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"So what do you think about the twins fighting?" Kimi asked the next morning in homeroom, "I don't think those two have ever fought before!"
"Me neither…but still…" I mumbled, becoming distant.
"Hello, earth to Senky-chan! Come in Senky-chan!" Kimi said, snapping her fingers in front of my face, "Are you in fantasy land?"
"Huh?" I gasped snapping to the sighed, "No it's just that…didn't the twins' argument seem…well…"
"Well, what?" Kimi asked curiously, eager to know what I had observed.
"It seemed pretty perfect. I mean they shot insults back at each other like they knew what they were doing," I pondered out loud, then leaned in and whispered in Kiki's ear, "I'm not sure about this but it could be a possibility that they're just acting."
"Senky-chan! How could you suggest such a thing?" Kimi hissed in a hushed tone, "These two are having a serious fight in their sibling relationship and you're saying they're doing it on purpose!?"
"Ok, ok!" I said, putting my hands up in defense, "It was just an idea. I'm not really sure but I guess you're right."
Just then, Hikaru walked into the classroom, making all the girl's heads turn in shock.
"Hikaru, what on earth happened to your hair? Why is it dyed pink?" Haruhi asked as he walked up to her with his reddish hair now a bright shade of pink.
"Yeah, really!?" I shrieked, jumping in.
"Because pink suits me, don't you think it's cute?" Hikaru asked cheekily.
I opened my mouth to say something when Kimi elbowed me in the side really hard. She shook her head at me and gave me a glare as if to say, 'don't even think about it!'
"From now on, I'm the pink-haired twin," Hikaru continued on, "I didn't want to be mistaken for the Kaoru for the rest of my life."
As he spoke of his detested brother, who should walk in but his detested brother who also had crazily dyed hair. Kaoru's hair was dyed blue and Kimi had to elbow me again from laughing. The twins had gone a little too insane this time and it was making my sides hurt from trying to hold back giggles.
"I was finally able to sleep all by myself last night," Kaoru told us as Hikaru took a seat, "But I ended up having a nightmare. I dreamt my stylist had dyed my hair pink! It was so garish and ridiculous that I woke up screaming."
Almost as soon as Kaoru finished his joke, Hikaru pushed over the chair Kaoru was beginning to sit in! However, Kaoru avenged his pride by doing the exact same to his twin, thus causing an all-out war of throwing things! While I would've usually laughed and laughed at their fight, I still couldn't help feeling that something was off. During class, there was a lot of tension in the air in front of me: where the twins sat. About ten minutes before class ended, I heard a soft sound of paper and looked down at my desk to see a note.
I thought they'd be too busy festering in their hatred to pass me notes! I thought as I opened the slip of paper.
'Meet me in the first abandoned music room fifteen minutes before the end of lunch.' It read. The writing was in blue.
All the way down to the refectory, I wondered why Kaoru had asked me to meet him, let alone even pass a note when he should've been busy giving his brother glares. I was so caught up in thought that I almost missed out on the twins fighting in sync and pestering poor Haruhi to death.
"Uh, Senky-chan?" Kimi said, poking me with a butter knife, "You ok? You zone out a lot but it seems like something's eating at you."
"Oh it's nothing," I fibbed.
I wasn't sure if the note had implied for me to come alone or not and while I was nervous and would've loved for Kimi to come with me, I wasn't sure if testing Kaoru's patience was a good idea at a time like this. I excused myself from lunch quickly and walked the halls, wondering what on earth Kaoru could want to discuss. When I reached the first abandoned music room, I blew at my bangs and slowly opened the door. The result was actually anti-climactic as no one was in there yet so I made myself comfortable by a dusty window. Barely any light streamed through the mucky glass and the electricity was even out in the room!
My mind began to stray once again while I waited on the blue twin. I thought of how strange it was. At the beginning of the year, I didn't want anything to do with guys but now one was all I could think about and I was pretty worried about boy/girl chemistry. After all, I was pretty sure Kaoru thinking I was jealous of the way he doted on Haruhi was what this was about.
"Senka?" came a familiar voice from the other end of the room.
I turned to see the blue haired twin and he slowly walked over to me.
"So what did you want to see me about?" I asked suspiciously.
There was a very long moment of silence and shadows covered the twin's cat like eyes. He looked as nervous as I did.
"I know you're jealous of Haruhi," he said at last, very seriously.
Knew it. I thought bitterly though I stayed silent.
"And I know you have a crush on my brother," he continued to say, "But I don't know if he likes you back."
I still remained silent, giving him a quizzical look.
"But…" he began to mumble, taking step closer and making me lean back on the window, "you could always love me instead. I'm not as dimwitted as him."
My expression changed to a shocked one. I didn't expect the conversation to go there!
"Kaoru, I don't love you," I said nervously as he leaned in further, his face only a few inches from mine.
"Then why is your heart beating so fast?" he asked in almost a whisper.
By now, I had my hand balled up into a fist and was ready to respond with a knuckle sandwich. When he had me completely flat against the window and I was just about to let him have it, he cheekily smiled.
