"Haruhi."
He grabbed hold of her wrist and gripped it tightly enough that she couldn't break free, but loosely enough that she would have to struggle quite a bit to make it hurt her. He had left only a few seconds after her, so he was able to catch up relatively quickly. He tried to turn her around to face him, but she seemed determined not to look at him, so he quickly decided it would be better to let her have her way, and gave up his efforts.
"Haruhi." he repeated, letting go of her wrist and hoping that she wouldn't just run away.
"Why did you follow me?" Her voice was faint, but harsh, almost as if she was challenging him.
"Kyoya had to make the customers leave." Which was a little odd. Because he hadn't just sent Haruhi's customers away. He'd made all of them leave, even though that meant the club's profits would decrease substantially. Nobody would want to buy the merchandise if they didn't even get to see the hosts.
"No." Her voice was cracking now. He had to force himself to stay where he was while she started to cry. "I mean, why did you follow me?"
"Haruhi…" She knew why. Why was she doing this to him? Didn't she realize that this was difficult for him?
"I didn't leave because of you, if that's what you think."
"…Ah." Why was she lying to him? Did she really think he would believe her?
"I just really don't want to go to Kyoto." It sounded almost like she was making herself laugh so that he wouldn't notice that she was crying. But of course, it didn't work. Because he could always tell when she was upset. She wasn't very good at hiding her emotions, either, but that was beside the point.
At first, he said nothing. There was nothing to say. Or at least, nothing that Mori could convince himself needed to be said. What some people didn't realize about him was that most of the time, he was quiet because he just didn't think there was any need to speak.
You see, most people fill the silence because they're afraid of what will happen if they just leave it be. Because words are much less scary when they're said out loud.
There's nothing more terrifying than not knowing what somebody is thinking about you. So people say what they're thinking out loud and hope that others will follow suit, because even if someone hates you, it's better to know that they hate you. So they speak more than they need to, so that they don't give anybody the opportunity to try to guess what they're thinking. Or worse yet, give themselves that opportunity. But in their desperateness to kill the silence, they fail to understand its modest beauty, if only one takes the time to look for it.
Takashi was seven years old when he had begun to appreciate the beauty of the silence. A seven-year-old boy spends most of his time screaming and yelling and jumping and running and dancing about with the other seven-year-old boys who are screaming and yelling about, giving heart attacks to their parents and teachers and people around them who don't remember what it was like to be a seven-year-old boy, and who would punish these innocent children when their behaviour became what they deemed to be "out of control". Mori had never been one of the very most disruptive of the seven-year-old boys with whom he was associated, but he, as you must remember, still was a seven-year-old boy at this point in his life.
It was during a moment of the aftermath of his "out of control" activities that he had experienced, for the first memorable instance, absolute silence. Because he, and all of the seven-year-old boys around him, had put their heads on their desks and not made a single noise, because this was the best way for them to calm down and get on with the lesson, or so she said.
And as he rested his head on his elbows, young Takashi Morinozuka could hear the soft 'tick-tock' of the clock, and the 'cla-clunk' of his teacher's uneven footsteps, and the 'fwshhh' of the breeze through the open window. Because absolute silence is not necessarily when there isn't any noise, you see. It's when the noise doesn't clutter the world around you or hinder your ability to appreciate your surroundings. And he heard his friends shuffling their feet in agitation, because they wanted to speak but knew that they couldn't, and for the first time, he realized that he knew what every seven-year-old boy in that classroom was thinking.
At first, this notion scared him, as I'm sure it would you if you were ever to experience such an epiphany. Because it simply did not make sense for him to know what they were thinking. Because they hadn't told him what they were thinking. But still, he knew. They were shuffling their feet, and this meant that they were getting fidgety from the century-long moments of not speaking. They were looking around at each other, clearly trying to determine who was the most upset with their teacher for not letting them talk to one another. They were looking at the clock every few seconds to see if their time was up, even though they knew that looking at the clock wasn't going to make it move any faster. This meant that they were allowing their hopefulness to cloud their judgment.
