If you skipped the bottom author's note last chapter, you're gonna wanna go back and read it other wise this chapter will really confuse you. Just a heads up cuz I know a lot of people skip them;;

The next chapters (and this one) will be uploaded in a separate story that I've decided to call 'Eyes of Ice', so if you want to keep reading then feel free to go to my profile and look for it :)

Bold - An author's note from yours truly ;)

Italics - Character POV's, emphasis on a word, letters, song lyrics, messages, etc.

Underline - To make important info stand out or just to make the lay out a lil' bit prettier~(?)

Chapter 1 : Reunion

You would not believe your eyes

If ten million Fireflies

Lit up the world when I fell asleep

Marcelline POV

I stood awkwardly at the door of the Hitachiin residence, my hands clasped tightly together behind me in an attempt to seem calm and sophisticated. And to hide how sweaty they were, because ew. I sighed. I'd read somewhere that sighing is a good way to pause, gather your thoughts and (literally) take a breather; it's supposed to be a way of helping the mind and body relax.

Needless to say, sighing had become a habit of mine when something was on my mind. It's one of the reasons why my childhood friend, Haruhi, knows when I'm lying; other than the fact that I'm a terrible liar in general. In another attempt to seem sophisticated, I was wearing clothes that I hoped were a classy-casual kind of style. I'd left my hair down, the ends - which curled slightly, against my will - resting on the small of my back. I wore a plain, grey - and slightly oversized - jumper which nearly covered the pleated black skirt I wore underneath. The collar of my white blouse stuck out, working nicely with the slightly transparent white thigh-high socks and black trainers with white laces*.

Before I was ready, - though I doubt I ever would've been - the door swung open and I was met by a cheerful woman with dark red hair tied in a bun who greeted me with a warm, welcoming smile. "Haninozuka-san?" She asked, and I nodded in confirmation, adding a smile of my own which caused her's to widen. She opened the door wider, enough for me - along with my drivers who were carrying my bags and suitcases - to walk in. "We've been expecting you," the woman said, and I assumed she was a maid as she beckoned over another woman in an identical dress and apron to her own. "Yuzuha-sama is in her office, she asked me to take you straight to her when you arrived. Is that alright?"

"Of course, if it's no trouble." I replied, even though I knew there was no point in adding the last part other than to be polite. It didn't matter if it was trouble or not, since doing troublesome things was part of her job. The other woman she'd called over gestured for my driver to follower her in the other direction down the hall to where I assumed my room must have been.

The red haired woman made small talk as we walked. She told me her name was Manami Hitoshi, but when I addressed her as Hitoshi-san she waved a dismissive hand at me and said I was free to call her Mana-san instead. "It's what Yuzuha-sama and her sons call me, so it's what I'm used to." She explained, and I told her she could call me whatever she was comfortable with in return since I knew 'Haninozuka-san' was a bit of a mouthful. I managed to get her to settle on calling me 'Marcie' instead of the full 'Marcelline', but she insisted on still using the 'sama' honorific like she did with the Hitachiin's. We reached the door to Yuzuha's office and Mana-san sent me a reassuring nod as she knocked on the door, again opening wide enough for me to step in after hearing a reply from inside.

She closed the door behind me, and I walked confidently to where a tall, slender woman was leaning against a posh-looking desk to the right of the room. I presumed the woman to be Yuzuha Hitachiin, because as well as being the only other person in the room, she was indeed dressed glamorously enough to be the owner of a house that was so...well, glamorous. She wore a tight black skirt that came down to just above her knee, and a matching, slim-fitted black blazer which was undone, exposing her white blouse underneath. On her feet were black stilettos which she somehow managed to pull off as looking graceful and sophisticated. Her hair was a short, pale ginger that spiked off in random directions but again, it still only added to her classy aura; as did the thin silver earrings with teardrop-diamonds that dangled and swung at the slightest movement. Her eyes and smile were kind but intimidating, which gave the impression that she was not to be crossed; like she was the boss at an elaborate and successful company. Which she was.

Aside from the small area with a work desk, a coffee table and some chairs, the rest of the room was occupied by mannequins. Each with its own unique design and tangle of tape measures and post-it notes with measurements. Mirrors of various sizes, book cases full of notebooks and draws and cupboards full of a variety of fabrics and ribbons took up all available space on the walls that hadn't already been taken up by pin-boards overflowing with hand-drawn designs. Not to mention the various mugs of half full cups of tea scattered around, some with a tea bag still dangling over the side.

