"Haruhi?"

But she didn't hear him. The door had already closed behind the female club member after her abrupt exit. Haruhi was already gone, and as far as Kaoru could tell, so was Mori.

Looking around the third music room, nobody seemed quite up to speed with what was going on. This was to be expected. It wasn't as if what had just happened was something that happened often.

Well, in fact, it was something that happened every day, right up until Haruhi up and walked out of the room without a word. That was definitely not a regular occurrence. Had she been so irritated by Tamaki's badgering that she decided that she wasn't going to take it anymore? Even if Tamaki was being unreasonably persistent with this whole Kyoto ordeal, it still seemed a little extreme for Haruhi to just leave. There was clearly something going on here beyond mere annoyance.

"Ta…" Honey seemed equally confused about the situation. "…kashi?"

Tamaki, on the other hand, seemed to be only beginning to process the fact that Haruhi was no longer in the room. "Ha… HARUHI! WHERE DID HARUHI GO? HARUHI! COME BACK TO DADDY!"

The faint grumble of something along the lines of 'you idiot' was barely audible amidst the King's incessant screaming. "Hikaru."

He did not respond. Hikaru turned wordlessly away from his twin and walked lightly towards the door. Kaoru was about to advise him not to follow her, but he had already stopped, in the middle of the doorway. "Hikaru…" he repeated.

"She left." Between any other people, these two simple words would be shallow and insignificant. But when Kaoru heard them out of his brother's mouth, both of the Hitachiins understood perfectly how important these two words were. They were simple, and seemingly generic, but the fact that Hikaru had chosen those particular words was more noteworthy than anybody else in the room- maybe anybody else in the world- could understand. Because he did not say "She's gone." He said "She left."

Her action was deliberate. This fact was of the utmost importance. Tamaki was standing right in front of her. He was looking her in the eye, and she was looking straight at him. He was talking to her. Yelling, even. There was no questioning that he wanted her attention.

And she had walked away. From him.

Kaoru looked over to Tamaki, who was screaming, then to his brother, who was thinking, and his lips curled into a smirk. "She'll come back." And even though he had clearly tried to avoid it, and it quickly faded after it appeared, Hikaru was wearing a similar expression.

--

"TAKASHI!"

His scream was somewhere between pain and elation. Because there was a fine line between the two.

When his cousin had first left the room, he had been anguished. He might have even cried a little. He had been so upset about Takashi leaving without saying goodbye, and leaving him behind, that he'd forgotten that this was a good thing. This was what he wanted to happen. This was why he had launched himself at Haruhi the other day. He had followed her.

That was… good, wasn't it? Because that meant that he was going to speak to Haruhi, and work out whatever it was that needed to be worked out between them. And then everything was going to go back to normal.

Right?

It was going to go back to the way it was. The way it was supposed to be. When Takashi and Mitsukuni and Haruhi could all sit together and eat cake without the element of discomfort in the silence across from him. This was the way that Honey needed it to be. It had to be the way it had always been. Because when it wasn't the way he knew it to be, he had to figure it out. Honey didn't like to figure things out. He liked to know how they worked.

Right now, he knew how his life worked. There were no problems in the mechanics of his life, and it was running smoothly. There was no need to change that. If a watch is working properly, you do not fiddle with it to see what happens. In doing so, you risk permanent damage upon a perfectly good watch that was working perfectly well and would have been perfectly fine without your senseless tinkering. This was the same was as Honey felt about his life. He liked the way it was now, so he had no real interest in making any drastic changes.

But if Takashi and Haruhi came back into the club room, would he be bringing inevitable change with him? Would the fact that he had followed her have an impact on the way he and his cousin lived their lives? Would it change their relationship?

No, of course not. He was reading too much into this. All that was going to change when they came back was that they would be talking to each other again. This was something that needed to happen.

--

Haruhi had left the room seemingly without provocation, without any sort of warning. She had stood up and walked out of the third music room, and nobody knew why she had done it. And Kyoya watched.

Mori was no longer in the room, but nobody had seen him leave. He had reacted so quickly to Haruhi's departure that nobody had even noticed him move, but now he was gone. And Kyoya watched.

Hikaru stood in the doorway. He and his brother were having one of their usual conversations in which only they could find the relevance. And Kyoya watched.

This had always been his role in the host club. He dealt with the finances, and made sure that Tamaki didn't murder the twins, and made sure the customers were happy, and made sure that Honey had all the cake he needed, but most importantly, he watched. He amused himself by knowing what was going on before anybody else figured it out, and watching things unfold. Because it wasn't his place to interfere. Listening in on a conversation and injecting yourself into the flow of words was rude, but eavesdropping was harmless, and entertaining.

