Hikaru begrudgingly pulls out the seat in front of Yori, letting it scrape against the floor. Yori winces, But doesn't complain.
"Okay Hama-San," Hikaru sighs.
"Ha-Hama…?"
Hikaru grabs her notebook, looking through it, ignoring her. He wanted to be done as soon as he could. He flips through the pages back and forth.
"What were you doing in here?" Hikaru squints, attempting to read what she had written in notebook. Yori winces.
"My handwriting isn't the best. Never has been. Especially my I's in the western alphabet. They always look like they're on a ship." Yori shrugs.
Hikaru blinks, looking up at her.
"What are you talking about?"
"Oh, my I's! Well, they look like they're on a ship and they're getting sea-sick. They're leaning over."
Hikaru shakes his head, looking back to her notes.
"So, maybe you shouldn't be listening to your phone when you're studying. You're not focusing and it shows."
Yori frowns. "I'm not studying. I'm re-writing my notes."
"Oh yeah?" Hikaru parrots absentmindedly.
"Yeah. I recorded the lecture audio and saved it on my phone, I knew I was gonna need it. But I just -"
Yori starts over. "It's a new technique. I'm just rewriting it, but the audio is muffled."
"A new technique," Hikaru mumbles. Before Hikaru could ask her what she meant, Kaoru finally joined them, pushing a shiny, silver cart towards them. On it was a 3 tier stand holding bowls of fruit on the first stand, finger sandwiches on the second, cinnamon buns and danishes on the third.
"I brought snacks too," Kaoru grins, plucking up the stand and setting it on the table. He carefully sets the teacups and plates in front of Yori, Hikaru, and for himself. He places a bag of tea leaves in between his and Hikaru's plate, then serves Yori a brewed from a kettle.
"It's not your brand, but it should do fine." Kaoru teases. Yori giggles, hiding a smile behind her left hand. Hikaru rolls his eyes.
"and here," Kaoru says as he bends down to the bottom half of the cart, retrieving his notebook.
"Oh, thank you so much," Yori all but sighs in relief.
"I was just telling Hikaru about what I did to rewrite them. It took too much time and I wasn't getting anywhere with it." Yori frowns, slumping in her seat.
"Well, what do you need help in?"
"It's… it's... I just need the notes, really. I'll be fine afterwards."
Unknowingly, Yori looks up and sees the boys staring at her, one looking concerned and the other annoyed.
Her bouncing foot comes to a rest, and she notices a few girls whipping their head back to each other, whispering and giggling. Yori looks down once more, cheeks ablaze.
"You're missing a good chunk of the material we went over," Kaoru finally says. Yori lifts her head up.
"She's got messy handwriting too." Hikaru points out , "maybe stick with writing with a pencil and then rewrite your notes in pen."
"Your pen isn't very good, either. I see a lot of smear marks…"
Yori shut her eyes, tapping the tips of her fingers on top of her thighs. Now she needs a new pen and paper that won't let the ink bleed through. Yori bites her lip, lost in thought. She could get some pencils too. She hadn't used pencils in a while, not after her dad switched them out for pens after chewing through too many and sharpening their erasers ends.
"Would mechanical or wooden pencils suffice?" Yori says out loud, cutting the twins off mid sentence.
Hikaru lifts a brow at his brother. Kaoru shakes his head.
"That's not important right now, we just need to fix up your study habits, if anything."
"I have to get new stuff. Would Amozan deliver overnight?" Yori huffs. Haruhi, who was walking past, raises a questioning brow and leans in to the table.
"What's going on here? I thought you were going to let her borrow your notebook."
"We are," both twins insist, "but now she's talking about having a whole new study set up."
"You two told me I needed to clean it up,"
"Just your habits," Hikaru states at her deapan, "not anything else."
"That's what I'm saying!" Yori wrings her fists, "I'll clean up my study habits by buying new stuff that'll help me study!"
"Your stuff is just fine. You can probably just get this stuff at the convenience store later anyway."
"Oh," Yori's eyes light up, "that's right! But I'd have to put a day aside to go." She frowns. Haruhi stares at her, but then sighs and reaches into her pocket.
"Here," she says, holding her hand out. Yori takes the object from her, flipping her hand palm side up and revealing a pink pencil decorated with tiny cartoon rabbits on it.