She greeted me with a wide yet understanding smile, like she was excitedly to see me but didn't want want to smother me. "You must be Layla's daughter!" She guessed, holding a hand out for me to shake.

"Yes," I nodded in reply as I took it, "I really can't thank you enough for letting me stay here, Mrs Hitachiin." Something like amusement flickered in her eyes as she told me the same thing Mana-san had earlier.

"Please dear, just call me Yuzuha. And it's really no trouble at all - anything for Layla's little girl!" I noticed a hint of fondness in her tone whenever she said my mothers name. Not that it was surprising, since they'd apparently been best friends when they went to school as well as working together a few times throughout their careers. I recalled meeting her a few times at business parties during my childhood, so it was reassuring knowing she wasn't a complete stranger.

Then, the excitement in the woman's eyes faded and she gripped my hand as our hand-shake drew to an end, placing her other hand over my own and patting it reassuringly. "I couldn't believe it when she fell ill," she said, talking slower now; her voice little more than a whisper, "she'd always been so cheerful and energetic. I can't imagine what it must've been like for you."

I smiled gratefully. 'You have no idea,' I thought.

She studied my face for a moment, her eyes flicking to each of mine before releasing my hand and rummaging in her pocket. She pulled out a small slip of paper with a phone number on it and handed it to me; "That's our driver's number. You can use it to go see them at the hospital whenever you want, he's always on standby." I gripped the paper tightly in my hand and smiled again, more genuinely this time, and stepped forward, daring to pull her into a tight hug.

She stroked my blonde hair calmly and reassuringly as I resisted the urge to nuzzle into the crook of her neck, drowning my nose in the scent of her perfume. "Poor thing," she mumbled, "just a child..." I wasn't sure if she was talking about me at this point or my sister, but I blinked away tears all the same.

Later, she introduced me to her sons, Hikaru and Kaoru. They were identical twins who were witty, polite and resembled their mother immensely; each with the same orange spikey hair and hazel eyes, though their hair was parted like curtains as if there was a rotating fan dangling in the space between them. They were both reasonably tall, and had glints of mischief in their eyes, however they differed in intensity: with the one who had his hair parted to the left appearing slightly kinder in terms of the way he shook my hand and how he smiled compared to how his brother was more hesitant and stiff, still unsure of me. His voice was also less deep and slightly croaky at times as if he had a cold. He introduced himself as Hikaru, but not before sharing a glance with his brother which - unfortunately for them, - gave away their little trick straight away. I knew what it was because it was a trick I used to play with my previously mentioned sister before the accident. I decided to let them get on with it for now; after all, introducing yourself as your identical twin was harmless fun, and if I wanted to make a good impression then it wouldn't go too well to spoil it. They said I could call them by their first names (since 'Hitachiin-san(s)' would get confusing and annoying) so I said it was only fair if they do the same with me.

Yuzuha-san gave the three of us a moment or two to chat and introduce ourselves before checking the shining sliver watch on her wrist and ushering me back toward the door. "I'll call one of the maids to come escort you to your room and help you unpack, just wait here in the hall and she should come in a couple seconds. I've just got to talk to the boys quickly before going back to work." She said, turning back into the room. I called out before she could close the door, and she turned to look at me again, poking her head through the gap in the doorway she'd left for herself.

"U-um," I began, trying to word my request in a way that I hoped didn't sound rude; "would it be possible to have that maid be Manami-san? I met her earlier at the entrance and, well..." I trailed off, hoping she knew what I was getting at. Mana-san was a familiar face (even if it had only been about half an hour) that seemed friendly, and close enough to my own age for us to hold a comfortable conversation without bothering too much about keeping up the airs and graces.

She nodded knowingly. "Will do. I'll send for Manami-san specifically."

"Thank you." I said, raising my hand in a half-wave to the twins behind her - who returned the gesture perfectly in sync with each other - as she closed the door.

I didn't have to wait long before Mana-san almost seemed to skip down the hall, a wide smile on her face as she greeted me and beckoned for me to follow her back the way she'd led me not long ago. We neared the front door and took a sharp right, chatting all the while about nothing in particular.

