The Day Before The Ball

As the day of the Christmas Saturnalia neared, what had once seemed like a long shot at best began to come together into a completely workable whole. The main ballroom had closed its doors and a transformation had begun inside courtesy of the black magic club's people—like a caterpillar in its cocoon growing into a frightening and magnificent butterfly. Honey made calls to his family's trusted caterers, the twins to their grandmother's friends in the fashion industry, and Kyouya to his hundred-man strong personal police force. Renge and Kanazuki had done well as signboard girls for their respective clubs, using the boys' hosting time as an opportunity to promote its new honorary members within the black magic club. Nekozawa and his cohorts' profiles on the host club website were popular among their regular customers, and already each one had a burgeoning fan club.

There was Minagi, the elegant, fair-haired third-year boy with a poetic obsession with death; Torihara, a second-year whose profile claimed he had supernatural abilities to communicate with animals; the mischievous first-year Fukazaki who combined the Hitachiin brothers' unpredictability with Honey's age-defying cuteness; and last but certainly not least as far as the other half of the student body was concerned, Kanazuki Reiko, the voodoo princess with the Bette Davis eyes whose mere presence on the site had assured a more sizeable turnout of male students than previous host club affairs.

Which was, of course, not to mention the black prince of the blackest of black clubs himself, frontman of this iniquitous quintet Nekozawa Umehito, about whom rumor circled of a damned, exotic lineage that made him shun the light, bringing him (just as Renge had predicted) a legion of sympathetic fangirls swooning with a reverential, almost longingly fearful fascination. Like moths to flames their gazes were drawn during host club activities to that ominous door cloaked in shadow at the end of the room, wooed by that sorrowful stare that looked out at them from the website and through their computer screens, proclaiming incessantly the nefarious cuteness of the Beelzenev merchandise; and should the good King of Cats himself appear and singe their tender wings with a curse, that with which they received their damnation would have been the joy of martyrs who have their eyes on heaven singing "Ia, ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

Yes, without a doubt Nekozawa's allure had been solidly secured by that covert and unholy marriage of Ohtori connections and Houshakuji enthusiasm, with repressed teenage hormones thrown in as a mistress on the side.

So too—and not to be shown up by their own president—in their character development sessions with Renge after the clubs' respective meetings, the black magic club boys traded their initial reluctance for an earnest effort. But even that was not always enough for Renge.

"No, no, no. Wrong, it's all wrong. It's lukewarm, that's what it is!" she was currently lambasting Fukazaki after he innocently tried one of his lines on her. "I'm not feeling your mischievousness. You need to speak cool, uncouth-like. R-r-roll your 'r's like a gangster, just like I'm doing r-r-right now! Add 'nya' to the end of ever-r-rything you say!"

She sounded just like a yakuza boss and Fukazaki straightened up. "Yes, ma'am!"

"Yes, ma'am what?"

"Yes, ma'am-nya!"

"That's more like it. And you." She turned to Minagi. "Your diction is not up to par. Have you been gargling with marbles like I told you?"

"Erm, I tried," said the third-year, "but . . ."

"Then let's hear something."

Shooting them both a nervous glance, he cleared his throat and started reading in a dreamy voice out of a well-worn notebook, "When I see your pale skin I am reminded of the bleached bones lying in the cesspools of Gehenna. Dance with me a little longer so that I might for a short while forget how fleeting this body is for the material world—"

"Stop right there! Oh boy, oh boy. Must it always come down to me?" Renge asked herself as she shook her head. "First of all, get rid of the word 'cesspool.' No girl wants to hear that in the same sentence as her looks. Try a bed of violets instead."

"Why would there be bleached bones in a bed of violets—"

"Just work with me, here. It's poetic juxtaposition. You need poetic juxtaposition or else you'll just freak people out. Honestly, don't any of you bunch listen to Gackt? And I'd add 'under the pale moonlight' and change 'pale skin' to 'fair' or 'porcelain white'—makes one's pallor sound more healthy."

"I see what you mean!" he said, scribbling down everything she said.

"And for Baal's sake, man, annunciate! You're supposed to be my most charming creation, polite to a fault. How are you going to make anyone tremble with ungodly delight if they can't understand half of what you're saying? Did you bring your marbles?"

"They're right here, but—"

She put her hands on her hips and glared. "And where are you going to put them?"

