Ouran High School Host Club 1. The Solitary Twin

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Bisco Hatori's Ouran High School Host Club and I also do not make profit of this fic._

**Prologue**

They already knew what to do when the girls sitting in front of them had hopeful anticipating gleams in their eyes. It was almost too funny to describe how easy it was for the both of them to lure them into their depraved little game. How their breaths would halt in their chests and their hearts would flutter at the sight of them touching each other so lovingly. If others had seen them acting in such a manner they would have received disgusted stares, yet in the new world they accepted as their own, they were a commodity to hormonal teenaged girls.

_Look at them... They're salivating at the sight of us._

Hitachiin Hikaru had gotten used to it and in spite of getting easily bored, he enjoyed playing with their fragile minds over and over again. He doubted that he would ever grow tired of it.

"Oh, Kaoru! You've got a crumb on your cheek! Let me lick it off!" all female eyes grew to the size of plates as he tilted his identical twin's face back, his fingers gently skimming the skin of his silken jawline, a jawline that was an exact replica of his own.

"I love _it _when they do this!" a girl exclaimed breathlessly, but Hikaru ignored her, his smirking eyes on his flushed twin's face.

Leaning forward, he slowly moved his beloved brother's head so he could languidly lick the crumb that had been sticking to his cheek. Kaoru shivered delicately at the contact of his tounge on his skin.

"My nose won't stop bleeding!" another girl gasped.

"Get a hold of yourself! Here's a tissue!" a female voice, belonging to one who was obviously impatient to continue watching their so-called 'act', said distractedly.

"Oh, Hikaru," Kaoru's heavy-lidded eyes moved looked up at him lovingly, "you take such good care of me..."

Smiling gently at him, Hikaru raised his other hand to craddle his brother's face. All of the girls leaned forward in their seats, at least that was what Hikaru asumed since they always did that without fail.

Here came the tricky part... The part that was always left unfinished and unfulfilled in front of their admirers.

"I take good care of you because I love you...," his speaking lips moved closer to his brother's parted ones as all of the girls watching panted wildly, wanting to see them _do _it.

With his heart beating at a fast rhymth inside his chest he only breathed over his twin's trembling lips, before moving higher to give him a rather chaste kiss on his forehead as their avid observers almost deflated.

Hikaru smiled inwardly. How they liked to tease, but it wasn't just 'teasing' that pushed them to not further their act... It was that they, believe it or not, had their limits in public. He had kissed his brother plenty of times before, and done more than that in fact, yet their fans weren't prepared to see them in full action.

_A pity really..._

"You almost had us there!" he pulled Kaoru's head to his chest so he could feel how his heart raced, to show him that he was just as excited as him as he smiled mischiveously at the whining girl.

"But I did kiss him!" he reasoned too innocently.

"Yeah... on the _forehead," _the girl that had spoken pouted as the rest of her group, minus a certain girl he hadn't taken notice of, nodded in unison, agreeing with her complaint.

"You can't have it all, ladies," he lifted a shoulder as he, to his reluctance, felt Kaoru lifting his head from his chest. The only thing that took away the sting at the separation was the look his twin gave him before sitting back on his seat. The look only they both understood. Only the two of them could speak through certain looks and gestures. Other than being able to instinctively sense what the other wanted.

"Did you like it, Sakoi-san? Aren't they absolutely wonderful?"

Both his and Kaoru's eyes moved in perfect unison to the girl called 'Sakoi-san'. Unlike the other girls that had nearly fainted at their display, she just sat there with a deadlike look in her black fathomless eyes. She was completely unmoved. No disgust, no shock, just a nothingness as her pale slender fingers caressed a heartshaped locket hanging from a thin chain around her neck.

"This was pathetic."

They both gaped as the girls gasped collectively.

_Pathetic? Who the hell does she think she is?, _Kaoru's calming hand touched his thigh since his anger had immediately rose at the mysterious girl's frank answer. It was the only thing keeping him from letting his true snappish attitude out. It wouldn't do the host club any good for him to insult one of their custumers.

Even her pale face hadn't shown a hint of emotion as she softly uttered those deadly words. And those words were a death blow to both of them. Hikaru knew that many people thought that there was something taboo in their 'affection' towards one another, yet it was the first time someone during an appointment blurted out such an insult.

"Wha-What do you mean, Sakoi-san?" one of the girls that was intimidated by Sakoi's cool demeanor asked uncertainly.

"They like toying with people. They imply deepness beyond themselves in front of you just for fun and yet hold back because they are afraid," her fingers quit touching the locket, giving it one last almost loving caress before putting her hand primly on her lap.

"Hikaru...," Kaoru whispered softly in warning. His leg was trembling under his hand, warning him that he was about to explode at the girl's audacity.

"Why do you say that?" he just couldn't keep his mouth shut. A girl he had never set eyes on just walks into their club and offends them. She _had _to give them an explanation.

An almost malicious light flashed in her impassive eyes.

"You fear that no one will accept you if they discover how truly petty you are," he could have sworn he saw her mirthless lips twitch in the ghost of a smile as she said that.

_That's it! I can't let her-!_

Everyone in the vast music slash clubroom stopped what they were doing to look over in their direction curiously when he rose sharply off his seat.

"Well if you don't like it, then why did you come?" as if predicting his twin's growing tantrum, Kaoru stood from his seat and grabbed his hand subtly, to give him silent support.

Unimpressed, her lifeless eyes looked at him.

"Because I wanted to be entertained and unfortunately you and your _uke _twin's brotherly love didn't satisfy me in the least. I find this a mockery of twins in general to be more precise," that maliciousness entered her eyes once more as she too rose of her seat.

_A mockery of twins? Why is she saying something like that?_

"I've said all that needed to be said, now if you'll kindly excuse me, Hitachiin _twins_, I have more important matters to attend," his jaw dropped as Kaoru stiffened beside him in shock as the girl turned to gracefully walk out of the room, all dumbfounded eyes following her.

Seeing her petite, delicate form walking so unhurriedly to the doors leading out of the clubroom, her light-brown almost blond hair drapping her shoulders, he didn't take his eyes off her and he knew for a fact that Kaoru didn't either. That girl had not only ridiculed them, she had _humiliated _them in front of the other girls that would surely tell the rest of the school. Gossip in Ouran High spread in a matter of minutes.

"Sakoi-san is usually nicer than that... I wonder what got into her!" the girl that had been the one to ask her what she thought of them said more to herself.

"It doesn't matter! That was so rude! Are you two okay? She didn't scare you, did she?" hopeful green eyes of one of their numerous fans looked at them.

Hikaru forced a smile.

"Of course-"

"-not!" Kaoru completed him perfectly, his intonation the same as his as the girls giggled, blushing prettily at their smiles that were also hard to tell apart as their identical appearances..

Feeling a tight hold on his hand, he subtly looked at his twin.

"Of course not...," hearing those soft words meant for his ears alone, he felt that they both were going to make that girl pay for what she had just done.

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><p>All straight up lemonish descriptive content has been deleted. If people do want to see a <span>unbutchereduncensored version without complaining about it, simply go to my profile in which there's links to sites that do accept such strong sexuality (this includes the deleted chapter labeled **'Seme Kaoru'**). I had expressed only writing this for lemon seekers and people that don't like lemons are _still_ reading. 'The Solitary Twin' is supposed to be a highly sexual story, so I guess you could say this is a more subdued version. Sorry to anyone upset by this! *winces* I had meant to use this site for some people that follow my stories in other sites that don't have story alert, but... *shrugs* It can't be helped. And if you do read the uncensored versions, don't be shy in telling me what you think of it! This is my first yaoi fic, so I probably need lots of improvement.


	2. What Lies Behind Black Lenses

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Bisco Hatori's Ouran High School Host Club and I also do not make profit of this fic_

**Chapter 2**

_Sakoi Etsu knew what was going on even though the 'adults' didn't want to tell her the truth. Sitting on a hard hospital chair while her mother sobbed sitting across from her she was fully aware of what was happening in the emergency room._

_Her sister... _Her _Iku was dying. For years, the family had thought it'd be her sickly nature that would do her in, but what trully made her battle for her life in those moments in that impersonal hospital was a car crash that also had their father Sakoi Akio in critical condition._

_Her mother, her lovely mother kept crying and she wished she could speak, but her own fear of breaking her mother's already fragile hold on composure kept her from uttering a word. Usually she was the 'talkative and social one' and now... she couldn't find enough strength to say anything._

_'Please Iku...' Iku was her other half... Her _everything. _She couldn't bear the thought of living without her sister. Out of everyone in the family, she was the one that understood her and gave her an unconditional love that even their parents couldn't give. They were always together... Until that day that she had gotten sick again and their father had to take her to the clinic. Due to that last minute trip that wasn't even a half hour away from the manor, both her sister and father were dying. It was like a part of her soul was being torn out of her. _

_The pit of her stomach ached as her breathing was coming out in slow wheezes, even though she forced her normally energetic body to remain still on the cool metal chair she was on. She... Her Iku. Not her Iku! _

_Giving her mother a furtive glance from underneath her long black bangs, she shivered at the thought of losing the only person that was the 'good version' of her. She knew that her mother always favored Iku for her gentleness and viewed Etsu as the troublemaker._

_If her sister was gone... Who would she have left? A mother that always chastised her for being clumsy and rude? A grandmother that was losing her memories at a slow rate and barely even remembered her face? Who else other than Iku would play with her?_

_No one could ever replace her sister... her twin._

_"Mrs. Sakoi," though the words were spoken to her distraught mother, Etsu instinctively looked up at the doctor that stepped out of the operating room. Seeing the look on the doctor's face was what broke her._

_"Iku..." she whispered, her eyes filling with tears though the doctor hadn't said anything. _

_' I don't feel... Iku here anymore,' she couldn't supress her whimper at the thought._

_"Please doctor! How is she? How's my little girl?" her mother rose from her chair in a rush, her lovely face streaked with watered down mascara that had smeared with her tears._

_Closing his eyes, the doctor said it. Said what Etsu would have never wished to hear._

_"We... We did all we could, but we-"_

_He didn't even get to finish because her mother let out a earpiercing howl of pain as Etsu finally burst into tears watching her as she fell to her knees._

_"I think you need to go to your mother, Etsu," her grandmother who had been silently sitting beside her said softly, surprising her. Blinking, Etsu nodded aprehensively since she felt that her mother wouldn't be happy at having her close during such a moment._

_Indeed... Shyly going to her mother to give and seek comfort had been a mistake that had changed her life completely. Her mother didn't like her because she was 'the headache', a bothersome thorn to her side. _

_As soon as she had reached her side, she had screamed in horror at seeing her face so close. The face that mirrored that of her dead beloved child._

_"WHY DO YOU LOOK SO MUCH LIKE HER? WHY ARE _YOU_ STILL ALIVE?"_

At present Etsu twisted a blond lock between her fingers while sitting inside the family limo. Her dead black eyes stared blankly into space as the shouts in her memories kept eating at her, like they always did. It sometimes came in handy to remember certain things... It helped strengthen her resolve in not being a 'headache' for once, though no matter how much she modified her personality, her widowed mother still found something to insult her with.

Changing her hair color hadn't worked and neither did covering her violet eyes with black lenses. Her once jovial loud personality had been dulled down to a corpselike demeanor that was only lifted when she was surrounded by people that knew who she really was.

Sakoi Etsu. The Two-Faced One. She knew how to make people believe she was cold in order to keep them away, but she was also an expert in tricking people into never trully knowing her.

She couldn't change who she was in the inside, so in order to save her mother some grief, she pretended to be a mere shadow in the house and stayed out of her way. The only ones that had seen the true Etsu were the girls at the boarding school she had attended in England.

Her life in England had been pleasant. There she didn't have to keep a icy mask and rarely speak. Among the girls in the dorm, she had been the 'wild one'. The kind of girl that always organized masterful tricks and escape plans. The one that always had a group of girls following her every word like she _owned _them.

_Now _mother _decides to bring me over to that craphole called Ouran Academy and tries to force me to befriend those Hitachiin twits._

Everyone in the family knew that she hated being around twins. Especially _identical twins. _After the loss of her own twin, the sight of them agonized her. For someone as cruel as Sakoi Sayuri, her daughter's own permanent grieving didn't mean a thing. Bussiness and making herself look good in front of the press was what mattered to someone like her mother.

After her father's death along with that of her sister's, her mother was left as the president of Sakoi Exports. Her family's company was in charge of importing and exporting everything from furniture, clothes, cloth, foods... well the list was endless. Because of her family's line of work in establishing contracts with wealthy business people in not only Japan, but America and Europe, her mother had insisted in her enrolling in Ouran.

Those blasted pretty-faced twins were the sons of the infamous Yuzuha. Their mother had just recently started a international mainstream fashion campaign and had voiced wanting to use Sakoi Exports as an outlet to expand her designs and commercialize them worldwide.

That was _why _she had gotten dragged away from her life free of pretending.

_Business. Not like it's going to do me any good. It's just another way for mother to make herself look good in front of her friends and appear in magazines to gush about her own brilliance._

In spite of her mother's grief, the woman, through her daily pill popping that was always accompanied with a glass of champaigne, was a self-centered bitch. Etsu wasn't ashamed of admitting that the woman was absolutely loathsome. A lot of people tended to be shocked when she easily voiced not feeling any love for the woman that had brought her to the world.

How could anyone feel or want to receive love from someone that only cared about herself? It was a waste of her time, if anyone asked her. Etsu wasn't the kind of girl that wasted her time with such trivial things as her conceited mother's grandeur.

That was why she had purposely botched her little trip to the socalled Host Club. Hopefully _that_ would make her mother think twice about making her part of her plans. Upsetting the twins would perhaps upset the great Yuzuha herself, thus extinguishing any possible contracts between her and Sakoi Exports.

Since she had been sent away to London's boarding school just a couple of months after her sister's death, Etsu had been quite ignorant when it came to such things as Hosts. In fact when she had asked the giggling girl that had taken the day off to guide her around the school, she had believed that Host was the same thing as 'male prostitute'.

She was proven wrong when it was explained that they just 'entertained' and 'made girls feel beautiful'. The 'feel beautiful' bit was said with a blush and dreamy eyes, much to Etsu's snarling disgust.

Another waste of her precious time. She couldn't believe she had been taken away from her perfect life in England to do a supposed _favor _for a woman that pretended she didn't exist. On top of that asinine idiotic action in her mother's part, she had to go to a freaking lounge area among simpering girls that gawked at pretty boys.

_I only exist when it's convenient, right? Should have known she only wanted me to come to Japan to make her bosom buddy with her new famous client._

A smirk lifted the corner of her lips at recalling the pure shock on the twins' faces when she had insulted them. It had felt shamelessly good, though a part of her felt a smidge of guilt at the fact that the boys had _nothing _to do with the issues between her and her mother.

_She's going to be so pissed. Probably pissed enough to send me _back _to England., _the idea was actually exciting her and a snicker sounded out inside the near empty interior of the limo.

"Ah... young miss?" a nervous male voice spoke from the door of the limo and Etsu flinched at realizing that her evil nature had been seen by a stranger.

"We have arrived already?" her voice was soft as she schooled her features to a frigid mask, her flat black eyes falling upon the young driver that had opened the door to let her out.

"Yes, w-we have," he was quickly intimidated by her dark stare. Everyone that looked at the blank void of her eyes became easily frightened which was fine by her. She had already made a mistake of letting the bevy of idiotic girls that had accompanied her to the acursed Host Club see her 'sweet girly side'. That was the tricky part of being the Two Faced Etsu. It was hard keeping herself cold and detached at all times around certain types of people. The girls had seemed nice and in return she had been polite, until letting her Evil Etsu out on the twins.

_Now they'll think I'm bipolar._

Her face still expressionless, she nodded at the young man so he could step aside. He did so with a pale face and jerky nervous movements that showed his anxiety to get away from her. His reaction didn't matter to her because many things had stopped mattering to her years ago. Eight years ago to be more exact. Her lack of giving a damn about other people's thoughts had begun the day Iku had died.

_No use thinking that useless shit. I have to prepare for mother's fit later tonight., _steering herself, feeling somewhat gleeful about her mother's future tantrum, she hid her smile behind her false coolness before stepping out of the limo.

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><p>Sakoi Sayuri would have never once thought that her remaining daughter was a bigger handful than when a child. She had believed that the strict boarding all girl's school with its nuns and almost military-like routine would have curbed her unpredictable nature. Unfortunately, she had forgotten that once Etsu started holding a grudge there was no way possible to predict her actions.<p>

"-just call me Yuzuha!" the woman in front of her was just as elegant as she had expected her to be. As soon as she had heard of her daughter's infiltra-_entrance _at Ouran, she had taken it upon herself to meet her new client, in hopes that Etsu had managed to charm Yuzuha's sons. Though Iku had been the soft spoken one, Sayuri hated to admit that Etsu was the charismatic funny one that drew people to her. Perhaps that _flaw _would help for once instead of cause trouble like many times in the past, even though when she laid eyes on her daughter at the airport two days earlier, she was met by dead flat _black _eyes.

Etsu had purposely changed her appearance so she wouldn't be likened to the dead Iku. She didn't know if it was for her own sake or if she did it as a sign of disrespect towards her deceased twin. Whatever the case, Sayuri had been relieved to see that Etsu didn't remind her of her loss like before. Her transformation was drastic enough to not compare her to Iku.

Though... She couldn't help but think that if her other child had been alive, how _much _like Etsu she would have looked. Pale and lovely, like delicately shaped glass with cool features. The dyed blond hair would have been an inky blue-black and the nearly feral black eyes would have been a vibrant violet.

She could only _think _it, not wish it because if Etsu were to return to her old troublemaking self, also having her natural hair and eye color, it would have been too much for her to take. It would have been like seeing someone dangling a _parody _of Iku right in her face. Someone that _looked _like her, but was the exact opposite.

"Thank you, I will!" Sayuri smiled at the lovely woman. Years of practice had made her a practiced actress. She knew how to flatter and get on people's good side.

"So you told me that your daughter has joined Ouran. The same class as my sons?"

"Yes, but I'm not sure if she met them today since it was her first day," she had made sure that her daughter would have been entered in the same classroom as the boys.

"That's wonderful! I'm sure my boys will get along with her just fine when they _do _meet her. Wait till you see them! They should be here any time soon after they finish with their club activities," Yuzuha set her cup of tea on the table between them with a pleasant smile.

A small tinge of envy raked her. It was just a tiny prick of it. This woman still had her two children. Perhaps even loved them both equally unlike her with her own remaining child. Feelings such as these came and went whenever she was reminded of it.

_Etsu... If you didn't make a good impression..., _grinding her teeth at the thought of her daughter even thinking of creating trouble, she managed to give the woman a winsome smile that appeared to be genuine.

"There they are!" hearing low murmuring and the sound of feet heading in their direction after Yuzuha's breathy exclamation, Sayuri straightened her spine, not only preparing to act like a charming businesswoman, but to prepare to hear exactly what new stunt Etsu had pulled off.

Because she _knew _that Etsu had been pissed when she had ordered her to befriend the twins. She had seen a flash of intense dislike in her empty black eyes that barely hinted that she was going to mess up everything just to spite her.

_What have you done now?_

She swallowed dryly at seeing the two teenaged boys enter the room. If she had once thought that no twins could be as identical as her own daughters, she had been wrong until that day.

These twins were almost _abnormally _identical. In the way they walked into the room and how their features held the exact same expression. It was unlike anything she had ever seen. They both obviously took after their mother in looks. With their styled auburn hair and golden, catlike eyes that were tilted at the corners giving them a more feline appearance they were both very beautiful young boys. She honestly hoped that Etsu was normal enough to realize that the twins were indeed attractive enough to _not _make a fool out of her by doing something so _Etsu-_like.

Standing up gracefully, Yuzuha signalled at the boys, a soft smile of pride on her lips, "Sayuri, these are my son's Hikaru and Kaoru!"

The boys stared back at her blankly and Sayuri was mortified at the fact that she was dumbly gawking at them.

"Ah!" smiling warmly, she rose from her seat and bowed at the boys, realizing that she had to at least introduce herself. "Sakoi Sayuri."

"You wouldn't happen to be related to some new girl at Ouran, right?" a slightly annoyed young male voice spoke up as she shivered apprehensively.

_That little _bitch! _I _knew _that she hadn't changed one bit!_

Raising her head, she nodded, forcing her smile to stay in place, "Yes, Sakoi Etsu."

The boy that had spoken looked at his brother as if saying 'I told you so'.

"What's the matter boys?" Yuzuha asked slowly. "Did something happen?"

"Something happened alright," the twin that had yet to speak said just as annoyed as his sibling, "some Sakoi girl went to the club and insulted us."

Both her and Yuzuha gasped. To tell the truth Sayuri was surprised that the only thing Etsu had done was insult them. When being a child that mischiveous little brat had done much worse than say mean words. In fact when the servants had heard that Etsu was returning to the manor, many of them packed up to leave due to her many evil pranks during childhood. For servants to remember her well enough to be terrified into leaving the household, Etsu had to be the embodiment of evil itself.

"Tell me, Sayuri... Do you think that was _your _girl?" Yuzuha didn't sound displeased, though her voice had an edge that signified that what her sons' had just said had disturbed her.

"Yes...," she winced, hating to say that the rude girl the twins had encountered was indeed the girl she had been singing false praises to in order to impress her new famous client. "Yes... that's my Etsu alright."

_If she thinks that she's going back to that school because of this stunt, she's dead wrong. I'm going to make _certain _that she fixes this mess._

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><p>Please R&amp;R!<p> 


	3. Just You And Me

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Bisco Hatori's Ouran High School Host Club and I also do not make profit of this fic_

**Warning:** Lemon deleted.

**Chapter 3**

At first it had been a game to the both of them. A way to tease with an impossibility. They used to laugh at the reactions they would incite from the girls that watched them, but going through puberty and an unhealthy dose of curiousity made their 'acting' take a serious edge. Of course that meant that they eventually succumbed to that sick curiousity.

Kaoru should have been ashamed of it, yet giving into it had made their drawing point more genuine to their admirerers. Some might believe it was fake in spite of loving to watch, while others instantly believed it was real and accepted it as a rare treat from the club.

No one could really see through it and understand the bond between them. It was a tie that only a twin that deeply loved his counterpart would comprehend. If he didn't know any better he could say that the twist in their already too close relationship made them closer and sadly, too difficult to separate. They were so far into their roles that they couldn't get out of it. He had to admit that it was selfish of him to still want to play along, but it was only because he didn't want to lose Hikaru.

He couldn't say that he didn't like girls. He did like them and so did his brother. The thing was that they were so comfortable with e_ach other _that no girls could intrigue them enough to 'experiment' fully. In the past, both him and Hikaru had been with girls, but when they showed their true colors, they either became disgusted or too overwhelmed to continue on to the next step.

They had given up... Until Haruhi had come along and now Kaoru had to say that _neither _one of them could have her, much less _both _of them.

Haruhi just didn't seem like that kind of girl. Besides, he and everyone else in the club, except for maybe Hikaru that was too busy trying to get her attention in his own way, knew that she had begun to harbor feelings for Tamaki. It was funny and almost _sad _to watch those two interact. Both Tamaki and Haruhi were so oblivious to what they felt yet it was so clear that they oddly suited each other.

"Well, that Sakoi chick is going to really get it now. What the hell kind of girl goes to a host club and does _that?" _hearing Hikaru that was lying down on one of the joined twin beds that they shared, Kaoru smiled.

"One that has enough time to watch and insult us," he could tell that Hikaru was pretty pissed about what the 'new girl' had done. No one had gone that far. In the past some people had remarked about their bizarre closeness, but _no _girl had ever said something as jarring as them being an actual mockery of twins. That was what had truly upset them in the first place.

It wasn't her analysis of them personally. It was that she had jabbed at their bond in _particular. _

A pathetic mockery. That was what they appeared to be. He wondered if she was the only one that thought that way. Usually both of them didn't care what people thought of them, but to have someone attack their inpenetrable connection to one another... was too new for them.

Kaoru knew he loved his brother and his brother had shown him many times that he did as well. They never needed to say it because they already _knew. _That knowledge had been present since birth, perhaps even from the womb.

They were too much alike and that was probably why they were so close.

"Do you think it's true, Kaoru?" Hikaru had become unusually solemn, his golden eyes staring up at the ceiling.

"What's true?" he sat down on the bed, his thigh rubbing against his twin's.

"That we're mocking ourselves?"

He almost felt like sighing. It had been the same thing he had been thinking, so it was unsurprising that Hikaru would bring it up at that exact moment.

"It depends on how you look at it," he began, feeling a twinge of uncertainty at what he was speaking of. There was some wrongness to how unnaturally close they were, but he was so accostumed to it already to just give it up overnight over some tactless comment. "I don't see anything wrong with us even if other people get a little freaked out."

"I don't either," making a face, Hikaru then snorted. "Screw her! What does she know?"

In spite of Hikaru saying that, Kaoru felt that the girl's words still wounded his twin's pride.

Hikaru's golden eyes stared at the ceiling unblinkingly and expressionless, even though his lips were smiling. He couldn't hide how annoyed he was by Sakoi's remark.

_She doesn't even know us well enough to say something like that, but for a moment it felt as if she could see right through us._

It had been eerie when he had seen the flatness in her eyes. It wasn't only the frost in her convincingly bored stare that had momentarily freaked him out. What had taken him by surprise was the flashes of hatred that appeared in those black pools. Like the girl was hiding something behind that coldness.

"Hey...," hearing his twin speak softly, he looked at him in questioning. Seeing that he had his attention, Hikaru smirked, "Do you think mother is still dealing with that woman?" By woman he was clearly referring to Sakoi Sayuri.

"I don't know," he frowned, cocking his head to the side, "maybe. You know her, once she gets started-"

"-she doesn't quit."

(**lemon has been deleted.)**

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><p>Please R&amp;R!<p> 


	4. First Day In Class

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Bisco Hatori's Ouran High School Host Club and I also do not make profit of this fic_

**Chapter 3**

Etsu learned a valuable lesson the next day in school... She loathed teachers with a passion. As soon as she had set foot in the cursed very _full _classroom, the bastard teacher had greeted her with some bullshit small talk about being happy to have her there. Not pleased with that, the man that was going to be her sensei until she found a way to get the hell out of Japan clapped his hands a couple of times to get her 'temporary' classmates to take their seats so she could introduce herself.

That was why she hated it. There was nothing worse than having at least a couple of dozen pairs of eyes belonging to strangers appraising you from head to toe to see if you were lacking. She wasn't conceited or shy, but she sure hated it when people measured her through narrow-eyed stares. It was like when both her and her sister had gone to school for the first time... Everyone in the small colorful pre-school room had just spun their heads at the same time to openly gawk at them as if they had come from another planet.

The only difference now was that she was older and _alone. _No mirror-like copy of her was standing by her side. Only her standing there with placid features and a rigidly straight back as her eyes stared vacantly ahead of her.

"Now, class, this is Sakoi Etsu and though she is natively from Japan, she has been studying abroad in England..." and just like she knew they would, everyone stared and some people in the sea of unfamiliar faces were open enough to start whispering behind their hands while eyeing her.

_This stupid mother-fucker..., _keeping her left eyebrow from twitching at the teacher's tone that reminded her of a Japanese version of Barney for some reason, she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from cursing at him.

_I can feel it coming... 'Now, give a warm welcome to Sakoi-san and show her some Ouran hospitality'._

"- and I hope that all of you show her some Ouran hospitality."

_Not quite, but close. I've got this routine shit all figured out._

"Sakoi-san," she looked at the teacher as he spoke and a small dose of satisfaction almost had her cracking a smile at seeing how he blanched a couple of shades at her heavy stare, "do-do you wish to say anything to your new class-classmates?" his faltering voice was humorous to her, but she managed to mentain her face relaxed, devoid of any emotion.

"No, sensei, may I please take my seat?" her tone was monotone, soft and so blastedly girlish, though the flatness of it had her new teacher's Adam's apple bobbing apprehensively. She loved to create that effect on people. It was best to let everyone in Ouran know that she didn't desire to make any friends. Getting attached to at least one person among the strangers currently gaping at her would make it difficult for her to return to her _real _friends in England.

