I Think We'll Be Okay

by M4rmalade

Kosuke's lost more than she could have imagined. Kyoya's heart is split in half, and he's vying after something that probably doesn't exist. Both of them have been forced into a corner and enter an arrangement as their only way out. Neither of them are happy about it. With time, though, maybe they can work something out. Kyoya x OC, Art by lipasnipis@tumblr

17. Record Scratch

bored411: Thanks so much!

CritiqueGirl101: Thank you! :)

SabellaX: Maybe after I finish this fic I'll just do a 500k Coffee Shop AU where everyone just drinks coffee and eats biscotti and nothing bad happens lol. Thanks so much!

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She probably should have slept the night before her first day of college. She tried to, she really did, but no matter how long she kept her eyes shut, they never stayed. She was not used to sinking in three feet on the mattress, the feeling of silk on her skin. She was supposed to open her eyes and see glow-in-the-dark stars that had long lost their light glued to the ceiling, not the top of a poster bed. Her ungratefulness still hadn't left, it seemed.

More than school, though, it was the last sleep for the rest of her life. Last sleep before she was trained to be an heiress. Last sleep without worrying about how she looked and acted in front of absolute strangers. Last sleep for the real Kosuke. She tried to just think about school.

Kosuke guesses she experienced high school the way most teenagers did—fun for the company, miserable for the work. When she'd wept tears at graduation, it wasn't for memories of pop quizzes and three-page essays. The only thing she actively looked forward to about college was the day maybe ending before three.

If her younger self could see her present one, she'd laugh. Kosuke had spent a year now lamenting that she couldn't go to college. Sometimes she'd let herself have little fantasies of going to culinary classes, eating up everything she could about food history, food preparation, even the "boring" things like safety guidelines. She had been to Seneca a few times before. She still remembers the halls and corridors, could still hear her footsteps on the boards.

Now she was going to be attending the most expensive, most prestigious college in the country. To learn to take over her father's business. With her fiancé who hated her guts.

Kosuke promised herself that she'd do better, if for no other reason than to save herself the damnation of a marriage to a man who couldn't stand her. She should have been excited to see Kyoya again and set things right, but instead, the idea just makes her stomach turn. Not only that, but Tamaki goes to Ouran Univeristy, too. If she's lucky, she'll be able to explain everything to him in private before he sees her in the halls first and loses his mind. She'd been so sure she'd be telling Haruhi first…She wondered, if Haruhi had replied to her messages before now, if it would have made her feel better at all.

But, at the end of the day, Kosuke has made her bed and now she must lie in it. She could have said no to all this. Well—Okay, no, she couldn't have, but the point still stood. She was doing all this for a reason. There was a timeline where Kosuke turned down Shigeo's offer, and now she and her siblings are near-destitute, and Minami and Hitsuji have no chance of a future. Kosuke has avoided that timeline.

Money. It all comes down to money. The reason why she agreed to this in the first place, the reason why Shigeo even wanted her to begin with.

Speaking of money, she remembers that she still has a shark tailing her. Now, Kosuke doubts he can do that much anymore—with all the cameras hooked up around the mansion's perimeter, he is not one of the reasons she struggles to find sleep. But, she imagines that in this new world where your image could just about kill you, neither Shigeo nor the Ootoris will be anywhere near happy if they find out she's slipping money to a criminal. Hell, considering how happy the shark was to torment and twist her into coughing up the cash, he could very well demand more once he finds out of her new circumstances. Threaten to let the "business world" know her under-the-table dealings.

Oh, no…Is paying illegal loan shark debts illegal? Is Kosuke a criminal, too? Haruhi is studying law, what's a non-obvious way she can ask?

Well, Kosuke will just have to keep up what she's been doing. Putting the cash in an envelope, dropping it in a box. For…Well, she's not great at doing math in her head, so it could be years. She's going to have to pay around 4,730,000 yen in total. So far, she's payed around 800,000.

The silver lining to all of this is that right now, Minami and Hitsuji seem happy. They have thoroughly broken in their new bedrooms, they danced in victory as the colossal television was plugged into their room, they gobbled up their mushroom risotto like starved animals—Kosuke can't blame them for that last one, though. She'd all but burst into the kitchen after dinner and begged the head chef for the recipe.

Even at breakfast, Hitsuji doesn't have a care in the world, and Minami is just that sort of quiet where everything is not 100% okay but asking will put her on the spot. Kosuke makes a mental note to call around the parents of Minami's old friends to see if they can get a playdate together. Despite the giant table and the shimmering chandelier and Hitsuji not even able to pronounce what they're eating (quiche, not keech) it feels almost normal. Kosuke finds herself giving genuine smiles. They won't be heading to school just yet, but they will be going to summer daycare provided on campus.

Later, as they step out of the limousine, Kosuke almost wants them to stay and keep her company. They can't, of course, and she puts on a smile and waves them goodbye, until she's whisked away to her first day of college.

Which goes…surprisingly well!

Oh, it's weird. Any stupor she'd had with the mansion is nothing compared to the buildings of Ouran University. Its splendor tipped into cartoony. Every stone and brick is pink while somehow still looking regal. There are Greek pillars holding up the roofs that stretch high above her head, a clocktower that could rival Big Ben. The flower bushes outside are in full bloom, and there's not a brown bud to be found on them. There's not a speck on any window, no dust on any surface—nothing out of place but the flower petals dusted on the outside walkways. Even the students are shockingly perfect. Kosuke has never seen so many beautiful people in one place before.

She doesn't let it all distract her—she pays attention to her professors' words. The classes are fine, though her culinary course would not start until later. Her professors know what they're talking about and teach well. She just has no passion for any of it. Human Resource Management…not her heart's content.

Even better, she's not hounded by any students to talk of—well, anything, her family included. Kosuke has never been the shrinking violet in school, but she keeps to herself just this once. Her longest conversation of the day is just asking directions from a passing student.

(Oh, and the cafeteria—heaven on Earth. Shigeo has covered all of her meal costs and she will use that every single day. How has she survived so long without ever tasting beef wellington?)

Best of all, she sees neither Tamaki nor Kyoya after all. For a few hours, Kosuke walks from class to class, books in her satchel, almost feeling like a normal college student. She never thought she was going to miss school.

Could it really be so easy? Maybe all she has to do is keep her head low. If no one talks to her, she can't make a fool of herself.

So…the day goes well. Her final lecture ends, and all that's left is to return home.

She might just be able to do this.

As she's walking down the hall, unsure of what she'll do for the rest of the day, a voice calls, "Excuse me!"

It's a woman Kosuke thinks she saw in one of her classes earlier today. She's smiling, though a bit out of breath, as she jogs up to her.

"Are you Kosuke Amida?" Kosuke nods, though the new name will leave a bitter taste in her mouth for the rest of her life. "Great! Could you come with me? There are still a few things we need to figure out, with you being a new student."

Well, boring paperwork will be the least of my problems lately. "Oh, okay. Lead the way."

Kosuke should make a note of how to get to the office they're heading to. It's embarrassing how many times she managed to get lost today. She tries to memorize all the turns they make, but she's already forgotten by the time they make it there.

She has to say, she thought it would be in another building. Not that it really matters.

This does:

"SURPRISE!"

Kosuke somehow manages not to scream. She does jump about ten miles into the air, though.

Who are these people? Why are they throwing a surprise party for her? Kosuke has no idea. But there are a lot of them. A room packed wall-to-wall with strangers, smiling and applauding, looking so friendly but unfamiliar regardless.

This isn't a high-society propriety thing—Kosuke could be dirt poor and she'd still have no idea how to respond. Her first idea is to smile, which doesn't hold. Arms pull her in to the thick of it all. Everyone starts talking all at once. She's surrounded in seconds flat.

"It's so great to meet you!"

"Congratulations!"

"You're such a lucky girl!"

Kosuke finally gets the sense to start responding with thank-yous, but feels no better for it. Of everything she'd been afraid of going into today, this is a nightmare she never saw coming. She feels dizzy.

"Hey, hey!" A voice calls from deeper in, followed by another adding, "Best friends here. We got first dibs!"

The dozens of arms start guiding her in as easily as a leaf caught in a stream. It's starting to be too much all at once, until finally she's stopped before—surprise! Even more strangers!

There are five of them, though it seems that the ones who called out were a pair of twins. Slender in frame with brown eyes so light they were almost bronze, they are just as devastatingly handsome as every other man in the building. Though Kosuke notes with curiosity that one has rich chestnut hair while his brother's was somewhere close to strawberry blond.

"Been waiting for you," says the dark-haired one. "Welcome to the club!"

All Kosuke can do is stupidly parrot, "The club?"

"Huh?" The next to speak up is a shorter boy with huge brown eyes and hair the color of honey. He can't be older than fourteen, to Kosuke's immense confusion. "Did he not tell you about us?"

The other twin smirks and declares, "We're the Host Club."

With his brother, they chirp, "Your life just got a million times better."

Oh! Kosuke realizes…and exclaims aloud, much to the twins' pleasure. Though it's not much relief, at least she can figure who organized all this. Maybe she should've known Tamaki was going to go over the moon for this.

Which means that he knows now. Oh, the conversation they will have…She is not excited for it in the slightest.

