Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

I.

Night had fallen and a page of her casebook was stuck to her face.

She hadn't been sleeping, only dozing, trying to commit the text to memory. Yet when she came back to attention, for one startling, surreal moment, Haruhi did not know where she was. The place still smelled new, with foreign furniture on foreign floors. Two weeks had passed in this new home and she still occasionally cut short the corner into the kitchen and smacked her elbow or her shoulder on the doorframe. And outside, stories below, the distant sound of cars on the interstate drifted up, faint ambient noise on repeat.

The paper peeled off of her cheek as Haruhi lifted her head from the table. Her neck had gone stiff, and she winced as she rubbed it and stretched. She smoothed out the page of the casebook and squinted down at the lines of text. Civil Procedure would be hardest class this semester, no doubt. As if the English textbook were not difficult enough on its own, the first case had reminded Haruhi that her understanding of United States courtroom procedure and politics was basic at best. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004). United States Supreme Court. The case held that the government could detain enemy combatants; however, the due process clause of the Constitution required that U.S. detainees receive notice of the factual basis for their detention, as well as an opportunity to rebut the government’s claims in front of a neutral decision-maker.

She had read the case five times before falling asleep. It was only after this recollection that she realized something had prodded her awake in the first place. Her own name, spoken in a soft but groggy voice—

“Haruhi?”

She turned around in the high-backed wooden chair to find Tamaki standing there in the doorway. He was in his pajama bottoms and tying off the knot of his bathrobe, squinting at her in the dim kitchen light.

“Reading still, at three in the morning,” he observed, only half disbelieving.

Reluctantly, Haruhi stopped watching him rub the sleep out of his eyes and turned back to the casebook. “Yes. I need to prepare for class.”

“You already did that,” he said, yawning. “You need to sleep.”

"M’not tired.”

“Sleeping reinforces learning. If you sleep, it will help you remember what you read better than if you don’t.”

Haruhi did not answer, but felt him watching as she picked up an uncapped highlighter—yellow, for highlighting relevant procedures in the fact pattern—and tried to highlight a line. The marker was dry. Haruhi glared at it, touched the felt tip to her tongue to re-wet it, and tried again. Failing that, she traded the highlighter for a pen and wrote the line out longhand. The District Court found that Hamdi's father was a proper next friend, appointed the federal public defender as counsel for the petitioners…

She heard Tamaki’s bare feet on the tile before he passed into her vision. He shuffled past her, brushing her so lightly on the shoulder as he went that it might have been incidental. The faucet went on and then off. There was a click-click-click-fwoosh as he lit the gas range. Cabinets opened, a spoon clinked against porcelain. At last, unable to ignore him any longer, Haruhi glanced up. Tamaki was pouring the boiled water into a teapot, which he transferred to the kitchen table along with a pair of teacups gifted to them by Suzushima. Sometime between his appearance and now, he had wrapped the robe tight around himself and tied it off at the waist. The apartment was quite cold despite the late August heat outdoors, and unless they were in bed, they found themselves bundling up in layers.

“I hope it’s something strong,” said Haruhi, by way of thanks. He smiled at her. She set down her pen and leaned forward on her elbows, pressing her hands to her face. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to keep you up so late.”

Tamaki shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said lightly, and she laughed into her hands.

Haruhi let him pour the tea. She waited until he had settled back with his own cup before raising hers and taking a cautious sip. Herbal, no caffeine. She drank it anyway, grateful for the way it warmed her from the top down. Halfway through it, she realized his trick. Before now she had been exhausted in an over-worked sort of way, but the warmth of the tea soon made her drowsy. Her shoulders eased, she leaned more heavily on the table.

Tamaki noticed. Eyeing her with apparent satisfaction, he said, “Six hours from now, you’ll be a real law student. Aren’t you glad?”

Of course she was glad, but at the moment the wall clock ticked away the seconds toward what suddenly seemed like a cliff and a long, steep drop.

“I am going to die tomorrow,” she said.

Twenty-one years of hard labor had brought her to this day, the beginning of the fulfillment of her life’s dream. It seemed that all of the anxiety she had harbored was coming out all at once, too. Until now she had been at least reasonably certain—study hard and success followed. It always had. But in law school, only the strong survived. She’d read that some law schools lost up to fifty percent of their student body after the first year. Yale wasn’t one of them, but still.

“You got into the best law schools in the world,” Tamaki said, awe blatant on his face. “How many of your classmates can say that they ‘settled’ on Yale?”

“Eh, I’m not sure that’s fair,” said Haruhi. “Most of the students will be from within the country. Yale is the best in the country, so if they intend to practice here, what good would it serve to apply to higher-ranked international schools?”

“That may be true. But how many of them have more pages of notes than they have pages of reading?”

He gestured to her Civil Procedure notebook, which looked as if she had carried it around since high school. The pages were swollen and wrinkled with lines of black ink, so much that the cover did not lie flat when she flipped it shut and scowled.

“Analysis!” she insisted, blushing. “And… case history. I’m really behind on U.S. history and politics…ah—”

That had reminded her of something she read about U.S. detainees from the Middle East. Haruhi snatched up her pen and flipped about three quarters of the way into the notebook, where she smoothed out a fresh page and began to write once more.

After he had finished his tea, Tamaki rose and cleared the table. He started for the kitchen’s exit. He stopped as he went by her, though, and a moment later she felt a soft weight on her shoulders. His fingers slipped up under her chin and gently tilted her head back. He leaned over her. Haruhi met his eyes over the rim of her glasses.

“Please do get some sleep,” he said, and then added in a teasing voice, “You can sleep in your room, if you think I might keep you up again.”

“Very funny.”

Having separate bedrooms was a pretense at best, an accommodation to quell the distress of their parents and his grandmother, as well as any socialites who might come to call and think it inappropriate for an unmarried couple to share the same bed. In private reality, they had not even pretended to care about sleeping together since they studied abroad in Boston. Haruhi’s bedroom had long since become her quiet study, bare save for some furniture and a small cabinet containing her mother’s prohograph. She’d never so much as napped on that bed.

The wayward thought died as Tamaki bent low and kissed her. When he began to pull away, she released the pen to reach up and grasp a handful of his hair. Haruhi held him there a little longer before easing up to say, “I’ll try not to wake you.”

They kissed once more before he left, fingers sliding out from under her chin and leaving her bare skin colder than it had been. Once his footsteps had faded down the hall, Haruhi turned to the clock. It was almost half past three now, and her (four) alarms were set for seven in the morning. She took a deep breath to brace herself for another long hour of studying.

However, after only fifteen minutes, Haruhi had to accept that Tamaki had thoroughly sabotaged her plans. Cursing him and his sneaky warm tea, she packed her books and pens into her backpack, and set it on the chair before following the path to their bedroom (formally: Tamaki’s room, into which she had never stepped foot).

He had left a lamp on for her, but Tamaki was already asleep with his pillow drawn over his eyes. Haruhi changed into her pajamas, taking care not to let the bureau drawer slam as she closed it. She turned out the light and felt her way over to her side of the bed. No more than thirty seconds after she had curled up, she felt the mattress move as Tamaki shifted in sleep. As always, his arm sidled across her waist and pulled her closer, needy even while unconscious. And as always, despite her anxiety for the coming days, Haruhi slept.

II.

All four of her alarms went off at seven a.m., and Haruhi could not distinguish the sounds of four different radio stations blaring all at once. In hindsight she could have saved herself the heart attack by staggering the alarms at one-minute intervals, but the placement was effective at least. The first alarm she conquered by reflexively rolling over and smashing it with her fist, in hope that she hit the ‘off’ instead of ‘snooze’. She raised herself up on her elbows and dragged herself across to Tamaki’s side of the bed, now occupied by Antoinette, where the second alarm sat on his bedside table. The third and fourth were on opposite sides of the room. In order to kill them, she had to roll out of bed and stagger over to them, one at a time.

The final alarm, turned for some mysterious reason to country music, died at last, leaving her with precious silence. Haruhi was tired in theory, but not in practice. With less than three and a half hours on board, a notable exhaustion had crept into her bones that made it almost painful to stretch and shake out her arms. Her mind, however, buzzed so loudly with the day’s itinerary that she barely noticed the tired.

This could be the most important day of her life. Today, she began to catch up with her mother’s shadow.

She showered and dressed in a daze, pulled on whatever she grabbed first from her closet, and half-jogged to the kitchen. Class began at nine. Her plan was to catch a bus to the law school, find her classroom, and grab a seat somewhere in the front row, where she could be sure to read everything the professor wrote on the board. All of this would take no more than fifteen minutes, leaving her with a little over an hour to get in some last minute studying before class began.

In the two weeks since they had moved into this apartment, Haruhi test ran this course seven times. Nowhere in this schedule had she planned breakfast—there were a few granola bars stowed away in her backpack, and a little café between the school and her bus stop. Tamaki knew about this plan because he had invited himself along on six of the seven test runs (he had only missed the last one due to a morning conference call with Board members in Tokyo). When Haruhi turned into the kitchen to fetch her backpack, however, it appeared that he had forgotten all about it.

He was sitting at his usual spot at the kitchen table, facing the entry way and beaming at her with his arms thrown wide. Spread out on the table before him was an arrangement that looked like it had come from a breakfast buffet. There was a bizarre combination of dishes—traditional and western style Japanese food on one end, which gradually transitioned over to U.S. breakfast plates. Along one side of the table, he had set up a line of carafes containing what looked like orange, apple, cranberry, and grape juice, as well as two steaming cups of coffee.

Haruhi had time to feel neither touched by his efforts, nor exasperated with his extravagance. In a different situation she may have chastised his tendency to waste food. Instead, as she stutter-stopped into the kitchen, she took one look at the table and demanded, “Where did you put my backpack?”

Tamaki’s face fell when he saw her. He dropped his arms. At first Haruhi thought she may have hurt his feelings, but before she begin to form an apology he had shot out of his seat and come charging at her.

“Haruhi!” he cried, so distraught that he was almost in tears. “This is your first day as a professional lady and you’re going to wear that?”

For the first time, Haruhi looked down and noticed what she had put on this morning. The khaki slacks were fine enough, she thought, if a little baggy. It must be the sweater that offended him so much. Oversized and the color of steel, even Haruhi had to acknowledge that the wool knit sweater made her look like—

“—a big, gray blob!”

Tamaki had grabbed her arm and dragged her back to their bedroom, where he threw open the door to the walk-in closet and steered her inside. Antoinette, still dozing at the foot of their bed, was unperturbed by the commotion. The closet’s motion sensor lights came up as he closed the door behind them.

“Wait—I haven’t got time for this!” she managed, at last.

His back was to her as he rummaged through her meager section of the closet, but he still managed to waggle a warning finger at her.

“Then not planning time for fashion was your mistake! First of all, it’s August; you’d be dripping by the time you got off the bus in that sweater. Second of all, the people you meet today are going to be your fellow students for the next three years. Maybe they’ll even hire you one day! You need to make an impression.”

Haruhi’s initial reaction to this point was a disapproving twinge that ran deep in her gut. If these people could not appreciate her as she was, or be bothered to look past clothing and at the person, she was not sure she wanted to associate them. Perhaps it was not fair to think such things, but the thought crossed her mind, as it often did.

Nevertheless, Tamaki had a point. This was professional school, and attire counted as a key part of professionalism. No doubt Tamaki meant that showing you knew how to dress yourself was a critical part of being a budding attorney. If nothing else, it showed respect to the professors and the time they spent prepping their lesson plans. She would be more mindful of what she wore from now on—she might not labor over her outfits every day, but she would at least look before dressing. After all, it wasn’t that she lacked fashion competence; she just didn’t think it important enough to care about.

Even so, Haruhi sighed loudly as she grabbed the hem of the sweater and pulled it over her head. She tossed it aside as Tamaki spun around with a dress in either hand.

“Here, pick—” The haughtiness dropped out of his voice when he spotted her standing there in a plain cotton bra, but he recovered and barely faltered as he held the dresses out and finished, “—pick one.”

She had never seen either of these dresses in her entire life. Clothes were always popping up in her closet without warning or explanation. Like weeds. Tamaki was almost always behind it—he couldn’t resist dropping a few hundred dollars every time he spotted something cute behind the window of a boutique—but sometimes the fashion choices made her think that her father was somehow involved. The dress dangling from the hanger in Tamaki’s right hand was one such example. It was a short pink dress, with one shoulder strap, and trimmed with so much lace that Haruhi forgot her infuriation. She laughed out loud and took the dress from his left hand instead. It was navy, a little longer and with two short sleeves.

“Fine,” she said, already pulling it over her head. She tugged her slacks down, stepped out of them, and straightened the dress so that it fell just above her knees. She turned her back to him. “Let me put my contacts in. I’ll eat but it has to be extremely quick.”

Tamaki zipped up the back of the dress and fastened a brown belt loosely around her waist. Haruhi hurried out of the closet before he could fawn over her cuteness (he had started to get that look, taking a big breath in preparation for an explosion). He followed close behind, stooping to scoop up her clothes from the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him chuck the sweater into the garbage bin en route to the kitchen.

x

In the end, they spent a little over ten minutes on breakfast. The table offered a little of everything here but toast (Tamaki made some comment about not wanting to give her toast on her first day of school, lest she check her watch and realize she was running late). Haruhi started off eating at whirlwind speed, but slowed down after almost choking on a mouthful of rice. She felt almost at peace after breakfast and a cup of coffee. She wished she could linger a little longer, to enjoy the smell of a busy kitchen and the idle talk that came with it. Unfortunately, there was no time to spare this morning. Tamaki shooed her away from the kitchen when she made a halfhearted attempt to tackle the dishes. She brushed her teeth and returned to find him waiting by the exit with her backpack and a thermos.