Seeing as so far no snakes had come out of her head and everyone was in agreement that they wanted to keep it that way, Minagi quickly gobbled the marbles up. "The way your skin glows like porcelain under this pale moonlight . . ." he tried to say around the marbles, but it sounded more like, "Uh uayoo thin gwozrye borshlan—"

"I can't take it anymore!" Torihara wailed. He dragged himself to the love seat where Kanazuki was sitting and sipping a cup of Hescafe instant coffee with Tamaki, cringing as a large black rat climbed in and out from under the collar of his uniform blazer. "Reason with her, please, Kanazuki, as one woman to another! She's killing us here!"

"You're the one complaining," Renge snapped back, her patience suddenly showing its wear, "when it's my vision you three are ruining? There's only one more afternoon of practice before your debuts as hosts at the ball, and so far your efforts have not been exactly what I'd call encouraging. If things keep up this way, half our guests are going to run out in terror before the first dance is even over, if they don't collapse from boredom and embarrassment first."

But Tamaki was calm as he said over his shoulder, "Relax, Renge. It won't be nearly as bad as that."

"What makes you so confident?" Kaoru looked up at him, one earbud of a shared iPod in his ear. "You have an edge we don't?"

"No edge," Tamaki said. "Just faith, is all."

"Faith?"

"You might say in Nekozawa-sempai's devotion. Or just in the simple fact that nothing that bears our club's name has ever been known to be a complete failure."

"Famous last words," Hikaru murmured as he glanced up from the iPod screen. "But speaking of the devil, where the hell is Nekozawa? It doesn't seem like him to just abandon his club in their time of need."

Now that he mentioned it, it was a little strange that the one in question was missing from what was supposed to be his club's valuable preparation time. If he allowed himself to think about it long enough, the same thought occurred to Tamaki about Haruhi, who seemed to have slipped out at some indeterminate point in time. Not that it particularly bothered him, however; Mori and Honey had done the same after the club meeting, claiming other responsibilities.

"If I know anything about him," Tamaki said with a wave, "it's that even if you don't see it, Nekozawa is working just as hard to make tomorrow night a success as anyone else. He wants to ensure his club's survival, and that is something I can relate to. I'd feel exactly the same way if it were my club's future on the line."

"You do realize that it very well may be, don't you?" Kyouya asked, but the other pretended not to hear.

"Tamaki-sempai," Kanazuki said sweetly, as she leaned a hair closer to him. "There's something I have to ask you about in his stead. You might say it's a request, but I know President Nekozawa could never humble himself enough to ask you personally—"

"Anything, milady," Tamaki turned up the charm, gently raising her chin with the side of his index finger so that their eyes might meet. "Just say the word and your wish is my command."

"We have to discuss the matter of the bean ballot."

That low, blunt voice, very much not belonging to Kanazuki Reiko or any of her fairer sex, even should they be from the wrestling team of the Lobelia school for girls, made Tamaki bristle. "Bean . . . ballot," he echoed, deflated.

"Right," said one of the three boys who were leaning uncomfortably close in on the host king's tender moment with their clubmate. "It's something of a tradition with us."

"To decide who will be crowned the mock king, of course."

Like that was something Tamaki should have known already.

—o—

It was down the hall in the third science lab that Haruhi found Nekozawa sitting in the dark—the very room where, some months previous, they had first tried to help him overcome his photophobia so that he could be with his baby sister. It was after four in the afternoon, and the overcast winter sky was already beginning to darken, so he had no qualms about leaning by the window sans cloak and wig.

He turned toward the door when he heard it creak open so she could slip through. "Oh, Fujioka."

"Nekozawa-sempai . . . is it alright if I come in?"

"Please do," he said cordially enough, a smile blooming on his lips. His whole presence changed and became more approachable when he smiled genuinely like that, Haruhi noticed, without any of the creepiness of his club persona. In that way, too, he reminded her a lot of Tamaki. Even now, it felt like there was something being covered up behind that smile, something she couldn't quite place . . .

"I take it everyone must still be working hard to please Renge."

"Uh, yeah." Haruhi resisted the strong urge to tell the truth. "I guess so. I think they're probably wondering where you went, though."

"I just needed somewhere quiet to collect my thoughts for a moment or two," Nekozawa told her, as though he felt the need to beg her pardon.

"I know how that is."

They fell into silence for a long awkward moment, just staring out the window, so that it startled Haruhi a little when he said suddenly, in a much graver tone of voice: "Fujioka-kun . . . er, Haruhi, if I may, can I ask you something in confidence?"

"Sure."

"Don't you ever find it tiresome? This act of yours, I mean. Pretending to be something you're not."

