CHAPTER SEVEN

Corporate World OMG!

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To the best of his ability, Kaoru refrains from 'acting weird' for the following days.

Such a feat is quite simple when he has nothing scheduled, because it almost wholly consists of staying with his friends at nearly all hours of the day and doing what they want to do. Kaoru has always been quite comfortable with letting other people take the lead, and it's not as if he has some major objection to spending time with them. In fact, given the choice he would spend his entire life with them very willingly. It's only really when he has private activities that it becomes inconvenient since they like to keep an eye on him. When he thinks about it, it's almost insulting – they can go off to do their own secret things, but if he so much as tries to do the same, they immediately want to sit him down for an interrogation.

Kaoru is quite certain that it is because Haruhi isn't here. It used to be that when it was just the six of them, they would mind their own business. They were friends and clubmates, of course, but they weren't close and they didn't spend their waking hours glued to each other. Then Haruhi came along, and they spent more and more and more time together – except that they also spent that time generally harassing and bothering Haruhi, focusing all the group's attention on her. Kaoru would never ever wish to return to that time before the club and before Haruhi, but he feels a bit sorry now towards her – they must have made things extremely troublesome for her, and it is a mark of how competent and level-headed she is that she has taken it all in stride.

He's the baby of the group now, so they've all decided to baby him or something. Why else would they be so insistent on watching out for him and knowing what he's doing? They think he can't take care of himself, and it makes him cringe with his own uselessness. He needs to do more; the inactivity is driving him insane. His mother would never forbid them from pursuing creative endeavours, but she would and has banned them temporarily from the Hitachiin offices and workshops because of their exams. They are high school students, after all.

Remaining within their sight appears to soothe the minds of all those around him, although Kaoru himself is disappointed at his apparent inability to be natural, and also he hates the way he keeps making everyone else worry. His Mori-senpai has been periodically asking him if he is all right, and to be honest Kaoru is feeling less and less all right with each question. He wants to ask the wise senior about what exactly is the problem, except he is too afraid to voice it because then he may end up creating a problem.

No. Better to err on the side of caution.

If only Haruhi could be here with them right now. If only she could occupy everybody's attention as effortlessly as she always does, and then Kaoru could get back on his feet in no time at all. He did it once before, he can do it again.

Amidst the noise of the fancy school cafeteria of the high school building, Kaoru looks down at his food and bites back a sigh. The plate is practically untouched, and he doesn't want anyone to notice – skilfully, he messes up the food by cutting it up into smaller pieces and shifts them around, scattering them and creating gaps to reveal the expensive bone china underneath. Hikaru and Renge, bless them, are distracting the crowd of girls at their table with amazing efficiency, and Kaoru has begun to try to imitate Honey in the art of capturing people with conversation while simultaneously accomplishing another more vital task. Everyone has been talking non-stop about the major overhaul of the Host Club, and his brother and the self-appointed manager are engaged in boisterous discussions with various schoolmates about the sheer excitement of, well, everything.

By the end of lunch, having carefully limited his input to the group discussion, Kaoru has managed to succeed in more-or-less 'finishing his meal' without actually having eaten a single bite. He would have failed if Kyouya (or Haruhi, since Kaoru makes it a point to share his food with her) had been with them, so thankfully the two third-year seniors have cloistered themselves away in the clubroom for some much needed peace and quiet. Today is a big day for them.

The brothers beg off their customers and duck into the loo to ensure that they cannot follow – eventually, they poke their heads out to sneak a peek, and when they see that there are much fewer people in the corridor, they set off for the clubroom as inconspicuously as possible.

Kaoru uses his key to gain access, and the two of them ease themselves gently into the room before swiftly locking it again.

On the ornate sofa near the enormous windows, there are two figures in the shadow of the partially drawn curtains. Everything feels hushed and special within these four walls.

"Heh." Hikaru smiles wryly and tenderly at them. Beside him, Kaoru too allows himself to just stand there and gaze despite feeling like a horrid intruder.

Their exhausted seniors are asleep. Kyouya is sitting upright – albeit tilted to one side and angled to accommodate Tamaki – with his legs extended and ankles crossed. His spectacles are still perched on his nose and there are papers on his lap, and somehow the image he presents makes it seem like he dropped off into the nap unwillingly. Tamaki, on the other hand, has his shoes off and his feet resting on the length of the sofa; he'd also removed his blazer and is using it as a blanket. His head is pillowed on his best friend's shoulder; in turn, Kyouya's tilt has caused him to use the top of Tamaki's head as his own pillow.

Regulating his footfalls scrupulously, Hikaru pads over to them and lowers himself to the edge of the coffee table in front of the sofa, pushing some of the files away before wriggling his bum onto the low table proper. He leans forward to bring his face closer to Tamaki's, stretches out a hand and touches his palm to Tamaki's cheek in a way that makes Kaoru's chest tighten with unnamed emotion. "Tono," Hikaru whispers with a grin, entirely cheeky and sly. But his fingers have slid to Tamaki's jawline and his mouth is hovering dangerously close, and his body language is saying something that his tone and words are not.