“Good luck,” he said as he watched her shrug her backpack on. With two casebooks jammed into the pack and another cradled in her arm, Haruhi lurched at first under the weight. When she had recovered, he handed her the thermos. “Are you sure I can’t walk you to the bus stop?”

“No, I can manage it.” Haruhi double-checked that she had her phone, wallet, and keys. All things settled, she took a step forward and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. She was smiling when she backed down. “Thank you, Tamaki.”

Within five minutes, Haruhi stood at the bus stop, soldier-still and clutching her book. The bus would arrive in exactly three minutes. In the meantime, she stood at the corner watching cars. From here, if she stuck her head out and peeked around the corner of the apartment high rise, she could see the wide, tall building that was Federal Court. Each state had at least one federal court building, and this state had three. One of them just happened to be within walking distance of the law school. Haruhi was not convinced of the coincidence. Perhaps she would end up speaking in this court before she graduated.

Turning her eyes downward, she forced herself to take a deep breath and scuffed at a rock with the toe of one sandal. That reminded her of something else, too.

I forgot to get the soil again, she thought, with a pang of annoyance. Since the day they arrived, she meant to sneak out with a ziplock baggie and collect a sample… a project for another day, perhaps…

Tamaki had been right about her attire. Late summer in New England meant considerable heat and oppressive humidity, and the light breeze would not have been enough to perforate the big gray sweater. She was already warm when the bus arrived, and sweating by the time she reached the school.

The first thing Haruhi and Tamaki had done when they reached New Haven, even before seeing their apartment, was come see the school. Tamaki had originally been disappointed when she told him the school was built in the 1930’s—he had been looking forward to a long history lesson on the school’s ancient founding—but when they finally saw the complex, they stood side-by-side in the main courtyard and gawked. Renovations had modernized the buildings, but it was clear that the architects had paid special attention to maintaining the Gothic style. The library tower loomed over them, its countless windows gleaming. It was smaller than Ouran, but somehow held the same sense of nobility without the excess gaudiness. All at once she felt herself falling in love.

“It’s modeled after the English Inns of Court,” said Tamaki, pointing. “Look at that ogival arch—it’s a perfect 14^th century replica.”

“It’s beautiful,” Haruhi agreed absently, too star struck to listen as he went off about vaulted ceilings and the Palace of Westminster.

At that time, she was still in disbelief that law school had become a reality. Now, as she hurried across campus, past where she and Tamaki had stood on that first day, she was set on earning it.

Despite her delay this morning, she was still one of the first students to enter the room. There were six rows of long, curved tables forming a raised semi-circle around the room. She claimed a seat in the front row, just left of center so that she would not be in the professor’s direct line of sight. The only others in the room were a small, dark-haired boy in the second row, and an older woman in the back row. Haruhi exchanged wary smiles with them as she crossed the room and sat down.

She got about twenty minutes of study time before students began pouring into the room. Unlike undergraduate school, where most everyone was around the same age, there was much more variety here. Most appeared in their mid to upper twenties, with some a bit younger and others much older. The person to take the seat at Haruhi’s right was a blonde, bespectacled boy with broad shoulders and a crew cut. He flashed her a smile when he sat down, but he had come in with two other boys and continued to talk animatedly with them. The first words Haruhi spoke to a fellow law school student came a few minutes later, when a girl took a seat to Haruhi’s left.

“Hi,” said the girl, sounding breathless and anxious. Haruhi noticed an almost imperceptible accent when she spoke, though Haruhi couldn’t place the nationality. “Is this civil procedure?” The girl let out a long breath when Haruhi nodded, and set her books down on the desk. “Thank god, I thought I got the room number mixed up with my contracts class.”

“Don’t worry, you’re in the right place,” Haruhi said, consciously smiling. “Or else… we’re both in the wrong place, so it’ll be less awkward if we have to sneak out together.”

The girl wore her thick hair pulled back in a tight bun. She grinned back at Haruhi, suddenly far more at ease than she had been before. She introduced herself as Tricia, twenty-three years old, from Brooklyn. She had gone to school at NYU and then worked as a paralegal in a big firm for two years prior to applying for law school. Haruhi mentioned that she had studied in Boston for a semester, which started a conversation about which city had better local food. By the time class time arrived, the room was brimming with excited voices of new students—most were strangers, some had friends that they had known from college. But the moment the professor entered the room, all the voices died at once.

Professor Connor was younger than Haruhi had expected. For some reason she had pictured all of her professors as the same caricature—an old white man with mean eyes. Professor Connor was none of the above. She was younger than forty, a black woman with a natural, easy smile. She was dressed in a pants suit and carried a laptop case slung over one shoulder. At the sound of the sudden silence, she stopped halfway to the lectern and looked out at the crowd.

“This… must be your first class as law school students,” she said, and a few students laughed. She sighed lightly in false remorse. “Give it a few weeks and you won’t acknowledge me when I come in the door!” she said. More cautious laughter. Haruhi felt her heart begin to return to its normal pace.

Professor Connor set up her laptop while the students looked on in silence. After she had plugged into the projector and booted up her laptop, she procured a long sheet of white paper from behind the desk and handed it to the first person in the row. He studied it for a moment before taking out a pencil, jotting something down, and passing the sheet along to the next person.

“As you may have heard, first year law students don’t have much autonomy,” she said. “You do not choose your classes. You do not choose when you have class. You do not choose when you have a lunch break. And as you are about to learn when you get the seating chart, you don’t even get to choose your seat every day. The seat you are in now is the seat you will have in this class for the rest of the semester. In other words, the first year of law school is basically like high school… except with more booze,” she added, as an afterthought.

While the rest of the class laughed along, apparently identifying with the joke, Haruhi’s chuckle was more of a groan. For whatever reason, she doubted that law school was going to be anything like her high school experience. She was wearing a dress, for starters.

Professor reeled the class back in with a clap of her hands. “Anyway, welcome, 1Ls! You’ll hear it all day, but we’re all proud to have you here. And what better a place to start the law school experience with federal civil procedure? No matter what kind of lawyer you want be, from litigation to transactional law, everything in this profession is about procedure. You want to put someone in jail? Well, due process requires that you take certain steps first. Want to sue someone? Procedure. Want to help refugees gain asylum in the United States? Procedure. We have an adversarial legal system. This means that the only way a court will even hear a situation is if there are two parties fighting it out. Plaintiff versus defendant; petitioner versus respondent, for higher court cases; state versus alleged criminal. And behind almost every major case? Lawyers! The supreme advocate to her client must also be the best adversary to whoever stands on the opposite podium…”

Haruhi had already filled half a page with notes. She glanced around about halfway through lecture and noticed that almost everyone was using a laptop in this class. She had her own laptop now, but even in undergrad she had preferred a handwritten approach to class. It gave her a good reason to review after lecture, to make sure everything made sense and was written legibly. But if she was one of the only ones without a laptop on the desk, maybe there was good reason for it…

Haruhi left her first law school class feeling dazed and excited. She had already learned so much, in just two hours—how much could she absorb in one week, she wondered? With that question in the forefront of her mind, she hurried off to constitutional law.

III.

Unlike civil procedure, constitutional law took place in a small classroom seating about twenty students. The room was almost full by the time Haruhi arrived, and she took the first seat she could find, in the second row.

Her constitutional law professor was also a woman, a little older, and with closely-cropped hair that reminded Haruhi of her own as a first year at Ouran. The professor, Alice Murphy, had a dry sense of humor. This did not surprise Haruhi, given that Professor Murphy had chosen a casebook where the first case was about three men who were stranded at sea and wound up eating one of their comrades. Like the previous class, the professor called on a random student and had them walk the case through the facts of the case. Afterward, the student faced questions and hypothetical questions from the professor. The student she called on first, named Jake, tackled her questions with a level of confidence Haruhi was sure she could not employ. She made sure to write down all of his answers, and starred the ones where Professor Murphy elaborated.

Constitutional law got out at 12:30, leaving an hour and a half lunch break. Haruhi gathered her belongings and went outside to regroup. She hadn’t met anybody new in her constitutional law class, given that it started immediately after the prior class let out, and she was almost hoping to run into one of the familiar faces from civil procedure this morning. Outside, the courtyard was full of students. While they were all strangers to Haruhi, though, it seemed as if everyone else had already become familiar. There were people standing around in small groups, chatting. Others sat in the sun, legs outstretched in the grass, and read from their books. A few smoked cigarettes.

Haruhi watched a handful of students roaming around, clutching lunch bags and looking rather lost. Having already explored the school with Tamaki, Haruhi knew where to find the dining hall. However, with two full classes now complete for the day, she thought that instead of having lunch, she ought to review her notes. Maybe re-write them, if they were too messy.

Before she could start for the library, however, Haruhi felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. She pulled over to the nearest bench, shaded beneath a large oak tree, and set her backpack down. Her eyebrows shot up at the caller ID. She flipped open the phone.

“Kyoya?”

“Haruhi,” greeted the voice from the other side, apparently not a hallucination. Kyoya rarely called her directly; he and Tamaki kept up enough so that each usually had an idea of how the other was doing. “How are you enjoying law school?”

Haruhi paused a moment before answering, “It’s great! You have impeccable timing; I just got out for lunch. How are you enjoying Stanford?”

“The same as last semester, when I’m there.”

“Oh, are you interning off campus?”

“Something like that.”

He asked about her classes, so they spent several minutes going back and forth about her curriculum and how the common law system (the system of the United States, where judges could make the law) compared to the code system used in Japan. He seemed particularly curious about how she was feeling about school, whether or not she was happy with the choice. Sitting on the bench with her legs outstretched in front of her, the sun peaking through the small gaps in the branches overhead, she was warm and content and happy to say so. Once she finished explaining her day thus far, however, she hesitated.

“Kyoya, what made you call?”

“Oh, I’m just checking in,” he replied, in a tone that reminded her she was speaking to the Shadow King. All of a sudden Haruhi straightened up, more alert. “Also, I thought I would let you know—I read a report from this year that placed New Haven as the fourth most dangerous city in the country.”

“Is that so,” she said. Having done an extensive amount of research on Connecticut and New Haven before deciding to go to school here, this news did not come as a surprise.

“Indeed,” he replied. “As such, I suggest you get back to the apartment before it gets dark. Unless you want Tamaki to pick you up from school with a SWAT team and a helicopter.”

“How thoughtful of you to remind me,” she deadpanned.

“I believe the more lawyerly phrase in English would be, ‘I’ll take it under advisement’,” said Kyoya. “Anyway, I’d better let you have lunch before legal writing class at two.”

“Thanks, Sen—wait, how do you know my schedule?” she demanded, but Kyoya had already bid her goodbye.

Suspicious, she hung up her phone and stowed it back in her pocket. She had an inkling as to what had actually motivated his call, but she would find out later. For now, she decided to skip lunch and review her notes as planned. A granola bar would suffice until after class. She could eat it outside in the nice weather before burying her head in the books for another hour. Haruhi unzipped the front pocket of her backpack in an effort to procure one of said bars, but found the pocket in a different state from which she left it. The stash of snacks was gone, replaced by a small purple lunch box.

Haruhi lifted the box out of her bag and set it on her knees. The lid popped open when she flipped up the front clasp. Inside there was a neat little row of sushi, a cup of fresh fruit, and a chunk of baguette. And sitting on top of it all, a piece of paper folded in half and bearing Haruhi’s name in unmistakable script. Not wanting to spill the lunchbox by accident, she closed the lid and set the box aside, then settled back with the note. It was a short thing, written in Japanese on some of the miniature notepad paper that they kept for keeping track of the grocery order.

Haruhi,

I see you did not pack a lunch today. Luckily, I had time this morning to make you something so you would not have to go hungry. I have perfected the sushi roll, don’t you think? Anyway, I hope your first day of law school is going well. I am sure it is, because you are incredible. See you tonight.

Love,

Tamaki

P.S. Don’t forget to drink a glass of water for every cup of coffee!

Apparently she would not be skipping lunch today. Ignoring the sudden tightness in her throat, Haruhi shouldered her backpack, picked up the lunch box, and went to the dining hall instead.

She found an almost empty table by the window, and had just begun eating when a timid voice asked, “Do you mind if I sit here?”

Quickly shielding Tamaki’s note from view, Haruhi’s head snapped up and spotted the source of the voice. The girl was short, even more so than Haruhi, and quite round. Her smile was careful line that only became genuine when Haruhi answered, “Of course not!”

“You’re Japanese,” said the girl, as she sat down with her lunch tray.

“So are you,” said Haruhi.

The girl nodded, relieved. “My name’s Kimiko, but everyone calls me Kimi.”

Haruhi introduced herself, and for a few minutes they exchanged the conversation that had become typical today—name, age, where you were from, where you had gone to university, your college degree. Kimi was twenty-three, from a small village in northern Japan. She went to Stamford for a degree in mechanical engineering and intended to become an intellectual property lawyer. As usual, Haruhi left out the finer details of her history and stuck to the basics: twenty-one, Japanese, attended university in Tokyo, had a life plan that was more of a work in progress, and yes, her English was very good, thank you, she had practiced quite a lot.