She shot him a strange look but a gentle smile as she said, "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, Sempai."

"Well, pretending to be a boy, for one. And keeping your female classmates entertained believing you're a boy." It did not come as any surprise that Nekozawa knew about the host club's ruse after spending that weekend at his family's beach estate, when he had seen her in the dress her father had "accidentally" packed for her; but his admission must have taken her aback somewhat, because when he saw the look on her face, he quickly backpedaled: "I mean, there's nothing wrong with it if you're into that sort of thing, and I don't mean to imply you're not actually sincere in your conversations but . . . Well, doesn't it ever bother you that the flattering things you have to say might not be coming from the heart?"

When he had a moment to think about what he had said, he opened his mouth to clarify again, but Haruhi stopped him by speaking up quickly.

"Actually," she said, "I don't really have that feeling anymore. I did at first, but then I realized that what I was saying really did come from the heart. It's just that I said it in such a vague way that the girls in my class wouldn't suspect I was anything other than what they saw on the outside. So I wasn't actually being dishonest with my words, and I wasn't trying that hard to pass as a guy either. I just . . . let the chips fall where they may."

"All right. But given that, how do you find the gumption to carry on a conversation with them, knowing what pretext they're coming to you with?"

"What's this about, Sempai?"

Nekozawa let out a sigh and closed his eyes before answering her. "I just don't know if I have what it takes to be a host," he admitted. "I don't think I can flatter girls and keep them entertained like Suou can. I can hardly make my little sister happy, let alone someone who's nearly a complete stranger. My vocabulary is completely different from his, I can't come up with magnificent things to say on the fly, let alone talk about the sorts of things girls are interested in if Kirimi's comics are any even remote indication of what they want. I'm not that graceful, or witty—"

"I think you're pretty witty, Sempai."

Nekozawa stared at her with eyes wide. "You do? You're just saying that."

"No, I'm not." Haruhi shook her head. "Whenever you pop in on our club meetings and tease Tamaki you always have something funny to say. It's almost like you two have a routine rehearsed the way it comes out."

For a moment it looked as though Nekozawa believed her; but his smile fell almost as soon as it had begun to form. "But you don't understand. Those times I have my cloak and Beelzenev with me. They are what make me feel invincible. Why, just the thought of being with so many people in one space—being the host of so many people, the one they're going to turn to to keep them entertained, and blame when things don't go right—the pressure of it is just too much to handle.

"I'm telling you honestly, Haruhi," he said to her eyes, "I don't know if I can do this."

"Do you think any of us are certain that we can do it?"

"Well, Suou always looks so confident in his element. And girls—they're more intuitive than us. Like how they say animals can sense your fear. They're going to see how uncomfortable I am with the whole thing and the evening will be ruined."

Maybe the first place to start would be a lesson in tact, like not equating girls with a pack of dogs, Haruhi thought in passing; but this wasn't the place to make a sarcastic observation like that. Not while Nekozawa's self-confidence was already suffering.

"Did it ever occur to you," she said instead, "that maybe Tamaki is just acting as well?"

Nekozawa just stared at her. She let out a small sigh.

"Maybe you don't realize it, but you're like a completely different person yourself when you're the black magic club president. Suave and mysterious with a dark sense of humor—that's a good half of what everyone is coming to see. This is going to be your party, and you better not forget it. You will be in your element. If you're nervous about being a host, then forget it! Just concentrate on being what you already know how to be: President Nekozawa Umehito, master of the dark arts. Everything you need to make tomorrow night a success is already there inside you."

"And Renge?"

Of course, Haruhi thought. There were benefits to having someone as devoted to the club as she was, but her passion could be a double-edged sword at times. Like now. Haruhi smiled. "She really does mean well, but sometimes you just have to humor her and not take everything she says so seriously."

"I see. . . ."

"What really matters is that you show everyone how much your club means to you, right? When they see that, of course they'll give you and your club some serious thought. But one thing is for sure: if the host of the party can't enjoy it, no one else can."

The smile slowly returned to Nekozawa's lips as he tucked a lock of fine, blond hair behind his ear and digested her words. "You know," he said when he looked back up at her, "you're absolutely right. I'd almost forgotten that the reason I was doing all this in the first place was because I don't want to lose this club without a fight. And maybe that's selfish of me—"

"It's as good a reason as any," Haruhi said brightly, encouraged and relieved by his words. "And I know Tamaki would agree."

Nekozawa grimaced. "Well, I guess if he is the president of the most popular club in the school he must be onto something."