"You pass!" he beamed, finally leaning back and giving me some air.
"Wait! What!?" I asked, dead-panning (the mood of the room changed from dead serious to 'what the heck?!').
"Just what I said, you pass!" he repeated with that same grin.
"Is this some kind of pop-quiz to you or something?!" I asked aggressively, shaking my fist at him.
"Yep!" he said then became serious again, "I do know that you have a crush on Hikaru but I was making sure that you worthy of him. You see…all the other girls who liked him and I in the past would always answer 'yes' to my question if they would love me or Hikaru instead. When they did, it was a pretty low blow since they didn't really value our individual personalities. They'd see right past who we really were and in the end only care if they got a boyfriend or not. I was simply testing you to make sure you weren't another mindless lover."
"Oh!" I said, realizing Kaoru's cleverness, "But why now?"
"Well my brother and I are supposed to be arguing and if I stormed off from lunch a little early, no one would suspect anything." He explained.
It took him about what seemed like ten minutes of silence to realize what he had just given away. His hands flew to his mouth and blushed in embarrassment.
"'Supposed to be arguing?'" I asked through laughs, "I knew it was only an act! I sensed the slightest bit of script writing in there!"
"You sure are good, Senka-chan!" Kaoru sighed.
"Well I was in the theater for a few years in middle school," I explained.
It was true. I was getting fed up with the bitches at my school so I thought theater might help me vent some of my anger but it just wasn't the same as venting anger through a machine gun so I ended up dumping it.
"Really!? You did theater?" Kaoru asked with a spark in his eyes, "Do you know any Shakespeare lines by heart?"
"O-of c-course not! I was never that into it!" I tried to lie hastily but he only smiled in expectation, waiting for a line.
Finally I sighed, giving in, and pulled out a line from my mind.
"'The more I love, the more he hateth me,'" I recited reluctantly and Kaoru gave an applause that awkwardly sounded throughout the abandoned room.
The line was said by Helena from A Midsummer Night's Dream which was my favorite Shakespearian play.
The Host Club was closed for business that day due to another battle of throwing things between the two twins. I relayed the message that the fight was actually an act to Kimi secretly and although we still didn't know their motives for staging such a thing, we were about to find out!
"Don't you think maybe: it's time to give up all this fighting," Tamaki suggested with an exasperated tone, "It's driving me insane!"
"What did you say?!" Hikaru shot back at 'The Boss', "You've got to be kidding! How do you think I feel right now! Every time I look in the mirror: I see his face! I'm sick and tired of constantly being mistaken for you, Kaoru! The truth is, I hate your guts!"
Even though I knew it was all an act, I heard some genuine anger in that line. It had never occurred to me that the twins would be angry for not being recognized as who they truly were. I already knew a little how they felt. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a girl who liked to break rules, shoot guns, dress casually, and write until dawn. But when others met me at parties and such, they mistook me for Senka Miyazaki: the prim and proper girl who would never do a single outlandish thing in her life.
Finally, Kaoru pulled out a curse doll that he had gotten from the black magic club! Tamaki gasped in terror as Kaoru wrote the name of his brother down on the back of the wooden cat doll. As I waited for another throwing fight to happen, Haruhi ran up to the twins, punched them both on the tops of their hands, snatched away the curse doll, and began ferociously lecturing the two!
"What do you think you're doing!?" she demanded, "This isn't something that you bring into a petty fight! You two better make up right now or I'm never going to invite you to my house, got it!?"
Then it hit me: the twins were annoying Haruhi with this act for one purpose only: to get her into inviting them over.
"So what you're saying is if we make up, we can come over to your house later?" the two asked slyly as the circled Haruhi.
The girl slowly turned the curse doll over to see that 'blank' had been written on the back of the doll and she too learned, along with the rest of the club, that the entire quarrel was just an act. Kimi and I snickered at how long it took them to figure it out. As the host club flipped out about how absolutely fooled they had been, the twins put on their twincest act again.
"Twins with too much time on their hands…" Tamaki groaned, "Are the devil."
The next day, the Host Club was able to open its doors once more and Kimi and I sat with the twins. Surprisingly, the twins kept their silly hair colors but I wanted them to go back to their sexier, natural color.
"It's so much easier to tell you apart!" said one of the girls.
"No it's not," Haruhi stated as she walked by the group.
She stopped and looked down at me. We both smiled with the same thought in our heads.
"Today, the twin with the blue hair is Hikaru," she said.
"And the twin with the pink hair is Kaoru," I said snidely, winking up at Haruhi.
"You swapped colors for the day, huh?" Haruhi asked then walked off, leaving the girls amazed by us.
The Hitachiin twins simply stared off into space with a shocked expression on their faces; as if they were reliving a long forgotten memory or speaking telepathically.
Senka: That was an interesting chapter! In the next one, I take to twins out of some good ol' fashion shooting!
Kaoru: Awesome! I've never held a gun before!
Hikaru: I guess it'll be cool.
Senka: In the next chapter...Guns and Grade school Kids!