"Ringing a bell now?" The brunette twin chuckles.

"Yes…Um—I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to be meeting you today." Kosuke looks between the twins, trying to find their names in her memories. "Hikaru and Kaoru…Hi…His…?"

"Hitachiin. I'm Kaoru—" The blonde twin points at himself, then is brother. "—and he's Hikaru."

Kosuke looks to the others. She's only just now noticing the very tall man with dark eyes and dark hair—striking, but with a calmness that borders on eerie. He blinks coolly at her when she turns to him. "Mori? Or Hani?"

The young boy is delighted—though Kosuke remembers now that he is not a young boy at all and is, in fact, older than her—and says, "I'm Hani! This is Reiko."

The woman behind him simply raises a hand and waves. Her straight auburn hair is so dark it's almost black, and her lips are painted red with such precision that Kosuke is jealous. She wonders how old she is. She must be close to her fiancé's age, but from looks alone, Kosuke could place her anywhere between fifteen and twenty-two. She's never met a person so…ambiguously-aged before.

There are five of them total, plus Tamaki and Haruhi, that makes seven. Wait, no, Reiko is not considered part of the Host Club. There are seven, though. Isn't the one missing a close friend of Tamaki's? It's K-something…

"I'm Kosuke," she greets them all, and tries to give a genuine enough smile. It's hard when it feels like every pair of eyes in the room is trained on her. "It's nice to meet all of you. Tamaki talks about you a lot."

For just a second, the twins' smiles slip, and they give each other curious looks. From the corner of her eye, she thinks that Hani shares a similar one with Reiko. But they shrug it off just as quickly, and Hikaru hums, "Well, congrats on the husband. Kyoya can be scary sometimes, not gonna lie, but he's a good guy."

"I'm really curious, what is romantic-Kyoya like?" Kosuke imagines Kaoru is talking to her, but he's turned his eyes upward in a far-away, thoughtful expression. "I'm trying to imagine it, but it's not clicking."

Well, if Kyoya is a friend of theirs, and they're friends of Tamaki, maybe Kyoya isn't that bad after all? Elite image aside, Kosuke wants to make a fair first impression, and she knows badmouthing their friend at the first opportunity will do the exact opposite. "He's…Very polite. I mean, I don't know much about him because we just met, but he's—very nice."

Kaoru says something to his brother that sounds a bit like "neither of them are poets, huh?" but she can't make it out clearly. While he does so, Hani asks her, "Do you want some cake?"

"Oh, I think I'm good—"

"Hold on, I'll go get you some!"

"I—" But he's already zooming away into the throng. "—Okay."

As she watches him go, Kosuke catches the eyes of several students looking back at her, and quickly looks away. This feels a thousand times worse than the strangers' engagement party. Kosuke is not dressed like the rest of them, there is no one she recognizes (not even a father she'd just met,) and worst of all, she can't blend in at all. She's not just another partygoer, she's the celebrated.

Actually, no, there should be two people she knows: her fiancé who may or may not hate her, and Tamaki, supposedly.

Speaking of: "I'm going to take a guess and say Tamaki threw this party?"

"Spoken like someone who knows him well," chuckles Hikaru. His amusement is genuine, but there's a little hesitance, like he's confused about something still. "Yeah, him and Fuyumi both. She should be around here somewhere."

Kosuke turns to look, but all she gets is another sweep of strangers. Three people, then.

She's brought back in by Kaoru chiming in, "Fuyumi is his older sister. Have you met yet?"

"We have! She and her husband both came to dinner with us. I'm happy they did; they're really friendly."

Hikaru chuckles, which startles her. "Sounds like you like Fuyumi and Tetsu more than Kyoya."

Kaoru just laughs with him. "Guess he isn't a romantic, after all!"

They're joking in good faith, Kosuke knows, but it still worries her. She can't act to save her life. Her less-than-glowing response to their friend may have already painted an image of her in her mind. Does it matter that much, though? If Kosuke remembers correctly, the Hitachiins run a fashion line, which doesn't sound like it would ever have anything to do with medical technology…but what does she know about all of this?

"I didn't mean for it to come out that way," she tries to laugh, and cuts it off with a cough. "Um…Is Kyoya here?"

"He is!" Hani bounds back into view with a slice of cake on a plate. It looks lovely, maybe lemon-basil, but wow it is a thick slice. As thick as her hand is long. He hands it to her, and she scrambles to hold it full-palm on the bottom. "He and Tamaki are talking about something."

So a friend of Tamaki's, too. That's probably good.

"We already know everything about Kyoya," Hikaru suddenly scoffs. Kosuke doesn't get a single second to brace herself before he throws an arm around her shoulder. She's very lucky not to send a one-pound slice of cake to the floor. Wasting food is her worst nightmare. "What we want to know about is you."

Kaoru does the same, so now Kosuke is trapped in a Hitachiin arm-cage with no chance of escape. "Yeah, what are you majoring in? What year are you in? How are you liking Ouran?"

"Business Resource Management, first year. Ouran is…Wow." Kosuke looks upward. Given she didn't take ballet for long, but her childhood studio didn't have three crystal chandeliers on the ceiling. She wonders if Ouran dancers get special million-yen shoes, too, because just the feeling of the glossy boards under her feet is making her toes sting. "Very 'wow.'"

Reiko narrows her eyes at her, not unkindly. "I can't tell if that's a good 'wow' or a bad 'wow.'"

"Oh, the campus is gorgeous, don't get me wrong! And the professors are very…Well, professional. It's just." Kosuke would scratch at the back of her neck if her hands weren't preoccupied and her shoulders weren't taken. "I may or may not have gotten lost six times today."

"Yeah, you're going to want to read up on the school map, or you're a goner." Hikaru finally withdraws his arm from her. He's reaching for something in his breast pocket. "Hey, would you happen to know what your waistline measure is?"

Well.

That's an icebreaker.

Kosuke blinks a few times as she tries to discern if she really just heard him ask that. He doesn't say anything further. "Do I have to ask you to explain?"

"Oh, we'll be designing your wedding dress for you. It's fine to not know. Most people don't. Arms up, please."

Then Kaoru is behind her and lifting her arms up marionette-style. Only then does she realize Hikaru has pulled a length of measuring tape out and is reaching for her. She snaps her arms back down as much as she can without wasting the cake. "I don't think I'm comfortable being sized in front of a crowd."

"Would you like to be sized in private?"

"I'm starting to see why Tamaki talks about you the way he does." Kaoru tries to move her arms again, and this time Kosuke snaps in probably too much of a mother-scolding-her-child tone. She even wags her fork at him. "Eh-eh-eh!"

Well, so much for first impressions. At least 3/5 of this group seems amiable enough. Hani is watching her struggle with her cake, though, and since she hasn't taken a single bite anyway, she just hands it over to him. He is delighted.

Hikaru and Kaoru huff and puff, but the measuring tape goes away, and Hikaru tries to move on. "So Kyoya says you're from Karuizawa. Is it weird, going from commoner to all this?"

"It can be…a lot to take in, I'll admit. But I'm trying to—Did you just say 'commoner'?"

"We've been to Karuizawa before," Kaoru goes on. He's not looking at her, though; he's looking at her arm with odd attention…and she realizes he's probably trying to take a mental measurement. "It's nice, I guess. Tiny, though."

Kosuke raises the arm he's staring at and snaps her fingers. He smirks back at her, but to his tiny credit, he looks like he's at least trying not to look guilty. Oh, she's going to keep an eye on these two. "Thanks."

"We went to a pension owned by one of Haruhi's dad's friends." Hani has already eaten half the cake slice in record time and Kosuke is terrified. "Do you know her? Her name's Misuzu!"

"Misuzu? Yeah, her—Please slow down, you'll choke." Hani takes this very easily and even lets out a contrite 'okay' and puts on the brakes. "Misuzu's pension isn't that far from where my family's restaurant was. Is."

"Ooh, you have a restaurant? Which one?"

"It's called The Lily Bowl." It's hard, switching from past to present tenses. It's still their home, the sign still hangs out front, but it hasn't been a restaurant in over a year. Suddenly Kosuke is struck with the image of the dining room tables filled with customers, the air filled with the buzz of conversation and the clinking of silverware. It's a bittersweet nostalgia. "It's just a little place. Not much…but we served good food."

"What about sweets?" Hani smiles a smile as sugary as the cake he's eating. Kosuke feels a cavity coming on just looking at it. "Did you guys make desserts and all that?"

"My mother made all the desserts." Before she can stop herself, Kosuke is rambling. "Strawberry shortcake, brownies, cheesecake, apple pie, tarts…It all kind of depended on the season, but sometimes around Christmas she'd make things like pumpkin pie and peppermint bark and—I—" Kosuke coughs. "Sorry."

Hani does not mind. In fact, he's now looking at Kosuke like she's some kind of goddess descended down to visit the mortals. "Do you know how to make all of that?"

"Oh, no! No, no, no, no, no!" Kosuke flits her hands around and shakes her head, as if by just bringing up desserts alone, she's put the sweet boy—man—in danger of getting poisoned by her toxic baking. "I'm not being modest, I really, really cannot bake."