Fear, maybe. That unnamed emotion. It is something raw and… covetous. Kaoru is scared of such gestures because he doesn't know what they mean anymore. In a world that he once knew, it would have meant love, amorous or possibly parental. It did not mean platonic, not in Japan at least. In another world that Kaoru also grew up in, in the western parts of the globe where his mother emphasised the opening of the mind, it was an act of human relations falling anywhere in the spectrum from friendship upwards. These types of gestures are commonplace in the world of a Hitachiin, they are the mother tongue, the primary means of communication… but they are scarce and heavily restricted by propriety in the realms of a Suou, a Haninozuka, a Morinozuka, an Ootori. They've gotten too intimate with each other in this club, all the lines have been redrawn, all the boundaries have been crushed, and Kaoru kisses his Honey-senpai on the lips and is in love with his Kyouya-senpai.

What does Hikaru do with Tono? Kaoru asks himself only now, the question freshly blooming in his consciousness like a terrible revelation. What does Hikaru do with Mori-senpai?

And, why didn't I have the sense to ask this earlier?

Mori promised Kaoru that he would keep watch. Mori said he would keep a handle on this situation, and Kaoru holds fast to that promise.

Hikaru lets out an indulgent exhale and starts to gather up Kyouya's papers. He looks at each sheet to check that he is arranging them by page number before putting them in a neat pile on the coffee table; then, he picks up a silver tray to clear away the half-eaten plates of food, the cutlery and the half-full glasses of water. Ordinarily the tray would go onto the trolley that would be removed by the cleaning staff at the end of the day, but they have no listed activities today and therefore their room would be left off the roster – only classrooms are cleaned and tidied everyday – so, when he is done, Hikaru lifts the tray and points to the door, indicating to Kaoru that he will take it down to the nearest cafeteria and will be back soon.

Kaoru nods his understanding, zipping to the door lithely to hold it open and glowing at his brother for his thoughtfulness as he sees him out.

And then it is just Kaoru. Just him and the silence of the room.

He settles himself into a lone armchair perpendicular to them, keeping his head down.

He looks at them, and he looks down again.

He thinks of everything that Tamaki has done for him, for Hikaru, for them as twins, and he remembers the radiant greatness of his friend, his inherent and incomparable goodness of heart. He reminds himself of how much he loves Tamaki, and he looks at them again.

This time, there isn't something awful lacerating the insides of his gut.

Yes.

Yes. He stares himself down, and this greedy selfish ferocious thing abates and slinks away.

Tamaki saved his life. He owes so much of what he is to Tamaki. He would be adrift and lost without Tamaki. He has no right to be jealous of anything that Tamaki has earned. Tamaki has suffered much, so he deserves much in return.

Kaoru looks once more, and finally he recognises himself in the warm adoring way he feels towards the both of the sleeping seniors. He creeps forward to the coffee table, bending over slightly to read the material – it is all related to the hugely significant meeting that they will conduct after school this very day.

Tamaki will attend as the Grantaine representative, and Kyouya as the Ootori representative. The contract in question is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly even billions. This is the real corporate world.

[To be continued]

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Notes

First off, an apology. No, this is not the complete Chapter 7B. It's just, I needed to post a notice and standalone notices are not really allowed, and also it is bad to get readers' hopes up only to confront them with a disappointing chunk of non-story text.

The passages above are the actual start of Chapter 7B, but the reason why I am not able to go on is because I have become aware of a terrible mistake in a fairly major plot point of the story. Please let me explain.

I have been relying on English fansubbed digitised versions of the manga while writing this story, and in Chapter 77 page 30 of the manga, it is mentioned that: "Of course, about the distribution of the new medication [slez medicine], the Ootori Group will take care of it."

Unfortunately, this is not quite right. I have recently obtained the complete set of RAWS for the Ouran manga (I don't know why I didn't do this earlier, damn it), and the correct translation of what Yoshio says to Yuzuru should be that the Ootori Group will have full rights of distribution over the Slez medication IN JAPAN.

This may sound like a small error, but it is actually significant enough for me to need to go back and change several large chunks of the story. The reason is because I have misinterpreted it as being that the Ootori Group is in control of the distribution of the medicine worldwide, and therefore why I have written it such that Yuuichi is in charge of the Japan + wider Asian release and Akito is in charge of the Oceania release. Kyouya, of course, is managing the European release with Tamaki. But all of this is wrong. Now I finally understand what Kyouya was trying to explain in those darned chapters, and why Yuzuru's plan is able to help the Grantaines. I always thought it didn't make sense because the development of new medicines is regarded to be a hugely expensive and high-risk venture, but now I see what he was doing.

