Ouran High School Host Club Tale:
Part One: The Host Club Reborn

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"My friends are my estate."
- Emily Dickinson

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“You’re not serious.”

Honey jumped up and down on Haruhi’s bed, beside the ever standing-still, Mori. The twins stood beside Haruhi, with an elbow on each of her shoulders. In front of her, Tamaki pulled his hands out of his pockets so he could make extremely exaggerated motions with his arms, while Kyouya just watched from behind him, ducking before Tamaki’s arms could hit his head. Besides the twins and Haruhi, the rest of the group was in normal everyday attire, as they usually were when they came to walk Haruhi to school, (something they had only started doing this past year).

“How can you doubt me, Haruhi?” Tamaki asked, parading around with his usual dramatics, “I am, in every way shape and form, completely serious.”

Haruhi stepped away from the physical contact of the twins. She went over to her desk chair and began to wonder when she had become casual enough with the Host Club for them to just walk into her house nowadays. Not even her dad was complaining… Which was really odd. She sighed and pulled her blue jacket off the back of the chair, pulling it on over her uniform white shirt.

“Tamaki,” she wanted to find a way to say ‘No’ without completely crushing him, but she really couldn’t find a way that was possible without saying ‘Yes’. And she was not saying ‘Yes’. “This… just…” She paused, nibbling on her bottom lip, “It’s a bad idea,” she finally blurted, “I’m sorry, but no.”

“B-B-B-B-But Haruhi!” Tamaki was throwing himself into the delivery of the line Haruhi was suspecting he had practiced for some time, “We can’t have a Host Club without you! You’ve just got to say yes!”

“Come on, Haruhi,” Kaoru urged, “This isn’t really something we agreed with either, at first.” He stopped and let Hikaru take over from there, “But aren’t you at least a little curious about how this could work out? It might even be fun.”

By focusing on the tying of her tie, Haruhi was able to avoid the puppy eyes she knew she was getting from over half the boys in her room. “Guys… We can’t keep doing this,” she told them, “The Twins and I are graduating today. With the last of our group leaving the High School, we were supposed to be done.” She continued to avoid eye contact with any and all of them as she turned to her desk and packed up the homework she had finished last night, “I think… I think it’s just time for this to end. You guys really need to let go of our little magical world where everything is perfect and join the real world.” As she closed her bag, she finally looked at them, “I’m supposed to be going to college in the fall, you know that right? But I can’t, because I don’t have the money. So I need to get a job and bust my butt for the next few years so I can get into a college before it’s too late.”

The room went still. All of a sudden, Kyouya lifted his hand up to push on the nose piece of his glasses. He smirked and asked, “And what if you were paid to be a Host?”

It took everyone a moment to register what he was saying, and then Tamaki raised his hand up, placing his thumb under his chin and his index finger on his cheek, like he was thinking about something. “Oh, yeah… I guess I forgot to tell you that part,” he remembered, (thanks to Kyouya’s comment alone, no doubt), “Since you technically haven’t been required to work in the Host club for a while now, having paid us back for the vase and all, we unanimously decided that it would be fair to pay you somewhere around… um… shoot…” Tamaki’s expression darkened in concentration for a second or two, then he looked over his shoulder at Kyouya, “Momma! I forgot the number!”

Kyouya opened the small brown pocketbook he pulled from his pocket during Tamaki’s concentration second, and read off the number he had written on the page in front of him, along with many, many calculations that led to this number, “One thousand nine hundred seventy five yen,” he snapped the book shut, “An hour.”

Haruhi dropped her bag, and her jaw, though she wasn’t in shock. Her mind when whirling immediately… 1,975 yen and hour… 8 hour work day… 15,800 yen a day… 7 days in a week… 110,600 yen a week… 4 weeks in a month… 442,400 yen a month… 12 months in a year… 5,308,800 yen a year…

She wouldn’t find a better paying job than this no matter where she looked. She could start college at any of the one’s she wanted next year. Even without a scholarship!