My room was much larger than I'd expected. On the opposite wall to the door was a large floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall window, and I noticed that all the furniture was mostly white, save for the black duvet and four pillows on my king size bed which all had grey floral patterns to match the curtains and light-shade. In the near left corner of the room there was a white reclining two-seater sofa made of white leather opposite a large tv sitting proudly on a white cabinet, and nearby was the door to my red-and-white themed bathroom, beside which was the walk-in wardrobe which had to be my second favourite thing about the room as a whole.

It was pretty much a short hallway with about five of the average sized wardrobes crafted into one on each side of the room going floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall. At the end of the hall was a floor-to-ceiling mirror with lightbulbs going up each side.

My favourite part of the room however, was the white desk attached to the large empty bookshelf in the far right corner of the room. In the space that the desk had left between the bookshelf and the window was a large, white framed pin-board which fit comfortably in the provided space. Not to mention the massive chalkboard on the other side of the wardrobe which was nailed into the wall above a white chest of six drawers. Needless to say, I was excited to make the room my own and fill up the two boards with doodles, notes and pictures**.

In what seemed to be no time at all, Mana-san and I had finished putting my things in their places and were now trying to figure out how the DVD player worked for the tv I'd been given. We may have sneakily watched a movie together with our remaining time.

At dinner that night, Yuzuha-san sat opposite her son's and I. "Are you sure you want to go to school, dear? I remember Layla telling me you've mostly been home schooled so far, so if you're not comfortable going then it's no trouble to hire a tutor." She said, delicately cutting the food in front of her.

I shook my head politely as I ate, "I don't mind at all, I actually think a friend of mine goes there so it'd be nice to see her again too."

I'd gone to a public middle school before being homeschooled, so school in general was no stranger to me. However, I was excited at the thought of going to a proper private school; and - of course - the possibility of seeing Haruhi again. We still texted eachother whenever we could, and met up sometimes when we were free to go to the hospital or simply go shopping for groceries or cheap crappy movies to make fun of that night at whichever house we'd decided to sleep at.

"Well, if you say so. Hikaru and Kaoru go to Ouran too, they'll be in the same year as you so let them know if you have any troubles and I'm sure they'll be happy to give you a hand," she turned to the identical red-heads in question with a raised eyebrow, "right boys?"

They nodded vigorously between mouthfuls, barely listening but still managing to make me smile to myself in amusement. Their mother wore a smile of her own before changing the subject. She said that once we were all done here, I'd have to go back to her office so she could take my measurements for the school's uniform.

I failed to hide my grimace, and she chuckled goodheartedly. "Not a fan of it?"

I stalled by taking a long sip of the drink beside me. "Well...not that I have anything against it, but it just looks a bit...unappealing?" I explained in a way I hoped was polite, but ended up being more of a question than anything else. The pale yellow colour was nice, but I despised the design with a fiery passion. The long sleeves and torso were ridiculously tight, and yet the skirt and shoulders were ridiculously poofy.

"No worries, I completely agree. That's why we've started a small partnership with the ownership of the school to design an alternative uniform that's not so likely to make the poor things look like suffocating ducks." She said, her face completely indifferent and smiley.

I choked on my drink, barely managing not to spit it out which caused the twins to do the same. Yuzuha looked proudly at the three teens in front of her who were struggling between laughing, drinking and breathing. Soon enough, she joined in too.

The next morning, I double checked my appearance in the vertical mirror hanging by the door in my room to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything important. Again, I'd decided to leave my hair down so that I had easier access to the one wavy strand of hair that was slightly shorter than the rest and framed my face nicely. Having easier access to it was necessary because I had a habit of tugging it when I was nervous or thinking.

My uniform was pretty much identical to the boys, except the blazer was better fitted and I had a black pleated skirt instead of the trousers as well as a more feminine version of their shoes. I'll admit, it didn't look half bad. It looked all bad - I'm kidding, I looked great. Moving on...

I'd taken longer than intended to get ready, so the twins had left without me; though I wasn't sure if it was because they didn't want any to be late or were just sparing ourselves what probably would have been an awkward car ride.

I had expected Ouran Academy to be a large school, obviously, since it was specifically built for rich kids; but calling this a 'large school' would've definitely been an understatement. This was a massive school. I wouldn't be surprised if it's hall's alone could comfortably fit the entire population of Canada.

