Sorry it took forever!
The next chapter will be a bit longer, yeah?!
Please enjoy!!
xoxo,
Spoons
Crybaby!
...Chapter Two...
Tick Tock
Sitting in the plush chairs, surrounded by several handsome men, it was easy to be unnerved.
However uncomfortable I felt though, I managed to suppress it, taking a sip of the tea provided and watching as they surveyed me like a bird on display.
"Perhaps…in order to best assess your predicament…" the one with black hair, the one called Kyoya, began to speak, clicking his pen against the clipboard he held in his hands. His leg was crossed sharply over the other and his glasses weren't catching the light anymore, allowing all the smooth expanses of his skin to show through the thin black frames. "…it would be best if we could get to know you better." Tamaki-kun nodded along in agreement, looking at me with something akin to innocent excitement.
"Yes, please do Princess Hoshiko. You seem like a very interesting girl." I blushed a little at the name and put my cup down carefully, hands folded in my lap.
"Well…where would you like me to begin?" I asked quietly, to which Kyoya sighed, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a flex of his long finger. When I am with this boy I feel as though I am a subject for test; some kind of experimental drug that should properly trialed before being given over to the general public.
Delicately handled, but with enough force to react. I have this intense feeling that this boy would be an excellent doctor…or at least a pharmacist.
"At the beginning preferably." He said dryly, breaking my thoughts. I bobbed my head in accordance, fingers fidgeting.
"Well…I've lived here all my life…" I started, still unsure. Kyoya wrote something down quickly and looked up at me, face unreadable.
"Your parents?" He asked curtly and I blinked. More writing; chicken scratch, slurred characters. Short-handed for methodical and personal use; he is a very, very practical young man I realize suddenly as he scribbles.
"My parents are never home." I responded, almost automatically. "My Father is away on business often and Mother…Mother doesn't care for me very much." The one to my farthest left, Haruhi, looked troubled.
"How is that possible? You're her child aren't you?" I could feel my face twist into some kind of smile and I tapped my hand methodically on the wooden arm of my chair, tracing the patterns etched into it.
"Yes. I am…but, Mother and I are very different. She finds me a pest, but I suppose it's true…anyway, she never really stayed around when we were younger, and now she almost never sets foot in the house. Whenever she does, she only gets bothered and ends up yelling, so it's better I suppose."
Haruhi looked so severely unconvinced I could only blink.
"That's no excuse…." He said with force, and then, as if recollecting a dream she looked off to the side, "A child should always be with their mother. It's the best thing." Suddenly, one of the twins batted his hand into the air.
"Don't mind her. He has a Mother complex." He said
"Hikaru, that is hardly the way to talk." Tamaki-kun reprimanded, leaving me to continue staring at each of them in turn. Kyoya's brows knitted together for a fraction of a second, like for one brief suspension in time he was very weary of it all until he turned to the four of us on one side of the seating arrangement, eyes flitting towards Haruhi.
"Haruhi-kun," He said, stressing the suffix, "It isn't as rare as you might find for an upper class family to have certain levels of," He paused, weighing his words. Tamaki-kun was looking sadly at me, his face friendly, but still sorrowful. Kyoya blinked, "courteous detachment. With the surplus of servants and other such, it would be inconveniencing for most parents to waste time bonding with their children, as is the case with your own I assume, Hoshiko-senpai." I nodded surely, agreeing with totality that made my insides heat, but ignored patiently. It was simple; it was just the way it was at my house.
"Sister took care of me when I was little. She and I were very close." I said, the smile I tried to hide behind a façade of indifference creeping back across my face. Sister was a delicate topic these days; She had gotten married, and I, I had stayed behind.
"What of now? Do you still speak often?" I shook my head.
"Sister grew up a while ago, and I suppose I'm still getting there!" I laughed, but the sound came out far more bitter than even I would have expected, hanging in the air above our heads and clouding my thoughts for a few moments. Kyoya clicked his pen again.
"I see." I woke from my temporary daydream and picked up my cup. He surveyed his work carefully, adding this and that, pausing to wipe away a speck of something on the white corner of his sheets. "Hoshiko-senpai, this may seem forward but, is there any tension in your household? Any internal conflict that could produce such a …violent… reaction." Kyoya chooses his words so carefully; he weighs them all the same though, his voice completely and utterly even as he asks the one question I've never been asked in my entire life.
"Basically," he clarifies, as if I am not understanding, "I wish to know if there is any kind of emotional trigger that perhaps has tied itself to Mori-senpai. He's obviously done nothing to hurt you, and though your explanations of your admiration of him are logical, it doesn't seem out of the question that something else entirely could be causing this…" He stops and looks at me, nudging at his glasses once more. He smiles gently, but the very bottom of his eyes squint just so; the scientist is merciful to its subject, but only when it complies.
I can't find the words I want to say; they freeze to my tongue and I'm left standing.
