[FIC] Ouran: A Gentlemanly Affair, Part One
I am finally, finally done with this. A week. STEPH, THIS IS STILL YOUR FAULT.
Also? Just a warning: this probably has a ton of Haruhi-OOC because I suck like a sucky thing at her POV. Also, Kyouya here is... milder than most.
A Gentlemanly Affair
Characters/Pairings: Tamaki/Kyouya, Haruhi, the Host Club, Tamaki’s family, unimportant OCs
Rating: PG
Words: 12,312
Summary: In which Tamaki is an English gentleman (of a sort), Haruhi is his daughter, an English young lady (again, of a sort). And Kyouya? Kyouya is a tourist who is forcibly dragged into their world by Tamaki. Haruhi narrates their meeting, and all of that happened next. For lady_stargazer's Victorian AU prompt here.
i; the throatwart and the water lily
When she first met Tamaki Suoh, she thought he was an angel.
One couldn’t blame her for it, truly, as it was winter, and the chill had dulled her senses. Her eyes were blurred by a mixture of grey snow (she had never seen white snow, just as she had never seen a clean blue sky) and tears. His hair was blond and overly bright, and his teeth and skin so white in a place where she was used to seeing black gaping holes instead of a mouth. She remembered that he was wearing a white tuxedo, with a white top-hat. It was memorable; everyone else was wearing black or grey and with umbrellas, but not he. The cloth was silk, that she could tell, and it was impeccably cut and spoke of wealth with just a look. ‘It is a dreadful waste,’ she remembered thinking grumpily, ‘that such beautiful white silk will be ruined by the snow and rain. How careless, but he is probably a noble, and I have seen no noble who cared for ‘trivial’ things as such.’
Her mother would be dreadfully upset if she had heard her thoughts, but she wouldn’t and she couldn’t tell her about it, so it was moot.
He turned to her, and she tensed, holding her knees to herself as she hid underneath the bridge. Greyish-green river water rushed past her, sending droplets into her face and clothes and she shivered at the cold. The angel (or was he a man?) squatted down to her, and his smile was brilliant. She looked up towards him, brows creased and folded like a handkerchief, and he leaned in closer. Backing up, she glared at him under matted bangs and he sighed.
“Little girl,” the angel said, voice low and soft and kind, “would you like to visit my house? There is food and a warm fire…”
She blinked, once twice thrice, at the suddenly offer. “Why?” she asked, tilting her head back to stare into his purple eyes. ‘Lavender’ meant ‘distrust and deceit’ in the language of flowers, she remembered her mother reading to her once, a large, red leather-bound book on her lap, feeling warmth in every word. She remembered the thick, cloying scent of the pressed flowers taped to the pages, roses, acacias, marigolds, lavenders. She remembered the small illustrations on every page, the vines of the ivy, the thorns of the rose, the soft petals of the hibiscus. The book was an heirloom, but they had taken it away and she hadn’t felt the warmth since, not even after three springs and summers of living alone.
The angel had lavender eyes, therefore he was no angel. He was a man. She felt oddly disappointed; she ought to have expected this, truly, for no angels would stop for a bedraggled, dirty child under a bridge on a downpour. Only men were silly enough to.
“Because my house is warm,” the stranger said, smiling genuinely, lopsidedly, “and you look cold.”
His smile was sincere and white; he was obviously a rich man, and she was cold. Her lips were bleeding; she could feel it when she pressed fingers to her bottom lip. The man reached down a hand, and she took it, staining white gloves. She gasped, staring at the damaged glove and pulling away, and said,
“I’m so sorry! I’ll pay for this, sir, please don’t send me to the workhouse-“
“Why would I send such a pretty little girl away?” the stranger was smiling, and she could detect no insincerity in his tone. “It’s just a pair of gloves, don’t worry about it. Come on, let’s get to the carriage.” he took her hand again, and she watch in morbid fascination and horror as the white glove turned grey and black under her touch.
The coachman gave the stranger an odd look when he led her into the carriage, and glared at her briefly when she seated herself on the expensive red leather seats. The cushion was soft, so soft that it sank down under her small weight. She pressed a hand against it and lifted it quickly, watching the imprint of her hand as it was framed by dirt.
It was oddly captivating to watch. Perhaps it was the stark difference between her brown-grey wool dress and the stranger’s white silk, or the dirt under her fingernails and her matted black hair in contrast to his clean, manicured fingernails and his bright blond, or perhaps she liked to make a difference in this strange man’s world, even though this was just a handprint on his leather seats.
Maybe she was just being childish and thinking far too much. This was what her father would say, anyway, and he would pinch her cheeks and smile at her. The carriage kept the draught out, and it felt fairly warm, but she was still cold, somehow. It was a cold that wasn’t on her skin, a cold that was indelible no matter how much she might rub her arms. She did not understand it, but she knew that it hurt, somewhat, especially when she thought of Father and Mother and Family.
She didn’t think of those often now; melancholia and sadness had no place in London’s streets, after all. Not when every beggar had a tragedy to tell, and every street child would live tragic lives. She could not compare, she knew, and she did not want to. Competitiveness was not for her, as all she needed was food and clean water and a roof above her head when it rained (or snowed, for the matter).
“We’re here,” the strange man announced, and she jumped slightly, suddenly aware of his eyes on her. She bit her lip and exited the carriage as carefully as she could, but she still fell, tumbling on the steps that were too high for her small, short legs.
She felt a hand wrapped around her waist as the man caught her before she could hit the ground, and she bit her lip, blushing as she found that she had dirtied his clothing again. The stranger smiled at her as he set her on the ground so gently that she wanted to laugh, but she didn’t, for that would be rude, and the coachman was watching her with sharp eagle eyes again, which made her feel so very uncomfortable.
Looking upwards, she gasped, a hand flying to her mouth (a lady, even a common lady, should never be so rude as to show her mouth to a gentleman, her mother had once said), The man’s words were misleading, for this was not a house, it was a mansion, and though she was poor street trash, she could still tell the difference.
She didn’t remember very much of what happened next, for she was busy trying to take in everything about the house at once. She knew, however, that she was hustled into a bath and her stained and torn dress taken from her. Her hair was cut and dumped into boiling water (she might have screamed here, but she was too busy staring at the ornate mosaic tiles and the claw-footed bathtub to focus much on the pain or her own reaction to it). The dirt underneath her fingernails was scraped out and her fingernails were ruthlessly cut until they were blunt. She was given clean clothes that were a little too big for her, but she didn’t mind and she didn’t care, because she now felt lighter than she had ever felt, even before her parents left.
It was the first time in four years that she had felt remotely like herself, and not like an animated doll, just walking through the motions of life in automaton.
She was pushed into a room, a beautiful room with windows from the ceiling to the floor, and saw the man sitting on the large dining table directly in the middle of the room. He grinned at her, a grin so wide that she wondered briefly, in a moment of silliness, whether or not it would split his face into two. But those thoughts were easily chased away when she realised that there was plates upon plates of food on the table, and the aromas of it were making her stomach growl. She hadn’t eaten in almost three days, but she resisted the urge to run, and stared at the man (not pleadingly as she would have before the wash and the new clothes).
He nodded and she took it as permission to dig in, and did.
