08.18.11
MY FINAL CONFESSION
Okay, dishes are washed, Dad is in bed, and Mei is ready to go. Although, I have no idea why since she's already told me everything she needed to. Apparently, she's just that excited to watch me write about something she was a witness to, played a significant part in, and has been talking about non-stop since breakfast. It's not like she's forgotten anything.
Whatever. Here's a quick recap:
The new school year started and I decided the robots should come to school with me for now. The first day went alright, but then Tamaki and Kyoya met up with Mei, who inadvertently got it in their heads that I was inevitably going to fall in love with one of them and abandon the rest. The many flaws with that logic, I'll leave for you to discuss amongst yourselves. This was met with intense insecurity from Tamaki (not so sure about Kyoya), which he managed to transfer to Hikaru and Kaoru during a highly ill-conceived meeting. This led to a small disaster at the Sports Festival practice when Hikaru basically attacked Tamaki during the relay race and now… it's time for dodge ball.
It should go without saying that I didn't like this dodge ball idea at all. It should also go without saying that my roundabout attempts to get the guys excused from practice for the rest of the week was met with nothing more than a command from my gym teacher to learn some manners and go sit back on the bleachers with the rest of the girls until it was our turn. From the front row, I could see everyone lining up, and Tamaki, Hikaru and Kaoru had their war faces on and balls at the ready.
We were doomed.
Okay, in all honesty, it didn't start out so bad. Tamaki, Hunny and Mori were part of the team on the left, closest to where I was sitting. Hikaru, Kaoru and Kyoya were on the team to the right. They differentiated by putting green headbands on the left team and red on the right. It looked sort of like a Christmas display, only a hundred times more deadly. The first round went by without incident, other than Hunny and Mori knocking out half of the opposing team by themselves and Tamaki just standing there glaring at the twins while mindlessly dodging everything that got thrown his way.
The second round is when the trouble began, and it began right away. Hikaru and Kaoru, up until now ignoring Tamaki in favor of the rest of their opponents, threw their balls with perfect timing straight at Tamaki's head. Having much better throwing arms than humans (even when they were holding back), he didn't move fast enough and got smacked twice in the chest. Somehow, they just missed his neck and I could at least be relieved of that. I could never stop myself from picturing one of them taking a ball to head hard enough to knock it clean off.
Once Tamaki regained his bearings, you could tell he was out for blood. The look on his face was not something I thought he was capable of and it was a good thing for the twins that 'death ray' wasn't one of his special abilities. He got sent to the Out box until the next and (thankfully) final round. Against my better judgment, I was starting to relax a little. If all of them, especially Tamaki, could just keep it together and get through this last round, that would be it for the day and I could get them all home and figure this out there. We'd be in a controlled environment where they all knew better than to start something physical. There was not going to be another hole in the roof on my watch.
The second round ended, once again, with Hunny and Mori victorious and only Hikaru, Kaoru and Kyoya still standing on the red team. To their credit, they'd taken out a good number of their opponents, with more than half of the green team cluttered together in the Out box. The only thing worse for them would have been if they were the red team. It was also a really good thing for everyone that Hunny didn't see this as anything more than a fun game.
Like a little boy, he jumped up and down, his hand clamped on Mori's gym clothes, and he was beaming so wide, I thought his mouth might split open.
"I knocked down five at once, Takashi! Did you see? Did you?"
"Yeah."
So if nothing else, I could take comfort in the fact that he wasn't going to kill anyone.
The gym teacher blew the whistle and called the boys back for round three. They were noticeably less enthusiastic about it this time around. The red team in particular stared fearfully at Hunny and Mori as they passed, and even their own teammates kept their distance as the whistle went off again and the next round started.
From the very beginning, it was chaos.
Against all my expectations, it wasn't Tamaki who started it. Not that he wouldn't have eventually; he was just biding his time and waiting for the right moment, possibly taking a page out of Kyoya's book. I don't think Kyoya would have been as obvious as to point directly at the twins while throwing his first ball right over their heads, though. It was more Hunny stirring the pot by aiming his ball right at Hikaru and getting him in the chest. Tamaki howled with laughter while Hikaru went completely still. He clutched his sides and pitched forward, and in general was just a sitting duck and perfectly poised to get a ball right to the head, courtesy of Kaoru.
