"I know! He's the mysterious type!"
"You know, we never know what he's going to do next and we don't really know a lot about him!"
"Uh—I haven't even joined yet."
"Yet," Kyoya smirked at the word, so he was thinking about joining—not that Shion had much of a choice to begin with.
Shion sighed, "Sure why not. Though that's only if I don't find another club by the end of the week..." Damn, I shouldn't have said that. Now I know Kyoya will pull some strings to get me to join... Ugh...
"How did you learn how to act Shion?" Hani asked from atop of Mori's shoulders.
"Where did this come from?"
"Well... You just practically transformed into another person."
"And that's not something a third-rate actor can do."
"So you two thought I was some third-rate actor?" The twins shook their heads furiously. Shion plopped down onto the couch behind him with a sigh, "I started with some school plays as a kid, it interested me so while I moved a lot I joined troupes in various countries. I auditioned for movies and commercials, and after that, I eventually became the leader of an improv-slash-acting troupe."
"Improv?"
"Improvisation, when you act out a random scene in the moment, it's usually melodramatic and funny. You need to have a knack for thinking of things on the spot."
"I want to try this improv!" Tamaki had never acted before. Even during school festivals his classes never did any plays.
"Maybe you could do it as a club activity?" Shion offered as an idea.
"You would have to host it though." Kyoya came in with an unintentional pun. Shion almost snorted.
"Like I just said Ootori, I haven't joined yet." There were still a few days until the deadline.
• • • • • •
"Ugh..." Shion grumbled into the pile of leaves he was lying down face first in. It was chilly outside and he was taking refuge in a pile of leaves.
"What's up Shion?" Satsuki poked his head with a plastic sucker stick, curious to what he was dreading over.
"If I can't find a club to join I'll be joining the host club by default."
"Well it can't be too bad, can it?" Aaron overlooked Shion's little meltdown from the branch of a tree he was hanging upside down on. "They only accept the handsome ones. If they want you, you have to be pretty handsome."
"But hosting... Hosting! It's encouraging prostitution for men!" Shion threw some leaves up into the air in frustration.
Satsuki snorted, "As if that adorable little third-year Hanizuka is a prostitute."
A very bad image came to their minds. They snapped out of the trance and waved the imaginary thought cloud away.
"Oh God, the horror!" Aaron exasperated, then he stroked his chin thoughtfully, "But seriously... He would totally be the Uke."
"Then who would be the seme?" Satsuki added onto the ridiculous conversation. "Ah, that Takashi guy! They're always together!"
"Oh, what about those twins in the first year? The... Chin twins? Hata–no Hitachiin? Yeah, the Hitachiin twins." Aaron added more fuel to the raging fire.
"I know that they do this whole incest thing for their hosting thing. Though I don't know who would be the topper—Oh! There's also Suoh Tamaki and Ootori Kyoya in our class! They have this whole Papa Mama thing going on."
"Then who would be the topper there?"
"Definitely Kyoya."
"What is even with this whole conversation?! And Satsuki how do you even know all this?" Shion sighed and flopped back into his pile of leaves and put headphones in, "I'm not even going to listen anymore," he turned the volume up to tune them out.
"Wait, if Shion joins the club the pairings will be even!" Satsuki realized, "Because that new guy Fujioka Haruhi joined—that changes everything!"
"Then wouldn't Tamaki go to Haruhi since he dotes on him all the time?"
"Yes, then Shion and Kyoya would be together... That's the perfect fit!" Satsuki grinned, "Shion hates the guys' guts, but would soon warm up to him. Then since Shion's rather attractive Kyoya would take an interest in him. Then what about the seme-uke situation? Hmm... I think Kyoya... But then again we don't know Shion well enough to know what he would be like in that type of situation..."
"Oh–ho... That's if he isn't already interested in him. I've seen Kyoya looking over at us during the breaks between periods—or rather him," He pointed to the lump in the leaves. Aaron was rather observant—you needed to be if you want to take the best photo. He raised an eyebrow, "You have this all planned out now, don't you Satsuki?"
"Oh yes, I'm so going to make this happen!" She started laughing like a maniac.
"What's with all the cackling? I can hear you through my music!" Shion rolled out from the blanket of leaves and took off his headphones.
Aaron knew of Satsuki's plans since they basically thought of the whole thing on the spot, but he really had to ask, "Hey, you can join my club if you want."
"Hmmm... Photography's not really my thing, plus it will just give you more room to secretly-not-so-secretly where's the money you extorted from those innocent people."
Aron clicked his tongue, "I was hoping that you forgot about that—hey! I didn't extort anyone!"