"Oh." All hope fades away from Hani's eyes. They're now so filled with disappointment that guilt curls up in Kosuke's gut, even though she knows she's trying to save his life. "Okay…"

Hikaru looks at her with interest—genuine interest, not I'm-trying-to-figure-out-your-bust-size interest. "So are you guys closed, or something? I mean, you're using the past tense a lot."

They're watching her, and everyone else is watching her, and everyone's listening in on what she's going to say next. Kosuke has been carrying this weight around for over a year now and she does not know any way, shape, or form of saying, "My parents died," without bringing the atmosphere crashing down. You don't say that in the middle of a casual conversation. And besides…It always makes her mouth dry and bitter afterwards.

"We closed, yeah." The dryness threatens to come, and she eyes the punch some of them are sipping on with jealousy. She would go get some herself if it didn't mean running headfirst into the sea of strangers. "Some—financial stuff happened. We couldn't stay open."

"Aw, I'm sorry," frets Hani. "I wish we'd come when you were open."

"What do you guys do now?" Kaoru hums in thought. "I mean, no offense, but in a town as small as Karuizawa, I can't think of many other good business ventures."

Reiko finally breaks her long silence to quip, "Karuizawa isn't that small."

The twins ignore her. Hikaru goes on, "Well, now that she's heiress to one of the biggest medical companies in the world, they probably don't have to do anything anymore. Heck, they could move out of Karuizawa, come out here to Tokyo."

"Kyoya kind of told us a little about what happened," Kaoru tells her, and when Kosuke can't stop her head from snaking back just so, he quickly adds, "Nothing bad, nothing bad! Just, like…Your dad didn't really know about you and took you in."

"Speaking of, is he coming?" Hikaru looks around the room as if Shigeo may already be here. He's completely oblivious to the chill that runs up Kosuke's spine at the sheer idea that her father may be in the room right now. "I mean, I know sending an invite to Mr. Ootori was useless, but what about him?"

"I've met Mr. Amida a few times," Hani chimes in. "He's kind of serious, but he seems nice, so maybe he'll show up after all." And suddenly a thought comes upon Hani, and he gasps, "Oh, no, did we invite her mother?"

Reiko looks at Kosuke without a single change of expression, yet somehow looks apologetic. "We didn't know much about you, so we couldn't get in contact with her."

Kaoru gives them all a bit of a hard side-eyed look, and tries to whisper from the corner of his mouth—and doing so to four other people means Kosuke hears every word he's saying. "She may not want to come, you guys."

Hani frowns, almost aghast. "Why not?"

"Um…Maybe because she and Mr. Amida have been divorced and separated for, like, twenty years?" Kaoru seems to realize as soon as he says it that there's no way that Kosuke didn't hear him, and looks a bit contrite.

"Yeah, but her daughter's getting hitched, wouldn't she want to come to her party?" Hikaru turns to Kosuke as if this is the most casual conversation ever. "Do you want to call her? We'll probably be here for a while, maybe she can still make it."

Kosuke has been listening to all of them talk and talk and talk, head going between them like she's watching a tennis match, and every sentence they say bounces around in her mind like a pachinko ball. She should be relieved that Kyoya and Tamaki didn't tell them her life story, she guesses, but she can't just keep letting them think her mother is still alive. How does she correct them? What does she do?

She settles on coughing again, and asking, "I'm sorry, but could I go get some punch real quick? I'm—parched."

Hani happily offers, "I'll go get you some!"

"No, no, I'll get it myself." She turns and walks away before anyone can protest further.

The twins call, "Other way!"

So she walks past them again with her head hung low. "Thanks."

The dizziness brought on by talk of her mother fades away the more she walks, to be replaced by the dizziness brought on by being surrounded by strangers celebrating her engagement to yet another stranger. She knows that not all of them are looking at her; this is a party, they're mostly chatting with others, laughing, joking. But she feels like she's being watched the whole way to the punch table. She thinks she'll get a moment of respite when she takes up a glass cup, but the hope is for not.

"Hi," a brunette chirps at her as soon as she comes. "It's nice to meet you! I hope you don't mind the surprise party."

"It's—" Kosuke bites back a sigh. As much as she dislikes it, all this glitz and glamor for a stranger is…nice. Maybe they all mean well. "It's really nice of all of you to throw a party for me. For us. Thank you!"

"Of course! Oh, Kazukiyo! Kazukiyo! Come here!"

She waves her hand up into the air, and a bespectacled man not that much taller than her steps out of the crowd. When he comes closer, she gives him a warm smile and lays her hand on his arm—with the movement, Kosuke sees the glints of rings on their fingers. She's happy for them. She's jealous of them.

"Miss Amida," Kazukiyo greets her, a bit surprised. "It's wonderful to meet you! We may not know each other, but I've always respected Kyoya, so I'm happy that we'll be attending school together."

It's stilted and awkward, but sincere, and Kosuke smiles. "Thanks." Should she be making small talk? She doesn't want to look like a scared rabbit in a cage. "What do you two major in?"

"We're both in law," Momoka answers.

"Oh! Are you in the same classes as Haruhi?"

"You've met Haruhi?" But Kazukiyo just goes on, "We were. Still are, I suppose. We don't see her that much anymore now that she's studying in the States. I think she flies back sometime next week?"

"What about you? What are you majoring in?" asks Momoka.

"Business Resource Management."

"You're heiress to Amida Health now, right?" It's neither Momoka nor Kazukiyo who says it. It's another stranger who pops out of the throng in an instant. "Oh, you're going to be set. Not to raise my nose at my uncle's company, but Amida Health's business model is impenetrable. Is it true that they're going into home products? I thought Mr. Shigeo turned down the idea of trying it again."

"Well." Didn't he say something to Mr. Ootori about some kind of heartbeat device or something? Why didn't you look at the papers, idiot?! "I think some ideas are being bounced around, but I don't think I can say anything solid just yet."

It's just ambiguously noncommittal enough for the woman to accept it. But then here comes two more students fluttering around her.

"Have you guys made any plans for the wedding yet?" asks a man. "Shigure Flora would be more than happy to provide all the flowers you guys will need."

"Do you already have friends here?" trills a girl. "Yes or no, you're absolutely invited to my birthday gala next month. Say you'll come!"

Kosuke swallows. She's feeling boxed in. "I—I'll come."

"Hey, now that you're here, can you answer a question? Obviously Kyoya won't be the sole inheritor of Ootori Medical, but with you as sole heiress of Amida Health, how are you guys going to be partnered? Will you and Kyoya own the business together, or will Kyoya stay with Ootori Medical while you're running Amida Health? Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Kyoya tries to do both, he's always managed to do the impossible…"

"Do you already have plans for Amida Health? What about branching off to other countries?"

A girl sighs, forlorn, "Alright, I'm embarrassed that I don't know that much about the company. What business model is it?"

Okay, this time, all eyes are on her.

Why didn't she read the stupid hieroglyphics? She knew the test was coming and she still didn't study. What does she do? What does she say?

This is it. This is where you sign your title as 'Dumb Pauper Who Has No Idea What She's Doing.'

It's already coming. As Kosuke stands there, mouth gaping open and close like a fish, the smiles start to flicker the longer she stays silent. People start to glance at each other. She can see in their eyes that they're realizing she doesn't know what to say—the heiress of Amida Health can't even say two words about it.

Maybe she should just be honest and say she's new to this. Go ahead and get it out of the way and deal with whatever dismissal or pity follows.

Then someone puts their hand on her shoulder—and at first she jumps, unsure if she's about to snap at them to back off or put on a smile or what.

Then she gets a look at who it is. She shouldn't be surprised, given the party is for both of them, but she still is.

"There you are," Kyoya says, warmly. He's smiling. This is—what, the second time she's seen him do so? It looks genuine. Emphasis on "looks." "I would have warned you about the party, but I didn't know about it myself."

It's probably for the best that someone speaks up, because Kosuke was definitely about to spend another laughable amount of time blinking and gaping. Momoka happily greets him with, "Kyoya! You're finally here. I hope you don't mind us snagging her before you could see her."

"Not at all. I'm happy to see her being greeted so easily." Kyoya looks back at her—she never took her eyes off of him, but she starts when she's caught. "You said you don't handle crowds that easily, but you seem to be doing fine to me."

"Wh—" That's all she gets to say.

"Oh, no!" Momoka grabs onto her fiancé's arm and tugs. The poor guy was taking a sip of punch, and just about chokes at the sudden lurch. When Kosuke looks at everyone else, they're sharing Momoka's expression of horror and guilt. "We didn't mean to crowd you! I'm so sorry!"

"Look, don't worry about it," one of the other men says as he's walking backwards. "We can talk later! Just try to enjoy the party."

"I…" It's no good. Or it's no bad? Kosuke gets what she wanted, she supposes. The crowd suddenly disbands from her, giving her enough room to finally breathe again, even if it's standing next to Kyoya. "Thank you?"

Kyoya just keeps smiling, but not really at her anymore. If she thought she was being watched before, that was nothing compared to now. There's no missing how many people are now watching them with warm gazes—oh, look at together, so cute! Kosuke also does not miss that one or two women in the crowd have jealousy on their faces. Some even teeter towards heartbreak. Geez…

"I didn't know you were starting classes today," Kyoya says. Still smiling.