Somewhere in the classroom a loud snort rung out and she stiffened upon hearing it because she knew who it belonged to without looking. It had to be one of the _twits _she had insulted the day before at that man-whore-she meant _host club _thing.

Refusing to acknowledge the boy who had made the scornful nasal sound, her eyes didn't so much as flicker in his direction.

_I promised everyone and if I let any of the losers in this school to see the true me, all of the work I put into my transformation would have gone to waste._

"Ah... yes! How rude of me..." clearly wanting to get her the hell away from him, he nervously signalled towards an empty desk that was close to the door of the classroom. "That wo-would be your seat Sa-Sakoi-san..." his stuttering was begining to irritate her.

Quickly dismissing him, she frowned at the seat and then mentally shrugged before walking over to sit down on the stiff wooden seat, settling her school-issued bag next to her legs.

_Stupid seats. Isn't the Teacher's Pet the one supposed to sit close to the door? I hate sitting close to doors. Everyone that walks in here is going to see me first._

What was her first day actually taking class in Ouran began like any normal first day in school. The teacher saying side-comments her way about what they had been working on before she had enrolled in the damned academy and students quietly working on the in-class assignments given to them.

It was tedious merely sitting there working on shit she already knew. She had heard that Ouran Academy was a one of the most prestigious schools in Asia. A school that not only boasted the highest creme de la creme in Japanese society, but also some wealthy Europeans and Americans. She had yet to see any actual foreigners in the school, but she had done some research before leaving England so she knew that there were rich brats from all over in the stupid place.

For being such a high and mightly academic wonder, they were sure behind on the study schedule. The stuff given to her to 'catch up' had been taught to her a year earlier. That was why she thought that the school wasn't all that wondrous... then again the boarding school she had gone to gave classes from eight in the morning to five-thirty. Nine hellish hours in a single classroom with a habit-wearing nun talking in a drone-like voice about history, math and so on. At least, she had to give her new teacher some credit for not boring her into a nap or into her dreaded escape plan called 'Step B' which was safely hidden in a safe-compartment in her new school bag.

_I should have pulled it out when mother started her fit last night. She hates my theatrics._

No one knew what 'device' she carried around, but her mother had seen her pull the 'Etsu Suicide Escape Method' far too many times to believe it anymore. The last time she had pulled out the noose she carried still made her smile.

She had draped it over the staircase at a dinner party while loudly declaring that she would kill herself because her mother wanted her to date some pimply-faced heir of some well-known hotel line. It had been so shameful to Sakoi Sayuri to have the English aristocracy and celebrities seeing her daughter doing such a morbid humorless act. The woman actually had a nervous breakdown that led her to be hospitalized for three weeks. Just the image of her fainting after giving a high-pitched scream of terror had Etsu's heart fill with joy.

_I have to change my escape plan. Maybe carry a razor to pretend to slit my wrists..._

However, just because her mother no longer believed the suicide routine, didn't mean that people that _didn't know _of her usual antics wouldn't be convinced by it.

Etsu was proud to say that she was flawless at acting. In fact, before leaving England, she had practiced endlessly in front of her mirror in making her face as a cool as possible. Her friends had helped in changing her hair color and getting her black contact lenses that looked 'normal' since most contacts in that color were meant to look falsely freakish. For hours, she had acted out the 'corpse Etsu' in front of her giggling friends that were stunned by the attitude change.

Being trully bitter inside, her 'new Etsu transformation' was coming naturally. She hated being surrounded by happy strangers and being inside the same house as her mother that was always glaring at her when she thought she wasn't looking. Only the girls at her old home knew what she was hiding. They knew of her craziness. In fact whenever something of the messy variety happened in the school, everyone would just say 'Etsu did it, _duh'. _

The thing was that she was indeed a cold person. It was rare for her to allow anyone in. Most of the people she was open with were people that had befriended her soon after her arrival in England eight years earlier. Other than that, the other girls had thought she was a stuck up, rather intimidating bitch.

She just wasn't good at handling strangers or showing them the nice side of her. People that had just met her always discovered that she was a very disturbed individual that had a knack for pulling pranks, having a dark sense of humor and being crudely sarcastic. She had done so many things to unsuspecting victims over the past couple of years, that nothing really impressed her anymore. The fun of her stunts had begun to lose their allure. Now, she mainly did them to get revenge, cause her friends to laugh during a long boring day or to escape the school altogether.

_"How _could _you, Etsu?" her mother shrieked at her red-faced while Etsu stared at her boredly. "Do you know how humiliating it was to have Yuzuha find out exactly what kind of _monster _you are?"_

_"It wasn't humiliating to me, but to you, mother dearest," to rub it in, she said the words lowly without any hint of emotion. It was just a blunt fact. She hadn't shamed herself. _Sayuri _was the one that had been embarrassed._

_Her mother's face became an ugly shade of mottled red at her words._

_"You... You _have _to be a demon!" gripping her hair, her mother's own violet eyes stared at her in both terror and disbelief, "Just what the hell _are _you?"_

_"A demon," she calmly answered._

_"That's it! Go to your room!" feeling pleased at her mother's order, Etsu turned with a military sharpness to gracefully head to the grand staircase leading to the second floor._

_"And don't you even _dare _come down to dinner until you have apologized to those boys."_

Yeah, right. It'd be a cold day in hell before she did _that. _That very morning before she had been driven to school, the head maid of the manor had given her a note that Sayuri had left before going to the main Sakoi offices speaking of just that.

The note had been simple:

_You are only allowed to leave to go to school. _

_You will have all of your meals in your room _

_and are NOT allowed to go out on weekends..._

The rest of the letter was of course utter nonsense. She had already balled it up and tossed it out the window of the moving limo before completely reading the dumb thing.

_She must think I'm a pushover. What a idiotic woman._

Feeling rather proud of her strategy, she smiled inwardly during the rest of the morning classes.

* * *

><p><em>I really hope no one is in the girl's bathroom!, <em>Fujioka Haruhi rushed through the hallways, mentally repeating that as a mantra. She usually used the bathroom in the music room that was employed for the host club, but on that day _someone _had decided to lock the doors until club hours. It wasn't the first time something like that had happened and it was annoying to her that she had let her guard down again. Normally, in that kind of situation, she would run quickly into the girl's restroom and lock herself into a stall until all feminine voices faded away.

She really had to go! Just running at such a breakneck speed was making her bladder contract painfully.

And there was no way in hell she was going into men's bathroom. How would she explain to other guys why she didn't use the urinals? As far as she knew the stalls in male restrooms were only used for... well, doing something that wasn't _urinating. _To top it off, she had heard that _all _male restrooms were filthy even in such a school as Ouran.

She wasn't willing to risk it.

Finally reaching a door with a small sign with a pink feminine siluehette drawn on it, she pushed it and ran blindly into the nearest stall.

Sighing in relief at her luck at not hearing any other girl's there, she set out to do her 'business' after locking the small swinging door of the stall.

That was when she heard it.

_"Stupid contacts. Why the fuck didn't I just get some eye tint to make them black? Damn it!" _the hissing voice that came from a couple stalls from hers was eerily familiar. Haruhi was having a hard time placing the voice with a face. Besides that, it was the first time she had actually heard a girl in Ouran curse so openly.

_"Man! My freaking eye is on fire! I'm so _stupid!_" _some gasps followed those furious loud whispers.

Gulping, she tried her best to finish quickly to not be discovered by the angry girl she had yet to see. Zipping up her pants after flushing the toilet, she opened the door of the stall to rush out as silently as she had arrived towards one of the sinks for a quick rinse of her hands when the female voice called out.

"Oi! I need some help here!"

Wincing with her back towards the girl that had shouted that, she slowly turned around to see the new girl, Sakoi Etsu stepping out of the last stall in the bathroom with one hand rubbing her teary left eye vigorously.

"Hellooooo...?" Sakoi's voice had an edge of annoyance and Haruhi guessed that she wasn't surprised at her appearance since one of her eyes was covered while the other one was scrunched shut in a grimace.

_I guess I have no choice then. Hopefully she won't scream about a 'boy' being in the girl's bathroom once she gets a good look at me._

"Um... yeah," she began awkwardly not knowing how to approach the unfamiliar girl that was waiting for her response.

"Could you _please _help me? I'm new with the whole contact lenses thing and some dust fell in my eye. When I rubbed it kind of fell out and now I can't get it back in," her voice was as soft as in the classroom earlier that morning yet Haruhi was somewhat shocked to see that the girl wasn't as formidable as everyone had begun to suspect.

"Sure...," murmuring that lowly, she supposed that the sooner the girl had her lens back in the place, the sooner she could leave. Maybe even escape without having her real gender detected.

"Thanks."

Reaching the girl, she timidly asked, "Do you have the lens with you right now?"

"Yeah...," raising the one hand that wasn't covering her hurting eye, Sakoi showed her a curiously dark lens that was bent in half in the middle of her palm.

_It's obvious she doesn't know a thing about contacts if she held it in a fist like that._

"We'll need to clean it," Haruhi sighed mentally. _All_ she had wanted to do was go to the bathroom.

Making a face without opening the eye that wasn't hurt, Sakoi said flatly, "Front pocket of my bag. There's some cleaning solution there."

_Okay... I'm lucky she's in too much pain to open that eye., _looking about the large pale bathroom, her eyes spotted a school bag thrown on the floor right in front of the stall Sakoi had been inhabiting. The girl must have tossed the thing there because some of the bag's contents had spilled on the floor.

Though it felt odd to go through someone else's bag, Haruhi knew there was no other choice. The girl's eye was probably itching and burning so much that she probably couldn't see straight even if she wanted to. Using contact lenses herself, she knew the feeling all too well.

After giving her a last wary glance, she headed over to the bag to search for what she needed. Finding the cleaning liquid as well as some eyedrops, she took a deep breath and faced the girl, prepared to do the task at hand.

The work was done in silence; not like they needed to talk during it. All Haruhi had to do is take the mangled plastic lens from Sakoi's hand, squirt some liquid on it, rub it until any dirt on it was rinsed off and see if she could clean her teary eye.

When the lens have been cleaned, she began to have her doubts again. Now she needed to carefully open the girl's eye to put some eyedrops _and _the lens. The girl in front of her said she couldn't put it back in so it was logical to think that _she _would have to do it for her.

Murmuring some apologies to the strange girl for imposing in her personal space, she gently tilted her head back and slowly pryed the girl's fingers from the eye was surrounded by red puffy skin.

Now Haruhi felt bad for having wanted to rush out of the bathroom moments earlier. One look at Sakoi's eye was enough to tell her that if it didn't get taken care of soon, she could get an infection.

It took some gentle coaxing to get her to relax enough to open that eye and when she did, Haruhi was confused at see that among the bloodshot white was a nearly purple orb that looked luminous under the harsh light of the bathroom.

Frowning, she looked at the lens she had readied on the tip of her index finger.

_Why the heck would she want to cover her eyes up with this? It doesn't make that much sense._

Shaking her head of her questions, saying inwardly that it was none of her business, she applied some eyedrops as Sakoi gasped and blinked rapidly at the odd sensation of the liquid falling on her sore eye.

Seeing that she was as ready as she would ever be, Haruhi set out about putting the lens in. Thankfully, Sakoi knew how to stay perfectly still and barely even flickered an eyelash when she slid the pitch black lens over the deep violet iris.

"Should have figured you were a girl."

Her eyes widened as she backed away from Sakoi that blinked and grimaced, trying to get used to having the lens back in.

_But she hadn't even been looking at me!_

Once she stopped making a face of discomfort, Sakoi eyed her up and down measuringly through narrow dark eyes. It was nerveracking for Haruhi. There was absolutely nothing in the other girl's face that said she was even surprised about her 'secret'.

"Thanks for the eye thing," her jaw dropped as Sakoi casually shrugged before turning around to pick up the discarded school bag. Staring at her dumbly, she watched as the girl calmly walked towards the bathroom door as if nothing otherwordly had just transpired.

"And by the way. I won't tell anyone your secret if you don't tell anyone about my eyes," that being said the door swung shut behind the girl's retreating figure, leaving Haruhi confused and alone.

_What was... _that_?, _other girls in her place would have probably shrieked in terror or in some horrible fangirl fit, have jumped on her. However Sakoi had acted as if she had known the whole time without so much as looking at her.

_That explains why she got on the twins' bad side., _she had noticed how Hikaru and Kaoru had been quietly glaring at the new girl throughout the morning. When she had heard Hikaru's scornful snort after she had first spoken during her surprise class introduction, it became clear that Sakoi Etsu was the girl that had embarassed them the day before at the club.

Relaxing her tense shoulders, she gave up. Even though she barely knew the girl, her blunt honesty had seemed genuine. For some reason that was enough to reassure her. Sakoi's bored attitude clearly showed that she was a person that didn't care about appearances. Heck, she had been the only girl to ever set foot in the host club that had insulted two of the most sought after hosts. Usually most girl's had nosebleeds or giggle fits when dealing with the twins.

_Guess not all rich girls are the same, right?_

Knowing that it was just a matter of time before some other girl came to the bathroom, Haruhi left the place hurriedly, her mind steering away from the strangely behaved Sakoi. She had far too many things to deal with to analyze unreadable people. One of the many _horrifying _things she had to put up with was Tamaki-senpai that had become even more dramatic than usual.

Yeah, she definitely had a long day ahead of her.

* * *

><p>Sometimes days became so boring in its normal drag that Hikaru often wondered why he didn't just ditch school to go elsewhere. The only thing that kept him from leaving was Kaoru that seemed to want to stay there until the very end of their club activities. He knew that deep the down his real reason for wanting to stick around until the very last host had left was because of Haruhi.<p>

It didn't upset him like it should have since he too liked being around the girl host, though over time he had been forcing himself to not think about her as a possible girlfriend. Not only wouldn't it be fair for Haruhi, but it wouldn't be fair for Kaoru as well.

Due to his unconventional relationship with his twin, he didn't bother with girls as he had done in the past. Once or twice, he had done things with them but when he suggested getting Kaoru involved the girls would automatically shut down. When he got to think about it, girls were far too annoying for him. Why bother with something that annoyed you? He could admit that he found _some _girls worthy of a second glance, yet when it all got down to getting to know them better, he became easily irritated.

Hearing giggles every five seconds and getting sappy eyed stares wasn't precisely a turn on for him. At least both him and Kaoru had each other to keep the edge off and thinking about it now, he realized that he liked Kaoru much better than some giddy teenaged girl. His twin was oddly more comfortable to deal with in bed and out. They already knew what the other one wanted, so they didn't have to put up false fronts to get on each other's good side. They only left the gentlemanly act for their time spent in the host club.

_Man, this headache is killing me!, _grimacing, he rubbed his temples as he walked alongside his twin into the Hitachiin manor.

Tamaki had been especially annoying that day. For the last couple of weeks their mentally damaged 'leader' had become more theatrical. It made Hikaru wonder if some guys had hormonal moodswings like girls during their time of the month. That day Tamaki had gone off about some girl asking Kyoya if Haruhi could do a 'private visit'. They didn't get to see who the girl was since the request had been done out of club hours but Tamaki had burst into tears when Kyoya had calmly told him that he had talked it over with Haruhi and that she had accepted to do a private off-club hours date.

He could never get those two. Kaoru had said a thing or two about about their boss and Haruhi, though didn't elaborate further as if afraid of his reaction.

"Hey, sounds like someone is visiting," hearing Kaoru's voice, he glanced over at him before looking at the slightly ajar doors of the sitting room close to the entrance hall. It took him a while to recognize the voice speaking with that of their mother's, but once he did a glower immediately appeared on his face.

"Its that Sakoi chick's mother."

That girl, in spite of not even glancing their way during the day, had gotten under his skin. It was like her dark presence had zapped out the enthudiasm in the whole classroom. Even the teachers and people that had passed her in the hallways of the school had become easily frightened of her. When both him and Kaoru had heard the whole school begin to whisper about the evil aura surrounding her, he hadn't been surprised one bit. Being a frosty bitch seemed to come quite naturally to her and people had noticed it just by seeing her for the first time.

_I even heard some people say that Nekozawa-senpai is thinking of asking her to join his club. That's how depressing she is._

On the other hand... Why was that woman Sakoi Sayuri coming over to their house? He knew that there was some type of contract underway, but that wasn't enough for the woman to build a friendship with their mother.

_But mother will be mother. She talks to anyone that so much as looks at her._

As if reading his mind, Kaoru said more to himself, "I wonder why she's here again."

"I don't know," he shrugged one shoulder, annoyed by the fact that the rather _fake _woman was coming around. He didn't know why he got the feeling that the woman was false in her politeness... She hadn't shown any malice like her daughter during the short while they had been in her presence. There just was _something _about the woman that irritated him. To be honest, Sayuri's sudden presence was nauseating compared to the cold Etsu's.

"Maybe we should see what they're talking about," surprised at that, he shot a glance at his younger brother. Kaoru wasn't the kind that liked to eavesdrop, so that could only mean that he got the same belly knotting sensation as him.

"Whatever. It's not like we have anything else better to do," brushing off the sick feeling in the pit of his belly, he shrugged and gave his brother a nod.

When they got close enough to the slightly parted doors to overhear what was being said without being detected, he bit his lower lip to keep from interrupting the conversation taking place. He really couldn't _stand _having the woman there.

_Why should I care who visits? It's not like that woman has done anything personally against us._

_"I told her to apologize as soon as she saw your boys. I honestly don't know what got into her! She swore she would talk to them about what happened! She was so sorry for making your sons go through something so terrible!" _Sayuri exclaimed with a fake scandalized tone.

_"Children will be children! You should have seen my boys when they were little! No one could keep them still! They were always getting into some kind of trouble!" _their mother laughed, recalling their antics.

Both Kaoru and Hikaru looked at each other at the same time, wearing mirroring confused expressions.

"She was supposed to-"

"-apologize to us?"

_"Etsu has been a little hard to control...," _Sayuri sniffled, _"... since _it _happened. The only person that could really get through to her was her sister and with her... go-gone now, she just doesn't listen to anyone."_

_"Oh, my dear...!" _their mother gushed in genuine sympathy. _"Your poor girl must be going through a very hard time... I heard that it happened eight years ago, am I correct?" _a small pause that Hikaru guessed was Sayuri's nod passed. _"I might not know from personal experience, but seeing how close my sons are to one another, losing a sibling at such a young age must be difficult for anyone. You're very fortunte to have one of your daughters with you, Sayuri."_

_"I-I know...!" _the sound of the woman choking that out ate at him. It actually escalated his annoyance to new heights.

_A dead sister?, _strangely the news of Etsu having a deceased sibling disturbed him, especially since their mother compared him and Kaoru to what the girl used to have with her sister. It didn't make any sense to him why she would use _them _as an example.

"Hikaru, haven't you noticed something strange about that girl?"

Blinking, he tiredly looked over at his slightly surprised twin. He was already bored with the little information they had discovered if it could be called that.

"What do you mean? Everything about her is strange if you ask me." He didn't even like talking about her. Ever since she had insulted them, his temper had been flaring over the smallest of things.

A slight smile played on Kaoru's lips, "Sakoi _wants _us to hate her."

_Still not interested in that right now., _if he hadn't been in such a bad mood he would have become excited at the possibility of wreaking havoc, but at present, he just wanted to go up to his room to lay down or at least get to the nearest medicine cabinet.

"Listen, Kaoru," he winced before rising from his crouching position beside the half-closed double doors of the sitting room, "I've got a headache and I'm tired. Can't we just drop this Sakoi business and go upstairs already?" His tone was whiny to his ears and couldn't help wincing once more at the sound of it.

Looking at him as if he were clueless, his brother said slowly, "What I'm trying to say is that if we make her mother think that we're her friends, were messing up whatever plans she has."

He stiffled a yawn behind his hand, "And what good... is that going to do us?" He didn't want to let his brother see that he had been thinking the same thing since the day before. The only difference now was that he finally knew that Sakoi was intentionally offending them. What he'd had in mind had been just annoying the girl, not something as elaborate as what Kaoru was suggesting.

_This could be fun if we do it the right way._

At his question Kaoru stared blankly at him before finally answering after a couple of seconds.

"It could be fun."

Taking a deep breath, he then mustered up a smirk. Starting a new game wouldn't be that bad. With the daily boredom they had in their daily routines, making Sakoi's life a living hell by deceiving everyone around them into thinking they were anything _but _trouble sounded promising. They knew exactly how to trick her mother into believing that they were little angels, just like their own mother thought that they were incapable of any evil.

"Let me just get some painkillers," Kaoru smiled at his words, since it meant that he had agreed to it.

_But I'm calling all the shots. Kaoru can be too soft sometimes._

* * *

><p>Please R&amp;R!<p> 


	5. Stirrings Of Jealousy

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Bisco Hatori's Ouran High School Host Club and I also do not make profit of this fic_

Underlined words a_re for when the twins talk at the same time._

**Warning: **Lemon Content deleted.

**Chapter 4**

She shouldn't have said anything when the maid sent by her mother had frantically knocked on her door,

"She's so adorable!" the unknown woman that her mother had ordered her to greet was suffocating her in a perfumed embrace.

How was it that one moment Etsu was comfortably taking a nap in her room to later end up being intoxicated by a hyper stranger that gave spontanious hugs. As soon as she had taken slow procrastinating steps to the entrance hall, a colorful fragrant blur had literally _pounced _on her.

Being in shock, the only change in her usually cool features was a widening of her eyes as her immobile body was squeezed in a fierce hug that had her face pressed tightly against the woman's chest. Under different circumstances she would have gone off and demanded to know who the woman was but politeness _and _her transformation kept her in line.

She could tell that very soon she would enter a catatonic state because of the woman's daunting enthudiasm. In England people tended to be bland, keeping a respectful arms' distance from each other; nothing as _affectionate _as the woman exclaiming over her looking like a little porcelain doll. Since having someone touching her with such familiarity was foreign, she didn't know how to react to the new experience. Even her own mother hadn't given her a hug... well since she could ever remember. Sayuri wasn't precisely affectionate.

_Guess some people are different._

The expensive perfume the woman wore wafted up to her nostrils, giving her a light headed and disconnected feeling.

_I'm going to pass out if this keeps up., _her cheeks were a heightened red because of lack of oxygen. She was trying her best to not inhale the clogging designer perfume.

"Sayuri! You had never told me your daughter was so cute!"

_I'm not cute., _She wasn't conceited and had never cared about her looks, but she had never considered herself a 'beauty'. In her eyes, she was too pale, too skinny and her face was thin which gave her a fragile appearance. She supposed that was why the woman said she looked like a doll. Her girlish looks did come in handy at times, of course. It tended to make people think she was innocent, letting her get away with bad intentioned pranks without so much as a reprimand.

"Oh, I know! A lot of people tell me how adorable she is!" her mother's voice exclaimed from somewhere behind the woman strangling her in her arms.

_That's such bullshit and she knows it., _her mother wasn't precisely the type of parent that liked showing her off to her friends. The only times any of her acquaintances had seen her were during short vacation breaks and during those breaks, she hadn't even set foot in Japan. Sayuri had been understandably afraid of 'unleashing' her in front of the wealthy Japanese.

_Damn it. My nap was ruined for this._

"Come here, boys! Say 'hi' to your friend!" Etsu's eyes widened more than they already were, which was a feat because her eyeballs had been almost spilling out of their sockets. "You were the ones that insisted on visiting her!"

_Oh, dear GOD!, _her heart began to thunder in pure terror.

Suddenly, the woman that she now suspected was Yuzuha pulled away from her and soon _other _arms imprisoned her.

_What did I do to deserve this? I haven't killed anyone or stolen anything! I have been a _good _girl!, _she lied mentally. Though she had never killed anyone, she had fantasized about it like she was in that exact moment.

"Can we call you Etsu-_chan_?" a dreaded chorus of male voices exclaimed as two pairs of arms wrapped around her terrified trembling form, holding her firmly in place. Like only twins could, the 'chan' was said in a perfectly syncronized mockery.

She grinded her teeth. The little monsters were not only _touching _her, but they were so damned close she could smell their hair gel. It was a mentally scarring experience for her, mostly because her mother and Yuzuha gushed over how cute the three of them looked together. It was obvious that she would find no help from those two.

"We were so _happy _when you came up to us in school to _apologize _for being so mean!" one of the imps hugging her side to his front, successfully pinning her arms said in a theatrical wailing tone.

With his arms locked around her shoulders, the other one chimed in,"We just _had _to come over to see you!"

For being so scrawny looking, the twins were quite strong. Even wiggling in their hold didn't faze them. Her molars were about to crack because of how hard she was clenching her jaw. She so desperately wanted to yell and punch them, yet had to hold back. And... she had a feeling that they were aware of that and were taking advantage of her predicament.

She cringed inwardly at feeling the cloth of their shirts rubbing against her. The unwanted hug was even more invasive and smothering than that of Yuzuha. It was like they both wanted to snap every bone of her body.

"She looks so happy with them!" what Yuzuha said was a lie. Etsu was definitely _not _happy. She was doing an admirable job of keeping any dislike from appearing on her face. If she didn't know any better, she'd say she looked constipated.

_Were Iku and I so disorienting?, _somehow the Hitachiin brothers were too similar; leading her to believe that it was years of practice that had their personalities so abnormally identical. Both her and her sister hadn't been that way. In fact, people could easily tell them apart because of how different their personalities and expressions were from each others. On the other hand, the two boys violating her 'safety zone' were too alike. It was confusing the crap out of her.

"We're going to be the best of friends!" hearing their voices declaring that so cheerfully made a chill of horror go down her spine.

"Awww...!" another chorus of feminine voices sounded out from somewhere else in the large room.

_These heathens are ruining my plans!_

Her eyes frantically sought those of the two older women standing at a distance from them, watching the twin's attacking her. She should have known that she was alone in this one. Both of the woman smiled fondly at her desperate horrified stare as if it were endearing. Yuzuha's smile was even wider than that of Sayuri's and more openly honest, unlike her mother's own subtly smug grin. Since it was the first time she had ever laid eyes on the fashion icon Yuzuha, she hadn't known what to expect. The woman was just... _overwhelming_ to even look at. It was like there was a barely tapped resevoir of volatile energy inside the lovely woman that had eyes similar to that of her sons.

"We should let the children play together while I give you a tour of the house!" Sayuri said smilingly as Yuzuha nodded eagerly in agreement.

_What are we...? Pre-schoolers?, _pretrified at the thought of being left alone with the grabby twins, she opened her mouth to speak out only to have a hand cover it, stopping any words from coming out.

"Now, Etsu-_chan, _don't tell us that you don't want to _play. _That would _crush _us!" if she knew their freaking first names, she would say that the one that had spoken was the loud-mouthed seme that had yelled at her at the club. She'd recognize that voice anywhere. _He _was the one holding her arms to her sides so she couldn't squirm away.

"Yeah! After we came _all _this way to play with you! It's a shame we didn't bring any toys!" the one that she privately deemed as the seme's 'bitch' said dejectedly. His voice was slightly different than the other boy's, so it was easy to figure out who was who without seeing them speaking.

_Say what? What the hell is this guy talking about?_

"You kids be good now!" Yuzuha sang as she was lead away by Sayuri as Etsu stared after them in disbelief.

_What kind of mothers are they? Can't they see that these freaks are _all over _me?, _the twins didn't say anything as the two women left the room, talking animatedly among themselves. It shocked Etsu that they were so dismissive... They were either too trusting or blind about how inappropriate it was to leave a poor defenseless teenaged girl in the mercy of two teenaged boys that didn't know the meaning of 'respectable distance'.

"Alone at last..."

Her left eyebrow twitched in frustration.

"Get your _fucking _hands off me," the words were gritted through her teeth, her angry trembling stare staring furiously into space. Maybe if she ignored them they would go away. Unfortunately _imagening _being alone didn't work when being squeezed between two boys.

"Wow! That's not the proper language for a lady!" the seme exclaimed, clearly faking shock.

"Yeah, we should _punish _her for being so naughty!" the uke next to her, rested his chin on her shoulder with such familiarity that had her blood boil in intense dislike.