"Yeah, yeah, suurre ya didn't." Satsuki drawled sarcastically. She smirked at Aaron's flustered state. She popped the sucker out of the inside of her cheek, "Hey, you guys want to come to my place after school?" She asked out of nowhere, the idea just suddenly came to mind and it was Thursday and no one had club activities so it was a good day for it.
"Sure." Aaron said immediately, "I have nothing to do."
"Huh, really? Then what about that math homework, is that nothing to do?" Shion teased.
"We could do it at my place. Well, that's if my family doesn't bother us."
Shion twirled a curl of hair in thought and frowned thoughtfully, "Hmmm, I guess I can, I'll just reschedule something." He was going to have his hairdresser straighten his hair for another performance. He checked the weather on his phone to see if the chance for rain had risen. Yup, an eighty percent chance of rain—he better not perform today, "Yeah, I can come."
"Great! We'll pick you up after school."
Soon the bell rang and they went back to class. Shion's two friends snickered to themselves and didn't bother to tell him about the number of leaves in his hair. When they entered the classroom Shion didn't register people staring at him—though he had a bad feeling from the way Satsuki and Aaron were acting, he was suspicious.
He looked up from organizing his bag and made eye contact with Kyoya. Shion waited, but Kyoya didn't look away, "... What are you looking at Ootori?"
Kyoya walked up to him and moved to grab the leaves.
Shion blinked, he felt him tugging at his hair. "Ow? What are you doing? I know my hair is curly and all, but that's nothing to bully me over."
Kyoya raised an eyebrow at Shion's assumption and pulled a bunch of leaves out of his hair. Shion blushed, no wonder why people were staring at him, "Thanks..."
Kyoya smirked as Shion pat his hair down and combed through it with his fingers, looking for any twigs from the comfy pile of leaves he was relaxing in earlier.
He'll get a good amount of customers by the looks of things...
The girls of the class were looking at Shion, smiling and giggling as he tried to calm his unruly hair.
• • • • • •
"Hmm... Well, I wasn't really expecting you to live in a traditional mansion." Shion looked out of the vehicle's window. He also didn't expect to be picked up in a limo.
"Yeah, my father is sort of a part of the Japanese mafia."
"Her father also has relations with American gangs." Aaron mused. "Isn't that right? He's one of the big shots."
They walked through the gates of her mansion to be greeted by a line of what Shion would call grunts from the Pokémon franchises villain organizations. Satsuki smiled back at the bowing rows of grunts.
"Welcome back Hijikata-sama!"
"Woah," Shion was taken aback from the loud greeting and mumbled, "It was never like this with my friends..."
Aaron overheard Shion's little afterthought and put a note in his head to bring it up later. It caught his interest and he wanted to know what it was about.
"Wanna play some video games before homework?"
"I'm in," Aaron grinned.
Shion sighed with a playful smirk, "Okay, but if you forget about it later I'm not letting you two copy mine."
The two started cheering right after he said okay, so they didn't hear about the no copying part.
"Haha! I won!" Satsuki cheered after a victory.
They were playing a fighting game. He was glad that Satsuki had his preferred controller since they somehow started betting along the way, and with them, Shion could beat them most of the time. This time he came in third place out of the three of them, and now it was time for him to pay the price.
"What should we have him do?" Suddenly they both grinned and snickered evilly, turning their heads to Shion.
"Oh, you said something about your friends earlier when we were greeted, what was that about?"
"Way to go Aaron," Satsuki whispered sarcastically. Instead of making him do something ridiculous, he asked a question instead. "We could have made him streak!" Aaron almost choked in laughter at the image in mind.
Shion, running around the compound in the nude.
Satsuki, in her ladylike glory, snorted.
Shion was unaware of the whispering since he was searching for lip balm in his bag. "Oh, back in America some of my friends were apart of some big gangs, they had big houses, but not like this..." Shion trailed off, choosing not to mention more than he should. "Hey, where's the bathroom?"
"Down the hall, turn right, then at the far end there's another hall, and the door will be on the right."
Committing the directions that Satsuki told him to memory, Shion directed himself to the lavatory. A couple of guards were stationed in the hallway, standing tall. They would probably be intimidating to anyone else. Shion made eye contact with them but didn't acknowledge them otherwise as he strode past. He could feel their eyes linger on him while his back was to them.
Reaching the door that Satsuki said was the bathroom and frowned. It did not look like a bathroom door, but hell, he didn't really have anything else to go off of.
Those guards probably wouldn't help me either. Oh well.
• • • • • •
"Oh crap!" Satsuki shouted out of nowhere. She realized something during her ransacking of Shion's bag in her search for his math homework. "I told him the wrong directions!"
