Countdown
Countdown
rated PG
2540 words
Kyouya has seven years to wade through. (Written for avalonestel as part of a fairytale meme; her request being Kyouya and Snow White. <3)
WARNING: Spoilers for end of anime series.
Today, Kyouya wakes up like any other day. It’s too early in the morning - he’d been up late the night before, again - but with Tamaki’s announcement yesterday of club dissolution, even early might not be enough. He predicts more late nights and early mornings in the future. But... maybe less than before. Just maybe. If this works.
Today, Kyouya slides from his bed and stumbles into his washroom. Cold water on his face, wakes him in a way the twins’ ring tone invading his dreams off and on all morning had not. He dries his face, doesn’t look up.
Today, Kyouya doesn’t look in the mirror.
(Thirty-two minutes, twelve seconds. Eleven seconds. Ten. Nine...)
*
He has very few memories of his mother.
He liked to think of her at the fair, in that hallway with mirror after distorted mirror. He liked to picture the warmth of her hand around his as she tugged him deeper into the reflective maze. “Quickly, Kyouya,” she said in his mind. Dozens of Mother every way he looked. He was surrounded. He liked to think he was laughing with her, but he could never get the sound right.
Anyway, it wasn’t even a real memory.
*
It was one of the few times his father actually touched him. Long, thin fingers at his throat, and Kyouya wasn’t breathing because he knew the strength in those hands.
“Over, and then back around,” his father was saying, and Kyouya was listening, yes, but mostly he was watching those fingers flip the black fabric at his neck, folding and rearranging it to sit just so.
His father’s cologne was overwhelming. It was still fresh on his skin, so close to the hour of hosting. And he was bent so near Kyouya. He wanted to take in a breath but had to stand so very still, keep his throat unmoving.
“There.” The hands were gone, and Kyouya looked ahead, carefully meeting his father’s gaze in the mirror. “That’s how it’s done,” he said unnecessarily. Then his father’s hands were back, tugging the bow tie undone, leaving two dangling ends of black around his neck.
“Now you.”
This time it was only Kyouya’s fingers at his own throat, long and thin, but not so strong, no.
*
“Do you suppose it’s some sort of commoner ritual?” Tamaki asked. “Or, hm. I think maybe they don’t have enough time in the morning to properly groom themselves, and this saves them the time of getting from bed? Maybe they can’t afford many.” Then, as if the thought had come to him suddenly and possibly painfully, he gasped. “Kyouya, what if they can’t afford the wall space?”
Kyouya didn’t answer. Which was a good world apart from being unable to answer, naturally. Instead he tipped the manga in Tamaki’s hand over so he could see the cover.
Tamaki was not to be deterred. “Do you think Haruhi has one? Shall I ask her about it?”
“I don’t think it would be wise to ask if she had a mirror,” (one year, eight months, six-)
“above her bed, no,” Kyouya murmured. “Where did you get this anyway?”
He waited for Tamaki to say Renge, and felt the need to choke, just a little, when he said Kimiri-chan quite calm and dead panned.
“Ah.”
“You’d be able to watch yourself fall asleep, that’s a little strange... And I’d always be worried it would fall down on me. Still... If I put a mirror over my bed, would you put one over yours?”
“No, Tamaki.”
“But-“
“No.”
*
Kyouya was the one who chose the music room at two years, eleven months, one week, and three days. He would be praised, later, for his wise decision based on floor space and lighting and the small, fine details given to a room meant to be performed in. All of these things were well suited for a host club, and Kyouya recognised this.
But it was not why he chose it.
Back then, it had been because of the piano. The day after foolish Tamaki had been by his home, invading the Ohtori’s household to brush his fingers over ivory and bring unconscious tears to his brothers’ stubborn eyes.
Kyouya knew how to play the piano. But Tamaki knew how to play the piano. It wasn’t about reading notes and measures, rather it was more about something most would deem sentimental.
Kyouya knew the truth - it was about placing oneself into the music.
Tamaki could do it; lost in rhythm and tone, everything the boy was was placed into each individual note.
And the sleek Ouran piano, tucked away in that third room, reminded Kyouya that he must always, always, always put himself into everything he did.
Clipped, cold, perfect. Fingers on a set of keys, glasses glaring laptop glow, typing away.
*
There was a hallway in the Suoh’s second mansion that had multiple portraits of Tamaki. Tamaki would make comments about how handsome he looked, or didn’t the artist capture his genuineness or his poise or his exquisite attractiveness?