The food was delicious, and she ate as much as she could. Though it was unnerving to eat when someone was staring at her, she found that she didn’t mind it so much that she could ignore her hunger. She sent an unintentional glare towards the man, and he chuckled, drawing back and eating his own (much smaller) share. She was relieved, but she didn’t show it, for it was hard to have facial expressions when one was stuffing as quickly as one could into one’s mouth.
“Little girl,” he said once the meal was finished and the maids had taken the plates away. “Do you want to stay here forever?”
“Huh?” she asked, blinking at the suddenly question. Fortunately, she did not choke on her water.
“I want to adopt you,” the man said, smiling that odd lopsided smile again. “Would to like to be my daughter?”
She swallowed, tilting her head to the side. It was surprising question, she admitted to herself, for not many nobles would care to have street trash for a daughter. But she was slowly learning that this man was unlike any noble that she might have known, for he was far kinder.
“But I don’t even know your name yet, sir,” she said honestly.
The man blinked, and then he threw his head back and laughed, so brightly that it could almost rival the sunlight shining from the windows. She turned her head away, thinking that he was laughing at her, and opened her mouth to apologise for the question. But he held up a hand, chuckles subsiding slowly.
“I apologise,” he said, and she could see him biting his lips to hold back his laughter. “I haven’t introduced myself yet, and here I was, asking you to be my daughter!” he shook his head, and she realised that he was laughing at himself and not at her, and she smiled in relief.
He stood up from his chair and gave her a small bow, still smiling, and said, “My name is Tamaki Suoh, my dear little lady. May I enquire about yours?”
“I don’t have one,” she said, quite honestly, “but I will accept being your daughter if you will accept having a nameless child.”
“Nonsense!” he cried, stepping forward quickly and gripping her shoulders. “It is almost a crime against God Himself that a beautiful girl like you has no name! You have agreed to be my daughter, child, and I shall give you a name.”
He pulled a chair towards him and whipped out a piece of paper and a pen. All of the sudden, he seemed to be filled with a sort of frenzied energy and she could only blink as she was swept up into it. He wrote furiously on the paper, getting ink on his hands somehow, before lifting his head up again.
“I shall call you Haruhi,” the strange man, no, Tamaki, said, smiling. The smile was bright, but it was a more subtle brightness, and she could see his satisfaction in it.
“What does that mean, sir?” she asked, cocking her head to the side. She had never heard of a name like that before, and it sounded strange and exotic on the man’s tongue.
“Call me father,” he ordered, flicking a finger across the tip of her nose. “Haruhi means ‘spring day’. I thought it to be rather fitting,” he pushed the paper towards her. “This is how it is written.”
There were three large squiggles on the paper, and below it, in a large, loopy handwriting, was ‘Haruhi’. She blinked at the squiggles, for they seemed to have nothing to do with her name, and pointed to it, “What is that, father?”
“It is a Japanese writing system, named hiragana. Your name is in Japanese, Haruhi, just like mine. Haru means ‘spring’, and ‘hi’ means ‘day’. ‘Haruhi’, together, means spring day, and it is a very apt name for you, don’t you think so?”
“But it is winter right now, sir, and spring is a month away,” she said, confused by his knotted logic.
He broke into a grin so bright that she was, for just a moment, almost afraid that it might blind her, “Winter is just a prelude to spring, is it not?” he tapped her lightly on the nose, and she scrunched it, eyes crossing as she tried to look at his finger. She exhaled explosively, and he laughed.
“And you are my spring sunshine, little Ha-ru-hi,” he laughed, loud and infectious, and she couldn’t help but smile back brightly. The cold was being chased away, and she was feeling warm again. Warmth from Tamaki’s, father’s, hand surrounding her small one, warmth from his laughter, warmth from the sunlight in the room and the warmth of his eyes. She felt clean inside out, and she laughed too.
Things would be fine now, she knew somehow. She had hit rock bottom, and now she was climbing back up to the top.
ii; the yellow acacia and the hellebore
This was what most people knew of Tamaki Suoh:
He was the only son of Elizabeth Dewing, and his father was Yuzuru Suoh. He was the half-blood, for his parents were a wealthy English lady and a foreign business man. He was the fruit of an affair, conceived out of wedlock. His father had left the family ever since Suoh was six years old, and his mother was ill, supposedly ‘recovering’ in a countryside cottage. He had an adopted daughter whom he had picked up from the street, a dirty girl who was no lady and who would never be. He was as charming as a Frenchman and just as welcome. He was overly-casual. He was no gentleman, no matter how hard he tried, and he tried too hard.
For most of the world, Tamaki Suoh had a single purpose: to be the subject of rumours, of gossip, of ridicule. They saw him as nothing else.
This was what Haruhi knew of her father:
Tamaki Suoh was a child born from two people who were deeply in love. His mother was a beautiful woman, with long, wavy blonde hair, dark blue eyes and a perpetual smile. Her voice was soft and low and lovely, especially when she sang underneath her breath as she played the piano, her long, slim fingers dancing across the ivory keys. She sang him to sleep every night when he was a child, and he had never forgotten her voice nor any or her lullabies. He had a rather selective memory like this; he would never forget the most important things in life, but yet the small, essential things, he tended to forget.
Tamaki’s father was not a business man. He was a Japanese noble, one whose bloodline could be traced back to the Imperial family, and one that any of the British nobility would kill for. He wasn’t one to brag about it, however, for it wasn’t really important to him; it was simply the unchangeable truth. His father was his father, nothing less and nothing more, and that was all that mattered to him. He had told Haruhi once, though, that he wanted to meet his father’s side of the family, just once.
His parents met in 1824 when his mother was betrothed to another man. Haruhi didn’t know when and where and how, as her father had never told her that, or he had, and she had forgotten. But it didn’t matter, for the conclusion was still the same: they met, and they fell in love.
It was a whirlwind romance; Tamaki had said, once, a dreamy smile on his lips. She had smiled indulgently then, feeling, not for the first time, that she was the parent and her father was the child. Tamaki was rather naïve in this way, she knew. His parents had fell in love, and there was a great scandal when she broke off her betrothal to the man she was supposed to marry and married Yuzuru instead.
The scandal grew to immense proportions when people found out that she was pregnant during her wedding day (a rushed, quiet affair with just the bride, the groom, the priest and the bride’s mother), which dragged the Dewing family name through the mud. But Elizabeth didn’t care, for she was a woman in love, and such things seemed so very trivial at the time.
The whole family moved to the Yorkshire after the wedding, where they lived until Tamaki was six years old. His father was called back by his family - his father was dying. That was when, Tamaki had said, voice low and almost melodramatic as always, everything had started to go wrong.
His maternal grandmother was apparent extremely displeased with her daughter’s choice of a husband and the state of the Dewing name. She had never spoken her thoughts out loud, for it was rude for a lady (and she was a lady) to go against the head of her house. Doing such a thing would only stain the family honour more, and so she refrained. But once her son-in-law had left and she was the head of the household once more, her rage ‘exploded like a volcano’, to directly quote Haruhi’s father.
The family was uprooted again, this time back towards London. Elizabeth was coerced, somehow, into writing a letter to her husband, telling him she was breaking off their relationship, and he was not to try to find her. She was forbidden to leave the house and every letter she wrote was read by her mother before it was allowed to be sent. Tamaki’s grandmother restarted the family business, and though the Dewing name had an indelible scar due to the incident, it was slowly rising back up the society again.
