Chapter 20

Kyouya made his way down to the gardens when he heard the crowd aweing and chattering from the balcony. It woke him up and it forced him out of bed. His friends had already gathered for the afternoon and he was barely alive to show for it.

Coffee. He needed coffee. His stomach growled. He could already hear bits and pieces of the shenanigans playing out.

"There's no way!" one of the Twins shouted.
"What about this tree?" Honey suggested.
"Oi, this is dangerous!" Tamaki tried to steer them away.

"It'll do," her voice rose above the rest, calming the crowd with just two words. He heard the scraping of a chair and quiet steps that turned into an eerie silence. Goodness, what was happening? The Host Club was never quiet. What did she do to manage to silence these boys? He picked up the pace and walked faster towards the gardens.

He was only a few feet away from the table when the Twins watched in awe as the woman grabbed a knife and threw it right against the tree, landing right in the middle. Honey was the first to clap. Mori nodded, impressed. Haruhi widened her eyes, unsure of what to make of this whole thing.

"Pay up," Kiyoko smiled devilishly at the two troublemakers in triumph.
"What the fuck?" Hikaru raised his arms up in the air. Kaoru's hands caressed both of his cheeks in shock. "We thought you were joking."

The woman rolled her eyes. "I wasn't joking about an easy way to make money."
"That was a fluke!" Kaoru called out.

Kyouya watched from afar with his arms crossed. All his friends were too enamoured by her to even notice him. Kyouya watched her laugh at the redhead's comment and shook her head at his accusation. Her thin fingers grabbed another knife off the table. She took aim across five meters and managed to lodge the knife right into the tree again. He knew her well enough to not have been afraid of a move like that – just like the rest of his friends, he stared in amazement.

"The more you make me throw, the more money I make," Kiyoko reminded. "These are nothing more than darts."
"You could kill somebody!" Tamaki cried in panic.

"With butter knives? I suppose I could… if I wanted to," Kiyoko shrugged. "Thankfully, you've all been quite tolerable so I think not today." She flashed her signature sweet smile, the kind that looked harmless. Except she proved to the entire table she was probably the most dangerous person after the two Judo trained men. The joke teetered on the line between being serious and not. No one could quite pinpoint if she meant it.

Honey was fascinated, unafraid of her smile – in fact, he was certain that the smile was genuine. The small blonde picked up his own butter knife and handed it to the woman. "Another one! Please!"

"Alright," Kiyoko's eyes crinkled at the small blonde when her smile grew. Gosh, he was cute, wasn't he? "Only because you asked so nicely."

She cleaned off the tip of the knife with a handkerchief and balanced the weight of the metal in her hand before aiming for the tree again. Another shot was lodged a little further below the two she had already indented into the wood.

"Where did you learn such a thing?" Haruhi blinked. Kiyoko looked so prim and proper. Her silent and reserved nature did not make her seem anything like the kind to throw knives… and to throw them as well as that. The woman screamed elegance in every shape and form: by the way she spoke, the way she ate, and of course, by the way she floated across the table to stand on the grass. Nothing about that kind of demeanour would scream knife thrower.

"Hmm…" Kiyoko stared into the distance of her own handiwork. It was a bit of an eyesore in the midst of a well-maintained garden. Thankfully, there was no target on the tree. She would have missed by a great lot. She thought to the knives thrown across the dinner table decades ago. "A product of my own childhood, I suppose."

"Was your childhood dedicated to committing murder?" Kyouya interrupted. The whole crowd swiveled their head back to the new voice.

Kiyoko tilted her head at Kyouya, raising an eyebrow to his presence. He finally woke. The woman stared back nonchalantly. "Avoiding them, mostly."

The table fell silent, unsure what to make of the dark twist of a topic the woman had thrusted upon them. She must have been joking, right? Then again, the woman was not joking about throwing knives. And the rumours of her own psychotic family… it only confused the crowd. What was real? What wasn't?

Tamaki only cleared his throat and casually changed the topic.

"You're finally awake! Even Honey had gotten up earlier than you." His best friend urged the man to finally sit. A cup of coffee was ordered immediately and brought to the table within minutes. Kiyoko took the seat with the Twins who had egged her to perform what she thought as a simple party trick that erred a little on the dangerous side. Her original seat had been beside the blond Suoh but she was easily replaced by the Ootori.