He was always trying to pick a portrait to put on the Other wall.
“Other?”
“The one in the first mansion. The line of Suohs. One day grandmother will add me there, you know. I just don’t know which one we should move... What do you think, Kyouya?”
(Two years, four months, three weeks, one day.)
Kyouya chose the one that had been photographed instead of painted. He told Tamaki the picture captured his true essence. Kyouya half-listened to a flailing tirade about demon twins taking photographs without permission and somehow placing their blown-up copies in his house, and this needed to come down now, and do you think anyone saw it? And Kyouya half-thought about the portraits in his own house, and his own unsmiling face in a row of two older brothers.
And he thought, where was his Other wall?
*
Somehow, leaving a copy of Western fairytales on Tamaki’s desk helped fuel the club’s activities for weeks. Tamaki was enthusiastic about any sort of roleplay - a book of cosplay fodder was more than enough encouragement for him. More than enough encouragement for everyone, really.
Hunni in particular was kept delighted over the properly scaled gingerbread, and Mori was kept busy running after him with toothbrush and paste.
“Revisonist, revisionist!” the twins had taken to shouting, whenever they could snatch Haruhi away from a true-love’s-kiss from Tamaki. (Which caused much staged moaning and griping, but the clients really did prefer new and twisted endings to the known tales - after all, a surprise at the end always heated things up.)
Haruhi herself, when not dodging Tamaki, was surprisingly apt at assigning roles. She mumbled something about Carrol but even Kyouya didn’t understand that.
“Why the mirror?” Hikaru asked, because ever since Haruhi had cast Tamaki as the golden ball in one memorable cosplay, the twins delighted in questioning her reasoning for everything.
Kaoru laughed, agreeing with his brother. “Of all the characters, poor Kyouya-senpai gets to be an inanimate object?”
“The mirror in Snow White knows everything, that’s why,” Tamaki grinned, proclaimed, flung his arms wide before settling them on Haruhi’s shoulders. “Ne?”
She hummed, a small off-handed sound she always made when someone guessed off their mark. And she wandered away, wont to leave it at that.
(Except she tended to mumble and when Kyouya couldn’t catch it, Mori usually could...)
“Because if someone breaks you,” Mori repeated for him, after club hours, “they’ll have years of bad luck.”
Kyouya smiled, nearly.
*
Kyouya broke a mirror, once.
It was the only thing he could consciously remember destroying. Oftentimes when things got damaged, a servant could whisk them away so quickly, or take the blame on themselves, that it was almost difficult to keep track of faults.
But Kyouya remembered the mirror. It was the day his eldest brother was named successor, and Kyouya had done the quick math of empires in need of heirs and number of Ohtori sons. The numbers were ill-favoured, as was the poor gilded mirror in the upper hallway.
The glass broke like a spider-web beneath his fist.
In the back of his mind, a countdown began: six years, eleven months, three weeks, six days, twenty-three hours, fifty-eight minutes...
*
Until recently, Kyouya used to imagine himself seeing the world through the lens of an old brownie camera. Nothing like the sleek digital camera he actually owned. Those photographs could be shot from a distance; no need to bring the eyepiece up close to insure a good take. Those photographs could be altered with a laptop and a few shortcut keys.
Anyone could photoshop. The twins did it all the time, much to Tamaki’s (and surely Haruhi’s) distress. Rough edges and seamed layers, like leaving fingerprints and breathmarks across glass so your once-presence is in no doubt.
Not just anyone could manipulate the old black-and-white photos. Crisp, seamless, worked tirelessly with knife and magnified precision. Gloved fingers, no prints left behind.
No one would suspect the host off in the corner, taking notes so courteously. No one would notice that brilliant Ohtori son, too bad he was born third. No one would realise their photo had been snapped.
Until Kyouya wanted them to. (Seven months, one week, four days.)
*
He would always, always, remember the afternoon (three years, two months, two days...) with Tamaki and the koatsu and his milky reflection in the teacup, distorted only by that tea stalk floating upright and forebodingly.
*
As a rule, Kyouya thought that people brought with them their own luck and skills. This was a more... recent outlook, ever since that day he had decided... well. Success was a careful combination of a person’s innate talents and the fortune of their circumstances. He was more severe when it came to failure. There was no poor luck in failure, just personal shortcomings.
Still, the day the scholarship student accidently backed into the Rene flower vase, fingers just too late to stop the shatter, Kyouya didn’t think about the girl’s comings, short or otherwise. He thought about how the crash of porcelain was the noose around her neck now, and he wondered if a countdown was beginning in her head even as Tamaki spoke.