Haruhi knew that these exchanges were just pleasantries, but she loved to hear everyone’s life stories. Putting something to a person’s face, even something insignificant, solidified them as a real person with an equally important life and dreams. This was of the most important skills that she had learned from the Host Club. Small talk was all about catering to the other person’s comfort, and people were always more comfortable when you actually cared to listen.

“Wait—if you’re not sure you want to practice here, why get your degree here?” Kimi asked.

“Yeah, why did you pick Yale?” Just like this morning, Tricia appeared on Haruhi’s left and dumped her books on the table. “Tricia, by the way,” she added to Kimi, as an afterthought.

“Kimi,” said Kimi.

Haruhi sighed. Unlike almost all of her classmates, to Haruhi it was a loaded question. “Well,” she began, sounding almost resigned. “I’m not sure what I want to do. I might up in the—uh—in a sort of… family business, but I don’t know that corporate law is right for me.”

“Wait a second,” Kimi interrupted. “In Japan, you get your law degree right out of high school. You said you went to university, so… you already have a law degree?”

“Yes,” Haruhi admitted.

“So wait, are you an LLM student, or a regular student?”

The LLM program was for international students to get what was essentially an international degree. In most other countries, as Kimi had just pointed out, you went straight to getting a legal education after graduating high school.

Ouran University’s law department had told her everything she ought to know about the Japanese code system and the courts, but she had left feeling totally unprepared. A law degree without passing the bar exam meant you couldn’t practice, which essentially left the degree useless on its own. Haruhi had graduated, but that meant surprisingly little.

Sighing, Haruhi explained, “Regular. I didn’t feel like I was ready to take the bar exam yet; I’m too young, and I don’t have any practical experience, and the non-Japanese systems of legal education are really famous for training lawyers. I might want to do international human rights, and Yale is the best of the best for that, even if I decide to practice in Japan. So I picked Yale.”

“You ‘picked’ Yale,” Tricia repeated incredulously, as Kimi laughed. “Haruhi, nobody ‘picks’ Yale. Yale picks them.”

“Is that why you’re both here?” said Haruhi, bemused.

Tricia nodded. Kimi did the same, and added, “I didn’t think I would get in, so when I did, I had to go! And the funny thing is—” here she lowered her voice, forcing the others to lean in close to listen, “The day before the fee bill was due, I got a call from financial aid—they gave me a full tuition scholarship!”

“No way!”

“Yeah! They told me somebody gave up their scholarship money and I was next in line. I’m sorry, I know it’s rude to talk about money, but I’m still all worked up about it.”

A bout of coughing ensued as Tricia choked on a mouthful of sandwich. “Holy shit. Why on earth would you give up a full scholarship to the best law school in the country?”

“Maybe she sold her soul,” Haruhi offered in a monotone.

“Well whoever they are, they can have mine,” said Kimi. “I owe it to them.”

Just then, Tricia spotted someone across the room and waved him over. He joined them at the table and introductions went around for the third time within the hour. His name was Brian. Haruhi thought he looked a bit like a lumberjack. He was tall and broad and boasted an impressively thick black beard. His red flannel shirt, rolled up to the elbows, only added to the image. At first he seemed gruff, speaking seldom and in a low voice, but soon Haruhi realized that he was merely shyer than his loud appearance suggested.

With his arrival at the table, conversation switched back to the morning’s classes. It turned out that they all shared the morning lecture, though in the large class split into smaller groups for constitutional law. Haruhi learned that she would share contracts with Brian that afternoon, and he offered to study with her if she ever needed help. That got them on the topic of study aids, which Kimi derailed halfway through the conversation.

“But it was thirty dollars, so I didn’t—wait a second, are you married?”

Changing track mid-sentence, Kimi flung an arm out and pointed at the ring that Haruhi wore on her finger. Haruhi jumped at the sudden gesture. She froze with the baguette halfway between the lunch box and her open mouth. She took the bite instead of answering right away, looking down at her ring finger. The band was silver, with a small stone in the center. The ring with which Tamaki first proposed to her had been so big and flashy that she made him exchange it for something more reasonable. As it was, she constantly guarded against dinging it on things as she walked by, lest the stone fall out. A bigger stone would have meant bigger consequences, if only in her head.

When she had swallowed the bite, she smiled. “No, just engaged.”

“‘Just’ engaged,” Tricia echoed Haruhi for the second time today. “Again with the understatement. Are you telling me that you’re going to plan a wedding during your first year of law school?”

Haruhi shrugged. “I guess I am.”

“That’s very brave,” said Brian in his brooding voice.

“It’ll be okay. Though to be honest, he’s taken the lead since I’m in school. I won’t be doing most of the planning.” Just most of the damage control, she added as an afterthought.

“Then he’s the brave one,” said Tricia. “He’s not in school, then?”

“No, graduated and working.”

“What’s he like?” Kimi pressed, sitting her chin in her hands.

“He’s very… kind,” said Haruhi, and with such finality that the others actually groaned.

“Looks like we have a mystery boyfriend,” Tricia said to the others.

Kimi corrected her. “Mystery fiancé. Oh well, looks like we’ll just have to make our own assumptions.”

By the time arrived to go to contracts, Haruhi’s new friends had created not only a caricature of who they thought her fiancé might be, but had also come up with a back story for how they had met. The only extra details they managed to wrangle out of Haruhi, who watched on while enjoying the last of her lunch, were that his name was Tamaki and that he was half French, half Japanese. According to their speculation, Tamaki was short, dark-haired, and strong ‘like a gymnast’. He also wore a beret because he was French, but not in a pretentious-hipster sort of way, more like a paying-homage-to-the-homeland sort of way. He was older than Haruhi, and a budding surgeon, which was important because they apparently met when Haruhi had an emergency appendix removal in college. They had fallen in love and become engaged two months ago, on the anniversary of her surgery.

The entire table was laughing as they packed their things and started off to class. Haruhi, who six years ago may have been annoyed by the intrusion, laughed loudest of all. Never could she have predicted that the most purposefully bizarre rendition of her love life would seem almost normal in comparison to reality.

x

In keeping with the spirit of the rest of her academic career, Haruhi stayed far too long at the library. Before this afternoon, she was sure that the complexities of civil procedure would be her greatest challenge this semester. Contracts had proven her wrong. The professor, an elderly white man in a wheelchair, rolled into the classroom at two p.m. sharp and immediately called on an unsuspecting girl. His manner was hard, his hypothetical questions even harder. The girl was on the verge of tears by the end of her interrogation, and so was Haruhi—while frantically taking notes, it had dawned on Haruhi that she had completely misunderstood the material.

That was why she did not look up from the casebook until nine o’clock, when the birth control alarm on her phone went off so loudly that the people studying around her jumped. Haruhi turned it off and whispered a mortified apology to the open room. She gathered up her things and scrambled for the exit, pausing just outside the library to dry swallow a pill before running to the bus stop.

Darkness was earlier in coming this close to fall, but the campus and surrounding streets were well-lit. Haruhi watched the matchstick streetlights pass on the short bus ride to the apartment complex, and warily recalled Kyoya’s words of warning from this afternoon. If she wasn’t more careful, Tamaki really would show up to fetch her from school with half an army. He hadn’t so much as texted her today. Haruhi took that as an intentional effort on his part not to be overbearing. She might not have minded a text message or two, but after her first response he had a tendency to send her long chains of conversational text, sometimes one-sided and containing pictures of Antoinette in funny poses.

Said dog greeted her at the door, and frantically licked Haruhi’s hands and face as she knelt to remove her backpack. Haruhi fell backward when Antoinette jumped at her, the wind knocked out of her. Haruhi laughed and scratched her behind the ears until Antoinette had calmed enough for her to sit up again.

The apartment was quiet, growing darker as the day traded for night. They had picked this apartment because she had fallen in love with the view. Almost every room had at least one window, even the bathrooms. The living room had floor-to-ceiling windows that spanned across the entire open floor plan into the kitchen. From where she sat, she could make out the shadow of coastline twenty-nine floors below, black against the constellation of city lights. Thousands of lives went on out there, all at once, everyone cohabiting under the same sky. The thought comforted her. When she turned out the lights and looked out over the city, it felt a bit like flying.

“Where’s Tamaki?” she asked Antoinette, though she knew where to find him. It was only mid-morning in Japan, which meant that Tamaki was trapped in the office. They usually let him go after giving report of what he had done that day, but he often worked late into the evening.

Antoinette followed at her heels as Haruhi proceeded to the room in the most remote part of the apartment. She never went into the back office if she could help it. It was his personal workspace. He deserved a spot of his own, especially since she had her own bedroom as a study room, and he often retreated to the office when confronted with some troublesome problem by the family business. That, and the office was so cluttered with commoner trinkets that just standing in the room gave her a headache.

Not wanting to disturb him if he was on a conference call, she knocked softly enough so that the sound would go unheard if he were speaking. Within five seconds, Haruhi caught a glance of what looked like a pyramid of pork ramen containers before a wall of blue cotton engulfed her face.

“Haruhiiiii! You made it home! I’m so glad!”

Her brain spun as Tamaki lifted her off her feet and rocked her side-to-side in a lung-crushing hug. With her face pressed flat against his chest, she could not help but think that his greeting was too similar to that of Antoinette.

“I was getting worried, but I knew you would be back soon,” he said breathlessly as he set her on her feet and watched her sway on the spot. “How was law school? Did you like it?”

“It was…” Haruhi bent over double for a moment to catch her breath, but when she looked up and met his eyes, she felt her face break into a grin. “Amazing!”

“Yeah?!”

“Yeah! Tama, you won’t believe how much I learned today. And all the interesting people I met.”

Tamaki gestured toward the kitchen and they started off together, hand in hand. “Tell me everything.”

She did tell him everything, omitting only her classmates’ speculation about him because it would fire up his ego. Tamaki had already eaten dinner, but he saved her a plate and sat across from her at the table while she went on about her day between bites of food. There was a little smile in the corner of his mouth that ticked up when she mentioned Kimi and her scholarship money.

“See, aren’t you glad you let me pay?” he teased.

“I guess some good did come of it,” she reflected, unwilling to take the bait. “And speaking of unusual events: Kyoya called me this afternoon.”

“Did he?”

This time it was Haruhi who earned the triumphant smirk. “Yeah, he called to remind me about the dangers of staying out past dark.”

Tamaki had suddenly become interested in a speck on the table. “That was thoughtful,” he said. “Maybe you should thank him…”

At least that mystery was solved.

As much as she thought that she could stay up and talk about school all night, by the time her plate was empty her energy reserves were, too. Sleeping for three hours a night was not sustainable. Tamaki agreed when she said as much, and after helping him with the dishes, Haruhi went straight to bed. The time was ten-thirty. She passed out at once and slept until the four alarm clocks sounded.

IV.

Haruhi rode the bus to school the next morning tired but eager, resolute, and more optimistic than the day before. This morning she had legal writing class, followed by lunch, followed in turn by torts. Yesterday’s lunch hour had put her in such a good mood that she decided from now on that she would never skip lunch. As long as she could keep up with the volume of work, there was no reason to deprive herself of a short break.

She stopped in the library en route to class to check her email. So far she hadn’t felt compelled to bring her laptop to school, and she hoped to keep it that way. Hikaru had set it up for her before she left Japan, and had changed the settings such that any of the Host Club’s former members could message her directly at any time. Being technologically reluctant at best (and ignorant, at worst) she hadn’t figured out how to change her settings so that she could turn messaging off during class.

As expected, her email had over fifteen unread messages. Six of them were from the Law School, with announcements about upcoming activities and internship opportunities. The other emails were from her friends. Two each from the twins, drilling her for updates from yesterday’s first day; one from Mei, with photos of her design project; one from Kyoya from three days ago, reminding her not to forget to bring her insurance paperwork to the admissions office because it would be a shameful way to start her semester, and enclosing a copy just in case (she hadn’t forgot); one from Hani, who had compiled a list of bakeries in the city and organized it by nationality (that one was co-signed by Mori); and one from her father, wishing her the best and including a long string of xoxoxoxoxo in the signature. Haruhi spent a few minutes typing out a general response, letting everyone know that she was alright, thanking them for their wishes, and reminding them not to text her between the hours of seven a.m. and nine p.m. She logged off the computer feeling that much more confident that it was going to be a good day.

This newfound optimism was blunted within the first few minutes of legal writing. The professor handed out the syllabus, along with the announcement that their first draft of a legal memo was due one week from that day. They had a total of five writing assignments for this semester, all designed to hone their writing skills into something useful for the legal field. As a practicing attorney, she told them as the class read the syllabus with growing dread, they would have to write briefs and memos. Writing a brief meant taking a fact pattern, turning it into a case synopsis, and giving an educated opinion as to the case’s merits. Memorandums of law—memos, for short—were more complex. Not only would they have to turn a lengthy fact pattern into an adequate summary, but they also had to analyze the applicable state law. Some memos were informative, others were persuasive and meant for the eyes of judges.

“You’ll be graded on your research ability, your understanding of the materials presented, and especially on your writing skills,” said Professor Lewis.

