Chapter 2: Starting Today, Mai is a Host

Mai opened her mouth to say something to Kyouya. She wasn't used to talking so much and wasn't sure what to say, but she got saved. The door opened and the teacher's head peaked out.

"I'm ready for you now."

Mai ad Kyouya walked inside as Mai subconsciously fixed her scarf. As she sat down in the styling chair, the teacher examined her hair.

"Oh, dear, did you cut your hair yourself?"

Mai stuttered, which already seemed unlikely for her to do. "U-u-uh yeah."

"This is why you should never cut your hair by yourself. It can be very sloppy, Miss- uh, I don't think I caught your name, Miss-''

"I'm Mai."

"She's new here. Just came to Ouran Academy today," Added Kyouya.

"Wow! And you've already made friends!"

Surprisingly, Mai winced at that. So maybe she did show some emotions? Hmmm…

In half an hour, Mai's hair was finished. Kyouya pulled her aside.

"There are probably lots of people outside. I'll go wait until the coast is clear, and then I'll come get you. If they see you're a girl, they'll never believe our club again. And I'll also warn- I mean tell the hair stylist not to mention you're a girl."

"Alright," Mai quietly responded.

"Good."

Kyouya slipped outside. 10 minutes later, he came back in.

"Wait by the door. I'll go talk to the teacher."

Ten minutes later, Kyouya was back. He seemed to do everything in 10 minute periods.

"Let's go," he said.

Kyouya and Mai walked back up to the music room to find all the club members running around. But not all of them were doing something useful. In fact, none of them actually were. Hikaru and Karou were chasing Tamaki, singing:

"You're such a pervert

No one ever likes you

You're such a pervert

And a stalker!

You stalk Haruhi all day!

You're such a stalker

No one ever likes you"

While Tamaki was screaming "I'm not a pervert! I'm NOT A PERVERT! I'M NOT A-HEY! I'MNOTASTALKER!"

And in a blink of an eye, Tamaki was in a corner of moe. Meanwhile, Haruhi was saying basically to herself, "Damn these stupid rich people."

And Mori-sempai was running around all over the place, just to give Honey-sempai and Usa-chan a ride on his back. Kyouya looked at all this as he and Mai walked in and just sighed. He pushed up his glasses with two of his fingers and opened his black notebook, which he always seemed to have with him. Suddenly, Tamaki jumped up and started talking in an I'm-in-charge sort of way. He seemed to get over his sadness VERY fast.

"The ladies are coming in 15 minutes!" Tamaki announced. "We need to get Mai set up. Remember everyone; Mori-sempai changed her name to Mao on the roster, so remember to call her that whenever someone else is around. Oh, hello Mai. You're hair looks better now.

"Thanks," she muttered.

"Hikaru, Karou, her uniform!"

Hikaru and Karou handed her an Ouran High School men's uniform and showed her where the changing rooms were. Mai went into a fancy dressing room and thought to herself as she slipped on black pants.

"What should I do? Some boy I just met already knows almost everything about me and he didn't even tell me he'd keep it a secret. I was trying to keep it unknown. So much for that."

As she put on a white button- down shirt with a black and purple tie, she thought, "Well, he found out because of my shirt. If I don't wear the shirt, will anyone else find out?"

Mai bent down to put on her black stockings and black shoes.

"As long as Kyouya doesn't tell anyone," She reminded herself. "For now, just act like nothing happened. After all, I'm good at that."

Then, she slipped on the blue sports jacket with the Ouran Academy symbol and stepped back into the music room. Haruhi walked up to Mai.

"Our guests will be here any minute. I guess my job is to tell you what to do. Here. We usually just poor tea into these cups for our guests to drink when we talk. We also eat cake. It's Honey-sempai's favorite food. I think. Anyways, girls just request to sit with us, and we sit around and talk about random, stupid stuff. It's actually really boring. I think it's not right that all they care about is good looks. Their goal is to make all ladies happy. I think it's stupid, but you might like it." She smiles.

Mai gives a forced smile back, but her eyes don't change.

"Wow, she looks convincing! Kinda like you, Haruhi," Hikaru says, poking Haruhi.

"Yeah. They sometimes fail to remember I'm really a girl. I hope that doesn't happen to you. It's really annoying."

"Hey boss!" said the twins in sync, turning around. "You're a stalker!" They said happily, running away towards the blonde one to torture him some more.