Elizabeth was heartbroken, and clung onto Tamaki as a lifeline and as a reminder of his father. She told him many, many stories about his father and of Japan, stories that Tamaki eventually told to Haruhi, who suspected that most of these stories were exaggerated or simply made-up, but she didn’t tell her father this, for who was it to say that the tales are untrue, after all? Her father was the one with the fascination with Japan, after all, and he was rather knowledgeable. Haruhi supposed that it came with how he placed his father on an incredibly high pedestal.
In Haruhi’s personal opinion, Elizabeth had spoiled him and overindulged him, and it was a wonder that he did not turn out to be an arrogant brute. Perhaps it was because he saw his mother slowly grew ill and lose her will to live, and he had never learnt to be selfish for his grandmother ruled the household with an iron fist, looking down on him as ‘that foreigner’s son’ and never accepting him as a ‘grandson’ or even ‘my daughter’s child’.
This was what Haruhi also knew of Tamaki Suoh:
He was far too kind, far too compassionate, for his own good.
His grandmother died two years after Haruhi was adopted of an illness she could not remember and her ‘uneducated tongue’ could not pronounce. There was a funeral, a quiet, solemn affair, and Tamaki was the only person who cried. His grandmother had taken his father away, had taken his mother’s health away, and she had refused to acknowledge him as her grandson even when she was in her deathbed.
And yet, he was the only person who visibly grieved for her. Not even his mother, who had sat, pale and silent, beside the coffin during the priest’s eulogy, had cried.
Haruhi had asked why.
“Does it really matter?” her father had said, dabbing at his tears with a handkerchief as he sniffed discretely. “She was family to me. Even though she decides not to think of me as her grandson, I think of her as my grandmother. Isn’t that reason enough to grief?”
There were certain times that Haruhi wondered if Tamaki was real, for he was too kind, too gentle and too dramatic. Sometimes she felt that he was more of a character in a play than a man, but this was not one of these times. Watching her father as his tears soaked the white silk handkerchief until it was grey, she smiled, feeling relief in her heart at the realisation that he was very, very real. He was not perfect, far from it, but it was his faults were what made him so real.
For the first, and certainly not the last, times in her life, she was so very glad that Tamaki was real and himself, and that he was her father. After all, if Tamaki was not ‘Tamaki’, then she wouldn’t be ‘Haruhi’, would she?
iii; the coreopsis arkansa and burgundy rose
The year was 1851 and the location was the Crystal Palace, England’s Queen Victoria’s gift to her husband, Prince Albert.
‘Only the royalty,’ Haruhi thought wryly as she exited from the coach, ignoring her father’s offered hand, ‘would think that a building would be a nice gift.’
They toured the Palace, and Haruhi marvelled silently at the high, domed ceilings and sheer amount of glass. She knew precisely why, now, that it was named the Crystal Palace. There was nothing except glass, reinforced by black grids of iron that managed to complement the glow instead of dulling it. There were technological marvels that she knew not the name of, huge, black machines that seemed to hum with some sort of strange, alien energy. There was a massive loom, the plaque in front of it boasting that it was an automaton, and Haruhi couldn’t help but worry slightly for the sake of the weavers when she saw it.
The sight of the sun when she exited the Palace was a relief. The high ceilings and the glass did nothing to alleviate the heat caught by the large amount of people crammed into a small exhibition room. In fact, Haruhi was sure that they have aggravated it, for greenhouses were made of glass, and the heat inside one was intense.
“Father, may we take a walk in the park?” she asked, fanning herself with a rather flimsy paper fan as she dabbing lightly at the sweat that had gathered on her face and neck. “The heat is killing me, and there is shade there.”
“Of course, that is a good idea,” Tamaki replied, smiling down at her as he pulled the brim of his top-hat lower. He took off his gloves and stuff them in his pocket, and waited for her to start walking before he followed, wiping his forehead and head.
They had entered the park located right next to the Palace and had just seated themselves under the shade when Haruhi heard a voice, growing louder as the owner walked towards their direction.
“Hikaru to Kaoru wa doko da? Ware-ware wa…” It was the same language she had noticed her father speaking sometimes, but it sounded completely different somehow. Perhaps it was because when Tamaki spoke, it was in a halting tone, but this voice carried confidence, and Haruhi could tell that he was intimately familiar with the language.
She turned towards her father, opening her mouth to speak. He wasn’t there, and she only blinked once before her eyes followed blond hair as Tamaki strode over towards the direction of the voice. Her eyes widened, and she stood up hastily and followed, lifting the hems of her skirts as she did so.
“Ano…” her father was heading straight towards a group of three men, and Haruhi quickened her steps as he bowed towards them before speaking, “ano sa, gomen nasai, demo kimi-tachi wa Nihon-jin desu ka?”
“Your accent is atrocious,” one of the men said in clear, fluent and unaccented English. “And to answer your question: yes, we are Japanese. Why do you ask?”
Tamaki laughed sheepishly, “Ah, I’m sorry, but my Japanese is rather out of practice… But, really, you’re a Japanese?” here he leaned forward, grasping the man’s hands tightly. Haruhi’s eyes widened slightly in horror (she was, however, completely unsurprised, for she had came to expect such casual, and rude to most, behaviour from her father). “You are really Japanese?”
“Yes, I am quite authentic, I assure you,” the stranger said dryly, and she had the feeling that he was laughing at both of them - Tamaki for his behaviour, and Haruhi for her obvious helplessness. He did not seem to mind Tamaki’s hands on his wrists, though, for which Haruhi was relieved.
“Sir,” her father said, smiling earnestly as he leaned forward. His smile brightened even more, though how it had eluded Haruhi. “Sir, will you accept an invite to my house for tea? I profess to be truly interested in the Japanese culture and, well,” he shrugged, smile turning sheepish, “I have never seen any Japanese before, so…”
The stranger raised an eyebrow, “I see. I will accept your invitation, but on a single condition.”
“A condition?”
He nodded, his mouth set into such a firm line that Haruhi was sure that he was trying very hard not to laugh, but she didn’t blame him. Tamaki’s exuberance was sometimes like a puppy’s; hard to refuse, but rather amusing in some ways.
“I would like to know your names first, please,” he said, eyebrow still raised even as he chuckled softly into his hand.
“I’m so sorry!” he exclaimed, blinking in confusion before he raised a hand and rubbed at the back of his head in embarrassment and… Haruhi blinked.
Was that a blush?
“I’m Tamaki Suoh, and this,” he held out a hand towards her, and Haruhi took it to be her cue to curtsey. She managed not to wobble as she had, but since it had been over nine years since she had been adopted, this was surely expected. “This is my daughter, Haruhi Suoh.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” she lowered her head.
“Suoh?” the stranger said in a tone so odd that Haruhi jerked her head up, staring at him. But he simply shrugged as he returned Tamaki’s bow, “My name is Ohtori Kyouya… no, I suppose I should introduce myself as Kyouya Ohtori, no?” he smiled slightly, a side of his mouth quirking up in amusement. “Please to meet you, Suoh-san, Haruhi-san.”
He straightened himself and waved a hand towards his two companions, “And they are my friends, Haninozuka Mitsukuni,” the shorter, blond one nodded, smiling widely, “and Morinozuka Takashi,” the taller one inclined his head towards them.