Kosuke takes a sip of punch—did his eye just twitch?—and marvels that the drink alone tastes like a million yen. But more importantly, Kyoya is actually talking to her…even though there's something about him now that's making her uneasy. His smile is kind and his voice is easy, but is she wrong for feeling like it's somehow fake?

Maybe he's just trying to start over, she thinks. Heck, maybe he regrets what happened at dinner. Go with it. So Kosuke smiles back, maybe not as expertly, and says, "We managed to get my schedule figured out pretty quickly."

"Business Administration and Management?"

"Yeah. Wait—no. Human Resource Management." Kosuke takes another sip of punch—if nothing else, she needs to get her major down pat. "It's nice. More math than I was expecting…" She hesitates. "Did you have classes today?"

"I did. I was half-expecting to see you in one of them." She doesn't miss the edge that creeps into his voice, she just doesn't know what it is. "How have you been settling in?"

"Fine. We moved into one of Sh—Dad's estates here in Tokyo." Kosuke swirls the last bit of pink punch around in her glass. Does she save it so she can do something with her hands, or down it now to get rid of the bitterness the word 'Dad' has left in her mouth? Why are the glasses so small? "The kids are at daycare right now." Oh. Kosuke's eyes flutter when the realization hits. "I should call my chauffeur to tell him I'm at a party."

What about the kids? Are they going to be okay in the mansion by themselves, surrounded by strangers? I don't think Shigeo is there, but what if he is…?

Thankfully, Kosuke keeps herself from babbling all of this out loud, but as she digs into her pocket for her phone, she looks up at Kyoya again to see if he's showing anymore annoyance with her—disorder. But he's no longer looking at her.

He's looking off into the crowd, and curious, Kosuke follows his gaze. It takes a second to pick out Fuyumi from the crowd—as elegant as Kosuke remembers her, dressed in lavender. Fuyumi is smiling at her brother. No, she's smiling at both of them. Warm and almost satisfied.

In reality, all of this looking only takes place in a second. Maybe less. Then Kosuke feels fingers brushing against her own, and startles before she hears Kyoya say, "Here, let me."

He turns back to the punch bowl. As he pours more into her glass, not spilling so much as a drop back into the bowl, Kosuke's fingers twitch despite herself. That's the first time they've touched, she realizes. They didn't even shake hands when they met at the dinner. Her heart isn't exactly fluttering at the thought.

As he hands her drink back—only further feeding the delighted eyes on them—he suddenly says, "Can I talk to you in private for a minute?"

Kosuke doesn't get much of it, neither excited nor worried. Maybe he'll apologize Maybe they can talk about what happened at dinner. That would be nice.

She starts to say yes, but then she swears she hears her name being called out. Kyoya frowns when she looks away to find the source, but then he, too, has his ears perked to attention. Kosuke can't even say if she recognizes the voice calling her name. The crowd has started up another excited babble.

Finally, there's a break, a familiar face almost bursting through the crowd, looking right at her.

"Haruhi!"

Haruhi says some quick excuse me's and nice to see you's as she comes, and finally the people start to part for her. Surprise wears off quickly. It makes sense for her to be here, especially if Tamaki is. Still, with the radio silence on the brunette's end, Kosuke feels justified for being taken aback—but she's instantly relieved, nonetheless. Haruhi also isn't dressed in triple-figure clothing, just a casual long-sleeved dress with tights and flats.

When she catches Haruhi's eye, though, the relief halts. Haruhi looks…not angry, but not happy. Somehow Kosuke just knows that she has to tell Kosuke something and she has to tell her now. And given the last time they talked, Kosuke was still living in her little restaurant-house in Karuizawa and not a multi-floor estate in Tokyo, she can imagine what it's about.

Finally Haruhi is just ten feet, nine feet, eight feet away…

…and her beloved fiancé sweeps in out of nowhere to pluck her off the ground.

"Haruhi!" Tamaki is completely unaware of (or desensitized to) Haruhi's little squeaks of alarm as he squeezes the life out of her. He also may or may not be aware that he's gently swinging her from side to side, leaving her legs dangling. "You didn't respond to my messages! I didn't know if you were coming…"

"I was busy," Haruhi croaks out. Finally she manages to pull her head back enough to exclaim, "Tamaki, I need to talk to Kosuke!"

"Oh." And just like that, the smile is gone and Tamaki is gently setting her back down. He looks to Kosuke and smiles again, but for once, it's not beaming bright. It's almost nervous. "Hi, Kosuke."

Kosuke sticks up a hand and murmurs, "Hello." She's trying to think of what else to say, but every thought that comes to mind gets cancelled out. She should explain that Kyoya is her fiancé—no, wait they already know that. She should introduce him—no, Tamaki already knows him, and Haruhi might, too. She should—probably explain to them why she is in this situation to begin with.

Haruhi steps toward her, but hesitates as she looks at Kyoya. Kosuke can't read the silent expression the two of them are sharing. Is there some level of distress she's detecting? Haruhi she may understand just because she probably has no idea what is going on, but why Kyoya?

Haruhi gently takes hold of her hand and whispers, "Can we talk for just a minute?"

Kosuke nods before she can even really think about it. Haruhi starts to gently tug her away, back toward the opening doors of the dance studio, shouldering between the party guests. As they stumble forward, Kosuke not sure what she's going to say first, she turns back around to look at Kyoya and Tamaki. Their images become more and more obscured as faces and bodies move into view, but she thinks that Tamaki looks a bit concerned and Kyoya…upset.

With just a few seconds to go until they're in private, Kosuke runs over everything she is going to say. She thinks she has the script down pat. She thinks she knows how this conversation will go.

---

Nevermind.

"Wait, he's that Kyoya?"

"Yes!" Haruhi grabs Kosuke's shoulders and gives her a little shake, as if trying to wake her up. "Did you not put two and two together once you heard what his name was?!"

"I forgot what his name was! I just remembered it was K-something…! Also, please forgive me, but I've kind of been in a permanent state of shock for the past week!"

Haruhi takes in a deep, deep breath and pushes the bangs out of her eyes. For some reason Kosuke feels guilty even though she can't figure out why.

In hindsight, it was probably very, very dumb of her to not realize that Kyoya Ootori—her fiancé, youngest son of Yoshio Ootori, member of the Ootori family, who own the most prestigious medical company in Japan—also just so happens to be Kyoya Ootori, Tamaki's best friend and fellow member of the Ouran Host Club.

Who has known Haruhi and Tamaki both for years. Because they are best friends.

Does it bother Kosuke? Well…She guesses not. In the end, it doesn't really change anything, it doesn't matter that much. They're still engaged at the end of the day. And like she'd told herself before, maybe him being friends with Tamaki and Haruhi spoke well of him. It made more sense for them to even know each other in the first place. At least they'd all gone to the same high school; Kosuke met Haruhi because her house just so happened to be the one of all others in Karuizawa Haruhi took refuge in during a rainstorm.

It's just that the likelihood of this happening is nothing short of mind-boggling. Kosuke and Haruhi hang out during a thunderstorm and from then on Kosuke is friends with both her and Tamaki—okay, sure. Her estranged father appears for the first time in her life to offer her heirdom of his prestigious medical company in exchange for an arranged marriage—not normal, but unrelated.

But the fact that her arranged fiancé just so happens to have already been close with her friends, whom she'd already met under complete happenstance? She's starting to wonder if this was all some kind of set up, because the world doesn't just spin in that pattern.

It's also odd to imagine that the guy who stormed out of their first dinner and made it clear from the get-go he thought her rather pathetic, and certainly unworthy to be heiress to Amida Health, was a longtime companion of the best friend who scolded her for not mentioning that it was her birthday and said best friend's fiancé, who hugged her to death every time they met.

Is this the weirdest thing that's happened to her so far?

No.

So she will just—deal with it.

"Why didn't you say something sooner? Why haven't you answered my texts?"

"Because it was a lot to take in! First you tell me you're getting engaged, then you're telling me you're moving to Tokyo, then Tamaki tells me that the guy you're getting engaged to is Kyoya. I didn't think this was a conversation not to be had in person." Haruhi stops and starts to twirl her fingers backwards. "Okay, just—rewind for a second here. Explain to me everything that has happened."

Kosuke does…but finds herself leaving certain details out.

She tells Haruhi the reason that Shigeo came to her was because he wanted to arrange her in a marriage with Kyoya. That now she's training to be the one-day owner of Amida Health, and now she and Hitsuji and Minami are living with Shigeo in the estate in Tokyo. This is more or less going to be her life from here on out—no longer living an average life in a mountain town, but forevermore wining and dining with the richest people in Japan.

What she doesn't say is that she agreed to this because she was—is scared. She's never once told Haruhi about the loan shark and she won't now. When she says she accepted Shigeo's offer, she doesn't say it's because she'd be wracked with guilt if she turned down the opportunity to have Hitsuji and Minami lead a normal…well, not normal, but stable life, where they won't have to worry about lack of money dooming their futures. She tells Haruhi she agreed because why not?

She thinks that maybe it's because, if she tells Haruhi why she agreed to it, having Haruhi confirm that she's still made a terrible choice may break her mental state.

