"Can I get you any refreshment?"

I turned to face the speaker from the table that I now considered my own. Today marked a full week of frequenting the host club. Since the second day, I had become more diligent about my homework, and the time passed by relatively quickly. Throughout the week, all of the hosts—with the exception of Kyouya, of course—had tried to keep me company, but I had refused. My grades had never been as well as they were now. And just in time too, because my aunt had been threatening me just a week before with a tutor.

This host that was offering me refreshments now, however, was someone that I hadn't seen before.

Or had I?

"Fujioka Haruhi?"

"Hai. Would you like some?" She smiled. She didn't understand.

Ouran was the school of future leaders. Their classes were precisely focused and equally grueling. If I had to, I could make it through an advanced class without failing, but it wasn't very easy or convenient, so I tended to avoid them if I could. I preferred classes with less intensive matter.

The first day, however, I had been placed in a Judicial Psychology class. I sat in the back of the room because I didn't want to be there, Haruhi because she was shy. Neither of us had talked much, but enough for me to learn that Haruhi was very nice and definitely female. I transferred out of that class as fast as I could and hadn't seen her since. She was just another face in the sea of students. I wouldn't have recognized her now but for her eyes.

"What are you doing here?"

She cocked her head to one side, studying me. "I am…" at once her eyes widened. "Nakasawa Amaya?" she asked tentatively.

"Hai."

She slipped into the chair across from me with an unsure smile. She poured two cups of tea and handed one to me.

"How did you end up here?"

She looked down at her uniform as though only just realizing that she was masquerading as a boy.

"I'm in debt. I don't gamble or anything," she said hastily in response to my confused expression, "I was just a bit…clumsy is all, and this is the only way that I can work it off."

We sipped tea in silence for a short while.

"But what about you? This room is definitely not the best place to do homework."

A nostalgic look crossed her face that I didn't understand. I waved my hand in the direction of Naoki, who was captivated by Tamaki.

"You could say that I am in debt as well."

Haruhi nodded her head knowingly, but did not prod farther, for which I was thankful.

"So you just do homework and wait for her to finish?" She tilted her head to see the book spread in front of me.

"Oh! Language! I'm only in the first part of that class, and I'm finding it a bit confusing."

"I could help you sometime. It's one of the few things I do understand."

"I'd like that," she sighed.

"If you just let me know when you'd like to meet…"

She drained the rest of the tea from her cup and rose to her feet. "I'd like to work on it now, but—"

"Oy! Haruhi!"

The voice I'd come to recognize as Tamaki's rose above the low rumble of conversation that filled the room. Haruhi winced.

"But I have customers," she finished. "I'll come back when I get a chance."

She grabbed the tray that she had brought with her and went to see what Tamaki wanted with a brief smile.

I turned my attention back to the book, but was distracted again before I could make any real progress.

"So you have discovered Haruhi's secret?"

"Huh?"

Without me noticing, Kyouya, the man to proud to talk to me before I knew anything of importance, had slipped into the chair that Haruhi had just vacated. I was surprised until his words caught up with me.

"Haruhi's…oh. Yes."

He folded his arms on the table and leaned forward. "I'm going to have to ask you to keep her identity hidden," he said. "There will be serious repercussions if you don't."

I couldn't help myself. "Oh? An army of mercenaries or something like that, I suppose?"

He raised an eyebrow. "A private police force, in fact."

I had only been joking. Not even my aunt and uncle were so eccentric about their wealth that they hired bodyguards. What these rich people wouldn't think of next…

I tried to hide my expression, but nothing escaped the shadow king "Is there a problem?"

I shook my head. "No…but do you ever get tired of threatening and intimidating people with your wealth?"

He looked taken back but rallied quickly. "Perhaps, were your circumstances different, you would understand the advantages of such a situation."

I wanted to fight back. I could have, but something he said caught me off guard.

"What do you know of my situation?"

His face, which had contorted into a sort of triumphant malice, sobered. "Enough."

He placed his hands heavily on the table and pushed himself up. Still lost in thought and memories, my eyes were fixed on the table, focused blindly on his hands, on his long pale fingers splayed across the dark surface of the wood.

"Have we reached an understanding?"

"I'll protect Haruhi's secret for Haruhi. I owe you nothing."

I still didn't look up, and could only imagine his expression.

"That's good enough," he said after a few moments. He removed his hands from the table, and I heard the sound of his footsteps growing fainter. I tried to return to my homework, but my mind was in the past. I tried to look out the window to distract me, but all saw only grey.

Since I had recognized Haruhi, frequenting the host club no longer seemed like such a chore. I didn't even need to bring my homework anymore. I could pose as one of Haruhi's rabid fans and hold conversations with her that way. It didn't even matter when other girls were around. They were too lost in fantasies with a male Haruhi to notice the hidden meanings in our conversations.

It wasn't until Naoki and I returned to her house one day to her parents talking to a certain student I remembered that the price of a few meaningful conversations had been a dip in my grades again.

He was a second year student, so I didn't know him well, but I recognized him from brief skirmishes in the halls.

His name was Fumio, and he was the only child of the president of an international bank. It wasn't always easy to remember, though. The attitude and superior air was there, but he lacked the dominant stature that all his peers seemed to possess. He was shorter than even Naoki with a chubby face and limp, stringy hair that fell on either side of his dangerously small eyes.

Oh, no.

"A tutor really isn't necessary, aunt Kaede."

She shook her head, a sickly sweet smile plastered to her face. "Not according to your grades."

"They'll get better, I've just been…distracted lately."

Naoki slipped past her mother and into the kitchen. I really didn't think that they would mind if they out that she had been spending her time at the host club instead of the tea party club that she had told them, but she had asked me to keep it secret anyway.

"Hmm…" she pressed the finger that she had been waving in my face to her lips. "Fumio will tutor you for one week, and we'll see how it goes from there." She smiled innocently at me. "Okay?"

As though I had a choice in the matter.

Fumio was everything I had expected. He was presumptuous, condescending, and the type of smart that is almost frightening. He was bitter that he wasn't first in the class, and blamed it on the fact that Kyouya was friends with the superintendent's son. After just one session of after school tutoring, I was wishing for the host club.

Now look, you and I both know that my writing isn't perfect. My information is limited, and my facts therefore slightly skewed. I'm sure that there were some grammar mistakes that you're dying to point out, some tense errors that were glaringly obvious. The lengths of the chapters are inconsistent, and the story is moving along too fast and without sufficient detail. I'm not knowledgeable in the field of Mary Sues, and I never will be unless one of you people that has taken the trouble to read this far lets me know if I am fulfilling Ouran fanfiction standards. The romance will come, the plot will thicken…all that good stuff. I won't threaten to stop writing if no one reviews, because I know that I want to finish it and there's no point in writing it solely for myself. I'll just keep on trucking.

I guess I can understand your possible motives...If you are anything like me, sometimes it's nice to just read through a romantic story full of clichés and not feel up to leaving a review. Some people don't want to attach their name to a criticism or compliment, which is why I have enabled anonymous reviews. Basically, I would like to make Kyouya the best Mr. Darcy he can be, but it's not going to happen right unless I figure out what I need to do differently. Let's make it happen.