Without intending to do so, Haruhi shrank down in her seat. Legal writing in English? She found herself recalling her first term paper during study abroad in Boston. Her teachers in Japan had told her that her English writing was excellent, practically native. The grade on her paper had said otherwise. It took hours of practice and long office hours until she could overcome the obstacle. Something told her that learning “legalese”, as they called it, would warrant the same sort of diligent practice.

Her classmates were more concerned about the workload. At lunch, Tricia raved that five written papers was simply too much for a 1L to handle when already swamped with work. None of the others seemed concerned about doing well. Granted, the first year students were graded on a scale of “fail, pass, high pass”, thereby removing some of the pressure. But Haruhi did not see this as any less of a reason to strive for perfection. Being the best lawyer meant applying herself—her entire self—to every task the school handed her, even when the grades didn’t matter. The results would show in practice.

Much to her surprise, the class Haruhi found most intuitive was torts. The professor, Professor Jones, spoke at an easy pace and welcomed questions. The reading had made sense, and unlike in contracts class, this lesson affirmed that she was on the right tract.

A “tort” suit included every personal suit that did not derive from a breach of contract. The vast majority of the time, these were personal injury, or PI, cases. Someone fell on the sidewalk outside a movie theater and sued to cover the cost of medical bills. Someone ran someone over with his car by accident. The question was almost always whether the person committing the injury—the “tortfeasor”—had been negligent, and just how much he ought to pay back.

Despite the seriousness of the topic, Haruhi found some of the cases almost comical in their bizarreness. They almost always involved someone getting harmed as the result of foolishness. In one case, a boy was walking across a railroad bridge, swinging a fourteen foot wire around. The wire touched a train wire and shocked him, and he sued. In another, a man was trying to break up a dog fight with a stick and poked someone in the eye.

“There are four questions you need to ask in order to tackle any torts problem,” said Professor Jones, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “First, did the tortfeasor have a duty not to harm the injured party? Second, did he breach his duty in a way that resulted in harm? Third, was the breach of that duty the thing that caused the harm? And finally, how do you calculate damages—in other words, how much should he have to pay for what he did?”

Haruhi left this class, at least, feeling as though her note-taking had prepared her. Just like yesterday, none of her professors called on her today. The classes were big enough so that the chances were low for at least a few days. She wondered if volunteering her own opinions might stop them from calling on her when she wasn’t prepared.

Kimi caught her on the way out of class and invited Haruhi to join them at the bar for happy hour.

“On a Tuesday?” Haruhi had been stunned.

“Tuesday’s two-dollar draft beer,” Kimi told her. “It’s a really good deal. We might get dinner, too, if you’re interested.”

“Two dollar drafts?” Haruhi repeated, wringing her hands. “How’ve you all got time for this? We have so much reading!”

Kimi looked at her bemusedly. “I’ve been keeping up okay. Brian told me he saw you leave the library at nine last night. You must have finished tomorrow’s work…?”

“Well, yes,” Haruhi said with a grimace. “I mean, I did the reading part, but I’ve been doing some extra work to make sure I understand all the concepts.”

Seeming to realize that Haruhi was not to be persuaded, Kimi shrugged and started off toward the building’s exit. “Ah, well, if you decide you understand them, we’ll be at Snappers ‘till at least 6.”

“Ah, okay, thanks.” She watched Kimi go, but then realized something and called out, “Hey, wait!”

Kimi turned, her skirt whipping around her knees.

“Do you ever feel sort of—like you still have to earn your scholarship?” said Haruhi.

Kimi paused, one leg still stopped halfway through a backwards step. “No,” she said, after a moment’s thought. “As long as I don’t flunk out, it’s mine to keep, and that’s a pretty low bar. I already earned it.”

x

Tamaki was watching the news when Haruhi got home at eight, with Antoinette snoozing across his lap. Both he and the dog perked up when Haruhi came shuffling through the door, bent over by the weight of her backpack. She went to the nearest chair and flopped backward into it with her backpack still on.

“How are you?” she asked him.

“I’m fine. There was a thing with work that I couldn’t figure out,” he said, and she noticed that he looked vaguely distant as he said it. But he perked up before she could answer. “Antoinette and I went on a walk today!” he added. “It was so nice out, we went all the way to the wharf.”

“That far?”

“Yeah. We played fetch, right An?”

Antoinette raised her head at the sound of her name, looked up at Tamaki, and licked his face. He laughed and scratched her behind the ear. “Are you hungry?” he said, turning back to Haruhi.

Haruhi shook her head, already clambering back to her feet. Already she had begun to feel sore with tired, but she still had a few hours left in her. She’d done the reading for contracts tomorrow, but wanted to re-visit the concept that had so confused her yesterday.

“I’m all right for now, I’ll just grab something before bed,” she said. “I want to do a little more work.”

If Tamaki was disappointed, he didn’t show it on his face. Instead he hopped up off the couch with Antoinette right behind him. He stretched his arms over his head, and Haruhi caught a glimpse of skin as his shirt lifted momentarily over the top of his jeans.

“Me too,” he said, sighing and shaking out his limbs.

They parted ways, Haruhi to her bedroom study and Tamaki to the back office. She stopped working only as long as it took to fetch a cup of tea, and then she was off again, hunched over her contracts book with a law dictionary. This time she was spared the confusion. After thirty minutes she realized that she had been using the word “consideration” in the wrong sense. The English word “consideration” meant thought or contemplation. The legal term, however, referred to something offered as a bargain.

When the professor had said that contracts were invalid without consideration, she had thought he was saying that one could not actually make a legal contract without putting a great deal of thought into it. She flushed when the piece clicked, embarrassed at her imperfect language skills. It seemed as though legalese would be her next language. The anxiety only worsened when she considered that she would have to learn the legal terms in Japanese, too, and made a mental note to buy a Japanese law dictionary. In the meantime, though, she ought to focus on the concept before her. The note from the first day of school finally started to make sense.

If you do someone a favor (i.e., give them money, shovel their driveway, etc.) you cannot then ask for payment in any form. To have a binding promise, the bargaining must take place before the work is done. In other words, past consideration is not consideration at all.

In other words, though it would be a moral good to give recompense for services or favors provided without consideration, the person receiving the favor need not feel any obligation to do so.

Haruhi sighed.

x

On Wednesday, Haruhi repeated the Monday schedule. Civil procedure, then constitutional law, then lunch, then contracts.

On Thursday she had her first cold call when Professor Jones asked her to review a case about a repeatedly offending drunk driver. She handled the case facts well, answering his questions with well-read ease. It was only when he began posing hypothetical questions that she became flustered.

“Why shouldn’t we allow injured plaintiffs like this one to seek punitive damages?” he asked her.

“Because—they’re contrary to the ultimate goal of the torts system, which is to compensate for injury,” Haruhi answered. “If the plaintiff already won a judgment in the amount to cover his costs, then the defendant shouldn’t have to pay more.”

“But don’t punitive damages have an important deterrent effect?” said Professor Jones.

“Well yes, but the defendant already has to pay for the costs—”

“Let’s assume this plaintiff’s negligence was covered by insurance,” the professor cut in. “Shouldn’t the defendant have to pay for what he did? Don’t we want repeat drunk drivers to have incentive not to do it again?”

“I—” Haruhi felt the classroom’s eyes on her. “Maybe,” she said. “But won’t his insurance rates rise with every offense? So he is paying—”

“But it’s not the same amount.”

The questions went on. Eventually she admitted in front of the class that she didn’t know what the policy ought to be, and left lecture on the verge of tears.

They did not have classes on Friday, but Haruhi nevertheless made the journey to the library, in an effort to get a jump start on the next week’s assignments. On her way out that evening, she spotted Professor Jones entering the building. She tried to dodge the professor when their paths crossed, but he recognized her.

“Ms. Fujioka, a word,” he said, and pulled her aside before she could duck into an empty classroom.

“I thought you looked a little disheartened yesterday,” he observed, and smiled when Haruhi’s response was to look down at her feet.

“Listen,” he said. “The reason we have hypotheticals is to demonstrate that the truth cannot be ascertained with a yes or no. There are rarely right and wrong answers in law school, aside from maybe procedural questions. What I’m looking for is that you have enough of a grasp on the concepts to think critically about them. You did exactly what I was looking for.”

Haruhi had stammered a surprised thank you, and they parted ways. So she hadn’t failed. The truth didn’t truly settle into her brain until later that evening, when she hopped off the bus around nine and began her ride up the elevator. By the time she entered the apartment, she was almost giddy. The professor had been pleased! Her first cold call was a success. She might not disappoint everyone after all.

Tamaki had apparently adjusted to the weekly routine, because a plate of dinner was waiting for her at the table when she arrived home. The cook was locked in the back office once more; she heard him clicking away on the keyboard when she pressed her ear to the door. She ate and retreated to study for another hour before it was time to go to sleep. En route to the bedroom, about halfway down the hall, she ran into Tamaki.

“Going to sleep?” he asked, but it sounded more like an observation.

“Yeah,” she yawned. “It’s getting late. And I’d like to get an early start tomorrow.”

There was a pause, and then Tamaki blurted out, “Do I get a goodnight kiss?”

Puzzled by the question (he always got a “goodnight kiss”, even if she wasn’t silly enough to call it that), she lifted her chin and raised up on her toes. As always, he met her halfway. But when she started to pull back, he cradled the back of her head and held her there a moment longer. She jerked in surprise, tensed, and eased. When he finally let her go, she all but stumbled to find her footing.

“What was that for?” she said, breathless and flustered.

Tamaki let out a low chuckle and brushed her hair away from her forehead. “I dunno. I guess I just miss you, is all,” he said, and kissed her eyebrow. “Goodnight, Haruhi.”

V

Saturday dawned still and silent. As the light grew outside, Haruhi stretched and wondered how she had slept through her alarms. The answer was sitting on her bedside table: she hadn’t. It was just before seven. She cancelled her alarm, then reached over Tamaki and turned his off, too. He lay on his side, one leg thrown over the covers, sleeping.

She rose from the bed and turned off the rest of the alarms so as to not wake him. If she began early this morning, she could review next week’s notes by the end of the day and have time to spare in the evening. Maybe.

Antoinette had been sleeping on a mat by the foot of their bed. She lifted her snout to watch Haruhi move across the room, and leapt up when Haruhi turned to acknowledge her. Haruhi put a finger to her lips as if the dog could understand, gesturing to the door. In response, Antoinette bolted out of the room. At least she understood the concept of ritual. Whoever woke up first had the job of taking the dog out, and today it was Haruhi’s turn. She followed Antoinette, took up the leash from its hook, and went out with the dog wearing shorts and a sweatshirt she found hanging by the door.

Summer was ending, she noticed with no small amount of melancholy. Tomorrow September would begin, and the weather seemed eager to show it. Even with the sun rising, the air held a chill that crawled against her bare legs and face. Soon enough, skirt season would end and leave her to a closet full of long pants and leggings. Haruhi shivered in place as she waited for the dog to finish her business. Few people were out this early in the morning, mostly joggers and small business owners opening shop, but those that passed by offered a little wave or nod.

Despite the warnings she had heard and the research she had done, she felt safe enough in the city. Most people just wanted to be left alone with their daily errands, and those that might wish her harm had nothing to gain from her because she never carried anything of real value. Her engagement ring was the only asset she owned, if she even owned it (she made a note to look up the property law in the library sometime, just out of curiosity).

The morning chill rode with her back up the elevator and into the apartment. Once inside, she bolted the door and told Antoinette to sit so that she could remove the leash. Antoinette sat, tail wagging, looking up at Haruhi with what she swore must be a grin.

“You be quiet now,” she whispered to the dog. “I’ll feed you in a little bit, okay?”

Antoinette grumbled but sulked back into the bedroom, where she curled up in her place on the floor.

Work was still on Haruhi’s mind as she wandered off to the bathroom, though by the time she had finished brushing her teeth and washing her face, she had yet to shake the chill. She went back into the bedroom in search of her backpack, but stopped just inside the door. Tamaki was still out cold, curled up on his side with his back facing her. Haruhi crossed the threshold of the room for a closer look. A sliver of sunlight had snuck through the blinds and spilled a line across the room, touching his head just enough to light the ends of his hair, making them shine almost golden. Some years ago he had stopped sleeping with his shirt on; he said he preferred the cold and otherwise awoke sweaty and sticky in the morning. She hadn’t bothered asking why he had waited until he shared a bed to reach this conclusion.

Sleeping on one’s side could not be good for the joints, Haruhi thought as she eyed the curving ridge of his spine. His shoulder blades came together asymmetrically, in a posture that looked both uncomfortable and, though she would never say so aloud, quite beautiful. Even unconscious he was a masterpiece, the sharp angles of his body poised as if to tempt her from her books.

Before she had the chance to talk herself out of it, she had pulled off the sweatshirt and hung it on the doorknob. She was cold, and she was going back to bed. Even if she didn’t sleep, the sheets would warm her up, relax her before a long day of work. There was a sudden sound as Tamaki took a deep breath, sighed, and slept on. She watched his back rise and fall with it, his profile long and lean in the early light. She took off her own shirt before climbing back in.

Haruhi eased down into the sheets and snuggled right up against him with her chest against his back. She pressed her mouth to the nape of his neck and stayed that way, eyes closed at ease. For the moment, the week’s stress ebbed off into a distant corner of her mind, out of reach, soaking up his warmth. Tamaki grumbled something incoherent but did not wake.

