AN: Omg guys. Hello. Long time no see.

This chapter was the devil to write. To be honest, the direction of my last chapter went so far off track from my original story outline that I was at a huge loss for how to continue from where I'd left off. Impulsive, inspiration-of-the-moment writing has its benefits and often produces wonderful results, but in the long term it poses a lot of problems as well.

All that is to say, I'm incredibly sorry this chapter took me so long to post. (Also, apologies for any typos! I wanted to get this out as soon as I actually managed to write it, so proofreading was a little more brief).

Disclaimer: Fruits Basket does not belong to me. Neither does Ouran High School Host Club or its characters.


Murasaki doesn't make it to lunch with the rest of her friends. Instead, a violent nausea sweeps over her body as she catches sight of their classroom door, and she finds herself rushing off to the girl's restroom and leaving behind a bewildered Yuki.

She's sent home with a stomach ache and orders not to come back to school the next day.

That evening, Tohru, Uou, and Hana show up at her door with porridge, chicken soup, and promises to nurse Murasaki back to health.

~.~

"The Prince explained everything to us. He also said not to worry about student council," Uou says as Murasaki gets herself curled up in her bed, her friends scattered across her room in a haphazard circle.

"And regarding our classmates … let's just say that their curiosity is no longer … an issue," Hana says thoughtfully, and the air in the room seems to chill by two degrees as the implications of her words sink in. For probably the millionth time since the start of their first year, Murasaki is incredibly glad that she is friends with Hanajima, and not her enemy.

"Thank you guys for coming to check on me. I… I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Kyoya. Or about…" the words get caught in Murasaki's throat, and she wrestles them out. "About the whole 'piano prodigy' thing. I-I wanted to, but it's…there's..."

The words die in Murasaki's throat. She bites her lip, bracing herself for the worst.

But it never comes. Instead, Uou and Hana and Tohru all fall silent, as if remembering something Murasaki isn't privy to.

Tohru is the first to speak, a soft, reminiscent smile on her face.

"Mom would have liked you," she says. Murasaki is surprised: it's not the first time that Tohru has talked about her Mom. Actually, Tohru talks about Kyoko-san quite a bit, but the statement has never been so directly tied to Murasaki.

Uou laughs at Tohru's statement, the sound quiet and uncharacteristically wistful.

"Kyoko-san always did have a soft spot for misfits, huh?"

"I can imagine her showing up at the Ootori estate, baseball bat in hand, Murasaki-chan wrapped in her other arm, demanding to give this Kyoya-kun a piece of her mind," Hanajima says with the closest to a chuckle that Murasaki has ever heard from the electric-wielding girl.

Murasaki isn't even sure what to make of this entire exchange.

"Wait… so you guys aren't mad that I didn't tell you?"

Tohru smiles up at her.

"You're a good person, Saki-chan. We can wait for when you're ready."

A tear spills over and rolls down Murasaki's cheek. Another. And another. And suddenly she's sobbing with all the force of torrential rain, like the sky is opening up and finally letting go of the dark thunderclouds it has been holding onto for so long, one raindrop at a time.


"So, what did I miss at that student council meeting?"

Yuki looks up from his novel, some part of his chest fluttering at the sight of the girl in front of him.

So she is back today.

He can't help the soft smile that spreads across his face.

"Oh, nothing much. We've essentially ruled out the need for a White Day activity, since we'll need to spend more time preparing for freshman orientation come April. But nevermind that, how are you feeling? I was worried when you suddenly felt so ill on Wednesday."

She takes her seat in front of him, twisting herself so that she's still facing him and leaning her chin on the back of her chair. Yuki can't help but wonder if she's done that before, or if he's only just now noticing how cute she looks with her chin propped up on the back of her chair, her rosy cheeks and absentminded smile no more than eight inches from the end of his desk.

"I'm feeling much better, the nurse said it was likely a stress-induced stomachache. I guess when you have tabloids spreading false rumors about you a certain amount of stress has to be involved," she laughs. "Which reminds me, I-"

Something shifts in her expression. Yuki watches as some of the color drains from her face, like she's suddenly seen a ghost. But this time, the emotions swirling in her eyes are different. The fear is still there, there's a spark of determination too, as she wills herself to finish her sentence.

"I have something to show you after our jog this Saturday," she says in one breath, like she's forcing it out before she can change her mind. Yuki furrows his brows.

"Are you sure you should be jogging?" he asks, concern coloring his voice.