Leading up to the two sets of glass double doors was a gravel pathway stringing off into various different directions along the way. I could see that one such path led off to an elegant-looking garden with multiple tables and chairs, and another led off to what could've only been a maze of rose bushes. There were also dozens of sakura trees lining the path and dotting the free space left at the front of the school. Because of that, millions of petals drifted calmly along in the late-spring air. The school itself was painted a pale shade of pink which was almost therapeutic, and had a large clock tower in the main building. Very pink. Much wow.

I hoped that the halls would be empty so that I could avoid the stares from curious students wondering who was this unfamiliar face strolling into their school with a different uniform to their own?! However, having to locate my class and then walk in halfway through the lesson would probably be even worse, since there'd be no where to run and there was also a slim chance I'd be forced to introduce myself. However I failed to locate my class before it ended, and somehow managed to walk into three other random classes during my search. At one point, I think I even stumbled into the complete wrong building since one of the classes was full of second years.

I sighed in exasperation as the bell chimed and students began filling the halls. So not only had my second worry come true of walking into class halfway through and embarrassing myself, but now the second had also become reality. I suppressed another sigh, causing my eye brows to twitch and my eyes to glare daggers at the useless time-table in my hands. I was about to cast the Witches' curse on it (from Macbeth?) when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

When I turned around, I was met with a pair of deep violet eyes and blonde hair. They belonged to a relatively tall second year i recognised from the class I'd just wandered into a few moments prior. Behind him was another boy with black hair and calculating grey eyes behind a paint of thin, silver-rimmed glasses of a horizontal, oval shape.

The blonde boy spoke in a flamboyant, dramatic voice which I noticed had the faintest hint of a French accent. "Greetings, princess." He said with a wink that caused me to shiver as he whipped out a white rose (seemingly from no where) that appeared to have been professionally de-thorned. "My name is Tamaki Suoh and this is my friend Kyoya Ootori, it's a pleasure to meet you." He passed me the rose and delicately kissed the back of my hand as I took it from him. I shivered again.

"I'm Marcelline Haninozuka," the eyebrows of Ootori-senpai behind him raised noticeably, "and it's nice to meet you too..." I managed to say in a way I could only hope was polite. I know there are some people that go crazy for handsome, touchy-feely strangers with accents (the small crowd of squealing female students starting to gather nearby would probably be a good example of this) but for me personally...not so much. Nothing against Suoh-senpai himself, (I mean, whatever floats your boat, ya know?) but him and husband friend weren't exactly my idea of 'dreamboats', as one of the girls kindly provided.

Deciding that I didn't want to spend the whole of second period wandering the halls again, I decided to ask for directions. "Is it alright if I ask the two of you for a favour before you head to class?" I asked, making Suoh-senpai's eyes suddenly light up as his smile expanded by at least twenty.

"Why, of course!" He exclaimed, his mood taking a complete 180 degree turn. "It's the duty of a Host such as myself to make all women happy!" He declared, bowing down slightly and producing another white rose. How does he keep summoning all these roses? Part of me thought the host thing he'd mentioned was just cover for him actually being a magician of some kind. The other part of me suspected he was actually Satan summoning demon roses that would devour my soul quicker the more he gave them to me.

I hoped my expression didn't give away my hypothesis, and I flicked my eyes over to Ootori-senpai as if to say 'seriously?'. He nodded - yes, seriously - and mouthed 'humour him' which admittedly made me want to chuckle a bit. "Do you know where this classroom is?" I asked, showing them both the room number on my time-table.

Ootori-senpai nodded again, stepping forward. "Yes, some friends of ours are in that one." He explained, whipping out a notebook and tearing out a sheet of paper near the back of it which had what I could've only assumed to be a map of the school drawn on it; complete with hand drawn labels on each individual room and an accurate note with an arrow saying 'you are here'.

I was slightly disturbed, but took the map regardless. "Thanks, but how did you kn-"

"It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss Haninozuka but I'f we don't get moving now we'll be late!" Suoh-senpai piped up suddenly before handing me a small white card:

~ Ouran Academy's Host Club ~

Located in Music Room 3, West building. Come along and find the host of your dreams!

