It's amazing what you can hide, just by putting on a smile~
Chapter 6: 'Cause You Believed
Today is Friday, but tomorrow will be Saturday.
I won't break down today.
Tomorrow? Yes.
But today... no.
I used these words to coach myself as I exited the classroom, trying to act as normally as possible, as if nothing was wrong. I knew I would be an emotional wreck the next day, but I also knew that mourning too much the day before was excessive and would interfere with my studies.
You're strong enough to keep yourself together through the day, Haruhi, I tried to convince myself as I made my way around the groups of students socializing in the hallway before the next class started.
I was walking a little too swiftly past a group of girls, and I realized when I heard the giggles that I had just brushed past a group of host club customers.
I won't break down today, I told myself again.
"Haruhi-kun!" they cried in unison from behind me.
I took a deep breath before turning around and then flashed them a smile. I felt a little guilty that there was an ulterior motive behind my smile- to keep them from knowing that anything was wrong with me. I was, of course, happy to see them, so the smile wasn't a complete fake, which helped my conscience only very slightly.
"How are you today, Haruhi-kun?" the tallest one asked with a cute little grin. I recognized all three of the girls as Tamaki-senpai's regulars.
"I'm happy to see all of you," I replied. "Tamaki-senpai truly is lucky to get to spend time with you ladies at the host club."
They all squealed a little, and the blond one said, "Oh, Haruhi-kun, you're so cute! If you'd like, we could visit your table too!"
"Yes!" the third one agreed. "I'm sure Tamaki-senpai won't mind if we request you just one time."
"That is very kind of you, ladies, but Tamaki-senpai is much better at handing out compliments, and you all deserve that sort of flattery," I said, causing them all to blush even though I hadn't intended to. "Plus, I would hate to see him sad at not getting to spend such precious time with you three, even for just one hosting session," I said truthfully.
"Oh, Haruhi-kun!" they all said, tears welling up in their eyes.
"You're so kind and considerate!" the tall one exclaimed. "If it is your wish, then we will continue to designate Tamaki-senpai."
The other two nodded fervently, and my mouth pulled up into a smile again.
"Thank you very much. Well, I must be heading off now. I will see all of you later," I said quickly with one last smile before I turned and walked away.
They are very sweet girls, I thought with a sigh.
I picked up my pace but didn't get very far before I nearly ran into another customer, this time one of Mori-senpai's quiet but loyal admirers.
"Oh, hello, Haruhi-kun," she said shyly. "You were walking fast, is everything alright?"
"Oh, yes, everything is okay. Are you heading to lunch now?"
"Yes, would you like to walk with me? We can sit together if you'd like," she said nervously with her soft voice.
"Ah, I'm sorry," I apologized. "I'm not going to lunch today. I hope you can forgive me. I would love to sit with you at lunch on another day, though, if you would be so kind as to allow me to."
"Of course!" she said, looking a little surprised. "Of course, you are welcome to sit with me any day. I look forward to it, Haruhi-kun."
"Thank you so much, then. Well, I'll be off now," I said, turning quickly away.
"Are you sure everything is alright?" she asked, causing my steps to come to a halt.
I looked back over my shoulder at her and gave her a soft smile, "Yes, everything is fine."
She blushed at seeing my smile and then gave a quick nod before rushing away. As soon as she was out of sight, I rubbed my temples with both hands and tried to breathe normally.
It hurt me to smile. It hurt to try and push back the thoughts that were threatening to consume me.
"Haruhi! There you are! Let's go to-"
Hikaru and Kaoru stopped mid-sentence when they saw me. I hadn't seen them before they called my name and didn't have the chance to quickly regain my composure and try to pretend that I was okay.
They instantly enveloped me in a hug at seeing the look of distress on my face. There was no point of trying to shrug them off as if the hug wasn't needed, so instead, I just leaned into them. They seemed a bit taken aback at this unusual return of affection.
When they let go of me, they bent to examine my face and asked, "What's wrong?"
"I have a lot on my mind at the moment," I answered vaguely. "I just need to be alone for a little while to think about things. Please, go on to lunch without me," I said, a hint of pleading making its way into my voice.
They looked ready to protest when I offered them the last bit of a smile that I had in me.
Kaoru's eyes softened, and he asked, "You really just want to be alone right now, don't you, Haruhi?"
