Kyoya Ootori's Guide to Self-Deception for Fun and Profit

Chapter 2: Wish you were here (so I could kill you)

Tokyo: Wednesday, 6pm

Such is the strange and corrupting influence of the host club, it seems almost reasonable to Haruhi that the next time she sees Tamaki he's sitting on the edge of the Ouran Academy fish pond, his feet in the water and his shoes and socks piled neatly beside him.

OK, so Tamaki looks happy enough, his head tipped back to the watch the sunset, but if there's ever a time for fish-pond paddling, Haruhi thinks an unseasonably chilly September evening isn't it. She's been hiding in the school library for the past few hours, in a fruitless attempt to catch up on her never-ending schoolwork. She wonders how long he's been waiting out there.

"What are you doing?" she asks cautiously, and Tamaki waves with enthusiasm, indicating that she should join him. "Aren't you cold?" she adds as she sits gingerly down next to him.

He flashes her a dazzling smile and raises a declamatory hand in the air. "Can a man be cold when his heart is warmed by the presence of such radiant beauty?"

"Yes," Haruhi says heartlessly, and Tamaki looks wounded for a fraction of a second, before splashing his feet with contentment.

"I'm feeling nostalgic," Tamaki says, staring up at the orange-streaked clouds, and then turns to beam at her. "Aren't you?"

Haruhi wonders if he's caught a chill and that's why nonsense is coming out of his mouth, and then wonders how she'd tell the difference between his normal nonsense and chill-inspired nonsense. "Nostalgic about what?" she tries.

Tamaki's eyes widen. "Our first true meeting of minds happened right here! In this pond! It was a momentous occasion, which will go down in history!"

Haruhi blinks, but Tamaki's already off on one again. "Maybe I should dig the pond up and have it transported to the Suoh mansion," he muses dreamily.

"I think Ouran's already using it," Haruhi says firmly, just in case he's being serious. With these rich idiots, sometimes it's hard to tell. "Best it stays where it is."

Tamaki kicks his feet idly, sending ripples flooding across the still, dark water. "Then perhaps I should persuade my father to erect a plaque . . ." he murmurs. "Anyway, I was wondering," he says, and slides a look at her, his eyes full-on puppy dog.

"No, I don't give you permission to restart the LINE group," Haruhi says, because most of the time she can read Tamaki like a book with very large print.

Tamaki's gaze darts away from her, and then back, his puppy dog expression intensifying. "But—" he says, with an audible pout.

"No, senpai," Haruhi says. "And I hope you haven't been bothering Kyoya either! He'll be much too busy," she adds severely.

Tamaki shoots her a serene, angelic look, which is the opposite of reassuring, and then splashes some more. "Kyoya's" splash "never" splash "bothered" splash splash "by me," he says with touching optimism.

It is cold, she thinks. Sunsets are all well and good, but it's almost fully dark, and she's hungry, too. Something warming and quick for dinner, she decides. There's half a packet of chicken breasts left in the fridge, isn't there? Shiitake mushrooms . . . spring onions . . . Some kind of soba noodle soup? She probably has enough to feed Tamaki too, she thinks, when he inevitably invites himself over. She doesn't want him to sit about with wet feet and catch a cold.

She's already starting to stand up when Tamaki says, far too cheerfully, "Kyoya definitely misses you more than me, though. He all but told me so when—"

Haruhi blinks – and stumbles. There's a moment where she wonders what she's tripped on, because it would be pretty stupid if it was her own feet, but that's quickly overwhelmed by the dreadful certainty that if Tamaki doesn't save her, she's going straight into the pond.