Eight million yen...
*
The problem about that fairytale, Kyouya kept thinking, was that he couldn’t possibly be the mirror.
He was always looking into one. Reflected reflection after reflection, stretching himself into eternity.
*
At nineteen hours, forty-five minutes: “The Tonnerre family are buying out the majority of shares for the Ohtori medical sub-company.” Hm.
Kyouya looked at Haurhi, dressed smartly in her festival cafe clothing, stunned silent and now free of debt. Her last customer served. The Tonnerre were on a purchasing spree, it appeared.
Kyouya glanced at the clock. Soon.
*
“This one is at the sports festival. She’s not terribly athletic, my poor darling. But she does try. In a non-committed way...”
Kyouya dutifully gazed over the next polaroid Ranka passed him. The middle school gym uniform was short and form fitting and would have a few of his fellow club mates in a blushing daze, most especially its founder.
He said, “I have always found Haruhi to be quite committed to every aspect of her academics,” smiling brightly at his guest.
Ranka set his tea down, porcelain scrapping on its saucer. “Kotoko would have liked you,” he murmured. Startled, Kyouya jerked and his glasses slid down his nose. “She liked true gentlemen. Especially in youth.”
The next photo was of Haruhi at the beach, hair long and pink dress swaying in a frozen breeze. Kyouya studied it as Ranka waxed prolifically on the goodness and kindness of his late wife and her ability to see the good in everyone.
It was a novel thing, to hear a husband reminisce and mourn this way. He thought of the small house shrine that always burned for her in the Fujioka apartment, and the ambitions of a daughter, and a husband who would never again love another woman...
He had been friends long enough with Tamaki, and had had enough excursions and trinkets shoved in his face, to acknowledge that there was very little either engaging or superior in the commoner world. But spending time with Ranka was beginning to be an exercise in not thinking of his own father, and how he never, ever, spoke of his mother.
*
Mrs. Hitachiin was doing nothing to calm her sons dancing about Haruhi in a fashion frenzied holler that was warring for Tamaki’s disapproving attention. (A disapproval less effective since his own blushing attention kept being pulled to Haruhi, too.)
They’d had her all morning, pulling outfits on and off, having her spin and model as best as she was able (which wasn’t much). If any more blood rushed to Tamaki’s pleased cheeks, Kyouya would have to make a call to one of his doctors. Haruhi was looking a little red herself with the exertion of lifting and pulling and twisting fabric around her body again and again.
They were knocking five percent off her debt for this.
(If only Kyouya could take five percent of his debt. Five percent of one year, two months, five days...)
Hunni was laughing delightedly from his table to the side, strawberry shortcake at his lips and fingers. “You look like a princess, Haru-chan!”
But it was only when they had her in sleek ebony silk that hugged her unimpressive curves and trailed behind her some, that Mrs. Hitachiin strolled over to Kyouya and his ledger, leaning close.
“Elegant, ne?” she asked. Capped sleeves, simple silver necklace, and Haruhi stumbled a bit when the twins urged her to walk in the heels. “I call this look ‘Mrs Kyouya Ohtori’.” And then she laughed, high and bubbly like champagne.
Kyouya tried to remember that giggle when he dreamed, hoping it would help trigger his own mother’s hidden laugh.
(It didn’t.)
*
“I’ve chosen a portrait,” Tamaki said, dully. “Though I’m not sure if it will hang in the Suoh mansion or the Tonnerre mansion...”
Eleven hours, fifty minutes, thirty-two seconds. Soon. Soon. No, now.
*
He had a dream of his mother again. Chasing her, and she’s chasing him, and there are mirrors and mother and mirrors and then - hah! Her arms around him, pulling him up her waist.
“Caught me, Kyouya-kun,” she says.
The laugh in his dream sounds right, today.
And today, Kyouya doesn’t look in the mirror. He combs his hair blindly, trusting his fingers to remember. He dresses without looking down, and his fingers are strong and nimble as they knot his tie.
He’s running late - the Ouran festival is in its second day, and there is still plenty to oversee and run smoothly.
But first, he pulls his laptop’s screen up. He doesn’t look at his reflection in the black as his background loads. He swiftly navigates usernames and websites. Click, click, click.
He reads quickly, sure that his proposal is tight, that his offer is the highest bid. He’s thankful he selected French as his elective.
User K.O, do you really wish to purchase this company?
He waits.
(Three seconds, two seconds, one.)