There's silence for a moment. She seems to glance down at her twisted ankle and then sweatdrops.

"Good point. Hmmm… okay, rewind. Care to join me for tea at my apartment on Saturday?"

Some ridiculous part of Yuki's mind (probably the part of him that's been irreparably corrupted by Shigure) is tempted to ask "is that a date?". He squashes the temptation immediately, mildly disgusted with himself.

Instead, Yuki says "Sure. What time?"

"I dunno. How about 10?"

"Sure."


This was a mistake.

Murasaki stares at the upright piano sitting in her living room with a combination of trepidation, fear, and contempt, wondering what on earth possessed her to think this was in any way a good idea.

The clock on her wall reads 9:51 am, and her stomach twists itself into impossibly tighter coils of inexplicable anxiety as she paces across the floor, rearranging sitting cushions obsessively and checking the tea every thirty seconds.

The waiting, the anticipation, is torment, as her mind runs through scenarios of what could happen, searching for an ideal end to this meeting and coming up empty.

On the one hand, she could be horribly out of practice and flub any kind of piece entirely, making a horrible fool of herself.

On the other, she could pull it out of the bag (as she always managed at the academy) and prompt all sorts of questions about why she quit and why she's studying here instead of at some conservatory. This option looks arguably more horrific, but neither outcome is really particularly appealing. Frankly, Murasaki is beginning to believe that this ordeal will be infinitely harder than anything she did at the academy. At least there, there was an ideal outcome.

To win.

But something in her chest refuses to let her back down; some part of her is determined to give away the pieces of herself she so fears sharing. After all, if anyone deserves to know, it's-

Her doorbell rings.


The first thing that Yuki notices, as he stands in Saki's doorway, a bag of tea cookies in hand, is that she seems incredibly nervous. The second is that she does a truly incredible job of hiding it.

Her hands open the door and accept his tea cookies with deceptive steadiness, but as Yuki enters her home, he spots her tapping her fingers in rapid succession against the side of her thigh. She even seems to walk in a frenzied rhythm: her steps are smaller, faster, and almost remind him of someone's gait when they're pacing.

But, most of all, she hasn't managed to look him in the eye for more than a moment since he arrived.

And then he sees the piano.

The realization presents itself like the image of puzzle pieces suddenly clicking into place.

"Saki, is this about the article?"

Her head snaps up to look at him, the tea she was pouring forgotten. Finally, she's looking at him, their eye contact giving him the chance to see that she is swimming, drowning in what looks like-

Fear. What can I do to banish it from your eyes?

She lets out a shaky but resigned sigh as he takes his usual seat in her living room. With the piano, there's a little less room to maneuver towards the kitchen, so when she slips her way around the instrument, he expects that she's only doing so to take her usual seat in front of him.

But, instead, she takes a seat at the piano bench and opens the lid, revealing the alternating lines of ivory and ebony.

"I haven't played for almost a whole year," she murmurs quietly, staring down at the keys with an unreadable expression, brows furrowed. "I realize this whole affair might seem silly to you: it's just a piano, right?"

But the attempt at humor crumbles in an instant, her eyes clouded and distant.

Clearly, it's not. Clearly, there's more to this than I can even begin to guess at, he thinks, frown deepening.

"If it's important to you, then it can't possibly be silly to me," he says without thinking, and were she not sitting at a piano and staring at it as if it were the most horrible thing in the world, he might have blushed at the implications of his own words. Instead, he simply meets her gaze when she looks up at him, surprised.

A small smile manages to find its way across her features. The sight settles the unease in Yuki's chest just a tad.

Saki's next words seem to have a note of strength to them that wasn't there before.

"There's a lot that I still don't know how to tell you. Those pieces of the story will have to wait, unfortunately. But, you at least deserve to know about this," she says.

She turns to the keys of her instrument with renewed determination and begins to play.


For a fleeting, terrifying moment, Murasaki's mind swirls with doubt at the instrument beneath her fingertips. But as soon as the first note rings into existence, everything else falls away.

Her apartment, the smell of tea, the nerves bundled up in her chest, they all disappear. There is only music and melodies and that soaring feeling of coming home after a long time away, her hands exploring the expanse of the keyboard with all the joy of a traveller reacquainting himself with his house and his bed and his sheets. The sweet, joyous sound of music in her ears seems to claw open a part of her heart that has been closed for too long, and she revels in the light that has been reintroduced into her life.

