The song from the last chapter was 'Kiss Me Slowly' by Parachute. It sounded romantic and awesome enough for Tama to excessively sing. Yep. And now for the ball!

Kyoya POV

I had held balls in extravagant ballrooms, beautiful courtyards, restaurants with significant additions, and lavish hotels. However, I'd never held a ball in a high school gymnasium.

The experience wasn't that much different: there were still ribbons floating around, guests to sweet-talk, dresses to be ordered, DJs to find, things like that. But this was my goodbye party. Hold a ball on November 30th, and expect to have your heart broken.

"Kyoya?" someone asked. I turned around to face them with a smile, but it fell from my face when I saw who it was.

"Hello, Haruhi. What do you need?"

She wore a curious expression. "Am I required to dance at this ball? I technically don't host, so I was just wondering."

A sly grin popped up. "Of course you must dance. It's a sign of sophistication and exceptional grace. Why, do you not know how?"

"Answer your own question."

"I would be happy to teach you. Half the boys in this school have a crush on you anyway, might as well indulge them with a dance." She stared at me in shock. How did she not know that?

"They watch you walk down the hall like you're a goddess. You have uncountable good qualities, it's no wonder the boys are enamored with you." The corners of Haruhi's mouth twitched up, but they didn't stay.

"I'll meet you in the clubroom after everything's done." When she had kissed Tamaki on the cheek, she left to go eat lunch. I collapsed into a chair unhappily. I didn't want to leave her, and I didn't want to be distant from her, but it would really hurt me if I didn't begin to close myself off again. Tamaki walked over to my prostrate form and plopped down next to me.

"Did you get any sleep at all last night? Were you just thinking about Haru-nee?" Tama asked.

"Have I ever gotten consistent sleep? And when do I not think about Haruhi?"

"Touche." He shifted the collar of his shirt to cover up a mysterious red mark on his neck.

"What is that?" I asked, having a pretty good feeling about the answer.

"Um, I don't know, maybe it's like a bruise or something." Oh Tamaki, you were such a bad liar.

"So, you didn't have an amazing makeout session with your rather good-looking boyfriend after your date." Tamaki blushed extremely dark.

"I refuse to answer that." He was trying to look tough and unbreakable, but he was failing miserably.

"Ah. I'll get back to the planning in a minute, just let me sit here." Tamaki patted me on the head and headed out the door to lunch. I occupied myself with some boring, trivial things until the time was up and I had to go back to class. I didn't see Haruhi again for a while.

When school ended, I went to the clubroom again to host. Hosting made me tired, but I let it go because I probably would never be able to host again. The girls noticed my quietude, and questioned it plenty, but left me alone when I gave them a little smile. Apparently, when I actually smile, which is almost never, it's very attractive, judging from the loud squeals coming from the corner of Music Room Three.

As soon as everyone evacuated the room, Haruhi gently shook me. "Come on, you need to teach me instead of sleeping."

"But I want to sleep," I whined drowsily. She pulled me up by the hand.

"You sound like Tama."

"So what, I'm tired."

Her face, having been already soft, softened further. "You didn't tell anyone that, did you?"

"Of course not. Why would I tell people I have a weakness?"

"Being tired isn't a weakness," she murmured.

"You are a weakness. That's why this is so damn hard. I am weak and it's all your fault."

Haruhi pulled me up, with absolutely no mercy at all. "Teach me to dance or I'll inform your father you refused."

I glared at her. "You know, there's a reason the twins call you the shadow king," she remarked.

"I'll teach you to waltz, but that's it." Haruhi grinned slightly, but there was sadness in her eyes. I am so sorry, my love.

I walked into the middle of the floor, shoving couches away as I went to give us space. "Alright, I'm going to put my right hand on your waist and my left hand out, while you put your left hand on my shoulder and your right hand out." Haruhi did what I asked, but when I went to put my hand on her waist, I shuddered at the feeling of her skin. I was way too far gone to be saved.