"You'll get to know these people soon enough at this school. Not that that's a good thing. The girls love drama, and the boys love telling and acting it out. Damn rich people. All they care about is money." Haruhi added as Kyouya, Tamaki, Hikaru, and Karou bragged about the newest, most expensive items they bought.

Tamaki said, "One minute left! Kyouya, turn up the lights higher! Everyone, get in their positions! Look happy. You know what to do. Mai, you can stand in that corner in the dark. Then you'll have a nice, dramatic entrance." Tamaki smiled and then got in his "position" in front of the door.

"Unlike some people who just walked in the room in ugly rags and bags for the host club," the twins just had to add as they looked at Haruhi, thinking back to Haruhi's first day at the club.

"Hey!" Said Haruhi and Mai heard her mutter "Damn rich people" yet again.

As Mai walked to the corner, she remembered what Haruhi had said.

"Oh, so this school is surrounded and fogged up with drama?" Mai thought.

Mai's life was full of drama, she knew, but hated it. She didn't like dramatic things. Other girls might like drama for the attention, but Mai didn't like to draw attention to herself. This made her different from other girls, along with multiple other things in her life.

She hid in the tiny corner, just like Tamaki asked. The ladies finally walked in, and the host club gave them the same greeting they gave to Mai when she first met them.

"Welcome," they said together with big smiles.

All the girls knew where to sit as they sat down with their hosts at the circular tables. The hosts began pouring special types of tea for their guests in fancy tea cups. All the girls were so very loud, especially over at Hikaru and Karou's table, where all the girls were cheering and screaming in delight as the twins held each other closely and whispered to each other. You could almost see little pink hearts and yellow sparks flying off the young ladies as they quickly swayed from one side to the other with their hands up at face level, fingers balled up in fists of happiness and excitement and their eyes were tightly squeezed shut. But when Tamaki stood up from where he was sitting, everyone stopped talking. It seemed he really owned the place.

"Hello, everyone," he said. "Thanks for coming on this lovely afternoon. We actually have a new member of the club, and it would be nice if you could meet him. Mao!" Tamaki commanded.

Mai slowly stepped out from the darkness and all the girls gasped.

"Oh, wow! How dramatic! How… mysterious! Maybe he loves drama?"

Which definitely wasn't the case. A group of girls rushed over to get a chance to talk to "him."

"Hey, Mao. Nice to meet you! My name's Keiko. My family owns a very important cruise company, used all over the world! What does your family do? Oh, and are you knew here? I've never seen you before. What grade level are you in? Oh, sorry. I have the tendency to ramble." Keiko said all very fast, without any pauses.

Mai seems to think about it for a moment. Then she says, "Yes. I came to this school for the first time today as a freshman. I'm a scholarship student." She added.

"Like Haruhi!"

Meanwhile, the twins had stood up and put on matching green hats.

"Let's play the Which One of us is Hikaru Game!" They said as Haruhi walked by.

"That's the dumbest game I've ever heard of."

"What? Have you got a problem with it, Haruhi?" They asked.

"Not really." She replied.

I just don't understand why the two of you are so popular."

"Booo! That's not very nice." The twins told her.

And then Hikaru started his speech to Haruhi.

"Apparently, you don't understand the merits of having twins in the host club. Listen up. Having a couple of good looking guys with homosexual tendencies earns the club high points. It also helps if the two struggle between their attraction and their friendship. And in our case, because we're twins, our relationship is taboo and therefore it's intriguing. Besides, who hasn't fantasized about twins? Having two loves is better than one, don't ya think? It's a young women's romantic fantasy."

"Yes!" The girls screamed.

After Hikaru finishes his speech on homosexual twins with occasional comments from Karou, Tamaki came running back in. He left to go check on the host club website the twins recently created. Tamaki yells at them for posting nude pictures of Haruhi online. Tamaki isn't sure if he likes the pictures, but everyone else does.

"You look great, Haru-chan!" Honey-sempai says.

Mori-sempai lifted him up so he could see over the large crowd of girls that formed when the laptop was taken out. Mai stayed where she was. She didn't really want to see what those pictures looked like. She already respected Haruhi. Instead, she looked up at the ceiling to find a whole bunch of beautiful paintings that she never noticed before. Mai notices a lot of things, but she didn't notice the paintings before because there was too much commotion.

Tamaki finds out the nude pictures were photo shopped, and wants tries to see if Haruhi will have her pictures taken (and photo shopped) with a pink, sleeveless dress that he has. The girls hear him and wonder what Haruhi would look like dressed up as a girl. Tamaki backs of though when Haruhi turns around and glares at him until he's back in line with Hikaru and Karou.