"Where did he go then?" Aaron mused from his comfortable position munching on a sucker. He had chewed the thing right after receiving it and Satsuki cringed at the sound of her baby's getting crushed.
"He went to the yoga room!"
"So?"
"Look at the time!"
Aaron grinned around his sucker stick, entirely looking forward to what was coming next. "... Whelp, he's in for a surprise."
As if on cue, there was a yell from across the manor, "What the hell!" Then there came the telltale sound of stomping footsteps.
• • • • • •
Shion opened the door to be greeted by a wave of hot steam, and the smell of smoke mixed with sweat. Once that cleared, he stopped coughing to see a peculiar sight—one that he wouldn't wish for anybody to see. There was a man in the middle of the Buda-esk room all sweaty and almost stark naked—only his nether regions covered by some weird traditional underwear that was basically a rope thong for men—doing some weird yoga move that made him look like an inverted turtle.
"Hmm?" The man grunted gutturally and turned his head to face someone unknown to him. There were a few seconds of silence as the two of them looked at each other before Shion abruptly shut the door and turned around like nothing had happened.
Well... That just happened...
There was a dull, wet sounding thump and he took it as the man falling out of his intricate pose. He startled and his heart jumped when the door slammed open behind him just as he was leaving. The man pointed at a guard, "You! Get him!"
The guard, confused out of his mind to why his boss was almost nude, set out to his orders and chased after Shion as he was told.
"What the hell!" Shion flew through the hallways until he passed the room his friends were in. The door slid open and they peeked out to see Shion run past and jump out into the courtyard.
Aaron whistled, "I didn't know he could run that fast."
"Quick! Follow him, lest we lose that poor servant!"
Aaron saluted briefly, "Agreed, my liege!" They ran after him and jumped over a few unfortunate guards who were laying on the ground in pain.
Shion stumbled to a stop by the outside wall, leaning heavily on it and panting. "What... Is wrong... with this... household!" Shion huffed out, trying to recover. He was surrounded by a few guards while more slowly gathered around him. He had kicked up quite the commotion after sprinting through the mansion after one particularly menacing guard came in and joined the first guard after he tripped him.
One of the guards came closer, cracking his knuckles, "Come with me, or I'll have to hurt ya."
Shion shook his head, "No way. That guy is going to maim me if he gets me. Did you see his face? He was fucking livid!"
The guard tried to grab Shion, but he was prepared and ducked under it, narrowly avoiding the carbon copy of a guards grasp. Under his guard, Shion propelled himself upwards with a solid punch to the jaw and the man was knocked out like a light.
Shion looked around after the guard collapsed to the ground. He was completely outnumbered, and he knew that he would not stand a chance against so many.
Well... I better... Run!
Once again he bolted, but this time he ran towards a wall near a large tree, kicked off it and grabbed a branch too high off the ground for them to reach. A guard almost grabbed his ankle before he used his face as a footstool.
Satsuki and Aaron sat there and watched the scene wishing they had popcorn. Aaron had been videotaping the whole ordeal so he had some great material that he wouldn't know what to do with—but hey, it was hilarious. He had the chance and he took it.
Now they were currently watching Shion in the tree poking the guards away with a stick he broke off from the tree. He would have tried to get on top of the wall to flee, but his legs were not trustworthy at the moment due to his swollen ankle that he got somewhere along the way.
He is just like a cat right now.
"Get down!"
"No, you'll just capture me!" Shion retorted. "If you want me to come down, bring that yoga guy here and we can talk about it!" Shion's eye closed reflexively when a raindrop got into his eye, soon after that it started raining lightly.
At that Satsuki snorted. He must mean my father. Ooh boy, he'll love this later after he's done being angry.
"Atchoo!" Shion sneezed and nearly fell out of the tree when he put weight on his bad ankle. He managed to stay on by swinging upside down, nearly having a heart attack when his vision whirred with the momentum of him falling. One of the guards almost caught his hand but he grabbed on the branch and held on to it as if it was his lifeline. He tried to fix his glasses only have them fall off completely.
"Aahhh fuck, now I can't see!" Shion complained. He tucked the hair covering his other eye behind his ear to be able to see better, but to be honest it didn't really help that much. He heard a crack, and he whipped his head to where the sound came from, squinting to try and see, "Don't tell me you stepped on my glasses!" He glared at the unsuspecting guard right below him.
"Uh—"
If Shion had his glasses, he would have been able to see the poor guy pale a few shades.
Aaron zoomed the focus of the camera in on Shion's face. Wow, he's scary when pissed off. Noted.