"Guess he didn't have the stamina to last all night and all morning, huh?" one of the Twins snickered while nudging Kiyoko. The other Twin cackled. The Ootori sent over a menacing glare to the Twins to shut them up.

Kiyoko fought back a snort. Her lips contorted into a small lopsided grin before she looked back down at the table, now knifeless. She turned back at the tree – three knives carved into the wood, one of them bent.

"I should go get that," Kiyoko announced. She excused herself from the crowd swiftly and walked away to give them a moment of privacy.

The Club watched as she slowly rose from her seat, poised and elegant as ever. Nothing seemed to break her composure – apart from the fact that she was a skilled knife thrower, the club admittedly found her to be rather charismatic. She held conversation well: a knowledgeable woman in many trades from fine art to the culinary world, and she was kind enough to offer her restaurant recommendations to the crowd when asked for them.

"She's pretty fucking cool," Hikaru turned to the Ootori.
"Yeah, she would easily replace you as the Cool Type," Kaoru added.

"Nonsense! Kyouya is irreplaceable," Tamaki scolded. "You're in our hearts forever, mon ami," he reassured. The Ootori ignored the Suoh's outburst and continued sipping on his much needed coffee, served black and steaming hot. He was clearly not worried about being replaced.

Honey cut in. "But Kiyoko-chan let me eat her éclair and gave me the strawberries on her plate."

Mori nodded, witnessing the whole thing after Kiyoko had watched him do it first.

"She's…" Haruhi trailed off watching as the said woman managed to dislodge only one of the butterknives. Two more to go. Haruhi had expected a grunt or some kind of groan as Kiyoko pried out the metal from the wood. But she did it in one swift motion, clearly a practiced move – she somehow even made knife dislodging a graceful action. "I thought she was an absolute replica of you when she took up the Twins' bet like a calculative businesswoman."

The Ootori pursed his lips to stop him from smiling proudly.

"Fuck," the Twins groaned, remembering what they had waged. "We owe her five grand."
"Technically seven and a half," Haruhi reminded. "She threw 3 knives."
"Shit, you don't think she would count that last one right?" Hikaru grumbled in a panicked state.

"Of course I am," Kiyoko approached the Twins with all three knives in hand. No one heard her coming thanks to the flat sandals on her feet. Her steps were as quiet as a mouse. Kiyoko held two knives in one hand and dangled the last one in her dominant one. "Unless…" She squinted at the two, watching as they shriveled up in fear of what she could do to them with a knife. I could make this look like an accident. She didn't have to say it out loud for them to comprehend the look she gave.

"It'll be wired to you tomorrow," Kaoru stuttered.
"You know, it's the weekend. Tomorrow being the first business day and all," Hikaru explained.

"Lovely," Kiyoko agreed. "Well, I have to take a call in a moment. Please excuse me – it was lovely meeting all of you."
"It's the weekend," Haruhi pointed out. "What business could you possibly have?"
"Artists have a different working schedule," she explained swiftly. "There is no such thing as a 9-5 job or a weekend. Creativity flows whenever and however," Kiyoko answered.

It was a brilliant exit strategy, executed to the finest tee. Kyouya watched as she walked off with a slight bow to the rest of the crowd, polite as ever. He couldn't help but to feel a sense of evasion from Kiyoko as she darted her eyes away from him especially.

Kiyoko found a shaded area on the other side of the estate, under the nook of another tree far away from the Host Club. It was a beautiful summer day – it would have been a shame to not spend it outdoors. Being cooped up in the chateau made her feel restless and unable to focus.

Her call was picked up in three rings. Anything further than that, she knew that he would not answer. It was not quite his bedtime. She knew his schedule like the back of her hand. Haru lived for a regimen. He liked repetition. He liked a routine – it kept him in a good place to not overwhelm his senses.

"Haru," Kiyoko greeted first. "I'm in Paris!" she told him.
"Paris…" he murmured. "Paris, Paris, Paris," he repeated. "Seven hours behind. It is 2:04. 2:04. 2:04, right? 2:04," he calculated.
"Yes," the sister confirmed.

"Why?" he asked her.
"A wedding. It was beautiful, really. Fireworks and all."
"A wedding," he echoed. "Will you have a wedding?"