I gave a little nod, and although he still looked hesitant, Hikaru said, "Fine, but promise that you'll talk to us later about it, okay?"
Surprised by their calm response, I nodded again as my pulse sped up and said, "I promise."
I meant it.
They both wrapped me in another hug, this one tighter and quicker than the first, and then they said a goodbye and walked away.
When I entered the third music room, my private refuge, I closed the door gently behind me. I was going to take a seat by the window, but I only got halfway across the room before I had to stop. Now that I was completely alone in the large room, my composure was failing me even more quickly than before.
As soon as the word 'alone' made its way across my thoughts, the tears welled up in my eyes, but I fought them with every ounce of determination I could muster.
"I am not going to break down today," I told myself yet again, this time aloud.
My spoken words, however, seemed to trigger the opposite of the desired effect as my tears multiplied and threatened to spring from my eyes.
My mind barely registered the sound of a body bursting through the door before I heard his loud, sing-song voice calling out to me.
"Oh Haruhi, my dearest daughter!"
I groaned quietly despite myself, and, glad that my back was to him, I raised a hand to hastily wipe the tears out of my eyes. My stomach twisted into a multitude of knots as I gritted my teeth, trying to put myself back together in record time.
"Haruhi! I saw you coming this way and wondered why you weren't heading to lunch! Of course I had to follow you and see if everything was okay," he proclaimed, much to my dismay. "Daddy wouldn't be able to forgive himself if anything was amiss with his favorite daughter!"
I wiped the moisture off of my fingers and onto my pants as inconspicuously as possible.
He took my silence as his cue to keep talking. "Are you eating properly, Haruhi? Why are you skipping lunch today? Did those evil twins poison your food? Is evil Mother stealing your lunch money to pay off your debt?"
"No," I said suddenly, ending his tirade of ridiculous questions. He obviously had no clue about what was actually troubling me.
After taking a few deep breaths, I decidedly turned around and said in a less hostile voice, "The twins and Kyoya-senpai have done nothing to stop me from eating properly, Tamaki-senpai. I'm just not very hungry today is all, and I wanted to spend my lunch period alone here to think quietly before my next class. There's no need to worry."
And with that, I dug down deep and unearthed another smile that said that I was okay.
Hikaru and Kaoru, although somewhat disarmed by it, hadn't fallen for this smile.
Tamaki did not fall for the smile either.
As soon as the smile appeared on my face, a look of utter confusion crossed his.
He strode over to me and placed his hands on my shoulders, surveying every inch of my face closely as if he would find some sort of answer there. As I realized that it would not be easy to keep myself together for much longer, the smile slipped from my face.
"What's wrong?" he asked, his voice uncharacteristically rigid.
"What do you mean?" I asked in forced monotone.
"Daddy just saw his beloved daughter give him a fake smile, and his heart broke," he said plainly, although it made my own heart give a painful throb. "He wants to know what unthinkable thing caused his precious daughter to taint her beautiful smile."
He saw right through my smile. He saw right through me.
"I need to sit," I told him, looking away from his prying eyes.
Stepping back away from him, I heaved a long sigh and then plopped unceremoniously onto the marble floor.
"Haruhi!" he cried in horror. "Don't just collapse onto the floor like that! Here, Daddy will get you a chair!"
Instead of grabbing one of the many chairs that littered the room, he ran to the largest couch there was and painstakingly pushed it toward me. When he finally got it over to me, though, he couldn't seem to coax me into making the simple effort of rising and taking the proffered seat.
I couldn't move. It took everything in me just to breathe in and out. I had reached my limit. I couldn't hold it in any longer.
When he finally realized that trying to get me to sit on the couch was no use, he dropped to his knees in front of me.
"Haruhi?" he said lightly, concern written all over his face. He surveyed my face once again, and as soon as I saw the heartbreaking tears welling up in his eyes, a sob tried to rise from my throat. I choked it back down, emitting an odd, strangled noise in the process.
"It's okay, let it out," he whispered.
Following his advice, my composure finally shattered, and I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around him, the hot tears pouring from my eyes as soon as my face hit the front of his blazer. I grabbed fistfuls of the back of his blazer, my arms around him in what I'm sure was a painfully tight hold. As I felt five long, tentative fingers wrap around my arm comfortingly, I tried to keep my sobs quiet.