"What's with all the commotion?!" A thundering voice boomed in the yard.
The guards whirled around and bowed, "Boss! This boy was running around the compound and knocked some of our guards out!"
"That's because you guys were chasing me!" Shion defended himself rather childishly. "Of course I would run! That is a normal reaction when someone puts a hit on you!"
"Come down."
Shion, despite his ridiculous position, was rather intimidating, the man thought.
"Will your cronies chase after me?"
The man looked to his guards with a clinical eye, some were on the ground, one knocked out by an uppercut while others crouched on the ground, groaning in pain after being rather cruelly hit in the balls. "No, they will not."
Shion started to get out of his death grip on the tree. "Alright, that's good enough for me–Grahh!" He grunted as his shirt got caught on a branch and ripped as he ungracefully fell to the ground with a thump.
Shion groaned, "Fuuuuuck."
• • • • • •
"So you're a friend of Satsuki's."
"Yes, sir..." Shion idly fiddled with the spoon for his tea.
"Care to explain what happened?"
Shion sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose where his glasses were supposed to be. He honestly didn't give a pile of shit if they saw his heterochromia at the moment. "Well, it first started when Satsuki here gave me the wrong directions to the bathroom," he gave her a pointed look. "After you sent that first goon after me, I ran. One particularly menacing guy joined in and eventually, there was a hoard of people after me. I knew my odds were minimal, and I ended up cornered, so I climbed the tree for high ground. That's when you came in." He sniffed, the feeling of a runny nose getting to him. "Oh—one of the guards broke my glasses by the way."
The man's hardened face softened and he let out a boisterous laugh. "I like you kid, you've got spunk!"
Shion blinked and the man's happy face went dead serious. "But if you tell anyone about what you saw..." he didn't finish, Shion knew that there was an underlying threat that he didn't want him to go through with. He's used the method a few times himself. It's good with a dramatic pause beforehand.
The man was a part of the Yakuza—he could end him for all he cared. Dramatic effect be damned, the man's reputation was enough to invoke fear in most people.
"I'll compensate for your glasses. My name's Hijikata Fugaku."
"Hakuba Shion."
"Take care of my daughter, you have my trust."
Shion almost took a double-take with his tea and Satsuki started choking on hers. Aaron broke out into laughed and patted her back. Satsuki and Shion both shared an incredulous, "What!"
"Isn't that what you're here for?"
"No, she just wanted me to help her with homework!" He paused, "Speaking of which... You two still have to do it."
"Nope! All done!" Satsuki smiled.
Her smile was too sweet to be trustworthy. "You copied mine didn't you...?" The smile was still there, but she added a cute head tilt in. That certainly just answered his question.
"Well... I'll just have to make you run through every step on how you did it—won't I?"
Satsuki and Aaron paled. When they hastily wrote down the answers, they had no idea what actually happened to get the answer.
We're in for a long evening...
• • • • • •
By the time Shion was done with them, Satsuki and Aaron were slouched over the kotatsu table mumbling incoherent sentences. He adjusted the new glasses he got from Fugaku. Somehow they had gotten the exact same pair that he had before. Sure he had a spare pair and contacts, but the man offered so he took it up. He was cheap that way.
He reached into his bag to check his phone.
"...hmm? Who's this?" In his caller's list, it said Missed Call Unknown Name, but the number was there. He called it, curiosity overwhelming him.
Ring, ring... Click!
"Hello, Ootori Kyoya speaking."
"Kyoya? Oh, so you're the one who called." How the hell did he even get my cell number?
"Yes... I called to ask why you weren't at the club today."
"I haven't officially joined yet."
"Though since you haven't joined a club yet, you're going to be in the host club–"
"Yes, yes, I know Ootori. Just let me have some freedom for God's sake. I went to a friend's house. Goodbye, momma," He hung up after mocking the nickname that Tamaki had for Kyoya.
"Sheesh, what is he, it's not like he's my mother."
Shion briefly felt lightheaded and was overcome with a wave of dizziness. It was a familiar sensation. "Oh," he stumbled to find a wall as he felt his temperature spike, and his ears started ringing. His perception slowed down as his vision went splotchy and the blood rushed down to his legs. "I'm gonna faint," his words slurred together and he slumped down while he tried to keep his eyes open.
Damn it. It's because of… everything that's happened earlier...
"Oi, what's wrong? Shion!?"
"Someone... elevate my legs..." and he succumbed to the darkness.
• • • • • •
Hoi fellow readers! Here's the latest chapter. I hope it's funny and not too explicit. XD
Well I'll see you in the next chapter. Bu-bye!