"The music is rather boring sometimes, but the steps are simple. You, as the female, will always start by stepping back with your right foot first. Then you step out with your left foot, and then you step your right foot to your left." She stumbled over her feet a little, but soon she got it. "Now, to go forward, you just do the same thing as I did the first time: step forward with the left, side with the right, and together with the left." Haruhi caught on faster that time.

"Now, we need to do this with music." I separated from her to grab my computer and put I on the table, playing a pretty typical waltz from the 18th century. "May I have this dance?"

"Yes, of course." I held out my hand, and she took it, the fingers of her other hand brushing over my shoulder. "Start by going back. One two three, one two go." As we began to dance, I unconsciously pulled her closer. Soon we became so used to being with each other, the dance felt graceful and light. I'd never felt that way about any of my partners before. Everything usually weighed me down, but Haruhi didn't. And why would she?

We knew the song was about to end, but neither of us stopped moving. To any outside observer, we must have seemed like a single body, circling and undulating in the almost completely set sun. Our shadow was getting longer and longer as the window darkened. As the final notes rang out from my computer's speakers, I turned Haruhi until her arms were crossed over her torso and my hands held them in place. She and I didn't speak for a few moments, Haruhi's back pressed against my chest, and my chest pressed against her back.

As we stood there, I really really wanted to kiss her on the very top of her head, but when my lips were not far from her head, she turned and I ended up grazing her cheek. She didn't look surprised, merely melancholy, like she was remembering better times, but the exact memory was beyond her reach. "Do you have something you need to tell me, Kyoya?"

I spun Haruhi out of my arms and let go of her hands, trying to stifle the noise of distress that came with being separated from her. My legs moved, much to my heart's disapproval, away from Haruhi, to the door. I turned around and replied coldly, "No, I don't need to tell you anything."

Haruhi POV

The hours until the ball happened passed relatively quickly. Okay, that was a total lie. The time moved slower than honey in the cold air. My father kept trying to find me one of his dresses to wear for the ball, but the problem was that most of his closet was entirely flashy and expensive. It wasn't like me at all. In my closet, which was more low-key, hung a dress that used to be my mom's. The last time she'd worn it was when I was five years old. The dress shimmered an iridescent white, had an empire waist, was sleeveless, and went down to my knees. When Mom wore it, the dress was mid-thigh. A small bow planted itself on the line that marked it an empire-waisted dress. There was exactly one reason I wore it; I wanted to wear something of hers, as a memory that I didn't want to let go.

Tama came over from his barren apartment wearing one of my dad's tuxedos. His hair was as messy and unkept as usual, but his eyes were shining. He couldn't wait to see Nekozawa-senpai and dance at a party. Nii-chan had simple wants, and they made him into my beautiful brother. He would have an amazing life, experiencing everything he could and making as many mistakes as humanly possible. For some odd reason, I was in a sentimental mood. That reason's name happened to be Kyoya Otori.

I didn't want him to go.

I never wanted him to leave.

If he had to leave, I was coming too.

With those resolves in my mind, I put my hair in a twisted updo, grabbed a coat, grabbed Tama-nii, and left the house.

The roads were covered in snow on the way to high school. The sky was dark and obscured by clouds, not a single ray of starlight showing. Tama talked almost nonstop as I drove, excited to a ridiculous extent. I was prepared to say something and make him go into his depressed corner, but neither of us needed that right then.

The parking lot was crowded, full to the brim with cars. I had to park a block away from the school. We entered a side door because we were in the host club. The first people we saw were Hani-senpai and Mori-senpai. "Hello!" Hani said happily. "Guess who's back from the hospital?"

"I'm so glad you're okay." I hugged my very tall older friend around the middle. "So, what did the doctors have to say?" I asked Hani.

"Well, his brain is healing fine, and there's no really bad irreparable damage, but he won't be able to speak more than a few words now and again for maybe the rest of his life. But that's alright, because I'll love him forever." My senpai blushed, the first time I'd ever seen him do that. Hani looked triumphant, and kissed Mori-senpai on the corner of his mouth, rising up on his tiptoes. I swore Hani had shrunk a couple centimeters since I last saw him.

