Little Ouran

Prologue: Welcome to the Third Music Room!

“Hi, Mom.  I can’t believe I’m doing this.  I know I wanted to follow in your footsteps, but I don’t think you ever had to do anything like this to become a lawyer.”

Haruhi Fujioka slid her hands across the handmade wooden frame that held her mother’s image.  As the sun showered the small room in the brick apartment with light, she gave the shrine one last look, her troubled gaze turning determined as she got up and left the room. 

“I still don’t like these heels,” mumbled Haruhi as she slipped on the new, leather shoes.  “Why is it necessary for me to dress like this outside of where I’m working? They could start a debt for me based on the wardrobe alone.”

Haruhi laughed to herself as she closed the door and considered what she had just said.  “Tamaki Suoh wouldn’t worry about a debt, but I’m sure Kyoya Ootori would.  He seems the type.  Tamaki Suoh is an idiot, if my last couple meetings with him are any indication.”

But where Tamaki seemed to lack in business acumen, Kyoya more than made up for it.  That was why those two worked together so closely, between Tamaki’s hotel and Kyoya’s medical practice.  Their businesses were situated next door to one another, which worked out for all involved.    

But how did they start working together? I need to find that out while I’m working for them so that I can better understand the friendship between those two.  They seem so different, and yet they work so well together.

Haruhi’s thoughts continued along that vein as she made the walk to her new job.  It was mid-afternoon, and the sun was warm upon her wool jacket.  At least the dress she wore was cotton, so that it would breathe while she was inside. 

She did not want to think about the dress she was wearing.  It was short, the hem now at her knees instead of her ankles and much shorter than she was used to, and she felt like she was a flapper now in this bright yellow dress and hat. 

She had shaken her head before at the “passing fashion” that all the girls in college had started dressing like, but the look seemed to have become more popular since.  It was nice to have more ability to walk, but the heels negated all benefits of the shorter dresses now in fashion, at least in Haruhi’s mind.  She just wanted a dress that was simple and functional, preferably in cotton.

She had insisted upon those things with the Hitachiin brothers when they had visited, in order to help her have an appropriate wardrobe for work.  They had made it their business to not listen to her the majority of the time, letting Tamaki dictate exactly what she would need, while Kyoya just stood in a corner with a black, leather-bound book, watching with concealed interest.

Do the Hitachiins attend this club? It would be hard to do my job if they’re constantly asking me questions and calling me their toy.  Other customers might think I’m not doing my job properly.  I have to perform well if I want to impress my new employers.

What criteria the duo used for evaluating her performance as a Hostess were unclear, but she hoped it was of the normal variety, in providing good, prompt service.  Tamaki probably expected her to smile and look cute, but what else Kyoya wanted was what concerned her.

As Haruhi walked up Third Avenue towards work, she did her best to keep her eyes straight ahead, not stopping to notice the various shops with their nice clothes and new radios, or paying attention to the cars that cruised along the streets.  She was determined to be early for her first day of work, and if the four tolls of the church bells were any indication, she was still thirty minutes early.  She had always been a hard worker, and seeing as this job would (hopefully) lead to a position as a lawyer, she knew that being prompt now was important.

“If we had an open position, we’d gladly give it to you,” chimed a light-hearted voice in Haruhi’s mind. 

Remembering the voice and face, Haruhi smiled.  She hoped that she could serve that speaker at some point in thanks for his help.  The gentleman, while small, obviously had a big heart and understood how much she wanted to be a lawyer.  The much taller gentleman beside him was quick to provide writing supplies so that she could be contacted if a position did open up. 

Both were also willing to give her suggestions on where else might have an opening since none of the firms in the area wanted Haruhi, a woman.  While the friends of her mother had been able to find jobs for both her mother and father upon moving, her mother’s position was no longer available, and so she had been given a list of names in her neighborhood, in “Little Ouran”, that might employ her. 

Those two kind men, whose names she could not remember (but always thought of her father’s job when she saw the names), had given her two other names who were hiring, and those two names happened to be the next ones on the list she had originally been given as well.