She blinked, not expecting the question. "I… I don't know," she stuttered. "Probably not," the sister sighed to herself and brushed off the topic. "What have you been up to? You said you wanted more charcoal, yeah?"

"No, no no no no. The skies cannot be painted with charcoal," the brother insisted. "The sunset has too many colours for charcoal. I need… I need the lightest orange… orange…"
"The sunset has more colours than that, no?" Kiyoko smiled. "Sunsets are so sad, don't you think?"

"Why?"
"It's the end of the day. There's no more light," the sister mused. "I like the sunrise better."

"The sunset brings the stars," Haru pointed out. "The stars are quiet. Calming. The dark can be beautiful too."
"I guess you're right," Kiyoko nodded to herself. "You see the beauty in a lot of things I don't," the sister admitted. "Remember when you cried because I killed a spider?"

"What spider?"
"Oh Haru," Kiyoko laughed to herself. "I was six and terrifyingly afraid of the creature. Any creature, really. I trapped it beneath one of your college math textbooks. You must have been eight or so but you wouldn't speak to me for days."

"Was that so?" It was clear he did not recall such a moment.
"I was so sad," the sister reminded. "Because I thought I had lost my best friend. And then suddenly, you brought me a spider in a cup during breakfast a few days after. It was my turn to cry."

"And then what?"
"Well, I cried because you brought me a spider. But I also cried because you came back to me. If you liked spiders, I would too. We ended up finding spiders around the mansion during that weekend and letting them outside."

"I don't remember that."
"That's okay," Kiyoko smiled. "I'll remember for us."

There was a comfortable silence.

"I'll come visit on Thursday," the sister promised.

"You came last week," Haru reminded.

"Yeah, but we didn't get to watch that documentary you wanted to watch because you got too busy with your painting." Often, she would visit and work alongside him in silence. Her with her laptop, him with a canvas. They would be side by side, just like they once were during childhood. Other times, they would watch movies together. Documentaries, mostly. Or play games – chess was his game of choice, beating Kiyoko nearly each time.

"Ah," Haru remembered. It was a large canvas, spanning the entire wall. He was still working on it today. "Do you want to see it?"
"I always want to see what you're creating," she encouraged. They switched over to a video call with Haru guiding her throughout his workspace.

"Wow," Kiyoko beamed. "The sea is so beautiful. It reminds me of when we went to the beach in the winter."
"That's it!" Haru excitedly nodded. "Yes yes yes. The ocean. It was so deep – never ending. That's why this is so big. Like you can swim in it."
"It was too cold to swim in, Haru," Kiyoko laughed. "But I see it. Even the details – oh! The little lighthouse too. I remember pointing that out to you."

The siblings laughed at the memory. They were each others' best friend. They conquered the world together. They were two parts of a whole. They would have been lost without each other in the world. There was so much comfort when they spent time together – like they had never grown up.

"Oi, Haru – remember to eat fruit. I bought those apples for you in the fridge. Did you finish them?" The sisterly nagging was a regular occurrence.
"No. Cutting them is annoying," Haru answered. "I ate the pasta you cooked. It was good."

"What else do you want to eat? I'll cook for you," Kiyoko offered.
"Kaeda-san's grilled mackerel with seaweed soup," Haru answered.
"That's awfully specific. Kaeda-san is still working at the manor," the sister mused. That woman had been on the Hibayashi staff for as long as the siblings had existed in the world. Her children were around the same age as Kiyoko and Haru as well. "I'll call her and ask for the recipe. But knowing her, she would just cook it for us and have me bring it to you anyway."

"Okay," Haru agreed. "I'm going to sleep soon."
"Okay," Kiyoko let him go. "Good night. See you soon."

He hung up first. Kiyoko sat back against the tree and let the summer breeze keep her company. The book she had been reading was still left unfinished. She took the rest of the afternoon to quietly read under the branches of a tree that she had come to call her home for the day. And at the last page, after nearly three hours, she was stuck without anything left to do.

So she sat and wondered to herself – thinking as usual. A dangerous past-time.

Where did you learn such a thing?