"Then you feel like you might be able to pull this off?"

"I'm still terrified, but I'm going to go through with it anyway. As they say, nothing can ever happen if you don't swing the bat, right?" And so saying, he bent his head and tugged on his wig, tucking his blond hair up underneath and smoothing the black locks down into place.

Haruhi grinned as she reached up to untangle a patch of hair sticking up that his hands had missed.

"Come on," she said. "Let's get back before your club starts thinking you jumped ship."

Nekozawa, who had gone still with surprise under that pat on the head, could only nod and follow wordlessly.

—o—

"Mock king," Tamaki was saying slowly in the third music room, turning the words over in his mouth as though they were from some alien language. Suddenly, he grinned cockily and ran a hand through his hair. "Why in the world would you want to elect a mock king when you already have me?"

"Well, isn't that the whole point?" said Fukazaki. "During Twelfth Night at the time of the winter solstice, all the rules are turned upside down and thrown out the window, and society succumbs temporarily to the forces of chaos and anarchy. Masters serve their slaves, women dress up as men and men as women, and the poor eat like the richest bastards in the land!" At each point he made, Tamaki reeled as though it were a needle being driven into some distant voodoo doll of pleasure, so that when one of the other boys said, "That's why there has to be a false king to rule over everything, a Lord of Disrule," he looked positively in the throws of ecstasy.

"How right you are!" Tamaki exclaimed. "If there's one thing everyone can agree on about anarchism it's its impeccable organization. A false king is a splendid idea."

"You do realize that means you can't be it," the twins told him.

But that didn't seem to faze their king. "It's like a raffle that everyone in attendance can get in on—"

"They only need a bean!" Minagi supplied helpfully.

"And even the nerdiest boy in school with the lowest social prospects can be king for an evening—"

"We're back," Haruhi announced appropriately enough just then as she and Nekozawa walked through the door.

Tamaki's eyes grew bigger and bigger. "Haruhi, what a coincidence! We were just talking about—"

A sharp slap on the back of the head with Kyouya's notebook cut him off. "Oops, butterfingers," said the host club vice president rather unapologetically.

"You all better not have had too much fun without us," Nekozawa said, his devilish grin returning.

As Renge and the rest of the black magic club predictably turned to him and Haruhi and demanded to know what they had been up to (and couldn't their club president stand up to Renge, because this torture really wasn't necessary and surely constituted a breach of the Geneva Convention), the matter of the bean ballot was quickly forgotten.

But the twins, with gothic rock pounding in their ears, turned knowingly to one another. "Were you listening to that business about a mock king?" Kaoru asked his brother.

"I sure was," said Hikaru. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"No. What are you thinking?" Kyouya said, sliding sideways into their conversation, pen at the ready.

"Nothing. Never mind," the twins chimed with grins even more devilish than Nekozawa's that said that, whatever it was, "nothing" it most definitely was not.

Three Hours To The Opening Of The Doors

"Where is he?" Tamaki huffed and puffed as he paced back and forth in front of the doors to the main ballroom the next afternoon, checking his watch every couple seconds. "This is extremely irresponsible. Doesn't he know we have a schedule to stick to?"

Just when Haruhi started to worry that maybe Nekozawa's cold feet were not so easily dealt with, the door cracked open and Nekozawa's face appeared as always through the darkness. "Good. . . . So, you're all here," he noted in a silky voice as he looked around at the eight members of the host club, half of them with dry cleaning bags in hand.

Tamaki started—for only a second. "Of course. We came to get ready for the party, and the caterers need a place to set up."

He gestured to the team in white waiting behind Honey, carts at the ready like racers at the starting line.

"Well, it's about time."

"I assume the ballroom is all set to welcome our guests?"

Perhaps Tamaki didn't expect the answer he got, because Nekozawa just chuckled ominously at that. "Of course it is. We were just waiting for you. I think you'll find the place much exceeds your expectations. But enough of this small talk. Please, come in." And with that Nekozawa pushed the door open wider and beckoned invitingly for them all to enter.

His anxiety the day before seemed to have all but vanished entirely as far as Haruhi could see, but perhaps it was only that her upperclassman had become as fully immersed in his dark character as ever before.

And the ballroom, once they had stepped inside, did not disappoint—if by disappointment one would mean to see something fall short of expectations. As it was, the transformation of the main ballroom's clean, white, Neoclassical lines into a shadowy palace that could have come out of a dozen or more of the darkest Gothic novels quite exceeded anything Tamaki and the host club had thought within the black magic club's power to pull together on such short notice.