She had success, but not in the way she expected.  Somehow, she was now going to be serving clients at an exclusive club, in a place known as “The Third Music Room”.  She had heard at her first inquiry that it was simply the third music room in the hotel (albeit hidden), but the Hitachiin twins claimed that it was the third time that the music room had been created, the other two either destroyed or abandoned for undisclosed reasons.

Haruhi really hoped that the room was named for the former reason, as she did not like the idea of dishonest work. 

As Haruhi approached the hotel, she kept her eyes open for the secret entrance that was reserved for the “Hosts” to enter through.  The main entrance was inside the hotel somewhere, reserved for all guests and privileged people.

The hotel itself was quite large, brightly painted, and had an odd structure.  Instead of being one large rectangle in shape, the hotel had the different wings jut out on their own, some turning at ninety degree angles, which Haruhi suspected led to courtyards in the middle.  The yard was well-kept and decorated, with plenty of shrubbery for privacy, and stone benches just inside the manicured bushes for leisure. 

As Haruhi turned a corner around the large hotel, a brown cat meowed and passed in front of Haruhi, surprising her.  When she stopped for the cat, a man with dark hair and a black robe peeked out from behind a pole next to an iron gate, saw her looking at him, and ran off.  Haruhi thought that was odd and wrote it off as probably one of the employees of the hotel. 

“Remember, Haruhi, to follow the gates once you get to the back of the hotel.  At the opening, take the path on the left,” Kyoya had said, emphasizing the last word.  “When the path ends, just keep going straight on down.”

Kyoya had grinned as he spoke to her about her path to take.  It had made her wonder if there was some private joke about that path, until she actually found the opening in the gates.  Then she realized that there was no path on the left, only a thin patch of grass separating the bright stone walls from the ornamental gates.

“What is he thinking behind that smile?” asked Haruhi aloud, comparing the two paths.  Why would he not just tell her to walk in the grass? It made no sense.  The only logical reason was that he was testing her.

But, he had told her to do so, and she was more than capable of following directions. In her mind, the grass was the path, and so she followed it.

Haruhi had to squeeze between the gates and walls to first get onto the grass, but she did so easily since she was so small.  After that, she slid along the smooth walls, her ungloved hands happy to admire the good paint job as she kept her eyes on the grass.

As Haruhi came to the corner, she realized that not all of the yard area had grass on it as she had thought.  A small portion did, but the rest was cut off by dirt walking paths and more ornamental gates.  She followed the grass around the first wing she came to (despite two large potted bushes in her way), making more turns until the grass stopped.  As the grass stopped, a dirt walking path began, and the paint became even brighter, but no longer smooth.  It was as if this portion of the wall had been hastily painted and not applied properly.

Whatever the reason was, Haruhi did her best to not get pebbles in her shoes as she walked.  The path was a straight shot, with much lower ceilings here, and now stairs appeared at the end of the path. 

“What kind of club is underground? I was imagining a large, airy room with comfortable chairs around tables,” said Haruhi, looking at the narrow path that reminded her of countless alleys in her neighborhood in Detroit. 

When Haruhi got to the stairs, she saw no windows.  It looked so small and cramped inside, with ceilings so low.  She was beginning to get a bad feeling about what this private “club” did.  No proper club was this hard to find.

All she had wanted was to find a place to practice law. 

Now, she was going to serve rich, privileged people in order to gain the trust of the owners of the club.

“Trust is important in small and large matters,” Kyoya Ootori had said to her as his reasoning when she was first hired.  Tamaki just thought she would be a good, cute addition. 

Haruhi straightened herself up as she took cautious steps down the steep, stone steps.  Mentally, she was ready for whatever new training Tamaki had in mind, or at least she hoped she was.  She had not gotten a headache the last time she had talked to him, which was an improvement over the previous times.

“A good lawyer must be willing to serve others,” muttered Haruhi to herself, her rationalization for taking the job in the first place.  “Besides, it’s only temporary until they find someone else.”

With one final breath, Haruhi opened the door.  It swung open easily, and the scent of roses filled her senses.  She felt as though roses were being showered upon her.

As the door opened, a voice yelled in excitement, “Welcome to the Third Music Room!”