The exchange last night had confused her at first. He had known—he had expected—that she would be unavailable during the day and even at night, too. They had followed their schedules for work and school, exchanging short dialogues and sometimes kisses when they met, but this was all expected. What had not occurred to Haruhi until now, however, was that while she ate with her new friends at lunch and chatted with classmates between class, Tamaki sat up on the computer or on the phone with businesspeople on the other side of the world. He spoke to his friends every day, but texted conversations and the occasional video chat were no substitute for seeing someone in person. Somehow, impossible as it sounded in her own head, she had managed to keep more of a social life than he.

Tamaki would never complain about it because Tamaki did not complain about anything of substance. He was too thick to process his own grievances, and even if he could, he would never risk saying something to derail her spirits. He had pledged to follow her to school and support her through whatever obstacles, from that day through the rest of his life, and that was what he would do. But in her first week of crisis, until last night, she had not noticed that he had become lonely. Without will or knowledge, she had neglected him. Which meant, by logical extension, that she had neglected a critical piece of herself, too.

A piece which, she now noticed, cried out acutely for attention.

Without opening her eyes, Haruhi rested her hand on the crest of his hip. She listened to his breathing, the sound magnified at such close range. Then she eased down between his legs.

Tamaki stirred beneath her hand before he showed any signs of waking. As a result, he was already half hard by the time he inhaled sharply and breathed out a soft groan of a sigh. She smoothed her palm over, stroking him through his pants. His voice was cracked as he tried to speak.

“Haru—” But then she slipped under his waistband; the words were lost as she took him up in her hand.

Haruhi kissed him on the shoulder, lips upturned in a smirk against his skin. “Good morning,” she whispered.

Her grip was firm but not tight, and she felt his pelvis jerk as she started with the motion. She turned her hips with his, following his body but guiding the pace. It was not until his fingers closed on her wrist that she hesitated. Gently, he tugged her hand free. He half-turned backward to kiss whatever part of her he touched first, which happened to be her temple.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, and sat up, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. When he glanced back and saw her lying there, dressed only in shorts and a simper, he turned away and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘good god’.

She heard rather than saw him shuffle-walk out of the bedroom and down the hall. The bathroom door closed with a quiet click. She subsequently heard the toilet flush, the running tap, and soon he reappeared looking more collected. As he whistled for Antoinette, Haruhi rolled onto her back and propped herself up on her elbows to watch. The dog didn’t budge from her spot on the floor. Tamaki had to cross over to Antoinette before she acknowledged him, but she remained still even after he pointed to the door and told her to get out. He had to grab her by the collar and tug her along. At first she but on the brakes, digging her hind legs into the ground with all her dead weight, but he eventually managed to shove her out of the room and close the door before she could turn around.

“Stubborn dog,” Haruhi said.

Tamaki had paused to catch his breath, and half-leaned against the door. “Poor girl. She knows she’s missing out on something,” he said, feigning sadness as he wiped away a nonexistent tear and laid a palm against the door. “Don’t worry Antoinette, daddy will take you on a walk later, I promise!”

And with that, he crawled back onto the bed and flopped down beside her.

“Such a doting father,” she teased.

Haruhi felt a shiver run up her right side and down her arm. She looked down to see him tracing one finger along the hem of her shorts, peeking up at her almost furtively.

“I thought… you had homework,” he said, voice muffled by the blankets.

“I do,” she confirmed. “I’m pretty sure that I’m never not going to have homework for the next three years. But I can’t very well go three years without a break, can I?”

“No,” he agreed solemnly, already tugging on the side of her shorts.

She felt her body respond when he kissed her hip, letting his mouth linger on the goosebumps that sprang up there. There was a low, pulsing heat that traveled down from the pit of her stomach and settled between her legs. Tamaki eased her shorts down and kissed her again, skimming his tongue against the bare skin that he had exposed there. She rewarded him with a moan, so soft it sounded more like a whisper. That encouraged him; he moved along this way, inching her shorts down over her hip and then her leg, little by little, marking the trail with wet, intermittent kisses that chilled when the air touched them.

Haruhi realized his intention when he shifted to his knees and rerouted his mouth to a path toward the base of her belly, but interrupted him before he could slip her shorts down far enough. Putting a hand below his jaw, she gently forced his chin up. His light hair fell askew over his eyes as he met her gaze, his lips wet and slightly parted as though he were about to ask what was wrong. She felt one corner of her mouth turn up at his visible disappointment.

Instead of explaining, Haruhi framed his face between her hands and leaned forward to kiss him. Tamaki met her halfway, eagerly, cradling the back of her head the same as he had the night before. He was always so composed when he was the one calling the shots, so calm about putting the moves on her that at times he could make her feel like she was in the spotlight, hyper aware of the heat on her face and the throbbing between her legs. But when she turned it around on him, the result pleased her even more. Tamaki was kneeling over her where she leaned back on one elbow, a handful of her hair grasped lightly between his fingers, but it was he who trembled when she opened the kiss, he who whimpered against her mouth when she met his tongue.

Haruhi pulled back and caught her breath enough to say, “You doted on me all week and I didn’t even notice.”

“I like doting on you,” he answered, redirecting his attention to her neck as he spoke, grazing his lips against her skin so as to raise her goosebumps anew. “Especially when you need it.”

Her head tilted back. “Which I appreciate. But let me be fair.”

“Fair?”

“Mhmm…”

Now she straightened up and flattened her palms against his chest, so that an inch or so remained between their faces. Beneath her right hand she felt his pulse, quick and thunderous, but steady. He had been looking her in the eye, watching to see what she was thinking, but as she began to push him backward, his stare wandered down to her lips. Slowly, she steered him into his spot on the bed and pushed him onto his back, swinging one leg up to straddle him at the waist. With his help she finally escaped from her shorts, her underpants coming off with them, and tossed them aside. She bent low and returned the favor, tugging off his bottom layers in one fluid motion and pulling them off his legs.

When his pants had been deposited on the floor, she climbed over him on her knees. Her hair, long enough to brush past her shoulders, skimmed across his chest as she stretched over him, sinuously slow. Tamaki gathered her hair up in one hand and pulled it over to one side as they kissed. His teeth nipped unintentionally at her bottom lip when she let her hips fall against his, pinning his erection flush between their bodies. He tried to utter an apology, which she trapped in his mouth before he could get it out. For a few moments she kept him this way, gyrating against him while his hands smoothed down the small of her back and over her bottom, until she could not stand to wait. She shifted her weight up and then eased back down until she felt his tip against her entrance. She reached down with one hand to take hold of him and spread the wetness around, and then, without warning, bore down on him, taking his full length in one deliberate, even motion.

Tamaki took in a sharp breath. He put his hand to his mouth and bit down on the side of his thumb at first, then pressed the back of his hand against his lips and muttered something that Haruhi did not catch. It may have been French. She was picking the pace, moving up and down along his length in even strokes, holding her weight on either side of his shoulders. When she started to go faster, the mattress creaked a little on the box spring and then went silent. It was a trusty bed, not like some others they’d endured. Not subjecting the tenants downstairs to their private affairs was one of their home’s high points.

They went for what felt like just a few minutes but was actually quite some time, their bodies growing hot and sticky with sweat, jaws tired from kissing but tongues still fervent. At last she straightened up, pausing to adjust herself on his lap. Her fingers traced a line down his center and settled on his hips, and Haruhi pressed down as far as she could take him. A tremulous little “ah” escaped from her mouth. This was the spot. Back straight, she rocked against his hips as she began the climb. Her eyes closed in concentration. Tamaki gripped her thigh in one hand, the other sliding up to cup her breast.

She felt something well up inside her, a sensation rising from the bottommost pit of her belly. She could not stop it now, could not wait for him to catch up. Haruhi gripped his waist tighter, made her thrusts faster, harder.

“I’m—have to—” she managed to pant, surprised that she could find her voice.

“Go,” he said, quietly urging her on.

He pinched her nipple between his fingers and she spasmed, tightening around him so suddenly that she heard him gasp. That little sound was all it took to set her off.

“Tama—” His name caught in her throat as the orgasm took hold. It rocked her, the pleasure pouring over in such a sudden burst that she moaned, loudly, unconcerned about being heard through the thick walls and thicker floor.

She came for so long that it felt like all the weeks and months of stress streamed out at once, the first five days of school and her anxieties about success all channeling up and falling away to this, this—

Her head had rolled back against her shoulders. When she opened her eyes, she saw a streak of sunlight across the white-painted ceiling. She was breathing heavily, her chest heaving, and her neck felt sore and stiff as she tipped her chin down. There was no time to recover, not with Tamaki still hard inside of her. She looked at him, took in his face. He, too, breathed heavily, his chest rising and falling in and out of sync with hers. His hair was soaked in front, stuck to his forehead, a bead of sweat working its way down his jaw. There was a blush high in his cheeks. But what struck her most was his expression. Tamaki looked up at her naked form through half-lidded eyes, and there was something there—something like awe, or reverence, or both.

She did not give herself time to think on it. Taking a deep breath, Haruhi fell forward and caught the headboard in her hands, gripping its edge to hold herself steady. She resumed the previous pace, and then took it up a notch. Tamaki grasped her hips and guided the rhythm, tipping his head back so as not to break their eye contact. He did not take long from here—she could scarcely believe he had lasted this long to begin with, given how long it had been since last time—and only when he came at last, breaths rising to a high staccato and then falling very quiet, did he close his eyes. Haruhi felt a sudden warmth inside, and the feeling made her tense and groan once more.

Her fingers cramped as she released the headboard and let herself fall against him, her forehead coming to rest against his shoulder. They smelled like sweat, but it did not stop her from kissing his collarbone and nuzzling into his neck. She felt the weight of his arms wrapping around her waist, holding her down.

They stayed like this for some time, perfectly still, letting their breaths and heartbeats return to a normal pace. She let him go soft inside of her, did not even try to move until she heard him swallow and clear his throat.

The palm of his hand slid up her back and rested on her shoulder. His chest shuddered beneath her as he let out a low, soft laugh.

“Good morning to you, too,” he said.

x

By the time they had showered and dressed, the sun had burned the chill out of the air and left them with a warm and cloudless morning. Tamaki was standing before the floor-to-ceiling living room window with his hands on his hips when Haruhi came out of the bedroom, a towel around her shoulders to keep her hair from dripping onto her shirt.

“Summer’s on its way out,” she said, coming up beside him to peer out the window. From here she could see light reflecting off the harbor several blocks away, where shipping vessels were already moving busily in and out of port. From way up here, they almost seemed to be standing still. “It’s already starting to get cold in the mornings.”

“First the cold, and then the frost. Then all the leaves will change.”

“We’ll have a nice view of it.”

“Yeah, we will,” he agreed, draping an arm around her waist.

He didn’t have to remind her how much he looked forward to fall, because she felt the same. New England had the best weather that time of year. The humidity fell away to crisp air, perfect for spending time outdoors (at least in the afternoon, during the break between the morning frost and the evening breeze picked up on the water). It was something they hadn’t experienced since their year in Boston, and that seemed almost too far back to remember.

Thinking of Boston gave Haruhi a sudden onset of nostalgia. That had been an incredible year. So much had changed in just a few short months. She had her first dose of culture shock, took all of her classes in English, discovered the various frustrations of living within ten feet of her future life partner…

“I’ve decided something,” she announced abruptly. Tamaki turned to face her now, his expression a curious mix of wariness and amusement. When he didn’t answer, she went ahead. “I have decided to fully take off one day per week.”

His eyebrows shot upward. “Is that so?” he said, in a voice that would have seemed deadly serious were it not for his smirk.

“Yes,” Haruhi said. “So far I seem to be keeping up with the workload all right… as long as I stay one week ahead of the readings, and don’t fall behind on my legal writing class, I think it’s important to take time to rest and do other things.”

“So if I said there was a farmer’s market down by the wharf today, you would say?”

“Yes, I want to come! But, uh,” She lowered her head in embarrassment. “Since I only just decided, I do have to just go over my notes and make sure I didn’t leave anything that can’t wait—ah!”

The air wheezed out of her lungs, and spots appeared in her eyes. Tamaki had picked her up, pinning her arms to her side and smooshing the side of her face against his shirt. Her legs swung lamely as he spun in a semi-circle.

“Oh, Haruhi, you are marvelous,” he laughed. With his cheek pressed to the top of her head, his voice sounded even louder than normal. He carried her, squirming, down the hall and set her on her feet in the doorway of her office bedroom. Red-faced and out of breath, she did not respond when he said, “Go on, check your notes! I’ll make us some toast while I wait.”

Haruhi was back before the toast had gone cold. They ate quickly and hit the sidewalk en route to the farmer’s market just before ten, with Antoinette leading the way at the end of her leash. It seemed a different day than just a few hours ago. The sun bore down on their shoulders, eager to melt them but thwarted by the breeze rolling in off of Long Island Sound. Haruhi’s long skirt filled and fluttered about her legs like a turquoise sail as she walked.

Conversation came easy as they walked the several blocks to the wharf. Tamaki seemed genuinely eager to hear the content of her classes, which served Haruhi well as a review. She had just finished explaining about 12(b)(6) motions by the time they arrived at the long row of merchant tables running down the road parallel to the beach. The newspaper had said that this market set up every Saturday morning from June through September. The first time they had come to do their shopping, the sight had reminded her of the outdoor markets in Boston. Vendors lined up along both sides of the road, their carts piled high with fresh local produce, meats, and other miscellaneous groceries. A few stands even had homemade crafts, which Tamaki adored. He had spent a hundred and fifty dollars on a painting of the lighthouse at the mouth of the harbor, and even now as they spoke, she could see him peering around, no doubt looking for some more hand-made souvenirs.