It was these little hints that were subtle only to those who didn't bother to look for them, that made people so interesting. And Mori would seek out the silence to try to find these hints, because he liked to be able to know what people were thinking just as if they were saying it to him, and still here the 'tick-tock' of the clock, and the 'fwshhh' of the breeze. Because these sounds were beautiful and unique to anyone who chose to think of them as such, and he had no intention of drowning them out with forced, unnecessary talk.
But right now, Haruhi was clearly in pain, and he couldn't tell what she was thinking. And she obviously had no intention of telling him what she was thinking. And for the first time in a long time, Mori was fearing the silence.
"I know that you're angry with me."
"Of course I'm not angry with you. Why would I be angry with you?"
Why was she asking him such difficult questions? It had been a long time since someone had asked him to explain himself. People normally accepted that he wasn't going to say anything to them, and they tailored their questions accordingly. They asked him things that could be answered with one syllable, or didn't need to be answered at all. He didn't often hear the word 'why' directed to him. It had been so long since he had been asked such a question, that he had forgotten how to answer it. He went stiff and remained silent, and couldn't help but wonder what she really expected his answer to be.
But of course, she had known that he wasn't going to say anything, hadn't she? She didn't really want him to answer her. She just wanted him to think about it. She wanted him to think about exactly what it was that had made her upset, because she wanted him to understand what he had done. But while she was saying these things that she knew would make him think about it, she must have made herself think about it more than she wanted to, because she was crying more freely now. And it was killing him.
"Haruhi, please stop." he begged, his desperation momentarily eclipsing his emotionless veneer. Because he couldn't stand here and watch her cry over him, as if on the inside, he wasn't crying his eyes out over her. He wasn't as strong as people thought he was.
She didn't stop, but she was trying. And Mori doubted that this was because he had told her to. "Senpai, why did you leave?" She still hadn't turned around to face him, and he wasn't sure if it was because she didn't want him to see her crying, or because she just didn't want to look at him. "I wish you would have stayed long enough to say that you don't love me. Because it's worse that you didn't think I even deserved a response." Her voice was getting louder and louder, and she was clearly getting less sad and more angry. And finally she spun around and looked straight at him, and he was almost thrown off by the way her eyes demanded an answer.
He stared down at her and impressed himself with how he managed to keep his calm consistent, but he must have opened his mouth three or four times before he finally decided what to say. Words had always been difficult for him to come up with, but it was important that it this very moment, he chose the right ones.
"I can't lie to you."
Then he turned around to go back to the club room, ignoring her inarticulate protests. Because once he was gone and she stood there by herself for a while, she would start to think about it. Because Haruhi was a thinker. She wasn't one to brush something off if she didn't quite get it. And he suspected that it wouldn't take her too much thinking to realize that she really didn't need any more explanation than that.
"Do not walk away from me again." The voice that snuck up on him from behind sounded almost like a growl. Haruhi didn't growl very often, and she'd certainly never growled at him before. "If you can't lie to me, then don't. But not lying and telling the truth are different things, Mori-senpai. If you love me, fine. If you don't, I might be able to live with it… But you need to turn around and give me a straight answer because I will never be okay with not knowing."
Mori had been stiff with fear since she had mentioned telling the truth. He did not talk, if he could help it. He did not openly demonstrate his feelings, if he could help it. And she was asking him to talk about his feelings, and it was just not a good situation for him. But he turned around anyway, because they both knew that she deserved an answer.
"Mori-senpai, do you love me?"
"Ah."