She thought about it. Her childhood had wonderful memories with Haru. And while their family was far from conventional, they were raised by the staff of the household. Kaeda-san and the rest of the maids were more or less mothers to the pair in constant rotation. Their family chauffeur, Toshio-san, had taught her how to drive amongst other things – letting her smoke a cigarette for the first time when she turned 18 before she was set to go to England and later, when she graduated from Oxford – they shared a cigar for (what he thought) was her first time. Their family butler, Satoshi-san, had watched the pair grow up – he knew of her favourite foods, her daily schedule, and even her grades.

When did she learn to throw knives?

Kiyoko smiled fondly at the memory. Their family chef noticed her being skittish around knives when she was sent to the kitchen as a punishment for being late to a family dinner. She must have been only ten at the time. For good reason though, Kiyoko had hated these family events, always ending in a match of screaming and cutlery and kitchenware being smashed in the heat of a moment over inheritance and family reputation soiled.

She had little context of why things were so heated but the sound of plates shattering and glass flying became more of a common thing than not. After a decade, she had grown out of flinching and learned to dodge the shards of glass by ducking beneath the table.

"You need to stop being afraid of the knife. You are in control of the tool," the chef scolded her, not realizing what she had dealt with outside of the kitchen. "Chop faster. We'll never serve food at this rate. You would have been fired five minutes ago in a restaurant."

And so, Kiyoko had learned to prep food slowly but surely. Her knifework became more swift. Her fingers were deft at julienning and brunoise cuts and soon, the knife became a tool that she wielded well into her teenage years.

"Come outside," the chef told her after she had spent an afternoon prepping vegetables – not out of punishment, but by choice on Sunday during her high school years. She prepped enough for the entire week, faster than any sous chef that the head chef had seen in years.

"What are we doing here?" Kiyoko looked out to the outskirts of their yard. Their manor was far and wide. It had taken 15 minutes to even get to the edge of their property, near the band of trees that kept out trespassers. "Don't tell me I have to chop wood for our fireplace. I'm not in trouble am I?" she grumbled.

"No," he bellowed in laughter. "Here." He passed her a velvet pouch with three blades, blunt at the edges to touch and a sharp tip that could easily stab through someone. This was when Kiyoko learned the difference between a blade that could hurt and a blade you could throw. "You look stressed."

"I'm not," Kiyoko huffed in denial. Sure, finals were around the corner. But she had studied as much as she could. Maybe she was just a little stressed.

"You looked like you could chop the head off of someone with those carrots, young woman." The head chef knew stress when he saw it. The child was growing restless with all of this anxiety she had pent up.

He took out his own pouch of knives and dangled the edge between his thumb and index finger, swinging it like a pendulum. "Stress relief is good for you, lady."

"I don't think murder is an acceptable manner of stress relief, sir," Kiyoko answered deadpan.
"Have you ever played darts?"
"No."

"They're like darts. But big boy darts," the man explained. He threw the knife against the tree with one swift toss.
"What the fuck?" Kiyoko breathed in shock – half in fear and half in absolute amazement.
"Just like playing darts," the chef smiled. "Now you try." Knife throwing, she learned, was an actual sport.

Her body tensed at the vibration of the ground. Her ears perked up at the slight crunch of the grass below someone's soles. She quickly came out of her daze when she felt a presence behind her.

"Is daydreaming a part of doing business for you?" he coolly asked. He settled next to her, glancing over at the book on her lap. She eyed him carefully for the first time during the day. He was dressed casually, a baby blue dress shirt with sleeves rolled up in his elbows paired with white pants – perfect for the summer. His forearms were bare with the exception of the leather Omega Trésor watch on his left wrist, a classic. Her eyes flickered back to his face, a stupid grin plastered as though he were proud of his teasing comment. He waited in anticipation, probably for an equally snarky comment back.

He lived for their banter. And quite frankly, so did she.

"I wasn't daydreaming," Kiyoko shot back. "I was thinking of easy ways to bleed the funds of the Twins dry."
He laughed, entertained by her wit. She loved that sound. "Good," he agreed. "They deserve it for all the shit they put me through."

Kyouya sat in silence with her for a few moments, taking in the sweet summer scent of the flowers and stared at the view. The view of course, being her. Her hair had fallen loosely into a braid with the dark green scarf that she weaved into the strands. As the Twins said, very effortless and chic when paired with her floral sundress and the Prada sunglasses that fell on the crown of her head. She stared back at him with those large doe eyes, curious to hear what he was thinking of.