The electric chandeliers and wall sconces had been dimmed down to their lowest setting short of being turned off, and the antique candelabras Nekozawa had promised—their numbers no doubt in the triple digits—lit the huge space with a warm, gently flickering light. The vague shapes of anthropomorphic Egyptian and Babylonian gods, stone gargoyles with protruding tongues, and bronze demons with bulging eyes and curved canines surveyed the empty ballroom lustily; black drapery and blood-red standards billowed from the ceiling and flowed down the sides of the room like moving columns of dark water; and along the side whose French doors opened up to the outside, glowing white dead tree trunks stood in an imitation winter forest that doubled as a light source.

"It's right out of Final Fantasy Seven: Advent Children!" Renge said ecstatically of the latter.

"Looks like frosted Plexiglas," Kyouya said, tapping one of them with a fingernail. "I wonder how much this set you back."

"Cost was little concern to us," Nekozawa told him with a wave. "To tell the truth, most of what you see came from our families' various collections. Case in point, I present to you . . . the altar."

With a sweeping gesture, he drew their attention to the mezzanine of the staircase at the front of the room, where a carpet the color of dried blood led up to a grandly-carved stone slab behind which stood a huge jewel-encrusted Byzantine cross, and above that a post and lintel structure surmounted by a shining, winged sun disk.

It was an amalgamation bordering on the obscene. "Are you sure you didn't forget anything?" Haruhi muttered.

Her sarcasm was completely wasted on Nekozawa. "Don't be silly," he said with uncharacteristic exuberance. "We didn't forget our generous friends, the host club. For your Christmas celebration you will notice we've strung dried pomegranates for long life, and provided an abundance of apples and oranges and persimmons from our cellars to represent fertility in the coming year and prosperity until spring. We have not forgotten the thinly-veiled pagan rites claimed by Christendom and commercialism alike; all manner of symbolically significant plants are accounted for. We even have three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree (all stuffed, of course). . . ."

"Where do you want the food?" Honey asked as the caterers began wheeling in banquet tables and metals carts laden with silver dishes behind him.

"You may place it over there in front of Moloch."

The host club looked in the direction in which Nekozawa had pointed, to a giant and grotesque bronze head that towered halfway to the ceiling with a foul-looking gaping jaw, deep inside of which a roaring fire seemed to be burning in bellows somewhere under the ballroom floor. The fire even seemed to reach its glowing red eyes, and a hidden fog machine rolled out a steady stream of mist from between its great, grasping hands. How the black magic club had managed to fit the huge bronze monstrosity through the doors of the ballroom, let alone what system they had put in place in what little time had been available to them to set up the fireworks, was beyond Haruhi, whose mouth was hanging open almost as wide as the Moloch statue's. Not that it should have come to any surprise at all, though. This was the same school whose students (and their connections) had made a to-scale replica of a portion of Venice, canals and all—as seen at sunset no less—inside a gymnasium.

"Does Kirimi know you plan to sacrifice her later?" said an incredulous Tamaki.

"She is not pure enough in mind for a sacrifice," Nekozawa said in perfect, ominous serious that made both Tamaki and Haruhi feel suddenly uneasy.

The three black magic club boys tried to sneak by the group but it was to no avail. They jumped and went stalk stiff at Renge's sudden, "You there!"—as if, like a tyrannosaurus, she wouldn't see them if they didn't move.

The next second she was at their sides. "I have something for you three."

"Wh-what is it?" Minagi said as all three gave her the most downtrodden looks one could imagine.

To which Renge simply thrust dry cleaning bags into each of their hands. "Your costumes for this evening," she elaborated. "Each one custom-tailored to your own unique personality." Meaning, of course, the personalities she had picked out for them. "I sure hope you three have got your motivations down pat. We wouldn't want anyone to commit social suicide out there, eh, Minage?"

"It's Minagi," the third-year gritted, but Renge's ear-splitting whistle cut him off.

"Xavier!" she called. "Can you come here please? I have a special present just for you, Mr Torihada—"

"Goose pimples! Goose pimples!" Honey shouted as he randomly bounced by.

The second-year boy looked mortified. "That's Torihara—"

"Whatever," Renge said as the man she called for joined them, his arms full of three gigantic, raucous crows.

The second-year's hopes sank even lower. "Wait a minute. . . . You can't be serious!"

"I am absolutely serious," said Renge as she proceeded to place the crows one by one on him. "These crows will be the perfect accessory for your character tonight. Ooh, girls just adore a man who has a way with animals."