Tamaki was now standing in front of him, blocking his vision of the rest of the room, screaming at him about how their daughter had run away from home, how they had to do something about it, how the unscrupulous twins must have had something to do with it, and the rest of his usual nonsense. And Kyoya watched. But he was only half listening.

This was another perk that came with not having to be a part of the conversations. This way, he didn't have to choose which one he was listening to. If he was going to participate in a conversation, he would have to give it his undivided attention and understand exactly what was going on, down to the most minute detail, and produce an opinion on it. But since he was only listening and not contributing, he could listen to all of the different conversations going on, without having to worry so much about not having exactly the right information.

Not that Kyoya would ever have the wrong information.

No.

At the moment, there were three conversations happening. There was the conversation that Hikaru was having with Kaoru, that Kyoya wasn't even going to try to understand. It simply didn't make any sense. Their conversations rarely made any sense to anybody who wasn't them. And Kyoya had given up on trying to be the exception. Then there was the conversation that Tamaki was having with him, that was boringly easy to understand, and annoyingly common. It was the same kind of one-sided conversation the two had on a regular basis. This made it the least interesting of the three conversations. The third, of course, was the conversation that Honey was having with himself, but Kyoya had no hope of eavesdropping on this conversation, as none of the words were actually spoken out loud. But he did think he might have an inkling as to what the conversation was about.

But there was a fourth conversation, Kyoya realized. Because why else would Mori have left than to speak with Haruhi? Although, Mori didn't speak very much, and Haruhi had been pretty quiet today, too, so he couldn't help but wonder how that conversation was going to work out.

But, intriguingly, the conversation that had now caught his attention was the second. Because it was no-longer so one-sided. Because in the midst of his contemplation, he had lost track of all of the conversations, and had failed to realize that the third had ended, and the second had changed its point of situation. Tamaki had stopped yelling at him, and made a bee line towards the door, presumably with the intent of following Haruhi, as Mori had. But Honey, having cordially excused himself from his conversation with himself, had flipped from his chair and landed in front of the King, dry disapproval playing in his so often sparkling eyes. It seemed that he wasn't the only one that had been eavesdropping, but unlike him, Honey had rudely injected himself into the flow of words.

And Kyoya watched.

--

"GNYAAAH!"

Tamaki obediently jumped back from the tiny man who had done some sort of fancy judo somersault in order to impede his progress.

"I think that it would be in your best interest to stay here," came the eerily low voice of Dark Honey, a figure that even Tamaki wouldn't be blindly idiotic enough to contradict. And although he knew enough not to ask them while Honey was in this state, there were a number of questions running through his head at the speed of sound.

What happened in Kyoto, and why did it make Haruhi so upset that she had to leave?

How come Mori-senpai got to follow her but I can't?

When will they come back? What will happen when they come back?

Where did they go, anyway?

After one more glance at the terrifying sight of an upset Honey-senpai, he shuddered and ran off into his corner. By now, he had realized that there was something going on beyond everyone being annoyed that he kept pushing this whole Kyoto idea, and that Haruhi leaving wasn't just a matter of her being especially irritable today. Even he couldn't miss it when the rest of the club was making it so blatantly obvious.

Mori had followed Haruhi out the door. This was strange. He was normally the type to sort of stand next to Honey-senpai and make sure nobody died while everything was being sorted out. He wasn't the kind of person to take such an extreme action as actually following her out of the club room when she left. And Honey seemed to be okay with his leaving, to an extent. So it couldn't have been completely unplanned and random. There must have been some order to it, or somebody would have said something. He couldn't be the only one that thought this was out of character for him, could he?

Kyoya wasn't speaking, which was never a good sign. He always said at least a few words every now and then to make sure nobody forgot that he was still there, unless there was something bad happening. Because when something bad was happening, he stopped talking entirely and watched it hit the fan because he got some kind of sadistic pleasure from standing to the side of the fan while everybody else tried to deal with what had just happened.

Even the twins were having some sort of mental conversation with each other, which wasn't too far from normal for them, but it was usually the most obvious that they were doing it when it was about something important.

And Honey was being Dark Honey. Enough said.

There was clearly something going on, but nobody had yet thought to tell the host club's King what it was. Typical. So, seeing as how Honey had already eliminated the option of following them, Tamaki had nothing to do but sit down and wait it out.


A/N: Okay, so this chapter is mostly only here to make sure you realize that I'm not completely forsaking the other hosts while I go on to follow Mori and Haruhi. You still have to wait a little while longer to find out what happens with them. Hehe.