As the light from the bay window illuminated the textbook of Modern Japanese Law, Haruhi understood that to signify her mother in heaven watching from above, encouraging her to keep pursuing her strongest desires. She picked her head up and adjusted her glasses, resolved to keep going. "I love this subject," Haruhi said, pleased with newfound optimism as she flipped the page onto another assigned section.
"Yeah, I do too." Takashi Morinozuka stoically concurred, sitting across from her at their study spot in the library with reading glasses adjacent to his near-sighted eyes.
"Nice to know I can look forward to it for the next two years, right, Mori-senpai?"
"Mmm..." He kept his eyes down, fixated on his book before him in hand.
Haruhi was beaming as she glued her eyes to Mori, feeling accustomed to his presence. He had a calming effect on her and for that reason, half the time, she didn't need his help in understanding the concepts she was being taught by often rambling professors. Despite the advantage of his seniority over her, which meant experiencing and passing the classes she was in now with flying colours, Takashi was merely used as moral support for her schoolwork.
Except for one class. "Come on, Mori-senpai. How do you say, 'the defendant is liable for the damages caused to the plaintiff by disregarding duty of care'?" Haruhi had bid to her demoralized classmate sitting across from her, head inches away from crashing into the table below him. It had taken her minutes to complete her last assignment for her previous class, so Haruhi began the work for French as part of their shared elective before she felt the need to retire for the day.
"I...I...Le défendeur...est...est responsable...est responsable..." The rest of the words became garbled in his head as he conflated translating Japanese to French and what Haruhi was studying minutes earlier into relevance for the overarching curriculum. It was, in part, the lack of cohesion with the rest of the Pre-Law curriculum that made him not prioritize the subject in the first place. His eyes became all twisty, and his mouth began to undulate from the stress of the thought of failing again. In truth, the subject mostly overwhelmed him.
"Are you alright, Mori-senpai? You're usually so composed." Then it came to her, her eyes narrowing. "Don't tell me international languages are your weakness."
"It isn't instinctive." Takashi's brows furrowed with the honesty he gave her, head raising slightly in hopes that she'll take some pity on him.
Haruhi smiled, and she lowered her head to the side to characterize an aura of warm understanding, relating not to the struggle of learning but to the acknowledgement that he, too, had to earn things through hard work. "You can't give up and fail this course again like an underachieving halfwit."
Takashi's forehead climatically thumped onto the mahogany table.
Her hand had settled on his head, stroking gently. "It's okay. It's okay." Reassuring him and the concessive reasonings behind their choices for taking the course came to mind once more.
The Host Club had disbanded in her second year of high school, which should have meant a dream come true of peace finally after a horrible year of forced unpaid labour—slavery—yet Haruhi couldn't honestly think like that. She found it was a shallow dream to have after all the time spent and connections she had made through the club. With the hosts, the girls, and the other clubs acknowledging her thanks to their club's reputation of being invasive, good samaritans, she couldn't ignore the positive and permanent effects it had on her. As a result, she was quite popular even after she got rid of her uniform and went back to her shaggy looks. Adapting to never being allowed self-allocated isolation, she found the benefits of studying in a group as multiple minds working out the same questions resulted in a much shorter time spent on homework and much more time studying to perfect her understanding. She couldn't argue with that mathematically sound notion.
One persistent downside to being well-liked was the en masse outpour of concern when she and Tamaki had unfollowed each other on social media, not even gracing each other with cordial conversation at school. At first, Haruhi thought he ignored her to respect his grandmother after she reassured him that she'd be okay. She thought she had understood what his intentions were, but then his dilemma had spiralled out of orbit at the hands of his father, Chairman Yuzuru Suoh. The matter was left entirely for the family to fix with little intervention from outsiders. It was too bad the main issue that mired the familial powerhouse unit was poor communication. She figured that out as much and tried to influence the new head of the family, Yuzuru, to talk to his mother and son about how brutally he had shattered their hopes and dreams. Haruhi would be lying if she said she believed to have gotten through to him, but Haruhi almost prayed that she was coherent enough for him at the time to reflect on her words later on. She couldn't tell as much when Tamaki had returned to school after missing many days at home with his grandmother, tending to her heart. He looked to have gained back the weight he lost and wasn't forcing a smile and his signature radiant, sparkling aura. All that was missing was a smile, or a glance, a word even otherwise to her. It was infuriating.
By no means did it reach the level of bile Kyoya one day spewed at the chairman to advocate for their president, but she felt it was pretty close as Hikaru helped her acknowledge her feelings for Tamaki. Back then, he believed that if she confessed her feelings for him, he might return to his usual self, even for a moment. She doubted her influence over him and questioned the integrity of that suggestion since Tamaki's situation wasn't about her or her feelings. Though, she couldn't help but compartmentalize that idea Hikaru had implanted the more days went on with Tamaki not even seeming to care whether or not she was breathing.
Some more excruciating days later, Haruhi caved and pulled an unsuspecting Tamaki off to somewhere secluded, much to the delight of the squealing fan girls who caught sight of them finally interacting. There she mustered up the courage to finally say it, with all the anger and fear culminating into a passion. "If no one else in your family will say this, I will! I love you!"
Tamaki's loose, stylishly uneven bangs fell over his eyes, she noticed, but she couldn't determine the tiniest hint of a reaction on his face. "Excuse-moi? Qui es-tu, petite fille? Es-tu perdu? Ton papa te manque? Pauvre chose. Tu ne peux pas dire des choses bizarres à des gens comme ça, d'accord?"
Haruhi ran away screaming.
After a night of what seemed to be endless crying and body aches that left her restless, Haruhi reconciled her amalgamation of feelings as forced indifference. That's when she had chosen to ignore the stereotypical blond much to the encouragement of her peers, who didn't think their expectations of him could be any lower. That's how Tamaki's jumping in front of her by their shared friend group wasn't stopped a minute earlier than it should've by a teacher in the courtyard when he had chosen the next day to begin speaking to her again, as if nothing had happened.
So why did she take French of all language electives despite her past traumatic experience strongly associated with a currently and traumatically half-French, begrudged friend? Maybe because Takashi had taken it and logically, it'd make sense to emulate and get tutored as needed by someone with a high A-level grade point average, but that was the reasoning before she found out he failed second-year French of all classes. It made her wonder where Tamaki was and what he was thinking about.
"Ta-ka-shi! Haru-chan! Am I interrupting something?" Mitsukuni Haninozuka interjected suggestively. Behind him on his right was Reiko, his wife, flailing hand gestures as a supporting greeting.
"A little, Hani-senpai..." Haruhi started, but Takashi cut her off.
"Mitsukuni, not at all." Takashi said.
Honey's eyes closed as his smile reached them, cupping his face. "I want to share the cake Hani Reiko-chan made me!"
Haruhi smiled half-heartedly, thinking if he is so adept at love that he was the first one to get married, then why couldn't he take the hint that she might want to be alone with the man she's fallen in love with?
A/N: Haruhi didn't tell anyone about her true gender as she didn't care to reveal it. Haruhi doesn't do much to convince anyone of anything anymore and does whatever she feels like, though still identifying as a girl. People find out she's a girl slowly, rumours spread and now there's divisions of people who believe she's a girl and people who believe she's a boy, both divisions believing she cross dresses as she dresses as either gender on whatever day she feels to. Everyone uses the honorific of -kun for her however.
This story takes places after around chapter 75-beyond, canon divergence.