UPDATE 23/9/18 - EDITED
Chapter 6 – Day One: The Secrets of the Old Storeroom
As the term drew to a close, every minute only added to my dread of having the Hosts spend the break with me – I mean, not only would they blatantly insult something every five seconds, but they'd be so melodramatic about all the work to do.
"So, this fancy Host club of yours is staying at our house because you did something stupid – that sound about right?" Corn, my only brother, said between grunts as he pulled at and tied the ropes. He stood bent over a massive log, covered from head to toe in splatters of mud, and he flicked his hair back to look at me dead in the eye.
I averted my gaze. "Way to sugar c-coat it, Corn." I crossed my arms over my chest, not caring that I was getting mud all over my brand-new dungarees. "And you sh-shouldn't spend your savings on c-clothes for me," I scolded even though my old pair were in dire need of a trash can.
This time when he looked at me, it was with furrowed brows and a bright red face. "I think you'll find I'm the older brother, so I'll spend my money spoiling my little sister if I want to!" He waddled over in the mud, once even sinking down to his knees, just to smack the back of my head.
"When I get married, you won't have me around to spoil anymore," I commented, half teasing despite the solemn look on my face. I hated the idea of leaving Corn behind, but I knew Kyoya's father would only accept the best for an Ootori, and Kyoya himself would die if he had to live on a farm.
"Don't say things like that. I'll spoil you forever and ever, and Ootori can go to Hell because he can't keep you away from me!" His voice becomes a whisper as he pulled me into a hug. "We're family." I wrapped my arms around him in return, but I avoid burying my face into his chest – I'd rather not blind myself with mud. "Anyway," he suddenly said, pulling away. "We'd better get moving if we want dinner before nine!"
We trudged through the thick mud together, lugging logs attached to some rope that we slung over our shoulders. "What should we do about the Host club?" I asked after a few minutes. "T-they've never done farm work b-before."
"Like hell will we let them get away with being lazy!" shouted Corn with a suspiciously evil grin on his face. "Those rich bastards can learn what it's like to lose their gumboots in some dirt!"
"Just b-because you did?" I teased, gesturing to his feet, which were now bare since he'd lost his boots and his socks in the mud. Adjusting my grip, I ignored his glower and focused instead on the zig-zag path I was walking (having to come back later for one pair of gumboots was enough, and I wasn't losing mine anytime soon!).
His glare became a grin when he said, "Imagine those pompous weirdos feeding the pigs! And they'd get eaten alive by the goats!" I smiled. Corn's mood changed so often, but his smile was always contagious – it almost made Kyoya crack a small one the first time he saw it.
"I want to see T-Tamaki with the chickens. He'd fit right in," I joked, recalling what he was like with Haruhi's dad when they first met. I'd been forced to go to her complex by Kyoya, who had me explain nearly every little thing that was different. Corn was so mad at Kyoya for dragging me out of my study time that he even screamed insults at him over the phone, and it only got worse when he found out that I failed my test the next day.
Corn was silent for a moment before he spoke again. "I'd love to teach that Kyoya Ootori his place as well." I didn't know if it was the fact that he was rich or because I failed that test, but Corn loathed Kyoya. He even begged me to decline the arrangement, even said he'd rather me marry his bully from high school (who's in prison).
I sighed. "Corn, no fighting with K-Kyoya this time, okay? He always m-makes both of us look stupid." I stop, making a point to give him a look that meant business. "Promise me."
"Fine," he replied, and I knew he took my demand to heart. "But if he hurts you once this weekend, he'd better hope he can find a tree tall enough to hide in." I dropped my log on the ground to rush forward and envelope him in a hug. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Let's just get these logs up before it gets dark because I am not feeding the animals when I can't see them."
Our trek up the hill continued, and by the time we were done the sun was beginning to set on the horizon. Corn was drowning in his sweat, desperately fanning himself with his hands, while I collapsed against my log, breathing like an exhausted dog – that fixed his attention on me.
"Alright, you've done enough for today," he said as he bent down in front of me, silently ordering that I get on his back. I did, too tired to think about walking up even the porch steps. "You need a shower and a lot of sleep, okay? Especially if we're going to clean tomorrow and chop up the firewood."