More honestly, though…

She spent years and years and years sitting around not doing anything to help her family. Not only is she going to refuse to be reprimanded for all but saving them, she's not going to take any pity when she knows deep down—deep, deep, deeeeeeeeeeeeeeep down—that she made the right choice. She has a distaste for pity now.

"We'll be provided for for the rest of our lives, Haruhi," she tries to say even as the brunette is boggling at her. "A cashier job wasn't going to keep us all going forever…It wasn't keeping us going in the first place."

"Sure, at the cost that you're marrying a stranger. How could you even trust your dad? He's a stranger, too!"

"Because there was something in it for him," Kosuke spits out before she can catch herself. She sighs. "I'm not saying it isn't weird that he hunted me down just to marry me off, I'm just saying that he's been pretty straightforward with everything. And it's not like he forced me into it, I agreed." When Haruhi's response is to simply shake her head side-to-side, she insists, "Look, Haruhi…It's fine. I mean—what's the harm in all of this? Oh, no, we have to live in a big mansion for the rest of our lives and eat caviar while I work at a super-profitable company! The horror!"

"If it was fine, I wouldn't need to be convinced." Haruhi runs her hands down her face. "Life isn't just about being rich and comfortable. Didn't you say you wanted to try and run a restaurant one day?"

Yes, she did. It was a fantasy Kosuke thought about often, and one that she just maybe thought may actually happen one day. Even if it was just running a tiny little food stand, being able to do the thing she loves and make a profit from it would be magical. But if it could be bigger, well, she hadn't told anyone, but she had a secret folder under her bed of all the design ideas she'd come up with, from the layout of the building to the chairs in the dining room.

She probably won't scrap the folder, but looking at it probably won't make her happy anymore.

"Yes, I did. I would also like to live in a huge mansion with an indoor pool and a—Bad analogy. It probably wasn't even going to happen anyway. I would have to wait years just so the kids are old enough for me to go to college, even assuming that I—" She swallows. She almost slipped there. "Don't they say you shouldn't make your passion your career, anyway?"

"What about Kyoya?" Haruhi asks, and even she winces as she says it. This must be so, so much weirder for her than it is for Kosuke. She can only imagine what it's like to have two people in your lives who have never so much as stood in the same room suddenly becoming engaged out of nowhere. "We also talked about how you'd start dating again when the kids got older."

Yes. They did. Kosuke always hated those talks. Not because being honest with Haruhi was ever bad. Venting out the pressure building up in her chest always felt nice. But every time they talked about it, and every time they so much as implied Kohta's existence, Kosuke left the conversation wondering if Haruhi thought she was pathetically lonely. She thinks she is. Sometimes she still cocoons herself in her blankets just to remember what it was like to be held when she fell asleep.

"Well…" Kosuke falls short on this one. She doesn't know how to justify this even to herself.

"But you're just okay marrying Kyoya? You're okay being married to him for the rest of your life?"

The disbelief and near-worry in her voice has Kosuke asking, "Isn't Kyoya one of your best friends?"

"I'm not saying he's a bad person." Haruhi looks off to the side, a bit distracted. "Don't get me wrong, he can be patronizing sometimes—a lot of the time, but he's a good guy. But I know he's a good guy because I know him. You don't. He's a stranger to you."

"Not anymore." Harui's glare borders on withering. "I mean, not technically."

Haruhi takes a step forward, leans a little closer. "Can you look me in the eye and say you're okay with marrying him?"

Again, venting always feels amazing after, but Kosuke knows that she just can't this time. She can't just spill out to Haruhi that she's pretty sure Kyoya doesn't like her at all, and she's pretty sure she doesn't like him at all. That she's already mourned (and still mourning) the fact that she'll never have another chance at a relationship again, for the rest of her life. That she knows all of three things about Kyoya even though they're about to be married—and Kosuke's stomach still roils at the idea of them sleeping in the same bed, eating their meals at the same table, her calling him "my husband…"

If she tells Haruhi, then what? She's still going to do it. She just makes herself look like a woe-is-me damsel-in-distress who needs other people to take care of her.

What is she supposed to say, though? What is there to say that will convince Haruhi enough?

Then the idea hits her.

"Yes."

She manages to say it while looking Haruhi right into her brown eyes. They flutter back at her for a moment as Haruhi leans back.

"Really?"

Kosuke knows she can't act to save her life. But she can act well enough to satisfy customers on a compensated date, to never let Miss Yukino get the notion that she knows why the window of her store got shattered. So maybe she can convince Haruhi of this.

Granted, she's not going to be able to look herself in the mirror for the next couple of days, but anyway…

"Yeah, really." Kosuke tucks a stray lock behind her ear, averts her gaze. Bashful 101. Textbook. "I mean…I like him."

Haruhi blinks a few more times. Kosuke can't tell if it's because people rarely like Kyoya so soon or if she's just acting too un-Kosuke-like. "Enough to marry him?"

"I'm not saying it isn't weird. It is weird. If I could have met him under any other circumstances, I would have. But…" Kosuke brings her gaze back to Haruhi's, but keeps it wavering, and holds her wrist with her other hand. "It's just the circumstances that are strange. I'm okay with him."

Haruhi keeps staring, though her eyes slide off Kosuke for a second. The arithmetic going through her head is almost visible. "Why."

Take it home. Kosuke shrugs. She looks away again. She doesn't know if she can blush on command, but she tries anyway.

"He's really—charming, I guess. Kind of like Tamaki, but he's also really mature. 'Cool,' I guess?" Kosuke winds the toe of her shoe on the floor. "He's really, really smart, too. I was really nervous when we first met, but he didn't make me uncomfortable at all. I mean, for a second, I was worried that I was rambling waaay too much about school and the kids and cooking and all that, but he was listening the whole time." Just for the cherry on top, she makes a little giggle as she says it. "I think he's nice. Really nice."

Finally she looks back to Haruhi to see if it's worked.

She thinks it has. Haruhi is certainly not smiling, not looking at her with a warm smile like the partygoers behind the door. There is surprise still in her eyes, but not disbelief. Like for all the out-of-nowhere information that Kosuke and Tamaki have thrown in her face all this time, she never once figured that Kosuke would not only like Kyoya, but already have a crush on him. Which is exactly what Kosuke needs.

Haruhi's hands drop from her hips. One comes up and rubs the back of her neck. "O…kay…"

Kosuke tips her head to the side, frowning. "'Okay'?"

"I mean, I guess if you're okay with it, then everything's fine." Haruhi lets out a sigh of all the air in her lungs. "But man oh man is this bizarre."

Kosuke lets out a huff of a laugh. "How do you think I feel?"

"It's just…picturing you and Kyoya together…" Haruhi narrows her eyes, like the mental image is an eye chart and she's trying to see the bottom row of letters. "I'm going to have to get used to it."

Kosuke shrugs. She doesn't know what else to do. "Sorry?"

Haruhi looks back to her again, eyes flickering over her face, then sighs once more. "I'm sorry for blowing up at you like that. I'm not trying to make you feel like you've done anything wrong. I was just worried about you, you know?" Haruhi crosses her arms over her chest. "You've been through a lot and I don't want you going through anything else…I just thought maybe you got trapped in this or something."

She's neither wrong nor incorrect. Kosuke's trapped, but she let herself be. Walked right into the cell with her hands unbound. Still, Kosuke puts on what she hopes is a reassuring smile. "I get it. I promise, I'm fine. Better than fine, actually. I think this is going to be good for us."

"Right. Well…Listen. I'm going to be flying back to the U.S. in two weeks, so I'm not going to be around anymore. I'm still going to call you, of course, but now that you're going to be attending school here at Ouran, Tamaki's going to be around. And Kyoya." Her voice drops a bit when she says it, still distasteful. Even more so when she asks, "Have you met the others yet?"

"The Host Club?" Haruhi nods dreadfully. "Hani and Reiko seem nice. Mori, too, just quiet. The twins tried to get my waist measurements."

"Sounds about right," groans Haruhi. "I'm sorry you'll have to be here with them."

"It's fine…I guess." Kosuke heaves a sigh of her own. "Thanks for being accepting. I'm sorry to throw this all at you."

"Hey, don't apologize to me. Just, uh—let me know if you need anything, I guess." Haruhi glances back towards the doors. Throughout their conversation, the party has been humming inside, barely stifled. "You…want to go back in?"

"I guess it'd be rude to leave a party thrown for me." Kosuke recalls how the party came to be in the first place. "What did Tamaki say?"

"Hm? Oh. He was surprised, mostly. I mean…can't blame him."

"Right. But what about me and Kyoya?"

"I think he was a little freaked out about that, too, but uh…" Haruhi looks up to the ceiling. It's not quite an eye-roll. "He was trying to hide it, but he was excited. I can't read his mind, but I think he was over the moon about his best friend marrying my best friend. Like we're all going to be one big happy family now."

Haruhi makes a little scoffing laugh. Kosuke does the same, probably for a different reason.

"I think we should head back in now," she says at last. Though she realizes as quickly as she says it that Haruhi has provided her a momentary haven from all the questions she has no answers to. Well, Kyoya did, too, but at least no one is watching now. She savors the moment. "I should make a good first impression."