You see, pharmaceutical research and development usually costs a hell of a lot (we're talking billions here), and because it is so expensive to develop new medicines, this is used as the justification for the high costs of medicines as sold to the public. Some people dispute that pharmaceutical research and development actually really costs so much because the data that we have are only those voluntarily released by pharmaceutical companies, of course. All the debate about the costs of creating new medicines aside, the critical point I am trying to show here is that companies have gone bust from trying to develop new medicines. It is the sort of thing with a high failure rate, not to mention it is not the sort of thing that can be done casually. I have no idea how Suou Yuzuru even managed to develop such a medicine or whatever, because the amount of resources and expertise is massive. I believe it if you tell me that the Ootoris did it, but not if any Suou did it since this is not at all their industry.

Therefore, I read the fansubbed version as correct – that Yoshio has such a huge hand in the development of the medicine that the medicine essentially was created by their doctors and partially belongs to them, the Ootori Group.

Tragically, this is apparently incorrect.

The manga actually means that the medicine belongs to the Grantaine company, and the Ootori Group has merely secured the exclusive rights to distribute the medicine in Japan. This means that the Ootori Group has no power to manage the medicine outside of Japan unless authorised by Grantaine company to do so. Further, it seems that the reason why Yuzuru is indebted to Yoshio is not because Yoshio had a hand in developing the medicine, but because Yoshio helped to keep the development of the medicine strictly confidential such that Shizue wouldn't find out.

I seriously, seriously have no idea why this medicine is developed by a Suou instead of an Ootori. I understand that it is terrible to be indebted to Ootori Yoshio, but what is the point of making a family the experts in medicine and then letting the Suous be the one to make medical breakthroughs? My god, the mangaka really does love her Suous, doesn't she?

Anyway, Yoshio would be quite pleased about securing the rights because of the large profits involved. And Kyouya mentioned in page 30 that "The Chairman is trying to make the Grantaine family earn enormous profits thanks to the development of this new medicine." Doesn't make sense, right? Because drug creation is very much like a losing business and this should be common enough knowledge, so I always wondered about how they even expect to recoup the money to break even in the first place, much less talk about profits.

But in this case it is different. Why? Because the money poured into the drug development was Suou money. Do you see? Yuzuru used Suou money to invest in Anneau Laboratory, and then the Laboratory became a joint stock company owned by the Grantaines, which means that all the revenue goes to the Grantaine family. In other words, all the expenses were borne by the Suou family, and they get none of the money back because it all goes to the Grantaines. So Yuzuru didn't just screw his mother over, but he literally gave away several billions of the family wealth to another family.

In this type of situation, Yoshio is bound to pounce. He will happily accept the distribution rights in Japan alone because then he also gets a generous share of the profit without needing to have invested in the first place. No loss, all profit. For the Ootoris and the Grantaines, this example essentially illustrates the advantage they will gain:

You want to start a small business selling beaded jewellery. You first need to invest in it by buying the thread and the beads and other assorted parts. Let's say the raw materials of one necklace costs $20, and you decide to sell each necklace for $30. Hence, your profit margin is $30 - $20 = $10 per necklace only, because you have to take into account your initial expenditure.

However, if someone else is bearing the costs of buying the raw materials, your profit for each necklace is basically the full $30! That is what Yuzuru did, and the Grantaines and Ootoris are the ones benefitting from it. As such, the Grantaines really will earn enormous profits because they didn't spend anything in the first place!

Which means, omg, that Yuuichi and Akito have no rights releasing the medicine elsewhere, and Kyouya was only allowed to take part in the European release because Tamaki persuaded his parents to authorise it.

This in turn means that Kyouya's position in the meetings is almost completely dependent on Tamaki's, and ohhhhh boy. It's his field, his family's territory, he knows what he's talking about, this is his world. Yet despite all of that, and despite the fact that Kyouya is undisputedly better at business and everything involving finance and politics, Tamaki is the boss. Tamaki is the Grantaine representative, and what he says, goes. He is the only one with the right to make this decision because the medicine belongs to the Grantaines, and in fact I think even this chapter may be wrong because there is no position for an Ootori representative to be there at all.

Ahhhh, poor Kyouya. Poor poor Kyouya. The Queen to the King on the chessboard, indeed.

Um, so. I am actually really quite pissed off at making this careless mistake, and I am on the verge of the horizon of despair that would lead to the Kazuha Chapter. It's not that I don't know what corrections I need to make, but the thought of having to rework these thousand-word chapters makes me want to cry and give up. Nonetheless, this weekend is the Good Friday-Easter long weekend, so I will be going back to the previous chapters to do my best and change it as necessary. This also means that the next chapter will take very long to be sorted out, and... I don't know. I really don't know. TnT

If I fail, I guess you'll know it by the Kazuha Chapter ;_;

YES, I AM STILL ALIVE. Yes, I still care about this fic. I'm going through the chapters slowly to do the edit, as a result there are now inconsistencies within the story. Every time I think I want to let it go, I discover that I can't. I still want Kaoru to get to know Okiko and Kiyomi and Yuuichi and Akito. I still want Kaoru to get in too deep with the Ootori family. I still want to tell you all the secrets Kazuha has been keeping. I still want to delve into Hitachiin family history. I still want Kaoru to have a future. I still want these stupid characters to fall in love. – 16 February 2014.