Yes.
rated PG
2540 words
Kyouya has seven years to wade through. (Written for avalonestel as part of a fairytale meme; her request being Kyouya and Snow White. <3)
WARNING: Spoilers for end of anime series.
Today, Kyouya wakes up like any other day. It’s too early in the morning - he’d been up late the night before, again - but with Tamaki’s announcement yesterday of club dissolution, even early might not be enough. He predicts more late nights and early mornings in the future. But... maybe less than before. Just maybe. If this works.
Today, Kyouya slides from his bed and stumbles into his washroom. Cold water on his face, wakes him in a way the twins’ ring tone invading his dreams off and on all morning had not. He dries his face, doesn’t look up.
Today, Kyouya doesn’t look in the mirror.
(Thirty-two minutes, twelve seconds. Eleven seconds. Ten. Nine...)
*
He has very few memories of his mother.
He liked to think of her at the fair, in that hallway with mirror after distorted mirror. He liked to picture the warmth of her hand around his as she tugged him deeper into the reflective maze. “Quickly, Kyouya,” she said in his mind. Dozens of Mother every way he looked. He was surrounded. He liked to think he was laughing with her, but he could never get the sound right.
Anyway, it wasn’t even a real memory.
*
It was one of the few times his father actually touched him. Long, thin fingers at his throat, and Kyouya wasn’t breathing because he knew the strength in those hands.
“Over, and then back around,” his father was saying, and Kyouya was listening, yes, but mostly he was watching those fingers flip the black fabric at his neck, folding and rearranging it to sit just so.
His father’s cologne was overwhelming. It was still fresh on his skin, so close to the hour of hosting. And he was bent so near Kyouya. He wanted to take in a breath but had to stand so very still, keep his throat unmoving.
“There.” The hands were gone, and Kyouya looked ahead, carefully meeting his father’s gaze in the mirror. “That’s how it’s done,” he said unnecessarily. Then his father’s hands were back, tugging the bow tie undone, leaving two dangling ends of black around his neck.
“Now you.”
This time it was only Kyouya’s fingers at his own throat, long and thin, but not so strong, no.
*
“Do you suppose it’s some sort of commoner ritual?” Tamaki asked. “Or, hm. I think maybe they don’t have enough time in the morning to properly groom themselves, and this saves them the time of getting from bed? Maybe they can’t afford many.” Then, as if the thought had come to him suddenly and possibly painfully, he gasped. “Kyouya, what if they can’t afford the wall space?”
Kyouya didn’t answer. Which was a good world apart from being unable to answer, naturally. Instead he tipped the manga in Tamaki’s hand over so he could see the cover.
Tamaki was not to be deterred. “Do you think Haruhi has one? Shall I ask her about it?”
“I don’t think it would be wise to ask if she had a mirror,” (one year, eight months, six-)
“above her bed, no,” Kyouya murmured. “Where did you get this anyway?”
He waited for Tamaki to say Renge, and felt the need to choke, just a little, when he said Kimiri-chan quite calm and dead panned.
“Ah.”
“You’d be able to watch yourself fall asleep, that’s a little strange... And I’d always be worried it would fall down on me. Still... If I put a mirror over my bed, would you put one over yours?”
“No, Tamaki.”
“But-“
“No.”
*
Kyouya was the one who chose the music room at two years, eleven months, one week, and three days. He would be praised, later, for his wise decision based on floor space and lighting and the small, fine details given to a room meant to be performed in. All of these things were well suited for a host club, and Kyouya recognised this.
But it was not why he chose it.
Back then, it had been because of the piano. The day after foolish Tamaki had been by his home, invading the Ohtori’s household to brush his fingers over ivory and bring unconscious tears to his brothers’ stubborn eyes.
Kyouya knew how to play the piano. But Tamaki knew how to play the piano. It wasn’t about reading notes and measures, rather it was more about something most would deem sentimental.
Kyouya knew the truth - it was about placing oneself into the music.
Tamaki could do it; lost in rhythm and tone, everything the boy was was placed into each individual note.
And the sleek Ouran piano, tucked away in that third room, reminded Kyouya that he must always, always, always put himself into everything he did.
Clipped, cold, perfect. Fingers on a set of keys, glasses glaring laptop glow, typing away.
*
There was a hallway in the Suoh’s second mansion that had multiple portraits of Tamaki. Tamaki would make comments about how handsome he looked, or didn’t the artist capture his genuineness or his poise or his exquisite attractiveness?
He was always trying to pick a portrait to put on the Other wall.