Haruhi wrapped up the lesson as they turned the corner onto the street, which had been marked off to redirect traffic. “So really, ‘failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted’ means several things. It breaks down into parts. Your complaint can be dismissed because you didn’t say enough, or because you said enough, but there wasn’t any claim in what you said, or even if there is a claim, it’s not one the court can provide relief for.”

“Ah, I see,” They had come up on the first cart, where a middle-aged woman in grass-stained jeans was selling tomatoes. Tamaki picked up a tomato. “So if I tried to sue Ms.—may I have your name, ma’am?” he said to the woman.

“M-marge?” she said, doubtless unsettled by hearing her name and ‘sue’ in the sentence so early in the morning.

“Thank you, Marge.” Tamaki turned back to Haruhi. “So if I tried to sue Marge for selling me a tomato that’s too small, even if I was truly offended, she could dismiss my complaint because the court can’t do anything to remedy my loss.”

“Exactly,” said Haruhi; and then, wanting to alleviate the grocer from any fear, added to Marge, “Not that he intends to sue you, of course.”

“No, of course not!” said Tamaki, and leaned across the stand to take the woman’s hand. “We would have no cause. Not because the court couldn’t grant us relief, but because these are the freshest-looking native tomatoes I’ve seen all season. You must have an incredible garden, Marge.”

Marge looked taken aback. After a moment, she remembered herself and nodded slowly. “Y-yes,” she said.

“Excellent! We’ll take four, if you please.”

Haruhi didn’t bother shaking her head at him. Had she been capable of dying from secondhand embarrassment, his antics would have killed her six years ago. Instead she fished in her wallet for a few bills as Marge took a canvas bag from Tamaki and put some tomatoes inside. A faint blush had appeared on the woman’s face when she passed the bag back.

“H-have a nice day,” she stammered, as they continued on. Haruhi would later discover two extra tomatoes in the bag.

They were comparing prices on jars of fresh jam when Tamaki’s phone rang. Haruhi took Antoinette’s leash from him so he could fish for the cell phone in his pocket and answer it. She knew by the look on his face when he saw the caller ID that it was his mother. Something about him always brightened when she called.

“Hello!” he greeted her in English, then switched over. “Comment allez-vous, maman? Je voulais vous demander ce matin, mais j'ai été distrait…”

He winked at Haruhi over his shoulder as he wandered off to talk, leaving her to juggle the dog, the money, and the task of picking from between raspberry and strawberry jam. She chose the latter and scurried behind him, keeping just a step behind as a sign of respect for his conversational privacy. Not that it mattered. Her French was good—better than ever—but Tamaki and his mother spoke with such speed and animation that she missed the substantial part of the conversation.

And anyway, her motivation for listening in was far more selfish than eavesdropping. French was beautiful on its own, but listening to Tamaki speak in his first language gave her a bizarre sort of pleasure. He used it so rarely, but whenever he did, Haruhi experienced a not-so-subtle tremor flit through her insides. For years Haruhi had tried to keep the visceral response a secret, annoyed about the potential for such vulnerability.

He had figured it out, of course. She would never forgive herself for giving him such an easy target. A blush crept up her neck as Haruhi recalled the incident where he had discovered the truth, but she forced it from her mind and kept her head bent until the heat had dissipated. Such memories were not appropriate for a public place like this, and she didn’t want to give him an excuse to tease her in public.

Luckily, she passed the test. When Tamaki had hung up the phone, she was able to look him in the eye and ask, casually, “How is she?”

“Very well today,” he said brightly, pocketing the phone. “She told me to ask you when she could expect her first grandbaby.”

“She didn’t say that,” Haruhi replied in a flat voice.

“Well, not exactly…”

Haruhi blinked and kept on walking. “Then next time you speak to her, you can apologize on my behalf, because it will not be for a very. long. time.”

This was not the first instance of this conversation, and though she had been very clear on the matter, he liked to remind her from time to time that he was unsatisfied with their agreement.

“Aw, come on, it wouldn’t be so—”

“Nope.”

Tamaki stopped mid-step and threw his hands in the air. “Aren’t you supposed to feel some ethereal lady-clock ticking down the minutes until the end of your child-rearing days?” he said dramatically.

Haruhi didn’t humor him with a backward glance. “It seems you’ve acquired mine, Tamaki,” she said dryly. “And people are staring.”

“You’re so cruel!” He turned to the closest shopper and said to him in a melodramatic half-sob, “Do you hear how she wounds me?”

The merchant either didn’t speak English or didn’t know how to answer, because he merely shrugged. Thoroughly defeated, Tamaki made a show out of dragging his feet when he caught up with her, only to become distracted moments later by a vendor selling crochet blankets with the American flag stitched into the pattern.

x

“Why did your mother actually call, by the way?” Haruhi asked later that day, when they had made it back home and were putting the groceries away.

Tamaki snapped upright from where he had been bent over a shopping bag, striking his forehead with the palm of his hand.

“I completely forgot to tell you,” he said, aghast at his own negligence. “I’m flying out for a conference on Monday.”

Haruhi almost dropped the strawberry jam. “You are?”

He nodded apologetically. “My father can’t make it, so yesterday he asked me to go instead. I’ve been working on a project of my own, too; he said it’d be a good time to present it.”

It was not uncommon for Tamaki to fly out on business, but he tried to plan these trips in advance so that he would be more prepared.

“Oh wow, and on such short notice… To France, I suppose.”

“Uh-huh. My mother and I are planning to meet up after, so I thought I would stay for a few extra days. I meant to tell you this morning,” he added hastily, “but I got, um…”

“Distracted?” Haruhi offered.

“Something like that.”

Haruhi sighed and put the last of the groceries, fish for tomorrow’s supper, in the refrigerator.

“I wish you had told me sooner,” she said, closing the door of the fridge. “I would have taken my day off tomorrow instead.”

Tamaki held up his hands. “Ah, don’t worry about that. I’ll be prepping for the conference tomorrow anyway. Maybe we can have dinner Sunday night? That would be enough.”

As promised, Haruhi spent the majority of Sunday locked in her office with her casebooks. Tamaki left her to it without complaint, too busy with his own presentation to prod at her while she studied. He did take one break, though, to partake in what Haruhi hoped would become a weekly ritual. Every Sunday since moving into their new home, he had begun experimenting with the oven and his grandfather’s recipe for French bread. He was getting better at it, though he had some trouble with getting the yeast proportions correct and sometimes wound up with a dense loaf that was more flatbread than anything else—edible, if only for dipping. What Haruhi liked most about his adventure, more than having fresh bread with supper throughout the early part of the week, was the smell of it baking on Sunday afternoon after rising on the sunny windowsill all morning.

Today even that could not lure her out of the room, but in the evening she ventured out, and she and Tamaki cooked supper together. He flaunted his newfound baking skill with bread that just about melted when she took a bite. They also wound up watching an action movie, which they did while lounging on the oversized loveseat and sharing a glass of wine. And afterward, once darkness had fallen and the credits rolled, they returned to bed for a more formal, extended goodbye.

VI

Monday began with more bustle than normal in their apartment. Tamaki and Haruhi dodged each other as they tried to get ready in the morning—Haruhi for school and Tamaki for his flight—more than once almost colliding in the hallway as Tamaki rushed around, looking for a particular sweater or notebook. He had spent the majority of Sunday planning for the conference instead of packing for it, but even in his hurry he paused in stuffing his carry-on to kiss her goodbye as she left for class. Haruhi wished him good luck, a safe flight, and breathed a long sigh once the elevator door had closed.

The morning had been so rushed, and the weather so beautiful when she stepped through the apartment building’s exit, that Haruhi opted to walk the three quarters of a mile instead of taking the bus. Last week she had taken the bus every day, in part to make sure the timing stayed constant each day, but now she knew the schedule by heart and had claimed her seat in class. Even at a sluggish pace, she would reach school with enough time to go over last class’s lecture notes.

Haruhi felt the stress ebbing out of her chest as she settled into the walk. Last minute traveling always left her tense, even if she wasn’t the one with the rushed plans. Tamaki handled it well enough, though; he would arrive at the airport just in time, collect himself during the long flight, and emerge on the other side as cool as if he had planned the trip six months ago. Someone would be waiting in France to drive him to the hotel, where he had a hot shower, a fresh meal, and a pressed suit waiting. Haruhi had never gotten accustomed to such service, even after years of traveling. Such was the corporate life. But Tamaki had it all figured out, and there could be no doubt that he would take his father’s place at the conference as seamlessly as if he had always run the family business, as if there had never been a time where his future dangled uncertainly over his head.

It occurred to her then that she didn’t know what Tamaki had been working on these past few days. She hadn’t even asked. A pang of shame pierced her gut, her grip tightening on the books clutched to her chest. She knew that in the summer between her college graduation and the start of law school, he had been working closely with designers in the branch of the Suoh Corporation that specialized in hospitality services. Entertainment had always been his forte, but whatever had been keeping him locked in the back office for the last week, she could not say. Probably he had wanted her input on his presentation. If he hadn’t asked, it was for fear of adding one more weight to her heavy burden.

Once more she had forgotten that law school was not the sole priority deserving her attention. Tamaki would forgive her, since in his eyes there were nothing to forgive, but Haruhi would continue feeling guilty about it. She resolved to be more conscientious from now on, and made a mental note to text him before class began, just to acknowledge his hard work.

She sent a quick message after setting up her place for civil procedure, but thoughts of Tamaki dissipated with the start of the lesson.

Today, on the third day of this class, they would begin the truly substantive material for this semester with a lesson on the “dreaded” Erie Doctrine, as most everyone she spoke to had put it. Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938). The case tackled the question of whether to use state or federal law in federal court cases. Haruhi had thought the holding straightforward enough: use state substantive law (in other words, law dealing with rights and duties), and federal procedural law to handle the steps of the lawsuit. Essentially, the doctrine dealt with a struggle for a balance of power between the courts and Congress.

But, as always, the matter became more complicated in practice. When the Justices disagreed on how to draw the line across the blurry zone between procedure and substance, the class let out a collective groan of confusion. A few students put their heads down on the desk.

Haruhi left civil procedure with her brain spinning from vocabulary input overload. There was the Income Determinative Test. Federal courts must apply state law if application of federal law would significantly affect the outcome of the case. Informed Prophecy. Federal court stepping into the shoes of state courts to determine how they would hypothetically rule on a case, given that the state courts haven’t touched it yet.

“I think I’m gonna puke…”

Haruhi turned to find Tricia a few paces behind her, looking grim.

“We’ll be all right after a few classes,” Haruhi assured her, in a partial effort to reassure herself. “They say the Erie doctrine is one of the most complicated first year topics… I wonder why they don’t save it for later in the semester.”

Tricia shrugged. “Can’t do much before you know about jurisdiction and choice of law, I guess.”

“Yeah, that must be it.”

Just then, Kimi appeared, looking particularly bright in a neon orange blouse. “Lunch time!” she called out. “That lesson made me hungry for some reason… I think my brain burned through breakfast, it was working so hard.”

The comment made Haruhi remember that Antoinette had been locked up in the apartment for several hours now. The poor dog spent so little time alone, she was probably pining for Tamaki already. Haruhi shook her head and apologized.

“I’ve got to run back to the apartment, actually,” she said.

Kimi cocked her head to one side. “Did you forget your lunch?”

“No, it’s the dog. Tamaki left on a business trip this morning and I ought to take her out. She can get a little destructive if she’s left alone with too much energy.”

“A business trip?” Tricia said. “I didn’t know young surgeons had business trips.”

Kimi laughed, and Haruhi had to smile. “Yes, he left this morning for the week.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “I’ve got to get going if I want to get back in time for contracts.”

“Ah, let us come with you! I love dogs!” Kimi cried. “I had a yorkie back home. I miss her so much.”

She grabbed Haruhi’s arm and made a begging face. Kimi was the sort of girl who launched headlong into friendship, acting as though acquaintances were childhood friends, abandoning any sense of formality. Haruhi lacked that gift. She retained a need for privacy that could drive a wedge between herself and others, unless she treaded with caution. There was also the issue of her living situation. Haruhi was overly conscious of the luxurious apartment, the fine furniture, the designer silverware. These friendships were only a week old, new and fragile and so, so precious to her. They might think her pretentious if she brought them to her apartment (not so modest, even after toning it down about ninety-five percent).

And yet, Tricia and Kimi had genuine excitement on their faces. They wanted to meet Antoinette, and Antoinette was great at making friends.

“All right,” she began, warily, “but you’ll have to wait outside the apartment while I get her, if you don’t mind.”

“Ah, I get it,” Tricia said knowingly. “Mystery fiancé is a very private man… he must not like having guests.”

If Tamaki could hear the sacrilegious misconception coming from her mouth, he would have died on the spot. As it was, the words sounded so bizarre that Haruhi almost broke down at the sound of them. Luckily, the girls neither noticed nor minded. Kimi cheered, Tricia beamed at her, and the three of them sauntered off together, through the gate and down the sidewalk, chatting as if they had never known anything else. The walk seemed to take only a few minutes, and they had just started a debate on the benefits of litigation versus transactional lawyering when they arrived at the apartment building.

