── ✧《✩》✧ ──

I'm okay with anything as
long as it doesn't harm me."
- Kyouya Ootori

── ✧《✩》✧ ──

It was the best day, the twins had dyed their hairs back to their original ginger color. It was hot, dad and Haruhi worked together to make my fever lunch. Most importantly, I had a lot of unexpected energy souring through me.

Haru and I walked down the hallway to greet the host club. We even got there early. We got into our usual spots, awaiting the ladies to arrive when the doors slammed open.

"Damn, those doors are expensive" I joked as it almost left a dent in the walls.

A small boy scanned us, sputtering out confused nonsense.

Man.  Always some BS happens here.

Hikaru dropped his pose, "What? A kid?"

"On top of that, a boy."

"He could be our brother." I joked to Haruhi, he had the same brown hair that we did. He was short, probably a bit taller than Honey senpai. He was wearing a green uniform middle schooler? No elementary?

"What's wrong, little lost one? What brings you here to my palace?" Tamaki takes a few steps towards the kid. In return, the kid backs up.

"Y-You're the king here?" He eyed Tamaki.

"Yes, now. Come forward, little lost one." Tamaki managed to convince the kid to approach the host club. "What did you call me just now?"

"King..?"

"Ohh, king! That's right. I'm this Host Club's king!"

I rolled my eyes, "Don't let a nine year old boost your ego, Senpai!"

"Shirou I'm from elementary school class 5-A, Takaouji Shirou! I am here to ask the Host Club King to take me on as an apprentice!"

The kid introduced himself and listed his demands. Expecting us to coaporate with a kid half our size. Everyone was in favor of this little kid joining the club"except for me.

But it's his grave and he can lay in it.

It's been only a few minutes into the Host Club actually being open and the elementary student looked uncomfortable.

Scratch that, he looked like he was going to have a heart attack.

He observed each of the club members at their tables. Observing the interactions very closely.

"Isn't it difficult if he lets him observe from that distance?" My sister asked Kyouya and I.

"He's always been a strong advocate of the saying that people are perceived to be more beautiful the closer they are viewed. Anyway, just leave them be." He explained.

"Are we sure that Tamaki is the best person he should start off with?" I asked.

"Oh sure, give him to the twins." He smirked at me.

"Okay you've got a point" I sighed. I hate that Kyouya actually understands my sarcasm.

"O, naughty person who let me taste the forbidden fruit." Tamaki sung. We tuned into his conversation with a customer. "You are like a mermaid princess who has brought me light unto a sea called solitude."

"Me, a mermaid princess?" She blushed.

Shirou scoffed, taking a good look at her. "Heck, you actually look more like the carp in my pond. I'm not going to give compliments that are this blatant."

"C-Carp?"

This actually causes the lady to cry.

"Ahh, it's just a kid saying this. You know, kids are frank." Tamaki tried to do damage control.

"Frank!"

"Ahh, but that doesn't mean you are a carp. Even if you are a carp, you're a beautiful ca --"

"So I am a carp!"

"N-No, that's not what I—!"

"T-Tamaki-kun, you idiot!" She gets up, tears in her eyes as she run away from Tamaki.

"Wait, my mermaid princess!"

"Quit crying, crybaby." Shirou said.

He leaves Tamaki stumbling and muttering. He walks over to the twins and just hearing Hikaru call Kaoru "a cute baby brother" made him throw up.

"Ah! Lovers! And they're twins!" The kid clutched his heart. "So this is the so-called kumquat yokan!"

"You mean incest? No need to be all fancy" I called out to him.

Honey decides to tackle Shirou in a hug. "Shirou-chan! Shirou-chan! Want to eat cake together? So I got a chocolate one and a strawberry one!"

"Ugh! Get off!" Shirou pushes Honey away. "What grade are you in? Why are you wearing a high school student's uniform?!"

Mori quickly steps in as honey climbs his cousin. "What's wrong, Mitsukuni?"

"Ahh! Not fair! You got this old of a buddy!"

This is when Shirou backs away from Honey and Mori but bumps into Haruhi.

My sister, being the empathic that she is, crouched down to the startled boy. "What's the matter? Ahh, you're surprised because of all the weirdos here? I also had a hard time understanding the atmosphere here and was quite confused at first."

Shiro takes one look at Haruhi and I. Back and forth. He asks, "Are you and that one twin crossdressers?"

The club members freezes. Tamaki and the twins think fast. Tamaki runs over to Shirou and covers his eyes with his hand.

Tamaki coughed, "Ahh, we'll take care of things here, so could you bring tea around?"

Hikaru leaned into the kid, "Haruhi and Y/n are really manly!"

"Okay, manly Haruhi, let Shirou take care of the tea set. This is part of his training." Kaoru pointed at me.

Shirou fights Tamaki and moves his hand from covering his eyes.

"You sure..?" I started.

"t's heavy." Haruhi finished.

"He has to see how manly this job is."

"Well, it's heavy, so be careful, okay?" I shrugged my shoulder and hands the tea set off to Shirou, but he drops it immediately.