"Why did you run away?" he wondered. "They liked you, you know."
"I had a business call," she evaded the question. "I'm not quite as rich as you or your friends."

"Rich enough to take a day off, right?" Kyouya nudged, glazing over her answer and did not pry. Whether she had a business call or not, she never returned back to them. She made the conscious choice to avoid them.

Kiyoko scoffed. "As if you didn't spend the past few hours catching up on more emails." She knew him better than he did himself. "And besides, your friends were quite a lot. I spent hours entertaining them before you came."
"They can be quite a bit," Kyouya admitted. "Are you hungry?" he asked, changing the topic. She must not have eaten for quite a few hours by now. He straightened up and offered his hand to stand up.

"I could eat," she admitted. "Are your friends gathering for dinner?"
"Yes. But we won't be joining them."

"What do you mean?" Kiyoko got up by holding onto his strong grip with one arm and her other arm clutching her now finished book and phone. "I thought they liked me."

"Oh, they do," he assured. "They may like you more than I do." He led her back towards the courtyard, swinging his arm with her hand in his. She squeezed his hand back and leaned into him, suddenly aware of how much she had missed him over the course of the day. Was this normal? To crave his touch like this – it seemed so juvenile and silly. He did nothing but welcome it. Maybe he felt the same too.

"Even the Twins? They're rather terrified of me, I think."
"Well, no one expected you to throw knives," Kyouya pointed out. "I think everyone except Honey had a moment of terror."

"Well," Kiyoko smiled to herself. "No one messes with the crazy lady." It was an image thrusted upon her. She eventually grew into it, using it to her advantage when needed.
"You're not crazy," the Ootori rolled his eyes. "Powerful, yes."

"Powerful?" That word still made her heart flutter. Did she like that? Why was her body reacting in that way? She didn't think she would like the sound of that so much. He was the only one who told her that she had it.

"You should wield it more often," Kyouya admitted. "You could do so much with that mind of yours."
"Playing games for money?" Kiyoko laughed. "Well, I already did that for a little while. Not quite sustainable."

"No," the Ootori shook his head. "You know what I meant, Kiyoko. Stop acting dumb about your potential."
"What potential?" she responded, jokingly.

"Your ego has been stroked enough today," the Ootori growled, not falling into a trap of her fishing for more compliments.
"I could say the same to you, Kyouya."

He stopped in his tracks and looked at her, letting the words ring in his ears. He could listen to her say that forever.

"What?" She stood beside him, still unsure of where he was leading her.
"You called me Kyouya," he pointed out.

Kiyoko stared back in confusion. "I did?" It must have slipped. She did not do it often, mostly to annoy him when she addressed him as Ootori-san.
"Why don't you say it more often?"

"Kyouya?" Kiyoko repeated. "I don't know." She was the one who asked to call him that first. But after that, it felt… too much. Because she was afraid of how it would stay on her tongue, because she knew she would have him in her head for days on end, those three stupid syllables running through her mind like a hamster on a wheel. He already called her Kiyoko so fondly, so earnestly.

"Kiyoko," He said her name again, softly. "Why did you run today?" He tried to coax out an honest answer from her.

He is very clearly in love with you.
That's absurd.

"I just wanted some time to read," she sighed. It wasn't entirely the truth but it wasn't a lie either. "Sorry," she apologized. "If you really wanted me to stay, you should have texted."
"It's alright," he waved off. "I was afraid of them scaring you off – I know they can be a lot."

"No, no," Kiyoko shook her head. "They were all very kind to me. Your friends are lovely," she assured. They were rambunctious but they all had good intentions, she could tell that much. "It's just me – I… I needed some time alone. It was a lot of social interaction…" Kiyoko was more used to business meetings, not socializing personally.

"They're yours too, you know," Kyouya quietly murmured. His friends had accepted her wholeheartedly. Even Mori had given a nod of acknowledgement when her name was spoken.
"Thank you," she beamed up at him. She stood on the tips of her toes and pulled him down for a kiss on the cheek. "That's very sweet of you to say."

His lips grew into a grin as he shied away, looking out into the distance. How nice it was to have her tucked so easily beneath his chin at her natural height. He tugged on her hand to get her attention off of his face and onto the top of a hill of the estate, hidden behind their guest villa.

"What is that?" Kiyoko squinted towards the general direction he had pointed to.
"Come on," he led the way.

