a/n : It's been just about forever, but I thought, why not whip up an update? HERE, AN UPDATE! xD I'm sorry for making anyone wait so long and then actually having the gall to update, thus raising the hopes of anyone still reading this, but there you go. Warnings: this chapter contains more exposition, this story contains OCs and TamaHaru. But it's mostly a TwinsHaruhi, I promise. Furthermore, the ball really gets rolling next chapter. Hopefully my writing/the long wait aren't too much of a disappointment to anyone; this isn't my best, but I'd like to finish it off satisfactorily! Excuse the handful of typos that might be lurking beyond...

recap: Futurefic: the twins are jerks. First they tricked Kaoru's girlfriend (a girl named Aiko), humiliating and hurting her. Next they went to a café where they made fun of the waitress, and where we gain further insight into these Future Twins. The waitress they taunted is named Manami… hmm.

Now. Back to the story.

Reviews are always appreciated; most of all, enjoy. :)

Manami slouched back in her chair. She would have sighed, but her pants were too tight for that.

"I hate these things," she said aloud, finally breaking under the tight zipper. "They're going to kill me. Apparently, in the world of haute-ish couture, a four is actually a zero."

The woman across the table looked up from her textbook. She sipped her tea and blinked. "I'd let you borrow my clothes if all yours are really that uncomfortable, but…"

Manami sighed. "They don't fit me. It's okay, Haruhi. Really. It's all right."

Haruhi looked at the woman sitting across from her, weary, more than anything. Typical brown hair, meticulously waved, and bright, brown eyes. Curvier body than typical Japanese woman, something that most men would find attractive.

"Manami," she ventured, unsure, "Is everything okay? You sound so tired."

Manami tried to keep up her happy face, but wilted on the inside. This isn't Haruhi's fault. "I'm fine," she lied easily. Haruhi's eyebrows furrowed, but she only sipped her tea again and didn't say anything more about it.

"Ken said he's coming back from his parents' today," Haruhi said. Manami sighed again, writing in her tight pants.

"Why is Ken always mooching off of me?"

"You should stop letting him."

Manami looked at Haruhi closely. She entertained the idea of telling Haruhi, twirled it around in her mind. Something in her just didn't quite want to mention the incident with the Hitachiin brothers, and so she didn't. She would tuck it away. Maybe tell Haruhi later. She wasn't sure that Haruhi wanted to remember her days at Ouran Academy, not after her broken engagement.

Suddenly, Haruhi's eyes widened. Manami, glanced up from her tea to see.

"What is it?" Manami asked, just a tad irritated, as she stirred another packet of sweetener into her tea (more for something to do with her hands, something to keep her from looking at Haruhi, than anything else, since she'd already added her customary five packets of sugar-free sweetener). "You and your big eyes, what are you looking at-?"

Haruhi nodded. "Ken," she said, somewhere between an answer to Manami's question and a greeting to the tall, lanky man that now stood near their table, grinning widely and balancing a thick stack of books. He ran his free hand through his neatly-cut brown hair, and smiled his lopsided toothpaste-aid smile. His thick black glasses were falling down his nose, and Manami had half a whim to reach toward his face and push them up for him.

"Ke-"

"Hey, Haruhi," he said, nodding in return and giving a little wave, along with an even goofier smile, which nearly made his books topple down. Manami reflexively stood up to help him steady the dangerously leaning pile.

"You should watch it," she warned him, but he just smiled at her. "Hey, Manami," he laughed, "You don't have to mother me so much!"

She sat back down, and crossed her legs, took a long sip of her tea. Mother?

"You can sit down if you want," Haruhi said. "Manami's right, you should put down that pile of books. You could hurt yourself. It's good to see you again. How was your weekend?

The books clanged against the thin metal-pattern table and Ken slid easily down into the free seat. "It was fine. I got to eat my mom's cooking, which is practically the only good thing about holiday weekends. What's going on?"

"I saw two guys from Haruhi's high school today," Manami blurted out.

Ken looked mildly interested, while Haruhi leaned forward.

"Who?"

Now Ken leaned forward as well, and Manami suddenly felt nervous. Haruhi's old friends had familiar names, names that turned up in the tabloids every weekened and were used in households throughout Japan.

"The designer ones," Manami said, going for the vague, I'm-not-really-all-that-interested vibe.