“Pleased to meet you,” the two chorused. Morinozuka’s voice was low and soft, almost like the sound of a great bass, while Haninozuka was chirpy and high-pitched, like a flute’s.
‘What a strange pair,’ Haruhi thought idly as she curtseyed again and murmured her courtesies.
“Please hold on,” Ohtori told them, smiling congenially at her father before he turned towards his friends. He spoke in rapid-fire Japanese, so fast that Haruhi could catch nothing except certain words; ‘Hikaru’, ‘Kaoru’, ‘gaijin’ and ‘omoshiro’, in particular, and that were only because she had heard these words before.
Tamaki waited for him eagerly, almost bouncing as he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. He looked akin to a puppy that was waiting for his master to take him out for a walk, and Haruhi had to stifle a giggle at the sudden mental image that the comparison gave her. It was certainly a very suitable comparison.
Soon enough, Ohtori bided farewell to his friends and Tamaki hustled them all towards the coach, grinning widely all the while. They received a few odd stares due to her father’s enthusiasm, but Ohtori didn’t speak, and seemed to be contenting himself with watching Tamaki.
‘Children should be seen and not heard,’ her great-grandmother had reprimanded her once. She usually thought this piece of ‘advice’ to be old-fashioned, but it came in true usefulness sometimes, and this was such a time. She decided not to speak during the whole ride back to the manor, and tuned out the voices of both her father and Ohtori. She watched them silently, and they did not notice her gaze.
Ohtori was obviously affluent and, Haruhi supposed, he was attractive. She placed him in his late twenties to early thirties at the very most, in the same age range as her father. His black hair, so dark that it almost gleamed in the sunlight, was combed neatly. He had a pair on thin, wire-framed glasses seated on his nose, and when he tilted his head in a certain manner, the sunlight would glint off the glass, hiding intelligent grey eyes. His coat and trousers were starched and pressed, and there wasn’t a wrinkle to be found on his grey waistcoat either. A silver-topped black cane was held in his hands, and Haruhi was completely sure that it was simply for the effect, for Ohtori did not look like he needed the cane for anything else.
Except for his pale skin and slanted eyes, he seemed very much like a normal Victorian gentleman and not like Japanese or a foreigner at all. But Haruhi knew that physical appearances are deceiving. Living with Tamaki for years had taught her this, at least.
There was a lilting, somewhat musical rhythm to Ohtori’s words, as if he was used to speaking another, more harmonious, language. He was also constantly, discretely, shifting his position on his seat, and Haruhi could tell that he was much more used to sitting in another, very different, position than this. It was the little things, more than his physical appearance or his knowledge of the Japanese culture and language, which convinced her that he was indeed a foreigner and not a con-man who had decided to take advantage of her father’s fascination.
She shifted her gaze to Tamaki, and her eyes widened.
He looked happier and more animated than he had ever looked in this past year. Her father was not made for the strict societal rules of the Victorian society, and living in England was obviously chafing him. Haruhi knew that he was constantly suppressing his wanderlust and his need to visit Japan, and that he was growing sick and tired of the various hypocrisies of the Victorian court. But he couldn’t leave England for Japan, and now…
Well, she could say that Japan had come to him, but she thought that was just a part of it. There was more, but what this ‘more’ was, she couldn’t tell. Not yet, anyway.
Tamaki’s eyes were animated as he spoke, hands waving around haphazardly, but he managed not to smack Ohtori in the face with them, so she remained silent. His eyes had a strange sort of glow to them when he was excited about a new prospect; the purple darkened to violet, and they lit up, almost like candles. How this was possible, Haruhi didn’t know, and she didn’t care enough to find out. There were certain mysteries about her father that she need not know.
Tamaki looked alive again, expression open instead of closed, and he was wearing his heart on his sleeve proudly once more. It relieved her more than anything to see his emotions almost literally flowed from him, for he had been trying to hide them for the past year, and it was truly unhealthy for him.
‘Well,’ she thought, leaning back to her seat with a small smile, ‘this trip wasn’t the waste that I had thought it would be, after all.’
iv; the oats and the purple lilac
Haruhi didn’t know just how exactly Tamaki had managed to convince Kyouya-san to play the biwa to accompany the piano, but he had managed to do it, and here they were now.
It was three months after they had first met Kyouya-san, and he was staying at a guestroom here in the manor. Haruhi had no idea how her father had managed that either, for Kyouya-san was usually too polite, and she knew that he despised charity.
Quite obviously, Tamaki was a force of nature that couldn’t be ignored even by the most stoic of men. Mori-san was the proof of this.
Tamaki was seated behind the piano, his hands resting on the ivory keys as he watched Kyouya tested his biwa. The Japanese instrument reminded her somewhat of a cello, but it was very different at the same time. The biwa had four frets (if that was what they were called, Haruhi wasn’t sure), and four strings. The most obvious difference, however, was in the elaborately carved back. She could clearly see a phoenix, which was the representation of Kyouya-san’s family name, and thorny vines climbing up its sides. The engraving were coloured with a whole palette of colours, and it was so beautiful that it took Haruhi’s breath away. How much it had cost, she wondered mentally, to make something this gorgeous?
“This is called a ‘Satsuma biwa’,” Kyouya-san had explained, voice low as he strung it with careful hands. “I’ve had it since young. It is an old friend of mine…” his voice trailed off, and he smiled a soft, gentle smile. It was oddly uncharacteristic for him, and Haruhi couldn’t help but wonder if there was a story behind that smile.
He seated himself on a high-back chair, and nodded to Tamaki. They started to play.
Haruhi gasped, and her hand flew involuntarily to her mouth as she listened. The melody they played was something that was almost impossible to describe and she, for one of the very few times in her life, was speechless. It was the soft press of the piano keys against the low thrumming of the biwa strings, something that looked so simple that they were no recognisable beat, no obvious rhythm, but it was so much more than that. It was… it was…
It was a haunting song, like a half-forgotten memory that you dreamt about and have forgotten the next day. It was like a lullaby that your mother had sang to you when you were a child, and that you found yourself humming for no discernable reason. It was something like an ‘I love you’ that had went unheard. It was something of all those combined, mixed together and stirred to form a song that tugged at her relentlessly, and she found herself afloat being pulled involuntarily by the tune.
Her vision blurred, and Haruhi felt the tears in her eyes overspill down to her cheeks. She wiped them away, half-confused, for it wasn’t a sad song. It was melancholic, wistful, and it spoke to her of everything that should not be left unspoken, but was. It honestly wasn’t something she would cry about. This was completely unlike her.
But she lifted her eyes and wiped them, clearing away the tears, and she smiled to see her father and Kyouya-san looking in each other’s eyes. Tamaki was smiling, a barely noticeable lifting of his lips that was so completely different from any other smile Haruhi had seen. And Kyouya-san was smiling back too, a crooked smile, and she could sense, somehow, that they had found something they never realised they had lost.
Haruhi smiled and caught Hani-san’s eyes, and he nodded to her, his grin a subdued version of its usual brightness. Mori-san did not turn to her, and his eyes remained glued to the pair playing, but Haruhi fancied that she could see the tears in his eyes as he listened. The music continued, rising to its crescendo and she turned to gaze upon the players again.