We stayed there on the floor for a while, with him completely silent and only moving once in a while to wipe away a stray tear that had escaped his eyes. My tears streamed unheeded for far too long, but I let them have their way, not knowing what else to do. Something in my stomach was writhing painfully, there was an infernal ringing in my ears, and I was trembling uncontrollably. Even so, I could hear his little sniffles and feel his labored breathing as he tried to not also fall apart, which made my own hurt grow.
When my tears finally slowed a little, he quietly asked, "What's wrong, Haruhi?"
By then, my intentions of hiding behind a smile were long gone.
"Mom," was all I could manage to choke out at first, but, to my relief, he just nodded in understanding before I had to explain any further.
After another stretch of weighted silence, I managed to speak again in broken little phrases, "I want... I want to be just like her. She always... worked so hard... but there are days... there are days when I don't think I'll ever measure up to her... I'm afraid that I'll end up letting her down..."
With strain in his voice, he said, "Haruhi, there are days when I think that you are even more insane than the rest of us."
I moved my head back for just a moment to look at his face and found that he was, in fact, serious.
"That's not even possible," I told him humorlessly, not even bothering to question his motive for saying such a thing.
He gave a small, sad smile and said, "You're crazy if you think that you're meant for anything less than your dreams."
Not having a response and not wanting him to see the emotion washing over my face, I quickly situated my head back where it had been before on his chest.
"Haruhi," he began gingerly. "I never knew your mother, but... I know that she's proud of you. Every time your name is at number one for first year students and every time you stay awake for hours studying and every time you give someone that true smile of yours that brightens the room, she is proud of you."
The tears started coming out faster again as I contemplated his words, as I thought about my mother up in heaven looking down at me, as I felt the guilt rise from having given those untrue smiles...
I started shaking my head violently against him.
"No, I'm not as strong as her," I half-whispered. "She endured so much. She always did her best without needing anyone else's help. She always loved with all of her heart and never... she never faked a smile, even when everything seemed to be falling apart."
"Strength is acquired over time and with trial, Haruhi, and you're already so strong," he said with conviction, but I just shook my head again. "No, it's true, Haruhi. And love... love is acquired in the same way, I think, going hand in hand with strength."
"Over time and with trial," I repeated quietly to myself, musing over the words.
"You... you don't have to hide your hurt from me, or from the others," he said shakily to the top of my head. "We all... we all love you so much," he said, his voice breaking by the end of his sentence.
I gently closed my eyes as I took in the words that were so paralyzingly true.
He took a quick, deep breath and went on, "You're strong and amazing and beautiful. You're her daughter, Haruhi. You have her strength. You've always had it. She believes in you. Ranka-san believes in you. Your friends believe in you. Now all you need is to believe in yourself."
As his words bore themselves into my mind, I reached out and took his free hand in mine. He had been about to say something more, but he was distracted by my action and faltered for a moment.
"Did you hear me, Haruhi?" he asked, regaining his conviction. "You've had all the strength to make it through all along."
I hesitated at first but then nodded against him, and the room went quiet again.
I finally pulled away from him and sat back, miraculously able to look straight into his bright, sad eyes without falling to pieces.
"I want to believe in myself," I confided in him, my voice small as my tears slowed.
"I believe in you, Haruhi," he said gently, yet with unwavering confidence. As he said this, the last tears slid down my face, and for some reason, I let him reach up and cautiously wipe them away.
I tried to say something in response to affirm that I knew what he said to be true, but my breath was caught in my throat, so all I could do was nod slowly and hope that he understood.
Later, when he was dropping me off outside of my classroom, he gave me a warm smile and said, "Stay strong."
He had given me permission to skip host club later on that day as well as the next day's host club get-together at the Morinozuka estate. I was incredibly grateful for his understanding. I was now confident that I could make it through the rest of the school day.
"I will," I told him, and then suddenly, a completely genuine smile took over my face. I couldn't have held it back if I had wanted to.
He stopped breathing for a moment, and his eyes shone as he looked down at me.
"There it is," he said softly, his voice filled with recognition and relief, before crushing me in one last hug.
This chapter was also very difficult to write, but thanks to a thinking session while I hand-washed the dishes and Demi Lovato's song "Believe in Me," I was finally able to come up with the premise of this chapter.
Of course, this story is not over yet. That would be too easy. The next chapter will offer some alternate points of view, and the final chapter will wrap things up.
Please do review and tell me your thoughts. It means the world to me. :)
-Skye