He had repeated that syllable so many times throughout his life, but somehow, saying it now was the hardest thing he'd ever done. But the worst part was that all the effort he put into getting that one word out didn't seem to pay off the way he would have liked it to. Because now, hearing him say that word wasn't going to make Haruhi rush into his arms from across the hallway. Maybe if he'd said it the first time, he would have gotten that kind of a reaction, but "Yes, I love you" wasn't going to be good enough for her anymore. Not after all that. Because she wasn't going to be satisfied until she understood what the last week had all been about. Which meant that he was going to be hearing the word "why" more than he ever thought he should have to hear it, in the next few minutes.
"So why didn't you tell me that before?"
One.
"I… was afraid."
"Why?"
Two.
Mori took a deep breath. "Because I love you."
"Why did th-" But he took another loud, deep breath to cut her off. She was never going to understand what had happened, because he was never going to be able to figure out how to explain it. And even if he did, she still wouldn't understand. He would think she was being an idiot. He probably was being an idiot. But he still believed in why he hadn't admitted his feelings for her from the very beginning. And he was trying really hard not to change his mind, but she wasn't exactly making it easy for him.
She sighed, and started to walk towards him. "I guess it doesn't matter," she muttered. And Mori said nothing. She continued to walk towards him, until they were no more than a foot apart.
"Haru-" And that was when it happened. Her arms locked around him and he raised his up into the air as if he was afraid to touch her. She was hugging him, but he was relatively sure that they had been in an awkward situation not too long ago. He hesitantly lowered his arms and placed his hands awkwardly on her back.
"Haruhi." And she pulled away.
"Mori-senpai, I don't think I'll ever understand what's going on with you." She smiled softly. "But maybe I won't have to."
"Ah…"
She walked past him and towards the club room, leaving him to turn around and stare at her in confusion. She didn't look back. She just kept walking, so he followed her, and then he passed her, and walked in before she did.
"Mori-senpai! Did you speak to her? Is she angry? What did she say to you?" Tamaki pounced on him the second the door opened, frantically asking questions in the hopes that one of them would illicit a positive response. Hikaru and Kaoru looked equally (but not quite as vocally) interested to hear about his encounter with Haruhi in the hallway.
"She is coming."
"Takashi! I saved you your cake!" He turned his head towards the table where he had been sitting with his cousin, and sure enough, the freshly-cut slice of cake that he had left there when he went to follow Haruhi, was still intact, surrounded by plates adorned with nothing more than crumbs, since Honey had made short work of the rest of the cake in his absence. "I ate the rest, but I left yours because I thought you might want to eat it when you got back!" he exclaimed, grinning.
"Ah." And Mori sat down across from Honey. But the remainder of the host club's time in the third music room went by as it always did, and Mori did not so much as nibble at his cake.
--
"Ah, Haru-chan!" squealed Honey as Haruhi stepped back into the third music room. "Are you feeling less upset now?"
She smiled and nodded. "Yeah, I'm feeling a little better now. Thanks, Honey-senpai."
"HARUHI!" Tamaki rushed towards her and grabbed her hands, bombarding her with questions and apologies, and she tried to keep track of all of it as Hikaru and Kaoru's voices joined his. And as she was assuring everyone that she was okay, and hadn't left them forever, she couldn't help but steal a glance at Mori. She wasn't sure exactly where they stood at the moment, but for now, maybe that was okay.
After all the anticipation and wondering, and overwhelming feelings leading up to now, it had finally ended, not with a bang, as she had hoped it would. But what surprised her was that she was okay with that. Because a bang would be loud and obnoxious. And what had happened was more calm and less disturbing than a bang, but it wasn't absolute silence. This was something that she had to remind herself of.
She looked at Mori, and she smiled. Because it was over. All the crying and sulking and hating him and hating herself, was over, even though she knew it would still be a long time before she could consider her relationship with him anything in the neighbourhood of normal. There was still a long road ahead of her, but as far as she was concerned, her world had ended. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
A/N: Please note that even though I've pretty much wrapped up the story, IT IS NOT COMPLETELY OVER YET. There will still be an epilogue, which will hopefully be up within the week. So don't go running off just yet, okay kiddies?