“Other?”
“The one in the first mansion. The line of Suohs. One day grandmother will add me there, you know. I just don’t know which one we should move... What do you think, Kyouya?”
(Two years, four months, three weeks, one day.)
Kyouya chose the one that had been photographed instead of painted. He told Tamaki the picture captured his true essence. Kyouya half-listened to a flailing tirade about demon twins taking photographs without permission and somehow placing their blown-up copies in his house, and this needed to come down now, and do you think anyone saw it? And Kyouya half-thought about the portraits in his own house, and his own unsmiling face in a row of two older brothers.
And he thought, where was his Other wall?
*
Somehow, leaving a copy of Western fairytales on Tamaki’s desk helped fuel the club’s activities for weeks. Tamaki was enthusiastic about any sort of roleplay - a book of cosplay fodder was more than enough encouragement for him. More than enough encouragement for everyone, really.
Hunni in particular was kept delighted over the properly scaled gingerbread, and Mori was kept busy running after him with toothbrush and paste.
“Revisonist, revisionist!” the twins had taken to shouting, whenever they could snatch Haruhi away from a true-love’s-kiss from Tamaki. (Which caused much staged moaning and griping, but the clients really did prefer new and twisted endings to the known tales - after all, a surprise at the end always heated things up.)
Haruhi herself, when not dodging Tamaki, was surprisingly apt at assigning roles. She mumbled something about Carrol but even Kyouya didn’t understand that.
“Why the mirror?” Hikaru asked, because ever since Haruhi had cast Tamaki as the golden ball in one memorable cosplay, the twins delighted in questioning her reasoning for everything.
Kaoru laughed, agreeing with his brother. “Of all the characters, poor Kyouya-senpai gets to be an inanimate object?”
“The mirror in Snow White knows everything, that’s why,” Tamaki grinned, proclaimed, flung his arms wide before settling them on Haruhi’s shoulders. “Ne?”
She hummed, a small off-handed sound she always made when someone guessed off their mark. And she wandered away, wont to leave it at that.
(Except she tended to mumble and when Kyouya couldn’t catch it, Mori usually could...)
“Because if someone breaks you,” Mori repeated for him, after club hours, “they’ll have years of bad luck.”
Kyouya smiled, nearly.
*
Kyouya broke a mirror, once.
It was the only thing he could consciously remember destroying. Oftentimes when things got damaged, a servant could whisk them away so quickly, or take the blame on themselves, that it was almost difficult to keep track of faults.
But Kyouya remembered the mirror. It was the day his eldest brother was named successor, and Kyouya had done the quick math of empires in need of heirs and number of Ohtori sons. The numbers were ill-favoured, as was the poor gilded mirror in the upper hallway.
The glass broke like a spider-web beneath his fist.
In the back of his mind, a countdown began: six years, eleven months, three weeks, six days, twenty-three hours, fifty-eight minutes...
*
Until recently, Kyouya used to imagine himself seeing the world through the lens of an old brownie camera. Nothing like the sleek digital camera he actually owned. Those photographs could be shot from a distance; no need to bring the eyepiece up close to insure a good take. Those photographs could be altered with a laptop and a few shortcut keys.
Anyone could photoshop. The twins did it all the time, much to Tamaki’s (and surely Haruhi’s) distress. Rough edges and seamed layers, like leaving fingerprints and breathmarks across glass so your once-presence is in no doubt.
Not just anyone could manipulate the old black-and-white photos. Crisp, seamless, worked tirelessly with knife and magnified precision. Gloved fingers, no prints left behind.
No one would suspect the host off in the corner, taking notes so courteously. No one would notice that brilliant Ohtori son, too bad he was born third. No one would realise their photo had been snapped.
Until Kyouya wanted them to. (Seven months, one week, four days.)
*
He would always, always, remember the afternoon (three years, two months, two days...) with Tamaki and the koatsu and his milky reflection in the teacup, distorted only by that tea stalk floating upright and forebodingly.
*
As a rule, Kyouya thought that people brought with them their own luck and skills. This was a more... recent outlook, ever since that day he had decided... well. Success was a careful combination of a person’s innate talents and the fortune of their circumstances. He was more severe when it came to failure. There was no poor luck in failure, just personal shortcomings.
Still, the day the scholarship student accidently backed into the Rene flower vase, fingers just too late to stop the shatter, Kyouya didn’t think about the girl’s comings, short or otherwise. He thought about how the crash of porcelain was the noose around her neck now, and he wondered if a countdown was beginning in her head even as Tamaki spoke.