Haruhi gives her an encouraging but concerned smile, and pushes open the door for them. Immediately the sound comes out like a popped champagne bottle. Eyes fall back on them, mostly Kosuke, smiling and kind but foreign nonetheless. She remembers that these are just people—they're not specifically here to humiliate her, they're here to celebrate her. Besides, she'll probably be going to class with some of them, if not already.

As she sweeps the many, many faces, she catches a few familiars. Tamaki is talking animatedly to the Zukas. The twins are pointing at Reiko's lace collar and asking something with genuine interest. Mostly, though, they are washed away in the tides.

For just a moment, purely by the split-second parting of the heads, her eyes land on Fuyumi again. For a second, she thinks that she's looking at her, but then she realizes her gaze is just slightly targeted to her left. She turns to look and thankfully doesn't jump this time when she sees Kyoya standing there.

He was definitely waiting by the door for them. As Haruhi comes back in behind her, the two of them lock eyes. Haruhi's jaw works side-to-side for a moment. Kyoya doesn't so much as flinch. Finally Haruhi continues forth—and with a groan as the twins crow her name from the other side of the room.

Kosuke had forgotten for a minute that Kyoya had asked to talk to her before Haruhi had. As he opens his mouth to ask again, she just nods her head back to the hallway, door still open. He tugs his blazer tighter as he steps past her. Now unsure if she'd prefer the party or her fiancé, Kosuke shuts the door again.

It's stupid that the same place feels different just thirty seconds later. Like for some reason Kosuke is noticing how large the hallway is, how her footsteps make soft echoes on the tiles. She also realizes that this is the first time they've been totally alone together. Just the two of them. Soon-to-be-husband and soon-to-be-wife.

Kyoya asks right away, "Did Haruhi explain everything to you?"

"Yeah, she did." Kosuke rubs at the back of her neck. "I probably should've realized sooner. Tamaki talks about you all the time."

His head tips just ever-so-slightly to the side for a split second, as if he's in the same boat, but all he responds with is, "It's probably for the best you already know them. Now you have a familiar face at Ouran."

"Right." Kosuke looks off to the side like she's expecting to find anything there. She wonders what might have happened if Kyoya had come along to Karuizawa all the times Tamaki wanted him to. Maybe then the first impression wouldn't be so abysmal. "You wanted to talk about something?"

"Yes, I did."

Kyoya's hand comes up to his collar, but only finds the top button. Did he forget he wasn't wearing a tie? Awkward is a strange look on him. It's like his body is physically refusing to be so.

"First of all, I wanted to apologize for how I behaved the other night. My behavior was unacceptable, especially leaving in the middle of dinner. I hope you can forgive me for that."

Well.

It's an apology.

A very obligatory, bureaucratic apology.

You're probably just being bitter, Kosuke tells herself. She should be over the moon that he at least "doesn't hate her enough" to apologize for what happened. Still…She's not catching remorse in his voice so much as frustration. Less "Wow, I was a jerk the other night, I'm so sorry!" and more "Let me just get this out of the way."

Okay, okay. It's an apology. She'll take it. "It's okay."

Instead of immediately going on with the "secondly," Kyoya keeps on staring at her. The corners of his eyes narrow just so.

…Is he waiting for an apology, too?

For what?

Kosuke doesn't get to ask. Kyoya lets out a quick sigh that's miniscule but notable nonetheless and goes on. "Secondly, there are circumstances around our engagement that I believe we need to discuss."

"You mean like the companies?"

"No. It's more to do with my friends and family. Rather, my family and our friends."

"Okay. Go on."

Kyoya pushes his glasses just a bit further up his nose. "I know you're well familiar with Tamaki now. Not so much with Fuyumi, but she's made from a similar fabric. She cares a lot about everything. All the time. The other Hosts aren't so much like that, but we are friends. We keep up with each others' lives and we notice when something isn't right. Are you following?"

"That does sound like Haruhi. I can hardly keep anything from her…" Well, not 'hardly.' Kosuke shakes her head, telling herself not to get off-track. "Go ahead?"

He folds his arms across his chest and keeps them there. "I'm afraid that my past behavior has given Fuyumi the unfortunate impression that I do not like you."

The first question that comes to Kosuke's mind is why that matters.

The question she asks instead, before she can stop herself, is, "Do you?"

What the hell are you saying?! But her mouth won't unglue itself to apologize. Kyoya blinks just once, which she guesses is his version of surprise, and then his eyes once again narrow ever-so-slightly. Part of her is guilty for throwing his apology back into his face. The other part of her is wondering how this is news.

He answers, with just a slight sigh to his words, "Like I said, my behavior has just given her that impression."

Wow, you could lead a course here at Ouran. How to Dodge the Question 101. Kosuke blinks herself and doesn't know if she even stops herself from doing it witheringly or not. "So what's the problem?"

"The problem is that although my sister isn't the rumoring type, she isn't one to keep things to herself for long. When she gets worried, she gets very worried, and eventually she will tell someone why. I imagine that someone might be Tamaki; they're friends." Kyoya looks off to the side a bit, in thought. "Assuming that one of the others doesn't figure it out themselves. Haruhi, probably. She has more intuition."

This time, Kosuke can't help but squint at him. "Can't we just reassure them otherwise?"

"It's a losing battle. Just trust me on that."

Kosuke opens her mouth to reply…and remembers the conversation she'd just finished with Haruhi.

She had literally just lied to Haruhi's face that not only is she okay with marrying Kyoya, she already has a schoolgirl blushy-blushy crush on him. Which is probably going to cause a lot of confusion if Tamaki or Fuyumi vocally think the two of them dislike one another.

Um.

Should I tell him? Kosuke thinks. Then, Yeah, I should probably tell him.

Kyoya is still staring, waiting for her response, except now his head is starting to tilt. She's thinking and he doesn't know why.

Kosuke settles with responding with, "I know why I would have a problem with that, but before I say it…Why is it a problem for you?"

He hesitates for just a second longer, certainly not expecting this response, but he answers.

"I do not need—and I certainly don't want—Fuyumi, Tamaki, Haruhi, or anyone else worrying over us. Which they will. Vocally so." Kyoya's jaw works to the side. "I don't know if anyone has told you as much, but my schedule between Ootori Medical and my education is very tight at the moment. I could do without the extra stress of convincing my loved ones that I'm not suffering."

Wow.

So we're in the same boat after all.

It's bitter, knowing this is the first time they've found anything resembling common ground. Kosuke looks him over head-to-toe. He is composed, blunt, and articulate. Borderline cold—or maybe not borderline. He couldn't be further from Tamaki Suoh despite being his best friend. He couldn't be further from her. Yet he also cannot stand being fussed over. He's trying to prevent it from happening.

It's good that they're in the same boat, but damn near tragic that it's over this. Kosuke once again wonders—with fear—if they're going to be expected to have children. This is not going to be a nice "how Dad met Mom" story. Hell, she's not going to be able to tell Hitsuji and Minami about any of this—her real, non-hypothetical siblings.

Kosuke runs her tongue over her teeth. "And we can't just convince them."

"We could try, but we won't succeed."

She can tell she's waiting for her to give him the go-ahead to share the plan. The plan that she has already put into motion, which she lets him know by finally sighing, "I told Haruhi I like you."

Kyoya answers, coolly, "She may be convinced for now, but you'd be surprised with how perceptive she can be—"

"I know how perceptive she is. That's why I acted—very carefully when I told her I liked you. And I don't mean 'eh, he's okay.' I mean like."

Finally she gets a more typical surprise response. Kyoya's head snakes back on his neck just so. His eyelids flutter. He asks (doesn't bark, doesn't exclaim, just kind of says it,) "Why."

"Same reason as you. Well…not really…" Kosuke crosses her arms, too, but she can't keep looking at him. She spins her toe on the floor again. She wishes the floor wasn't so pristine that she saw her reflection. She sees right up close how pitiful she is. "Haruhi and Tamaki already worry about me a lot. And it's not that I don't appreciate it. I get it. They're my friends. I worry about them, too. We care about each other."

Kyoya doesn't interrupt. His silence is inviting her to go on.

"But I've been worried about for a long, long time now and I just…don't want to give them another reason." Kosuke pauses for a minute. Is this going to make Kyoya worry about her? "And there isn't one. I'm fine with this. I don't mind that we're getting married. But like you said, I don't think I'd be able to convince them. They'd still be saying the same old 'you can talk to me if anything's wrong' stuff, looking at me when I have my back turned…"

Bitterness creeps into her voice, which he'll probably misplace. She is not bitter at Tamaki and Haruhi. She loves them. She's bitter at herself for time and time again being so easy to pity.

She takes in a deep breath, straightening her spine, and meets his eyes again. He's still calm and collected.

"I don't think I'd be able to convince them that everything's fine just by saying so. But…if I acted like everything was more than fine, that I wasn't just 'okay' with this and I was actually happy about it, then maybe they'd accept that more easily."

Kyoya nods, not happily. "So we're in agreement."

"I guess so. We'll act…affectionate in public. Or just chipper."

Kyoya nods again, and a length of silence follows. Kosuke thinks about what she's going to have to do and tries not to grimace in front of him. She's not going to just snog him in public, obviously, but she can't help but find it weird, the image of smiling warmly at him and even just brushing against his hand while others are watching. Especially if they'll be like this once they're behind closed doors, quiet and terse.