‘When,’ she wondered as she watched them, ‘will Father notice?’
Only Time will tell.
Part Two
Also? Just a warning: this probably has a ton of Haruhi-OOC because I suck like a sucky thing at her POV. Also, Kyouya here is... milder than most.
A Gentlemanly Affair
Characters/Pairings: Tamaki/Kyouya, Haruhi, the Host Club, Tamaki’s family, unimportant OCs
Rating: PG
Words: 12,312
Summary: In which Tamaki is an English gentleman (of a sort), Haruhi is his daughter, an English young lady (again, of a sort). And Kyouya? Kyouya is a tourist who is forcibly dragged into their world by Tamaki. Haruhi narrates their meeting, and all of that happened next. For lady_stargazer's Victorian AU prompt here.
i; the throatwart and the water lily
When she first met Tamaki Suoh, she thought he was an angel.
One couldn’t blame her for it, truly, as it was winter, and the chill had dulled her senses. Her eyes were blurred by a mixture of grey snow (she had never seen white snow, just as she had never seen a clean blue sky) and tears. His hair was blond and overly bright, and his teeth and skin so white in a place where she was used to seeing black gaping holes instead of a mouth. She remembered that he was wearing a white tuxedo, with a white top-hat. It was memorable; everyone else was wearing black or grey and with umbrellas, but not he. The cloth was silk, that she could tell, and it was impeccably cut and spoke of wealth with just a look. ‘It is a dreadful waste,’ she remembered thinking grumpily, ‘that such beautiful white silk will be ruined by the snow and rain. How careless, but he is probably a noble, and I have seen no noble who cared for ‘trivial’ things as such.’
Her mother would be dreadfully upset if she had heard her thoughts, but she wouldn’t and she couldn’t tell her about it, so it was moot.
He turned to her, and she tensed, holding her knees to herself as she hid underneath the bridge. Greyish-green river water rushed past her, sending droplets into her face and clothes and she shivered at the cold. The angel (or was he a man?) squatted down to her, and his smile was brilliant. She looked up towards him, brows creased and folded like a handkerchief, and he leaned in closer. Backing up, she glared at him under matted bangs and he sighed.
“Little girl,” the angel said, voice low and soft and kind, “would you like to visit my house? There is food and a warm fire…”
She blinked, once twice thrice, at the suddenly offer. “Why?” she asked, tilting her head back to stare into his purple eyes. ‘Lavender’ meant ‘distrust and deceit’ in the language of flowers, she remembered her mother reading to her once, a large, red leather-bound book on her lap, feeling warmth in every word. She remembered the thick, cloying scent of the pressed flowers taped to the pages, roses, acacias, marigolds, lavenders. She remembered the small illustrations on every page, the vines of the ivy, the thorns of the rose, the soft petals of the hibiscus. The book was an heirloom, but they had taken it away and she hadn’t felt the warmth since, not even after three springs and summers of living alone.
The angel had lavender eyes, therefore he was no angel. He was a man. She felt oddly disappointed; she ought to have expected this, truly, for no angels would stop for a bedraggled, dirty child under a bridge on a downpour. Only men were silly enough to.
“Because my house is warm,” the stranger said, smiling genuinely, lopsidedly, “and you look cold.”
His smile was sincere and white; he was obviously a rich man, and she was cold. Her lips were bleeding; she could feel it when she pressed fingers to her bottom lip. The man reached down a hand, and she took it, staining white gloves. She gasped, staring at the damaged glove and pulling away, and said,
“I’m so sorry! I’ll pay for this, sir, please don’t send me to the workhouse-“
“Why would I send such a pretty little girl away?” the stranger was smiling, and she could detect no insincerity in his tone. “It’s just a pair of gloves, don’t worry about it. Come on, let’s get to the carriage.” he took her hand again, and she watch in morbid fascination and horror as the white glove turned grey and black under her touch.
The coachman gave the stranger an odd look when he led her into the carriage, and glared at her briefly when she seated herself on the expensive red leather seats. The cushion was soft, so soft that it sank down under her small weight. She pressed a hand against it and lifted it quickly, watching the imprint of her hand as it was framed by dirt.
It was oddly captivating to watch. Perhaps it was the stark difference between her brown-grey wool dress and the stranger’s white silk, or the dirt under her fingernails and her matted black hair in contrast to his clean, manicured fingernails and his bright blond, or perhaps she liked to make a difference in this strange man’s world, even though this was just a handprint on his leather seats.
Maybe she was just being childish and thinking far too much. This was what her father would say, anyway, and he would pinch her cheeks and smile at her. The carriage kept the draught out, and it felt fairly warm, but she was still cold, somehow. It was a cold that wasn’t on her skin, a cold that was indelible no matter how much she might rub her arms. She did not understand it, but she knew that it hurt, somewhat, especially when she thought of Father and Mother and Family.
She didn’t think of those often now; melancholia and sadness had no place in London’s streets, after all. Not when every beggar had a tragedy to tell, and every street child would live tragic lives. She could not compare, she knew, and she did not want to. Competitiveness was not for her, as all she needed was food and clean water and a roof above her head when it rained (or snowed, for the matter).
“We’re here,” the strange man announced, and she jumped slightly, suddenly aware of his eyes on her. She bit her lip and exited the carriage as carefully as she could, but she still fell, tumbling on the steps that were too high for her small, short legs.
She felt a hand wrapped around her waist as the man caught her before she could hit the ground, and she bit her lip, blushing as she found that she had dirtied his clothing again. The stranger smiled at her as he set her on the ground so gently that she wanted to laugh, but she didn’t, for that would be rude, and the coachman was watching her with sharp eagle eyes again, which made her feel so very uncomfortable.
Looking upwards, she gasped, a hand flying to her mouth (a lady, even a common lady, should never be so rude as to show her mouth to a gentleman, her mother had once said), The man’s words were misleading, for this was not a house, it was a mansion, and though she was poor street trash, she could still tell the difference.
She didn’t remember very much of what happened next, for she was busy trying to take in everything about the house at once. She knew, however, that she was hustled into a bath and her stained and torn dress taken from her. Her hair was cut and dumped into boiling water (she might have screamed here, but she was too busy staring at the ornate mosaic tiles and the claw-footed bathtub to focus much on the pain or her own reaction to it). The dirt underneath her fingernails was scraped out and her fingernails were ruthlessly cut until they were blunt. She was given clean clothes that were a little too big for her, but she didn’t mind and she didn’t care, because she now felt lighter than she had ever felt, even before her parents left.
It was the first time in four years that she had felt remotely like herself, and not like an animated doll, just walking through the motions of life in automaton.
She was pushed into a room, a beautiful room with windows from the ceiling to the floor, and saw the man sitting on the large dining table directly in the middle of the room. He grinned at her, a grin so wide that she wondered briefly, in a moment of silliness, whether or not it would split his face into two. But those thoughts were easily chased away when she realised that there was plates upon plates of food on the table, and the aromas of it were making her stomach growl. She hadn’t eaten in almost three days, but she resisted the urge to run, and stared at the man (not pleadingly as she would have before the wash and the new clothes).
He nodded and she took it as permission to dig in, and did.