“You live here?” Tricia said, tipping her head skyward in an effort to see to the top of the building. Kimi did the same, but averted her eyes after only a moment, dizzy from the sensation of the building towering over her.

“Yeah,” Haruhi admitted. “Almost all the way up. It’ll take me a minute to get to the apartment and back, but I’ll hurry.”

Kimi shuddered. “Yikes, it’s so high up.”

“It’s not as scary as you might think,” said Haruhi, already heading for the door. The glass doors slid open as she drew near, and a wave of cool air wafted out to meet her. “I’ll be right back.”

Haruhi could not tell who was more eager about the walk—Kimi, or Antoinette. Kimi gasped when Antoinette bounded out of the building, all but dragging Haruhi along behind her. She dropped to her knees and the dog leapt right into her arms, licking her face between sharp, excited barks. Before long Antoinette, bodily wriggling as if Kimi were her long lost friend, had sprawled Kimi out on the sidewalk.

“Doggy!” Kimi cried, hugging the dog as Tricia bent over with laughter.

Haruhi had to grab the dog’s collar and pull her off of Kimi. “Ah, sorry Kimi! She gets so excited—Antoinette, sit! Sit. Good girl.” She reached into her breast pocket and tossed Antoinette a treat.

“What a sweetie,” Tricia said, approaching once Antoinette had sat still long enough to suggest she was not going to leap anymore. She offered her hand, palm up. Antoinette sniffed it and wagged her tail. “Not gonna lie though, I was kind of expecting a poodle. It’s French-ier.”

The walk was short but pleasant, their route a square block of streets surrounding the apartment building. By the end of it, they had a thin veneer of perspiration on their foreheads, beckoned there by a combination of exercise and late summer humidity. Kimi and Tricia bid their goodbye to Antoinette when they reached the apartment again, Kimi with a hug and Tricia with a scratch behind the ears. They made it back to school with enough time to quickly scarf down their lunches and head their separate ways for class.

“If you want company tomorrow, too, just let me know.” Tricia said it hesitantly, like she were afraid of rejection, but she winked. “Your guy is away all week, right?”

“Until late Saturday,” Haruhi confirmed. Then she smiled. “I could always use the company.”

Kimi beamed at them both. “Great! I’d love to get out more before the weather changes.”

“Me, too.”

x

Haruhi awoke in the middle of the night to a jolt of panic. She sat up to find her nightshirt damp with sweat and her heart hammering. Had she been dreaming? She could not remember. She tired out her body so much each day that she had little time for anything but the deepest sleep—but then, maybe adjusting to the newfound stress had caused the nightmare.

Shaking her head, Haruhi studied the dark bedroom. Only a sliver of light pollution had escaped into the room, through the same gap in the curtains that had let the light in two days ago, when Tamaki had laid there with the sun falling over his golden hair. For some reason, the memory heightened her sense of alarm, making her pulse quicken. She strained her ears, listening for anything out of the ordinary. There was a hush in the night, the sound of the highway far off and below, and nothing else. She realized that she was holding her breath, waiting fruitlessly to hear someone else’s.

That was it. The silence seemed to go right through her, and Haruhi found herself shivering beneath the layers of blankets. A twinge of annoyance rushed in where the fear had been, and she threw away the coverlet to climb out of bed and change into a dry shirt. Afterward she climbed back into bed and picked up her phone where it lay charging on the side table. Her eyes squinted involuntarily at the screen as she turned it on. The time read 3:47 AM. It was almost ten in Paris. No messages. Haruhi set the phone back down and rolled over, leaving a wide margin between her pillow and the wide, empty space to her left.

She was not used to being the needy one, and she did not like it. But at least acknowledging it let her fall back to sleep.

That same night, the past ran through her unconscious mind, more like a reminiscence than a dream. Haruhi rolled out of bed the next morning, unable to shake the memories brimming over her head…

To the surprise of nobody, their first ventures into physical intimacy began with a clap of thunder. They spent the summer before her second year of high school in Boston, getting used to the city and speaking English as a primary language before classes began in the fall. Haruhi was seventeen, eager to expand her world beyond life in Japan, prepared to tackle culture shock and a new style of coursework, and determined not to let Tamaki through the door connecting his apartment to hers (which he had labeled the ‘love door’). On all of these fronts, Haruhi succeeded except for one. She adapted to U.S. schoolwork in the same fashion that she had for Ouran. Her English proved good enough to get her through class, though reading her textbooks took longer than it otherwise would. New England culture she grew to love, with its gruff, plaid-clad New Englanders who didn’t like to make eye contact on the train.

Before the summer was out, however, Tamaki had charmed her into moving her sofa from blocking the ‘love door’ and moved freely between the two apartments.

It was through this door that he stuck his head late one night and found her curled up on one end of the sofa with her hands over her ears. Nobody had warned her about the late summer storms. They pounded the city several times a week in August with thunder that rattled their apartment building. Whenever they struck, she camped the night out in her living room and spent the next day trying not to fall asleep in public.

Haruhi knew this fear was nonsense, irrational, even childish. She’d always known it, which only made it more frustrating when her heart went into hyper-drive at the first rumble of thunder.

What had driven him out of his room to check on her, she couldn’t say. She’d always figured that he assumed she toughed it out in her bedroom, under the covers with the earplugs he’d given her. The sight of him standing in the doorway startled her at first; lightning flashed, illuminating his silhouette like a lanky shadow. Haruhi had to blink several times before she was convinced that he was really there. He crept toward her like someone approaching a beaten dog, and when he took a seat beside her, he left her so much space that she couldn’t have reached him if she put her hand out. The memory stood out to her so clearly, even years later. High school third-year Tamaki didn’t believe in personal space. He got up in her face and made lewd jokes because he had no common sense, and because he liked making her squirm.

He asked her if, maybe, would she get through the night better if she wasn’t alone? And if so, perhaps she would prefer to stay in his room, just for tonight, if she wanted? Or if it helped, he could kip on the floor of her room, or they could both stay up out here, on the couch?

It wasn’t until she had some hindsight that she realized his change in behavior was his testing their boundaries—not in a sexual way, not yet—but deliberately offering her something he perceived to be a Very Serious Matter. And it was probably this respect for her wishes, coupled with his obvious terror at the prospect rejection, that ultimately lead her to nod and take his hand and let him lead her through the Love Door to his bedroom.

That first night, he assured her that he would stay on his side and she on hers. That lasted until the first thunderclap shook the window. Before the sound had dwindled off to a low and distant growl, she found herself on his side of the bed, clutching at him like a drowning child. Instead of freaking out, as he was apt to do, he cradled her head and uttered some passing reassurance. And to Haruhi’s great astonishment, she awoke there the next morning with her face still buried in his chest.

Storms started it, but it didn’t end there. As fall approached and the cool weather took hold, thunderstorms became less frequent. Haruhi began to find excuses to hang around. The weather was getting colder, and the heat worked better in his apartment (not a lie; the building was so old that it was on the historical building registry, and the thermostat did whatever it wanted). The people who occupied the apartment on the other side of her bedroom wall made too much noise at night (also not a lie; they were apparently quite fond of each other).

The biggest excuse, which quickly morphed into cause for a regular occurrence, was when she knocked on his bedroom door one evening while he sat reading on his bed, held up a textbook in one hand, and asked if he minded if she sat with him. She got sleepy when she had to read for her Western Lit class, she said, and he could prod her awake if she nodded off. Of course he didn’t mind. Haruhi would stay on his far right, ankles crossed and a book propped in her hands, reading until she grew tired or they got to talking and eventually nodded off there. That was how they went from sharing a bed by necessity to sharing it casually. It wasn’t an everyday thing, but it was a thing.

Haruhi was still figuring all manner of things out at that time. Tamaki was so much more outwardly enthusiastic about their relationship—more specifically, obsessed with being the best possible future husband—that he made her look almost bored in comparison. His sometimes brazen flirtatiousness only made her insecure. He could wither her with a look, a surprise kiss. All the while he seemed confident, too busy acting the seducer to get ruffled by any real romantic feelings. She began to feel as if maybe he had misplaced his affections, or perhaps that she just wasn’t the sort of person who could elicit that response from him. Or maybe, even worse, his unconditional affection for her was totally in his head and not capable of being awakened in reality (she was the tanuki, after all).

It wasn’t until they went to Spain and Haruhi exchanged a few choice words with Kyoya that she understood. The language had to be spoken both ways to work. She gave it a shot, one attempt at flirting off the top of her head, and Tamaki just about fell apart. He blushed, stammered, and melted, completely disarmed.

By the time they arrived back in Boston, Haruhi had a few other ideas bouncing in her skull. She began to ease up instead of tensing up when he made jokes about their pending intimate relations. As of yet, her feelings hadn’t crossed out of the realm of romantic. But she did enjoy the cuddling, and the kissing, and the increasing instances in which those two events overlapped.

And then, on a nondescript Wednesday in December of that year, the door holding back those steps in their relationship was opened a crack. Afterward she went about as if nothing had changed, brushing aside Tamaki’s over-the-top reaction as if she had not just experienced her own awakening.

x

On Tuesday, Brian joined them on their walk. He had been left alone for lunch yesterday, which none of the others had realized until they arrived with barely enough time to eat. Haruhi felt terrible for abandoning him, but he hadn’t seemed affronted by the lack of an invitation. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. Brian hailed from Missouri, with a polite, small-town shyness that clashed with his hulking appearance. He greeted Antoinette with a light pat on the head, saying, “Ah, what a nice dog,” in his faintly Midwest accent. On their way back to school, they stopped by a local café and bought a round of iced coffees. Haruhi thought the iced coffee here rather weak and flavorless, but the others enjoyed it, and even weak iced coffee took the edge off the heat. Kimi winced as Haruhi drank her coffee black, while Haruhi grimaced to see Kimi deposit half the pitcher of cream into her drink. Tricia preferred lattes to coffee, and Brian ordered his with whipped cream. Haruhi had been watching Brian try to scoop the whipped cream up with his straw when she felt her phone vibrate. A text from Tamaki.

- Hi! Sorry I didn’t text yesterday. lost track of time difference and didn’t want to call late. Conference tomorrow. how are you? everything OK at home?

Haruhi had to awkwardly cradle the coffee cup in the crook of one arm to type back a response using both hands.

- Hey. Everything fine here. Took dog out, now walking back to school with friends and coffee. How was your first night?

- Slept poorly, kept waking up. Must be jet lag.

About three seconds later, a second message followed:

- But no worries! Hotel lobby has coffee 24 hrs.

“Earth to Haruhi! Are you coming?”

Haruhi startled at the sound of her name, head snapping up to discover that she had all but stopped walking. Tricia had her hands on her hips where she stood about ten feet ahead with Kimi and Brian.

“Ah, I see. She’s chatting with the mysterious fiancé,” said Tricia.

Only then did Haruhi become aware that she had been smiling down at her phone. She typed out a quick note saying she had to run and would text him later, then pocketed the phone and half-jogged to catch up to the others.

“Sorry,” she huffed, catching her breath and slowing to a walk between Kimi and Brian.

“So,” Tricia continued in a teasing voice, “how’s mister—what’s his last name?”

Haruhi answered before she could stop herself. “Suoh.”

“Suoh?” Kimi repeated. “Huh. I feel like I know that name.”

“I, uh—I doubt you’ve met him,” Haruhi said quickly. “He didn’t live in Japan very long.”

“Has he got family in Japan, though?”

“Not much.”

She watched as Kimi tapped her chin, thinking hard. She felt a guarded relief when Kimi concluded, “Ah, you must be right. It feels weirdly familiar, but I must be thinking of another name…”

Just then, Brian pointed out what looked like a small mob gathered just inside the looming law school gates. “Is something going on today?”

Tricia stopped slurping her drink to answer, “Oh, shit! I forgot—they’re handing out free outline books today!”

Outlines were the law school equivalent of study guides. Since for most classes one final exam determined the entire grade, outlining one’s notes was the best way to study for exams because it forced the person to take a second walk through the entire course.

“Really?” Haruhi had poked through the bookstore’s collection of course outlines and decided not to spend her money on them. But if they were giving them out for free, she had no reason not to grab one. Together, the four of them rushed to join the crowd.

VII

On Wednesday, it rained. When her friends nevertheless politely offered to go with her on her daily trek with Antoinette, Haruhi thanked them and declined. She took the bus back to her apartment, walked the dog, and stayed to eat lunch standing at the kitchen counter, watching traffic pass below. Vaguely she recalled that, yet again, she had forgotten to get a sample of soil from outside the apartment building. She only seemed to remember when the weather was poor, or when she didn’t have any bags to put it in…

The sound of raindrops pinging against the window took away some of the apartment’s unsettling stillness. Tamaki was at the conference, probably standing up to give his presentation before a board of stone-faced executives. She had never seen him present before, but she knew that he would do just fine. The prospect of rubbing shoulders with businesspeople didn’t give him the same sort of anxiety she felt just thinking about it; his father and grandmother had spent the last six years grooming him for the part. And anyhow, Tamaki loved an audience.

On Thursday, they finally spoke over the phone. There was a message waiting for her when her alarms went off on Thursday morning, which she did not notice until she had gotten out of class and checked her phone for the first time that day.