He panicked, "T-This isn't my fault, okay? It's your fault for making me do this!"

"Y/n and Haruhi, you're down another 100,000 yen." Kyouya tisked.

"What?!"

"What the fuck!"

Shirou, still crossed, shouted. "Hey, let the twin crossdressers do the trivial chores! They're probably in love too! Ones an idiot and the other is dying! I don't know why you ever let someone so sick touch me! Instead, hurry up and teach me how to please women already!"

"What's with your attitude?" Tamaki scowled, "On top of that, I can't forgive you for talking so rudely to the twins. Quarantine this scoundrel!"

The twins were quick to salute him, "Yes, sir!"

They ran off and pulled A LEVER?!? OUT OF NOWHERE??? A metal cage falls down over Shirou.  Almost slicing off his lower half.

"What the hell is this?!" The boy, rightfully so, cries out. "What did a steel cage drop on me?!"

"No, yeah, really, why?" Haruhi asked.

"This is the music room, right? Why the fuck do you have it in here?"

"Damn it! Let me out, let me out! Is this something you do to your cute little apprentice?!"

Tamaki scolded him, "Stay in there until you're calmer. I made you my apprentice since you really wanted to be a host, but I guess I was wrong about you."

"No! I'm serious. Really totally serious!"

"Hmm"

"I want to be a host, too!" Shirou sobs and falls to his knees. "I don't have much time left. Teach me!"

"Huh?"

"You like girls! You like to see girls happy! That's why you're a host, right? I beg you, please teach me! You're a genius at this, right, King?!"

Tamaki stopped walking away, sighing. "Ah, Well, you may be impertinent, but your desire to become a host seems to be sincere. Plus, you somewhat resemble me."

Haruhi turned to me, "Poor boy"

"This could be considered child abuse"

"Then you'll make me a host that can please girls?" He crawled up to the cage bars, meeting Tamaki in the eye.

"Someone who cannot please ladies cannot be called a host. Very well. If you're willing to go that far, then think about how to make good use of your qualities."

"Qualities?" He asked.

Kyouya eagerly explained, "Our Ouran Host Club makes use of our individual features and answers our customers' needs as our basic strategy." He pushed all of us up into a line as the cage lifted.

"What do you mean?" He walked closer to us.

Kyouya walked down the line and introduced each of us to the kid. Us having to hit certain positions.

"Starting with the prince type, Tamaki, we have the wild type, the loli-shota type, the little devil type, and the cool type, among the many variations we pride ourselves on. Then, the twin honor students. Not to confuse you with the ginger twins, tbey are entirely different to eachother with wild polar opposite personality types. You have the natural rookie, Haruhi, and her sister Y/N, the chaotic child."

"I'm the natural type?" Haruhi asked me.

"No you're the wild child." I rolled my eyes at my sister.

"I think we act and look pretty similar to eachother other than our hair lengths and some minor things."

"We should totally pull a prank like what the twins did."

"Ahem. Gentlemen, if I may continue." Kyouya glared at us. "So our formation is now pretty much perfect. I wonder if we will find more types."

Shirou paused before asking, "Ahh, which am I..?"

"Age-wise, it'd be the shota type" the twins chimed together, "but then he'll overlap with Honey-senpai."

Honey cried, "Wahhh! Am I a nuisance already?"

"Not good enough! Not good enough, I say!" Oh my fucking god. Of course she's here.

Renge appears on her platform. Slowly rising up from the ground...where I have no idea.

Haruhi tried circling back to our joke about this place actually being a music room.

Renge, with the help of Tamaki, jumped off her pedestal. "I didn't know you Host Club members were this poor at analyzing characters. I'm quite disappointed."

"Well then, Renge, how would you bring out his qualities? Honey-senpai already owns the shota-type department." Tamaki asked.

"And that's where you're not good enough! Listen to me! While it's true that we call girls who experience unexplainable throbbing at the sight of younger boys and babyfaces 'shotacon' lovers, this kind of categorization is rather sloppy, and different preferences require even more delicate categorizing. Yes, while Haninozuka-senpai is of the more royal road, the 'loli-shota' type, in that boy's case, the direction he should aim for has to be that of the naughty type!"

This conversation is so uncomfortable.

Shirou grinned. "Naughty type"

"The basics to being a naughty type, is that you must always wear half-trousers." Renge looks over Shirou's appearance. "Okay.  You must show your naughtiness with injuries on your knees and cheeks."

The twins helped draw fake scratches on Shirou's face and cover him in bandages.

"Run in a naughty way! Run recklessly!" He followed her instructions. "And make a spectacular fall there!" Shirou trips over a rope.

He cried, "Ahh!"

Renge quickly slid to his side. "Are you okay, little boy?"

"Ngh"

"Okay, and promptly say your line!"

"No, it's nothing."

"Ah! Perfect! It's perfect!"

"How wonderful. Your instructions are flawless, Renge-kun." Tamaki complimented the red head.

As everyone complimented the boy, his face twisted more and more. His cheeks flushed red and he looked extremely angry.

He outbursted, "Forget it already! There's no way she'd be happy with this!"