The food was delicious, and she ate as much as she could. Though it was unnerving to eat when someone was staring at her, she found that she didn’t mind it so much that she could ignore her hunger. She sent an unintentional glare towards the man, and he chuckled, drawing back and eating his own (much smaller) share. She was relieved, but she didn’t show it, for it was hard to have facial expressions when one was stuffing as quickly as one could into one’s mouth.
“Little girl,” he said once the meal was finished and the maids had taken the plates away. “Do you want to stay here forever?”
“Huh?” she asked, blinking at the suddenly question. Fortunately, she did not choke on her water.
“I want to adopt you,” the man said, smiling that odd lopsided smile again. “Would to like to be my daughter?”
She swallowed, tilting her head to the side. It was surprising question, she admitted to herself, for not many nobles would care to have street trash for a daughter. But she was slowly learning that this man was unlike any noble that she might have known, for he was far kinder.
“But I don’t even know your name yet, sir,” she said honestly.
The man blinked, and then he threw his head back and laughed, so brightly that it could almost rival the sunlight shining from the windows. She turned her head away, thinking that he was laughing at her, and opened her mouth to apologise for the question. But he held up a hand, chuckles subsiding slowly.
“I apologise,” he said, and she could see him biting his lips to hold back his laughter. “I haven’t introduced myself yet, and here I was, asking you to be my daughter!” he shook his head, and she realised that he was laughing at himself and not at her, and she smiled in relief.
He stood up from his chair and gave her a small bow, still smiling, and said, “My name is Tamaki Suoh, my dear little lady. May I enquire about yours?”
“I don’t have one,” she said, quite honestly, “but I will accept being your daughter if you will accept having a nameless child.”
“Nonsense!” he cried, stepping forward quickly and gripping her shoulders. “It is almost a crime against God Himself that a beautiful girl like you has no name! You have agreed to be my daughter, child, and I shall give you a name.”
He pulled a chair towards him and whipped out a piece of paper and a pen. All of the sudden, he seemed to be filled with a sort of frenzied energy and she could only blink as she was swept up into it. He wrote furiously on the paper, getting ink on his hands somehow, before lifting his head up again.
“I shall call you Haruhi,” the strange man, no, Tamaki, said, smiling. The smile was bright, but it was a more subtle brightness, and she could see his satisfaction in it.
“What does that mean, sir?” she asked, cocking her head to the side. She had never heard of a name like that before, and it sounded strange and exotic on the man’s tongue.
“Call me father,” he ordered, flicking a finger across the tip of her nose. “Haruhi means ‘spring day’. I thought it to be rather fitting,” he pushed the paper towards her. “This is how it is written.”
There were three large squiggles on the paper, and below it, in a large, loopy handwriting, was ‘Haruhi’. She blinked at the squiggles, for they seemed to have nothing to do with her name, and pointed to it, “What is that, father?”
“It is a Japanese writing system, named hiragana. Your name is in Japanese, Haruhi, just like mine. Haru means ‘spring’, and ‘hi’ means ‘day’. ‘Haruhi’, together, means spring day, and it is a very apt name for you, don’t you think so?”
“But it is winter right now, sir, and spring is a month away,” she said, confused by his knotted logic.
He broke into a grin so bright that she was, for just a moment, almost afraid that it might blind her, “Winter is just a prelude to spring, is it not?” he tapped her lightly on the nose, and she scrunched it, eyes crossing as she tried to look at his finger. She exhaled explosively, and he laughed.
“And you are my spring sunshine, little Ha-ru-hi,” he laughed, loud and infectious, and she couldn’t help but smile back brightly. The cold was being chased away, and she was feeling warm again. Warmth from Tamaki’s, father’s, hand surrounding her small one, warmth from his laughter, warmth from the sunlight in the room and the warmth of his eyes. She felt clean inside out, and she laughed too.
Things would be fine now, she knew somehow. She had hit rock bottom, and now she was climbing back up to the top.
ii; the yellow acacia and the hellebore
This was what most people knew of Tamaki Suoh:
He was the only son of Elizabeth Dewing, and his father was Yuzuru Suoh. He was the half-blood, for his parents were a wealthy English lady and a foreign business man. He was the fruit of an affair, conceived out of wedlock. His father had left the family ever since Suoh was six years old, and his mother was ill, supposedly ‘recovering’ in a countryside cottage. He had an adopted daughter whom he had picked up from the street, a dirty girl who was no lady and who would never be. He was as charming as a Frenchman and just as welcome. He was overly-casual. He was no gentleman, no matter how hard he tried, and he tried too hard.
For most of the world, Tamaki Suoh had a single purpose: to be the subject of rumours, of gossip, of ridicule. They saw him as nothing else.
This was what Haruhi knew of her father:
Tamaki Suoh was a child born from two people who were deeply in love. His mother was a beautiful woman, with long, wavy blonde hair, dark blue eyes and a perpetual smile. Her voice was soft and low and lovely, especially when she sang underneath her breath as she played the piano, her long, slim fingers dancing across the ivory keys. She sang him to sleep every night when he was a child, and he had never forgotten her voice nor any or her lullabies. He had a rather selective memory like this; he would never forget the most important things in life, but yet the small, essential things, he tended to forget.
Tamaki’s father was not a business man. He was a Japanese noble, one whose bloodline could be traced back to the Imperial family, and one that any of the British nobility would kill for. He wasn’t one to brag about it, however, for it wasn’t really important to him; it was simply the unchangeable truth. His father was his father, nothing less and nothing more, and that was all that mattered to him. He had told Haruhi once, though, that he wanted to meet his father’s side of the family, just once.
His parents met in 1824 when his mother was betrothed to another man. Haruhi didn’t know when and where and how, as her father had never told her that, or he had, and she had forgotten. But it didn’t matter, for the conclusion was still the same: they met, and they fell in love.
It was a whirlwind romance; Tamaki had said, once, a dreamy smile on his lips. She had smiled indulgently then, feeling, not for the first time, that she was the parent and her father was the child. Tamaki was rather naïve in this way, she knew. His parents had fell in love, and there was a great scandal when she broke off her betrothal to the man she was supposed to marry and married Yuzuru instead.
The scandal grew to immense proportions when people found out that she was pregnant during her wedding day (a rushed, quiet affair with just the bride, the groom, the priest and the bride’s mother), which dragged the Dewing family name through the mud. But Elizabeth didn’t care, for she was a woman in love, and such things seemed so very trivial at the time.
The whole family moved to the Yorkshire after the wedding, where they lived until Tamaki was six years old. His father was called back by his family - his father was dying. That was when, Tamaki had said, voice low and almost melodramatic as always, everything had started to go wrong.
His maternal grandmother was apparent extremely displeased with her daughter’s choice of a husband and the state of the Dewing name. She had never spoken her thoughts out loud, for it was rude for a lady (and she was a lady) to go against the head of her house. Doing such a thing would only stain the family honour more, and so she refrained. But once her son-in-law had left and she was the head of the household once more, her rage ‘exploded like a volcano’, to directly quote Haruhi’s father.
The family was uprooted again, this time back towards London. Elizabeth was coerced, somehow, into writing a letter to her husband, telling him she was breaking off their relationship, and he was not to try to find her. She was forbidden to leave the house and every letter she wrote was read by her mother before it was allowed to be sent. Tamaki’s grandmother restarted the family business, and though the Dewing name had an indelible scar due to the incident, it was slowly rising back up the society again.