For most of the piece, nothing else seems to matter.

But as she reaches the recapitulation of the melody, as the lines of Chopin in her memory draw to a close, something other than joy and music filters into her mind. Two faces.

Yuki Soma. Smiles and chocolates and morning runs.

Murasaki's sister. A black dress and torn music books.

Monochrome.

The notes end abruptly, Murasaki's hands frozen and trembling, only five measures from the end of the piece. But suddenly, she's incapable of finishing, the mere thought of playing another note sending a wave of nausea through her.

A voice snaps her out of her thoughts.

"So that's what they meant."

She looks up to see Yuki observing her with wide eyes and a slack jaw, his tea forgotten in his hands.

"You mean the article?" she asks, closing the lid of her piano carefully, and quickly pulling the dust covers back over the instrument. Her chest is still trembling in that sickeningly familiar way, memories of winter and snowy monochrome and cold hands flooding her senses.

Really, the only thing keeping her present is the image of Yuki Soma at her coffee table.

"Yes," he breathes, a note of awe in his voice. "About the whole prodigy thing. I assumed you were skilled, what with the books in your house and then the article but I didn't know that-"

He seems to sense her discomfort and cuts off his sentence abruptly, tilting his head slightly as he studies her. Whatever observations he's making must warrant some form of a conclusion, because he offers her up a gentle smile and holds out her cup of tea.

She takes it and slips into the seat across from his, awaiting the inevitable questions. She prepares herself to explain why she's no longer playing or what she's doing at a non-music school when he instead asks-

"Why did you seem so afraid of telling me?"

She blinks. Contemplating the question around a sip of tea.

"I'm afraid that once I show people, it'll be the only thing they see," she admits after a moment, surprising herself. "That and, as I said earlier, there's more to this I can't explain yet."

He seems to consider her answer for a moment, reaching for a tea cookie. The bite he takes causes a resounding crunch to fill the air, the contrasting silence between them palpable as he seems to formulate his next statement or thought. After a moment, he sighs through his nose.

"Your chocolates were better," he murmurs, eyeing the cookie in his hand a little ruefully before taking another bite.

A beat. Her eyes widen in surprise, mouth opening slightly before closing again.

Murasaki can't help it. She laughs.

"You sound like a petulant child," she giggles, the words escaping her lips before she can stop them, and at the slight pout that Yuki sends her she only bursts into a louder fit of laughter. It dies away quickly enough, but it leaves a lightness to the air that wasn't there before, soft smiles on both their lips.

Relief, Murasaki realizes. This feeling is relief.

"If the Yuki Fan Club could hear you now. Their prince acting all cute and childish over sweets. Careful, you might send some of them into hysterics," she teases, and the look he sends her is equal parts exasperated and exhausted.

"Please don't start with that," he grimaces, but the expression soon melts into one of innocent curiosity. "Oh, by the way, did that article ever get taken down?"

Murasaki brightens at the question, remembering another rather hilarious text exchange with Kyoya the day before and opening her mouth to speak when-

Her doorbell rings.

She frowns. Yuki tilts his head curiously, brows furrowing slightly.

"Huh. I wasn't expecting any other guests," she murmurs, frowning apologetically at Yuki as she stands up. The path to the entrance requires some maneuvering past the piano, so by the time she gets there, Yuki is already there waiting for her, leaned against one of the walls in her walkway. She sends him a smile for the quiet company he offers, a little touched that he would bother getting up for her. It's a silly thing to be comforted by, but considering the week she's had, she'll take all the small joys she can get.

Her door creaks open to reveal probably the last person she'd expect to see at this moment, simply because the coincidence is too perfect, too on-the-nose.

At her door stands Kyoya Ootori, clad in casual streetwear, sunglasses in one hand, a face mask hanging off the fingertips of the other. His eyes first regard Murasaki with a silent hello before flicking back towards Yuki, a single, dark brow on Kyoya's face raising slightly as he returns his gaze to the dumbstruck girl in front of him.

"K-Kyoya. What are … um… I wasn't-" she begins, but he cuts off her stuttering.

"Kaname. Apologies for the sudden intrusion." His voice is smooth and clear, to-the-point. His eyes shift slightly, voice darkening almost imperceptibly. "You must be Soma."

Somehow, Murasaki gets the feeling that there might yet be more catastrophes in her immediate future.


