"I am sorry Kyoya," she mumbled more to herself than for Kyoya to hear, but he stopped anyways and turned around.
"Don't worry about it," he gave her a small smile. "I will think of something."
She pursed her lips in response.
"See you," Kyoya nodded and left.
It was very hard for Haruhi. After graduating, her life didn't go as planned. Her father fell ill, and she stayed in Japan to take care of him, instead of taking the opportunity of a good scholarship to a distinguished law school abroad. The illness ate him alive, and Haruhi withered herself, looking at her dad's suffering and pain. Everyone moved on. They would come and visit her at first, but soon they all went abroad to study, and she stopped seeing them. She got calls from Tamaki, but then over time those calls and messages became more scarce and stopped eventually when he started dating a supermodel heiress.
Mori and Honey did occasionally sent her postcards. They were busy with their family business and tournaments and didn't have time to visit her or call her, but soon those postcards and letters stopped as she was forced to move to an even smaller apartment after her father's funeral and didn't give anyone her new address.
She didn't keep in touch with the twins either. She would see news about them on TV, and the fashion magazines were all about them. They were rarely in Japan, constantly traveling for fashion shows and different fashion galas.
Haruhi didn't blame then one bit. She herself did a poor job at reaching out to them or trying even to keep up. Her father's illness and eventual death had made her withdraw further into a pit of self-pity and depression. Her life had fallen apart, and it was hard for her to get back together. She had numerous part time jobs since all of them were temporary, and she needed something else lined up to make sure she was getting steady paychecks to make the rent, the utility bills and have enough money for food and necessities.
She hadn't dated a single person in the last eight years. And now at the age of 24, she was broke, single and with no aspirations in life, running from one errand to the other. She had no desire or hope to change anything about her life, because she simply didn't have the time to do so.
Refusing to help Kyoya was very hard. After all, he was the only person from her high school friend group who had truly been there for her and kept in touch with her even when she moved away and didn't bother letting him know. Kyoya studied at a prestigious university in the States and while getting his law degree, he always kept in touch with her, calling her often enough to remind Haruhi that she had a friend, but not frequent enough to be a constant presence and nuisance.
He was there when Ranka died and helped her with the funeral even when she insisted she could do everything on her own. Kyoya was polite enough to keep his distance, but observant and kind enough to help her when he saw that she needed the help despite the protests. Their friendship never grew further, but it never died as it did with everyone else.
After landing a comfortable role at his father's company and then steadily raising to an executive position, Kyoya offered to find her a better job at the company with good pay that would allow Haruhi to escape the economic prison she ad locked herself in and wasn't able to get out. She refused, not wanting a job through a connection, even though she knew that was how everyone got where they were; through connection and luck and rarely with sheer talent.
She sighed and tried to think of something else to make the feeling of guilt go forgotten. She knew she couldn't have agreed to that. It was uncomfortably surprising that Kyoya of all people, reserved, cool-headed Kyoya Ootori, would suggest such a ridiculous, childish scheme. Pretending to be a random stranger's girlfriend on the phone to shoo away unwanted ex she could do and forget about it, but to lie to powerful people about her identity and commit to a relationship of several months, she wasn't insane enough to pull off such plan.
Even though she was poor with no life or name to put her face out there, she had been in the same school with a lot of privileged kids no more than 6 years ago. She did change, but she wasn't sure she changed enough for none of them to recognize her, and if she pretended to be Kyoya's girlfriend, she would run into people she knew from school. They all ran in the same circles.
She shook her head as if to tell herself that she made a sound decision, and there was nothing to feel guilty over and grabbed her bag. Making sure her uniform jacket and the nametag were there, she walked out of the apartment and locked the door behind her. She needed to take the bus and then walk some more to get to the cafe where she worked at. She already felt exhausted.