"But I don't even like animals!" yelled a petrified Torihara, looking more and more like an ineffective scarecrow. "In fact they scare the living crap out of me!"

"Why didn't you say something before?"

"I tried to say something before! I've been trying to say that all along, but you never let me!"

"Well, it's too late to start complaining now," she said. "I've already paid for them. Besides, look how quickly they've taken to you."

Which anyone with eyes could have seen was most definitely not true as the crows just sat on the poor second-year's shoulders and cawed back and forth at one another as though in the midst of a heated debate, indifferent to his abject suffering.

Seeing his club mates resigned to their fates and not wanting to risk the same for himself, the first-year boy tried to sneak away, and for the large part succeeded until—

"Pst, Fukazake."

He spun around. "It's Fukazaki."

"Whatever," the twins said disinterestedly as they swung from either sides of the skirt of a lion-headed goddess like some Egyptian Remus and Romulus. "Listen, lil' drinker," Hikaru whispered, "we have a proposition for you-nya."

That piqued the other's interest. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," purred Kaoru, "about fixing a little something you like to call a . . . bean ballot-nya?"

"It was just a thought," said his brother, "but we were thinking that it might be bonanza for your club if a certain someone were to be crowned Lord of Disrule for the evening."

The twins did not have to say who, as their line of sight was drawn to none other than Nekozawa himself—who, without warning, at that very moment tripped over the hem of his cloak, stepping right onto a banana peel that came from god knows where, on which naturally he slipped and performed a rather inelegant pratfall. Which wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't come out of it with the gingerliness of a brittle old man.

The twins winced. "He needs all the help he can get."

"And what, may I ask, are you three looking so cozy over here for?"

Hikaru and Kaoru quickly kicked Fukazaki out of the way as Kyouya poked his nose and handy-dandy notebook once again into their business. "Oh, just adding a few last minute touches," they chimed in innocent unison. "Garland here, rickrack there, and a couple of sprigs of yaupon," they sang as they suddenly produced little bundles of winter foliage that they began to hang indiscriminately, "that's how we like to deck the halls in the merry ol' land of Ouran."

They were up to something, but that didn't strike Kyouya as anything particularly new.

—o—

An edgy excitement was thick in the air when the clock in the tower struck eight o'clock on that much anticipated and equally dreaded Friday night.

The guests were gathered outside the ballroom awaiting the opening of the doors, some in their holiday finest, others taking up the black magic theme like a personal challenge and coming in the darkest, most Gothic designs they could find. All were equally on pins and needles, if the nervous whispers that filled the hall were any indication. Male and female students alike had to agree that waiting (and not knowing) was the hardest part—like the anticipation that frightens first-timers most at a haunted house.

Then the ballroom doors cracked open with a loud groan. Everyone went silent and turned toward it; but they could see nothing through the crack but a dark room.

As they waited on bated breath, preparing themselves for the worst, the doors swung inward and open; and as they did, the guests saw a ballroom straight out of an ancient palace, with dim candlelight flickering warmly on every surface, from the evilly sparkling jeweled eyes of statues, to the crystal glasses next to the punch bowls and the rich, glistening array of food.

It made Tamaki and Nekozawa positively sparkle as they beckoned their guests inside to a theme from Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite": the former in the formal military garb of some unknown European country of some undisclosed time, the latter in the robes of an umpteenth-century czar (with Beelzenev poking his head in around the door), and both with smiles as radiant as their shining brocades and sweeping arm gestures that sought to out-do one another in magnanimity. Like first rays of the rising sun banishing the last traces of night, at that familiar sight the guests' apprehensions melted away, replaced by sighs of wonder and delight.

"Welcome, one and all," the two hosts said in unison, along with the chorus of their respective clubs in their respective places, "to our Christmas Saturnalia."

One more chocolate in the advent calendar down. . . .

A/n: OK, I angsted over this for about a day and decided I'd give the black magic club members names after all. But you know me, I can't just give them ordinary names, no sir, they had to be puns. I am such an incorrigible geek that way. So since it doesn't work as well in English, I'll just spell it out here (or, if you have a Japanese dictionary handy, you can look them up for yourself). Minagi is a pun on "minage," which is suicide by throwing oneself off a cliff; Torihara becomes "torihada" (goosepimples); and Fukazaki comes from "fukazake" which is a drunkard. His isn't as appropriate, but it kind of sounds like "fuzakeru" which is to flirt or fool around, so . . .