"No one's…no one's ever asked me …" I whisper softly; eyes sift to me and Kyoya only places his pen delicately on the surface of his note book, his eyes mesmerizing, like those of a snake.
He waits, as if baiting the trap.
"Of course, you realize, this is all to help you in the best ways we can. We never do anything half way, Hoshiko-senpai." Suddenly, I jump as Tamaki-kun, his face nervous, laughs slightly.
"Kyoya, honestly!" He starts, running a pleasured hand through his beautiful blonde hair. His eyes close as he stands, holding his hand out to me, "Did he scare you? Sorry!" He laughs, this time a little easier. I blink and put my cup to the side, the china clinking as I realize my hands are shaking.
"Yes." I say, "Of course…our time is up…"
That night, wrapped in my bed, hair spread across the pillow, I can only reanimate the conversation with the snake-like boy. He is so dangerously charming; and I realize slowly that I have never allowed myself to let someone wheedle their way so far down without my permission. Somehow, Kyoya was about to make me say things I'd never dreamt of saying with only a few words. It frightened me.
Was I really that transparent? Was it all so easily apparent that I wasn't as solid as I seemed? I'd always been aware my insides were the soft, tender, easily pulled consistency of cotton. The same empty fluff that comprises stuffed animals…but I'd never had someone almost pull at the seams of my careful stitching before. Not without my understanding, and I certainly hadn't understood at the time.
My eyes squint shut tightly and I bury my head into the pillows and blankets with a heavy sigh, the city lights just barely leaking in through the crack in my drapes. I smile slightly to myself, pushing the scary thoughts away.
Today, Kana-san arranged for my dinner again; I'm too nervous to ask myself, but Kana-san, she seems to understand that. She smiles at me a lot, and calls me 'Hoshiko-chan' and brushes my hair for me after I get out of the tub.
Kana-san is the newest servant we've had in a very long time, or so she's said. She's very young, and very beautiful, and took me very much by surprise.
One day, after I had returned from school alone, she was there, waiting, watching me with very intense scrutiny and after a moment of staring at each other she broke into this huge smile.
"There's no way!" She laughed, coming up to me, all the other women who run our house peeking around from their places, out of sight, "There's no way someone as adorable as you could be as spoiled as all these women say!" With a heavy blush (the heaviest I've probably ever had), I stumbled over my words of intense gratitude, but Kana-san only waved me off with another one of her blinding smiles.
"Now, I hear that you like Soba noodles, is that true?" I stared at her trying to understand. Was it a trick?
"I…b-but only on New Years!" I cried, and Kana-san in her pretty little uniform only laughed.
"We have this whole big house to ourselves! Who says we can't all have Soba! You like it don't you? And you're the Madame of the house, so what you say goes!" She looked at me, her dark eyes glistening. I swallowed. No one, no one had ever greeted me like this before.
But Kana-san, she always greets me when I get home now. She always goes on about how my parents are awful because they never spend any time with me, and while she brushes my hair she asks about this and that, and talks about her fiancé 'Kiku-kun' and all sorts of things, like how one day she wants to be a singer at a big hotel in New York City.
Kana-san, she makes me smile so much my mouth hurts sometimes.
The other women in the house don't typically talk to me. They, like my Mother, find me a pest, and spoiled. Mura-san especially; but Mura-san doesn't really like anybody. She has a very formidable face and very tightly-wound grey hair and she walks very quietly. She has a tendency to sneak up on me, and in a house full of no one, this is quite an easy task, especially if I'm absorbed in something.
Another little sigh comes from my lips as I think about my large and empty house, quite aware I am the only one in my family occupying a bed that night, for the third week in a row. Father came home briefly, a two day stop before going to California when he returned from Seoul. Business is going well, or so he tells me, but Father tends to be dishonest around me. He brought home so many new dresses I thought my closet was going to explode.
Papa always brings home something for me, beautiful, priceless things. He always brings them and puts a card (because often, I do not receive them until after he is gone due to shipping).
'For my favorite daughter.' That is typically what Father puts, and I always smile, and thank him profusely over the telephone, and then he disappears into his business suits and friends and I do not see him for weeks, sometimes even months.
When Papa looks at me, he always looks guilty.
When Mama looks at me, all I see is something called contempt. She shouts a lot, and when I was younger she didn't like it when I touched her. She would bat my hands away and hand me over to my Sister. The funny thing is, I love Mama very, very much and for the life of me, I could never really stay away from her. I always latched onto her dress or tried to hold her hand or climb into her lap. Anything to be close to her. She smelled nice and she was always so pretty.