Haruhi blinked. "Hikaru and Kaoru? I haven't seen them in years." She leaned back, her eyebrows furrowed into what Manami called her "thinking law student" expression. She was always one of the best in class, Manami thought.

"Yeah," Manami continued, trying to keep her interest out of her voice. "They showed up at the café today." They were pretty big assholes. I can't believe you used to hang out with them. And God, they were handsome. So of course I acted like an idiot around them.

"Wow," said Haruhi, picking up her textbook and suddenly looking uncomfortable. "Well, that's great. I… I think I've got to go."

Manami glanced over at Ken, who was watched Haruhi leave.

"I just got here," he said, exagerrating his disappointment.

"Don't be such a baby," Manami said. She meant for it to be a snap, but it came out softer, as her words always did around attractive men. Around Ken, especially.

"I guess she doesn't want to talk about…. About her high school, does she?

"Not after that whole fiasco with her fiance. That was a mess."

Ken frowned. "I don't think she ever got over him."

"I'm sure she's not entirely over him. Not that Haruhi's that sentimental or anything. You can tell she's upset, though, when she starts spending over four hours a day at the library. Like she's been doing for the past six months." She chewed at the inside of her cheek. "Plus, you read all that crap about them in the papers, and I can see why she wouldn't feel like she belongs around them anymore. I mean, the Hitachiin twins are good looking, but for ever pretty picture there is of them there's an article about them being nasty to this person or that girl, and most of the time I told myself, 'Manami, only believe half of what you read…' But all this time, those articles have been right. Those guys are assholes." She ended by taking a sip of tea and setting it back down with a thump.

Ken nodded, although he didn't meet her eye. He cleared his throat and turned to her. "Hey, Manami?"

Shestraightened up a little despite her super-painfully-tight pants. "Yes?"

"Are you paying?"

At home, Haruhi tried not to look at her telephone. Or her computer.

No.

She went back to her law textbook, but the definitions and rules and snippets started to blur.

Check, some nostalgic, sentimental part of her said, just check up on them. You don't know anything about how they've been doing, other than what Manami is always reading to you out of her trashy tabloids.

She nearly jumped up out of her chair to grab her laptop. With as much cool, indifferent brevity as she could muster, she emailed Hunny.

I'm not going to let a tabloid tell me about my friends, she resolved, although the urgle to google them – Hikaru and Kaoru, who always seemed to irritate her and make her laugh and hurt her in their own wounds – was strong.

She was just closing her laptop when she heard her cell phone ring. She picked it up without checking the caller ID, because she never did, wasn't used to it.

"Hey," Manami said, "It's me. Ken feels gypped by you walking out early. He wants to reschedule your date."

Haruhi looked at her cell indredulously. "Date? What date?"

"I'm kidding, I'm just saying. He was planning to spend time with… us, and he didn't get to because he had to go to the library and get all those medical textbooks." She paused. "He works too hard, just like… well, just like you."

"What does he want to do?"

"Lunch, tomorrow. The place that I work, because we get a pretty discount and I don't work Wednesdays."

Haruhi groaned. "Why does he want to go there?"

"Hey, we have pretty good food. You've never been there, you might like it!"

Haruhi smiled wryly. "You're awfully loyal for someone who was just complaining about her 'sucky waitressing job' two months ago."

Haruhi could practically feel Manami shooting her a dirty glare over the phone.

"Okay, okay," she said, shaking her head. "I understand. When did he want to meet?"

"Noon. See you there?"

"Sure."

They both hung up, and Haruhi found herself staring at her shut computer. Tempted to google Hikaru, or Kaoru… or Tamaki. A little part of her, the part that read shoujo manga and infrequently blushed, feared that he'd found some other girl. Some rich girl, some pretty girl, some Éclair Tonnere type of girl, and her heart ached. It didn't just ache – it felt like it was burning. And another part of her knew that he was probably still upset, just like she was, only twenty thousand times more demonstrative. Probably still crying bi-weekly to Kyouya from their school in Europe (Kyouya had called to inform her that she was the cause of this new annoyance and that she owed him for sponging up the grief that would otherwise spill over into caffeine-induced, 2 AM phone calls to her cell).

She closed her eyes and tried to breathe, but she found her heart beating too fast. This is why, she thought to herself, this is why you broke up with him.

And then, with the kind of discipline that only Haruhi could manage, she sat back down and went back to her text book.