Surprisingly enough, I pocketed the little note the strange boy with black hair had left. I thought it a nice reminder that rich people could still appreciate acts of kindness, and were kind themselves - because I needed all the reminding I could get. For though Ouran was renowned for its beauty and prowess, its students were less so on the inside. They stalked about in packs, conversing about which of their four cars to take to the theatre next weekend, or how irritating it was that the family butler had fallen ill, taking little to no notice at all for me, walking alone with my books and big glasses. Even if they did take notice it seemed only to turn their noses up at me.
It was clear at a glance I did not belong, with my pitifully cheap clothes and home haircut, with tape securing my glasses in two places. Not that my intellectual ability mattered to them. It wasn't important that I was offered a scholarship by the most prestigious school in the three surrounding countries - no, of course not. Why should that matter when I don't even have a single piece of jewellery on my body. Well, that's not true. I did. Just one little pendant on a fraying old twine cord that hung about my neck.
It was a single tiny white pearl that had fallen off mum's wedding necklace when it broke because I'd been playing with it too roughly when I was little. I'd run screaming to her, wailing my apologies as tears streamed down my face, but she hadn't punished me. She just laughed and said they looked better on me anyway. She rethreaded the pearls onto a new chain and assured me it was all okay and that no damage had been done, but I was still utterly distraught at having destroyed her favourite necklace. To convince me of my innocence, she'd fished a bright red string out of dad's sewing kit and knotted a single pearl onto it before tying it about my neck.
"There," she'd said, wiping away my tears with her thumb and smiling at her handiwork. "You can have that one, and I'll keep the rest - it's not a broken necklace if it's meant to be two necklaces, is it, Haruhi?"
"I suppose…" I'd hiccupped back. I remember how tightly she'd hugged me after that, and how since then I'd taken such particular care of that one silly string so that it didn't snap and break her necklace again. The red was almost completely faded, and the knot securing it behind my neck had had to be trimmed and tied over and over again so it had steadily become shorter and shorter, but still the little white pearl was beautiful and clean. I loved that little pearl. But no amount of sentiment was going to stop these rich kids from judging me.
Deciding I'd rather had enough of them staring at me, I quickened my pace as I continued on to my foreign language class. It was as I climbed the stairs hurriedly that I found myself bump into someone.
"S-Sorry!" I hurried to say, scrabbling about for my books which I had managed to drop. I noticed they had to, by the way they did the same. As I reached for one which I presumed to be theirs, I was surprised to find how soft it was. Looking at it, I found it was a fat pink rabbit doll. "What on earth?" I looked up at the person I'd run into, and saw they were quite obviously a child. He was tiny, pink cheeked and blonde haired, wearing a fluffy white jumper with little pink roses embroidered on the hem.
"That's Usa-chan!" he giggled, making grabby hands at the rabbit I held.
"Oh… okay," I said, giving the rabbit to the oddly small boy. "Are - are you lost?"
"Oh, no!" the boy smiled, picking up the last of his books and hugging them and the rabbit tight to his little chest. "I've been here for two years, I think I know my way around. See ya!" With that he skipped off down the stairs, and I heard him gasp loudly. "There you are! Where did you disappear to, last night?" I watched the strange child begin to run off through the steadily dispersing crowd - I couldn't see much, but I think I saw him leap on the back of a very tall person with black hair.
Wait.
Could it be?
I stood up and took a few steps down the stairs to try and catch sight of them, but already they'd been lost in the crowd. Damn, I thought to myself. But it was too late for me to run after them, because at that moment the bell signalling the start of class began to ring. I hitched up my books in my arms and speedily made my way up the stairs and along the corridor to my classroom.
"And of course, to say thank you to whoever it was, Tamaki got them a damn gift basket."
"With the roses too?"
"Yeah, the roses too."
"Oh, for the love of - "
"Sorry I'm late," I said to the professor as I burst in, "I had a little accident on the stairs." I heard a number of snickers as I sat myself down at my desk, particularly from the two redheaded boys either side of me, but I ignored them.
"What sort of accident, Fujioka?" one of them asked.
"Probably had a seizure because our stairs have carpets and not little bugs crawling all over them," the other answered. Again, I ignored them, setting various books within my desk and flicking to the page dictated by the professor and clicking the nib of my pen.