_Hypocrites! I bet their mother doesn't know how they fondle each other at that club! I bet they even _do _each other!_

"You know that you brought this on yourself, right?" confused about the seme's words, she scowled and made the mistake of looking at him as the other twin slowly removed his hand from her mouth, purposely dragging his palm over her chin in a caress.

He was smirking, but that wasn't what bugged the hell out of her. What trully irritated her was what he looked like close up.

_Blasted bishounen. Heard those are quite popular here in Japan._

His skin was pale, smooth and far too flawless. It was more like the skin a girl would have. No blemishes, scars or even hints of growing facial hair. The eyes that stared at her, in spite of appearing to be smiling, gave her the suspicion that he was quite bored with what was taking place. His symetrical soft features that leaned towards androgenous instantly had him and his twin fall into the 'male subspecies' category called bishounen.

What stood out the most were his eyes. She had never seen eyes quite like his which led her to believe that they couldn't be full Japanese. Their honeyed golden hue gave him a feline appearance that was further enhanced by the overall shape of his eyes. Very much like a cat's, his eyes were tilted at the corners and she even noted that he had rather long eyelashes for being a boy.

To make matters worse, even his auburn hair, that reminded her of the brownish red color of rust was perfect. His bangs were combed in a manner that framed his already too beautiful face. Seeing him up close was like a harsh slap for her, not because she found him attractive in any way, but because it was unfair for such a pain in the ass to look so damned pretty.

_Stupid boys look prettier than most girls. It isn't right._

"Did you see something you like...?" his grin widened as the question was teasingly drawn out.

Narrowing her own eyes, she arched an eyebrow at him and seeing this he blinked, momentarily confused.

"You're the asshole," his jaw dropped as she slightly turned her head to the other boy resting his chin on her shoulder, "and you're his bitch." Both of them stiffened at her words as if electrified, though they had yet to release her, the damned bastards.

_I'm right, aren't I?_

Seeing that they were too stunned to even move or speak, she heaved a sigh.

"Maybe I said it wrong," she said boredly, looking tiredly at the floor. "What I really meant to say that, _he's _the ass_," _her head jerked towards the uke twin, " and _he's," _this time her head jerked towards the seme, "the one that sticks it in." The words were spoken more for her benefit, because she really _wanted _them to let go of her. Hopefully shocking the hell out them would work.

Finally, her crude insults gave some results because the boys leapt away from her as if burned by acid.

_About damned time._

Not suppressing her disgusted shuddering, she took a step forward and gave an exagerated display of wiping desperately at her dress as if their close contact had tainted her. In some way _they _had been soiling her by putting their goddamned paws all over her person.

_"She definitely can't be normal," _she tensed at hearing the whisper behind her.

_"It's probably because she went to an all girl school. You don't think she's like one of those girls from Lobelia, do you?"_

_"Maybe, because she acts like a total freak."_

She honestly didn't want to show them the true dark side of her. The _heathens _were disrespectful enough to whisper quite _loudly _behind her back. They wanted her to hear what they thought of her.

_Relax, Etsu..., _she had already shown a smidge of her old self when she had demanded to be released. It wouldn't do her any good to really explode. Everyone that knew her well had seen her tantrums. If she showed how angry she really was, everyone in all of Japan would know because she didn't precisely hold back when mad.

Her whole body trembled as she took deep breaths to steady her nerves. Closing her eyes, she started mentally counting to a hundred as the twins continued talking just a couple of feet behind her.

_When was the last time I was this pissed off?_

Squaring her shoulders, she turned around. The twins didn't acknowledge her since they were too busy talking with one another.

They were standing a bit too close for being siblings. Not knowing their names because she didn't waste her time on pointless things, she guessed that the seme was the one that had his arms wrapped around the uke's waist; making both of them face each other too intimately. While in England she had seen many gay couples that had shown their affection that way and it was somewhat shocking that _brothers _would be so open about it. Seeing them that way made her even start to have doubts on whether or not they were in a sexual relationship.

_If they really are, it's fucking disturbing. I had a twin and I could have never done anything like that with her. _

"Is she looking this way?"she crossed her arms and coldly glared at them as the seme whispered that into his twin's ear.

"Yeah and she looks mad."They both appeared to be amused by her as their eyes shot her sideways glances.

"This whole pretending I don't exist nonsense is irritating me," she muttered darkly. "If you don't have anything important to say, just get the hell out of my house."

"She's actually kind of cute when she's like that, don't you think?"

It took a lot effort to not drag a hand over her face at how annoying they were.

"She's cute, but you're much cuter, Kaoru."Not only were they rude, they were narcissistic.

Bluntly dismissing her, they both snickered together, their eyes on each other once more.

_The girls in Ouran have to have a shitload of neurons missing to pay money to be around these idiots._

Breathing deeply through her nose and closing her eyes tightly, she put a stop to their rude conversation.

"Would you incestous retards just tell me what the fuck you're doing here and _leave_?"

Hearing no response after her heatedly spat words, she opened her eyes.

They simply stared at her as if she had just lost her mind. Their expressions were abnormally similar. The widening of eyes, the slightly opened mouths of shock. They _had _to have spent hours practicing how to mimick each other so flawlessly.

"My, she is full of surprises, isn't she?" the seme asked dumbly, staring at her unblinkingly.

"If you want we could get you a good therapist to take care of that," the uke said, his eyes falsely sympathetic.

_Is he... Is he saying that I'm crazy?_

Panting now in outrage, her whole body as rigid as a board over what they were implying, she ground out through her teeth, "Get. The. Hell. _Out _of my house."

"I feel really bad for her, Hikaru!" the uke wailed looking sadly at his brother, much to her growing outrage. "She's needs help! Just look at how _ill _she is! It makes me so s-sad!" the boy convincingly whimpered, pretending to be truly feeling for her supposed plight.

_Oh. My. GOD!_

She couldn't believe this! The morons were actually verbally sparring with her and _winning. _Usually she was the one that had the last word in situations such a those, but the two of them were actually kicking her ass!

"Don't worry about her, Kaoru. She's just a pathetic little girl with nothing better to do than envy our love."

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at that.

_This is a waste of my time. I could have been sleeping this whole time instead of watching this twincest drama._

Since they were both too busy looking at each other, she did the only thing she could do to keep some of her dignity intact.

She walked out on them, not even sparring them a glance while heading to the grand staircase.

"Wait! We're not finished yet!" in spite of hearing those alarmed shouts behind her, she didn't turn around.

"Too bad because _I _am," with those as her last words, she left the boys and their theatrical performance. Seriously, who did they think they were dealing with? She didn't get hurt easily, though her temper was easily provoked. It was just that when it came to useless emotions, she was practically immune. If they thought they were hurting her fragile feminine sensibilites, they were dead wrong.

_See? I _had _the last word this time._

Even though it was a cowardly victory, she felt some nervousness when leaving them... because though they hadn't spoken further, she could feel their eyes intently staring after her. The heaviness of their stares didn't go away even when she was all the way to the second floor and away from their lines of vision.

_I guess this is what they call 'burning a hole on your back', huh?_

**(Yet another hunk missing! Suggestive content deleted!)**

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><p>Please R&amp;R!<p> 


	6. Not So Innocent Brotherly Love

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Bisco Hatori's Ouran High School Host Club and I also do not make profit of this fic_

**Warning:** lemon content deleted

**Chapter 5**

It wasn't surprising to see that Sakoi Etsu made it late to class the next morning. Hikaru had made sure that she would have a hard time getting there on time.

Seeing her entering the classroom full of quietly working students two hours late, he shifted in his seat while studying her through narrowed eyes. It was the first time he had ever disliked someone so much. She didn't even have to try to get on his bad side.

People began to whisper at her appearance once she walked over to the dumbstruck teacher that stared at her as if she had just killed someone. It was obvious by just looking at her, that _something _had happened on her way there.

Though her uniform was dry, her blondish hair was knotted and pulled up in a messy wet bun. Her face was flushed and oddly shiny. Whether the shine of her skin was from water or pespiration, he didn't know or care. He guessed that she hadn't dried herself well enough after he had thrown a bucketful of dirty mopping water on her head earlier that morning.

It had been more of a last minute thing. He had been walking past the windows on the second floor and had seen her going up to the school. When he had noticed that an employee was leaving his cleaning supplies behind muttering something about getting more window cleaner, Hikaru hadn't thought of a good strategy to pay her back for her insults and had merely gone by instinct.

He had waited for the girl to go up the steps of the entrance of the school, had opened the window and had lifted the bucket filled with browned water. The instant he had heard a loud splash and a group of feminine screams, he had left the scene as quickly as possible, keeping his face devoid of all satisfaction punishing Sakoi had brought him.

No one needed to tell him that what he had done was not only cruel, but stupid. After what had happened the night before with Kaoru, his growing grudge towards the girl had turned into fullblown hatred. Everything about her was offending to him.

_I don't know what Kaoru sees in her., _coldlyglaring at Sakoi as she spoke in a low voice to the alarmed teacher, his fists clenched over his desk. He had tried to avoid thinking that Kaoru might show an interest in her by telling himself that it was impossible. Whenever he tried to believe that nothing was going on, the more he remembered what happened at her house.

When she had pulled away from them and he had Kaoru pressed to his chest, he had felt his brother's dwindling erection accidently bump against him. He hadn't said anything about it and had just pushed it aside... that was until he had discovered that Kaoru had left their bed to 'take care' of himself. In that instant, he had known something wrong and out of his control was happening. It had alarmed and angered him to think that his brother could be looking for sex elsewhere.

_And he didn't tell me._

He had felt insulted, even belittled by it. Wasn't Kaoru just happy with him? Hadn't he been giving him everything he wanted? Why would he let a _girl _that treated both of them like crap put him in that condition?

He doubted he would ever get it. The only thing that was for certain was that some of his anger towards her had been appeased with his little stunt.

_Now it's time for the other one._

Not feeling as much anticipation as he would have liked, his eyes followed her slowly walking petite form as she headed over to her desk. He swallowed dryly, waiting for _it _to happen. For a moment, he _almost _wanted to stop her from sitting down... He didn't know why he would have wanted to stop what he had begun, but his heart had skipped a beat at the thought of her falling into another stupid prank.

Sadly, he hadn't taken time to realize that Etsu was far smarter and more observant that even Kyoya himself. When the girl reached her desk, her shiny flat black eyes stared at the seat for a couple of seconds. He held his breath as she calmly placed her school bag on the wooden surface of her desk, without even making a move to sit down on the awaiting, seemingly harmless chair positioned in front of it.

Not taking her eyes away from the seat, her hand slipped into her bag until she pulled out a pencil.

_What? She couldn't have noticed that!_

Holding the pencil in the air directly over the chair, she nonchelantly dropped it. The instant the pencil hit the top of her supposedly sturdy seat, the loud splittering sound of the chair falling to pieces startled the whole class into gasping collectively.

She hadn't so much as blinked as the thing that she had been about to sit on became a pile of useless cardboard and weakened wood.

Paling at how the the girl had figured it out by merely _looking _at it, he half-expected her to look at him, but what she did next shocked him.

Turning her head towards their teacher, she stated softly with an unaffected tone, "I'll be needing a new chair, sensei."

Gaping like a fish out of water, their teacher stuttered out, "Of-of course, Sakoi-san!" his wide disbelieving eyes darting to the mess in front of her desk.

Everyone in the classroom, except for him and his brother were in uproar over what had just happened. Sympathetic girls rushed to Sakoi as she serenely looked at them as if nothing had transpired.

_"Oh, my goodness, are you alright?" _

_"You could have gotten hurt! You're so lucky you saw that on time!"_

_"I'm shocked to see that Ouran could have such faulty chairs!"_

_"You know you can sue? My father is a judge-"_

_"Do you want my chair until they get you a new one?"_

The well-meaning words to the stoic girl shot out like wildfire from the crowd surrounding her. Not flinching or showing any surprise at their questions and remarks, she answered calmly.

_What the hell is up with this girl? Is she a freaking robot?_

Feeling Kaoru's eyes on him, he stiffened and shot him a sideways glance just as Haruhi leaned forward in her own seat, asking herself, "Just what the heck happened to her chair? That can't be right."

Seeing his brother's eyes that a combination of disappointment and accusation had Hikaru wishing he hadn't done something so stupid to get back at Etsu. He understood why Kaoru was upset by his actions. Unlike his brother that was more logical and even-tempered, Hikaru was easy to anger and impulsive. When in a festering rage, he didn't think things over carefully and just did what he felt like even if it was unfair for the people receiving his wrath.

He might dislike Etsu after just a few encounters, but she hadn't really done anything to him, other than the incident at the club. Besides that, both _him_ and Kaoru had been the ones that had started an actual pursuit. All she had done in retaliation was defend herself, given by the shouts and curses at her house. And as for Kaoru's physical reaction, Etsu hadn't acted remotely sexually arousing towards either one of them.

_There's just something about her that drives me crazy! What is it that gets me like this?_

In the back of his mind, the answer to his question was present... He saw Etsu as a threat. In the past he hadn't even blinked when Kaoru was with a girl. To them it hadn't really mattered since they were sure of each other. Girls were easily forgotten, but what was between him and Kaoru was sacred. Come to think of it, he would be more upset if Kaoru were with another _guy, _not a girl.

He usually denied being selfish, yet he had to admit that his immature revenge proved that he was indeed insecure about Kaoru's unconditional love towards him. It was something he had never had to face before, since things were always crystal clear in their relationship. The sex between them was mutual and came naturally. Other people would have thought it was just them being sick minded hormonal perverts, but both of them knew why they truly did it.

They did it to be closer, not only sexual gratification. Whenever they had sex, they felt like two halves completing each other and Etsu's disinterested presence was threatening that intimacy. Unlike other girls, she wasn't trying to draw their attention and yet Kaoru had...

That's _why I hate her. She's not like the others. If she had been, I would have just looked the other way and not given a crap!_

Him and his brother had a sort of unspoken agreement when it came to the types of girls they'd had. If they were too eager to please, then she was 'passable'. If she was too serious, making them feel drawn in, they avoided her like cancer. Haruhi had easily drawn them in, but with Tamaki and his airheaded personality, they'd quietly given up on her. It was annoying even thinking that Tamaki or _any _of the other guys at the host club would be better for her.

He was fully aware that him and his twin were too twisted to have a regular relationship with someone besides themselves. Like Kaoru, he doubted that Haruhi would be open enough to accept both of them and if she had to choose at least one of them that would have completely destroyed their bond.

They were both careful at not getting tangled up in 'normal' female/male relationships because they both coincided in one fundamental thing.

They wanted to always be together. If it were up to them, neither of them would get married or have families of their own even if people wondered about it. Their own mother sometimes suspected that there was something wrong with them still sleeping in the same room and insisting childishly in doing everything together. One time, probably because of their odd behaviour, she had suggested that Kaoru should go on a business trip with her while he left with his father to the States for one summer.

Being so used to each other, they had of course panicked and ended up staying alone in the manor. That was how inseperable they were. Only other twins, even ones that weren't as warped as they were, would understand how painful it was to _think _of being separated.

He couldn't bear it and in his inability to deal with something inevitable, he had lashed out at Etsu.

Looking away from his brother's hurt eyes, eyes that had probably seen that he was unsure of what he felt for him, Hikaru inwardly shivered.

* * *

><p><em>Those <em>heathens! _I'm not sure which one of those demons did it, but I _will _get my revenge!, _Etsu was more pissed than she had ever been. To think that those little bastards had thought she would fall for such an old overdone prank insulted to her life's work! The peculiarly smelly water thrown on her had come as an unpleasant surprise, but the chair? Just who the hell did they take her for?

If they thought that those little games could work on her, they had another thing coming! By the end of the day, they'll know that she shouldn't be underestimated.

Though it had taken her a while to get some 'supplies' for her pranks towards the boys, she was more than prepared to make Ouran a battlezone, not just for the twin diabolical _monsters, _but for the whole freaking school. Why hadn't her mother just taken her out of the pompous craphole already? The night before, after the infernal imps had gone off with their mother, she had told Sayuri that she had finally done her 'part' in getting Yuzuha and her boys on her good side.

There was _no _reason for her to stay in Japan any longer. She knew that Sayuri couldn't stand the very sight of her breathing, so why all the freaking delay? She wanted to go back to England _now. _It would be best for _all _of them.

She had a _life _there and her mother was tampering selfishly with that life!

_When she finds out what happened here in Ouran, she'll definitely know it was me which is exactly _what _I want... This is kind of exciting when I think about it. Maybe its because its a _different _school., _the corner of her lips twitched mirthlessly as she took yet another turn in the school's maze, her school bag held tight to her side in a death grip. For the last ten minutes, she had been following the main water valve for the stupid looking fountain in the school grounds. Why anyone would think a fat stone cherub urinating in a filthy moldy pond was 'elegant' was beyond stupid to her.

When she had searched for the pump meant to keep the streaking water falling endlessly into the pond, she had realized that the plumbing system was a 'hidden' kind. Unlike the one in England that had a small box at it's base, this fountain's flow was was enduced by a tube safely hidden from ordinary sight among the hedges of the maze. It still irked her how long it had taken her to find the comufladged long tube, especially now that she was following it stupidly.

_Why did it have to be so complicated? Getting into that music room wasn't that hard and neither was messing around with the sprinkling system, but that stupid fat kid is a whole different story. What is it with the architecture in this school anyway?_

Though she was heir to Sakoi Exports, a multi-billionare company, she always had a thing for architecture and building designs. To the common eye, Ouran might have seemed as wonderful, but with her critical eye for measurements and textures, the place was a gigantic chaotic mess. Every damn building was in a different style. There was no consistency in either interiors, exteriors or it's beautiful gardens. Some buildings had clearly Victorian influences while others were in the more elaborate Baroque or even the sharp harsh angles of mideval styles.

It made her eyes sting. Someone might as well have tossed a couple eras together, to make such a place. Whoever had designed the school must have gotten bored easily to keep switching from style to style.

The thin dark green tube she was tracking bent in yet another turn and she mentally sighed at the irony of her luck. At the rate she was going, she was going to get her ass lost in the maze and no one would come 'rescue' her. She was a good climber, but being only five foot three would have her attempt at hopping on a tall seven foot hedge a pain in the ass. The hedges were too weak to hold anyone's weight. If she tried to climb on it, the thing would just bend right under her.

_If I get lost, I'll just hack through them. I don't care if they're thorny rose bushes. Better yet, I'll track the dumb thing _back _to the pond._

_"I'm sorry for not telling you, Hikaru...!"_

She stopped on her tracks at hearing the male voice.

_Something is going on., _the one that she suspected was Kaoru, the uke, sounded strange to her. There was something off with his voice. It was like he had breathlessly rasped those words out.

_After I wasted all my break time doing this, it turns out the _monsters_ are in the maze with me._

She had never followed common sense and though she was secretive by nature, she was too curious when things caught her attention unexpectedly. Narrowing her eyes at what seemed to be whispers and unmistakeable rustling noises, she slowly walked in their direction, her shoes barely making a sound on the grassy ground. The sensation that something wrong was occuring kept telling her to stop being so nosy and to turn around, but she was already too intrigued. For all she knew, they could be planning another sissy trap for her.

That was the only thing that kept her from leaving, or so she told herself to not feel so guilty.

_I'll stop here, so they won't see me._

Halting right in front of yet another dreaded leafy hedge that separated her from the whispering twins, she put her bag next to her feet so she could carefully part some of the thin branches from her view. Cursing mentally at how some of the thorns of the febril twig-like branches kept jabbing at the skin of her fingers, she finally had at least some view of what was happening on the other side.

Her jaw dropped in disbelief at what the twins were doing hidden from view.

_What the hell _is _this?, _It was rare for her to be shocked by anything. In fact, she had thought that nothing could so much as make her squeak in surprise... but what was happening in the small private space on the other side of hedge was beyond anything she had ever encountered.

She had thought... She had thought it was an _act! _What the twins were doing completely unaware of her presence proved exactly how wrong the dimwitted girls in Ouran were.

With her legs frozen in place, her wide eyes stared unblinkingly at what was before her. Why couldn't she look away from something that _sick?_ It was like her eyes had a mind of their own. Or was it that her shock was keeping her immobile, with only her sight registering what Hikaru was doing to his twin?

Her heart pounded so loudly that she feared that _they_ would hear it.

_Stop staring! Walk away and pretend you didn't see anything! This is just a... a _daymare_! That's it! A freakish _daymare_! Or probably something I ate! _

No matter how much she told herself to flee, her eyes were unwillingly glued to them.

**(lemon deleted)**

Now the only sounds being heard was that of her heart pounding madly in her ears and their pent up breathing.

_This is the part where I run the fuck out of here and get on the first plane to England!, _finding that her legs weren't as useless as before, she slowly backed away from the bushes.

Unfortunately, letting go of the small opening she had parted in order to watch them made a snapping sound that had her heart skip a beat.

_"What was that?" _Hikaru's voice rung out alarmed.

_SHIT!, _Mentally kicking her own ass for her stupidity, she spun around and ran off blindly. Never in her life had she been so scared out of her mind. The only thing in her favor was that she was following the tube that had led her there. Even through her blinding breakneck speed, her eyes stayed on the twisting pipe that could take her out of the cursed maze. She was running so fast that her ears ached at the howling wind brushing against them.

_I hope they didn't see me! Did they see me? No, they didn't! They _couldn't _have! Are they after me now? Will they know it was me? Shit! Why did I stick around to-DAMN IT! _

Only when she was out of the maze did she realize one minor, little _detail._

_My bag! I left my FUCKING BAG! That piece of shit has my last name on it!, _hating Ouran with every fiber of her being for issuing bags with especialized name tags on their sides, she slapped her forehead repeatedly while wincing.

_"I think she ran this way!"_

"Damn it!" They _were _after her and they knew that the peeping Tom was a _she_. That couldn't be good!

The sounds of feet running somewhere inside the maze behind her, made her legs go on autopilot. She fled cowardly towards the high-school building without looking back; she was too scared to even look at them. Pushing herself recklessly through the double doors of the building, she cursed for the millionth time when she collided with a body that yelped.

"Watch it!" a familiar voice snapped.

_That girl host!_

Seeing a possible escape, she didn't give the girl time to get up from her place on the floor. Bending down, she grabbed the protesting host by the front of her boy's school blazer and dragged her struggling body to a shadowy corner of the entrance hall just as the doors she had entered slammed open.

"What're you-?" the girl cried, but Etsu abruptly covered her speaking mouth with one hand.

It didn't take long for whoever that girl was to notice what was wrong when the twins entered the vast hall. Etsu swallowed at seeing her bag dangling from the hand of the one she guessed was Hikaru.

Closing her eyes, she prayed inwardly that they wouldn't look at the column her and the now very quiet puzzled girl were hidding behind of.

_"Do you think that she saw us?"_ Kaoru didn't sound as scared as she would have thought. _"She might come back to look for her bag."_

Hikaru didn't answer him at first because he was too busy scanning the large open room.

_"She might... but I think it'd be a good idea to pay her another visit. We can't have her going around telling everybody."_

Not another visit! What the heck was she going to do if they came over? Now they knew that she had seen them! Where they going to cut her tongue off to keep her quiet? Where they going to blackmail her or something? Or even torture her?

The girl made a questioning sound behind her hand and in response Etsu's snapped open her wild panicked eyes to look at her.

Raising both brows, the host whose name she didn't know gestured with her eyes at the twins as if asking 'What happened?'

Not wanting to say a word of the scene she had just witnessed, Etsu shook her head quickly. There was no way in _hell _she was going tell anyone what she'd seen happening between the boys. Nobody would believe her anyway. She was _sure _of it. Something as _brothers _having sex on school grounds was too farfetched even by her standards.

She couldn't blame the girl for wondering though. The twins did appear to have been doing something they shouldn't have. Their clothes were wrinkled and some of their styled auburn locks stuck to the sides of their faces in sweat. It was pretty obvious that they had hastily dressed themselves to chase her through the maze.

_Please, just go away!, _her silent prayers were answered when the twins turned around to walk in another direction. She could hear a low murmur mentioning something about her probably being back in class.

_I'm not going back to class after seeing _that_! Even if someone pays me! This is my _last _day in Ouran and the _last _time I see those... those demons!_

Unfortunately life had other plans for her. She was going to be seeing those boys very soon and far too often for her own good.

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><p>Please R&amp;R!<p> 


	7. Misleading

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Bisco Hatori's Ouran High School Host Club and I also do not make profit of this fic_

**Warning: **suggestive content deleted

**Chapter 6**

She was in deep shit.

As soon as she had gotten to her family's mansion she had barricaded herself up in her room. There was _no one _that would be able to convince her to go back to Ouran. The only thing in her favor at the moment was that her mother wasn't home and that the incestous twins were still in school. That alone gave her enough time to think up a strategy on how to get out of Japan and leave what she had seen behind her.

Sitting on her bed with her knees drawn up to her chest, she bit her nails out of bad habit as her frantic mind tried to come up with ideas on how to convince her mother to sign the legal papers for her to be accepted back into her old school. _That _was what would give her a problem. There were far too many legal procedures for her to just waltz into her old school and dorm.

_Crap! How did I get mixed in all of this?, _wincing and cursing her fate, she gave a specially hard tear at one of her nails, creating a pleasant abeit annoying sting on the tenderized skin she had just wounded in her biting. The pain helped bringing her back to reality at least...

_Could I have really seen that? That couldn't have been what I thought it was..., _Of all of the crazy things she had witnessed in her young life, seeing twin boys doing such things together had permanently traumatized her somewhat 'innocent' mind. She wasn't altogether ignorant when it came to the goingons among rich pompous society. In England, many of the girls in her school had their own skeletons in the closet. Far too many damned skeletons. She, herself, had a couple of secrets she wouldn't want others to know.

She didn't have anything against male/male relationships. Being in a school were girls were with girls, it was quite commonplace to hear of same sex relationships, but the Hitanchiins' were _brothers. _Not just brothers, but _twins. _That in her mind made it all the more twisted and sinful. She tried to understand why they would be so comfortable doing such sick things with each other, but her mind couldn't fully grasp it. Morals stated it was wrong, yet there was something telling her that nothing was what it seemed.

When Iku had been alive, Etsu had never loved anyone more than her, not even their parents. There had been a comfortable bond between them that made them have no secrets to hide. Everything they shared had been beautiful and pure. In fact, even during the worse of times when Iku had been sick and overidden with vomiting due to her cronic illness, not once had Etsu felt disgust. _That _was how close they had been. There was no shame, revulsion, or looking down on. Just a perfect equality between opposites, because indeed both her and Iku had been as different as day and night.

Thinking about it now made Etsu doubt that anyone could ever replace that particular feeling of love. Iku's death had left a void within her that had never been filled and knowing that it was hopeless, Etsu had never bothered to find that again.

Was _that _why the twins did those things? She still didn't get it... Her love towards Iku had been the unconditional protective love of a _sibling, _not of a lover, though then again, Iku had died when they both had been children.

_Whatever their reasons, it's none of my business. They could keep doing their... _thing, _while I just keep living my life. I'll just pretend I didn't see anything._

Forcing her mind to stop thinking of what had transpired in Ouran's maze, she relaxed on her bed, stretching her body out over the soft linen, letting herself enjoy the gentle sinking sensation. She allowed her mind to grow numbed as she stared blankly at the ceiling.

_That girl had been shocked though., _she thought randomly about the female host that had been nearly kidnapped by her. Etsu hated to say that when she was nervous she became twitchy and overwhelmingly paranoid. When the twins had disappeared off to class, she had stunned the poor girl by becoming into a stammering mess that didn't make a lick of sense.

_"Tell them that you-you _didn't _see me and if you _do _tell them you saw me say that I didn't see _anything!_Because I wasn't in the maze and I didn't just leave my bag behind! Just tell them that I didn't see a _thing!_ I wasn't here talking with you either! And if they ask why I'm not in class tell them that I am sick with diarhea or something really mundane like mano! Did that make any sense to you?_"_she asked desperately seeing that the girl looked vaguely queasy._

_The girl merely blinked._

_"So... you want me to tell them that I _didn't_ see you, that _you _didn't see anything and that you're too sick to go to class?" the question had been slow_

_"Yeah-I mean _no!"