"We'll see you inside," Hani-senpai said cheerfully. He took Mori-senpai's hand and led him into the dark interior of the gym, made visible by a door opening. When Tama and I stepped through it, the first thing that struck me was the elaborateness of everything. It was so Kyoya, the careful decorations, the meticulous detail. He had done this with all the thought as he put into anything else, except I could see differences. Kyoya had put light blue ribbons on the walls, my favorite color that I didn't tend to tell people. It must have been a coincidence.

Tama was the one to see the masks in bins near the people's entrance. "Don't tell me this is a masquerade and you forgot." Tama's voice was indignant, as if I had robbed him of an important opportunity.

"I did forget. Sorry." Tamaki huffed and rummaged around until he came out with a gold eye mask. With a flourish, he disappeared into the crowd of dancers, twirling about to the newest J-pop song. I picked a turquoise mask out and slipped it on, not expecting to feel like Cinderella, masked and wearing a dress magicked up by the fairy godmother known as Mom. All I needed were some glass slippers.

When I dove into the huge group of people that had shown up to the Host Club's event, I felt incredibly stifled, so I found a chair by the punch bowl and just stayed there. Everyone that passed by me whispered about the dark-haired club member that had accepted all dances and captured the hearts of every female and some males in the area. Over a longer period of time, I began to hear more about the blonde, foreign-looking boy that had revealed himself to be even more of a Prince Charming-type than he usually was during club hours. I knew Tama was treating the masses like he would have treated Nekozawa-senpai. Hani-senpai, being his adorable little self, was spinning around with all the girls, Mori-senpai standing protectively nearby. The twins danced back to back, circling with their partners. And there I was.

I decided that some punch couldn't hurt, especially since I was doing absolutely nothing and using my lazy part of my personality. As I went to grab a glass, I noticed a couple boys from Class H pour something from a flask into the bowl. Coming a bit closer, I could smell the alcohol. I sighed. Even a party held by completely not deviant boys had spiked punch. There went my grand idea to drink the red juice.

I missed Kyoya. He would have had me tempted to dance with everyone, even though I was so terrible at dancing, it would have made a baby cry. Kyo would never admit he felt claustrophobic, but he'd find me and he'd feel better. Oh shit, Kyoya was claustrophobic. I stood up to go find him, because it would suck for him to feel like that before he left.

The masked people all over made it hard to identify the one person I was looking for. There were too many freaking dark-haired people in Japan, plus the addition of the masks, and the uncommonness of everyone in dresses and suits.

Eventually I got lost in the middle of the pulsing group. For a few minutes, I was stagnant, but I followed some girls back to the punch bowl soon enough. Falling ungracefully back into my chair, I considered asking the DJ to tell Kyoya where to go so we could find each other. But someone changed my mind.

"Is this punch spiked?" a muffled voice asked, dressed in a tux and black mask that left his lips uncovered.

"Do you really want to know?" I replied.

"Of course. Is it spiked or not?"

"Yes. I know who did it too, if you need that information."

He shook his head quickly. "Can you get me a cup?"

I cautiously ladled a small amount of red juice into a plastic cup, which he handed back for more. When he thought there was enough, he took a large gulp, made a strange face and took another gulp. "So what if none of us can drink this legally, it's useful every once in a while."

"For what, exactly?" I didn't trust this random guy that had come to the punch bowl to just drink alcohol.

"I need to drink away my unhappiness for one night."

"Amen," I replied. "Be my drinking buddy for tonight." I grabbed a cup and filled it to the brim. I felt an urge to do something stupid. Experiences of all kinds, right? At least I'd be entirely truthful about everything, unlike Kyoya, who insisted that we had nothing. I loved him, I lost him, and here was a depressed stranger that had similar problems. This would work for just one night.

"Now, tell me the whole story."

For some reason, it's easy to imagine Haruhi having a drinking buddy. Maybe I'm just insane. Don't worry, nothing bad happens to anybody next chapter. This chapter is a two-parter. I might be a really good person and write the next chapter over the weekend. Or not. Love y'all!