"Not very sociable are you?" they asked together. "Maybe commoners aren't even educated on how to annunciate words properly."
"Don't say things like annunciate, Kaoru - they won't understand you."
"Oh, how foolish of me, Hikaru! I oughtn't use long words that they don't know the meanings of."
"Because then they'll try and use long words to impress us and get them all wrong and look stupid in front of everyone."
"Yes, I completely photosynthesize with you."
"Why are you even in this class, Fujioka?" the one on my right asked.
"I doubt you can even string together a literate sentence in your first language, let alone French," the one on my left said.
I glared at him and muttered out the corner of my mouth, "For your information I am perfectly capable of - "
"Fujioka!" I was interrupted, and looked up to see the teacher glaring at me. The boys on either side of me snickered, and I could see every head in the class turned to stare at me. "Stand." I put down my pen with an internal sigh of irritation and rose to my feet behind my desk. I could feel every pair of eyes following me as I moved.
"Yes, sir?" I asked.
"First you are late to my class and now you are disrupting both students on either side of you. Are you interested in this class at all?"
"Yes, sir, I am."
"Are you suited to this class?"
"Yes, sir, I took the exam."
"I don't want that kind of cheek in my classroom, Fujioka." I heard a few people giggle. "Have you been paying attention thus far in the lesson?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then recite the last thing I read from the textbook."
I reached down and picked up the open book and trailed my finger down to the spot I believed him to have finished. I cleared my throat a little before reciting, "Je ne voisvraiment rien romantique à proposer. Il est très romantique d'être amoureux. Mais il n'y a rien de romantique dans une proposition précise." I could hear nothing at all but my own voice in the silence left by my fluid pronunciation. Even the boys beside me did not move or make a sound. "Pourquoi, on peut être accepté. L'un est souvent, je crois. Puis l'excitation est partout. L'essence même de la romance est l'incertitude. Si jamais je me marierai, je vais certainement essayer d'oublier le fait." I lowered the book and looked my professor sincerely in the eye. "Would you also like me to translate?" There was a short silence.
"It seems you were paying attention after all. My apologies. That will be all, Fujioka." With that I lowered myself into my seat and resumed my hold upon the fat black pen, and continued with my notes, choosing to ignore the look of incredulity on the identical faces of the redheads either side of me.
"Hey, Fujioka - " the two boys began to say as class ended, but I'd already gathered my things and had exited the class. I didn't much want to associate with the likes of them, they'd been insufferable since the beginning of term, but I was with them for rather a while at this rate so I knew I'd have to stomach them. But I wasn't likely to go about with them anywhere but in that classroom, as neither of them took law with me. That was one thing I like about Ouran - despite being a university, it allowed you to take two courses rather than specialise in one. It helped me keep my options open, even at a university standard.
What with not having any classes until later in the afternoon, I saw very little point in remaining around the school building. Beautiful as it was, and many hours could have been spent admiring its architecture, I'd save it for another time. Right now I was tired and stressed, and I just wanted to go home and get some tea. Oh, no, I needed to buy some first.
Instead of heading right down the street to go home, I went left toward the supermarket, which was about the most normal place in the world compared to the illustrious nature of the academy. For one thing, it didn't have wrought gold gates. For another, the people were actually friendly. It didn't take me long to find the aisle I needed, occupied only by two people about my age, but I didn't take much notice of them, despite their somewhat heated discussion over the section of tea and coffee I was trying to get to.
"Excuse me," I said, gently nudging one, a boy with black hair and glasses, a little aside.
"Oh, sorry," he replied, taking a step away. His friend, however, didn't seem at all to acknowledge me, making animated gestures with his arms. "No, Tamaki, for the last time - "
"But, just look at all the choice they have!" the other boy, an exuberant blonde, was excitedly saying as he bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. "Look how many! It's riveting to think of how many flavours the commoners have invented!"
"Oh, lord…" I muttered to myself, immediately recognising the two as Ouran students who must have lost their way into the 'commoner' side of town. The sooner I found the tea I liked and got out of there, the better.
"How have I never seen this place before? It's fantastic!"