"Oh, man... Etsu, you suck," moaning woefully, she turned on her side and closed her eyes. Thinking about it now made her realize that she _hadn't _made any sense. How could that girl say she was sick and hadn't seen a thing right after telling her that she _hadn't _seen or talked to her? Damn, she was such an idiot when in a full panic.

She had to spend at least five minutes explaining things _slowly _in order for that host to know exactly what she meant and all she had done was confuse herself. When scared, she couldn't think straight. It was a rarity for her to be so panicky. It had been _years _since she had a paranoid attack and now she was a bigger mess than ever before.

_I hate being here and I hate having to act in front of these people._

There was a good reason behind her socalled acting skills.

She liked being in control of herself. In perfect, _absolute _control. Everything in her life was crazy and in her view, worthless, so why not have at least something she could manipulate? Controling what others saw of her on the outside was her greatest virtue or so she thought. She could feign happiness, sorrow, and coldness so expertly that no one could really say what she was really like.

Sadly because of this, she no longer knew herself anymore. Being so used to hiding what she was thinking and feeling, covering up with emotions that she no longer felt, had made her forget who she used to be before Iku's death. She was already too far into her continous disguising that it was pathetic and dismal to think about it after the damage had been done.

_What do I do when I find something worthless...? I _forget _about it and move on., _that was her usual way of doing things. Nothing else could make her forget. Only things that were deemed useless to her were cast aside and forgotten easily.

_But why can't I erase that _disgusting _shit I saw in that maze?, _her whole body began to tremble in earnest as she squeezed her eyes shut. Rarely did she have such a problem. Things that she didn't like dwelling on were easier to erase from her mind, yet this? It was easier said than done.

She didn't know how long she stayed like that, huddled in her bed, grimacing with her eyes closed. It could have been hours and she hadn't moved a muscle. The back of her mind kept silently hoping that the day would disappear and that it had all been just a nightmare. To be back in her old room, with her roomate Katherin shattering away on her cellphone with her most recent 'secret boyfriend' and thinking about frivolous things like whether she should buy a new Gucci purse or just go to France for the weekend. _Stupid _girl things she used to spend so much time on. Things that had never trully interested her to begin with, yet made her seem as normal as any other teenaged girl. She didn't even know what really interested her, merely going with the flow of what was 'normal' rather than what she liked, so shopping, boys, traveling and just acting like a moron with an early death wish had been strangely comforting.

It had made her feel like less of a freak for not feeling anything other than bitterness and annoyance towards everything surrounding her. It was shocking that everyone didn't even resonate with her in any level. Talking to people was like dealing with something abstract and having abstract 'objects' invading her space was irritating. It always had her thinking 'What the hell is this person doing? Why don't they just go bother someone else?'

Was it normal to think like that about other people? She didn't think so, but that didn't stop her from feeling that way.

_Hopefully _they _could forget that I accidently saw their little tryst..._

Then, as if fate had decided to spit on her, a knock from the other side of her door startled her.

_Crap! Can't a girl be left to wallow and shrivel in peace around here?_

Looking over her shoulder, she glared at the door and didn't answer.

_"Etsu, I know you're in there! Please open this door _right _now!" _the doorknob startled to jiggle.

"Stupid woman," she muttered, turning her head away from the door so she could continue snuggling into her comfortable bed. If it were up to her she would stay in her bed forever, but life always had other plans. It wasn't her fault that the damn mattress was so welcoming and soft.

_"Sakoi Etsu! If you don't open this door I'll call the locksmith!" _a series of punching blows shook the door.

"Call away to your heart's content," snorting at that, she smirked, still not looking at the door that was being threateningly pounded on by her angry mother.

_"Etsu...!," _her mother sighed tiredly. _"I will not tolerate your little melodramas! You are not a little girl anymore and I am sick and tired of you behaving like one!"_

"Look who's talking."

_"ETSU!"_

Sayuri way too persistent! The only thing her mother had against her was that she knew that Etsu cracked under pressure. If she got annoyed by the sound of her voice continously jabbering at her door, she would definitely open up just to save herself of such eardrum torture.

Pulling the pillow from underneath her head, she decided to hold out as long as possible by dulling out the screeching. Covering her face with her pillow she started to mentally sing songs as her mother still shouted and started _kicking _the door as if that would be of any use to her.

_"The Hitanchiin boys came over to check on you, Etsu! I will not have you making me look bad! Do something right for once!"_

Yeah, Etsu could hold out for at least an hour of such noise.

* * *

><p>"What's taking her so long?" Hikaru snapped beside him, slouching moodily on the couch of the sitting room one of the maids at the Sakoi manor had shown them into.<p>

Kaoru's nerves had been on edge for most of the school day, though he tried his best not to show it. Giving even the slightest hint that he was anxious about someone witnessing what had happened in the maze would have Hikaru's own nervousness escalate. He was already twitching enough.

"I'm sure she'll come down here soon," he reassured his brother that just glared at the entrance of the room as if imagining Etsu standing there.

Said girl's bag was set right in front of them, lying atop a delicate looking glass table. They had lugged the thing around with them for most of the day, knowing that it was a good excuse to come back to her house so unexpectedly. It was a dumb tactic, yet it worked because the moment they had chimed about Etsu forgetting her bag at Ouran, her mother had exclaimed about immediately getting her to come down to 'chat'.

That had been forty-minutes earlier. He was sure that Hikaru was thinking the same thing he was after so much time had gone by...

Etsu was clearly avoiding them.

"This is _so _boring! I can't believe someone like _her _is making us wait like this!" he mentally sighed at Hikaru's snappy attitude. His older brother had become increasingly moodier since discovering that Etsu had eavesdropped on them. However, Kaoru couldn't help but wonder if something was wrong with him; unlike his twin, he wasn't all that upset about Etsu witnessing their 'make up' inside the maze. The only thing that was truly keeping him on edge was that she could tell someone else, not that she, a _stranger, _had seen what was meant to be an intimate moment.

_I had told Hikaru that it wasn't a good idea to do that kind of stuff at the school, but he's so stubborn... and persuasive._

Hearing the sounds of speedily walking high-heels both his and Hikaru's heads turned to the entrance to see a flushed-faced Sayuri standing there.

Panting and smiling apologetically, holding a hand to her heaving chest, she said in a somewhat strained tone, "Sorry for making you wait, boys, but Etsu seems to have accidently locked... herselfin her room and now can't get _out." _though the woman was still smiling, the word 'out' was spoken through her teeth.

His brows shot up as he glanced at his brother. The look on Hikaru's face was similar to his own, yet he could see the clear unspoken remark saying 'Accidently locked herself, my ass.'

"But don't you worry! I've just called the locksmith and he's on his way!"

Looking away from his already irritated sibling, he smiled at Sayuri. Like always, women being such simple minded creatures, this woman's eyes unsurprisingly widened and then immediately softened warmly. The reactions they received from females were so predictable that they were already bored by it, though it worked to their advantage. Sayuri didn't have the slightest idea that they had reeled her in so they could have plenty of freedom in tormenting Etsu.

_I don't think she's going to be too happy if she finds out what we're really here for._

"I-I'll just go see if the locksmith is here," laughing girlishly, Sayuri shyly backed away from the entrance. Once she was out of eyesight, Kaoru stopped smiling, seeing there being no point in keeping up the act. Resting his back on the couch, he too began to slouch as his brother, since staying in a pale little room without any entertainment was tiresome. A lot of people may not realize this, but boredom always made him feel sleepy.

Hikaru yawned loudly beside him, reinforcing his point.

A couple of more minutes, he wasn't sure how many, passed. He was about to tell Hikaru that they'd have to confront Etsu in school, _if _she happened to go back, since it was clear that they wouldn't see her on that day. He would have said it if it hadn't been for a hearty slam heard from somewhere in the house.

The thunderous sound was loud and harsh enough to make the walls of such a huge place vibrate.

Flinching at the unusual amount of noise in the otherwise quiet mansion, Hikaru commented, "Holycrap, that was loud!"

It wasn't long before the person they had been waiting impatiently for appeared in a angry rush at the entrance of the boring little room.

"Let's get this over with," they both straightened their backs as Etsu walked into the room to sit across from them on a vacant pale couch. Though there was a redness to her cheeks that signified she was upset, her expressionless mask was remarkably intact. She appeared to have thrown a pale blue dress that was slightly wrinkled at the last minute and her blondish locks were tousled around her head. Those haunting black eyes of hers were bloodshot and uninterested as they fell on them.

Seeing her made his own face heat up in embarassment, which was funny since he hadn't minded that she had seen them. Having her sitting there as cold as ever before, suddenly had him feeling self-conscious.

"Well...?" one of her finely arched eyebrows rose, "Don't either one of you remember what you came here for?"

His eyes shot sideways at Hikaru and he was a bit surprised to see that he too was speechless.

"So be it," her voice sounding bored, she moved to stand up from her seat until Hikaru finally spoke up, stopping her.

"How much did you see?"

Something unreadable passed over her inky orbs as she settled back on the couch.

"Enough."

Kaoru's heartbeat sped at the thought. When she said 'enough' did that mean the same thing as 'everything'? The girl was so expressionless, not showing a thing to them, making it difficult to know exactly what she was capable of doing with such information.

Sighing beside him, Hikaru smirked faintly at her single word answer.

"What do you think we should do with her now, Kaoru?" his eyes widened at his brother's question. "What could make her keep her mouth shut?"

"You two don't have to worry about me telling anyone."

"Huh?" they both looked at her.

As glacial as always, she lifted a shoulder in a shrug, "Your little relationship is of no interest to me. I don't see how such information would be of use, so your coming here is just a pointless waste of time for all of us," her eyes narrowed as her light pink lips lifted at the corners in a nearly evil smirk, "but I _will_ most definitely take my bag back."

They blinked at her. Kaoru didn't know how to react to that and he was sure that neither did Hikaru. Other girls would have tried to blackmail them with it, yet Etsu appeared to be bored by it.

Hearing Hikaru chuckling beside him after getting over his initial shock, Kaoru was confused.

"That's too bad, because you see... We _don't _trust you! We don't even _know _you!"

Now both of her brows rose.

"I'm sorry... I wasn't aware that you would have to know me in order to trust me. Can't you just take my word for it and leave?" Her soft, monotone tone was slowly starting to get on Kaoru's nerves. He knew that she was just pretending to be over it; no one in their right mind could be so unaffected.

"I don't trust her either, Hikaru." Etsu's eyes glared at him when he murmured that. Receiving such a heavy blistering stare had him wishing he hadn't said anything.

"Then that settles it!" Hikaru laughed, thankfully drawing Etsu's attention away from him. "In order for us to trust you to keep our secret, we'd have to...," he trailed off purposely, probably hoping that Etsu would become nervous, which didn't work of course, "make you do something you wouldn't want other people to know!"

"Is that your master plan?" she asked flatly. "If you want to know a secret, I could just tell you one."

"But that would defeat the whole purpose!" his brother was already getting excited at the prospect of making Etsu do something naughty. It was clear by his cheerful tone.

"For all we know, you could be lying to us," Kaoru silently swore when she gave him another one of her frosty glares.

Breathing in deeply and closing her eyes, she muttered, "When I was in sixth-grade I made out with an older girl."

They stared, unsure of what to make of that sudden confession.

"I still don't trust her, Kaoru. She doesn't look like the type to even have a sex life."

Her eyes snapped open and gave them a particularly vicious look.

"I don't go around telling people my personal things, so the least you little demons could do is take my word for it and be on your way!"

There it was again... What Etsu tried to hide behind her apathy. Kaoru had noticed that she had close to zero patience for dealing with other people. In her eyes, they might as well have been invaders.

_Making her do something she would be too ashamed to tell..._

"Say, Hikaru," his brother looked at him in questioning as he studied a silently furious Etsu that was trembling in barely contained rage, "why don't we make her be part of the problem?"

"Part of the problem?" Hikaru made a face, not getting it.

Unlike his brother, Etsu had a good idea what he was talking about because her glaring had stopped. Now fear flickered in her orbs. A fear she hadn't been able to hide in time.

"Yes...," he smiled subtly to himself, "part of the problem. She saw us playing together, so we could play with her." Even though Etsu was intimidating, he was intrigued to see if she was _that _kind of girl.

"Ohhhhh..."

"You two are diluded," she gritted, stiffening her slender body. "What makes you think that I would agree to that? I'm not part of your stupid little fan group."

"That's the thing," Hikaru was now the one speaking, playing along, "you _aren't _a fan, which makes this interesting."

_We'll just intimidate her until we're sure she wont say anything to anyone., _he just hoped that Hikaru knew he was just joking when he had said that. His brother had a tendency to push things a little further than they were supposed to.

"So what does that mean?" her eyes flashed that dark hatefulness that Kaoru guessed came naturally to her, "That I'm your fuck-toy or slave or some other stupid immature nonsense you could come up with?"

"I don't know...," Hikaru stared at her thoughfully, before looking his way, "Kaoru! What should we really do with her? She's not getting scared so we have to think of something a bit stronger. Verbal intimidation doesn't seem to be working."

_She might be hiding it, but she _is_ really scared_., Kaoru's eyes flickered in her direction to see the nearly unnoticeable tremble of her tense shoulders.

"Where's your mother right now?" looking away from him, Hikaru was getting way too into their teasing.

"What does that have to do with anything?" she scowled.

"It has everything to do with this. If your mother is close by that would mean that we'd have to go somewhere more private."

"I'm not going to do shit with either one of you so quit pretending that I will." Etsu was not only scared, she was also getting increadibly pissed with them.

"And there she goes again!" Hikaru complained to no one in particular, his eyes looking at the ceiling, "Cursing and being so unlady like! Good thing we came here to help keep you in line!"

"I don't _need _to be kept in line and if I required such help, I would get it elsewhere rather than from two horny twincesting morons such as yourselves."

Feeling the couch they were on quaking, he felt some dread at the pit of his belly when he glanced at Hikaru's reddened face.

"You just don't get it, do you?" Kaoru paled at the dark tone his brother had taken. "We can't take any risks!"

She didn't bother hiding her eyeroll at that, which unfortunately angered Hikaru further.

"I already told you that I don't care. It was traumatizing, yes, but I am not interested in knowing the degenerate details of your socalled brotherly love act. Please, kindly leave," folding her hands on her lap, she hadn't blinked as she said those words. Kaoru almost found himself believing her due to her calmness.

"Hikaru... don't do something stupid...," he whispered for his twin's ears alone.

"She just... she just pisses me off!" Hikaru half-yelled that, startling him while Etsu remained cool.

"Hmm...," hearing the mirthless amused sound coming from the impassive girl, they both looked at her. "You two are so predictable. You came here trying to intimidate me, but in the end I won this game by making one of you snap. Neither of you are a match against me. I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up since this just goes to prove that I am a lot smarter than you are. That's why you must learn to excersise self-control. You give yourself away far too easily and that in turn makes it child's play to mess around with your heads."

He couldn't always predict Hikaru's reactions, so he was surprised when he jumped off his seat and rushed to the girl that didn't show any fear like before.

Frightened by what his brother could do after being provoked, Kaoru rose off his seat and began, "Hika-"

"Is that what you've been trying to do since that stupid ass comment at the club? To mess with our heads?" he froze at seeing how Hikaru grabbed Etsu's shoulders.

"No... I was just annoying you. If I had wanted to really drive you crazy I would have come up with a better insult than the one I used back then."

_Is this girl even human?, _Etsu was practically serene, in spite of having Hikaru's face inches from hers. By how white his knuckles had become, Hikaru was gripping her shoulders quite hard and not once did Etsu show any pain.

Another smirk played on her lips. It was playful little smile that had nervousness spear through Kaoru.

She was planning something.

"You said you wanted to play with me, right? To keep my mouth shut?"

"W-what?" Hikaru loosened his grip on her, taken aback.

"It's just a simple question. I honestly want to put this behind me. Having you here is begining to irritate me." her brows lowered, "Besides... it's the only way you'll go away."

_She can't be serious! Is she bluffing? Turning the game on us?_

From the stunned look on Hikaru's face, he wasn't the only one thinking that way. Etsu had just admitted to liking setting people off with an offhand comment. Could this just be another subtle manipulation of hers?

"Are you... are you messing with us again?"

"You don't know me well enough to trust me," was her reply. It was easy to notice that she was enjoying her little game.

_She's doing it!, _Kaoru was shocked to see that Etsu did something similar to what they usually did, though her act was more convincing and hostile. It was true that they didn't know her and because of that they were at a disadvantage.

"Holding onto my shoulders this way really restricts my movements and for your information, my mother is busy talking to the locksmith that destroyed my door."

Kaoru didn't know what was going to happen. Nothing could have prepared him for it, but Hikaru being curious slowly let go off her shoulders, but didn't move away, his eyes staring at her in frightened anticipation.

_I don't think I can watch this., _before his wide eyes, he saw as Etsu's hand gently craddled a trembling Hikaru's face.

"Don't tell me you're backing down. After all, you came here to do this, right?" her lips came closer to that of his brother's as her eyes closed slightly.

"Um...," Hikaru's cheeks had a pinkish tinge.

Scoffing softly, she raised her lips and lightly brushed his. Stiffening at first, he saw his brother begin to relax to open his lips over hers.

**_(_suggestive content deleted)**

_Now I understand why Hikaru can't stand her. _

From the very begining, Etsu had thought they were a joke.

* * *

><p><em>I can't keep this up!<em>

Her act was falling apart. Sure, being an iceberg had taken some training, but being an experienced whore? That was pushing it too far.

She had done her hardest to not appear panicked when leaving the dumbstruck twins. Nonetheless, as soon as she was certain that she was far away from the sitting room, she had cowardly ran back to her now doorless room in hopes to get away from them and what she had done.

_Why did that idiot fall for it? Couldn't he tell I was just kidding?_, When she had begun kissing Hikaru, her intentions were to disgust and shock him into leaving her alone. She had studied the twins discreetly during her few hours in class and had come to the conclusion that they were dismissive towards other girls. The only one she saw them interacting with was that girl host, Fujioka.

Seeing them having sex together had finally led her to believe that they weren't the least bit interested in the opposite sex, which had been a huge mistake.

_Well, they proved me wrong! Damn them both to hell!, _becoming angrier with the situation as seconds flew by, she shivered, pressing her back against the wall next to her open doorframe.

With this little fuck up, they were going to think she was a gangbang whore. She knew the one named Kaoru hadn't liked it as much as his brother, but seeing how the front of his pants had tented had made her want to wrap things up quickly in order to flee.

She had gotten scared when instead of pushing her away and spitting in revulsion, Hikaru had responded back by thrusting his tounge at the same rhymth as hers, rubbing and sliding with his hot breath entering her mouth. She had tried to keep the kiss under control so it wouldn't escalate to something she couldn't handle. That explained why she had stopped things when he had started pushing at her shoulders to get her to lie on the couch.

_Oh, my God!, _her whole body shivered more uncontrollably as she brought one of her trembling hands to her still moist lips.

_How the hell am I supposed to go back to school? They're definitely going to keep bothering me after I said that stuff about 'playing' another day!_

"Why did you leave the twins alone?"

Jumping at the voice, her terrified eyes looked at her mother that was studying her through narrowed eyes. Sayuri must have snuck up on her, entering through the doorframe to look in on her.

"Have-," she swallowed, "have they said something?"

"Yes," not pleased by her 'rude' actions, Sayuri crossed her arms, "and they're rather upset over you walking out on them that way."

"Did you notice anything... _different _about them?" to hear that they were upset with her for leaving them was puzzling to her.

"No, should I have?"

Blinking at those words, she shook her head.

"No, you shouldn't have."

"Good," sighing, her mother ran a hand through her perfectly sleek straight black locks. "You did well today in entertaining them," Etsu's heart pounded at that, making her think that Sayuri may have seen something."If you keep up the good work I might just let you return to England."

Paling at the fact that the twins had obviously made her mother believe that they still wanted to see her, she nodded and murmured a low 'Thank you' that had her mother's brows shoot up.

"Are you alright?" the question was sharp and surprising to her since Sayuri never gave a damn about how she was feeling.

"Yes. I'm just... a little tired and your _client's,_" she made sure to stress the word 'client's', "sons kind of exhausted me with their... exuberance."

The hint of a smirk appeared on Sayuri's lips.

"You and Iku weren't that different from them," widening her eyes, she only saw a fleeting sadness in her mother's eyes before she left the room.

_Right... If Iku had still been alive... Things would have been very different for all of us. I could have saved the both of us of all this shit._

Hating that she had only complicated things by getting mixed up in a game she didn't even know how to play, she closed her eyes and tried to think of a possible escape from her life and the two diabolical twins that insisted in entering and destroying her world.

* * *

><p>Please R&amp;R!<p> 


	8. A Game Gone Wrong

_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own Bisco Hatori's Ouran High School Host Club and I also do not make profit of this fic_

**Warning:** suggested content deleted.

**Chapter 7**

_I really hate it when he lies to me., _Hikaru studied his twin who had his back turned to him on the bed. Kaoru had barely spoken to him at all, in spite of doing a great job of pretending that he wasn't mad at him. He knew better... Kaoru _was _pissed. The difference between the both of them was very marked when it came to their tempers.

Hikaru usually just mouthed off and exploded completely, while Kaoru remained silent and held it in. Rarely had he seen his brother actually throw a fit. The few times Kaoru had truly gone off had been because he hadn't been able to hold his anger in any longer which meant that he could spend days, weeks or even months harboring that rage in.

"Kaoru...," he sighed heavily seeing that his twin stiffened and didn't turn around to so much as look at him.

_He thinks that he's such a good actor. I can tell he's just faking being asleep._

"Kaoru, quit acting like you don't hear me."

The body beside him on the bed only tensed up more in response.

_And he says that I'm like a little kid sometimes!_

"How many times do I have to apologize for doing it, Kaoru?" he hissed under his breath, getting annoyed at the silent treatment his twin was so good at giving.

"You...," he straightened to a sitting position, resting his back on the headboard upon hearing Kaoru speak softly, "You could have just pushed her away..."

His brows raised.

_So that was what bothered him? Me not pushing her away? He usually doesn't care if I do stuff with girls and now he's mad at me because of what happened with Etsu?_

Tiredly running a hand over his face, he didn't know what to say to him. There was no valid excuse for what he did. Etsu's actions had surprised him, even though in the back of his mind he had known that she was going to kiss him. What he hadn't expected was that she had been _forcing _herself to do it.

It was only after she had iniciated the kiss that he had realized that. The girl had former kissing experience, which had been a shocker since most of the girls he had encountered didn't know a thing about what they were doing, but her expertise had been dulled by the fact that she had been using it as a way to chase him off.

When he had pushed aside his shock to see if she was serious, he had felt her hesitance and how she quickly dominated everything that was in the kiss. The gentle movements of her lips and tounge, how she measured her breathing to arouse him and the firm restraining hold of her hands on his face.

Etsu had been controlling _him_.

When he had come to that conclusion, he had wanted to test it out further by trying to push her down on the couch and it was no surprise that she ended things there.

And now _this _had to happen. Kaoru was angry at him and he was confused by it.

_Because he liked watching us. He can't deny that to me and if he does I'll just point it out to him._

"Are you mad because it wasn't _you _she was kissing?" he asked, frowning at his brother's turned back.

The answer was clear when Kaoru turned around to stare at him with very wide alert eyes.

"W-What made you think that?" his twin looked almost offended by the question.

Narrowing his eyes at him, he stated edgily, "Y_o_u were turned on by it. Even she noticed it."

Kaoru's honeyed golden eyes trembled as his face flushed, "I wasn't turned on by that! I was just thinking about what we did at school earlier!"

_He's awfully defensive. Now I know that he's hiding something._

Struggling to keep a smile from appearing on his face, he shifted on the bed so he lie beside his brother, facing him. Once his head was on his pillow, he stared at him directly in the eyes, so he could convey to him exactly what had transpired between him and the strange girl.

"That kiss meant nothing, Kaoru."

"Are you sure? Because it looked like you were having fun with it," regardless of trying to keep anger from his face, Kaoru's tone was slightly accusatory. The tiny edge on his voice wasn't missed by Hikaru. He knew his brother too well to miss small hints such as the changes in his voice and looks.

Breathing deeply, he gazed at him boredly, "She was just doing that to get us to back off. If I didn't know any better, I'd say she was scared out of her mind when she was doing it."

Blinking, Kaoru only asked a low, "What?"

"What I just said. She wasn't as into it as she made you think and neither was I."

"Then why did you keep doing it?" furrowing his brow, Kaoru still needed more convincing.

"Are you starting to _doubt _me?" he stared at him disbelievingly. Of all of the things that could hurt him, having his twin doubting in him was the thing that topped the list.

"I don't see anything wrong with it, since you played those stupid pranks on her because of what happened last night. You were the one that started this whole mess."

Wincing at being reminded of that, he closed his eyes.

_He just had to bring that up._

"You liked kissing her. You were even flustered by it."

_Why does he insist on talking about this? Can't he just forget about it? If I said the kiss meant nothing then it was nothing. I bet that 'Etsu-chan' has already forgotten about it, judging by how good she was. I don't think that girls that kiss like that keep lists on how many guys they've fooled around with._

"I'll admit that she's pretty good...," he admitted after a lengthly pause, without opening his eyes. He honestly didn't want to see the look on Kaoru's face after saying something like that.

"So you liked it," at least he didn't sound as angry as before.

"And you liked watching, so we're even," he had to just point out the obvious.

Hearing a relieved sigh, he opened one of his eyes to look at his brother warily. To his shock Kaoru was smiling at him, without any anger remaining on his face.

"What...?" he arched one of his brows.

"I just wanted to see if you'd lie to me about it and I'm glad that you didn't, so I guess not all hope is lost."

Now he couldn't keep a glare from appearing on his face as he sharply sat up on the bed to stare down at his deceptive younger sibling.

"You were just testing me? What the hell, Kaoru? How could you trick me like that? I really thought you were mad at me!"

A chorus of snorts escaped Kaoru, angering Hikaru more than he already was.

"I don't find it funny!" he snapped as the laughter at his expense rose to such heights that Kaoru's face reddened brightly at the force of it.

"You're so cute when you're mad!" Kaoru's laughter was rapidly becoming full-bodied guffaws that shook his side of the bed.

"Stop laughing about it!" They were supposed to play tricks on _other _people, not on each other! He couldn't believe that Kaoru had convinced him so easily!

"I can't...! Stop...!" tears appearing in his eyes, Kaoru choked that out through his laughing fit. His whole body was shaking so hard with it that it looked like he was having an epileptic seizure.

Scowling heartily at him, he grinded his teeth together while snaking his hand behind him to grab the pillow he had once been laying his head on.

Unaware of his plans, Kaoru continued laughing idiotically.

_I have no other choice!_

He hit him hard across the face with the cushiony weapon, making his laughs end with a surprised grunt.

Seconds that felt like ages passed by as his twin silently just laid there.

_Did I hurt him?, _Alarmed, his eyes widened as he tentatively shook a limp Kaoru's shoulder.

"K-Kaoru...? I was just kidding... I didn't mean to hit you so hard...," not getting a sound or any signs of movement from his eerily still and quiet brother, his heart hammered his chest.

"Kaoru?" close to a panic, he yanked the pillow off his brother's face. The wild pounding of his heart steadied to an angry tempo when he saw that Kaoru's beet red face was puckered up from trying to keep his laughter contained.

"I knew you'd fall for that!" another string of laughs escaped him as he started all over again, much to his growing rage.

"What's up with you?" he spat when Kaoru who was still futilely struggling to stop laughing, sat up.

Holding both hands to his mouth to keep the mocking sounds from flowing out, his teary eyes met his.

"You shouldn't tease me with stuff like that!"

What his brother had just done, though it was a joke, had seriously pissed him off. It had almost been unbelievably cruel. Kaoru _knew _that he loathed being laughed at, most of all when it concerned his feelings for him. There were some things he took seriously, and things such a 'Kaoru being hurt' or 'Kaoru being upset' tended to set him off quickly.

_I can't believe he did something like this!, _glaring at his brother, he didn't try to hide how it had affected him.

"I'm... sorry!" finally showing some composure, Kaoru abruptly leaned closer to wrap his arms around him. In spite of his body still trembling from mirth, he was keeping all of his evil snickering from being heard for his sake, yet Hikaru was still mad about it.