It was a picnic beneath the tree, overlooking the gardens that they had spent the afternoon with the rest of his friends. Two bottles of wine, perfectly chilled in their cooler and an assortment of amuse-bouches packed away with cut fruit, cheeses, and sliced baguette. An extra blanket for the cooler temperatures to come in the next few hours.

"Did you do this?" Kiyoko could not stop smiling at the sight, very much impressed by the effort.
"Yes," he answered triumphantly, amused by how well she had taken the surprise. She was absolutely ecstatic. He wished he could take a snapshot of her, grinning at the grass before she looked back to him.

She narrowed her eyes. "You don't have an ounce of romance in your body," she suspected.
"It was Tamaki's idea," Kyouya muttered. "He had the staff put this together," he quickly confessed.
"That sounds right," she nodded. "Well, goodness, Haruhi must be so lucky."
"What do you mean?" the Ootori growled. "I did this for you," he insisted.

She laughed at the way he grew annoyed so easily. "This is wonderful, Kyouya," she placated his irritancy with a single word.
"Kyouya," he repeated after her, still amazed that she called him by his name for the second time today.
"Kyouya," Kiyoko whispered, meaning it with all her heart. "Thank you."

He guided her onto the blanket, letting her toe off her shoes for extra comfort. She fed him small slices of baguette with just the right amount of churned French butter and giggled when crumbs fell into the creases of his pristine shirt. He laughed along with her as she nearly spilled wine on herself, giggling the story of him chasing down Antoinette two days ago.

"Knife throwing," Kyouya couldn't help his curiosity. "Where did you learn that?" His entire friend group had been dying to know. Surely, he could be the one to be let in on the secret. They were close enough that she would let him know, right?

Kiyoko looked into the distance and found the tree that she had defaced just a few hours ago down the hill. Knife throwing was a fun little skill, a party trick at most. Kiyoko was not a violent person, she never was. She never was a terrifying woman, she only pretended to be.

"You weren't really avoiding murder," he trailed off. Were you? He wanted to add. Even though he knew her, there were moments where he was reminded that perhaps, he did not know her at all.

Kiyoko took in a deep breath. How much did he need to know? How much did he want to know, anyway? She sipped on a particularly large gulp of her wine.

"You know the rumours," Kiyoko started off. "They're not entirely unfounded. Our home was… unconventional. Some others would describe the family as expressive to say the least. Knives were only one of the things thrown across tables."

"And you learned to… throw knives back?" Kyouya widened his eyes at the thought. A small child wielding a steak knife across the dinner table that he had eaten at himself, just a mere few months ago.

"No," Kiyoko shook her head. "No, I was a child," she clarified. "I just learned to avoid flying plates and wine glasses."
"And knives?"

Kiyoko nodded slowly. "Like I said, an unconventional home."
"Abusive, more like," Kyouya called it out as it were.
She brushed off his comment. "They weren't aimed at me." Except for once. But Kiyoko wasn't about to get into that.
"That doesn't excuse violence," the Ootori was firm on his stance.

"I guess not," she agreed. It wasn't like her to mull over her childhood – not out loud anyway. Kiyoko reverted back to the question. "Our chef taught me to throw knives, it was a hobby of his that he had taken up while in Europe."

Kyouya tilted his head at her, urging her to continue to fill in the gaps.

"I grew up helping out in the kitchen," Kiyoko explained. "One particularly stressful bout of finals during Ouran had me julienning 50 carrots, dicing 30 celery sticks, chopping 10 onions, and chiffon cutting all the herbs I could find in an afternoon. I nearly tore apart the entire kitchen pantry looking for more things to chop."

Kyouya grew amused. "You do know your way with a knife," he realized. Kyouya had watched her prep dinner a handful of times, always wondering if she had a secret culinary degree from le Cordon Bleu. She might as well have had one considering her cooking technique was likely enough to get her hired in a professional kitchen.

"Our chef was worried about me," Kiyoko continued. "He took me outside in the fucking middle of winter and taught me how to throw knives as a means of stress relief."
"That's…" Kyouya had no words. What an odd upbringing, he thought to himself.

