended so many students over this investigation that they've basically just struck the rest of the week off," she replied under her breath. So my suspension meant absolutely freaking nothing then. I still wasn't sure how I was surviving this. I wasn't sure I should be.
"Are they allowed to do that?" I asked but realised it was a stupid question. Of course they were. It was Ouran and this was apparently their biggest scandal in a long time that didn't stem from the business or politics of the parents. I imagined the Japanese newspapers were going to have a field day with it – the esteemed Ouran Academy, the focus of an investigation following the latest in episodes of violent bullying. I fiddled with an abandoned pencil nervously. I hoped they left me out of it. I couldn't do that again.
"Where should we go, Tamaki?" Kyoya asked, opening his laptop.
"Hmm…" The king thought, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "Well, Haruhi has a passport now…" The club immediately chimed in with numerous ideas, many of which I hadn't heard of, a few which I had. My heart sank. I couldn't go away with them. I'd almost killed a person. Right in front of them. Again. And they were planning on taking me away with them? What the actual hell was wrong with these people? No, seriously. What was wrong with them? None of this made sense. I looked across at Kaoru as his brother leant on his head, both suggesting places with severely unpronounceable names.
Oh hell, I sighed inwardly, just go. They didn't know what I'd almost done. They didn't know how far I was going to go. And as long as it stayed that way…
I recognised a name and froze.
"I, uh, can't go," I blurted out and they all looked at me. "Abroad," I clarified quickly, "I can't go abroad.
"But you have to have a passport, Kat-chan!" Honey exclaimed. "Because you came here!"
"Yeah, it's a, uh, limited movement type deal. There's, uh, restrictions." I glanced at Kyoya, who looked slightly embarrassed.
"I forgot," he said simply and ducked the pencil I threw at him. Tamaki arched a perfect eyebrow.
"Are we missing something, Kyoya?" He asked in such a way that demanded an answer from his second-in-command. We looked at each other for a second and then he looked back at his laptop.
"Katya is only allowed-"
"I have a criminal record," I stated, cutting him off. "Which means I can't go waltzing around the world without a lengthy application process and there wasn't really time before." I slumped back in my chair and narrowed my eyes at the twins as they opened their mouths.
"No," I growled with a glare at the offending shadow king, who inclined his head. He knew. Which was probably why, I realised slowly, he'd been so desperate to stop me. He'd known. He knew what I was. He knew everything. We locked eyes for a moment, but he was completely unreadable. The club took a beat to digest this new information, staring at me like I'd grown horns. Or a tail.
Or, I supposed, a mysterious backstory.
"Well," Haruhi said, turned the page of her text book, "We could always do what we did last time." That seemed to disperse the sudden tension and Tamaki leapt to his feet.
"The beach! A wonderful idea, my love!" He exclaimed. Kaoru looked at me.
"You up for that?"
"I love the beach," I said, kicking my feet up on the table as my heart twisted in my chest. "But I've never been to one outside of England."
"Then it's decided!" Tamaki announced and they got down to planning, which didn't appear to involve much more that decided a time and a meeting place. So this was happening. It'd be fine. It'd be totally fine.
"Oi, oi," the twins said suddenly, leaning forward. "You're not going to trick us and bring customers again?" Kyoya shook his head.
"Chairman Suou was very clear on suspended school activities as well as classes. This will be a small vacation, nothing more. Except, well," he said and paused. I glanced up as he murmured something to Tamaki, who nodded slowly. I decided I didn't want to know. A holiday sounded amazing. I couldn't remember the last time I had one. I wasn't even sure I'd be able to enjoy one. I wasn't sure it was a good idea.
But I was the Queen of Bad Ideas today so fuck it.
"Kat-chan, Kat-chan, do you have a swimsuit?" Honey asked enthusiastically.
"Because if not-" Hikaru started before Haruhi smacked him in the face with her textbook.
"Yes, I do," I said quickly, and then paused. "Although… isn't it a bit late in the year for a trip the beach?"
"Nah," Kaoru said, picking his brother up off the floor. "Not here we're going."
"Kyoya's family own a beach to the south," Hikaru explained as he was hauled upright. "It's warmer down there." I wasn't sure why I was still surprised. I flexed my feet, wondering exactly if I did in fact own a swimming costume. I didn't have many clothes but some of my rarely used stuff I hadn't seen in a while. Actually, I thought, I hadn't seen quite a few things that I owned. I'd have to look but I had a feeling some of my stuff had been left behind in the Hayashi mansion when I'd first arrived.
Which meant somebody had probably set it on fire.