He responded in turn with a ball to Kaoru's head, while the gym teacher walked over and started telling at them all to stop messing around and get in the Out boxes.
"Hey! What the hell do you three think you're doing all day?" he shouted, getting right in between them and screaming so loud that probably everyone in the whole enormous gymnasium could hear. I know I could. Despite this, his words fell on deaf ears and at this point, I could hardly watch.
"Are you listening to me?" he shouted again. He focused on Tamaki now, though I don't know why. "If one of you doesn't explain yourselves this instant, I'm having all of you put in detention and cleanup duty for a week! Do you hear me?"
Tamaki heard him alright. All of a sudden he seemed to realize that there was something blocking him from the twins, and he stood up straight as a line with a fresh ball in hand. His face morphed from its characteristically overwrought emotional state into something calm and even and, for lack of a better word, robotic.
"Sir, as per my standard protection and safety function data, I must ask you to please step aside and not get involved, so as to not put yourself at serious risk."
The teacher's mouth dropped about as far as mine used to when I first met them. Mei here thinks it was pretty funny after all this time. I'm not so sure.
"At risk? Are you threatening me, you little punk?"
He grabbed Tamaki's arm, as if to drag him to detention himself. Tamaki brushed him off all too easily.
"I do not make threats," he answered in that same, chillingly cold way. "I only give warnings."
He reared back his arm and threw the ball passed the man and at the twins. They each stepped to one side so that the ball sailed in between them. I can still remember the ugly booming sound when the ball embedded itself halfway into the wall. I don't know what that wall was made of, just that it was not something rubber- or anything else- should have been able to penetrate. That's robots for you, I guess.
The gym teacher, having no way of knowing this, turned as white as if he were a walking corpse. Without another word, he turned and ran straight through the double doors and down the hall, never to be seen again.
No, I'm serious. He literally quit his job that day and never set foot on school grounds again. There's a rumor he left the country entirely, all the while screaming something about secret government experiments infiltrating the school systems and dooming us all. I don't think that's true.
Anyway, once that was done, there was no turning back. The twins returned fire without delay, smacking Tamaki once in the shoulder before he dodged the second one. Two more balls were sent the twin's way, followed by two more Tamaki's. It might have stayed just the three of them more or less playing an intense game of catch, if not for one poorly aimed ball of Hikaru's that completely missed Tamaki and hit someone else entirely. Want to take a guess who?
Well, Hunny reacted to getting a hit in the face about the way any sane individual would. By which I mean he threw twelve balls in quick succession at Hikaru and Kaoru with more force than Tamaki could dream of. What balls didn't hit their targets (about half) joined the first one in the wall. By now, the rest of the teachers had finally realized the danger and were working to evacuate the students. I stayed off to the side with Mei so they wouldn't try to make me leave. What I was thinking about doing and why Mei was staying with me in the first place, I'm afraid I can't say.
I just checked with Mei. She doesn't know why she stayed either.
Hiding under the bleachers, I could see everything. Mori joined up with Hunny and formed a tag team against the twins. Tamaki, though technically on their team, was mostly lone wolfing it, throwing and receiving more balls than probably anyone else. Even Kyoya was getting in on the action, although he restricted himself to only throwing back when something came his way, and he never initiated.
And of course, no hardcore game of dodgeball would be complete without a big, heaping helping of collateral damage!
Countless more balls were stuck in the gym walls on all four ends. When they re-opened the gym after several months of repairs, many of the indentures were still there. All the windows were broken one by one, raining glass down on a blacktop that I prayed was empty (it was). When it wasn't a window, it was another rung of the bleachers getting uprooted. Anything the other kids had left behind, from backpacks to notebooks to metal pencil boxes, got catapulted into the air and either slammed into the walls or broke more windows. At some point, a high flying ball smashed into the fire sprinklers and set them all off. Water rained down, soaking the floors and the microphone and speaker system used to make announcements. It shorted out and caught fire, which the sprinklers mostly doused. We were far away, but Mei still dragged me out the door in a rush.
"Come on, let's get out of here," she urged me. "Whatever your cousins' problem is, they can work it out on their own, and Haruhi? Please don't be mad when I say that your family is completely crazy."