The average human lives to be…what, eighty? So she has about sixty years of this to look forward to. All the time that she has been alive times three.

As everything mixes together—exhaustion, anger, confusion, fear—into that gross, muddy brown when you mix up all the colors on a palette…Guilt seeps in. And Kosuke doesn't feel so bitter anymore.

Had Kyoya been rude to her at the dinner? Yeah, maybe. But he apologized for it. And sure, he was a bit terse, a bit blunt, but Kosuke wasn't exactly radiating warmth lately, either. Plus, having a job like his and going to a school like this on top of a new bride is probably stressing him out of his personality. He's Tamaki's best friend and a close one of Haruhi's. He's helping them plan their wedding and will be the Best Man. He can't be a bad guy.

Kosuke takes a peek at him from the corner of her eye. He's looking towards the doors, which are still stifling the chatter and laughter of the party. Kyoya doesn't look too pleased with it. It must have been a surprise for him, too, and he also wasn't clicking his heels—maybe not for the same reason as her, but still.

The thought also occurs…how much say so did Kyoya get in this?

Have I thought of this before? I can't even remember. Kyoya's family setup was just a touch bit more "standard" than hers. His father did not seek him out after almost two decades of being a stranger just to marry him off to a stranger. Kyoya knew his father, he worked for him. They were a family, and Shigeo had told her that people in "his world" have to do things for their family less they bring them down. Shigeo wasn't Kosuke's family, she only hopped on board with this because she had to.

Kyoya had a family, though, and from what she understood, an important partner in their company had pulled out. Did he have to do this? Did he also feel like had no choice?

Kosuke tried to map out sixty years in her mind. It's not easy—it's hard to comprehend such a long period of time. Sixty years of them exchanging monosyllables, barely looking at each other, just wallowing in the stress of their situation. She'd told herself the night of the dinner that she was going to get him to like her. What had happened to change her mind?

He's not a bad guy, she tells herself again. This is just a bad situation.

So, with all of that thought (in about the five or so seconds of silence), Kosuke starts, in a gentler voice, "I…feel like there's more that we should talk about, if that's okay with you."

"I agree. However, there's more that I wanted to say, if I may."

Kosuke nods and urges, "Yeah, go ahead."

He pushes up his glasses again. A tic, she guesses. "I am…aware that you have had a limited amount of time to fully grasp everything that someone in your position will be responsible for."

She tips her head in a "fair enough" fashion. "That's one way of putting it."

"I don't know what Mr. Amida has or has not explained to you so far." He pauses. "Has he told you of how important your image will be now?"

"He has." I still don't get it, but he has. "He said that what I do and say can reflect on him." She hesitates, unsure if she should add it, but does: "And you, I suppose."

Agreeably, he goes on, "I have been very mindful of how others perceive me throughout my life. I may not be an inheritor of Ootori Medical, but I am still an Ootori. Whether they're simply a socialite or even a potential future partner, people will watch me and form opinions on my family. If they're worth associating with, let alone doing business with."

Somehow he's made it make more sense in twelve seconds than Shigeo has for the past whatever. It's still strange, of course, but she supposes she can follow the logic. "I understand."

She doesn't know where this is going.

She doesn't expect it to go like this:

"You said yourself that what you say and do can and will affect me. So I would appreciate it if you were more—mindful of your behavior in public."

If a record were playing right now, it would have just scratched.

All of those thoughts, about Kyoya not being a bad guy and all, they don't disappear, per se, but they get—paused. Put on hold.

Parroting back "Behavior?" probably won't do her any favors, so she instead says, slowly, "What behavior are you talking about?"

"Perhaps 'behavior' isn't the right word." There's no apology in his tone. "I already realized at the dinner that you are not knowledgeable in the—for lack of a better word—details of Amida Health. I saw as much just a while ago when you were talking to the other students. People will begin noticing that you don't know much at all about the company that you're going to lead one day. They're going to start wondering why you've even been offered such a thing, let alone creating a partnership with another medical company."

Kosuke swallows but doesn't take her eyes off of him. He's not wrong, but boy does he not sound right. The annoyance has crept back into his voice. She's a problem. She's embarrassing him. The guy who stormed out of their first meeting.

Back in the party, and even the engagement party that seemed to long ago, she was dying of humiliation, not being able to answer questions she should. But the way Kyoya says "why you've been offered such a thing" makes another thought occur to her. "Why is it any of their business?"

His gray eyes narrow behind his glasses. Unamused. "I thought we were on the same page. It doesn't matter whether it's their business or not. What matters is that it will bring into question the mindsets of our fathers and the ethics of our companies. When people ask me about why you don't seem to know anything about Amida Health, I don't know what I'll be telling them."

Now the whole Kyoya's-not-a-bad-guy train of thought starts to fade. "You're mad because I'm embarrassing you."

His eyes narrow more. Thoroughly unamused. "I just said—"

"Dad has already started teaching me everything. I don't know every tiny little detail because of how quickly everything has had to change. I don't have time to study business models when I'm moving myself and two children into a new house. If you have a problem with how slowly I'm learning everything, you can discuss it with my father, but I don't think you will."

"I'll grant you that your father should be the one teaching you about Amida Health, but I don't think it's correct to say you don't have some responsibility yourself. Did you not ask him to perhaps slow everything down? To explain Amida Health's workings and your responsibilities before you agreed to being heiress?"

I would have loved to. "That's not how it ended up playing out, alright?"

"Then how did it? I'm genuinely curious. Why did you agree to become the future owner of an international medical technology company despite knowing nothing about it?"

"I don't think that's any of your business." He opens his mouth again, and she quickly adds, "He's going to teach me everything I need to know—and we're literally standing in the college where I'll be educated in business management. So I'm sorry it's not happening at the pace you want, but I am learning."

"This is—not at all how I wanted this conversation to go." Kyoya briefly sets his palm against his forehead. Still no apology, just annoyance. "I shouldn't have gotten off track. What you do and don't know isn't my concern—"

"It clearly is, since you feel so strongly about it."

"As I keep telling you, your lack of knowledge could negatively impact my family and yours."

"Okay, let me posit this idea." Kosuke claps her hands together just because she feels like being a little condescending. See how he likes it. "We just tell everyone that my father saw potential in me. It's not like I'm going to be running the company tomorrow, he's training me to do it because he believes I can. At least then I'll look more determined-student-wanting-to-lead-her-dear-father's-company and not idiot-way-in-over-her-head."

Another facepalm. "That still doesn't change the fact that I'm someone who has been trained for years and years in how my family's business is run and operated while you're just someone Mr. Amida thinks can run his company one day. The only reason two people like that would be engaged would be for money."

Kosuke tries to keep her eyes from bugging out of her head. "Yes? Is that not why people around here get in arranged marriages all the time?"

"'People around here' get into arranged marriages because their families are fully aware that they will be prepared for leadership positions in their respective businesses. If a well-prepared heir is arranged to marry another well-prepared heir, then the result is a partnership made by the union of two people who know what they're doing and will lead their family businesses accordingly."

"What does your sister do? She was arranged to marry her husband. What's her big 'leadership' position in Ootori Medical?"

Finally Kyoya pinches the bridge of his brow—the telltale look of someone who has been proven wrong but still thinks they're fundamentally right.

"When I am engaged to you, and you don't know anything about Amida Health, then it becomes very obvious that the only reason we're engaged was so your father's company could replace DomenMed for a partnership with us."

"That's a secret?"

"It's a suspicion that we don't want to prove." Kosuke can't keep a scoff in any longer, and Kyoya snaps, "All I'm asking you to do is to show more knowledge about Amida Health to better your image as its future owner."

"Because otherwise I'm embarrassing you."

"If that's how you're determined to paint my argument as, fine."

"I'm not trying to embarrass you on purpose. Don't you think I'm more embarrassed than you are?"

"I'm not saying you're doing it on purpose, but you're going into settings where people are bound to ask questions about your family and business."

"What do you mean, going into settings? It was a surprise party. I'm sorry, but I was surprised."

"You still had to have some notion that you would be asked certain questions before you arrived today. You could try to divert the topic, or just say you'd rather not talk about it right now, but instead you were floundering out there with no idea of what to say."

Fair point. But also: "So, just to be clear, not knowing about something I have had zero time to learn about is unacceptable, but up and walking out of our first meeting is totally fine? You want to talk about me making you look bad?"

Finally Kyoya's eyes go wide open, outraged. Kosuke wants to slap the past version of herself for ever thinking his eyes were pretty. "I apologized for that!"

"And let me tell you, it was like someone trying to pull their own teeth out!"

"I wasn't just up and walking out, my phone was vibrating and I needed to go answer it."

What?! "You couldn't have put it on hold for five minutes?"

For one second, Kyoya's sneer deepens so much Kosuke thinks his lip is about to curl back from his teeth. "You didn't seem to have any problem using your phone."

"What are you even—" It takes a second for the memory to roll back. Can she be blamed for not immediately remembering? She'd looked down at Haruhi's text for all of three seconds. It didn't imprint in her mind. But even as she realizes what he's talking about, Kosuke only doubles down. "Haruhi was watching my brother and sister. It could have been an emergency."