Stiff in the apologetic hug and refusing to reciprocate, he glared down at the ginger haired head under his chin.

"I... I was _kind _of mad."

"Hm?" he made a face at that.

Moving his head away from his chest, Kaoru looked up at him solemnly, though his face still had some residual redness from his earlier laughter.

"I _was _mad... About you kissing her."

Blinking down at him, he was at loss for words.

"You said...," Kaoru paused as if unsure, "You said that you didn't like her and when you caught me last night you were so cold towards me afterwards. Seeing you doing that with her made me angry at the both of you."

His heart nearly stopped.

"Kaoru... do you _like _her?" If he did like her, Hikaru wouldn't know how to react to it.

"Not really," those words brought him so peace of mind, at least until he heard more.

"There's just something about her... I don't know what it is, that makes me feel this way."

_Damn it! I _knew _he had been covering it up!, _he tried to keep from stiffening in his brother's arms. He didn't want him to see how his flow of words were upsetting him.

"I wouldn't say it's '_like' _like, but she doesn't feel like the other girls. She doesn't like us, and isn't trying to get on our good side. I guess that's why being close to her feels like we're near something we can't really touch. Isn't that weird?" frowning up at him, Kaoru studied his hardened face.

Hikaru had sensed that vibe off the girl, but hadn't really dwelled on it, writing it off as mere dislike. Etsu was just... too _intimidating _to want to get close to_. _He supposed that was why Kaoru said that even being in her presence gave off the sensation that she was unreachable.

"Truthfully, I think she's just a total bitch," he said bluntly and as he half-expected, Kaoru smiled at that.

"I think so too."

Lifting his arms, he finally wrapped the around his younger sibling and let himself relax. Hearing the truth from Kaoru had taken away some of the tension that had been growing between ever since Etsu had shown up. They never e_ver _kept things from each other and if they did it was always found out.

"Though I wonder how far is she willing to go in trying to keep us away from her," murmuring more to himself, Kaoru pulled himself closer, snuggling up to him.

Automatically Hikaru felt a smirk quirking his lips.

"Are you willing to make a bet?"

"Huh?" moving slightly to look at him, one of Kaoru's brows was lifted in puzzlement.

"How far is she willing to go. Who knows? We might get her to crack and to stop being such a mean bitch while at it."

Kaoru's questioning expression turned into a frown. Knowing what that particular look meant, Hikaru decided to amp things up.

"Come on, Kaoru! She _knows _about us! I don't think we'd be hurting her or anything! In fact she said she'd play with us! Aren't you the least bit curious?"

"Are you sure you want to keep this up? What you're planning is kind of pushing our usual standards."

Now that question made him have seconds thoughts. The more they were around the girl, the more complicated their own relationship seemed to get.

_I don't know anymore..._

People often said that curiousity killed the cat and that wasn't that far from the truth. Usually, both of them would be bored by a girl after a couple of days, sometimes even just after a couple of hours. Etsu's meaness that rubbed him in all manner of bad ways, had kept both him and his brother interested in her longer than any other girls. Haruhi own lack of response to their teasing and games hadn't been as adverse and volatile as Etsu's.

Etsu _hated _their guts. No one needed to tell him that because the girl had shown it from the very start. She couldn't stand the very sight of them.

_Why does she hate us so much though? She has to have a good reason behind it, because as far as I know before that day at the host club we had never even met the girl... and yet she just showed up and insulted us like she knew everything about us. If that isn't creepy, I don't know what is._

Thinking it over carefully while contemplating his brother's searching stare, he finally said...

"We have to set some rules..."

* * *

><p><em>Why couldn't Etsu have been normal?, <em>studying her silent daughter from the corner of her eyes, Sayuri was mentally stumped. The girl sitting with three feet distance from her was nothing like the bratty child she had seen grow up into a full-fledged prankster. She couldn't get over the drastic change in demeanor, manner of dress and even tone of voice.

For the last couple of days she had been waiting for Etsu to finally snap to her old self. The Etsu she knew was usually mean, and spiteful with a sardonic charm that confused her unsuspecting victims. The changed girl riding in the limo with her was _not _her daughter. She might look like her at least when it came to her face, but the attitude was completely off.

_How long will it be before she shows her true colors?_

She was dreading the real Etsu's comeback. If her daughter were to stop acting with her ridiculous and disturbingly convincing cold facade, everyone in Japan would be in uproar. Growing up hadn't made Etsu mature in the slightest. From the reports she had gotten from the all-girls school she had been attending, her daughter had in fact gotten worse.

_That nun at her school had told me that the other students called her 'Etsu the two-faced'. I guess this is just another one of her tricks._

"For crying out loud, Etsu, quit slouching!" she hissed.

The only thing Etsu did was straighten her back while staring vacantly at the empty white leather seats in front of them.

_Definitely _not _her. She's doing a remarkable job; I'm almost believing it myself._

Just as that thought crossed her mind, her peripheral vision caught sight of Etsu recommencing her slouching, this time her lazy pose more exagerated and nearly having her falling off her seat.

_Should have known better. She's using the 'subtle defiance tecnique'._

Things had been pretty uneventful since the last visit from the twins. Like always, Etsu stayed out of her way and remained holed up in her room, only daring to go out when meals were served. It was as if she were still alone in the mansion, since her daughter's presence was barely felt_._

She should have been grateful because of it, yet she still felt a bigger sense of loss at Etsu's new emotionless tactics.

_"You're killing the life in that poor girl!"_

Grimacing at hearing the words her mother-in-law had shouted at her weeks earlier when she had mentioned bringing Etsu back to Japan for the sake of a contract, she glanced over at the blatantly sarcastic 'cool' girl.

"You know, you are very fortunate to have caught the attention of the Hitachiin twins. I think you're one of the few girls they have ever invited over to their house," she was trying to make her comment come off as a compliment, which failed miserably.

"That's good to hear."

Sayuri glowered. Couldn't she just show a little enthudiasm? She wondered if there was something wrong with Etsu's way of thinking or if being around girls for half of her life in a different country had made her disinterested in boys in general. From what she had been told, the twins were very sought after. They were practically infamous among their social circles for their charm and looks, but Etsu being herself, obviously didn't give a damn about what being associated with the Hitachiin name really entailed.

Not only was Sayuri getting her name recognized, but Etsu was getting an even better deal out of her growing friendship with the boys. She would have expected her to take advantage of the benefits such a connection could give her.

"Try to be nice to them today, okay? They are going out of their way to be nice to you."

_Though I don't know how they could have warmed up to her with that frigid attitude she has taken lately._

"I will, Mother," Etsu's black eyes didn't show a flicker of emotion.

_Goodness! She would have cursed at me by now!, _shocked by her, Sayuri rested her back on the seat, feeling a bit awkward.

Sighing, without looking her way, she softly murmured, a little put out by her coldness, "You don't have to put on this act around me, Etsu."

"This is no act."

Snapping her eyes towards her, she studied her slouching profile and dead looking gaze.

_Then I guess it's not._

The soft movement of the limo coming to a halt let her know that they had finally reached their destination. Giving her daughter yet another measuring glance, she saw that she straightened accordingly in her seat, preparing to be let out by their driver.

_Here goes nothing._

She was surprised to see after they had been let out of their limo, that the twins and their mother were already waiting for them at the front door of the mauseleum of a mansion. She didn't know what to think of that and Etsu didn't comment or show any surprise about the strange sight as they headed towards the three of them.

"The twins were so excited about their friend coming over that they insisted in greeting her themselves!" Yuzuha exclaimed as soon as they reached them.

For some reason that had some discomfort spike in Sayuri.

_Why do I feel like something is wrong? The twins seem friendly enough..._

"ETSU-CHAN!" she flinched as two blurs immediately rushed to her immobile frozen daughter. The twins had moved so fast that she was surprised she hadn't toppled down the front door steps considering that she had been standing so close to the now smothered up girl.

The twins literally towered over Etsu and were pressing tightly on both of her sides, their arms wrapped like vices around her fragile frame.

_They're a little _too _friendly, but I guess that's a family trait..., _studying her daughter now, she saw that Etsu hadn't been surprised at their sudden attack. In fact the girl hadn't even yelped in shock or moved to escape them.

"We thought you were mad at us when you didn't talk to us at school!"

"Yeah, you were really worrying us!"

Sayuri frowned at the wailing shouts the boys let out at the silent Etsu. Since she had barely spoken to the boys, it was hard to tell which was which. They were both far too identical and similar in overwhelming enthudiasm to be able to be told apart, but then again she herself used to have a similar problem when it had come to Iku and Etsu. When her twin daughters had been born, the only way to know which one was Etsu and Iku was to have bracelets with their names on them. Other than that, Etsu, who was five minutes younger than Iku, had only one physical trait that set her apart from her twin.

A birthmark on her left hip. That minor little difference had saved her time after time whenever a nanny accidently switched the twins' bracelets or cribs. She had lost count of how many times both her and Akio had to undress both of their daughters to be able to tell them apart.

Those had been the good days... The days in which both of her children had been healthy. Everything in their happy family had begun spiraling downwards when Iku had developed a sickly nature while Etsu was always healthy and vibrant in comparison to her.

_And I've always made her pay for it, like she's to blame., _Sayuri didn't know how it had happened... How two identical girls had managed to have different physical strengths and weaknesses. The things that had been physically threatening Iku, had never had any adverse effects on Etsu. To tell the truth, she couldn't remember ever seeing Etsu get sick. It was one of those rare enigmas that surrounded twins; that even though they looked alike, there was always _something_ that set them apart, thus making them into very different individuals.

Mere subtle differences that only someone that knew them personally would notice.

"The boys couldn't stop talking about your Etsu!" startled out of her inner thoughts, she looked over at the beaming Yuzuha who had moved to stand next to her. "Its so rare for them to ask a girl over to visit!"

That feeling of dread came back again. Sayuri got the sensation that she herself was thrusting her one child into the lion's den. Rarely did she pay attention to her maternal instincts, because she always knew that Etsu had a knack for getting into some sort of trouble, however the feeling that something that shouldn't be happening was starting to unfold kept nagging her...

The boys weren't showing any hostility towards her, yet she couldn't shake the feeling off.

"Wait till you see what we have planned for our playdate!" one of them exclaimed happily as Etsu stood there impassively.

"Mother has set up a room for us!"

"A room...?" Sayuri asked herself numbly, overhearing the teen boys. Honestly, she didn't like the sound of a 'room' and didn't need to have motherly intincts to think that way.

"Ah, yes!" Yuzuha, who appeared to be just as excited as her sons, explained to her with a brilliant smile, "The boys love cosplaying and they wanted to have a room set up with things for them to share with Etsu!"

_That's a strange pastime., _Forcing her strange earlier thoughts concerning the smothering affection from the boys currently squeezing her poor daughter into suffocation aside, she warmly smiled at her client.

_I'm just seeing things..._

* * *

><p>The demons had practically carried her to a large room on the second floor of the mansion. Though to others she may have seemed indifferent, she had in actuality been squirming helplessly in their arms. She had been struggling during their entire speedy trip up the stairs and through the hallways. Even arriving at the socalled 'play room' hadn't gotten them to release her.<p>

_I hate them!, _Under different circumstances someone had to really anger her in order to earn her hatred, but the twins... They had managed to earn a life's worth of loathing quite effortlessly.

Perhaps proud of how easily they had carted her around, the bastards chimed in sing-song tones, "Sooo? What do you think?"

Being mercilessly squeezed between them, she glared at the forsaken room they had brought her to.

Nothing about it was out of the ordinary and that was what didn't sit well with her. She tended to be wary when something was too 'normal'. From personal experience, unthreatening things coming from her _foes _turned out to be everything but.

_These two are up to something..., _a nervous tick appeared on her left brow. Lately, ever since they had started bothering her, her eyebrow had been going crazy. That repetitive twitching only happened when she was bottling in her anger and failing pathetically at it. She couldn't recall having it twitch so much before.

_They really know how to get on someone's bad side._

"What's the meaning of this?" keeping her voice neutral while at their mercy was taxing.

"What do you mean by that?" Hikaru who was at her right exclaimed, looking down at her disbelievingly.

"You're... going... to cosplaaaaay..." Kaoru said on her left in a tone reserved for dumb people.

_I fucking knew that already and that's not what I meant! Do they think I'm stupid?_

Grinding her molars until her entire jaw hurt, she sent a fulminating glower at the rows upon rows of clothes crowding the large gym-sized room.

"Are you two into drag or are all of those clothes flamboyantly unisex?" she finally muttered, after noting that the color pink and purple were very prominent in grand majority of the outfits.

"Awww... she noticed!" Kaoru gushed and then much to her horrified disgust rubbed his cheek against hers affectionately.

"_We're _not going to cosplay! _You _are!" Hikaru's words explained more than enough.

All blood drained from her face at what they were planning.

"We'll just help you change clothes..." hearing the deviously low tone Kaoru had taken was what did her in. Now she definitely knew what they had in store for her. The twins were going to _force _her to put those clothes on.

"I d-don't need help changing my clothes," she felt her cheeks flush at the tell-tale stammer in her voice.

"Kaoru... I don't think we _asked _her for permission to do this..." her heart began to pound in earnest because as those words left Hikaru's lips, his arms tightened over her shoulders.

"No, we didn't."

_Oh, God what have I gotten myself into?, _She had never been the kind of girl that liked playing 'dress up'. In fact, whenever she went clothes shopping, she just went for practical clothing, paid and then left, unlike other girls that spent hours looking at outfits that they would probably never wear in spite of buying them. To tell the truth, she abhorred shopping because it meant she would have to deal with stupid sale's people and other girls from her school that knew her and happened to be brousing at the same store. Most of the time she just opted to order stuff over the internet.

And now these two-She didn't even know what to freaking call them anymore-wanted to dress her up, probably _touching _her in the process.

_I'm not going to do it._

"If you two so much as touch me in a improper manner, I will _kill _you," her growl didn't have its desired effect because all they did was laugh.

"That's an awful lot coming from a girl that offered to play with the both of us just a couple of days ago, isn't it, Hikaru?"

"Yeah, I'm begining to think that she's a coward that's in way over her head!"

"Me too!"

Their laughter was so loud to her ears that she grimaced and jerked her body the best she could to no avail. A cousin had once told her and Iku that it was 'smartass' and 'rude' to openly remark about people standing right in front of them _while _ignoring them. It was the first time she had ever realized exactly how right her cousin had been back then. Having the twins talking to each other, about _her _as if she weren't there, was really starting to get under her skin. It was ironic that something she had done so much in the past was biting her in the ass years later.

"You kind of neglected poor Kaoru last time and we agreed that you would make him feel better about it!" her face blanched further at what one of the beaming imps was insinuating.

"Yeah...," upon hearing the falsely sad tone Kaoru let out, her narrowed angry eyes looked his way. She felt her face go cold at how close his face was to hers. Seeing that her attention was on him, he pouted childishly, "It made me sad... I even cried myself to sleep because of it..." a false little sniffle ended his pretended melancholy.

_They're not even trying to hide the fact that they're full of it!_

"You're quite mean, Etsu-chan. I told Kaoru that we should punish you for that, but we thought that it'd be a better idea for us to play with you instead of the other way around."

Refusing to look at the twin that just spoken, she tried to gather her bearings, but it was a waste of time to do her routine of imagining a 'happy place' while being held prisoner by two boys that were staring far too intently at her.

Kaoru studied her with deceptively sad and disgustingly innocent large golden eyes, and she helplessly gulped, feeling as if someone had thrown ice directly on her face.

"We just want to play with you...," he meekly reinforced his brother's earlier words.

Little by little her eyes widened in realization.

_They're _testing _me. I don't know exactly what they want to test, but they sure are doing it._

"Fine, let's play," she felt some satisfaction when some uncertainty passed Kaoru's saddened facade. As if looking for some kind of confirmation, his eyes left hers to look at Hikaru who had also fallen silent.

_I bet that they want to back out now._

Unfortunately, what she thought would be a cowardly surrender turned into the hell of all hells when Kaoru smiled happily the instant Hikaru eagerly yelled, "That's great! I'll go lock the door!

_WHAT?, _Hikaru's unwanted warmth left her when he stepped away to walk behind them. Hearing the double doors of the room being closed, she turned her head to see him turning a small key attached to a chain.

"We're so happy you want to play with us! Most of the time girls that say that always get scared at the last minute!" Kaoru who was still attached to her left arm smiled cheekily as his brother turned around, dangling the keychain with his fingers.

Hikaru mockingly shook her only means of escape between his fingers and smirked, "No need to worry, Etsu-chan. This is the _only _key to this room. Mother doesn't have a copy of it which is why we chose to do it here. We're pretty smart, huh?" her wide eyes saw the key disappearing into one of his pockets.

Smart? They were the worsest sort of evil in the universe. People had often told her that her games would get her into a bind she couldn't escape and what was happening on that exact day and time with the twins that she had purposely been trying to frighten off, was a repercussion of her thoughtless actions. She had stupidly put herself in that position by underestimating them.

And man, did she regret it now. At her old school, she had gotten weekly room isolations, cleaning duty, and public reprimands, but this time... no, she _really_ had to watch the stuff she did and said in the future to avoid such an embarassing situation.

"We had thought that dressing you up nicely would be a good warmup, but since you're so willing to do it, we can just go straight to the fun part..." the twin that refused to let her go, breathed along the side of her cheek, making a shiver of dread go down her spine.

She was sure that they could hear her heartbeat pounding erratically. Every vein in her body was pulsing furiously with anxiety. She could already feel her skin thinly coated in a cold sweat.

"We weren't sure if you wanted to do it or not, so we only had a couch put in here behind some of the isles," Hikaru informed casually, passing by them to head over to some of the endless racks of clothing.

_They had been plotting this., _At school, after the 'incident', they hadn't so much as acknowledged her presence. She should have known the moment that Sayuri had told her that they had asked if she could come visit that something bad was going to happen.

"Come on, let's go," Kaoru whispered, his arms pulling at her shoulders to urge her into a robotic walk towards where his twin had disappeared.

_Stay calm, Etsu. It's probably another one of their tricks. They're just on to you..., _Swallowing at that, she loosened some of her muscles in a pretense to appear relaxed while on the inside she was in panic.

She had _no _idea what to do. Sure, she had some experience, more than a 'young lady' should have, but she didn't have enough knowledge to have sex, much less with _two _people who appeared to be degenerates.

_I'm so stupid. I bet that if something _does _happen, my mother will just say I asked for it._

"Here we are!" she flinched at Kaoru's yell when they reached a long couch that had been set against the wall, hidden away from view by rows of clothing. His twin had already made himself comfortable by lying down on it, waiting for them.

"What's with that look, _Etsu-chan. _Don't tell me you're getting scared?" said boy remarked mockingly to her and hearing that she shot him a glare.

"Of course, she's not scared! She wants to do this, right, Etsu-chan?" to her, Kaoru sounded just as mocking except his tone was nearly flirty in comparison to that of his twin.

Knowing that they were waiting for her to reply or to at least run off screaming bloody murder, she smirked.

"Let's get down to it." Neither of them showed signs of deceiving her. They were either very good at hiding things or they were really serious about what they had shamelessly offered.

"Good! We're going to have so much fun together!"

_Don't freak out! If things get out of control, just run away., _she always had issues when admitting she was wrong, but if things worsened and became inevitable, she would have to regrettably show what a bad actress she truly was.

Hikaru stared at her expectantly, still wearing a teasing little smirk that grated on her nerves.

_I don't think I can do this!_

"Now, Etsu-chan, if we're going too hard of you, you can always tell us to stop," when Kaoru solemnly said that, she sharply looked at him. He was being serious as he rested his chin on her shoulder, his cattish eyes staring at her unblinkingly.

"We don't want you feel forced to do anything."

They were giving her a chance to run away on time, but her pride, her biggest flaw, told her to stay and see how far she could play along. Something told her that in spite of them being considerate enough to say that she could back down with some grace, that they were merely testing her limits in order to humiliate her and see through her lies. This was the main reason why she started loathing them in the first place. The few times she had been around them, they had been tampering with her limits.

**(suggestive content deleted)**

* * *

><p>Please R&amp;R!<p> 


	9. Clashing Tempers

**Warning:** Hika/Kao/Etsu-abuse/angst, long-chapter.

**Chapter 8**

_"Now why did you go ahead and do that for, Kaoru? We were about to expose her."_

That was what Hikaru had said a little after he had interrupted Etsu's ministrations on him.

At present, sitting in class Kaoru couldn't keep a wince from his face at recalling what had happened a couple of days prior. He didn't know what had gotten into him when Etsu had begun pleasuring Hikaru with her hand. Somehow the sight of his brother's shocked yet aroused expression had made him feel ill, especially since it was _her _that had been making him feel that way.

That was why he had fumbled with the cellphone in his pocket, making the ringer go off so everything would be put to a end.

Everything had felt wrong to him. The sensation of wrongness had been emphasized when he saw a flicker of relief combined with smugness in Etsu's lifeless gaze the instant his cellphone had rung. Though she was good in being an iceblock, she had been as happy as he was for the interruption.

Hikaru in the other hand hadn't been as happy, mostly because of how easily Etsu brushed off the incident as if nothing had occured between them. The girl was obviously an expert in forgetting about things or at least playing it off like such things didn't matter to her.

However, Kaoru knew the true reasn why Hikaru's hatred towards the girl had grown.

She made them feel worthless. Neither of them were used to being ignored and belittled. Even girls that held grudges towards them in the past for making them cry hadn't been that coolly hostile.

_One thing for certain is that we were pressuring her to do something. That's probably why it didn't feel right._

If they had gone further, it would have been rape. He wasn't trying to exagerate his thoughts on this, but that was how he had seen things. _They _hadn't wanted to do it and neither did she... so his cowardly escape had been fully justifiable.

That was what he kept telling himself to take the sting of her indifference away.

From the corner of his eyes, he saw Hikaru glaring somewhere in front of the class while their teacher droned on about philosophy. He knew he was shooting daggers with his frigid glower at the calm girl taking notes. She hadn't looked at them once that morning; they might as well have been furniture from all the acknowledgement she gave.

To make matters worse, their mother had to 'surprise' them by leaving to Prague earlier that day. She rarely stayed for more than a week or two before disappearing off to some far-flung destination. Their father was no different... well he stayed for even shorter periods of time.

The continous absence of their parents along with the negativity Etsu kept stirring up had been making a difficult situation tougher than it was supposed to be.

Though Hikaru might not have noticed, Kaoru had figured out on his own their mother's insistence in dealing with Sakoi Exports. The company not only focused on exporting, but on creating international contracts via proxy, meaning that if all turned out well their mother would no longer have to leave Japan.

It _should _have made him happy but her future prolonged presence could threaten his unconventional relationship with Hikaru. Due to her not being around, their mother spoiled them and didn't question whatever outrageous purchases they made and what they did while she was gone. If she stayed longer, she would know just how close they _really _were.

With that impending danger and Etsu's knowing of their secret, Kaoru couldn't help feeling as if she had them cornered, regardless of the fact that she hadn't voiced any demands for her silence.

_What could she be thinking?_

All he could see of her was her back turned, with her waist length hair hiding most of her pale face. _Nothing _else. He couldn't even see what possible expression she might have if there had been any to begin with...

He shuddered visibly in his seat. It was hard for him to believe that such a detached person had the capacity of being so openly sexual to just turn around without a second glance or word. He would have expected her to a least show a bit of discomfort with the intimate experience.

* * *

><p>All was right in the world. Etsu had never been happier. For the last couple of nights, she had been sleeping with a guilt-free conscience.<p>

_Perfection at its finest! I'm so thrilled!_

The only thing that kept her from showing glee were the burnholes the twins had been boring into her back since class had started. That minor annoyance just told her that they weren't giving up on tormenting her as she had first hoped.

The teacher speaking in front of the class stuttered for the hundreth time. It was obvious that his nervousness had stemmed from the occasional evil little sneers that kept popping up on her lips.

_I can't stop!, _Her smirk showed up again and as she expected the teacher paled so much to the point that she thought he would faint. She knew it wasn't nice of her to frighten the poor teacher, but it wasn't her fault that all of her smiles came out so evil looking.

Wreaking havoc always satisfied her. Sometimes it even aroused her to scare people off, which explained why she was feeling so dastardly euphoric that day.

Accomplishing a 'mission' was absolutely beautiful, especially if she had regained some of her beloved solitude. Back in England she'd had no other choice but to socialize. It was her dumb luck that she had met some girls that weren't half as annoying as everyone else, so it had become bearable once her peers had grown accostumed to her odd behavioural quirks.

_Those two know how to glare!, _It took some effort to avoid fidgeting nervously. She was used to people disliking her for her rebuffing attitude, yet having those two pairs of smoldering eyes fulminating the back of her head as if willing it to explode was putting her on edge. She couldn't fathom why their stares bothered her so much...

_Well... I _did _kind of jerk one of them off._

A grimace of distaste crossed her features at the ghastly memory. She did have some limits to her 'act' and playing with Hikaru had to be the most embarassing moment of her entire life. Since a young age, she had always prided herself on being open-minded, hence explaining why nothing really shocked her, yet doing something like what she had done to him went _beyond._

Thinking about it now, she could still feel his supple half-hardened flesh becoming stiffer and warming, elongating and thickening as it throbbed to life in her palm. She had touched other boys, but never quite like that. To be fully honest, she had been going by simple theory more than anything.

Gentle kneading and up and down motions. It wasn't supposed to be that damned difficult. A penis was a _organ _that filled with blood, growing erect and larger in arousal; nothing out of the ordinary.

_But I did that to him!, _Trying to think scientifically wasn't helping her forget about it. The fact that he had been in her hand also reminded her how he had _used _that part of himself on his twin. Knowing that they both seemed to like girls in some level had been enough for her to guess what he wanted to do to her with that thing.

The twins were dangerous. They were not remotely similar to the virginal shy gentlemanly boys she had experimented with in the past. She doubted that they would settle for simple heavy petting and kisses. From what they had shown her so far, they didn't have an ounce of restraint and perhaps had already gone 'all the way' with a number of girls.

To put it bluntly... If they hadn't stopped, she would have been in real trouble.

The suspiciously convenient intervening ringing of Kaoru's cellphone had thankfully saved her of more terror. No one in their right mind would be alright with sharing his lover and that was what she had been targeting with her shameless actions, though it had come as a surprise how disappointed they'd seemed when she calmly dressed and didn't speak of what had been about to take place.

_They sure contradict themselves, but I don't think I can continue teasing them like this... I'm giving them the wrong idea... I've never even had sex before for crying out loud._

The truth had her blanching at just how close she had gotten to losing her virginity. She, though people didn't believe it, did have a spontanious streak but having sex for the first time with _two _boys, and _twins _for that matter, bordered on the obscene. In fact if made her feel dirty to have considered doing it since she didn't like the bothersome pests.

_I barely know them and I've already kissed and _touched _that smartass Hikaru and let Kaoru undress me! It's no wonder they think I'm a slut!_

Shuddering at the bad impression she had dumbly given the demons, a smirk then began to appear on her lips unexpectedly once more. Many had deemed her as evil for her way of thinking, but she had been observing her 'enemies' for quite some time ever since they had begun their stupid futile little games. It would be downright lax of her to not keep a close eye on them just in case they tried another revenge tactic.

Everyday when she came to school she would see a bevy of blushing squealing yaoi fangirls around them and how the twins played it off like they actually had an interest on the bimbos. Etsu guessed that it was because of being members at the host club, but what truly amused her of their falseness was how much like exotic animals attempting to look human they appeared to be by flirting with the opposite sex. It was by far the funniest thing to her.

However, her smirk faltered.

_This is starting to get bad... They won't have anything to lose, but me? I have plenty..._

She was prideful. Everyone that had come in contact with her didn't insult her coldness or rudeness, but her pride in specific; that was her main flaw other than her explosive temper. She never liked admitting when she was wrong or that she couldn't handle any and all situations. Perhaps it was her independence and the fact that she had only herself as a rolemodel after her mother had tossed her away at a boarding school that had made her look at people as idiotic puppets she could manipulate and harm without remorse.

The sensation of their eyes on her was unsettling to her and the eerie skin-crawling sensation was driving her insane since those bastards had more staying power than all of her other victims.