Eight million yen...
*
The problem about that fairytale, Kyouya kept thinking, was that he couldn’t possibly be the mirror.
He was always looking into one. Reflected reflection after reflection, stretching himself into eternity.
*
At nineteen hours, forty-five minutes: “The Tonnerre family are buying out the majority of shares for the Ohtori medical sub-company.” Hm.
Kyouya looked at Haurhi, dressed smartly in her festival cafe clothing, stunned silent and now free of debt. Her last customer served. The Tonnerre were on a purchasing spree, it appeared.
Kyouya glanced at the clock. Soon.
*
“This one is at the sports festival. She’s not terribly athletic, my poor darling. But she does try. In a non-committed way...”
Kyouya dutifully gazed over the next polaroid Ranka passed him. The middle school gym uniform was short and form fitting and would have a few of his fellow club mates in a blushing daze, most especially its founder.
He said, “I have always found Haruhi to be quite committed to every aspect of her academics,” smiling brightly at his guest.
Ranka set his tea down, porcelain scrapping on its saucer. “Kotoko would have liked you,” he murmured. Startled, Kyouya jerked and his glasses slid down his nose. “She liked true gentlemen. Especially in youth.”
The next photo was of Haruhi at the beach, hair long and pink dress swaying in a frozen breeze. Kyouya studied it as Ranka waxed prolifically on the goodness and kindness of his late wife and her ability to see the good in everyone.
It was a novel thing, to hear a husband reminisce and mourn this way. He thought of the small house shrine that always burned for her in the Fujioka apartment, and the ambitions of a daughter, and a husband who would never again love another woman...
He had been friends long enough with Tamaki, and had had enough excursions and trinkets shoved in his face, to acknowledge that there was very little either engaging or superior in the commoner world. But spending time with Ranka was beginning to be an exercise in not thinking of his own father, and how he never, ever, spoke of his mother.
*
Mrs. Hitachiin was doing nothing to calm her sons dancing about Haruhi in a fashion frenzied holler that was warring for Tamaki’s disapproving attention. (A disapproval less effective since his own blushing attention kept being pulled to Haruhi, too.)
They’d had her all morning, pulling outfits on and off, having her spin and model as best as she was able (which wasn’t much). If any more blood rushed to Tamaki’s pleased cheeks, Kyouya would have to make a call to one of his doctors. Haruhi was looking a little red herself with the exertion of lifting and pulling and twisting fabric around her body again and again.
They were knocking five percent off her debt for this.
(If only Kyouya could take five percent of his debt. Five percent of one year, two months, five days...)
Hunni was laughing delightedly from his table to the side, strawberry shortcake at his lips and fingers. “You look like a princess, Haru-chan!”
But it was only when they had her in sleek ebony silk that hugged her unimpressive curves and trailed behind her some, that Mrs. Hitachiin strolled over to Kyouya and his ledger, leaning close.
“Elegant, ne?” she asked. Capped sleeves, simple silver necklace, and Haruhi stumbled a bit when the twins urged her to walk in the heels. “I call this look ‘Mrs Kyouya Ohtori’.” And then she laughed, high and bubbly like champagne.
Kyouya tried to remember that giggle when he dreamed, hoping it would help trigger his own mother’s hidden laugh.
(It didn’t.)
*
“I’ve chosen a portrait,” Tamaki said, dully. “Though I’m not sure if it will hang in the Suoh mansion or the Tonnerre mansion...”
Eleven hours, fifty minutes, thirty-two seconds. Soon. Soon. No, now.
*
He had a dream of his mother again. Chasing her, and she’s chasing him, and there are mirrors and mother and mirrors and then - hah! Her arms around him, pulling him up her waist.
“Caught me, Kyouya-kun,” she says.
The laugh in his dream sounds right, today.
And today, Kyouya doesn’t look in the mirror. He combs his hair blindly, trusting his fingers to remember. He dresses without looking down, and his fingers are strong and nimble as they knot his tie.
He’s running late - the Ouran festival is in its second day, and there is still plenty to oversee and run smoothly.
But first, he pulls his laptop’s screen up. He doesn’t look at his reflection in the black as his background loads. He swiftly navigates usernames and websites. Click, click, click.
He reads quickly, sure that his proposal is tight, that his offer is the highest bid. He’s thankful he selected French as his elective.
User K.O, do you really wish to purchase this company?
He waits.
(Three seconds, two seconds, one.)
Yes.