"You can have it. I found it in the hallway and it looked cute, so I grabbed it. But if you want to clean up your study habits, start off with this pencil. It never matters what the quality of it is, as long as it writes and erases fine, you're set."
"Thank you," Yori says quietly, a tiny smile stretched on her lips. Hikaru doesn't miss it, and neither does Kaoru.
She's happy
Over a pencil…?
"It's not a problem…" Haruhi shrugs, "You can even buy these for 100 yen, they're not very expensive."
Yori nods. Hikaru leans over and whacks her head with the notebook.
"Hey!" She yelps. It didn't hurt, if anything her hair softened the blow
"Pay attention. We're mapping out your notebook, you need to tell us what you understood and what you didn't."
Haruhi sighs and pats Yori on the shoulder as she walks away.
"Okay. Give us a run down on today's lecture." Kaoru peers at Yori over her his own notes.
Yori frowns. She looks over at Hikaru, who's keeping a neutral expression. She lets out a breath and stands from her seat.
"From what I understood," she begins, and Kaoru makes sure to list off what she's grasped.
—
The twins and Yori finally patch up her notes in about 30 minutes time. They wouldn't let her mind stray and still hosted her while she wrote down the notes piece by was still after her second cup of coffee, but almost tuned the twins out because of her sudden hyperfocus.
She smiled and bowed at a 30 degree angle. The twins chuckle.
"She's got it," Kaoru nudges his brother.
Hikaru shrugs, a grin losing its way up to the corners of his lips.
"Thank you for letting me borrow your notes. Would…" Yori frowns and shakes her head.
"Never mind. It'd be too troublesome. I've caused enough trouble for the two of you."
Hikaru's brows furrow. She didn't ask for much except for help and it's not like the twins were heavily scheduled today. But she might've caused a bit of trouble on Kyoya's accounting end. It's nothing that can't be fixed. The girls look well tended too - at least the few that still remained. It was about time toss in the towel and call it a day anyway.
"It's nothing that can be helped." Kaoru shrugs.
"Why don't you come back some time? We'd love to spend time with you outside of class," Kaoru smirks too innocently. Hikaru elbows him in the ribs. Kaoru elbows him back and both snarl, ready for a fight. Yori takes a step back, eyes wide.
"Alright, thats enough you two," Tamaki scolds the twins, pushing himself in between them.
"No fighting," Mori grunts. Honey, who sat on his shoulders hummed the song the lyrics belonged to.
"Kaoru started it," Hikaru growls. Kaoru smiles lazily.
"There was no reason for you to. I was just suggesting for Yori to return if she enjoyed herself."
Both twins stare at her. Yori, who'd been shuffling her feet suddenly glances up.
"Oh! Well," she bites her bottom lip. "I can. If uh, i could... get tutoring out of you two."
"Tutoring," the twins deadpan.
"That's...not a bad idea," Kyoya takes out a calculator from his book bag and begins to punch in numbers.
"Oh," Yori waves her hands in front of her, "I can pay! I won't take advantage of you two, but I don't mean to be a burden I just-"
"It could improve our profit and we could manage to get replacements around the place," Kyoya pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose,
"We could even replace the luxury sofa with something more like French wood…"
"Hikaru, Kaoru, I suggest you two make yourselves useful gentleman for Miss Hamamoto,"
"And what, side hustle?" Hikaru scratches the side of his head.
"What about our customers?"
"I trust Miss Hamomoto will be a fine replacement for your lovely guests and will be more than happy to reward you for your time.
"Of course!" Yori nods, grin in her face.
Haruhi side glances Kyoya, Tamaki catching sight.
"Haruhi, my dear,"
Haruhi's cheeks flush and she looks up to Tamaki.
"What are you thinking, mon coeur?"
"Stop that," she clicks her tongue.
"But i'm thinking there's some scheme going on here. We don't really need to replace very much around here. The sofa is fine. Could her name be that shiny?"
Tamaki scratches under her chin. "I think while you're right, it could be something Kyoya sees beyond her name. Something just under his nose."
Tamaki and Haruhi watch as Kyoya, Kaoru, Hikaru and Yori discuss tutoring salaries, Yori never once stumbling on her words and keeping a straight face.