"You haven't seen it before because you never thought to come this way before, you utter - "
"Oh, Kyoya, can't we just buy it all!?"
"No."
"But - "
"No."
"Buuut - "
"No. It is cheap and no doubt disgusting, and will drive away our customers. Absolutely not." The boy seemed to completely ignore the pouty puppy face the blonde was pulling, as he grabbed him by the arm and began to march him away. "Come on, we're going to get some quality coffee."
"Excuse me," I said, straightening up after having finally found what I was looking for. The boy with glasses - Kyota, or whatever his name was - stopped and looked back at me, eyeing me almost distastefully as he took in my hair and glasses and the oversized jumper. I proffered forward the box of tea blend and a pot of instant coffee. "These are personal favourites of mine, and I'd be willing to bet you'd find them nice too. They're a new brand too, so I don't know if you'd have had something like it before."
"See, Kyoya?" the blonde piped up, coming over to me and taking the boxes eagerly. He turned the coffee over in his hand and inspected it, almost mesmerised by the dark brown powder shifting about in its glass pot. "What…is…this…?" he whispered, shaking it and smiling in awe at the coffee powder in his grasp.
"It's just… instant coffee…?" I hazarded, not sure why he'd react in such a way. He looked at me quizzically, and I saw what deep blue eyes he had.
"Instant?"
I heard the boy called Kyoya sigh, raking a pale hand through his dark hair.
"Yeah, you just add hot water."
There was a pause.
"Brilliant!" the boy shouted, and I jumped; an old woman that had been turning the corner to enter the aisle did the same, clutching her poor heart as the boy jumped up and down in excitement. "Kyoya, we have to try this!" He grabbed seven more pots from the shelf and held them in his arms like his children, grinning from ear to ear. "Thank you for your help!" he beamed, before turning and racing away toward the check-out. I stood there, still somewhat in shock. As she hobbled past me, I heard the old lady say, "That young man's had far too much coffee already, if you ask me."
Decidedly less enthusiastic about coffee than that strange boy, I only picked up one more pot and two boxes of the tea blend, before making my own way to the check-out. I paid my money and exited the shop, swinging the bright orange plastic bag from my hand as I walked back down the street toward the accommodation village. When I saw my house, the smallest of the lot, I smiled. I was happy to be able to have a rest, by myself.
As I drew closer, however, I noticed a very large mound by the doorstep. After walking up and stopping directly before it, I saw that my welcome mat had been balanced haphazardly over a very large package or something. I put down my shopping bag and pulled off the scratchy mat to reveal an enormous basket stuffed full of wine and fruit and chocolates, and a very large bouquet of perfectly cultivated roses of different colours; some were white, others pink and purple, orange and blue, and some were even a dark navy colour. Wondering who on earth they could be from, I looked around in confusion, perhaps hoping they were still around.
Regardless, I slung my arm through the basket's handle and picked up my shopping bag before pushing my way through the front door. I turned off into the sitting room and set down the basket on the sofa before dumping the coffee and tea away in the kitchen. I returned to the sitting room a few seconds later with my hands on my hips, frowning a little in confusion. Was it something everyone got? Sort of a 'Welcome to Ouran' gift basket? Can't have been. Well, who was I to determine the things rich people do or don't do?
I knelt down before the sofa and began rifling through the various edible delights, until finally I found what seemed to be a letter, that maybe had slipped down the rest upon the very bottom of the basket. I untidily ripped open the expensive looking parchment envelope, and when I pulled out the card inside I could smell so much perfume it was almost sickly sweet. The card had the official Ouran crest on it, gilded in gold ink. I opened it, and out fell a small flurry of pure white rose petals. Inside, in an incredibly neat and floral hand, said; Warm thanks and regard from the Ouran Host Club.
My only thought was 'who the hell are the Ouran Host Club?'
And who the hell was stupid enough to try and hide something this big under my welcome mat?
It was then I remembered the little note I had in my jean pocket. I fished it out and uncrumpled it, reading the two scrawled words again. Thank you. Maybe this was another form of his thanks, that boy with black hair. Maybe he was with the Host Club, whoever they were. I smiled a little, deciding I'd try and find him. To thank him in return.