"But that's just it, Mei!" I screamed.
She blinked. "That your family is crazy?"
"No!" I put my hands to my head in case I needed to rip my hair out for stress relief. I didn't think hitting my head against something was a good idea. First, I had to find a way to make them stop. Inside, I could hear more glass breaking and then Hikaru shouting something at Tamaki.
"She'll never pick you after you've done all this!"
"Are you blind?" Tamaki retorted. "You're doing it too! And you started it!"
"Did not!"
Another row of bleachers flew by and no more words were exchanged. They spoke through dodgeball instead.
"I can't believe this," I said to no one in particular. I don't think I even noticed Mei anymore. "Why are they doing this? After all this time with nothing going wrong… why do they think I would ever choose between them? What got that idea into their heads?"
It was a legitimate question at the time, one I'm very happy to finally have an answer too. I can only imagine the look on Mei's face back then, and judging from the look on her face right now, she's not going to tell me.
"Well uh," Mei said, coughing a couple of times. "Iiit's just guys, you know? They're stupid, and they do stupid things and I- er we as girls have absolutely nothing to do with it at all. You want to go get some ice cream?"
I jerked away before she could touch me. Flattening myself against the door, I watched Hunny and Mori go on the offensive, their arms spinning so fast and releasing so many balls, it was like they were living machine guns. How did the school even have this many balls?
"There has got to be a way I can stop them," I said.
"Why bother?" Mei asked, becoming desperate. "Haruhi, come on, look at that! If you try and go in there, you'll get killed. Just let them fight it out."
"What, and take the whole gymnasium with them?" I shot back.
Mei put a finger to her chin thoughtfully. "Honestly? I always thought that place needed some serious remodeling."
I glared at her as hard as I could until she threw her hands up in surrender and backed far away from me.
"Okay, I get it," she said. "You're worried about your cousins. I understand, I would be too. Maybe when they've calmed down a little, you can sit them down and have a nice heart to heart, tell them how you really feel or whatever. Until then, we should just run before the cops get here and…"
I don't remember anything else Mei said from there, I was no longer listening. Inside, I could see the six of them had slowly drawn themselves closer to the line as they threw whatever they could reach at each other. Their gym clothes were ripped in places and their skin was scuffed up like damaged metal, but otherwise they looked just fine.
"You're going down and then Haruhi will only want us!" Hikaru and Kaoru said together, an eerie reminder of what they used to be like.
"Don't be so stupid," Tamaki shouted as he took another ball to the chest and then threw one back. "Haruhi is going to pick one of us. One! If it's down to just the two of you, one of you is still going to be the loser!"
The twins hesitated, balls in hand but unreleased. Very slowly, they turned to face each other.
Their eyes narrowed.
That's when I knew I couldn't wait another second.
With Mei yelling after me, I ran back into the gym with my hands over my head. Balls whizzed by in every direction, never hitting me, but coming very close. The six of them were at the ready with new ammo, and with synchronized movements they all prepared to throw. I skidded to a halt right in the center and screamed in a way I hadn't since the stunt show.
"STOOOOP!"
A part of me didn't think they would listen. Tamaki hadn't. I thought maybe this was some other hidden setting of their being activated, a 'fight to the death' kind of thing. It may sound stupid to you, but it felt like a very real possibility at the time. When nothing happened I deemed it safe to look up, and all the way around they were still, heaving unneeded breaths and watching me in wait.
As my own adrenaline started to drop, I felt the weight of my exhaustion start to crash down on me. Never before have I hated the sports festival this much. There was no way I wasn't playing sick next year, perfect attendance record be damned.
"Okay," I said once I was sure they wouldn't start up again. "Okay you guys, listen up, and listen good."
I targeted that specifically at Tamaki and the twins, all of whom had the good sense to be cowed.
"I know that you've gotten this idea that I'm going to one day choose between you," I went on. "I don't know where it came from, and you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I just want to set the record straight right now."
I paused again, only this time it was because I didn't know what to say. My mind went totally blank with nothing coming to me except what Mei had just told me.
'Have a heart to heart,' she'd said. 'Tell them how you really feel.'
Yeah, easier said than done.