"How do you know the phone calls I was getting weren't emergencies?"

"I didn't. I didn't even know you were getting phone calls, because instead of doing what a normal human being would do and just saying, 'I'm sorry, this could be serious, I need to go answer this phone call real quick,' you just huffed and puffed and left without explaining why!" The more she talks, the harder Kyoya pinches the bridge of his nose. She doesn't let up. "I was at least trying to hide my phone because I didn't want to be rude to you. Let's look back on your stunning behavior, shall we?" Kosuke starts ticking off her fingers. She has not felt this angry in a long time, and it's bad, but she's on a high right now. "You couldn't say one syllable to me without sighing it out, you wouldn't even look at me, and when you finally started to talk to me first, it was to grill me like I was some criminal you were trying to crack! Forgive me if all of that led me to think you just got fed up and left."

"Well, if you had simply stayed behind and waited for me—as I am positive your father told you to do—I would have happily explained otherwise."

"Oh, no. I don't give a crap about your stupid courting rituals, I am not staying behind for someone who treats me like that. If you'd just explained to me why you left when you 'apologized' before—Well, I still wouldn't be happy, but it makes more sense than just letting me think you're some proud jerk. Which is true, by the way, because 'simply explain what happened' was much, much farther down on your list of priorities than 'scold your fiancée like she's a five-year-old child.'"

Kosuke is fully aware at this point that she's more or less lost her marbles. That rational part of her brain is now the size of an atom, though, and every other part is still blazing. She and Kyoya are two boxers in the ring, and she's waiting for his response, waiting to throw another blow. Because screw her puppeteering father, screw this pompous douchebag of a fiancé, screw this whole asinine situation.

Kyoya does not respond. He stays there for a long, long stretch of time pinching his nose, eyes closed, breathing deeply. Kosuke knows that he can't see her, but she crosses her arms and glares at him anyway. She isn't some unruly child to discipline and she's not going to let him treat her like one.

Finally Kyoya opens his eyes and drops his hand to clasp it with the other one—less a condescending gesture and more of a, I am THIS close to losing my mind gesture.

"This is not how I wanted this conversation to go—"

"You're not getting an apology."

"—but that said, I think this was still worthwhile regardless. Now we have a better understanding of each other and at least some idea of how the rest of this…union is going to look like."

Despite the rage that's still pumping white-hot through her veins, a stone still drops in Kosuke's chest. Maybe not a large stone, granted, but regardless…

Any hope she'd had in this whole thing is now officially dead. Kyoya is not just treating her as such just because he's stressed by what's happening, he actually, really dislikes her. He is not just a slightly proud man who is still best of friends with Haruhi and Tamaki, he's a condescending bastard with an ego bigger than the entirety of Japan.

Last but certainly not least, Kosuke is not going to be working her way towards an at least civil marriage with this man because now she is no longer interested in doing so. If "getting along" with Kyoya Ootori means letting him scold her like a child and sigh in annoyance every time she so much as breathes, then no. She would much rather spend the rest of her life with this guy despising her than let her head duck for him even once. They're going to be married at the end of the day, happily or otherwise.

She almost can't believe how quickly her outlook on this whole thing has changed. She rewinds through the conversation, her outrage gaining new fire as she recalls every sneered little criticism he'd thrown at her, until finally she comes back to what they were talking about before this. Kosuke is suddenly very, very exhausted.

"Do you still want to put on an act for the others?"

Again, screw this guy, but she wants him to say yes. Needs him to.

Terse, short conversations and fleeting eye contact will undoubtedly bring on Haruhi and Tamaki's attention. They will time and again assault her with hands on her shoulders, eyes looking right back into her, the gentle but all-knowing repetition of "Is everything okay?" the soundtrack for the rest of her life.

Glaring, scoffing, and refusing to say a word to each other will leave them no barriers. Their friends won't just warmly hint to the fact that they know something is wrong. They will tell them, fiercely, point-blank and demand answers. They will refuse to leave them alone until they admit that there's a problem, and after that, until they let themselves be helped. Because Haruhi and Tamaki are just too good and care so much.

Kyoya knows this, which is why, after heaving a sigh so large she sees his chest expand behind his blazer, he replies, "Yes. My points still stand. What about you?"

She bites the inside of her cheek until she gets the first hint of something coppery. "Yeah. I'm just going to have to act a lot harder now."

The last little blow is unnecessary. Probably kicking a dead horse. But oh well. Kyoya's jaw once again pulls piano wire-tight. "Me, too. I think we should go back in now."

"I'm right behind you. Just need a minute to put my smile on."

She says this last part with her back already turned. She can't look at him anymore. She doesn't even want to remember what he looks like. Behind her, Kyoya wastes no time. She hears the door open and yet another brief peal of sound before it shuts again.

So now she's alone, and she still feels like a pile of rotting garbage, but she has to admit: alone, she feels the best she has all day. No siblings to kiss goodbye to as she sends them off to a foreign land. No strangers revealing her ineptitude question-by-question. No Haruhi to charade as a stupid lovesick girl to. No Kyoya to kick her while she's already down. The air already feels fresher.

She knows she can't stay out here forever, so she does what she did when she had to sign the paper that ended the life of Kosuke Nakahara. She gives herself ten more seconds and just makes them stretch longer.

In those ten seconds, she is—naturally, because what better way to make her feel better?—hit with a memory of her parents. More specifically, their wedding.

It wasn't a large wedding, not at all. The ceremony was in one of many azumayas in Karuizawa. The aisle was a thin dirt path lined in lilies, the pews just simple plastic chairs draped in pearly ribbon. It wasn't the grand affair that the much-younger Kosuke was expected, and though she was rather disappointed, she kept her criticisms to herself. She was her mother's Flower Girl of Honor (Maid of Honor and Flower Girl combined into one role, and Kosuke felt like she ruled the world), so it was her job to be happy.

Which wasn't hard. She was finally getting the father she always wanted. She and Mommy and Marti were all going to live together in Karuizawa and be a family, and if Kosuke's wishes came true, she'd have a baby brother or sister one day—maybe both! Mostly, though, her mother was radiating so much happiness that in Kosuke's eyes, she almost looked angelic.

At that age, Kosuke knew—in that way that kids sometimes get to know things, by looking back on something they never really noticed before and going "huh"—that her mother was not happy often. She smiled and laughed, but even then, she always seemed tired, like she could never get enough sleep. Kosuke thought that maybe it was because she spent so many nights smoking outside, but Emiko would deny it. She'd never asked Mommy why she was so tired and unhappy all the time because that was normal. It was not a new, noticeable thing to be noted.

At her wedding, though, Emiko was nothing but joy. Kosuke can't remember a moment where she wasn't smiling—even when tears were spilling out of her eyes, she was still smiling. So Kosuke didn't see any reason to comment that they weren't in a big, fancy church or that her mother was wearing a white sundress instead of an actual wedding gown.

The reception lasted well after sunset. To be honest, Kosuke does not remember most of the people who were there. They were friends of Emiko's and Marti's who'd just sort of faded from their lives as Okina had from hers, she guessed. They all mingled around the grass, drinking fruit punch and eating the cake Marti had made himself.

Kosuke refused to stop dancing no matter if music was still playing or not—eventually Marti realized that his now-stepdaughter was sitting on the grass not for the heck of it, but because she literally could not stand anymore, and carried her over to sit on one of the chairs for a while. Kosuke just let herself sit still and enjoy everything. The wedding would not last forever, and it made her sad.

Emiko came down to sit beside her, blonde hair tousled from dancing, and a tiny little smudge of pink frosting just near the sweetheart neckline of her dress (Marti had done a rather shoddy job of getting cake into her mouth and apologized profusely despite his wife's reassurances.) She looked warm.

While they were sitting there—just sitting, not talking, a mother and daughter drinking in the beginning of a new life after so long of just the two of them—Emiko said, "Kosuke?"

Kosuke was taking a drink of punch and had spat it back out into her cup just so she could reply. "Yeah?"

"I want you to make a promise for me, okay?"

"What is it?"

Emiko gently ran her fingers through Kosuke's hair—she'd told Kosuke many times that she was jealous of her hair, jealous that it was soft because Emiko always thought hers was just a bit too dry—but raised her eyes to her husband. He was talking to some of his friends at the party. He'd taken off his black blazer, and he'd forgotten to shave in all the preparation, but to Kosuke he still looked like the handsomest dad in the world.

Emiko had told her, "I want you to promise me that when you get married one day, you make sure that the person you marry is absolutely good. Okay?"

Kosuke wrinkled her nose. Adults didn't always make sense, even if they sounded smart. "Why would I marry someone bad?"

"I'm just saying, honey," her mother chuckled, and drew her in so the back of Kosuke's head rested on her chest. "It's an easy promise to make, isn't it?"

"Mm-hm," Kosuke answered, rather absentmindedly. "I promise."

And now Kosuke is here.

And unlike all of her other decisions before this, she doesn't hear her mother's voice this time. She just hears static.

Kosuke doesn't smile, but she puts on a relaxed face, the face of a girl who has come out of a completely normal conversation with a boy she's already head over heels for. It hurts.