Elizabeth was heartbroken, and clung onto Tamaki as a lifeline and as a reminder of his father. She told him many, many stories about his father and of Japan, stories that Tamaki eventually told to Haruhi, who suspected that most of these stories were exaggerated or simply made-up, but she didn’t tell her father this, for who was it to say that the tales are untrue, after all? Her father was the one with the fascination with Japan, after all, and he was rather knowledgeable. Haruhi supposed that it came with how he placed his father on an incredibly high pedestal.
In Haruhi’s personal opinion, Elizabeth had spoiled him and overindulged him, and it was a wonder that he did not turn out to be an arrogant brute. Perhaps it was because he saw his mother slowly grew ill and lose her will to live, and he had never learnt to be selfish for his grandmother ruled the household with an iron fist, looking down on him as ‘that foreigner’s son’ and never accepting him as a ‘grandson’ or even ‘my daughter’s child’.
This was what Haruhi also knew of Tamaki Suoh:
He was far too kind, far too compassionate, for his own good.
His grandmother died two years after Haruhi was adopted of an illness she could not remember and her ‘uneducated tongue’ could not pronounce. There was a funeral, a quiet, solemn affair, and Tamaki was the only person who cried. His grandmother had taken his father away, had taken his mother’s health away, and she had refused to acknowledge him as her grandson even when she was in her deathbed.
And yet, he was the only person who visibly grieved for her. Not even his mother, who had sat, pale and silent, beside the coffin during the priest’s eulogy, had cried.
Haruhi had asked why.
“Does it really matter?” her father had said, dabbing at his tears with a handkerchief as he sniffed discretely. “She was family to me. Even though she decides not to think of me as her grandson, I think of her as my grandmother. Isn’t that reason enough to grief?”
There were certain times that Haruhi wondered if Tamaki was real, for he was too kind, too gentle and too dramatic. Sometimes she felt that he was more of a character in a play than a man, but this was not one of these times. Watching her father as his tears soaked the white silk handkerchief until it was grey, she smiled, feeling relief in her heart at the realisation that he was very, very real. He was not perfect, far from it, but it was his faults were what made him so real.
For the first, and certainly not the last, times in her life, she was so very glad that Tamaki was real and himself, and that he was her father. After all, if Tamaki was not ‘Tamaki’, then she wouldn’t be ‘Haruhi’, would she?
iii; the coreopsis arkansa and burgundy rose
The year was 1851 and the location was the Crystal Palace, England’s Queen Victoria’s gift to her husband, Prince Albert.
‘Only the royalty,’ Haruhi thought wryly as she exited from the coach, ignoring her father’s offered hand, ‘would think that a building would be a nice gift.’
They toured the Palace, and Haruhi marvelled silently at the high, domed ceilings and sheer amount of glass. She knew precisely why, now, that it was named the Crystal Palace. There was nothing except glass, reinforced by black grids of iron that managed to complement the glow instead of dulling it. There were technological marvels that she knew not the name of, huge, black machines that seemed to hum with some sort of strange, alien energy. There was a massive loom, the plaque in front of it boasting that it was an automaton, and Haruhi couldn’t help but worry slightly for the sake of the weavers when she saw it.
The sight of the sun when she exited the Palace was a relief. The high ceilings and the glass did nothing to alleviate the heat caught by the large amount of people crammed into a small exhibition room. In fact, Haruhi was sure that they have aggravated it, for greenhouses were made of glass, and the heat inside one was intense.
“Father, may we take a walk in the park?” she asked, fanning herself with a rather flimsy paper fan as she dabbing lightly at the sweat that had gathered on her face and neck. “The heat is killing me, and there is shade there.”
“Of course, that is a good idea,” Tamaki replied, smiling down at her as he pulled the brim of his top-hat lower. He took off his gloves and stuff them in his pocket, and waited for her to start walking before he followed, wiping his forehead and head.
They had entered the park located right next to the Palace and had just seated themselves under the shade when Haruhi heard a voice, growing louder as the owner walked towards their direction.
“Hikaru to Kaoru wa doko da? Ware-ware wa…” It was the same language she had noticed her father speaking sometimes, but it sounded completely different somehow. Perhaps it was because when Tamaki spoke, it was in a halting tone, but this voice carried confidence, and Haruhi could tell that he was intimately familiar with the language.
She turned towards her father, opening her mouth to speak. He wasn’t there, and she only blinked once before her eyes followed blond hair as Tamaki strode over towards the direction of the voice. Her eyes widened, and she stood up hastily and followed, lifting the hems of her skirts as she did so.
“Ano…” her father was heading straight towards a group of three men, and Haruhi quickened her steps as he bowed towards them before speaking, “ano sa, gomen nasai, demo kimi-tachi wa Nihon-jin desu ka?”
“Your accent is atrocious,” one of the men said in clear, fluent and unaccented English. “And to answer your question: yes, we are Japanese. Why do you ask?”
Tamaki laughed sheepishly, “Ah, I’m sorry, but my Japanese is rather out of practice… But, really, you’re a Japanese?” here he leaned forward, grasping the man’s hands tightly. Haruhi’s eyes widened slightly in horror (she was, however, completely unsurprised, for she had came to expect such casual, and rude to most, behaviour from her father). “You are really Japanese?”
“Yes, I am quite authentic, I assure you,” the stranger said dryly, and she had the feeling that he was laughing at both of them - Tamaki for his behaviour, and Haruhi for her obvious helplessness. He did not seem to mind Tamaki’s hands on his wrists, though, for which Haruhi was relieved.
“Sir,” her father said, smiling earnestly as he leaned forward. His smile brightened even more, though how it had eluded Haruhi. “Sir, will you accept an invite to my house for tea? I profess to be truly interested in the Japanese culture and, well,” he shrugged, smile turning sheepish, “I have never seen any Japanese before, so…”
The stranger raised an eyebrow, “I see. I will accept your invitation, but on a single condition.”
“A condition?”
He nodded, his mouth set into such a firm line that Haruhi was sure that he was trying very hard not to laugh, but she didn’t blame him. Tamaki’s exuberance was sometimes like a puppy’s; hard to refuse, but rather amusing in some ways.
“I would like to know your names first, please,” he said, eyebrow still raised even as he chuckled softly into his hand.
“I’m so sorry!” he exclaimed, blinking in confusion before he raised a hand and rubbed at the back of his head in embarrassment and… Haruhi blinked.
Was that a blush?
“I’m Tamaki Suoh, and this,” he held out a hand towards her, and Haruhi took it to be her cue to curtsey. She managed not to wobble as she had, but since it had been over nine years since she had been adopted, this was surely expected. “This is my daughter, Haruhi Suoh.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” she lowered her head.
“Suoh?” the stranger said in a tone so odd that Haruhi jerked her head up, staring at him. But he simply shrugged as he returned Tamaki’s bow, “My name is Ohtori Kyouya… no, I suppose I should introduce myself as Kyouya Ohtori, no?” he smiled slightly, a side of his mouth quirking up in amusement. “Please to meet you, Suoh-san, Haruhi-san.”
He straightened himself and waved a hand towards his two companions, “And they are my friends, Haninozuka Mitsukuni,” the shorter, blond one nodded, smiling widely, “and Morinozuka Takashi,” the taller one inclined his head towards them.
