AN: PHEW, wow you guys are really supporting this story full force. I am almost on 40 different alert lists!!! I am posting as fast as I can, my beta Monedameow, who is stellar fantastic, must be getting sick of how many times i email her in a week. I have hit some snags on the way. Your reviews are causing me to look into and rewrite parts of my story that were...lacking? We are now past the half way mark on the story! Once again thank you all for you comments nothing cheers me up like waking up to a mailbox full of comments. You folks make me want to keep writing! Once again, Ouran High School Host Club isn't mine, i just play with it.
Of Respect and Friendship
Chapter 5
From that day on, they agreed to meet at the same park that she, Huni and Mori went the night she had learned about the bet, everyday after school. They choose the park so Haruhi's fellow students wouldn't wonder why someone who had graduated two years ago was picking her up. Even though it was Haruhi's last year at Ouran she still had not informed her class that "he" was really a woman, and because everyone thought that she was boy she had not yet announced her marriage to her class.
She didn't care if the students knew she was a girl, it was never really a concern for her. The only thing that prevented her from saying anything was her fear of how her classmates would react to her lie. She almost regretted not telling them the truth her first year of School. Now she known all of these people for two years and if they found out she was lying to them the entire time she had no idea if the would be okay with that or if she would be rejected.
Haruhi found herself thinking about this and how to tell her classmates, more and more often. And these thoughts were interrupted during her last class on Monday by an invitation to see the chairman. It had been a week since she had seen Kyoya, and she had not forgotten his warning about Mr. Souh. Yet the invitation to see the chairman didn't scare her.
She was actually expecting it. She had been meeting with the chairman since she entered Ouran High School, always at the start and end of every semester. She had not seen him yet this semester. When they did meet their meetings were never serious. He always flitted about her asking how she was doing and that making her promise to call him uncle, something which she never did.
She walked calmly to his office, looking out the tall windows as she walked down the hall, trying to act like this time was no different then the others. Even as she tried to act normal, she was tucking her wedding ring, which was on a chain around her neck, deeper into the collar of her uniform.
She knocked softly on the huge set of white double doors and heard a small voice cry enter.
"Haruhi come sit down" said the voice of Tamaki's father.
She crossed the threshold and stepped into a huge room that was the opposite of Mr. Othori's large office. Where Mr. Ohtoir's office was bright and endless, the chairman's office was dark with only a few stained glass windows letting eerie colored light filter in. Taking a deep breath Haruhi sat down across from the blonde haired man smiling softly at her.
Any thought that anything would be different was washed out of her head when he started asking her the typical questions. He wanted to know how where classes and how was her father, and how she felt she was doing this far at school. They chatted casually and Haruhi was almost confident that the interview would be a success until she heard a question she did not expect to hear.
"And how is Takashi doing?" the older man asked her casually, as if it was a topic discussed causally like the weather.
She looked up eyes wide, breathing in quickly.
"Excuse me?" was all she could manage, hoping that she had heard him wrong.
"I said 'how is Takashi?' Or have you already forgotten about your husband?" he asked her in an overly friendly voice that was bordering on sarcasm.
"I know my husbands name," Haruhi recovered quickly "I just wasn't aware that you did."
"Ah yes, well, I wouldn't have known, expect for the frantic call I got from my son this morning, long distance from France, claiming the virtue of his dear daughter was at stake to a ruffian. He asked me to look into it for him, which I did, and, to my surprise, he was correct. The confirmation on your marriage broke his heart; he was hoping to marry you, my dear. Despite how you hurt my son, the ironic thing is that, you really hurt yourself even more."
An empty laugh came from the normal smiling face of her blonde mentor.
"You see the sad thing, Morinozuka Haruhi, is that by getting married you forfeited your scholarship."
Haruhi sat as silent as a stone. As her world slowly started to crush in on her she heard the man across from her chuckled. It was if the world had stopped moving for a moment, she sat completely still, frozen, then after a moment of this utter stillness, her mind and heart beat started to rush forward, as if making up for the time they had been frozen.
"What? I am sorry, I don't understand" she stuttered, her logical mind was searching desperately for an answer.
"Well, it's really simple actually. As an aspiring lawyer this is a very good life lesson. You see, the contract you signed, stated in the clause that you were a student in need. A special student as we like to call them, an amazing mind with no financial abilities to speak of to pay for schooling, and a rather dead end situation ahead of them. You are a prime example of that type of student. Well, by marrying you changed your statues, and stopped being a dependent on you father. Thus you are no longer entitled to the scholarship."
He smiled an almost wicked smile at her, watching her with her mouth slightly open and her eyes wide in horror.
"Of course you do have a couple of options. You could transfer to the public school in the area, or find another source of educational income or... divorce your husband."