Then, she looks at all of them and says, or more likely, commands, "Now cut it out! And no more making weird pictures of me, you got that? Just what do you guys take me for anyway?"

"Isn't that obvious?" The twins replied. "You're our toy."

Then the boys explained that when they're bored, they need a toy, which is kind of creeperish.

"I'm not your toy, ok?" Haruhi sounded mad at them.

"You want a toy? Toys! TOYS! If you like toys, you should visit my Black Magic Club." A man's voice says through a crack in a huge, black door, which looks kind of odd in a completely light and happy room.

Only his hand with a puppet, his arm, half of his face, covered with a cloak and his hair, and a whole bunch of candles he's holding show. He explains that if someone visits the Black Magic Club, they get a free Belzenef puppet, which is apparently the name of the cat puppet he's using.

"Why is he talking to us through a crack in the door?" Haruhi asked.

"Has that door always been there?" The twins asked.

So, wherever there are questions, there's answer's, right? So, obviously, Kyouya had to come over with his black notebook open, explaining that the man that was talking was Nekazowa-sempai, and he doesn't like brightly lit places. When Tamaki hears Nekazowa-sempai's voice, he gets a scared expression on his face, which Mai notices and decides to pay attention. So, Tamaki walked over to Haruhi and the twins and warned them to be careful around Nekazowa-sempai. Then Tamaki just had to tell his "life threatening story." Last year, he accidently stepped on Belzenef, and all sorts of "weird" and 'mysterious" things started happening. Now, they could all be true, but Kyouya added facts about incidents that happened at the time (using his black notebook of course) to make the whole story actually make sense. For instance, Tamaki couldn't understand the language around him in the class he walked into right after he stepped on the cat puppet. Kyouya's fact was that Tamaki accidently walked into the Greek classroom because he was so worked up about stepping on Belzenef.

"Well, my legs were as heavy as lead, too! JUST HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THAT?"

"You ran a marathon the day before, so your legs were tired."

"Never underestimate the powers of Belzenef." Nekazowa-sempai added. "Just write the name of a person you hate on the back of this wooden Belzenef, and they will be cursed with misfortune!"

The twins were examining a flashlight they just found.

"Hmmm…" They looked at each other with mischievous grins.

"He doesn't like the light, huh?"

They looked at Nekazowa-sempai, who was talking to a scared Tamaki. They shined the flashlight in Nekazowa-sempai's face.

"Ah! You murderers!" Tamaki screamed as Nekazowa-sempai got so close to him as he ran out of the room.

Tamaki was already in his dark corner, and he said something that sounded like, "no dignity."

"Hey Haruhi! Can we come over your house?"

"No way. You guys would just make fun of me."

"I've been thinking about that for a while now too, Haruhi." Tamaki added, standing up.

"No way in hell, sempai."

"We can settle this with a game." The twins said in sync.

"What game?"

"The Which One of us is Hikaru Game!" They said, putting the green hats on again.

"You're Hikaru and you're Karou." Haruhi said, pointing to each twin.

"Uh-oh! You got it wrong!"

"No. I know I'm right. You guys may look alike, but you're very different."

"Wow! How did you do that, Haruhi? Whenever they put those hats on to cover their hair parts, no one can ever tell."

Mai watches this and she thinks, "no one can tell Hikaru and Karou apart? I can. I guess I'm not normal. Ha. Didn't just figure that one out."

Haruhi tells the ladies a speech of how she can tell the twins apart.

"Well, It's kinda difficult to explain but, Hikaru's speech and actions make him come across a little more mischievous than Karou." Haruhi said, and it sounded like she didn't mean to be offensive, but Karou starts laughing.

"It's not funny," Hikaru snaps. "I'm honest, I speak my word, and sneaky people like Karou are troublemakers."

And that's when the fighting started.

I'm sorry this chapter took so long. I've been really busy. This chapter is kind of long and maybe a little boring, but I wrote it to show you readers when Mai starts at Ouran. I based it off of the anime "The Twins Fight" (number four in Ouran anime). I wrote it how I remembered it, so sorry if it's not accurate. The Hikaru speech about being gay is not mine: I copied the words from the anime. I also copied the speech when Haruhi tells the twins apart. I wanted it to be accurate. I put this note here so I don't get arrested for plagiarism. :D