"Unconventional, right?" Kiyoko filled in the blank for him. "I couldn't even aim properly, much less get the knife into the wood. It took months."
"But you…"

"I can throw knives but not very well," Kiyoko explained. "Had the Twins put a target on that tree, I would have lost money. Luckily, they're easily impressed," she admitted. "And now I'm… a little richer," she smiled to herself.

"That you are," he clinked her glass in celebration. Kyouya smirked proudly at the woman. "You're someone to be feared."
"Aren't you afraid of me slitting your throat in your sleep?" Kiyoko winked.

"It would be an honour," Kyouya kissed her temple. He wasn't afraid of her, in fact, he adored her. He loved the way she made people's skin crawl with one single look. Kyouya could spend hours admiring the way she calculated the odds and weighed the benefits of each business risk she encountered. She giggled as his lips found their way against a particularly sensitive part of her neck. She wanted to bottle up the feeling that bloomed in her chest – the warmth, the peace, the security, all wrapped up in his arms while they soaked in the last bits of sunlight of the summer.

Was this what it was like to fall in love?

She only read about it in books. Watched it in movies. Seen slivers of it in real life between strangers. But never did she ever expect to experience it.

"What are you thinking about?" he whispered. He could see it on her face – the flicker of light and then it went dark, as if she had woken from a dream. She stared into the horizon, on the fence about what to say.

"Tell me," Kyouya coaxed, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "Please," he softly pleaded. There was so much about her that he didn't know. So much to learn. So much to understand who she was.

"To fall in love," Kiyoko quietly confessed. "Is this is what it's like?" She looked to him, craning her neck to read his expression. His eyes widened, slowly processing what she had said. Kiyoko grew embarrassed, wondering if her foolishness had finally gotten to him – did he finally see her for who she was? She was not powerful, she was quite the opposite. Kiyoko had succumbed to the tugging of her heartstrings. She fell apart in his arms, no matter how hard she tried to stay together.

"Yes," Kyouya agreed after some time. "I believe this is the feeling that Tamaki had been droning on about his whole life. Guess he wasn't a delirious idiot after all."
"Or maybe we're all just delirious idiots," she offered in consolation. "Do we look as sickening as the Suohs?"
"I hope not," the Ootori laughed.

She laughed along with him. When they fell back into a comfortable silence, she leaned her head against his chest and held onto his arm that was firmly around her waist. They stared into the horizon, watching the hues of the sky turn into a smattering of pastel colours.

"Do you… like sunsets or the sunrise?"
"Why?" He was thrown off by the oddness of the question.

"I think sunsets are sad," she explained.
"Aren't they the same as a sunrise? It's all just the rotation of the planet." Kyouya had never been awake to see the sunrise anyway.

"It means the day is ending," Kiyoko defended. "The skies have given you one last thing to enjoy before it's all gone. It's your last attempt at holding onto a feeling, a good memory… and then it fades to black. That's it," she whispered, almost afraid of bringing the darkness faster if she said it any louder.

"And the sunrise?" He grew amused. She almost sounded like Tamaki with the way she spoke of something so seemingly trivial. Leave it to the French man to attach meaning to something as frivolous as the stars and the sun.

Kiyoko watched the clouds turn into fluffy strings of cotton candy painted across their heads. She breathed in the fresh air. The honeysuckle aroma wafted in the air from the gardens. It was quiet enough to hear only the birds singing and the crickets chirping. She wished she could bottle up this feeling and extract all the parts that she held so dearly to while skimming off the inklings of dread of knowing that this wouldn't last.

"The sunrise is hope. A new day. A blank slate. Anything you choose to will into existence… it's another chance to attempt it," Kiyoko reasoned.

"And what are you going to be attempting tomorrow?"

Kiyoko wondered that too. Was it so wrong to be honest? "To keep my heart intact," she confessed quietly.

"And tonight? What feeling are you holding onto?" Kyouya ran his thumb across her arm, stroking her soft skin. He pressed another kiss to the crown of her head, where the scarf she weaved into her hair had served as a headband. He held her a little tighter. It took him some time, but after the amusement had passed and her words had sunken, Kyouya understood what she meant – to hold onto a feeling. He held onto her in the only way he knew how, letting her melt safely into his arms.

What feeling was this? Kiyoko exhaled. What was she trying to hold onto so dearly while denying of its existence? Why did it make her heart beat so fast and her stomach churn in so many different directions?

"Love."