Angered by them, she looked over her shoulder and met eyes with one of the exasperating monsters.

_Kaoru..., _Strangely, unlike someone with some sense would have done, he didn't look away from her and managed to hold her gaze without blanching.

She could tell them apart easily now. That particular twins' eyes always appeared softer, showing a hint of mellow rationale that clashed with the lively sharpness of Hikaru. She couldn't get why other girls hadn't seen that subtle difference, just like they couldn't tell Fujioka was a girl.

_It's so obvious. What kind of 'boy' uses strawberry scented bodywash and has such girly hands? The moment she touched me I knew that she was girl. The air in Ouran must be infected with stupidity for people to not notice something as obvious as _that_., _Being suspicious of all people that came in contact with her had made her especially observant of all of the physical and behaviour characteristics that person had. After the first two days in Ouran, she had already tagged every person with a unique trait that set them apart. The teacher was a wimp, Fujioka oblivious and conforming, the fat kid sitting next to her a smelly beavis, the girl behind her had asthma judging by her sometimes uneven breathing and the twins... Those two had yet to be fully read because as far as she had seen they liked to fake everything from their 'tame brotherly love act' to how open they had been in letting her 'play' with them. That made them far too unpredictable for her liking. They had even surprised her a couple of times which was more than other 'victims' could say.

_He's nervous., _she noted with mild interested when Kaoru's cheeks began to redden.

Dismissing him, in spite of the awkward moment of locked stares, she turned around to continue feigning listening to what the teacher was saying.

If someone thought that she was being just straight evil minded towards the boys, they were wrong because what made her react so negatively towards them was they kept fueling a petty little school feud. They should have given up on her already like she had given up on them from the first day.

Etsu had always made it a point to not waste her time on meaningless pursuits. If they wanted to keep playing, they would have to do it by themselves without involving her.

* * *

><p>"Are you still mad about that?" Hikaru stiffened at his brother's question as they walked through the hallway on their way to class after the first break time.<p>

"No, I'm not mad," he lied and felt a hint of annoyance at how Kaoru's perceptive eyes studied the side of his face. "I just wish she weren't so smug about it." The last part was said to smooth over his nervousness at being so readable to his twin.

_She ignores us like we're nothing., _That was what frustrated him the most about Etsu. She acted like they were no threat; something that could be easily brushed aside.

"You know we could try again."

Blood drained from his face at what Kaoru's words conjured up in his head. He didn't think he could take it for another round of 'playing' with the girl. What had happened at their house that one day had made issues he had never had problems with surface. He was disgusted that the simple way she had calmly dressed had him doubting himself.

_That girl just doesn't care about the people she hurts. It's like she's dead inside._

"I doubt that she gives a crap one way or the other," he couldn't say that he wanted to end the game. At least not yet since the problem with Etsu's indifference was what kept irritating him. It was true that she didn't do anything to them at school, but the few times they had talked to her had been nearly devasting.

Nothing they did was working on her, like she was immune by twisting their game around and making them lose in it. That had never happened before and he'd be cursed if he was about to let it continue on that way.

"Hikaru, just because she acts inhuman doesn't mean she has no weakness... We just have to find out what that weakness is," hearing the lightness in his brother's tone, he looked at him and saw a slight smile on his face.

_I've never wanted to hurt someone so much., _That fact was what scared him. The way she toyed with them and made them feel beaten was a foreign experience. It was as if her negativity was contagious. Just when he thought that the game was getting boring, she had to do something to make it interesting again. He knew that she wasn't even trying to keep their interest alive, but she still did it.

Then there was the sure way she had touched him. He had even felt embarassed by it because of how stunned he had been. His surprise had been so intense that his body had frozen still with all rebuffing words silenced in his mouth as she had made him harden fully. He wouldn't have minded having her stimulating him if it hadn't been for his dislike towards her.

What could have been a pleasurable experience had been far too strange and awkward to be enjoyed because of her coldness. She might as well have been stroking a unfeeling pole for all the excitement she showed.

Sensing that Kaoru had stopped walking beside him, he frowned and glanced at him to see that he was staring at something off in a distance.

Following his eyes, he nearly snarled at seeing the infuriating iceblock Etsu walking carelessly towards their classroom door. Like always, she didn't show any signs of knowing they were standing there staring at her.

Only seeing the side of her fine girlish face and vacant eyes had him feeling as if his insides were about to combust at the slightest of things.

_I'm going to put an end to this bullshit today! We're going to straighten things out and stop all of this!_

Not giving his brother a fair warning, he rushed towards the girl. He didn't use hurried steps. No, he _ran _up to her, surprising both her and Kaoru that called out his name.

Grabbing the top of her arm, he said sharply, "We need to talk!" The widening of her eyes should have been a small victory since she barely displayed any expressions at all, but at the moment he didn't care if she showed _anything_ to him.

"For your information, class has just started. Let go of my arm," regaining some of her icy composure, her dulled stare had a sharp threatening edge that only appeared when she was angry. He had noticed that about her. Her _eyes _always gave bits of what she was thinking given certain moments.

"Does it look like I care?"

Narrowing that slightly irritated stare of hers, she pulled at the arm he had grasped and then frowned when he only tightened his grip.

Now her brow arched as she cooly glanced at Kaoru.

"You seem a bit smarter than your boyfriend, could you please tell him to leave me the hell alone?" the soft balanced tone she used was what made him snap.

He yanked at her arm, twisting his fingers in the process, hard enough to make a surprised squeak leave her as her startled eyes met his with fear.

_Finally, some emotion!_

She protested when he spun her body around and away from the classroom door. Vaguely, he heard his brother's questioningly calling out his name, but his fury had blinded him too much to listen. He wanted to end things and move on already and the only way to do it was by asking 'why?' It wasn't too much to ask, was it? To want to know why she treated them like crap before ever truly knowing them. To ask why she toyed with them and their feelings for each other, because he had noticed that she liked pushing their buttons by being sexually suggestive, purposely making them feel jealousy and uncertainty.

He already knew where to shout out these questions and already knowing the school by heart, he dragged the violently cursing girl through the hallways and out of the school altogether.

_Damn does she have a mouth on her!_

"You shit-eating abusive little motherfucker! Let me go right now!"

Having his ears reddened by the endless string of profanities that even he never would have used, he only stopped their violent walk once they reached the fountain just outside. Sick and tired of _touching _her, he not only let go of her probably bruised arm, but pushed her into a sitting position into a set of steps leading into the maze.

Hitting the ground hard, she stared up at him in disbelief while quickly rubbing the arm he had gripped so tightly on their way there.

"Hikaru! What's gotten into you? We could get in trouble for this!" remembering his brother's presence, he shot him a sideways glance.

"I _know _we can get in trouble for it, but we aren't going back," he angrily pointed at the building looming beyond the maze behind Etsu's back,"in there until _she _tells us what crawled up her ass and made her such a bitch!"

Understanding what he meant, Kaoru closed his mouth, stilling any possible chastising words for his actions.

Taking a deep harsh breath, he glared down at the slip of a girl that had started all of that trouble to begin with.

"So? Got anything to say for yourself? Because if you don't have anything to say, I'll make sure _none _of us go back into the school until you tell us what your damned problem is!"

Blinking, Etsu straightened her back, taking away the soothing hand she had been rubbing on her injured forearm to fold it together with her other hand over her lap in a disgustingly ladylike manner. He seethed inwardly when her pale doll-like face became relaxed and icy.

_This girl... She's two-faced., _One moment she was a practiced seductress, the next as frigid as a blizzard and in other moments she was a cursing harpy.

His glare became a look of disbelief at seeing the transformation happening before his eyes.

_How couldn't I have noticed that before? It was right in my face!_

"Just who the hell are you right now, _Etsu-chan_?" his voice had an odd tremble as some discomfort briefly crossed her composed features.

"I am who I've always been, Hitachiin Hikaru. You just happened to piss me off. How foolish of you to push my limits so callously. What would your fans say if they saw you behaving like this towards a young helpless girl?" was her soft reply.

"You're anything _but _helpless!" he spat and he didn't need to look at Kaoru to see that he had flinched at his tone.

_I'm losing it._

"Kaoru, I suggest you take care of your brother's frazzled nerves, I think he's close to a nervous breakdown. We wouldn't want that, would we? It would be greatly disgraceful for the both of you," he could have sworn there was some amusement in those words, though her face didn't show any.

"Hikaru...?" his brother's presence neared his side. "It's pointless dealing with her..."

That was when he saw the slightest twitch on the corner of Etsu's unsmiling lips.

_So _this _is what she has been after this whole time? Why the hell is she making us go through all this shit for something as stupid as that?_

"You don't have anything personal against us, do you?"

She didn't answer that, keeping herself flawlessly impassive.

"You said something about twins that first day. You were kind of mad towards us for some reason and said we were offending twins," Kaoru was the one to speak and at this Etsu's calm face blanched as she nervously reached out to that same heartshaped locket she had been so lovingly touching that day.

"It's _twins, _isn't it?" Hikaru couldn't keep a malicious smile from his face.

"Class has started," though pale, she didn't show any other signs of cracking.

_A weakness... A weakness..., _his eyes went for the locket that she still held between her white little fingers.

As if realizing that he was staring at her involuntary actions, her fidgeting hand abandoned the locket, letting it drop to the top of her chest like something she had promptly forgotten.

That thing obviously meant something important to her and because of the growing confusion and anger she brought up in him, he didn't care if he was being too harsh on her.

He rushed to her only to snatch the little white-gold heart. She flinched and tried to move back but all it did was help snap the fragile little chain that held the locket.

_GOT IT!_

Etsu stared at him as if he had ripped her own heart out when he stepped back and smiled triumphantly at her, dangling the locket from its ripped chain like it were a pendelum from his fist.

"Looks like I've found our innocent Etsu-chan's Achille's Heel!" he sneered

Due to not knowing all of the hidden facets of Etsu, her violent reaction came as a shocker to both him and Kaoru.

"YOU'RE GOING TO REGRET DOING THAT!" accompanying those bellowed words, the girl's surprisingly strong yet small form shot out towards him. She took advantage of his shock and the element of surprise to knock him flat on his back, her furious little body viciously tearing at him.

_HOLYSHIT! THIS GIRL HAS GONE PSYCHO!_

Hikaru couldn't say that Etsu was an able fighter, but what she lacked in skill was made up by her viciousness and determination.

An angry small used-to seem harmless feminine hand yanked at his hair so fiercely that he feared that she would tear his scalp at the forceful pulling. Her free hand was too busy clawing at the fist he held the locket, the apple of discord, in. She was most desperate about getting it out of his grasp.

"GIVE IT BACK! GIVE IT BACK!" he could have sworn there was actual sorrow in her shouts as her nails raked at his knuckles.

"LET GO OF HIM!"

_KAORU!_

Her slight weight was almost lifted off him until she wrapped her legs around his hips to keep from being pulled away. In spite of being such a tiny girl, she was a lot stronger than she appeared to be. Hikaru could feel it in the muscles of the legs squeezing him for dear life. Unfortunately, Kaoru's attempts of saving him had the fist on his hair twisting hard enough to make him shout.

_I CAN'T BELIEVE I HAVE TO FIGHT A GIRL!, _Gritting his teeth at the pain she causing, he let go of some of his pride and began to shove her off by slamming the palm of his empty hand against her chest.

She gasped, but still stubbornly held, even though he was firmly pushing at her. Clearly wanting to punish him for hitting her, her fist gave a long hard pull that had him feel some of his hair being yanked out.

_SHE'S REALLY TRYING TO MAKE ME BALD!_

From the way Kaoru had both arms wrapped aroung her waist, and how he pushed at her chest, her locked strong legs actually lifted his lower body off the ground with every upward pulling his younger brother did of her body.

Etsu was the very meaning of 'pissed off'. Screeching and tugging angrily at his poor abused scalp, she was lost to the rage he had stupidly brought out in her. He would have never expected her to have such a explosive comeback. He would have expected her to yell, or to say some frigid comment, _anything_ but what she was doing in that precise moment.

Unbeknownst to them, a crowd that had perhaps heard the yelling had come out to watch and murmur amongst themselves in shock over what was taking place between the three on them on the grassy ground.

_ETSU HAS TO BE A DEMON! IT'S NOT NORMAL FOR A GIRL TO BE THIS STRONG!, _either that or her anger had given her the strength to take them both on.

"WHAT'S THIS? THE THREE OF YOU STOP THIS AT ONCE!"

Her death-grip on his hair finally loosened, much to his relief. Just having her letting go off him had his whole head burning sharply as she let herself be pulled off by a worried pale-faced Kaoru.

Once she was standing, she pulled herself away from Kaoru that seemed to be happy to be freed of the contact. Her cool eyes looked ahead of her at the older man that had shouted, and _ended _their bizarre tug of war.

Swallowing, his eyes wide in disbelief over what had just happened, he looked at the fist that she had abused. The locket he had ripped from her chest was still held tightly within his grasp.

"Please... give it back to me...," his face hardened at her low request. She hadn't even looked at him... Not even a goddamned apology for jumping on him like a bratty girl. No... All she cared about was getting the blasted locket back.

"Hikaru! Kaoru!" he snapped his head in direction of the all too familiar voice and nearly yelped at all of the silent witnesses that stared at them in amazement.

_Everyone... saw that..., _All of the people that took class with them were there, as well as their teachers... But the one that had called out their names in a tone full of shock had been Tamaki that stared at them as if they had committed the most hideous crime in history. In fact, _all _of the Host Club had seen what had transpired.

_This... This doesn't look good, does it?_

The man that had shouted at them to stop, obviously the principal designated to the high school building, stared hard at them. He gave each one of them, including the serenely put together Etsu a hard stare.

"The three of you... My office _now._"

_All this fuss for a locket., _Giving a glance at the thing that had made Etsu reach such a breaking point, he clenched his jaw and reluctantly sat up on the ground without looking at the girl that was probably waiting for the little piece of jewelry.

Not giving her a glance, he wordlessly held out his hand, letting the locket swing from his fingers. He didn't need to be told that Etsu took hold of it, accepting it back in her possession.

It was a damn shame though, because as he let his eyes flicker her small fist closing around the broken chain with it's mysterious closed heart, he regretted one thing...

Not knowing what was so protectively hidden inside of it.

* * *

><p>Please R&amp;R! (that includes you pesky lurkers that skulk all fanfic sites)<p> 


	10. The Twins Lose

**Warning:** suggestive content deleted.

**Chapter 9**

She had gotten them suspended. Kaoru still couldn't believe it, but Etsu had actually made herself look like the victim in spite of _her _practically tearing Hikaru's hair out in front of half the school.

"Do you still think it's pointless dealing with her? That girl is a menace! Did you see how she conviced the principal that it was _our _fault that the whole fight started?" Hikaru was having a hard time getting over it. Sitting on the bed, resting his back against the headboard with both arms crossed, his face was a heightened red of pure anger over the shame Etsu had made them go through at the office hours earlier.

"You have a point, Hikaru," he murmured, sitting on the edge of the bed as his twin went on yet another rant that said word for word what Etsu had done to them.

Afer they had all gone to the office, the principal had of course go off in a long speech about the reputation of the school. During this long-winded one-sided conversation, Etsu, who was turning out to be quite unpredictable, had burst out crying, startling all of them. In horror, they watched as she tearfully said a totally different version of what had occured, saying something along the lines of them 'attacking' and 'kidnapping' her from class to insult and 'abuse' her. The overly dramatic flair and endless stream of tears she convingly shed had made the principal apologize profusely for yelling at her for what the 'troublemaking Hitachiins' had done to her.

Kaoru still felt shocks of rage at what the girl had pulled off. He had thought that she had an evil streak, but nothing as horrible and cruel as what she truly was when she wanted her way. Through tears and wiping her face with quickly soiled tissues the principal supplied for her, she was one hell of an actress. Even though her sobs were perfection itself, he had detected _laughter _in her cries. Because she kept her head lowered most of the time during her performance, none of them had seen the obvious victorious smiles on her tear stained face.

The principal had then demanded to know where _their _parents were so they could be called to pick them up since they would have a five-day school suspension. That was when they had to go through the awkwardness of explaining to the livid man that their parents, like always, weren't in the country for which they had to endure yet another rant.

_"What am I doing to do with the both of you?" the principal snapped as Etsu weeped on a chair not far from them. "Every time you sneaky little brats do something in this school your parents are conveniently in either Venice, or Hawaii, or some other _unreachable _place in the globe! When are they going to take some responsability for the things you do?"_

It had stung them greatly. He wasn't sure who it had hurt the most; him or Hikaru. From what the principal had said, he had made it sound as if their parents didn't give a damn about them. To make matters worse the man had continued to confuse their names and when Hikaru had snapped saying that he wasn't Kaoru, he had retorted that it didn't matter, that a 'troublemaker' was still a troublemaker. What had made the situation more uncomfortable was that Etsu, with her fake crying, had had enough freedom to morph her laughter into sobbing during the shameful speech.

Then, as icing on the cake, when they had been escorted out of the office, _everyone _had nosily been listening outside the door hearing everything that had been said to them.

_The most humiliating day of our lives., _It was almost funny in a ironic karmic way since in the past they had made other people live through humiliations and now... The one they'd been trying to destroy had easily defeated them time after time, giving them a bitter _taste _of their own games.

In fact, when Etsu had been walking out, one of the girls they hadn't spoken to since middle school had given her two thumbs up as if she had done a _good _thing. It came as an unpleasant shock that there were still some girls in school that hadn't forgiven them for their cruel name-switching pranks and insults.

_What a disaster!, _Grimacing, he dragged a hand over his face at the memory. Etsu was like an avenging demon thrown at them as a slap in the face.

"Let's try one last time, but if she wins, we quit," Kaoru gave up, looking at his fuming twin sharply. "And I mean it this time, Hikaru. If she wins and makes us go through something like this again, we'll just stay out of her way."

For a moment, he thought that Hikaru would refuse, but after a few tense seconds, his brother gave a stiff nod without saying any other words on the matter.

_This will be the last game we'll play on Etsu._

Hearing a certain ringtone interrupting the silence between them, Kaoru's face became cold.

"That's senpai," Hikaru's uneasy eyes glanced at the vibrating ringing cellphone on the nightstand by their bed.

Knowing that his brother would A: Let the phone ring or shut it off. Or B: Answer it and make a unrepairable mess out of things, Kaoru sighed and held his hand out.

"Give it to me, I think I can handle this."

He didn't even know where to begin, because dealing with a high-strung Tamaki during his theatrics was close to impossible for anyone.

_When we get back at Etsu we'll have to make it extra good., _Never feeling so angry before, he clenched his jaw and accepted the cellphone that had an almost impatient note to its usual cheerful ringtone. Flipping the phone open, thankfully stopping all the noise coming from it, he steeled himself to hear the longest fit in history, courtesy of Tamaki-senpai also known as 'tono'.

_"HOW DARE YOU TWO DO THAT TO A POOR YOUNG LADY-?" _he flinched, pulling the ear-smartering thing far away from his ear.

"He's on the roll today," Hikaru muttered hearing the shouting even from a distance.

_"I'VE NEVER BEEN SO TERRIFIED AT SEEING TWO OF _MY _HOSTS MANHANDLING A INNOCENT GIRL IN SUCH A MANNER-!"_

Then unsurprisingly, Tamaki probably suffering from hormones, started wailing about 'naughty vulgar children'.

_"MAAAAMMA! WHY DOES DADDY HAVE TO SUFFER SO MUCH? WHERE HAVE I GONE WRONG WITH THEM? HAVEN'T I GIVEN THEM ENOUGH LOVE AND... _AFFECTION_? AFTER I'VE TAUGHT THEM HOW TO MAKE GIRLS HAPPY! WHY? WHYYYY?"_ loud wet hiccuping followed his dramatic yelling.

Craddling his head, Hikaru moaned, "Oh, man..."

Kaoru understood the feeling all too well...

This was promising to be one long phone call.

* * *

><p>Everything <em>should <em>have been picture perfect but with Etsu something _always _had to botch her small victories. What she had done to the twins was meant to end their stupid 'Piss Etsu-_chan _Off Game'... yet when she had walked through the imposing front gates of Ouran Academy that morning the stupidest thing had been done to her.

Some _asshole, _perhaps the mouthy imp she had jumped on for breaking her necklace days earlier, had thrown eggs on her hair. She hadn't seen him actually doing it but she _suspected _that it was him. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out something as simple as that.

_That cock-sucking-Grr! Wait till I get my hands on him!_

Wasn't it enough that her mother, that didn't believe her side of the story, had taken all forms of entertainment from her room for the exact amoung of time the demon twins were suspended? No, it _wasn't _enough! She had been stuck in her own damned room with her homework like some ordinary grade-school brat that had done something wrong. She had been so bored out her mind that she even started a journal though that whole 'Dear Diary' crap was considered lame by her.

Having to wash egg yolk and pieces of broken shells sticking to the back of her head in the girl's bathroom sink wasn't enough either! Neither was having to see the demons surrounded by hoards of squealing girls in class while they laughed as if they _hadn't _been making her life a living hell on earth.

She hadn't been able to leave her room to even get her necklace fixed. That beastly Hikaru had snapped it's fragile little lock. The only thing about the incident that had given her some peace of mind was that both him and his twin hadn't seen what she liked to keep close to her heart.

The last pictures her and Iku had taken together. Of course their faces had been cut out to fit the locket. Iku had had the same locket... the one she had been buried with. Though some people might have found it corny for her, a high school girl, to wear such an unfashionable piece of jewelry, to her that locket was something _no one _was supposed to touch.

The news of her having a deceased twin wasn't really new. Everyone in high society knew about it, or at least the people that had come in contact with her and her sister when she had been alive. The thing was... that everyone, out of respect for the Sakoi family didn't speak of the 'tragedy'. She was sure that kids in her new school didn't know about it, but that didn't mean that their _parents_ didn't know of the sad incident that had splashed front headlines for months.

Pictures of an eight year old Etsu had been all over the papers and news networks and people, wanting to know what the 'living twin' looked like had stared at her like she was even more freakish than ever before. Some mean cousins of hers, that resented all of the attention her and Iku had gotten for being the only twins in the family, had even scornfully teased her by saying 'Where's your other half? Oh, she's _dead_! I guess that makes you _ordinary _now!'

She had put up with it... only because Iku would have been upset if she started fighting to defend her. Iku had never liked it when she fought with family members for their hateful teasing and pranks, especially if it was for her sake, so even in death she had respected that. In spite of being the 'younger sister', Etsu had always been fiercely protective of Iku. When alive, no one in their right mind would dare to look at her the wrong way unless they wished to have Etsu pouncing on them.

Respecting her dead twin's wishes by trying to tame her vicious temper had worked until that little _shit _had touched her locket. It was yet another reason to hate the Hitachiin twins. Not only were they making her see them _together, _but they, or should she say _Hikaru, _had soiled her sister's memory by taunting her in saying it was her 'Achille's Heel'.

But what the fuck did those assholes know? Just because they were twins didn't make them have anything in common with her. They didn't know the first thing about her! The only thing she wanted of them was to be left alone. Yeah, she had made a huge mistake in stirring their interest by insulting them that first time, but she had never intended for them to turn it into a full-blown battle.

_And people think I'm irrational! That I let my emotions think for me! These bastards seriously _want _me to blow up when I'm the victim here! It's two against one! Where's the fairness in that?_

Etsu was indeed pissed. So pissed that it was hard to keep all anger from her face or forsaken twitchy left eyebrow. People who didn't know her were giving her a wide berth because her aura clearly screeched "Fuck with me and _die._"

That evil aura didn't leave her for most of the morning classes. It lingered and hovered over her skin, putting everyone in the classroom minus the smirking little demons, on edge. In the back of her mind, she got the feeling that they had thrown the eggs at her head just to goad her into a fight.

_Damn it all! They got my attention alright! If they want to have things set straight, then I'll fucking set them straight and call it quits before I go to jail for homicide! _

Those were her thoughts as she slowly walked through the halls in Ouran. The first break time had started and since she had nothing else better to do, because making friends wasn't part of her agenda at that blasted preppy school, she walked listlessly without really thinking on where to go. Sometimes something interesting popped up like the week before when she overheard some kids fucking in a closet. It had surprised her because of how prim the kids in Ouran liked to appear, but then it wasn't anything new that should impress her. Rich brats had a bad habit of thinking their dirty secrets remained secret. The twins were lumped into that same ordinary mass as well.

_It gave me a couple of laughs at least._

Suddenly she stiffened and stopped her leasurely stroll, her back straightening, all of her senses coming alive.

_Don't show him your fear... He can _smell _it._

"Wow, Etsu-chan! Why the bad mood?"

It was _one _of her tormentors that had spoken. The reason why she had stopped was because the heavy sensation of being watched had made the back of her head itch.

"What do you want, Kaoru?" she wasn't going to give him the pleasure of having her looking at him.

There was a pregnant pause. A pause that confused her until she _heard _the smirk in his voice when he spoke up again,"I just wanted to know what has you so moody... You know everybody is scared of you. No one is going to want to be your friend if you keep this up."

_Haven't you realized that's exactly what I want?, _her fisted hands trembled at her sides. These bastards really knew how to push her and that had her at a disadvantage. Since when had she become so easy to read?

_Damn them._

"I asked you a question and that's the best answer you could give me?" it was hard to keep a growl from her voice. Staying cool-headed was becoming increasingly difficult when it came to the twins.

"Hmph! Sorry for trying to be nice to you!"

_This shit is annoying me!_

Spinning around, she glared sharply at the lone boy standing just a couple of feet from her that grinned as if he were having a pleasant conversation. She was momentarily puzzled at seeing him alone, but she pushed that thought to the back of her mind.

"It's much better to talk face to face, isn't it?" his cheeky grin widened. "When I heard about the whole egg thing I was worried that you might be upset. Some people in Ouran can be really childish, huh?"

Her eyes widened.

_This hipocritical little mother-fucker!_

With her left eyebrow going a mile a second, she grabbed the smiling boy by the front of his school jacket and slammed his back against the wall. He didn't even bother fighting back, his smile not faltering as if he had wanted her to react that way. She should have known that he was allowing her to abuse him in order to draw her in.

_A trap!, _Just as the realization hit her, she tried to pull her hands away from him only to have her wrists imprisoned gently by his hands.

"Now, Etsu-chan, you weren't planning on hurting me, were you? And here I was so concerned about you!" she would recognize that falsely melancholic tone of his anywere. Even the sad face he showed her was practiced.

Narrowing her eyes, she clenched her jaw and gritted, "What are you up to?"

His eyes grew large in exagerated offense.

"Whatever made you think I was up to anything, Etsu-chan? I just want your happiness like any _best-friend _would!"

Now she didn't know which of the twins was more evil. Hikaru with his smartmouth or Kaoru with his false 'gentle' demeanor. If she had ever thought he was the one with more sense between the two, she had been dead wrong.

To top it all off, being much shorter than him was annoying. How could she be intimidating when the top of her head barely reached his chin? Mostly when he was giving her such a patronizing smile?

"You need to _really _loosen up...," his voice lowered as his mischiveous grin softlened. The fingers surrounding her wrists softly squeezed. Nothing painful or too agressive. However small the touch, the firm pressure and the heat of his long fingers on her skin had blood rushing to her face.

_What the hell...? Is he doing what I _think _he's doing?_

"I think...," his long body shuddered, and she blanched when he moved his hips to brush the bell skirt of her uniform, "I should apologize for what Hikaru did... If you'd let me."

Being instinctively dubious, she arched an eyebrow, "If you are so desperate to get some sex, go to your brother. I'm sure he would be very angry if he found out about your apologizing methods."

Kaoru chuckled, cocking his head to side to study her through heavy-lidded hot gold eyes.

"He was the one with the idea and me being a good little brother, I'm more than happy to do it."

_These are the most fucked up twins I've ever had the misfortune of coming across._

"Where's Hikaru?" not answering that, Kaoru bit his lower lip in a attempt to look sexy or to smother a laugh.

Tugging at the hands holding hers, she made a face when those gentle hands tightened forcefully.

"He's never that far."

Her heart began to pound in earnest at what those words meant.

