"More churros?" Kyouya raised his eyebrow, holding back a smirk as he watched Haruhi gobble down more churros.
Haruhi swallowed the last bit of her fifth piece of churros. The other four pairs of judging eyes watched as she gulped down water. She was stalling again. But they'd wait.
Haruhi was trying her best to avoid the elephant in the room. "I've got work," she piped up.
"What kind of work?" Tamaki cried, afraid of the worst.
Haruhi narrowed her eyes. "I'm a call girl."
Tamaki's jaw dropped like a hammer. "MY INNOCENT DAUGHTER!" His eyes bulged out of his sockets.
Haruhi rolled her eyes. Trust him to be dramatic. She felt her throat tighten a bit when he said 'daughter'. "I was kidding. Kidding, Tamaki!" Haruhi sighed. She turned to Kyouya and gave a hopeful look. She needed a distraction to think, to muster enough courage to tell them. Kyouya would understand. He does it so well.
"A new model will be coming in later," Kyouya said. Yes, he understood.
Haruhi exhaled in relief.
"And Tamaki," Haruhi said. She turned to look at him crouching on the floor.
Tamaki was sobbing buckets at the sheer horror of Haruhi being a call girl. Kyouya and Hikaru tried their best to hand him tissues. "It's okay, Tama. It's just a joke!" Hikaru said, patting him on his back.
Tamaki looked up when Haruhi called his name, tears brimming in his eyes.
"I'm not your daughter," Haruhi said softly.
Mori inhaled sharply and Kyouya's head snapped so fast, it cracked. Their blood froze because they had seemed to overlook one important person in the mess. Where was Ranka?
Kyouya's heart panicked, feeling it constricting in his ribcage. He was worried that this dark pandora's box was a bigger mess and involved more pain than he had anticipated. But it was too late to back out now. They promised they'd stick to it until the end. It was an oath that he would definitely see through.
"Haruhi, what do you mean? Tamaki has always been the dad," Hikaru said, confused. Kaoru turned to give him a look, but Hikaru seemed to miss it.
Haruhi turned away and picked up the dirty dishes on the counter. She felt something getting stuck in her throat. It wasn't tears. No.
It was fear.
It was guilt.
It was the fear of them finding out that she was afraid of and that she had yet to prepare herself for.
She stacked the plates and placed them inside the dishwasher. She cleared her throat. "So, Kyouya. When will the new model be arriving?" she said, trying to steady her voice. "You know, the model doesn't have to be anything fancy. I just need to do some work on it."
"Haruhi," Hikaru leaned against the counter. "Is that why you don't want to tell us?" he said, his voice raising. "Because you don't think we're family anymore?" he snapped.
Haruhi's eyes grew and the grip on the plate loosened.
Crash!
"It's not – No… it's…" she stammered.
"Hikaru!" Kaoru turned to glare at him. Hikaru caught that look and glared back.
Haruhi stood frozen in her place, standing over the shattered pieces of Corelle that lay at her feet.
"Hikaru," Haruhi said, comfortingly. "I don't have a family anymore."
Haruhi said it so softly, it sounded like a whisper. But everyone in the kitchen heard it. She had finally said it, like a secret bottled up for too long. For the first time in two years, she said it.
Haruhi didn't have a family anymore, because her only remaining family was gone. Shot and killed before her, because he was trying to reach out to her, protect her. He's gone.
It's real.
It's true.
He truly died.
She always thought that if she didn't say it, maybe, just maybe it never really happened. Maybe he survived the gunshot wound. Maybe someone found him and saved him. Maybe…
But she saw it with her own eyes, the life leaving his, saw his shattered look as his lifeless body fell to the floor. She remembered the faint smell of gun powder just before her world went dark. She smelled the strong sourness of iron that filled the room as the blood started to soak the kitchen floor.
Her only family died.
Permanently and forever gone.
She'd never be able to wake up to the scent of food burning when he would try to fry an omelet for her, or to him squealing in delight over her achievements or to listen to him talking to her mother. She'd never be able to scold him for being annoying. Or worry about him when he tired himself over his job, or tell him how much she was sorry. She couldn't do any of this anymore, because he was truly gone.
Haruhi swallowed and bit her quivering lip, trying to hold in her tears.
He died. And she didn't even know where his body was. He didn't have tombstone, like her mother. She didn't know where to mourn so she never did.
And that was perhaps the hardest part to digest.
It wasn't the kidnapping,
or the escape,
but it was the reality underneath the lost shards of what had happened - the fact that she couldn't find any remnants of her father, his life or death.