I would've taken any other option, any at all. Because I knew what I felt, had known for a long time, ever since the jailbreak episode. They'd known since then too, they'd told me as much that day at the mailbox. They'd gotten over their insecurity, so why couldn't I?
I took a deep breath.
"The truth is, I'm not going to make a choice," I said. Tamaki opened his mouth to speak, but I was not stopping now. "I'm not going to choose today, tomorrow or any day of the week. It would be impossible for me to do that, because…"
This was it. The words were on the tip of my tongue and if I could just get them out, I'd be over the highest hurdle and everything would be easy from here. Or maybe it would be a thousand times harder.
"Because I love you, all of you. You're the best friends I've ever had and I could never choose between you."
My heart was pounding in my chest, my body tense. Slowly, I was coming back down, but it would be a while yet before I no longer felt like trembling. In the meantime, all six of them reacted to my confession in their own unique ways. Hikaru and Kaoru were awestruck, Kyoya serene, Hunny on the verge of tears, Mori unperturbed, but smiling warmly. Tamaki was the one who dared approach me, his quivering fingers reaching out.
"D-do you really mean that, Haruhi?"
He looked like a little lost puppy, and I had to admit, it was kind of endearing. You know, now.
"Yes, Tamaki, I do."
That opened the floodgates right up. Soon, he was crying harder than Hunny ever could and clinging to me. He spun us around hard and fast, but for the moment, I let him let it out.
"OH HARUHI, I'M SO SORRY FOR DOUBTING YOU! I SHOULD'VE KNOWN YOU'D NEVER LET OUR BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP BE TAINTED BY THE COLD HANDS OF FATE!"
He dropped me there and ran to Hikaru and Kaoru, hugging them as one.
"I'M SORRY FOR TRYING TO TURN YOU AGAINST EACH OTHER! IT WAS SO WRONG OF ME AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN!"
The twins looked at each other while Tamaki dry sobbed into their joined shoulders. To my surprise, they hugged him back.
"We're sorry too," Hikaru said.
"We shouldn't have egged it on," said Kaoru.
"We should have just talked it out like mature adults."
"Instead of making such a big mess of things."
"WE'RE SORRY HARUHI!" They shouted over at me.
Hunny launched himself at my head before I could respond, and sat on my shoulders while he wrapped his little arms over my eyes.
"I'm sorry too, Haruhi! So, so very sorry!" he shouted while I tried to keep my balance with him on top of me.
"Why? You didn't start anything!"
He didn't answer, and pretty soon we all dissented into a big, messy group hug, with even Kyoya and Mori dragged into the mix. We stayed that way for a while, hugging it out while bits of broken plywood and plaster fell to the floor and the still going sprinklers drenched us.
We eventually did stop and go home amid sirens and fire trucks and possibly a helicopter. Kyoya found us a secure path off of school grounds and we got home without any trouble. At least no more than seven people in torn up and sopping wet clothes walking down the street on a sunny day would get.
The school was closed for the next two days while everyone tried to figure out what exactly happened. The school board refused to believe that six students could cause so much damage, let alone with just rubber balls. Since the other students were ushered from the room before all the really bad stuff could happen, they didn't know much either, and most of the rumors that wound up circulating either barely mentioned us or didn't include as at all. I never found out was the official cause of the damage was. So long as no one got hurt and I didn't get any bill collectors or lawyers at the door, they could've said a giant glowing cloud came and did it. Would've been fine by me.
That night at dinner, I made miso and chicken rice soup just so they could share it with me. They may not have had taste buds, but I quickly found that I enjoyed having the six of them at table with me, as tight a squeeze as it was.
And you know what? I'm happy that this happened, all things considered. I finally found myself on common ground with the six of them; there were nothing more I had to hide.
And it was definitely worth getting a permanent ban from this and all future sports festivals.
Aagkh
You guys are not going to believe what happened next, I mean it is just C-R-A-Z-Y crazy! I mean with all the drama and the action and when the pitsm
Please ignore the last few lines. Mei will be leaving now.
Why do you say that like it's a good thing, Haruhi? You're going to make me cry!
…and of course, I thank her for all her help these last few days. This part of the story wouldn't be complete without her.
Oh Haruhi! You don't have to think me.
-sigh-
posted by Haruhi at 7:23 pm 0 comments