"Wait, who's 'she'?" I asked.

He didn't even let me finish before he ran off. Everyone called after him. However our cries fall deaf on his ears.

Renge put a hand on her cheek and sighed. "Young ones are not good enough yet, I guess. After all my coaching, he doesn't want to go on."

"We even gave him a lesson and he didn't like it. What a selfish kid." Tamaki waved his hands.

"People normally wouldn't like something like that. By the way, did you notice?" Haruhi explained:

I'm glad my sister and I shared the same brain. I continued, "Right. I wonder what he meant by 'not having much time left'."

"And he also mentioned 'she'."

Tamaki slowly smiled and clapped his hands. Next thing you knew we were outside of the elementary school building of Ouran Academy. I was dressed as middle schooler while Honey is dressed as a high schooler.

"Why did it end up like this?" I sulked. "I didn't agree to being put in a dress…"

In truth, it was Haruhi who was supposed to be in the dress. Butttttt, she opted out since she had to play dress up for the dance.

Touché sister.

"But it looks so cute on you, y/n! And it's the first time I've seen you all dolled up too!" He squealed. Grabbing onto my hand, we walked down the hallway. Honey was explaining to both me and the host club through a walkietalkies. "We have successfully infiltrated the building. This way, they'll see me as an elementary student, so it'll be fine, right, n/n-chan?"

"Man, this blows. I guess I do understand the logic of dressing up like an elementary student to even get into this stupid elementary school building. It fits better for you than me, Honey-senpai, but why do I have to dress up like a middle school student? I'm not even short."

We take a few turns in the abandoned afternoon school, all the children must have gone home by now.

I could hear Haruhi calling the twins and Tamaki creeps for just wanting to see me in a dress.

Nonetheless, we finally arrived at Shirou's classroom.

"This must be his classroom." Honey and I peered into the window. "I was also in this classroom when I was in elementary school."

"Nobody's in there."

We pushed open the doors and the rest of the club followed in suit.

"What?! Noone's here?" Tamaki sulked as the twins went to find their old desks.

Instead of focusing on the mission, everyone was too keen on doing a middle school reunion.

"Hold the fuck up. If you all are here, then what's the point of having us wear disguises and coming in here?"

"Because you guys look so cute." They chimed.

My face heated up, but Haruhi came over and fixed the shirt and skirt for me. "It is true, I remember you always put the skirt on backwards, you still do."

"It all looks the same."

"But she does have a point. Even if we've infiltrated the building, how are we supposed to find Shirou-kun?"

Kyouya points to a framed photo on the wall. "There's something interesting over here."

We all huddled around the photo.
It was of Shirou playing the piano with a small girl.

"It's Shirou-kun!" Haruhi cried.

"The classical music club, huh?"

"He seems pretty happy. This is the expression Shirou-kun smiles with, huh?"

We all slowly piled out of the classroom and started down the hallway. Looking into all the rooms to find the classical music club room.

When we finally found it, The Host Club looked through the window to see Shirou. We couldn't hear well but we learned the girls name was Hina. They sat on the piano together and played a song together over and over again before stopping at the same part.

We learned from another girl that there was no point in talking to Hina as she was moving soon.

Shirou spots us and sprints out of the club room. "What are you doing?! What are you doing here?!"

Tamaki looks at us and back at the kid before picking Shirou up and hoisting him over his shoulder.

I'm pretty sure kidnapping is illegal.

Shirou grunted and screamed to let him go. Tamaki just tells him to stop resisting. Hina watched as we take him away. We make it all the way to the club room where I eagerly changed out of this uniform into my own.

Shirou demanded. "What's the meaning of this, you stupid king?!"

"You're the stupid one!" Tamaki fired back.

"Huh?"

"You wanted me to teach you how to make girls happy? Don't make me laugh! You think we'll be able to answer you no matter how much you ask us? What you want to please isn't many unspecified girls, but only Kamishiro Hina… her and only her, right?!"

"Ah!"

"You're the only one that can find out how to make her happy. Listen, our job as hosts is to make girls happy. But for a girl that you personally love, you cannot approach her as a host. You can only approach her as a man! What you should aim for isn't a fully-initiated host!"

"Ah...king"

"...but a fully-initiated man, right?"

"It doesn't matter anymore... I don't have time left… I just wanted to watch her play the piano as much as I could.. so.."

"The practice piece just now. That's Mozart's sonata for a duet performance, right?"

Tamaki stands up away from the boy and pulls a curtain aside, revealing a grand piano.

"Was there a grand piano in this room before?" My sister turned to me.

"Well I guess this is a music room..."

"We don't have much time, take a seat." Tamaki sat at the piano. Determined to teach Shirou the remaining piece.

And, within a few hours, he managed to get it down packed. The club and I rushed the little boy to the girl. He called after her and together, they played the piano.

First just him, and then she tuned along.

We didn't dare interrupt, but we couldn't help but watch the two.

"We did something nice." Tamaki commented.

"A single-minded love, huh? Does that part of Shirou-kun resemble you?" I asked.

"...Yeah, absolutely."

── ✧《✩》✧ ──