I stopped reading after that, deciding to flick my eyes over to Ootori-senpai again to silently ask if this was legit. He nodded like before, except this time he wore a smirk that implied there was something important he wasn't telling me. "I do recommend you stop by some time soon. Who knows, maybe you'll have a fateful encounter or something?" He said, his glasses glinting in the sunlight from the windows even though it was cloudy. I honestly expected him to do one of those evil villain laughs from the movies when he was done, but he only widened his smirk and followed Suoh-senpai down the hall. I tried to shrug off his odd little statement, thinking it was just something from a script meant to try and convince girls to give up their money and free time to be entertained and flattered by a bunch of, for lack of a better term, fuckboys. However despite trying to forget about it, his words stuck with me as I whipped out my phone and took a picture of the map. This way, if my curiosity got the best of me then I could say that I'd only gone there to return it to Ootori-senpai.

I managed to arrive to my next class (english) before the teacher did, and tried my best to slip quietly into the classroom without attracting too much attention. Unfortunately, the students had seen the door opening and quietened down thinking I was the teacher. My uniform probably didn't help with with that assumption.

I listened to their confused mumbles as I speed-walked to an empty seat at the back left corner of the room. I pretended I couldn't hear them and hummed purposefully off-key while looking out the window to my left. Amongst the whispers, I heard a familiar voice call my name from my right, and I slowly turned my head to face them.

The expression of the brown haired, brown eyed boy sitting one chair away from me lit up as he smiled brightly. "No way, it is you!" He exclaimed with a chuckle. I shrank back, having been taken by surprise.

"Um..." I squinted as I observed him, leaning forward to see him better behind the person sitting between us. Then, the realisation hit me like a truck and I nearly fell off my chair in shock. "You...Haruhi?!"

He - well, she - laughed again. "Bingo. What're you doing here, I thought you were being homeschooled?"

"Nevermind that, what happened to you?! Why are you dressed like a b-" I was cut off my hand being clasped around my mouth. I realised it belonged to the person sitting between us, and since I was looking at him properly now, I realised it was one of the twins. The one who'd falsely introduced himself to me as Hikaru? His brother was on the other side of Haruhi, also staring at me in subtle shock.

"What's that? Why's he dressed like a rich kid? Ha ha, we let him have it." He said with a warning look and making sure to raise a brow as he emphasised each male pronoun carefully. Then he nodded as ignoring to say 'play along' and released me.

"Why...?" I trailed off in confusion. I had multiple questions that I couldn't seem to prioritise or simply couldn't ask for threat of...blowing Haruhi's cover?

1. Why is my female, non-trans (as far as I know) friend dressed as a boy

2. Why do you two apparently have something to do with it

3. Why did you give her a uniform

4. Why did his hand smell really good-

MOVING ON.

He seemed to assume I was going to ask question three (which was good, since I knew I'd be fucked if he knew about question four) and answered it with a forced toothy grin. "What do you mean why? Why not? We're extremely nice people after all." As he said this, I noticed a few of the boys infront of us shiver which was very convincing.

Haruhi chimed in, not bothering to hide the confusion on her face. "Wait, how do you know the twins, Marcie?"

I sweatdropped and scratched the back of my neck, "Ah, well I'll tell you later." She nodded in understanding and replied in the same way when I asked her how she knew them. We both huffed in frustration when the teacher walked in, still having so much that we wanted to catch up on and talk about.

While the teacher - who introduced herself to me as Atsuhishi-sensei with a nod - droned on about Shakespeare, I leaned forward again to look at Haruhi past Kaoru. The hair wasn't as much of a shock to me. I knew it was short because I'd cut it for her myself; but now it was more professionally trimmed and styled. Her grandfather's large brown glasses had also been discarded and replaced with contact lenses. Those two facts were most likely a partial reason as to why I'd failed to recognise her upon entering the room. That and the fact that, you know, she was dressed like a bOY.

I was distracted from my internal, one sided conversation by Kaoru who subtly stuck a post-it-note to my desk, out of view of Atsuhishi-sensei thanks to the tall boy sitting in front of me. 'Like whatcha' see~?' was written on it in red ink, and it clicked in my mind (after I managed to suppress a giggle) that he must have thought I'd been looking at him the whole time. I flicked my eyes up to see him vigorously raising and lowering husband eyebrows while adorning a feigned suggestive pout. His wrist, propped up on the desk by his elbow, was supporting his cheek but quickly covered his mouth to stop himself from laughing as I nearly fell off my chair (again) from trying not to burst into a wheezing mess.