Damn. Could she really say ‘No’ now?

She sighed. “All right,” she agreed, “But only for the summer!”

The Hitachin Twins, Tamaki and Honey all cheered loudly. Then the six boys, (including Mori and Kyouya), followed Haruhi out of her room and to the door, where they all put on their shoes and left her apartment.

“First off,” she addressed Tamaki, even though she knew it was Kyouya she was going to get an answer from, “Where is this happening?”

“You remember Ranka’s Bed and Breakfast?” Tamaki asked her, (hm… apparently he did know), “Kyouya used the money we’ve been making since we started the Host Club to buy it from him at double the price he bought it.”

Haruhi looked over at Kyouya, slightly impressed with him. He simply smiled and pushed the middle part of his glasses with his finger.

“So… That’s where this is going to happen?” Haruhi went back to Tamaki.

Tamaki nodded, “If you wish, you can move into Ranka’s old room upstairs.”

“Hm…” Haruhi thought about this. She had been meaning to find a place of her own soon. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea.

“By the way Haruhi,” Kaoru suddenly appeared on her right, and Hikaru on her left, though it was Kaoru who spoke, “You should know that we all had a huge fight about it…” He stopped and Hikaru came in right away with, “… and decided that we’re going to take turns staying at the Bed and Breakfast with you.”

“Huh?”

Kyouya came in now, “Tamaki is worried that you might get scared all by yourself, so we set up a rotation until we get the separate house built.”

“Wait, what?!” Haruhi glanced around at all the different faces, “I’m confused. What do you mean?”

“Kyouya and I, then Mori and Honey, then The Twins…” Tamaki explained, “Each night a pair of two will stay in the double bed room next to Ranka’s old one, so you won’t be alone.”

Haruhi nodded, “Okay, I get that… But what’s this about another house?”

“It should only take two months,” Kyouya told her, “We’re having a separate home – a small one, nothing fancy – built behind the Bed and Breakfast. It’ll be two stories, with three bedrooms on top, then a bathroom, and living area downstairs. When it’s finished, those five plan to move into it. I, however, will remain at my parent’s cottage.”

Haruhi was taken aback, “You’re putting a whole other house on the property?”

“And a pool!” Honey cried excitedly from Mori’s shoulders.

“A pool?”

Tamaki shrugged, “The Twins insisted.”

“Uh… No we didn’t,” they replied in perfect unison, “You did, Boss.”

Haruhi’s expression went flat when she looked over at Tamaki, “I see.”

Tamaki started freaking out, “I did not! It was those two! They’re the ones that wanted a pool! Them!”

“Nu-uh! Nu-uh! Nu-uh!” they chanted back.

Meanwhile, Haruhi turned to Kyouya, “Do I even want to know whose idea it was?”

“Unexpectedly… It was Mori,” Kyouya replied, “He mentioned it because he thought Honey might like the idea, and then the Twins kind of took it over from there.”

“That is unexpected…” Haruhi murmured, risking a glance at Mori, who was watching Tamaki and the Twins argue with Honey.

“Oh, Haruhi?” Kyouya reclaimed her attention, “You should know that we’ll be wearing our Ouran Uniforms any day that we aren’t cosplaying. That was a suggestion from Kaoru. Something about a magic spell…”

It was then that they arrived at the Academy. Even though Ouran was quite a ways from where the Twins, Tamaki, Kyouya, Mori and Honey lived, it was actually surprisingly close to Haruhi’s home. The Twins and Haruhi said good-bye to the rest of the Host Club, (who had already graduated), and headed off to school.

“See you at the Graduation Ceremonies!” Tamaki yelled to them, waving furiously from the front gate, “We’ll all be there for you!”

Haruhi paused and looked back. She gazed at their four smiling faces back at the gate, and couldn’t help but smile back at them, and waving.

She had become a part of a wonderful family. Maybe it would be just as wonderful to spend the summer with them, doing what they did best.

Being a Host Club.