Her eyes which had drifted to the floor shot up to look the Chairman. The man in front of her wasn't the kind man she spoke with before, or the caring father of one of her really good friends. He had turned into a very ugly person, she didn't know if he was acting this way because he wouldn't be winning his bet, or because she had broken his son's heart.
"Well, it is Monday and I will give you until Friday to make you decision. After Friday you will be dropped from the school and no longer be considered a student at Ouran High School, if you stay married that is."
Somewhere in the background she heard the school chimes ringed signaling the end of classes.
"Oh my, well you'd better be going; school is over for the day. Have a good week Morinozuka Haruhi, and hopefully it won't be your last one at Ouran." He said as he slowly stood and walked out of his office, not looking back at the young woman he left sitting in his office.
She could feel her eyes start to water, 'No, I will not cry here. I won't give him the satisfaction to know that he is hurting me'. She grabbed her bag and walked away with as much dignity as she could muster. She remained cool walking through campus, waving when other said good bye to her. She stayed calm until she was off school grounds where she broke into a run, trying to get to the park as fast as she could.
Takashi was sitting on his favorite park bench (which happened to be the same park bench that he comforted Haruhi on almost three months ago). He sat there, watching the wind blow through the trees, waiting for his wife. He thought about how his life had changed so much since then; he almost didn't recognize himself. Now he had thoughts and worries he would have never imagined having and passions he never felt before. He was eternally thankful to the young woman who brought him all these feelings, and he wished there was something more he could do for her than just try to be her protector. Deep down he knew she could take care of herself, but that she let him help meant the world to him.
His mind was busy thinking of something nice to do for Haruhi, when he was roused from his thoughts by the sound quick footsteps, he stood up quickly ready to intercept whatever was coming his way, but he never expected this whatever to have arms thrown around him.
They were the tiny arms of his wife; she wrapped them desperately around him, as if he was the only thing keeping her from breaking into thousands of little pieces. Haruhi did not see his shocked reaction because she buried her face deeply into his chest and wept.
Once Mori regained his senses he protectively put his arms around his wife's small frame, trying to offer her as much comfort as he could.
"Haruhi," he said trying to get her to pull her face out his chest. "Haruhi what is wrong?" He felt a rush of uncontrollable anger at the idea someone might have upset her. "What happened?"
His heart was beating faster than it ever before, he needed to find out who hurt her. She cried when she found out she was being used in the bet, but those were tears of frustration and angry. Now she was crying as if someone had been killed. She was reacting as if a part of her had been ripped away. He didn't know how those thoughts were not that far off from the truth.
"Th…they t...t…took it away." She stuttered into his chest. She was breathing in short erratic breathes and Takashi could tell she was starting to hyperventilate.
"Haruhi," he said calmly rubbing her back with his hand. "You need to breath. Breathe deeply, slowly. Please."
She tried but she was still to upset. She just ended up choking on more air
"Please. Please breathe with me" he whispered urgently to her. As if she noted the urgency in his voice she set her head against his rising and falling chest. Mori starting to breathe deeply himself, her head against his rising and falling chest caused her to catch onto his rhythm and she slowly calmed down, tears still rolling down her cheeks.
When she was breathing normally, he was worried about asking her what happened again, not knowing if she would start to hyperventilate again, but he knew he had to ask sooner or later. So he picked up where she left off.
"Haruhi, what did they take from you?"
"My scholarship… my dreams" she whispered into his chest sadly.
Mori quickly looked down; unsure if had just heard what he did.
"What? Why?" Inside his heart he was hoping for a mistake, an error, a miscalculation.
"Because…because I am married" she whispered again into his chest.
Takashi, had always been even a man who kept a cool face, it was something he was very proud of, something that brought him honor in his family. Even when he kept a blank face he still felt emotions as deeply as anyone else did. At that moment he felt his heart drop down into the pit of his stomach. It felt as if his heart stayed in its new location and it old spot was instead filled with a pin cushion. As if a thousand pins that caused him pain in a new way to remind him that this was his fault. He did everything he could to protect her, and instead he ruined her future.
The sadness he was experiencing didn't stay too long before guilt arrived, and with that guilt, the deep rivers of rage started to set in.
"They can not do this" he growled into Haruhi's hair.
She nodded into his chest "Yes they can, my schooling contract was only withholding when I was a dependent of my father, but now that I am no longer attached to him in that way, thus making my scholarship as his dependent, null and void. Mr. Souh gave me a few options; I can go to public school, find a new method of payment or file for divorce." The last three words she whispered, as if hoping he wouldn't hear them.
Yet he had heard her, and his heart, for all of the intense and unfamiliar pains he was feeling today, felt like it had stop. While it was true they had only been married for a month, the tiny women in his arms had, oddly enough, worked her way so completely into his life he didn't think he could picture living it without her.