He carried me inside, just in time for the sudden rainfall outside. "Ah, shit!" said Corn, speeding up his pace to sprint upstairs and practically dump me on the bathroom floor. "I'll be back soon!" I could only smile, knowing he'd be outside for another few hours despite his promise. He always works too hard, I thought to myself.
"Looks like I'm having a bath tonight," I sang, leaning over the edge of the tub to twist the tap handles. The water began pouring out, hot and cold, and I slowly stripped myself of my clothes. My dungarees ended up in a heap beneath my dirty undershirt, socks, bra, and underwear – I'd throw them in the laundry basket later – while I was finally lowering myself into the tub. The water was warm and bubbly, a nice feeling I hadn't had in a while.
After a while, the door opened to reveal Corn with his eyes covered. In his hand was my phone, dinging over and over again. "Your phone's blowing up and it's driving me crazy. Do something about it, Chips."
When he left, I discovered that the spam texts were from none other than the Hosts, who'd evidently added me to a group chat. From what I could see, Tamaki was part of an emoticon war with the twins, and Honey wouldn't stop sending photos of his cakes.
Me: The hell is wrong with you guys?! That was the first and only text I sent, instantly sending everyone else into silence. It was almost a little bit concerning until a message came from 'DaddySuoh' (I wasn't surprised by the username).
DaddySuoh: ISABELLA!
HikaHita: Hi, Isabella!
KaoHita: Hi, Isabella! I frowned when the messages sent at the same time. It made me wonder if the twins were in the same room or if they had a psychic connection – their bright orange hair made the latter option a little more believable.
When they began texting back and forth again, I stepped out of the bath and drained the water, watching all the bubbles disappear with a pout, my mood ruined because of those boys. Why do they have to be so clingy all the time? I thought to myself as I dressed. They give me a bloody headache!
My eyes met my reflection's in the mirror on the wall, and I couldn't help but crinkle my nose distastefully before I moved on to leave the bathroom, leaving the mess on the floor for Corn to clean up in the morning. It was dark in the hall – the lights were left off – so I used the light from my phone to see two feet in front of me. Suddenly, a flash of lightning outside lit up the entire hallway through the window, but it didn't bother me until the thunder sounded only a second later.
"That's too close," I murmured, looking outside to where Corn was fiddling with tarpaulin sheets in the dim light. I couldn't help the uneasy feeling that settled in my stomach, but I did my best to ignore it as I headed downstairs, scrolling through the hundreds of texts the Hosts managed to send.
CuteCake: Hey, Isabella-Chan, why is your username 'Chips'? I smiled. The childhood nickname somehow stuck around, and I always thought it was cool, but I wasn't about to tell them that, especially not when the twins would find a way to use it against me.
The door burst open just as I slipped into the kitchen to start dinner and in stepped a soaking wet Corn, dripping mud and water all over the welcome mat. "No way!" I shouted. "You t-take those clothes off r-right now because you are not g-g-getting mud all over our carpet again!" He sighed and started stripping, making a show of it just to irk me even though we both knew that cleaning mud off the carpet was the worst job in the world.
"Happy?" he called. He sat down on one the bar stools, staring at me from the other side of the hand-through in the wall with a stupid, lop-sided grin on his face. His hair dripped water onto the counter when he leaned over it.
I jabbed at his naked torso with a half-chopped carrot. "Very. Nice boxers," I stuttered between laughs when I spotted his bright pink boxer shorts.
"Yeah, yeah, get back to your damn carrots," he grumbled, picking up a piece to eat. "I hope those Hosts can deal with homegrown food. I can just imagine the tears when they find out that we breed and raise our steak before we eat it." We shared a bout of laughter over that, louder than the horrid storm outside that rattled the fences.
It was nice. And I hoped it would stay that way for just a little while longer.
OHSHC – OHSHC – OHSHC
The last thing I ever wanted to see was a collection of posh boys standing in front of my house, but the harsh reality was that they'd be living with me for the next ten days – the mere thought of it made me want to cry.
"Do they have to spend the holidays with us?" Corn whispered beside me, not even trying to hide how upset he was. "I mean, don't they have their own families to annoy?" I couldn't even think of an answer for him; I was too busy watching the twins, whose critical eyes were glaring at everything from the house to the grass poking up through the gaps in the porch steps.