“Pleased to meet you,” the two chorused. Morinozuka’s voice was low and soft, almost like the sound of a great bass, while Haninozuka was chirpy and high-pitched, like a flute’s.
‘What a strange pair,’ Haruhi thought idly as she curtseyed again and murmured her courtesies.
“Please hold on,” Ohtori told them, smiling congenially at her father before he turned towards his friends. He spoke in rapid-fire Japanese, so fast that Haruhi could catch nothing except certain words; ‘Hikaru’, ‘Kaoru’, ‘gaijin’ and ‘omoshiro’, in particular, and that were only because she had heard these words before.
Tamaki waited for him eagerly, almost bouncing as he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. He looked akin to a puppy that was waiting for his master to take him out for a walk, and Haruhi had to stifle a giggle at the sudden mental image that the comparison gave her. It was certainly a very suitable comparison.
Soon enough, Ohtori bided farewell to his friends and Tamaki hustled them all towards the coach, grinning widely all the while. They received a few odd stares due to her father’s enthusiasm, but Ohtori didn’t speak, and seemed to be contenting himself with watching Tamaki.
‘Children should be seen and not heard,’ her great-grandmother had reprimanded her once. She usually thought this piece of ‘advice’ to be old-fashioned, but it came in true usefulness sometimes, and this was such a time. She decided not to speak during the whole ride back to the manor, and tuned out the voices of both her father and Ohtori. She watched them silently, and they did not notice her gaze.
Ohtori was obviously affluent and, Haruhi supposed, he was attractive. She placed him in his late twenties to early thirties at the very most, in the same age range as her father. His black hair, so dark that it almost gleamed in the sunlight, was combed neatly. He had a pair on thin, wire-framed glasses seated on his nose, and when he tilted his head in a certain manner, the sunlight would glint off the glass, hiding intelligent grey eyes. His coat and trousers were starched and pressed, and there wasn’t a wrinkle to be found on his grey waistcoat either. A silver-topped black cane was held in his hands, and Haruhi was completely sure that it was simply for the effect, for Ohtori did not look like he needed the cane for anything else.
Except for his pale skin and slanted eyes, he seemed very much like a normal Victorian gentleman and not like Japanese or a foreigner at all. But Haruhi knew that physical appearances are deceiving. Living with Tamaki for years had taught her this, at least.
There was a lilting, somewhat musical rhythm to Ohtori’s words, as if he was used to speaking another, more harmonious, language. He was also constantly, discretely, shifting his position on his seat, and Haruhi could tell that he was much more used to sitting in another, very different, position than this. It was the little things, more than his physical appearance or his knowledge of the Japanese culture and language, which convinced her that he was indeed a foreigner and not a con-man who had decided to take advantage of her father’s fascination.
She shifted her gaze to Tamaki, and her eyes widened.
He looked happier and more animated than he had ever looked in this past year. Her father was not made for the strict societal rules of the Victorian society, and living in England was obviously chafing him. Haruhi knew that he was constantly suppressing his wanderlust and his need to visit Japan, and that he was growing sick and tired of the various hypocrisies of the Victorian court. But he couldn’t leave England for Japan, and now…
Well, she could say that Japan had come to him, but she thought that was just a part of it. There was more, but what this ‘more’ was, she couldn’t tell. Not yet, anyway.
Tamaki’s eyes were animated as he spoke, hands waving around haphazardly, but he managed not to smack Ohtori in the face with them, so she remained silent. His eyes had a strange sort of glow to them when he was excited about a new prospect; the purple darkened to violet, and they lit up, almost like candles. How this was possible, Haruhi didn’t know, and she didn’t care enough to find out. There were certain mysteries about her father that she need not know.
Tamaki looked alive again, expression open instead of closed, and he was wearing his heart on his sleeve proudly once more. It relieved her more than anything to see his emotions almost literally flowed from him, for he had been trying to hide them for the past year, and it was truly unhealthy for him.
‘Well,’ she thought, leaning back to her seat with a small smile, ‘this trip wasn’t the waste that I had thought it would be, after all.’
iv; the oats and the purple lilac
Haruhi didn’t know just how exactly Tamaki had managed to convince Kyouya-san to play the biwa to accompany the piano, but he had managed to do it, and here they were now.
It was three months after they had first met Kyouya-san, and he was staying at a guestroom here in the manor. Haruhi had no idea how her father had managed that either, for Kyouya-san was usually too polite, and she knew that he despised charity.
Quite obviously, Tamaki was a force of nature that couldn’t be ignored even by the most stoic of men. Mori-san was the proof of this.
Tamaki was seated behind the piano, his hands resting on the ivory keys as he watched Kyouya tested his biwa. The Japanese instrument reminded her somewhat of a cello, but it was very different at the same time. The biwa had four frets (if that was what they were called, Haruhi wasn’t sure), and four strings. The most obvious difference, however, was in the elaborately carved back. She could clearly see a phoenix, which was the representation of Kyouya-san’s family name, and thorny vines climbing up its sides. The engraving were coloured with a whole palette of colours, and it was so beautiful that it took Haruhi’s breath away. How much it had cost, she wondered mentally, to make something this gorgeous?
“This is called a ‘Satsuma biwa’,” Kyouya-san had explained, voice low as he strung it with careful hands. “I’ve had it since young. It is an old friend of mine…” his voice trailed off, and he smiled a soft, gentle smile. It was oddly uncharacteristic for him, and Haruhi couldn’t help but wonder if there was a story behind that smile.
He seated himself on a high-back chair, and nodded to Tamaki. They started to play.
Haruhi gasped, and her hand flew involuntarily to her mouth as she listened. The melody they played was something that was almost impossible to describe and she, for one of the very few times in her life, was speechless. It was the soft press of the piano keys against the low thrumming of the biwa strings, something that looked so simple that they were no recognisable beat, no obvious rhythm, but it was so much more than that. It was… it was…
It was a haunting song, like a half-forgotten memory that you dreamt about and have forgotten the next day. It was like a lullaby that your mother had sang to you when you were a child, and that you found yourself humming for no discernable reason. It was something like an ‘I love you’ that had went unheard. It was something of all those combined, mixed together and stirred to form a song that tugged at her relentlessly, and she found herself afloat being pulled involuntarily by the tune.
Her vision blurred, and Haruhi felt the tears in her eyes overspill down to her cheeks. She wiped them away, half-confused, for it wasn’t a sad song. It was melancholic, wistful, and it spoke to her of everything that should not be left unspoken, but was. It honestly wasn’t something she would cry about. This was completely unlike her.
But she lifted her eyes and wiped them, clearing away the tears, and she smiled to see her father and Kyouya-san looking in each other’s eyes. Tamaki was smiling, a barely noticeable lifting of his lips that was so completely different from any other smile Haruhi had seen. And Kyouya-san was smiling back too, a crooked smile, and she could sense, somehow, that they had found something they never realised they had lost.
Haruhi smiled and caught Hani-san’s eyes, and he nodded to her, his grin a subdued version of its usual brightness. Mori-san did not turn to her, and his eyes remained glued to the pair playing, but Haruhi fancied that she could see the tears in his eyes as he listened. The music continued, rising to its crescendo and she turned to gaze upon the players again.
‘When,’ she wondered as she watched them, ‘will Father notice?’
Only Time will tell.
Part Two