"Everything okay back there, Haninozuka-san?" Sensei called. I nodded slowly, not trusting myself to speak but sobering up instantly as I saw the shocked faces of the twins when I turned back around. Haruhi looked just as confused as I did, and I took that moment to decide that the three of them had a lot of explaining to do. Especially when Kaoru gave me another post-it-note. 'Come with us when this lesson ends, it's important'.

'I didn't know it was possible to be confused, curious and skeptical at the same time' I replied, and he chuckled before mumbling "Seriously though." and I nodded to show I understood. "Yeah, I'll come with you."

After that, the class seemed to drag on mercilessly, almost as if it was mocking me for my excitement. When the class finally ended, it was break. The twins walked ahead of Haruhi and I while she explained questions one and two from my list earlier (number four will forever be unanswered and we shall never speak of it again).

While looking for a quiet place to study on her first day, she had walked into what she had thought was an abandoned music room but really turned out to be the host club's club room. The club was led by the two second years I'd met earlier, funnily enough, with Suoh-senpai being the President and Ootori-senpai as Vice President. During the process of trying to escape, Haruhi had accidentally broken an expensive vase that was going to be auctioned for eiGHT. MILLION. YEN. In my opinion, that case was just asking to be broken; I mean who leaves something so expensive just lying about with no protective case or anything?! Besides, it's a vase. You literally just fill it with water and put flowers in it, who's gonna buy it for eight million? Unless yo' mama's ashes are in that thing, it should not be so ridiculously over-priced. Anyways, I'm getting off topic. Since she was a 'commoner' who'd only gotten into the school thanks to a ascholarship, the club knew she wouldn't be able to pay them back in money, so instead decided that she'd be their errand boy. That's right, errand boy. She hadn't been able to afford the girls uniform, and instead wore her own clothes which (in addition to her short hair, glasses and pancake chest) made the members of the club think she was a boy. Then later on they changed their minds for some reason, deciding to give her the (boys) uniform and making her into a host. Their logic was that if she could get 100 guests to request her, then they'd let her off the debt.

She was a natural at it, but some jealous fam girl started bullying her and claiming that she tried to 'assault' her. The club's solution was to pour water on both of them and ban the others gorl from the club. With Haruhi's uniform drenched, they provided her with a female uniform since it was all they had - only to discover she was a...well, a she. But since she hadn't no other way of paying them back for the vase, she and the other members had decided to keep her real gender a secret so she could keep hosting. Also, for some crude reason, her quota had been raised to 1000 since it wasn't apparently her fault they'd lost a customer.

All that went down in just two days. I sighed as my mind struggled to comprehend it all, barely understanding. I patted her shoulder in reassurance. "So that's how you know those two, then." I said, sending half-hearted glares at the back of the twins' heads. She nodded with a sigh of her own. I could tell how stressed the situation had made her just by how she recalled it to me. She was out of breath by the time she'd finished.

"Yeah, what about you?" She asked, looking at me from the corner of her eye as we followed the brothers across a roofed-bridge into another building. They slowed their paces to earwig, apparently having not been told the reason themselves.

I would've lowered my voice, but I decided that they technically did have a right to know since I was living in their house and would be now for god-knows how long.

"I mentioned before that my mother was sick, right? Well a couple weeks ago she took a turn for the worse and had to go to the hospital. We had to dismiss a lot of our staff in order to pay for the medical bills, and after a while she got worried about me being on my own all the time and decided it would be best for me to live somewhere else until she was better. She called up an old school friend who agreed to let me stay with her as long as I needed, provided that I helped out with her work when she needed me to." I explained non-chalantly, recalling the events as I described them and fiddling with the slip of paper Yuzuha-san had given me.

Haruhi's eyebrows were furrowed, and she held my hand as we walked, squeezing it reassuringly. She didn't say anything, and I didn't expect her to. The pair of USB's ha had always been hopeless when it came to reassurance; either not knowing how to react or simply saying the complete wrong thing. I caught sight of the twins exchanging glances of sympathy and pity, but decided not to acknowledge it. They still thought they were sneakily earwigging, after all.

The four of us turned a corner into a seemingly abandoned hallway and approached a pair of double doors with a sign at one side that read 'Music Room 3', which I recognised from the card I'd received from Suoh. I'd decided to drop the 'senpai' honourific after deciding he didn't deserve it for blackmailing Haruhi. Petty, I know.