They said together, "What a dump!"
Well, I expected a lot worse.
"I'm going inside before I tear their heads off." Everyone stared as Corn stormed off. He hated it when people insulted the place.
I felt someone tugging on my skirt (the only one I owned), and I looked down to see a beaming Mitsukuni. "You live on a farm?!" he exclaimed childishly. I fought the temptation to roll my eyes at him. "Takashi and I always wanted to know what it's like living on a farm!"
It was then that Tamaki decided to speak up, startling poor Haruhi when his dramatic movements ended up hitting her in the face. "Who is the boy that dares to have hair redder than the twins'?!" What a dumbass, I thought to myself, but when I opened my mouth to answer him, Kyoya cut in, holding what looked suspiciously like a file.
"Kristopher Ayakushi, Isabella's older brother. He studied in the United Kingdom, but he dropped out when he was sixteen to help pay for Isabella's textbooks and uniform." He said this all in a mechanical tone – Kyoya hated my brother maybe even more than Corn hated him, which was saying something since Corn liked to list off all the ways he'd murder Kyoya nearly every day.
"It's all just basic information after that. Blood type: A, Ethnicity: Eurasian, Nationality: English-Japanese." He finished his rambling by snapping his file shut and hiding it between the pages of his notebook. "Isabella." He suddenly turned to me, and my back instinctively straightened a little. "Won't you show us inside?"
I nodded and picked up the groceries I'd set down when they arrived. As their first chore, they could carry all their bags themselves. I smirked as I realised all the power I'd have over them, especially Kyoya, but my joy soon fell short when I realised that they'd be looking at the inside of my house.
And I hadn't cleaned it yet. Oh, Jesus Christ, save me.
There was a hand on my shoulder. "Hey, I'm sure it'll look amazing inside," said Haruhi with a soft smile. I nodded at her and lifted my feet, my gumboots falling off to reveal my dirty, holey socks. At my gesture, she kindly slid open the door and pushed the closed curtain aside, exposing the lounge area to the Hosts.
"Wow!" I shared a smile with Haruhi. The house was far bigger compared to her apartment, but it was still reasonably cramped with the furniture and small piles of clutter everywhere. "You have a TV!"
"Thanks to my awesome skills of saving money to spoil my sister!" Corn appeared from around the corner – probably the kitchen – and wasted no time in ruffling my hair before taking the bags of groceries from me. He then turned to the boys and curtly said, "Don't just stand around, come inside. Also, if you don't take your shoes off, your heads will end up mounted on the wall."
Tamaki was the first to step on the carpet, enthusiastically commenting on every little detail to my lounge that he saw. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone put a couch right next to a door, but to each their own, I guess!"
"You're s-staying here with Corn," I said when I lead the boys to their room upstairs. It was one of the largest in the house, but it could only fit two portable cots on either side of the California King bed already in there. "T-Takashi, can you share the bed with Corn? You're b-both so tall..."
The black-haired monster of a boy dumped his bag on the bed. "That's fine, thanks."
"Ooh, yay! I get to share my bed with the hottie of the group!" Everyone's jaws dropped aside from my own. I should've known that Corn would get excited. "What? He's a Host – you can't deny that he's gorgeous – and you guys cater to everyone, right?"
"That's enough joking around, Kristopher," I said, kicking him out of the room with a warning glare. Hopefully, he'd leave poor Takashi alone for the rest of the break. "Sorry, Takashi-senpai." He was too stunned to reply, just stared with a slight blush at the place where Corn stood.
I didn't even know what to think of that.
"Tamaki-senpai, Mitsukuni-senpai, I'm sure you c-can decide over the cots yourselves." I slammed the door shut before they could reply and beckoned for the twins to follow me back downstairs. We passed the entrance to the kitchen, and they craned their necks to get a good look at Corn cooking, of course, but they continued to follow me down a hallway, complaining the entire time about how cramped it was.
Haruhi, who'd had enough of them, sharply commented, "Unless you want to sleep in a cupboard, I suggest you stop insulting Isabella's house, you pompous brats." When they ceased talking immediately after that, I made a mental note to buy Haruhi some chocolates.
