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

Chapter 13: Legally Brunette

Tokyo

The deadline for Harvard applications passes. Haruhi wakes up on the morning of February first, turns the page of the physical calendar on her bedroom wall to a new, much blanker page, and thinks . . . thank goodness.

It's not like she was planning to go to Harvard in the first place. It's too expensive, particularly when compared to Ouran University. She liked Boston well enough, but it's far enough away from home and family for it to be a drawback, rather than a positive. And although she can, she supposes, see the appeal of turning her life upside down to follow the boy she loves all the way to America in the hopes he'll change his mind, she's much too sensible to consider it a genuine option.

Now the deadline has passed, it's much easier to think that – and believe it. She can't make a crazy decision any more, even if she wants to.

Life is not a romantic comedy, and although Tamaki and Mei seem to have joined forces in recent days to try to persuade her that's not true, she's not suitable to be the protagonist of one, in any case. Tamaki had cried in a corner for a while, after he and Mei had forced her to watch Legally Blonde and she'd still flatly refused to fill out an application to Harvard Law. But Haruhi thinks her two idiot friends have missed the point of the film, in any case. As far as she can see, Elle Woods learned two things: that the man she followed to Harvard wasn't right for her, and that she was actually pretty good at law. Haruhi hopes she can learn those two lessons right here in Tokyo, all for a much cheaper price.

New day – new month – new, albeit painful, start.

She doesn't feel optimistic, exactly, as she drags herself out of bed to shower, put on her school uniform and face the new, post-deadline world. She hurts too much for that. But she has a lot to be grateful for, she tells herself firmly. She has a home and a father she adores. She has friends who love her, even if their well-meaning attempts to make her feel better sometimes end up making her feel ten times worse. And last, but very much not least, she knows that all her hard work is very soon to pay off. She's passed the Center Test, hasn't she, meaning her place in Ouran University's law department is guaranteed. A few more years, and she'll have achieved the thing she's been dreaming about all her life: she'll be a lawyer, just like her mother. And on top of all that, it's her eighteenth birthday tomorrow. Maybe, she thinks dubiously, she might even manage to enjoy it.

Rationally, Haruhi knows it's not the end of the world if the boy she likes doesn't like her back.

If only knowing that helped, though, she thinks glumly as she leaves for school. For while it might not be the literal end of the world that Kyoya doesn't love her, she still can't stop herself from feeling like it is.

Haruhi doesn't manage to enjoy her birthday, but it's not through want of effort. She feels ungrateful, but it's as if the harder everyone tries, the more she can see the hole in her life that no one but Kyoya will ever be able to fill. She doesn't think she's being melodramatic about it, particularly. It just is what it is, and there's no point in pretending it's not true.

Her birthday's on a school day, so she spends most of it at Ouran, surrounded by her friends. Classes have wound down now that examination hell is over, and the atmosphere is less strained. The twins spend the morning pulling pranks on everyone, in an obvious attempt to make her laugh, and the gardening club steal her for most of the afternoon. They've baked her a cake using carrots grown in the Ouran greenhouse over winter. It's too small for the number of people in the club, so when she shares it out it's more of a crumb each than an actual slice, but that somehow makes it more delicious. She still doesn't have much of an appetite, anyway.