AHHHHH!

That's always a promising sign, right?

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Disclaimer: I do not own the original host club!


GaijinPot Complex in Bunkyo-ku

Exact Location: Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan

Apartment Room 204

15:02


I woke up this morning to huge surprise and a fresh pang of homesickness. It had snowed.

Now, the weather forecast has been mentioning the rapidly cooling temperatures and we are growing steadily closer to the end of October, but still. Wow, how long have I been here?

I opened my window blinds and was greeted by at least an inch of the white stuff. I know a lot of people hate snow, but I personally love it. When I was a young girl, Connor would always wake me up whenever it snowed and we'd run out to the living room. My mom would already be sitting on the couch with her coffee, the news station playing quietly on the television with school closings running along the bottom of the screen. We'd sit on the floor in front of her, as close to the television as she'd allow us, waiting for our school name to be announced so we could run out to play in the backyard.

Ahem. Sorry, didn't mean to get all sappy there.

But anyways, before I headed out to the train station, I finished up my research on the Grand Tonnerre company last night. I finally decrypted the last firewall and I spent close to fifteen hours pouring over the files stored in there. From the looks of things, Kyoya fucked them over more than he thought. Good for him.

I'll keep my summary short since I'm sure our research teams back on base have reached the same conclusion. Grand Tonnerre is a finance and business management company that got their starting funds from descending from a royal family. But what's kept them in business for the past thirty or so years is by digging their fingers into the workings of large, successful businesses and slowly taking more and more control of their board and management teams until their CEO's have no choice but to give Grand Tonnerre ownership.

They're based in France but were slowly working their way through other countries, such as Germany, Italy, Austria, and Japan over the last five years. They were starting to become an overbearing cloud of doom for business owners. If they got a foothold in your business? It was almost inevitable what their next step was. And there is a ridiculous amount of money that goes into purchasing companies. They had legal teams in every country they worked in, not to mention employees whose sole tasks were to work their way up the corporate ladders in various companies. And at the end of the cycle Grand Tonnerre typically got the CEO to sign the titles over by promising a cushie compensation for their families.

The same would've been said about the Ootori Group if Kyoya hadn't stepped in.

And it gets better! Once the story of a high school student outwitting Grand Tonnerre leaked all over the world, they lost a huge amount of respect. Many of their future "projects" fell through and a decent portion of their employees, including all of those lawyers, jumped ship! After that, it was lawsuit after lawsuit as they tried to continue their practice, and they've been forced to sell most of the companies they bought back to the original owners.

And, like a cherry on top, the only heir lost her fiancé in the mix… one Tamaki Suoh.

Which is why I'm currently running around my apartment like a chicken with it's head cut off trying to get my stuff together and ambush Haruhi at the train station. I guess she's more of an asset than we first thought.


"Haruhi!"

Haruhi jumped a little at the sound of her name. Spotting Livia waving at her through the crowd, she smiled and waved back. Livia reached her side right as their train arrived at the station.

"Hey, Livia-senpai. You seem oddly cheerful this morning. What's up?"

Livia shrugged her shoulders. "I dunno. I woke up early today and got to eat breakfast. There's no host club to bug us. I'm not tired so I probably won't fall asleep in my classes. The possibilities are endless today."

Haruhi snorted with laughter before grabbing onto a nearby pole as the train began moving. Livia grabbed one of the overhanging hand rails and waited for the other girl to calm down. She had fifteen minutes to get through this conversation. There were a few things she wanted to learn before they gained six eavesdroppers who didn't understand personal space.

"Actually, there is something I want to ask you about Haruhi."

"Yeah? What's up?

"Um, this may be a bit awkward… but I was talking with a friend from home last night and I mentioned Tamaki's name. Apparently she knew about him because he was to be engaged?"

Instantly Haruhi's body stiffened, so Livia forced her body to cringe.

"I'm sorry. Was that rude of me? You know what? Forget I said anything. It's none of my business anyways."

"No, it's fine. It's just… that girl brings out a lot of bad memories. She was intolerable."

Livia tilted her head to the other side. "If you don't mind, do tell?"


*Low whistle*

Damn. That Eclair Tonnerre sure sounds like a character. I knew that there are plenty of entitled and snobbish rich kids in this world, but damn. That's just ice cold. I mean, splitting up the Host Club just because she could make Tamaki do whatever she wanted? Trying to take him to France? I already said this, but damn.

On the other hand, she doesn't seem like someone who would order a hit on the boy responsible. I mean, she let Tamaki leave her willingly. Perhaps there's a bit of decency in her? Or not, there's still a possibility. I dunno. Something's telling me it's not her. She's still a teenager. That's a little young to be making contracts with assassins in my opinion.

Make no mistake, that doesn't rule her out as a suspect. I'm not stupid. However, I'm not going to be focusing on her at the moment, because that same thing in my gut that tells me it's not her is whispering that she probably learned that cold, controlling, take-no-prisoners attitude from someone. And I bet my fictitious pink lamborghini that she might address that someone as 'Father'.

Now, I need to go. The twins ambushed Haruhi and I outside the school with snowballs when we got here. I just barely managed to shake them off by slipping into the bathroom. I should probably go join them before Kyoya starts wondering where I went off to.


By the time Livia got back outside where she'd left Haruhi to fend for herself, the Host Club had gotten into a full-fledged snowball war.