When we walked in, there were multiple delivery men and women each carrying boxes that varied in size and quantity but the company's name for all of them was the same. I spotted Kyoya in the centre of the room signing multiple sheets in multiple spots on multiple clip-boards. Again, his glasses glinted from the non-existent sun light when he saw me and he adorned a prideful smirk as he nodded to me in greeting. For what must've been around the third time that day, I shivered.

"What's all this stuff?" Haruhi asked, scrunching up her nose as she cautiously stepped around a pile of boxes that had air-holes and were making animal noises.

Suoh abandoned the delivery woman he'd been chatting up to strut over and wag a finger in her face with a wink. "That's a surprise."

She swatted his hand away distastefully with a blank face as she looked away from him. "And that's creepy." She mocked, causing him to get impaled with a red arrow from the heavens labelled 'creepy', and he almost seemed to deflate as he shrank down and crawled over to the far corner of the room.

"Uhh...does he always do that?" I pointed to him, fidgeting uncomfortably from being unsure whether I was supposed to call someone.

The twins, Haruhi, Ootori-senpai, two other boys I had yet to be introduced to and even some of the delivery people - including the woman Suoh had been flirting with - all looked over at me with blank faces as a synchronised 'yes' chorused around the room in a dead-pan tone; I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be reassuring or not, but I suppose it kind of was..

Everyone else went back to what they were doing, but one of the boys I hadn't met let his gaze shamefully linger on me with narrowed eyes in an observing kind of way; like he knew me from somewhere but couldn't remember where. I would've felt uncomfortable hand I not done the exact same thing due to feeling the exact same way.

"You recognise him or something?" The twins inquired, popping up on either side of me to each drape an arm around my shoulder and make me jump. They spoke in a nonchalant, 'no biggie' tone, but something in their eyes made me think they were more interested than they were letting on and reminded me of the feeling I'd had earlier during my encounter with Suoh and Ootori-senpai - like there was something they weren't telling me or something I was missing.

"I feel like I should, but..." I trailed off, not knowing how to end my sentence. Desperate to know, I looked over at the boy again who had now stopped staring and resumed eating jianyun cake on the other side of the room. He had blonde hair that was slightly spiked in some places, and large brown eyes which reminded me of melting chocolate. He was ridiculously small; as in small enough for me to almost assume he was an escapee from Ouran's nearby middle school. In contrast to the boy who sat beside him, he appeared to be even smaller. The tall boy had a blank yet well-formed face with grey eyes and black spikey hair. He would've seemed menacing if not for how he looked at the childish blonde beside him. It was the kind of look that held a sweet kind of brotherly affection-

Brotherly...

Clogs turned rapidly in my head as fog cleared and puzzle pieces clicked into place. I wanted to kick myself. How had I been so stupid? I didn't need to Ben introduced to the smaller boy, as I already knew him. His name was Mitskuni Haninozuka, and he was my brother.

A subtle smile overtook his features as he seemed to catch on to my recognition. He patted the arm of the other boy, catching his attention to pass him his cake. He then got up from his seat, walking to the door and gesturing excitedly for me to follow him.

And they fill the open air

And leave tear drops everywhere,

You'd think me rude but I would just stand and stare

I know I mentioned this in the original but I just wasn't happy with the first few chapters and the guilt of pretty much stealing someone else's idea in chapter 3 never really left me so I wanted to redo it. There were also some things in the plot that I wanted to change (as you can tell), for example, how it took like 11 chapters for Marcie to figure out that Honey was her brother since I know a lot of you were triggered about that. And I decided to change it from Marcie being a model and living with her boss to just being a normal teen living with her mum's friend. I'm aware that I said you shouldn't read the origional; however, there's always a possibility of some Marcie x Kaoru moments in there that I'll have to abandon in this version, so if you want to hunt for those then you can. Anyways, I hope you'll all join me on a rewrite of the ride we've already partially been on!

If you happen to spot any spelling errors or grammar mistakes then please let me know in the reviews so I can fix them!

Until next time~ ^3^

*I know, I know, this description is kind of all over the place, but I had to get it done sooner or later so \_(ッ)_/

**I'd like to apologise for my apparent inability to do descriptions; be it of a character or a fUCKING ROOM