_An ambush!_

"You really are a tough act to follow, Etsu-chan, but it's not that impossible to keep up with you!" Hikaru laughed behind her.

Feeling understandable fear, she turned her head at the sound of his voice which unfortunately didn't give her enough view of what he had in his hands and that he had slyly moved to stand beside them.

"We are going to finish our game. Make sure to hold her wrists still, Kaoru."

_Game?, _hearing him so close to them, she snapped her frightened eyes and saw _both _of their smiling identical faces.

Holding up a tie, that he had obviously taken off himself, Hikaru's eyes twinkled, "I'll admit that breaking your necklace was mean of me, but you getting us suspended really took first place! We're going to apologize as long as you make up for it!"

"We think it's time to let bygones be bygones-!" Kaoru added.

"-and put all of this behind us!"

"What the fuck are you _idiots _talking about?" she snapped as both of the twins rolled their eyes.

Looking defeated, Kaoru murmured to his brother, "Maybe we should gag her."

"Nah... We'll gag her and tie her up better once we get her into the music room," was Hikaru's bored response.

_Say what?_

Terrified, the truth of what they were planning sunk in and she began trying to pull herself away desperately to no avail because her wrists were already being firlmy tied by Hikaru. That didn't stop her from thrashing though.

"Relax already! We're not going to hurt you or anything! We even set some easy rules!" Kaoru frowned at her, confused by her violent reaction.

_Rules? WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT RULES?_

"I don't really get why you're fighting so much. We thought you were into this kind of stuff... I mean, by what you've lead on this whole time. Aren't I right, Kaoru?"

"Clear as crystal."

She ceased her struggles, though her instincts told her to flee. That feeling of complete and utter _stupidity _for not thinking her strategies more carefully came back like when she had felt cornered the day the twins had her at their house.

"What are the rules...?" her voice came out in a traitorous tremble, giving them hints of how afraid she was. They were setting up a game and she wasn't willing to lose in it.

Giving the tie around her wrists another knot, Hikaru looked at her, "You won't know them until you go with us to the music room."

"They're pretty simple though. Last time we didn't even _have _any rules. This time things will be easier for all of us," Kaoru beamed, clearly pleased with their way of thinking.

"We're just tying you up as a precaution."

"You're pretty scary when mad. We wouldn't want to have another bad incident."

She gulped loudly, her eyes looking from face to face.

_They're staging their shit again... Or are they really? I can't tell anymore!_

"Tell me _one _of the rules and I just might decide to go with you."

_Stupid me! But I said 'might' so it isn't a promise that I'd do whatever bullshit they ask of me._

They looked at each other as if weighing their options. Coming to a wordless agreement, they both looked at her again.

"Keep your clothes on," Kaoru was the one that answered.

_That doesn't... sound that _threatening.

"Fine. Let's go," she nodded as they both grinned.

"See? We knew you'd like it!" without having the courtesy of untying her, Hikaru pulled at her bound wrists, just as Kaoru finally released her.

"You know that by agreeing to this, you have to abide by all of the rules. If you decide to get out before the third stage of the game, we'll have to make you do something totally humiliating in front of the school."

"Now we'll _definitely _make you take that punishment, though everything in the music room has to be done willingly," Hikaru continued explaining his brother's words as she was lead to the music room, the room she hadn't visited since that one cursed day that she had first set eyes on them.

_Public humiliation and being willing during the game?_

"Exactly how long are you guys planning on playing this?" she asked slowly and they both stopped to glance at her, wearing mysterious smiles.

"As long as it takes."

_I shouldn't have agreed to this!, _The more they said, the more she felt as if she would _lose _in that game. The two of them had obviously thought things out carefully before starting their move.

_They don't think I can win. _That's _why they're doing it! Not for me to play the game, but to _lose_!_

Paling, she kept her tone as flat as possible, "Sounds interesting."

"It is!" they were _too _good at acting. They might even rival her own skills.

Reaching the dreaded room, Kaoru pulled out a key from his pocket and unlocked the double doors.

"Doesn't this bring back bittersweet memories?"

_They're trying to make me cave in... But I _won't_!_

Once the doors were opened, the large dark room was almost beckoning them inside. Giving a gentle tug at her wrists, Hikaru pulled her along with him, following Kaoru's lead.

_So far... nothing out of the ordinary., _Her eyes scrutanized the room. It looked the same as the last time she'd seen it. Tables, couches, vases. Just an ordinary entertainment room.

"I'll lock the door. If someone sees it open, they'd get nosy."

Hikaru nodded as his twin went to do just that. Looking at her as if just remembering she was there, he widened his eyes.

"Now are you ready to hear the rest of it?"

_He dares to ask that?_

"Yes. I've waited long enough."

**(suggestive contents deleted)**

Jerking her hands away from them, Hikaru glared.

"Don't you get it, _Etsu-chan_? You've won the stupid game!"

Her jaw dropped.

_Here I thought I was the coward and it turns out they're bigger ones than I am!_

Closing her mouth to not look like an idiot, she nodded and held out one of her hands so Kaoru could give her the key.

_Who would have thought that their strange love could run that deeply? _Is _it their love that made them stop or was it because they didn't know how to go on?_

Studying them, she was confused by how they stood by each other, with an actual distance between them that hadn't been there before.

Somehow seeing that small distance was heartbreaking to her. She found it out of place.

_It isn't meant to be there._

"I... I'm sorry," feeling embarassed when they looked at her in equal shock, she turned around and stiffly walked out of the dressing room before they saw too much of her unwarranted regret for creating that awkward space.

The game was over, according to them. Or was it really? There was no way of knowing, because though they were angry at her for making them give up, she was sure that they were chasing her away because they had been about to go through with it.

_What the hell kind of mess have we gotten into?_

* * *

><p>Please R&amp;R!<p> 


	11. The Word Gets Out

**Warnings: **angst, Etsu-abuse, some Hikaru/Kaoru/Haruhi/Tamaki-abuse and random meaningless random oc abuse, occ long chapter. I kinda updated this account before my other ones in case people wondered.

**Chapter 12**

The demonic beings known as Hikaru and Kaoru were understandibly staying as far away as possible, but Etsu knew better than to let her guard down. Even though they hadn't spoken or approached her in nearly a week, she could feel them watching her like prey.

It bothered her of course. Not only because they were both as annoying as nails on a chalkboard, but because she felt some actual guilt for what had happened in the music room.

_It wasn't my fault that they went too far with their nonsense! I needed to make them back off somehow! If they're pissed at me for what _they _did, they obviously need a reality check!_

She hated feeling guilty for her desicions and what she _didn't _do with those boys had guilt come haunting her every time she heard one of them speaking from far away or even accidently saw one of them passing her in the hallway from her peripheral vision.

Why should she feel that way? Part of her reasoned that she had been too hard on them with her coldness, just as another part snappishly stated that they had a good share of the blame for fighting back so aggressively; keeping the hostility and immature game alive.

And then another problem, a problem that she was afraid of facing had risen on that particular day...

The frustrating monsters could easily overwhelm her. She wasn't overly experienced, at least not up to the level those two thought her to be, so having two beautiful sensual acting boys tempting her had briefly shut down her instinct to win with some of her beloved dignity.

It had been a major relief when Hikaru had called the game quits. Her lack of experience would have made her easy prey for them. They would have seen it as something to target, while she in the other hand knew how sick it would have been to accept doing that with them.

_I have to be the sickest girl in the face of the earth. Those boys have sex with _each other _and almost pulled me into it for crying out loud!, _She had been so scared of losing control. She wasn't supposed to give in to them or anybody. As fucked up as it was, the twins had their _own_ relationship; which made it feel like 'condoned cheating'. She did have some rules to her own games and participating in something that made her feel as if she were an intruding meaningless whore meant to sate their curiousity was out of the question.

_I should be happy that they're leaving me alone now. It's best this way. I'm not sure what could happen if they try something like that again. Every single time they 'play', they push things into dangerous territory... They make it too serious._

Having their eyes stalking her every move just reminded her how vulnerable she truly was and she loathed it because vulnerability wasn't that different from weakness and lack of self-respecting pride.

The Hitachiins had their own sick private world. A world she didn't want to participate in and though they were discomforted by her, they continued to shameless invite and yet push her away whenever she got too close.

_I'm disgusting to have thought of doing that with them..., _From time to time, for the last couple of days, she wondered what would Iku think of her if she knew. Though her twin had been her number one supporter when alive, she hadn't been afraid of telling her when she did something wrong.

_If Iku had been alive, Mother would have already conviced her to date one of those twits. Come to think of it... Maybe none of this shit would have happened if she were here... with me._

A slight dulled pain, a sharp ache that had faded over the years, clenched her heart as she hid inside one of the stalls in Ouran's bathrooms. She had being doing that a lot lately... Hiding to think. Unfortunately thinking too much brought back harmful memories of a peaceful time that had died with her sister.

The sounds of slamming doors had her automatically lifting up her feet on the toilet seat she was sitting on, so the other girls entering didn't know she was there.

_Just peacy! I can't find any peace and quiet in this fucking school! Why can't I just skip? Oh, yeah! _Mother _is finally acting the way she's supposed to and keeping track of my studies! As if _I want _to stay here! She was way better when she didn't give a shit about what I did!_

Clenching her teeth and furrowing her brow, she did her routine of ignoring other people. It barely worked since her quiet avoidant nature _always _made her privy of the secrets of strangers.

_"I can't believe she hasn't found out that it was you that threw those eggs at her, Megumi!" _a vaguely familiar voice giggled.

Etsu's eyes trembled in disbelief.

_"Yeah, I know! With as creepy as she is I would have thought she had eyes on the back of her head. Anyway, what is most important is that she learned her lesson about messing with Hikaru-kun and Kaoru-kun!"_

Angry over what she was overhearing, she leaned forward in hopes to hear more of the private conversation.

_"I don't know why they look at her so much during class! She's not even that pretty!"_

_"They might be staring because she's a total slut!" _her jaw dropped.

_A _slut_? How the fuck would they know? I haven't been acting slutty in front of everyone, have I? Unless those _assholes_ said something, which wouldn't make any sense since they're ten times _sluttier_ than I am!, _The fact that other people had noticed what was going on between her and the twins was enough to make anyone nervous.

_"Face it! You're just mad because they're paying attention to her while they only speak with you if you're paying custumers at the club! I think you're just jealous and throwing eggs at her just shows how insecure you are!" _an annoyed third voice piped in.

_"Just on whose side are you on, Reiri?"_

_"Nobody's side! Haven't you realized by now that the Hitachiin's don't give anybody the time of day? The only reason they're interested in her is because she doesn't smother them with so much nauseating fanservice!"_

_"First off, that egg incident was because she actually hurt them! We can't let her get away with something like that!" _the one named Megumi all but shouted. _"And secondly-!"_

_"Whatever! Hearing so much about the three of them has almost made me want to stop hanging out with you! Could you just drop the subject and talk about something else, _please_?"_

_"You're one of _their _custumers too, Reiri!"_

_"So what if I am? That doesn't mean that they belong to me! And besides that, you two are always daydreaming about them liking you when they have never given any hints of liking _anyone _in Ouran! Staring at Sakoi-san? What's your deal? They can stare at whoever they want! It's not like they're saying they have a crush on her! For all we know they're just scared of her because of that fight!"_

_"But you're missing our point!" _the voice of the still unnamed girl spoke up.

_"Have you even noticed _how _they look at her? There's something definitely going on with the three of them! And by the way, they're not _scared_! I know that kind of look-!"_

_"And that makes her a slut, right? With all of the crap you guys have in your innocent little heads, you still manage to judge every girl that so much as talks to them!"_

_"Well..."_

_"I rest my case!_ _Hearing the same thing over and over again has almost made me quit going to the Host Club! Even Asami and Yukiko have grown tired of it and have left the group because of you!"_

_"But-!"_

_"Bye! Talk to me when you have grown up a little! I can't believe you're nearly making me hate the twins!" _the bathroom door slammed open and closed as Etsu held her breath in order to remain undetected by the two girls still inside.

She had made a huge mistake in thinking that all her problems had ended once the twins had stopped persuing her, because somehow they _still _caused trouble. And the staring during class... She had no idea that they had been so obvious while doing it. It wasn't like she was watching _them _to check how many times they did it!

_Has everyone in class seen them doing this and thought the same thing?, _That was mortifying. The last thing she wanted was to be the center of attention, especially _that _kind of attention.

Taking a deep calming breath and closing her eyes, she waited as patiently as humanly possible for her new 'victims' to leave.

_"Maybe Reiri is right, Megumi..."_

_"I. Don't. _Think. _So, Emiko-chan."_

Her eyes opened and a twitch quirked the corner of her lips.

_I take it she wants to play. _

Feeling a familiar shiver of anticipation and mingling rage, she stood up just as the girls softly murmured while leaving the bathroom. Forcing her smiling lips to thin into a mirthless line, she opened the stall she had been inside of, letting her dull eyes stare at the still swinging door the 'lambs for slaughter' had exited.

_Because of those stupid bitches, I fell into the trap of those degenerates... Hikaru and Kaoru had just taken advantage of the situation _they _had set out for them._

Cocking her head and narrowing her eyes pensively, she thought about how long it had been since she had beaten up a _girl. _She wasn't ashamed of having a rather sadistic streak and neither was she embarassed of brawling when circumstances demanded it.

_It's a win/win situation. I get my revenge and some added bonuses. It's dumb luck that this 'gift' has fallen on my lap..._

Unable to hide her secretive glee at creating havock, she left the bathroom, fully intending on confronting those girls.

Now was perfect opportunity to show her true colors and be free of Ouran altogether. If everything turned out well, she would be expelled from the stupid place like week old trash.

* * *

><p>"EAT THIS, BITCH!" Haruhi along with everyone in her class watched in gaping wonder as Sakoi Etsu viciously swung her schoolbag at a sputtering Uchino Megumi's face.<p>

For the past half hour, in Ouran's pond, a fight worthy of the movie Gladiator had been taking place.

"She so scary!" a girl behind her gasped as Etsu grabbed the front of the dress of an anxious Kajita Emiko. Giving a fearsome battle yell, she furiously yanked the screaming girl facefirst into the pond.

_What the hell has gotten into her?, _Watching the fight of the three splashing screeching girls through wide eyes, she was absolutely dumbfounded. Sakoi, judging from her cold demeanor, didn't seem to be the passionate violent type, so to see her fighting as if to actually _kill _her opponents proved to Haruhi that outward appearances could be deceiving.

Though she wasn't precisely a martial arts master, Etsu was good at beating the two frightened girls. With her drenched dress weighing her slender petite frame, she noisily splashed over to a crying Megumi and sloppily swung her fist.

"OWWW!" Everyone shouted sympathetically as the now bleeding girl heavily fell back on the greenish dirty water.

Haruhi was begining to think that Etsu was purposely trying to get everyone's attention in the fight. From how she had grabbed Megumi's hair out in the hallway once lunch had started to toss her into the pond outside, the girl had made it clear that she didn't care if people watched her in action. It was like she had practically _announced _that she was going to have a showdown.

_Why would anyone in their right mind want to get in trouble? This could get her expelled!_

* * *

><p>"They didn't even read us our rights to an attourney or let us make a phonecall!" the sniveling blonde wailed in a corner, huddled up in his seat with his back turned towards everyone. "And why is Kyoya is taking so long in paying our bail?" his shoulders shook in exagerated sobs.<p>

"Tamaki-senpai, we're not in jail, we're just in the principal's waiting room," Fujioka said matter of factly.

_How did I get stuck in here with these lunatics?, _she hid her grimace of annoyance at having to be in a roomful of strangers, or should she say _near _strangers. Being wet and miserable as the principal interviewed all of the witnesses of the fight at the pond, she wished she had thought her strategy a little more carefully before executing it.

Everything _hadn't _come out as she had wanted. Her fight was supposed to between her and the two stupid girls that were sniveling in a couple of seats from her, not between her, _them, _Fujioka, the idiot guy named 'Tamaki', and the twins. The last thing she had wanted was for so many damned people to get involved in her plans to make them inevitably _fail _so disastrously.

When she had been about to dunk Megumi's head into the water, a voice, vaguely similar to Fujioka's started yelling about someone stopping her 'from drowning' the girl. Since no one had stepped forward and Etsu had been too busy in punishing her newest victim, Fujioka got the dumb idea that _she _should step in. In doing that, apparently the idiotic currently weeping blond had gotten ahead of her and tried to pull Etsu off the breathless sputtering Megumi.

That was when things had become absolute crap. All because of _them. _Being grabbed from behind by the unknown older boy had sent her into a panic. Everything had become a blur from then on. While she had been splashing wildly to get him to let go off her, Fujioka had been trying to help the shaken Megumi up from what could have been her 'last bath'... That was until she had been quickly sent facedown on the water when one of Etsu's flailing feet hitting her on the back by accident.

_Those _monsters _then had to come to her rescue because of that., _The twins attempted to get her away from Tamaki that had been screaming like a girl in spite of easily keeping her from running off.

That was what pissed her off about it all. Everything had been going _perfectly. _The rest of the students had been scared enough to stay out of it, but when it came to those _other _individuals...

Kaoru had grabbed her legs with some difficulty and started yelling at Tamaki to help him carry her out of the pond while Hikaru tried to help the stunned Fujioka up. Being pissed at having even more people getting into her goddamned business, she twisted her body so she could bite Tamaki's arm, making him screech hard enough to split her eardrums.

What could have been an awesome fight became more like a grotesque comedy that had the students actually _laughing _at them. When Tamaki had instantly released her in his pain, she fell on the pond with Kaoru still holding her wiggling legs. Embarassed about that brief moment of disgrace, she violently jerked in his hold until knocking him off.

Seeing his twin down, Hikaru immediately forgot about Haruhi and rushed to him. Thinking that everything was looking up since everyone had forgotten about her, Etsu then made the stupid mistake of believing she could pounce on Emiko to continue with her initial plan. It _would _have worked if it hadn't been for Fujioka yelling about her 'doing it again' which led to her being tackled by _somebody _she hadn't even gotten a good look at. To make things even more ridiculous in her humiliation, Tamaki started running around in circles in the pond shrieking that someone should '911'

Her idea was to get immediately expelled, not to have an almost 'school trial' for what she did. Now everyone in her classroom as well as in second year and third year classes that had seen the fight even as passersbys were being questioned about how everything had taken place. It could be _hours _before her punishment would be decided and she wasn't exactly a patient person.

_Couldn't he just call my mother and tell her what I did and call it a day? Why am I_ _here with these damn people?, _Pulling the wool blanket supplied to her to ward off some of the cold from the filthy pond water that soaked her uniform, her eyebrow gave a nervous little twitch.

_This is stupid._

"You're a real handful, do you know that? What the heck were you thinking?" clenching her jaw at the voice that had said that, she ignored Kaoru's questions and looked blankly at the floor.

"Don't talk to her, Kaoru. You might as well be talking to a wall."

_Glad you've noticed that. It was about damned time._

"I know that, but whenever she does something stupid we get in trouble for it."

_Good riddance to you too._

She didn't want to look at them or show signs that she knew they were there even though they were sitting in front of her. She knew that if she gave them the attention they seemed to crave from her that they would just piss her off like they always did.

"Would you stop doing that?" she nearly snickered at how Hikaru, the one that had been trying to tell his younger twin to ignore her, snapped when she continued her avoidance routine.

_Don't exactly practice what you preach..., _a snort escaped her at the irony.

"Why did the hell did you do it? Most of all, why did you drag Megumi-chan and Emiko-chan into it?" not seeing him, judging from the disturbance in the otherwise quiet atmosphere, she could sense that he was moving his arms a lot while yelling at her.

Not answering to annoy him further, she tightened her grip on the blanket to gain at least some warmth. The little bastard didn't seem like he was going to give up on bugging her.

"One question! Why do you keep goading her if she annoys you so much?"

Surprised at the irritated slightly feminine voice, her head snapped up to look at Fujioka that was glaring at him.

"What... What do you mean by that, Haruhi?" for some odd reason, Hikaru appeared to be almost embarassed by having her say something like that.

_That's a first., _Curious about the strange behaviour he was displaying, she quietly eyed him and then studied Fujioka's annoyed face.

"You _know _what I mean! I don't know exactly what's going on with the three of you, but for the last couple of weeks there's a lot of hostility flying around in Ouran and that was before that fight you guys had at the maze! You two have been bugging _her _because of something she saw that day, aren't you?"

Hikaru's face paled a couple of shades at her tone, or was it her words that had him suddenly show that fear?

_Fuck soap operas, _this _is getting interesting. What is he going to say? Is he going to screw up?, _a smirk struggled to appear on her lips, but she kept herself in check. She preffered it _if _Hikaru gave himself away. It could be fun for her to watch, especially since being stuck in that room with all of them had been boring until then.

"Why are you so mad, Haruhi?" Kaoru asked slowly, though he wasn't as pale as his twin.

"I'm mad because this could have been avoided! Ever since that day, _weird _stuff has been happening! And I'm not talking about Sakoi-san's chair or the rumor going around that mop water was thrown on her head! You two have been acting off in the club and at class!"

"Ah...," Tamaki tentatively spoke up, bringing all eyes on him. "Haruhi does have a point..."

"Yeah, but it still doesn't have anything to do with..." Kaoru trailed off as his eyes widened on Haruhi's face.

_He just thought of something._

"Your scholarship."

_Okay..., _She didn't have any idea what they were talking about now, so she opted to ignore them once more by looking at the floor.

"You know what...? Forget I said anything. Just being here for so long brings out the worst in people. I don't even know why I got mixed up in all this...," Haruhi finally said wearily before giving a sigh of finality to the conversation.

_Smart move._

"See what you just did, Etsu?"

She rolled her eyes at hearing Hikaru talking to her again.

_What a pain in the ass._

"Don't roll your eyes at me!"

"I can't believe this. I just told him to quit goading her into a fight and he goes ahead and does it anyway. Wonderful," Haruhi muttered dryly.

"It's not enough for you to insult us every freaking time you see us, but now Haruhi could be kicked out of school because of you!"

Etsu was already tuning him out. It wasn't her damned problem. She hadn't asked for them to jump into the fight. If Fujioka had a problem, she could just tell her mother to pay for her scholarship. She wasn't the giving type, but she didn't have a grudge against the girl like with the other morons there with her.

"Hikaru! Stop it already!" Kaoru admonished him in a hushed voice,

"She goes around acting like she can't be touched by anybody, when she's just pathetic and dead inside!"

Her heartbeat raced even though her features were placid.

_Don't give into this nonsense!_

"Look at her! She doesn't even _deny _she's a bitch!"

A loud whimper that sounded like Tamaki followed his words. Apparently 'Blondie' wasn't accostumed to hearing such language.

"If I'm such a bitch, then why are you still speaking to me?" she asked smoothly, without looking at him.

_Damn it! Why doesn't he just shut up? Now I ended messing up again!_

"Why? _Why? _Because you bug me, _that's _why!"

"That's wonderful news. Must mean I'm doing something right at least."

"Wow. That's taking bluntness to a new level," Haruhi murmured to herself.

Something that was like a combination between a growl and a hiss left the fuming boy that was probably glaring at her. At that moment she found the floor far more interesting to look at than him, so she could only guess what his expression was.

"One day you're kissing me and then the next you were kissing Kaoru right in front of my face!"

Gasps from everyone present sounded out dramatically as Etsu's heart pounded wildly.

_He _did not _just say that shit!, _Shocked out her disinterested act, she finally looked at him, gaping. Having him blurting something like that out had everyone's eyes on her as if she were some kind of new species.

"_Excuse _me. _You'_re talking about immorality and _bugging _when you do far more disgusting things than I could ever do," her eyes hardened on his livid face as Kaoru cleared his throat to subtly interrupt what could be another unwanted revelation.

"Don't talk like you're so innocent, Etsu! You're the one that offered it and we just played along!" he retaliated back and Kaoru shrunk in his seat helplessly.

"Whoa, what's going on?" Megumi, one of the girls that they'd all forgotten about gasped from her seat next to a frozen Emiko.

"Then it was _your _mistake for falling for it," she tried to smooth over her mistake, ignoring the girl that had spoken. It wasn't really her fault _they_ had distorted her strategy of scaring them off. They should have backed off as soon as she had begun her 'seductive act'. Someone smarter would have noticed something was up when she suddenly took on that sort of attitude. Someone with more _sense _than them would have seen it was all an act meant to ridicule.

"It wasn't _our _mistake! That's what you don't get!" his face was now a bright red that amused her, since it could only mean he was about to make a fool of himself. "You started doing that to insult us, but you got off on it!"

"So did you and your _girlfriend _Kaoru. I bet you two had a lot of fun alone after toying with me for awhile. Like that day at the maze for instance. You seem to really like being pissed at me to drill your poor twin like that," Kaoru looked like he was about to pass out at the bit of information she had given out.

"OH, DEAR KAMI-SAMA, DID SHE JUST SAY THAT?" Emiko shouted hysterically as Megumi shriveled in her seat. None of them spared them a glance.

Hikaru's face hardened

_Here it comes._

"I don't think this is the time and place to talk about this-"

"You don't care about the people you hurt, do you?" he cut his brother's low words.

"Not really. I don't see why I should care," his words were wounding, because in a way he was saying what she liked other people to believe of her. That she didn't care for others, only striving for what she sought no matter who she stomped on along the way. It was in her nature to do that, because it had been a long time since she had felt the need to care about the feelings of people outside of herself.

"You are a really _sick _girl," though his tone had lowered considerably, Hikaru's eyes showed how much he hated her for being so cold about it.

"WOULD THE TWO OF YOU CUT IT OUT ALREADY? BECAUSE OF YOUR BIG MOUTHS _EVERYBODY_ KNOWS!"

Stunned speechless both them stared at Kaoru.

_He's finally snapped!_

Panting furiously, his face beet red, Kaoru's body was tense with both fists clenched at his sides. It was obvious that he was struggling to keep himself under control. The room had become so silent in his outburst that Etsu fancied she heard a random cough echoing somewhere; like one of those coughs that only happened during embarassing moments in the movies.

"OH, NO! IT'S ARMAGEDON! THE END OF DAYS!" Tamaki screamed theartrically, suddenly jumping on Haruhi, nearly knocking her off her seat. "DEAR, DAUGHTER, HOLD ME TIGHT TILL THE END! AT LEAST WE'LL DIE TOGETHER!"

Unamused by the performance, Haruhi tried to futilely push the grabby anxious blonde away from her. "Stop it, senpai!" No one looked their way despite all of the noise they were producing.

"We were _all _wrong!" Kaoru continued heatedly, his body subtly trembling.

Etsu and Hikaru now began to gape at him.

"It was just a _stupid _game! Why can't we just forget about it? It's not like it was all that important! Why do we keep coming back to it over and over again if it makes it so hard for us?" this last question was directed at a disbelieving Hikaru.

"I-I...," blushing, Hikaru's eyes fleeted over the other accupants of the room, including her, much to her bad luck. Closing his lips, he again looked helplessly at his angry twin.

"There's...," Kaoru took a deep breath, closing his eyes, "There's some things that are meant to be said in private...," opening his eyes, Etsu was surprised to have him looking at her tiredly, "But I guess that's no use now, is it? Since Ouran will know everything..."

Her brows trembled. This whole time she had been worrying about getting herself purposely expelled, but now something far worse loomed overhead.

_What if... What if I _don't _get expelled and have to go through the crap all of this will bring up?_

Having people talking about her was nothing new... It shouldn't have bothered her. However, what had been told in that room in front of two particular girls that were staring wide eyed at the three of them soaking in all the information, she felt that if she didn't get out of Japan soon, her life was going to become downright nasty.

