A/N: Man it's been a long time since I've written a proper fic. I'm a little cringed out from just *seeing* what I've made before. Hello! I'm Toni, I'm pretty grown now when you look at my old stuff. Now I'm here to add to the dozens upon dozens of OHSHC x OC fics sitting around here for my own personal gratification. I dug into the OHSHC category to see if anyone was still here even though many of us migrated over to AO3, and when I saw it I felt a little happy.
The setting is mainly the anime with the manga to extend the plot, but pushed up to more recent years. In other words, Haruhi has a cheap smartphone, and social media influence is in full swing.
Just a very important heads up since I'm not too sure if anyone is open to the idea: I intend on making one of the hosts queer. I went into this with queer-blindness, aka I wrote the story without minding it too much that the readers might be uncomfortable with it. So this is your warning.
With that, I hope you find a bit of enjoyment diving into this sort of thing again. Without further ado, here is The Rose Garden.
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"What do you mean I can't possibly pass on the business to Danica?"
Was what Danica Kingsley heard when passing by her father's home office one of those nights she couldn't sleep.
She'd down a shot of Nespresso as easily as her teenage body could possibly handle, being oppositely affected by the caffeine. She stood there by the door slightly ajar as she overheard her father speaking with her grandparents.
"Danica doesn't appear as interested in this business as you claim to be, Alistair. We see her grades, her school involvement but what exactly is there to indicate she is right for this job?" She hears her grandmother.
"Your mother is correct, Danica hasn't given any regard to her future at KS Medical as she does in every other field at her age, why my father—"
"You're the ones who insisted she be sent to that boarding school up in New York once she…"
Danica stood there, almost forgetting the hot mug in her hands as her family elders squabbled.
Danica Kingsley.
Daughter of Alistair Kingsley, Chairman of the Kingsley Labs, now KS Medical Tech. One of the frontrunners of medical innovation in North America. Widowed at age thirty two after his wife succumbed to a hereditary illness, Alistair Kingsley was left with a six-year-old Danica, who'd been numbed to the relentless criticism of her grandparents even before her mother's passing.
Danica as a child was the very picture of excellence at such a young age. Her mother had won the baby race even two times over, in exaggeration. The little Kingsley got her motor skills down a few months after her birth, learned to read at age 2 and write the next year. It was only a matter of time before her fingers would master a few tunes on the ivory. Their own little Matilda, as Alistair would put it.
It was strange to Alistair, when Danica was eerily calm after her mother's death. He was little more distraught when Danica would throw herself into a bout of academic work that pushed her to overachiever status. Their halls were decorated with certificates of excellence, gold medals and trophies. Nothing less came with Danica Kingsley. And Alistair had chalked it up to distracting herself from her mother's passing.
"You've certainly left her no room for such experiences, sending me away and, apparently, denying her assistant's requests to shadow me or even learn from me in the last couple of months."
"We did no such thing—!"
"Yes you did!" Alistair spits. "sending me to close your deals and clean the messes of whatever middle aged mayhem your husband left behind that could damage our reputation." Danica peeks, seeing her grandparents shy back with a grunt as her father continues.
"I don't see Danica as much as I would like, and whenever she's home, I can't even see her. The one moment of peace I have with her you come barging down my door and she stands there like an obedient little pup! I don't recognize my daughter anymore!"
The shadow of a daughter that he would forever love, the image of her reading to them between him and his lovely wife and her smile when she ran her little legs when he came home, happily receiving him—gone.
"I don't even get a chance to show her what her mother was like, she doesn't even visit her other relatives anymore. This is cruel."
Danica is stuck in her head after the thought, scraping needlessly at the glaze of her cup before her ears perk up.
"Well now, this is a perfect opportunity to send her. You're expected to be in Japan for the next few months, surely it's a chance to enroll her into that little school her mother used to attend."
Her grandmother pipes up. "That's right! And—I do believe she keeps in touch with her cousin there, practicing her Japanese. Until your business concludes, you two could spend your time there. Or until you can find her a husband."
Danica freezes, gripping the mug.
She hears the disbelieving baffle from her father as he continues, "she's too young for that!"
"Not for our Japanese associates, surely. I heard many of their children can be engaged at an early age."
"You're out of your mind."
"Better start anew over there than consolidate her prospects here!" her grandfather shoots.
"Alistair, I beg you, at least consider this for her. She might be more useful out there than here…"
Her father screams at them when Danica takes a few steps back to her room, breathing heavily and slamming the door behind her.
A husband. Just ship her off to be mere breeding stock to a company heir then spend the rest of her days as a housewife. The thought repeats in her head as she sits in bed, taking a few sips of her drink, feeling herself eased.
That wasn't who Danica was, nor what she was meant to be.
Danica fell victim to the elder Kingsleys' relentless criticism, sneers and utter lack of affection, and she knew it was because of her mother.
Miko Katayama, a sweet woman who had the prestigious opportunity of working at a Kingsley lab quickly after finishing an internship, where her future husband would find her.