Mother is very beautiful; she is the most beautiful woman I think I've ever seen. She has slanted eyes and glossy brown-gold hair, the shimmery color of tortoise shells. She has always looked so young, and when they stand next to each other, she and Sister look almost like twins, and not a Mother and Daughter. I don't look like Mama at all. I look like my Father, and something else; I believe my Father's mother, even though I've never met her. Mother wears designer dresses and burgundy lipstick and when I see photographs of her she stops smiling around the time I turned five. Before then, Mama always smiled very wide at me and called me "Hoshiko" and dressed me up like a doll when Sister was at school.
But somewhere, Mama stopped smiling and Papa stopped kissing her when he came home from work and they both started traveling and leaving Sister and I together in our very big house. I went to school; I met people like Naomi and all sorts of friends. I met Takashi. But until she left, I always loved Sister the very most of all. Sister was always there, no matter where Mama or Papa may have been. She was always there, and Sister promised me, when I was very, very little that she would never leave.
"Hoshiko, do you know I named you?" My eyelids start to droop as I recall the conversation; the same story I begged her to tell me whenever I got the want for it, like some children cling to a blanket. Sister, who smelled like flowers and sunshine would sit next to me on my big bed and braid little sections of my hair.
"I named you Hoshiko because I know that Mama had a baby that died. A little baby boy, but then God gave us you! He gave us a little star-baby to replace the one that Mama lost." I can remember so well, the feel of the blankets luring me back in time when it was just Sister and I and nobody else. Not even Takashi-kun.
"So I named you 'star child', just so I could remember. Mama even let me, just like she lets me take care of you and dress you up and play with you! Mama doesn't know you're a star-baby yet Hoshiko, but that's ok, because I'll always be your Sister." I loved that story; I loved knowing I was a gift for Sister. A gift from God, or a star, or whatever she decided to call it.
I loved to know I fit in somewhere; that I was there for a reason. On my nightstand, I can barely see the burgundy ribbon hanging from its hook in my jewelry box, the one that hasn't left my head since my first day of kindergarten when Mother insisted I get a haircut. My hair had been cut so short all I could do was cry, especially when Sister looked at me and laughed and said I looked like a little boy.
But Sister fixed it.
"See Hoshiko! You're the cutest one now! And everyone else is going to be soooo jealous because look what your Sister gave you!"
The ribbon's satin surface caught a streak of light from a passing car or something else and I fell asleep, remembering Sister and the way it felt to know I was a star, the clock on the wall ticking and ticking until I couldn't hear it anymore.
The question from earlier rang out through my head...and suddenly, I found the answer.
Sister too, had found me just a pest in the end.
Takashi woke with a jolt.
It had been a while since he'd slept so hard, but then again, it had been a long time since he'd thought about her. She was the one with eyes like black slate, hair the deep color of tortoise shell and that way of looking through someone when she spoke to them.
"If you see that child…"
Mori's eyes narrowed a fraction, recalling the conversation that had occurred so long ago he'd practically forgotten it. It was the only thing he'd ever truly been asked to do outside of hosting…and why he continued to do it was still beyond him.
With a silent breath, he lay back, collecting his thoughts, organizing them patiently until all the components fit back together in their proper settings. The woman and her hawkish smile and her strange, strange words (so surprisingly tender) settled back into the shelf on the back of his mind.
He was already beginning to forget again, the dream dissipating at the odd hour of the night.
Still, the feeling lingered. Why? Why did he continue to do what he did? He wasn't forced, he hadn't even been properly asked at the time.
It had been more like a silent expectation though…something he felt as though she'd know if he ever stopped. She'd know and he'd be subjected to the eyes that looked through him when they'd spoken.
'Perhaps…' he thought drowsily, sleep pulling insistently on his brain, dulling the sensation and lulling his aching muscles. He'd trained especially hard today; he'd been rather distracted as of late, and somehow, knowing that the Host Club was speaking to her without him being there made him feel uneasy.
She wasn't too good with people…
'Perhaps Tamaki read the situation…' He continued, mind sifting as his eyes pulled shut, finally.
Perhaps it was seeing her face when she cried, and slowly realizing that those tears did not fully belong to him. That they belonged to someone else, probably many different people…but it wasn't so much even that. Maybe it was because she still remained convinced that they were his tears; that she was still too lost in the lies to understand that she didn't cry for him that Takashi still looked at her and couldn't be so angry as he was hurt.
But not really for himself.
Perhaps it was seeing a woman like that ask him to do it.
The one, unforgettable little sentence hanging like a tapestry on his brain.
"If you ever see that child…be kind to her, tell her that she'll be alright, because I can't be her Mother anymore."
Kyoya you cunning you! (And Tamaki, you do know how to phase out awkward moments my darling love!) I feel as if I can never write an honest Kyoya, even though his development as character in the actual series has proved him otherwise!!
So we see that perhaps Takashi's obligation is more of...well, an obligation than just him being his wonderful self.
Did you catch the allusion to Anime episode 13? Whoever can find it gets something special!
And Hoshiko mama-drama! But wait? Who was the real speaker?
xoxo,
Spoons