"I want to wear a cowboy hat!" declared a motivated Honey as he looked at Tamaki's costume with pitiable envy, but nobody seemed to hear him or have any inclination to answer his request. He had taken a breath and was just about to repeat himself, when he heard a deep and memorable "Mitsukuni" inches away from his ear, and reached up to adjust the straw hat that had found its way onto his head. With a grin, he jumped onto his cousin and swung himself around to his back and eased into his often-adapted position on the tall boy's shoulders. "Yiee!" he exclaimed, clearly much happier now that he had something on his head. It worked out just as well for Takashi. He normally didn't look good in hats, and Honey had been wondering why they had given him one to begin with, especially if he, himself, did not get one. But now, Mitsukuni had a cowboy hat and Takashi did not, so all was right with the world.

"Haru-chan! Haru-chan!" In one skillful stride, he leapt away from his cousin with an uncannily powerful acceleration and landed on the female host's back just as she turned to close the door behind her. It was an unreasonably graceful journey, and by no account did it make sense that he could both take off and land so weightlessly, without harming either Mori or Haruhi. It was enough to make somebody question how he could have almost killed her last time.

Of course, that somebody thought that it was an accident.

Haninozuka Mitsukuni was not a malicious human being. You could ask anybody in the world, and they would tell you exactly the opposite (unless the one person out of several billion that you chose to ask happened to have woken him up from an afternoon nap, or brought some sort of ill fortune upon his bun-bun, but that's beside the point). Still, he had jumped onto his friend yesterday with every intention of knocking her off balance, fully intent on making her fall. But Haninozuka Mitsukuni was not a malicious human being, and he had jumped onto his friend yesterday with absolute confidence that she wasn't going to hit the ground. And he was able to have this confidence, because even if Takashi had been distant lately, even if he'd been speaking even less than usual for the last week, even if he wasn't letting Honey into his thoughts the way he usually did, even if he was making every possible attempt at concealing his ever-hidden emotions, Mitsukuni was not completely naïve. He knew his cousin. This was a fact, even if Takashi happened to be trying to avoid it.

And even if he had yet to figure out exactly what it was, he knew that there was something going on between Mori and Haruhi that was making them evade each other, and act uncomfortable around each other (and in general). But no matter what sort of issue they were having, he knew that Mori cared about Haruhi, and he wouldn't have let her fall no matter what kind of argument they were in. This was the problem, you see. Honey knew that Takashi would protect Haruhi no matter what. It was the two of them that needed to be reminded.

--

She braced herself as she saw the tiny human being flying towards her. After what had happened yesterday, she wasn't about to put herself in a position to be plowed over again. For one thing, she wasn't yet sure if Mori was even there to be able to catch her (she had just walked in, you see), and for another thing, she wasn't sure if having him catch her would be any better than just falling. One would think that this act of kindness on his part would go at least a small way towards making things less uncomfortable between them. This was the way that these things were meant to work, right? But as far as Haruhi was concerned, it would only make it worse.

When they were avoiding each other, at least she knew where they stood. But now she was just confused. Were they still going to try not to look at each other? Were they going to pretend that none of it had happened and go back to the way they were before Kyoto? She just had no idea how to proceed. This was the kind of thing that people needed to discuss with each other, so that they could figure out how to move forward. But she was kidding herself if she thought she could get whole sentences out of Mori, let alone opinions.

As usual, she didn't have time to regain her balance after being pounced on, before she was attacked by another of the many evils of the Host Club, this time choosing to present itself in the form of Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin, brandishing an obscenely short-skirted outfit and followed by a clearly disgruntled Tamaki. "Haruhi! Look at the costume we picked for you!" they demanded in a familiarly chorale unison that was even more irritating today than it would be at any other time. Tamaki caught up to them and promptly argued, "I will not have my daughter wearing anything compiled by you two!" Just when Haruhi was about to thank her late mother for the King's presence, she was given reason not to do so. "So Daddy wants you to wear this!" And he pulled from out of nowhere an equally feminine (skimpy) little outfit and displaying it to her as if there was absolutely no reason for her not to want to wear it.

"I'm not wearing that," she said with uncannily triangular and pupil-less eyes, turning away from the three who proceeded to bicker amongst themselves about which of the two dresses she should wear. It crossed her mind to ask them if they thought the customers might suspect something if she was the only one wearing a girl's costume- every single day. Somewhere in the background, Honey chimed in. "I think Haruhi would look cute in either of those!" Not helping.

She glanced around the room as quickly as she could, in the hopes that nobody would notice her looking. But it was long enough to confirm that Mori was, in fact, there. How did everybody manage to get there before her every day? And have their costumes already on by the time she came in? Weird.

For once, she was glad to have the constant background noise of the argument between the twins and Tamaki, because it was something to fill the silence. Because if nobody was talking, she was painfully aware of her senpai's presence, and she was still trying to convince herself that he wasn't there.

It wasn't just that Mori didn't speak. He was silence. He filled the room with presence when others didn't fill it with their speech, and that was intriguing, but at this point, she didn't want to experience it. Because when Hikaru and Kaoru and Tamaki and Kyoya and Honey, didn't say anything, they faded away from the world. And that was when it became the most apparent that Mori was there. When others disappeared with their lack of noise, Mori appeared with his silence.

And the silence, which she had so often found comforting, relaxing, enjoyable, now seemed to be more vulgar than all the screaming twins in the world.