Her grandparents were initially against the marriage of course—she didn't come from a respected family nor did she have any substantial wealth to her name but all it took to shatter their insistence was thankfully the reputation she'd earned in their own company as an employee. Her mother was intelligent, kind, and well-liked. Most of all, she understood their business like the back of her hand and better than most of their own at a considerably young age. Their marriage was certainly beneficial in that regard.
The elderly couple surely took a swoop at chipping away at the young Kingsley, not directly however.
Just like tonight, that night many years ago some time after her mother's passing, Alistair paced his office as his parents berated him for a decision that he technically didn't make, but tanked their credibility. With that they criticized everything else in his life—including Danica.
Everything happy in Danica's life came to a screeching stop when she passed away. From then on after a relentless berate on her father she worked hard to make it known just what she was capable of.
Whether or not she was, her grandparents clearly haven't received the message.
"Danica, my dear?"
She lifts her head at the sound of her dad's gentle voice, the door creaking as he asks to come in.
"Yes, father…" she scoots to the side, missing the frown on Alistair's face.
"I know you overheard that conversation. I'm sorry." He says, sitting down.
"It's all right, father. They're right, I might have better prospects useful to them over there." She replies, almost robotically.
The change had been obvious since the incident. She'd been quiet for weeks until her birthday, when Alistair heard her voice for the first time. It sounded forced, surely, when he painfully had to hear her call him father. When she stood at the head table of her birthday party, her shoulders were square, posture straight, but dainty. Like a little doll, waiting on his command.
Alistair reached to pat her arm, pursing his lips. "You don't need to be like this anymore, princess. Wherever you go, whatever you wanna do, I'll be there with you. Your okaa-san… she wouldn't be happy seeing you like this…"
Her lips push into a small smile, looking at him. "I'm fine, father." She closes her eyes when he pats her head with a sigh. "Do you… wanna go over there?" He asks. "Saint Lobelia is an all-girls school. She had the time of her life there…" he chuckles softly.
"I… guess it would be a good change of pace. I could practice my Japanese. I mean, I already do it with the exchange students and my friends, but it might be different over there… at least I got my writing down."
"To a T." Alistair smiles. "You still write to… what was her name? Haru?"
"Haruhi." She hums. "Yes… this might be a good idea… we haven't seen each other since before…"
Silence.
"… maybe… you can reconnect with her. I mean… she's your cousin, after all and she still is your best friend, isn't she? I don't doubt you'd make just as good friends in person."
She hums. "It's a start… she said once that she is on scholarship at a prestigious academy… surely I can make acquaintances with her friends too."
"Danica…" he starts. "You don't have to—"
"I know. But it can't hurt making more friends, yes?" She breathes. "Friends who could certainly be adequate for me."
He purses his lips. "I'll only take you if you focus on yourself… at least for the first few months. Nothing else. Not the business, not your grandparents… you. And maybe me."
She blinks at him, "you?"
He smiles. "It's been a very long time since I had you to myself… the least we can do is have breakfast together everyday? Maybe have a taste of what your mother used to live like. Together."
"… I can work with that." She smiles softly.
"And please, princess, call me dad."
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"You're leaving?"
"It's a change of scenery, Ciel." She calls over her shoulder as her friends stare at her incredulously from her desktop monitor as she packs her things.
"But what about our crew? Our Sunday brunchies?" The bluenette of them whimpers, pouting at her. Danica sighs and gazes at the three other boxes on her screen.
"We don't even go to the same academy anymore, and Sunday brunchies are on the last Sunday of every month. Even then it still takes us three months to do it anyway, what with all our studies and family business." She says, matter-of-factly, placing her more personal items in a special box. The movers had come to pack away half her clothes at her insistence the other day, all that's left are her important items.
The male redhead next to the bluenette perks up from the side. "But will there be any time for all of us to meet again even when you're a thousand miles away?"
"Fath–dad would insist on it if there was a solid plan. Otherwise I'd just be wasting our jet fuel." She scoffs. "Plus I'm gonna need the next few months to adjust anyway. I have an assistant so I'll let her know to hand you my calendar."
"But—"
"No buts! We haven't seen each other for weeks because of finals and I know all of you have businesses you're tied up with for the next few weeks. Let's circle back to this when I'm good, all right?"
The little one shoves a pout into the camera, huffing as she puts on a cutesy voice. "Say hello to Haruhi-chan for us, yeah?"
"Oh, oh! Can we meet her soon?"
"When she's comfortable." She smiles as she continues. "She has five other crazy rich friends who already drive her nuts, let's not disrupt her life with five American crazies in the mix, okay?"
The friends make an agreeable noise in sync, before going silent.
"You promise to text everyday?"
"Update everyday?"
"Send pictures!"
Danica covers the camera at the sound of their eagerness, making them all scream.
"Shut up, you will all know I'm alive when I update my other profile."
"Promiiiise?" She looks to her small friend once more as she pouts at the camera, making her scoff. "Yes, I promise. Now disperse, evaporate—I have some researching to do on the flight."