* * *

><p>I kinda went 'Breakfast Club' there. If people haven't seen that movie, well... nevermind.<p>

Thanks to everyone for the reviews! I didn't think people would review it because I had just uploaded a bunch of chapters up at once but I'm really grateful for the feedback. I know most OC fics aren't well received and I tried hard to make an 'unlikeable' character that wasn't a Mary Sue (because Mary Sues are not liked for being just Mary Sues, while making an OC with actual unlikeable flaws is a whole different ball game). That's why if anyone asks why Etsu is such a cruel bitch, well... that's one of her flaws and its a flaw she doesn't willingly admit to. _About the lemon in chapter 3, one of the reviewers said something about it being confusing. LOL. I know. Most yaoi is like that because it's two guys doing it. Once I had written 'original character yaoi' and someone got annoyed about me using the names too repeatedly and giving weird 'titles' to make it known who was who and I was like: I gotta avoid that. When I write different scenes, I use only one POV (I've seen many writers that use a bunch of POVs at once and that gets way too confusing for me.), so that could help in the future=) _Anyways, I hope people liked the chapter! It was one of those chapters we writers hate to write, but STILL have to because it explains something that's coming up in the future... Blah, blah, blah... The smut will be eased somewhat, though the sexual tension will escalate once more until it explodes (when I say explode, it's usually pretty serious.)

PS: Sorry if I messed up on some of the chaps. They got shuffled. *winces*


	12. Fate Always Brings Them Together

**Warnings: **some brief angst, Etsu-abuse, plot-filler, long chapter.

**Chapter 13**

"We're screwed, aren't we?" Hikaru quietly asked his brother while sitting beside him on the limo heading to the manor.

"You could say that...," not looking at him, Kaoru was still obviously upset with what had happened moments earlier at the academy.

Slumping on his seat, he eyed him from the corner of his eyes.

_I just made matters worse by bringing all that stuff up..._

He had just been so pissed at Etsu's coldness that he had unthinkingly brought up _everything _without really thinking that she had more on them than anyone. He tried to see her as the one to blame for their current predicament, but whenever he made an attempt the fact that _he _had started the argument taunted him.

There was no way he'd verbally admit to provoking her into revealing their secret even though that was exactly what he had done.

_She'd stayed quiet about it long enough._

"It was bound to happen some day," hearing the low subdued tones of his younger twin, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I just didn't expect for it to happen this soon..."

"Listen, Kaoru... I...," he trailed off when Kaoru looked at him with dulled weary eyes. "I...," flushing and gulping, he forced himself to continue. "I shouldn't have said anything like that to her in the first place-!"

"She had to defend herself somehow," interrupting him, Kaoru smiled faintly. "Can't say I blame her for doing it like that. Had I been in her place I probably would have done the same thing."

Seeing that his brother clearly didn't want to talk about it any further, Hikaru desisted by looking away and staring listlessly out the window at the passing scenery. Whenever Kaoru showed some temper, he became unusually melancholic and quiet afterwards, leading him to believe that he just spent too much time over-thinking things, unlike him that was naturally impulsive and could stay fuming for hours or even days on the same subject.

_This really sucks. In fact, everything has started to suck ever since Etsu came along..._

Clenching his jaw, he went over the day's events and still couldn't get over the bad luck that had been following him and his twin ever since they'd started their 'game' with Etsu.

Mori had been the one that had tackled Etsu to the water and had pulled her out to hand her over to the school officials. The girl had been so rabid that she probably hadn't noticed who had grabbed and carried her soaked squirming form like a child. It had almost been comical seeing her screaming and struggling against Mori's vicelike arms, but now that he thought about it, it only made him angrier.

She had inadvertedly gotten _everyone _in the Host Club involved, even if it had been indirectly.

_Though I feel kind of bad for tono... it was funny as hell when she bit him!_

"Hikaru! I don't find anything funny right now!"

Surprised at the somewhat annoyed chastising tone his brother had taken, he looked at him questioningly raising his brows.

"What?"

Frowning in barely hidden frustration, Kaoru said accusingly, "You were laughing just now."

"Oh...," feeling an all too familiar heat that had been coming too much lately on his cheeks, he adverted his eyes.

_I hadn't realized that..., _looking away from his brother, sensing that he was still annoyed, Hikaru returned to looking out the window. For all he knew, Kaoru would be in a bad mood for the rest of the day. What always made him uncomfortable about his twin's temper was how silent he could become. It didn't give him anything to go on; any comforting words would be useless and it wasn't like he could say anything to help him brighten up again.

Kaoru wasn't going to get over it any time soon. He knew that for a fact.

_Man... This is a huge mess! What if our mother finds out about it...?, _his heart clenched painfully at that thought. Their mother wouldn't accept it. She loved them, even though she sometimes confused their names and was barely around, but she would never like the idea of _both _of them being lovers. Hikaru knew that with them being brothers, _identical _brothers, best friends... Two different yet similar people that had been together from the womb and shared the same blood would be deemed as disgusting by people too dense to understand it. He and Kaoru may have grown used to it after letting down the barriers of what society's morals stated, but the world outside of themselves would be cruel about it even though they hadn't done anything personally offensive to them.

A beeping ring entered his thoughts, making him jerk in his seat. Glancing towards the noise, he saw a slight frown on Kaoru's face as he pulled his cellphone out of his pant pocket.

_Kaoru has a specific ringtone from everybody we know... That ringer just now is for unknown numbers., _For some reason the fact that his twin would be getting a call from someone they didn't know so soon after they had left school didn't bode well with him.

Kaoru appeared to feel the same way when his wary eyes met with his before he finally opened the cellphone to place it on his ear.

"Hello...?"

Curious about the mystery caller, Hikaru moved on his seat to study his brother's face as he spoke.

"Wait... What?" his breath hitched at Kaoru's shocked tone, but he held back the need to ask who it was.

"No! You two have the wrong idea about us! What makes you think that we'd do that?"

"Kaoru? What's going on?" Hearing his brother sounding so angry was in turn making _him _angry. It was so rare to hear than kind of sharp tone on Kaoru.

Instead of answering him, his furious eyes looked at him, letting him wordlessly know that something that had to do with the events of the day was starting to rear its ugly head.

_This can't be happening!_

Sucking in a deep breath, his face showing every bit of anger he felt, Kaoru snapped, "So what if we did that with her? That doesn't mean we're going to-!" Whoever it was cut him off.

"Then you're in bad luck, because I'd prefer _that, _than having me and Hikaru participating in something that sick!" the desperate edge in his brother's voice, had Hikaru instinctively putting a hand on his shoulder to offer at least some comfort.

It of course didn't work.

"I told you that I don't care and I'm sure that Hikaru will agree with me once I tell him what you just said!" the shoulder under his palm trembled.

Another infuriating pause that signalled that his brother was impatiently listening to whoever was on the other line almost made Hikaru fidget nervously.

_Maybe I should just take the phone from him..._

"Oh, yeah? At least Etsu didn't have to resort to something as disgusting as this! Who do you think you're dealing with?"

Giving up on patiently allowing Kaoru to let off some steam, he snatched the phone from him, startling him in the process.

"Hey-!"

"Let me deal with this!" he hissed at his brother's protest, putting the cellphone to his ear.

At first there was silence... Until he heard a very familiar feminine voice speaking on the other line. A voice that grated on his nerves at the over-dramatized mysteriousness of it. It was so _obvious_ who it was no matter how she tried to change her voice to sound more mature and dangerous.

_"Hello?" _the faked seductive tone purred.

"What the hell do you want, Uchino?" he scowled at the hypocracy of the girl.

_"What every girl wants... What you gave to Sakoi. We want it. If you don't give it to us, the whole school will know what you two _very _naughty boys have been doing to each other. That'd be a shame wouldn't it? For everyone at Ouran and their families to know exactly how _real _your brotherly love is."_

His breath shortened.

_IS THIS GIRL FUCKING KIDDING ME?_

"Oh, you'll get what you want...," Kaoru gasped beside him, surprised as his words, "but it'll be when you die and fry in hell!" Beyond pissed at how the situation had worsened so quickly, he pulled the phone away from him and punched the off button with his thumb.

"Hikaru...?" the soft low voice of his brother somehow soothed him, though there was still a festering rage at how deceptive some people could be boiling inside him.

_I thought that Etsu was evil, but Megumi-chan and Emiko-chan are much worse than she is._

"Don't worry, Kaoru...," he started gravely, grinding his molars to keep himself from shouting and showing how truly outraged he was about the audacity of two of their most frequent clients. "We'll make it through this. I _know _we'll make it through this."

_Even if we have to ask for Etsu's help in cleaning up our names after she practically shit on them._

* * *

><p><em>This is awful! Hikaru and Kaoru getting in trouble in school! I didn't think Etsu was the kind of girl to start brawls of that nature!, <em>shaking her head at what the principal of Ouran's high school section had told her hours earlier before her boys had been released back to the mannor, Hitachiin Yuzuha walked so fast up the front steps of the Sakoi estate that it was a miracle her heels didn't snap over the marble ground.

She wasn't angry about what she had been told, but more like concerned. She didn't know a thing of what was going on with her children due to her and her husband being out of Japan for extended periods of time, so hearing that her sons had gotten suspended because of Etsu and had gotten in trouble once more because _Etsu _had nearly drowned two girls from their class in the school pond... _No! _There was something that didn't meet the eye and she wasn't about to let something like this slide.

_Just ask Etsu as nicely as possible what's going on... I can't get angry! For all I know she had to have a good reason to do those things! She looks like such a good mature girl..._

Refusing to believe that her sons may have had something to do with the girl's supposed fits of rage, she reached the door and thrust her finger at the doorbell as hard as she could. Holding her finger without relenting, she let the melodious albeit thunderous sound of the doorbell be long and annoying as if that could make whatever servant close by open the door quickly.

After twenty seconds of the remarkable racket, the door flipped open showing a tiny slip of a maid that was probably younger than Etsu herself.

"Y-Yes, ma'am...?" the blushing childish maid didn't meet her eyes, like she had done something wrong for taking so long in getting the door.

Softening her face upon feeling some sympathy, she smiled warmly down at her, "I'm here to see Sakoi Etsu."

The young girl's big brown eyes widened in fright. "Etsu-sama?"

_Is there something wrong with this girl?_

Blinking at the her odd reaction, she said a slow, "Yes..."

The fearful eyes of the maid brightened immediately, though there was still a hint of apprehension swimming in them. "Thank goodness you're here! We're so afraid of going into the misstress's study after the young miss came home and we were hoping that someone would...!" trailing off in her excited chatter, she bit her lower lip and looked down at the floor.

"Is... Is there _something _wrong?" there was a tightness in her chest when she asked that question. The maid was acting far too strangely as if she wanted to say something but feared doing so.

"Please, ma'am! Don't tell Sayuri-sama that I told!" the girl's sweet childish voice beseeched her as did her big eyes that looked up at her from thick dark brown bangs.

Already sensing that something bad was happening for the maid to be that frigtened, Yuzuha straightened her back and said firmly, "Take me to your mistress's study. And don't worry I will not tell her you said anything." It was rare for her to take such a commanding tone, but her suspicions called for it.

_I _really _hope its not what I think it is._

"Thank you so much, ma'am!" moving aside to let her inside the mansion, the maid curtsied several times in her gratitude.

_What exactly is happening here?, _she asked herself as the small maid quickly turned around to show her to the study of her mistress while saying, "Please following me!"

When she had first come there, she had intended to interrogate Etsu about what had been happening between her and the twins for them to be getting in so much trouble lately, but now all of that was pushed aside as she walked behind the speedily walking maid that seemed nearly desperate to get her to their destination as soon as possible.

Her eyes widened when she was led to another wing on the first floor of the large estate. What had to be every servant of the household lined the walls murmuring to each other in hushed tones as the maid in front of her lowered her chin to her chest, probably embarassed at giving away some information they themselves had been unwilling to disclose. They were now in a long stretching pristine white hallway that matched the rest of the pale decour of the mansion. Having so many dour faced servants shifting and whispering nervously at her appearance made the situation all the more tense.

"Sayuri-sama's study... is behind those doors...," meekly speaking, the maid pointed a trembling finger at two white doors at the other end of the hall.

Feeling some anxiety at how nervous everyone around her appeared to become at those words, Yuzuha nodded stiffly and wasn't surprised that no one followed her when she walked towards the doors that the maid had shown her to.

Swallowing, it didn't take her long to realize _why _the servants were too frightened to intervene.

_"OF ALL THE THINGS YOU COULD COME UP WITH TO SHAME OUR FAMILY, YOU DRAGGED TWO MORE FAMILIES INTO IT!" _Sayuri's voice screeched, startling Yuzuha. It was the first time she had heard the usually charming smooth voiced woman yelling like that.

Etsu's voice was soft in responding back to her shout, _"Sometimes I have to do what I have to do. They reaped what they'd sown."_

"Etsu...?" Yuzuha was in shock at hearing the callous words coming from the normally calm girl.

_"THAT'S STILL NO EXCUSE, ETSU! I DON'T _CARE _THAT THOSE GIRLS THREW EGGS AT YOU BECAUSE OF SOME JEALOUSY FIT! YOU'RE A SAKOI! AS A SAKOI, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO PERFECT! ABOVE _EVERYONE _ELSE! THIS-THIS JUST PROVES WHAT A DISRESPECTFUL _BEAST _YOU ARE!"_

_"Then I guess being a Sakoi means that I have to be a coward, am I correct in asuming this, Mother? Is defending myself beastly or justified?"_

_"You... You... I can't believe I got _stuck _with you! I honestly don't know what I did to deserve being STUCK WITH YOU!" _slapping a hand over her mouth at what Sayuri was implying, Yuzuha's eyes trembled in disbelief.

_"Such is life. We never get what we want, do we? But I am glad that Iku is in a much better place than by your side."_

She flinched at the harsh sound of flesh hitting skin.

_"Your sister! She would have never said anything like that to me! How I regret that it was her that died!" _Sayuri's shouts sounded histerical._ "You never do anything but cause trouble for everyone! You're absolutely useless! Why are you STILL HERE?"_

_"Would you feel better if I turned the other cheek for you, _Mother_?" _Etsu's voice didn't show any pain or sadness at being struck by her.

_"GOD, HOW I HATE YOU!"_ yet another slap rung out and the voices of the servants standing behind her rose in volume.

_I have to stop this!_

Not really thinking, not caring that what was taking place was a private argument that had nothing to do with her reasons for being there, Yuzuha's hands grabbed the brass doorknobs of the doubledoors and turned them sharply to slam them open.

The two females inside jerked to look at her. Sayuri who was standing over her daughter wore a stricken expression, obviously not expecting her there and Etsu who was sitting on a leather seat in front of her mother's desk turned to look at her with her passionless black gaze.

"I would have _never _in a million years have even _thought_ that you, Sayuri, were capable of doing something like this!"

"I'll take that as my cue to leave," Etsu said boredly, fluidly rising from her seat, unaffected by the fact that both of her cheeks had red handprints and that her hair had been slightly mussed by her mother's lashing hands.

_She acts as if this is normal... How long has Sayuri been having these tantrums?, _Shocked at Etsu's calmness, she was even more surprised when the girl bowed respectfully.

"As always, Hitachiin-san, a pleasure seeing you," lifting her head up, she casually glanced at her mother, "I suppose you'll want to continue our amiable conversation some other time, Mother."

Trembling in rage, Sayuri just covered her mouth with one hand as if to keep herself from screaming again. Yuzuha suspected that if she hadn't been there, she would have hit Etsu once more for her frosty comeback.

Shaken by what had happened, she stared after the girl that walked unhurriedly out of the study without looking back at them. No tears, no anger, just an emptiness floated in her eyes that gave Yuzuha a chill at how abnormal it was. The girl was either an expert in bottling her anguish in or she merely didn't feel any. She didn't know what to think of her behavior.

Once the girl left them, even having the presence of mind of closing the double doors behind her to give them some privacy, Yuzuha forced her stare to harden on the still angry Sayuri. She could tell that the woman was struggling in keeping herself from chasing her daughter down judging from the furious tears floating in her violet eyes and how her hand pressed hard on her trembling lips.

"Sayuri..."

"You don't know what its... _like _to live with someone like _her...,_" Sayuri managed to choke out behind her fingertips.

Narrowing her eyes, Yuzuha now saw through the other woman's act.

"I doubt you do either, considering that you locked her away in a different country after her twin's death."

Shock registered in Sayuri's eyes and Yuzuha couldn't help feeling a twinge of guilt at giving such a low blow. It wasn't her business and she hated feeling so angry, even if that anger was about something as _wrong _as what she had witnessed moments earlier. By nature, she liked surrounding herself by joyous things. Colorful things that never let her think of the bad things happening in the outside world. She liked having laughter around her at all times and loud sometimes obnoxious people because she believed that cheerfulness was meant to be infectious.

So feeling so much anger, was a rare thing for her. She disliked seeing something so undeniably _ugly _like what the false Sayuri hid behind her praises for her only daughter.

Seeing the other woman slowly sitting down on one of the seats facing her desk, she released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

"I understand your anger, Yuzuha. It must have come... as a shock," Sayuri's shimmering eyes glanced at her as she removed her hand from her lips.

"A very _unpleasant _shock," she kept her tone hard, to let Sayuri know that she wasn't going to be as easy to win over as before.

"I'm... I'm so sorry you had to hear that!"

Yuzuha felt some of her anger relenting; not like she was going to let her see that.

"Is it common practice for you to hit your daughter and compare her to her sister?" she just had to ask that.

Shaking her head vigurously, Sayuri gasped, "No!"

_Why do I find that hard to believe?, _Etsu's attitude ealier had been a giveaway. For someone to be so cold after receiving blows and such insults, it had to be seen as normal. Etsu was clearly _accostumed _to it.

Not truly knowing how to handle such a situation, she sighed and took an empty seat beside the shaken woman that carefully looked away from her in obvious shame. It was uncomfortable having to witness something so personal, especially when that 'personal thing' happened to be from a person she barely knew...

What Sayuri didn't know was that Yuzuha had thoroughly investigated her and her family before deciding to go to Sakoi Exports with a business idea. There were plenty of reasons why she had done it. One reason was that she couldn't put her work in the hands of someone untrustworthy. The second reason, the reason that Sayuri probably didn't suspect in the slightest was...

The elusive Etsu herself.

She had always been understandibly intrigued by the story of the Sakoi twins. When the older twin, Iku, had been alive, both of the little girls had been quite famous in the social circles in Tokyo. Business people even traveled to see the charming identical 'living dolls' and Yuzuha, having twins herself had curiousity regarding the lovely children, though being so busy had never given her the priviledge of meeting them.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for her to realize that Sayuri had shamelessly exploited her daughters to bring in new clients for Sakoi Exports. Everyone that so much as laid eyes on Iku and Etsu fell instantly in love with them; Iku for her genteel mature manners and Etsu for her ability to make people laugh and warm up to her. Sayuri had taken advantage of the innocent charisma her children displayed.

That fame ended the day of Iku's death and Etsu being practically locked away in some boarding school in England soon afterwards. At first she hadn't wanted to believe the rumors of Etsu, already a teenager, being used as a pawn for business ventures, but once in awhile people talked of the cold shadown of the once happy twin. Pictures of her had appeared from time to time on magazines saying that she was either dating the son of some influencial family or making friends with some aristocratic daughters in England.

Every picture would show an etheral black haired girl with a bland smile that never reached her eyes.

_And I've always wanted to see what happens to a lone twin., _She didn't like admitting that what always interested her with the tragic story was the _effects _of twins being separated. Seeing Etsu being nothing like the charming girl people had praised her to be as a child, had given Yuzuha second thoughts about 'helpfully' separating Hikaru and Kaoru.

She couldn't do it if they were to become empty shells of their former selves; that was why when the boys had become interested in a _girl _for once, she had gladly encouraged them to continue their friendship with her.

"Losing a child like that must have been painful, but have you ever thought about how Etsu must be feeling?"

Sayuri didn't answer, her eyes downcast and unmoved.

She sighed, seeing she wasn't getting anywhere.

"Well, I'll take that as a no. Hitting your child for not being like her sister is the wrong way to handle grief...," _I just can't leave without doing something at least., _"Couldn't you find a more effective way of disciplining her without any violence?"

Hearing a audible gulp, Yuzuha had a hard time catching Sayuri's whisper, "I... We've never had a very close relationship...," her bloodshot moist eyes met hers briefly before they skittered away nervously. Taking in a shuddering breath, she continued, "Etsu was always closer to her father and paternal grandmother... While Iku," her voice cracked as her eyes became more damp and distant, "Iku was a little angel... She never caused trouble. She had perfect grades and was so polite... Etsu," she gave a weak wry smile through her tears, "was always the opposite. Rude, loud and didn't think before speaking..."

Smiling, knowing what she meant, Yuzuha murmured, "I think all twins are pretty much like that, Sayuri."

Stiffening at her words, the other woman didn't comment on that as if that fact of life was something that displeased or made her feel some actual physical pain.

"How long...," she paused, feeling that awkwardness again when the woman looked at her waiting for her to finish her question, "how long have you and Etsu been fighting like this?"

Blinking as if taken aback, Sayuri took a while in answering her, "Eight years or so. Since Iku's death..."

_Eight years is a long time for a mother and daughter to be at odds. From what I see so far, the two of them haven't even tried to fix their relationship._

"You haven't taken any counceling, or tried to talk it over?" the more she wanted to get away from the truth that hit a bit too close to home, the more she felt herself pulled in.

Scoffing softly at that, Sayuri let a grimace that vaguely resembled a smile cross her features.

"What you overheard just now is what all our conversations are like... We've gotten so used to it already that we don't try to change the routine out of bad habit. As for counceling," she shook her head, scoffing once more, "Etsu always finds a way to weasel out of everything. Her old school tried to do it by having a resident psychologist give us some therapy, but she eventually got fed up and started running off during the scheduled visit dates or pretending to be sick."

_Is this the same girl?, _Making a face at what Sayuri was telling her, she didn't have any good words to say about Etsu's 'dark side'.

"I guess...,"she chose her words carefully, "Both of you spending so many years living apart and coming back together under the same roof so suddenly hasn't been easy."

"You have no idea... I wasn't really thinking when I have her transferred here. I thought it...," Sayuri's eyes glimmered, "I thought it would have been easier."

Swallowing, she folded her hands over her lap. This was far too intimate for her liking, yet... Etsu... The twins... Everything. Seeing this changed girl reminded her of the mistake she could have made if she had seperated her own sons.

_The truth is ugly._

"I... I have a proposition for you," straightening her back and taking a purposeful tone, Yuzuha tried her best to look at the confused distraught woman in the eyes.

"A... _proposition_?"

"Yes."

Frowning slightly, Sayuri shifted in her seat, probably already sensing what she was about to say.

"Yuzuha, I know that you want to help, but this is not-"

"I want Etsu to stay with me until you two learn how to mend your differences!" the words left her in a rush as she clutched her eyes closed. It was a selfish 'proposition' on her part, since she was mainly doing it because of the guilt she felt at merely thinking of making her own two children suffer.

She knew, like any mother should know, that they would surely die inside if she had done what she had _thought_ was right. For the last couple of months she had been not only traveling for business but searching for all boys schools so that _one _of the twins could study abroad while the other one continued attending Ouran.

The reality of what she had almost done had her eyes stinging.

Sayuri gaped at her in disbelieving terror."But-? I can't let you do that, Yuzuha!" some life entered the woman's eyes, leading her to think that not all hope was lost.

_I hate having to resort to doing this! I just don't like seeing this! I hate having to see what could have happened. Of course my sons are both alive, but what if...? What if they end up like Etsu? What if they end up hating me like she hates her own mother?_

"I know it's shocking," she tried to smile to take the sting out of what she was about to say, ignoring the selfishness and guilt spearing her, "but it's either that-"

Sayuri's eyes widened.

"-or the complete cancelation of all future contracts. If all of Japan were to find out about the abrupt removal of my company from yours, all businesses with Sakoi Exports would be jeopordized."

_She knows it's true., _Yuzuha understood that it was condescending of her to use her family name in such a way_._ She tried to see it as a 'good thing'. In a way she was sparing Etsu of the verbal and physical abuse, while... she got some closure in somehow paying for trying to do the same to her boys by killing them in life by keeping them apart.

"Why...? I don't understand!" Sayuri blinked rapidly. "I've just told you what she's like and you still want to bring her to your house?"

Wincing at that, since in some way Sayuri was making it sound as if she were crazy, Yuzuha held up a hand, "I _know _that its sudden, but this might help the both of you in the long run-"

"How? How can that help? You have no idea what's she's like when she's in a vengeful mood! She can be dangerous!"

_She makes this poor girl sound like a demon., _Closing her eyes, she pushed aside what Sayuri had just said. After seeing how the woman had easily lied to her about how wonderful her daughter was, only to tell her weeks later what a _monster _she was, didn't exactly make her believe _everything _she said.

_I don't think her sister's death is the only thing that has to do with Etsu's bad attitude. _Sayuri _has half of the blame for it._

"I wasn't kidding when I said that I would cancel all future contracts and pass on the word," keeping her tone hard, Yuzuha felt herself cold even if the icy commanding voice was her own.

A steely silence followed her words.

_Say something!, _She felt like an intruder, attempting to kill two birds with one stone when no one asked her to. It wasn't her place, it wasn't her problem... But it was similar and though unrelated, too personal for her to forget about.

"Fine...," her heart sped, "Etsu... may stay with you until we can... _mend _our differences."

Opening her eyes, it felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted off her chest at Sayuri's reluctant agreement.

* * *

><p>I apologize for how the chapter turned out but I was listening to EpicaDisturbed/Stabbing Westward/30 Seconds To Mars throughtout the writing of this chapter and music greatly influences my writing. (plus something is seriously wrong with my account. One time it changed my password and settings and in others it deleted uploaded chapters on its own. Either someone is hacking or the site needs some serious mentaining)

Also...Thanks to everyone that took the time to review, favorite and alert this! And for those that also read and reviewed the uncensored versions as well! Hugs and kisses to all of you! *throws confetti* Yes, I'm a peppy person (when I'm not in one of my Authoress Rants).

At** LOL101**, sorry! My stories tend to have a lot of 'mini plots' in them and this is one of them, but never fear! Sometimes I make things seem worser than normal, only to make it not so bad. (I'm weird like that. Heheh)


	13. Must Read!

Sorry for taking so long you guys, but I'm going to start updating my older Bleach fics.

'Salvation' was published on January 11th of 2011 and has been on hiatus for 6 months on AFF, so before anyone jumps the gun _that _fic has been in very desperate need of attention for quite awhile. I posted a 'censored' version of it on here when I first upload 'The Solitary Twin' so if the kids that bypass warnings and M-ratings that want to read it without a full-on lemon can stick to the version in this site.

That doesn't mean that I've abandoned this story. Even if I go on hiatus, I always go back to my stories to finish them.

If people are interested on the fic that I'm going to update, let me tell you that like all of my stories... it's loaded with sex (the version here had to be modified because _once again _little kids didn't read the summary and A/N in the first chapter stating that it was a MATURE fic. I really wish kids stopped going to stories that warn them off, but it can't be helped I guess. *shrugs*) The uncensored version of 'Salvation' is on AFF just like uncensored version of 'The Solitary Twin'. All you have to do is pass the age verification page (and I DO SINCERELY HOPE the people reading the uncensored versions are adults or mature minded individuals that live in areas that do allow them to read adult content!) in order to read the full originals without any cuts or confusing blanks spaces. I'll admit to being more active at AFF because it is the first site to see my stories published (and the people there are awesome!).

If none of you have had the opportunity to watch the anime Bleach, I'll put links to episodes on my profile. (its good if you're into shounen/adventure/action/fantasy). I only hand out links to anime when I go on hiatus and it seems to help because when I started 'The Solitary Twin' some of my old reviewers from my Bleach fics watched OHSHC and followed it.

The pairing in 'Salvation' are Ichigo and Tatsuki and those two aren't hard to miss in the first couple of episodes, so you won't have to go for long wondering who's who, though if you haven't watched the whole series there might be some minor spoilers in the fic.

Anyways, on the meanwhile, while I'm finishing 'Salvation' you guys (if you want) can leave suggestion for 'The Solitary Twin'. Readers on Aff have helped me shape fics by telling me things they wish to see in the story and I do take suggestions (just not all of them because some reviewers that have hate for a particular character usually say something stupid like 'kill the bitch off!' or 'Make her/him suffer!' or ask for countless random sex scenes that don't fit into the storyline. LOL)

Hope to hear from you guys soon and so sorry for the inconvenience!

Miriam aka Mirrors

PS: I've also got a POLL on my profile regarding my next course of action when it comes to future work. So if you're a member and want to vote, do so NOW! =)


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