"You two will stay here with Kyoya, okay?"
"Aww, and we were hoping that you would sleep with Kyoya, isn't that right, Kaoru?" I nearly fainted right then and there. What the hell were they thinking?!
"Yeah! Hikaru and I wanted some epic action to tease you over!" They both laughed at my fuming face, and I was sure they could see the steam shooting out of my ears. "Don't be like that!" Kaoru added, throwing his arm around my shoulder. "After all, you and Kyoya are the star-crossed lovers of the story."
I pushed them off me, hearing Haruhi mutter, "I didn't think Renge was a part of this vacation," as I did. And I had to agree with her. Kaoru and Hikaru had suddenly become just like Renge, and I was almost expecting them to pull out a couple of voodoo dolls of Kyoya and me... God only knows what they'd try to make us do.
"Speaking of Kyoya, where is he?" I looked up, realising that Kyoya had disappeared at some point. I turned tail and bolted out of the bedroom, praying that Kyoya wasn't snooping around in anyone's underwear drawer or something. Knowing him, he would've wanted to know Corn's underwear size at some point. Behind me, I heard the twins ditching their bags and following with haste, but I barely paid them any attention as I rushed back down the hall and upstairs to the storeroom – I somehow knew that he was in there when I saw his discarded notebook on one of the kitchen counters.
The door? Closed. I hesitated for a moment, scared to go in there after so many years of avoiding that door, but at the sound of someone shuffling around in there, I forced myself to twist the knob. There was a small, sharp intake of breath – it was me – at the sight of the room, just as we left it.
In the corner next to a small window, a twin single bed, a layer of dust covering the astronaut bed sheets and the pillow, which still had an untouched dent in it from the last head that lay there. Labelled boxes filled with old possessions towered over the bed and the grand piano that was too old to sell. My trembling hand rattled the doorknob, and I had to muster up all of my remaining courage to take a minuscule step over the threshold.
As the wooden floor creaked under my foot, I heard Corn call me from downstairs. "Chips? I heard running... what's going on?" I didn't answer him, of course. I was captivated by that suffocating loneliness that settled over the room, and my eyes wouldn't look away from the bed.
Once upon a time, the one who used to sleep there haunted my dreams and nightmares.
Haruhi gently slid past during my silence, her wandering eyes catching Kyoya standing on the other side of the room with a book in his hands. "Corn, Chips, and Dip: The Great Adventure Book," she read, effectively earning my attention. "The little boy in this book looks just like Kristopher," she whispered. "This is Corn, the eldest of the three siblings. He loves to feed the piglets, and he could play with the puppies all day long, but nothing holds his heart more than his younger siblings, Chips and Dip."
The handmade book almost made me smile. A long time ago, my mother used to write children's books, and her favourite characters to write about were Corn, Chips, and Dip. We used to love her stories. She'd read them to us every night when she tucked us in.
"Wait, I know 'Corn, Chips, and Dip!' My dad bought every issue because he thought the art was cute!" She stole the book out of Kyoya's hands, being careful not to damage the fragile binding. "What's the original issue doing in Isabella-senpai's wardrobe, though?"
I hadn't noticed that I'd tip-toed over to her until I saw the pages of the book. The colour inside was preserved somewhat, but the cover was fading and falling apart – that tends to happen when you stuff it inside a chest to rot for a decade. She offered me the book, a guilty look in her eyes for prying into my privacy, and I took it from her, sparing a single glance at cover as I closed it. There they all stood, staring up at me with huge grins, and I practically threw it back into the chest.
"P-Please, don't come in here again," I begged, feeling the tears brimming in my eyes. They all agreed, the twins being quick to complain about it as I lead everyone out of the room. The one thing I didn't notice, however, was Hikaru snatching a photo off the wall, but I'd later come to find that everyone else saw, and they all wanted to know what he'd just taken.
Especially Kyoya.
A/N - Two chapters in one month! Wow! And you get to see where Isabella lives. Not only that, but you finally get some info on her past! Sorry, folks, but it's ALL downhill from here! Can't have a good fanfiction without some juicy drama and feels in the mix ;)