Omake: (Wednesday at Ouran Academy)

As soon as Kyoya enters Music Room #3, he is struck with an instinct to turn on his heel and leave. All of the other hosts are gathered around a single laptop, eyes darting quickly between the screen and Kyoya in the door.

Tamaki has that look in his eyes like he's been stabbed in the heart by a close loved one. Honey is actually away from his cake and staring with rapted attention at the screen, Mori standing silently behind. The twins, still clad in their middle-school uniforms, are exchanging devious glances, wide grins stretched across their face.

"Alright. What is it?" Kyoya asks, the slightest note of exasperation coloring his tone.

Tamaki bursts into tears.

"KYOYAAA! HOW COULD YOU! WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME YOU HAVE A FIANCEEEEEE~" the blonde host wails, falling to the ground at Kyoya's feet and clinging the front of Kyoya's uniform jacket. "I THOUGHT WE WERE BEST FRIIIIIIEEEEEENNNDSSSS!"

Honey pops into sight from behind Tamaki's broken frame, eyes wide.

"Kyo-chan, you're really engaged to that girl in the article?" he asks, taking a huge bite of cake and staring Kyoya down with enormous, brown eyes.

"Running a Host Club when you already have someone's hand in marriage? Kyoya, we never knew you were so devious," the twins chime in unison, grins widening to Cheshire-Cat crescent moons.

Kyoya pinches his nose, letting out a sharp sigh.

"I see you've all found the article."

Tamaki's wails sound through the room once again, Honey bubbling with questions, the twins smirking devilishly.

It's going to be a long week.


AN: I really tried to keep Kyoya out of this one, but he's just too much fun, and the unspoken tension here is just too delicious to resist.

Huge thank-you to my Favorite/Followers: AngelofMusic1321, Deneb E. Winter, Sayuri Tamano, Yakitori-Chan, ayamiamy, cappie14, frustratedfox, sheeto1011, tokkiKANA, Of-Constellations-and-Coffee, SimULater, Ice of Serenity, TheAlleyCat18, Stestiel, wildflowerboots, ivyqiu112706, TwilightNewMoonEclipseMidnight, ColorfulPhoenix92, starrycalypso, BlackWind 34, im-so-confused-18, mysticfairydancer, Diamond D' Natsuki, judjejuj, Supix, Elsangelee Irizarry, satirepoet2649, MistiFlare, ChuChewy, Dragon Queen001, yatogod1, Blehlove, yorrusorra, Maui2013, Ruyuz, PrincessJV, Niclrv19, greenteakisses, Subhera, xoxoSabinaEvans, and CupCakeSama! (If I have somehow missed anyone, please let me know!)

Review Replies!

judjejuj: Thank you so much! I'm glad you're enjoying the story, and tbh, I'm pretty sure I'm enjoying writing Kyoya more than I should, lmao. Happy you like the poetry-like writing: I started on slam poetry as a creative writer, so it slips into my prose sometimes, loll. Thanks for being patient with the update and for the wonderful review!

Guest (Ch.7): More fluffy Tohru-Uou-Hana-Saki friendship material in this chapter! I am absolutely adamant that there will never be any serious riffs in this group, because this world needs to see more trusting, healthy friendships between girls. Hope you enjoyed their little "nurse her back to health" bit :). As for her friendship with Kyoya, the amount that he knows about her past will become clearer later on, but I can confirm right now he doesn't know the true scope of her guilt and there will definitely be a conversation about that eventually. Thank you for the kind words, you're so sweet and precious *throws cookies in your direction*

ZukoHere: Omg, the username you've typed is giving me life. Glad you enjoyed the chapter and that you think it reflects the source material in style :). As for your predictions about the future, I don't know if she'll meet Aya yet (haven't decided, but it would be so hilarious if she did) but I definitely have plans for Akito... *grins manically*. To be honest, I wonder too if I should make her piano playing public again, but the way this chapter came out is making me feel like Murasaki is a character who needs piano to really be living her life, so we'll see. Thank you for the kind words and your wonderful review :)

S: I'm so happy to hear that! Thank you so much for reading and reviewing :)

marrona: Thank you so much! I'm glad you're liking the Saki-Yuki evolution, I'm having so much fun writing it. And I agree, Tohru is a precious cinnabun, haha. Thank you for the lovely review :)

Idk when the next update will be out, but I'm hoping that it won't be more than 2-3 weeks from now. As ever, please leave me a review and thank you so much for reading!