It was Haruhi and Tamaki vs. Hikaru and Kaoru vs. Mori and Honey. Kyoya was standing to the side with a camera, but not participating himself. Tightening her scarf around her neck, Livia slowly waded through the snow in her black boots before stopping about two feet away from Kyoya. He noticed her immediately.

"Good morning, Livia. How was your commute?"

"Fine." She sighed, her breath misting out in front of her. As she watched Tamaki cheer as he successfully hit Mori square in the back, only to be caught under an avalanche of snow from the twins, a snowflake drifted past her nose.

Tilting her head back, Livia stared straight up at the clouds. It had started to snow again. For a moment, she just took it in. Snow always made her feel like a little kid again. It was sad sometimes, but mostly they were just good memories.

Livia smiled softly at the various grey shades of the clouds that blanketed the sky overhead and just let the snowflakes flutter past her face. It felt peaceful, and for a moment Livia was alone in the moment. Yes, it was predicted that the snow would be completely melted away by the evening, but for now it was here and Livia couldn't help but smile.

"What is it?"

Livia quickly looked back down, finding that Kyoya had moved closer and was staring up at the clouds, just as she had been. The snowflakes, which were falling a little heavier now, were slowly collecting on his glasses. When she didn't answer right away, he turned his head to face her and she looked away.

"Nothing. I just have a lot of good memories with snow."

"I see."

Livia refused to look at him, instead pulling her coat a little closer to her body. "So, who's winning?"

"I don't think there is a winner. They're all going to be completely soaked by the time they get to class."

Livia hummed and let her gaze roam the rest of the courtyard. "Are you sure there are no winners?"

Kyoya once again followed her line of sight, his eyes widening just a tad when he noticed the multiple snowball fights that were breaking out among his fellow students. There were a few boys who were just shoving each other into snow covered bushes and girls who were making snow angels. One girl nailed her boyfriend in the face with some snow, only to be tackled by his younger siblings who had run across campus from the elementary school to join in.

A nudge and head nod from Livia moved Kyoya's attention back to the Host Club where Tamaki had paused briefly to watch the chaos breaking out among his fellow students. His usual bright grin wasn't present, instead replaced by a smaller, more sentimental one. Kyoya allowed a miniscule smile on his own face as Haruhi stuffed a decent amount of snow down the blond's shirt and his content expression was replaced with disbelief and shock and a grimace that somehow managed to convey, 'COLD COLD COLD' just by itself.

"And you say they're not your friends."

Kyoya turned back to Livia, mouth already parted probably to rebuke her statement. But before he could speak, something struck Livia on the left cheek.

For a moment, Livia stared at Kyoya as the remains of the snowball melted and dripped off her face. She turned to face the battlefield. All six players were frozen, Hikaru still bent forward with his left hand stretched out towards Livia. For a moment, he looked smug. Then it changed to complete and total terror when the girl dropped her school bag and launched herself at the battle, scooping up a ball of snow and chucking it at him.

The half-formed snowball hit him square in the face and knocked him backwards into a snowdrift.

Immediately, the group dissolved into a free-for-all.

Livia dodged every snowball, the world becoming clear as her training kicked in. Scoop. Pack. Dodge. Throw. Dodge. Repeat. She couldn't have hidden her smile even if she tried. Time stopped meaning anything as she lost herself in the game. She hit the others at least three times each. At some point, she wasn't sure when, but Hikaru and Kaoru had also somehow gotten Kyoya into the game by nailing him in the chest as he continued taking photographs.

And instead of getting mad, he just dropped his camera on top of his school bag and joined the chaos.

Another two minutes into the madness Livia was laughing out loud, looking over her shoulder.

"Alf…"

She stopped. She had been about to say Alfred. Because the last time she'd had a snowball fight, she and Connor had been in the U.K. with Alfred and Sean. It had been her and Alfred against the other two. That had been years ago. It was the first time Connor had laughed since he became a trainee.

Unfortunately, as Livia reminisced, she forgot that she was in the middle of a snowball war herself.

"Watch out!" A hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her out of the way of an onslaught of snowballs. Her next step sent her foot on another shoe and Livia squeaked as went down, taking Kyoya with her.

"Oof!"

"Ow!"

Livia pushed herself up onto her elbows immediately and her face flushed. She was on top of Kyoya, her legs straddling his waist and her hands pressed against his chest. For a few seconds they just stared at each other, red faces darkening the longer they laid there.

She quickly scrambled off him, falling sideways into the thick snow before managing to stand. Kyoya sat up, the two of them avoiding eye contact. Thankfully, none of the others seemed to have noticed the slip, too busy with their continuing war.

Clearing her throat, Livia did her best to dust the snow off her legs. "Um… I should go in and dry off. I don't want wet clothes in class."

She turned around just as Kyoya called out, "Wait!"

He was back on his feet as well, and for a moment they just stared at each other. Kyoya rolled his shoulders back as he seemed to search for the right words. "Would you mind… if I accompanied you home tomorrow evening to work on our egg project?"

Livia could've sworn his words were actually creating a noose around her neck.

"Sure. See you in class!"

And with that, she grabbed her school bag and ran inside, not looking back once.


Fuck!

End log!


Okay, so everyone is probably wondering when the truth is going to come out and how Kyoya's going to react, and there are some really interesting ideas coming in... so I'm going to let you know it's all gonna spill really soon! Get ready!

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See you next chapter!