The two stood in silence, her head flush against his chest and his chin resting on top of her head, looking out into space. Neither moved, they held onto each other as if would be the last time they would see each other. Even when they felt the chilly winds of rain start to blow, they stood there. Not until the rain actually started to fall did they let go of each other. Their unspoken agreement to remain in their embrace caused them to walk home in the rain which neither seemed to notice, both had their heads full of thoughts. Mori had protectively draped his arm around her shoulder, and hers was around the small of his back, as they walked with heavy hearts and busy minds.
Their mutual silence carried on through the rest of the evening. Not a word was spoken as they sat across from each other and ate dinner, nor when they both sat down to study. They both pretended to be engrossed in their studies while neither of them actually looked at their books.
Mori was ridden with guilt, he looked at his wife. 'She is my wife' he reminded himself and that even though she might not be for much longer, he decided that he would enjoy addressing her as that while he could. He wouldn't blame her if she left him; he was convinced that what she was debating wither she should or not over in her head right now.
What Haruhi was debating was far from divorcing Mori, that of all of the options was the least likely to happen. She was happy to be married; for once she was living in a stable situation, no longer worrying if she and her father were going to be kicked from their apartment for not making rent. She didn't have to think about bills anymore, it was no longer her reasonability to make sure they got paid. While she liked her knew stable home, she also really liked her stable husband.
Takashi was what she needed. Her father even thought she loved him, was never there, and was never the adult. Tamaki was too much like her father for her to have ever felt any romantic feelings for him. The twins were selfish, and she knew would have taken advantage of her. Kyoya would have manipulated her, and Huni well was Huni, and she could have never agreed to marrying him because he was to much like a little brother. Yet her husband, he was so unlike the others, it made him even more special to her. Haruhi cursed the Souh family for using such an obscure loop hole on her.
The rest of the evening passed in silence. The quiet was finally broken when they both were laying in bed yet neither one was asleep. Haruhi was lying on her side with her back to her husband, staring off into nothingness, with a blank mind. While Mori laid staring up at the ceiling his mind full of plans to help his wife.
Of all the plans and courses of action he had thought they could take there was only one that seemed worth mentioning out loud to her. He felt that it solved two problems, the first one was what to do about the Souh family and two, what he could give Haruhi, to thank her for becoming his wife and changing his life. So as softly as he could, he broke the silence.
"Haruhi," he whispered to the dark. "I'll pay for your schooling"
At first he thought she was asleep, because he heard no noise come from her. But he was proven wrong when she rolled over and looked at him with shock.
He sat up and put his forehead in his hands, muttering to her "Haruhi, this is all my fault, I was so eager and ready to protect you, that I caused all of this. It was me, and my readiness to marry you that caused you to lose your scholarship. We could have figured out other plans, other ways to get you away from those two families, but I wanted to help you so badly that I caused you to lose what you want most, your dreams and ambitions. I would understand if you left me."
His last sentence hung in the air. Instinctively Haruhi wrapped her arms around her husband's midsection, smelling the clean sent of him after he showered.
"Please Takashi, please. This isn't your fault. You need to know that. You really are protecting me, and helping me. We thought of many different plans but my marriage to you was the best plan. As far as I am concerned divorce is not an option, I feel that they are trying to make us choose that route. Making you feel bad and causing me to blame you. But I won't, Takashi. I don't know if I could live happily anywhere else but here with you. Beside I haven't lost my goals or ambitions, if anything this has made them stronger."
He smiled through his hands at her. Thinking to himself 'That is my wife, always determined'
"But" she continued "I can't let you pay for my education. It is just too expensive."
"Haruhi please, let it be my wedding present to you. I know some women expect expensive jewelry, others want pieces of art. Well let me give you something priceless; let me help make your dreams come true. We'll enroll you under Morinozuka Haruhi, next week after they drop Fujioka Haruhi." He looked at her hopefully as he told his plan "Please Haruhi" he said softly, looking at her "I could never forgive myself if you gave up on your dreams because of me."
Haruhi sat there looking at her husband. His face, to a person who wasn't used to being around him would have seemed blank, but his eyes were so active with emotion. 'He really wants to do this for me.' She thought to herself. 'He really wants me to reach my dreams.' She smiled at him softly.
"Thank you Takashi, thank you so much."
He smiled a smile that reached his eyes when he heard her accept his gift. They laid down together her head on his chest listening to hear his heart beat. It wasn't long before she had fallen asleep, with all of the pressure suddenly off her mind she realized how tired she really was, and sleep claimed her quickly. Her Husband on the other hand, laid awake a little longer, his mind too active for rest.
"Haruhi" he whispered to the sleeping girl. "I would do anything to protect you and your dreams…I…I love you"
Takashi closed his eyes. He felt better now that he had said that one sentence that he had been wanting to say for the last month. As he drifted off to sleep, he wished with every inch of his being, that he had the courage to tell that he loved her when she was awake.