It was a picture—a selfie, to be precise—of Tamaki and his mother, their faces close together to fit into the frame, smiling and flashing a peace sign. The photo caption read: “Good morning, Sunshine!”

Haruhi lingered long on Anne-Sophie’s bright features. She looked stronger than she had ever seen her, which was encouraging, but the improvement made her anxious all the same. His mother had gone through some serious ups and downs over the years. Mostly up, thanks to modern medicine. The uncertainty left Tamaki a mess—not in a way that anyone else would ever see, because he would not let them see—but sharing a living space with him gave her certain insights. Most particularly, there were instances where she had woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of his gasp and the jolt of his body as he snapped out of a dream. She would listen to him get out of bed, slip out of the room, and make a call to Paris, feigning nonchalance while he asked his mother how she was feeling. It was a rare thing, as far as she knew. That didn’t make it any less unsettling. Once or twice, the same thing had happened and he hadn’t gotten up to make a phone call; instead he’d scooted over to Haruhi’s side and latched onto her, burying his face in her hair until she felt his heartbeat slowing down.

Lost in thought, Haruhi stared a while longer, closing the message only upon hearing a set of footsteps approaching from behind. She turned around and spotted Brian a few feet off, his head bent over his legal writing book as he walked.

“Hey!” she called out, and he looked up. “I’ve got to make a phone call. Would you mind telling the others that I won’t be around for lunch?” she said to him.

“Sure, no problem,” he answered, his eyes skimming the pages. “I might take lunch off to work on my memo,” he said. “But I’ll tell them.”

“Thanks, Brian.”

Haruhi waited until she had brought Antoinette back inside from the walk to call. She didn’t realize how much she missed him until his voice reached her from across the world. Aside from her fleeting moment of weakness Monday night, the only times she’d had time to lament his absence occurred as she first woke up and when she climbed into bed. The rest of her days had been too stuffed full of class work to think about much else.

But when he answered on the third ring with an animated, “Haruhi!” she felt at once a familiar affection, along with a lesser-known sensation that closely resembled homesickness.

“I just got your message,” she said, at once. “Your mother—she looks incredible!”

“I know. I can hardly believe it myself!”

Anne-Sophie’s experimental medicine had worked like a miracle, leaving her at a higher level of functioning than she had even been through Tamaki’s childhood. However, even the Ootori Group’s pharmacologists had not been able to cure her disease entirely. She still had long periods of illness from time to time, the most recent of which had ended two months ago, when her doctors modified the dose of her medication.

“I only got here this morning, but we’re already working on wedding preparations,” he continued, sounding much more at ease than he had in days.

“I’m glad someone has been,” said Haruhi, who had not so much as started the guest list.

“What do you think for tablecloths, white or lavender? We can’t decide. I like the lavender, but she thinks we might need a white cloth to contrast the napkins and centerpieces.”

Haruhi gave a wary laugh. “You know I don’t know,” she said, deliberately avoiding anything that might come out like “I don’t care” to avoid hurting Tamaki’s feelings.

He did not sound put off, or even surprised, by her response.

“I’ll post some pictures on the site. Take a look and get back to us if you have a moment tonight, all right?”

“Hah. All right, all right.”

They spoke for about twenty minutes total. Tamaki did most of the talking, filling her with his and Anne-Sophie’s adventures in wedding arrangements while Haruhi laid back on the couch and closed her eyes, listening. When finally they had caught up to the present, she remembered why he had left in the first place.

“How was the conference, by the way?”

“It was great! I’ll tell you more about it when I get back. You have to get back to class now, don’t you?”

Haruhi glanced at her wristwatch, then forced herself upright, groaning. “Yeah, I’ve gotta go. Tell your mother I said hello. You’ll be home on Saturday?”

“Mhmm, late though. Don’t wait up for me.”

“All right. I’ll see you then.”

“Okay… um.” A long pause, followed by a shuffling sound, and then Tamaki spoke in a rushed whisper, sounding as though he had cupped his hand around the phone to prevent anyone else from hearing: “I love you, Fujioka Haruhi!” he declared.

Taken aback, Haruhi laughed. She could practically feel him blushing through the phone. She allowed herself a fraction of a second to recover before she replied in similar form, “I love you, Souh Tamaki. Travel safe.”

The secret little smile returned as she ended the call, feeling a bit silly.

x

With nothing to distract her from work, Haruhi spent the next two full days holed up in the library, leaving only twice a day: once to walk Antoinette, and again after nightfall. When at last she had stowed her casebooks back into her backpack and slung the overstuffed bag over her shoulders, swaying under the weight as she did so, she felt as though she had earned her Sunday off.

She passed by the local bar, Snappers, on her way to the bus stop. While the surrounding office buildings had gone dark for the weekend, the bar looked like it was running at maximum capacity. The outside seating area was lit with long, overlapping layers of white string lights that seemed to twinkle as she walked, and on each table sat a glowing oil lamp. Through the tinted windows she could see countless silhouettes passing one another, and when the door opened, the sound of voices and loud music poured out into the night. A few of her classmates who usually smoked outside the library stood smoking outside the entrance. They exchanged casual greetings as she went by. One of them, a stocky guy named Pete, threw his cigarette down and crushed it beneath his heel.

“No rest for the weary, eh Haruhi?”

She shrugged. “I plan to rest tomorrow,” she said amiably. “I like to study on Saturdays since we don’t have cl—”

“Haruhi!”

The bar door crashed open, and out flew Kimi, donned in a short dress and flip-flops, her updo already falling out. The way she flung herself at Haruhi, latching on to her arm, reminded her a bit of Hani. Except Kimi was clearly quite drunk. Her face was flush with color, and Haruhi smelled something strong on her breath—rum, perhaps.

“I saw you through the window and now you have to come have a drink with us!” she cried.

“Ah, I can’t—” Haruhi began, trying to extract her arm, but Kimi’s grip became tighter the more she struggled.

Kimi made a face at her and began pulling her toward the front entrance. “Don’t lie! I know nobody’s home.”

“But Antoinette—”

“She can wait! Come and have just one with us. Come onnn...!”

Sighing, Haruhi relented, allowing Kimi to half walk, half drag her into the bar. All she would be doing at the apartment was sitting around, anyway.

Inside, Haruhi was the only one with a backpack. Whoever had picked the bar’s location had been a genius; its close proximity to Yale’s law school and undergraduate campuses meant that the students flocked there for drinks and a quick meal. The students she saw here, however, only vaguely resembled the studious young professionals she knew from school. The bar itself looked like a cozy pub, with rows of wooden booths and polished countertops, but the noise level pulsed until Haruhi’s eardrums ached.

Kimi lead her over to a long table and forced her into a seat next to Chris—the handsome boy with the blonde crew cut who sat next to her in civil procedure. He greeted her with a tipsy wave and laughed when he spotted her backpack.

“Stay a while!” he said, lifting the bag from her shoulders with one hand and setting it on the ground.

Brian was there, too, down on the other end of the table, engaged in what looked like a debate with two other people. He had drunk his pint down to the foam. Several other empty or near-empty pints stood between him and the others. Across from Haruhi sat a girl that she had never spoken with outside of contracts class. Michelle was beautiful, well-dressed with wavy brunette hair that always hung down her back. Haruhi had heard that Michelle had gotten a perfect score on her Law School Aptitude Test.

“How are you?” Michelle asked, as Chris pointed to Haruhi and shouted across the room to the bartender, “Hey, someone get this girl a beer!”

Haruhi wound up staying for almost two hours, and her watch read close to ten p.m. when she finished her second drink. Despite her initial resolve to escape, she found herself not wanting to leave after the first drink. Her classmates treated one another with a professional sort of friendliness on campus, engaging in what mostly amounted to small talk and conversation about school. As it turned out, they were much more personable outside the classroom, especially once they had some alcohol on board. The topics ranged from political issues to funny stories that left her sides aching, and the group held the rule that talking about class was forbidden on weekends.

Excusing herself from the conversation with the explanation that she had to go let the dog out, Haruhi shouldered her bag once more and departed, stopping at the counter to pay before she left. Outside, the air had gone cold, but with two drinks on board and no dinner in her stomach, she didn’t much notice the chill. She caught the first bus back to the apartment and found that Tamaki had still not returned—not that she had expected him to be there; he had warned her not to stay up waiting.

After letting Antoinette out and eating the first thing she found (half a bowl of rice, leftover from last night) Haruhi brushed her teeth and fell promptly to sleep.

She woke up in need of a toilet at about five in the morning, before the sun had begun to rise. When she sat up and glanced to her left, she was surprised to find the spot still empty. Haruhi frowned at the vacant space. He ought to have been back by now.

Grumbling under her breath, she heaved herself out of bed and padded barefoot to the restroom. On her way back to bed, her eyes passed over the spot of ground where Antoinette always slept, then did a double-take when she noticed the empty dog bed. Haruhi stutter-stopped in place, swaying sleepily, and closed her eyes as the answer dawned on her. Then she turned around and proceeded to the living room.

The traitor dog was right where Haruhi knew she would find her: dozing across Tamaki’s long legs where he lay, stretched out on the couch in his suit with the blazer draped over his face. He had loosed his tie but hadn’t bothered with removing his shoes; one remained in place while the other dangled from his toes. A sort of warmth washed over Haruhi as she stood watching him sleep. Her thumb rubbed absently in the place where her engagement ring resided during the day.

Quietly, she approached the couch and squatted down by his head. She lifted the suit jacket away and set it on the ground, then gave him a gentle poke in the ribs and chuckled when he startled awake.

“Welcome home, Tama,” she whispered. “You should’ve come to bed—you’re gonna get a stiff neck sleeping out here.”

He opened one eye to squint sleepily at her. Haruhi felt a soft weight as he set a hand atop her head, pulling her closer.

“Didn’t want to wake you,” he said into her hair, his voice traveling through her body like a low pulse, leaving a fuzzy sensation in its wake.

After some silence had passed, Haruhi lifted her head, sought his hand, and pressed it between her own. “Well, I’m awake, so let’s both go back to sleep. What time did you get in?”

“Three-ish?”

With some coaxing, she managed to get him on his feet and lead him down the hall by the hand. He trailed behind her, Antoinette close at his heels. Haruhi hung his jacket while he tugged the knot out of his tie, hung it up, then repeated the motions with his pants. The both of them groaned as they flopped back onto the bed, each exhausted from their own week’s separate ventures.

Haruhi vaguely recalled how she had awoken Monday night, reeling and sweaty, but could not remember what that felt like now. Tamaki’s arm was back where it belonged around her waist, and as she fell asleep, his breaths came slow and easy to her ears.

x

They lingered in bed until almost eleven the next morning, dozing and talking. Tamaki had already gotten up, let Antoinette out, and crawled back under the covers by the time Haruhi came-to and spotted him lying there with his arms crossed behind his head. She tucked the sheets up under her chin and peered at him across the mattress, wiggling her way a few inches closer.

“Tell me about the conference,” she said, almost meekly.

His head turned, and for a second he looked almost surprised to see her. She must have caught him halfway through some thought, for his eyes had been fixed on the white ceiling, as though he were trying to see through to the next floor. But whatever the thought, he seemed to set it aside as he rolled over on his side to face her.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” said Haruhi.

And so Tamaki told her everything. For the last several weeks, he had been chipping at what he considered a behemoth of a problem for the Suoh Corporation.

“People go on vacation to foreign places for two main reasons,” he told her, holding up a finger for each reason. “The first reason is to relax and recharge. The second reason is to experience something ‘different’. So having luxury resorts and hotels in a variety of exotic places is a must. But the typical method for running these properties is troublesome…”

He explained the typical business model: the corporation acquires the land, usually in the midst of an already-existing city or village. The corporation builds the resort, hires locals as support staff, and capitalizes off of the indigenous culture without passing along most of the benefits.

“It would be more bearable if the relationship were symbiotic,” he said, though she did not know whether ‘bearable’ referred to the system itself, or his inevitable future as president of it. “The general idea is to give—no, what word did I use with the Board?—to permit the citizens of the community complete authority over the properties. To make it theirs, and run it as they like, and prosper from its success instead of just… scooping from the runoff.”

“How very optimistic of you,” said Haruhi, not unkindly.

“Yeah, it is a little more complicated than I first thought. Especially for existing properties, where the management doesn’t want to relinquish its operations over the area. It ought to work out more smoothly in new contracts, mostly because any business would be a completely transparent negotiation instead of the usual takeover.”

Once he had finished explaining the finer details, Haruhi felt the gears in her own head turning in search of complications. It was unlikely that she would come up with anything he had not considered, but she still liked to try. Two weeks of law school had already changed the way she tackled these sorts of problems. Instead of jumping right to the solution-crafting part of the process, she lingered a little longer over the legal implications. If Tamaki’s idea meant to run a more ethical business, it meant changing the entire legal process as well.

When she told him as much, he nodded, saying, “That’s one major aspect the Board wasn’t thrilled about. If we approach the business by treating the people of the region like they actually are—which is property owners with entitlement—then it becomes a partnership. Which means they have the right to be fully informed before they make any deals. Oh wow, is it already eleven?”

When he sat up, the mattress shifted and Haruhi propped herself up on an elbow to keep from falling over. Her hair, mussed from sleep, hung over her eyes as she watched him stretch.

“It means,” she said, almost to herself, “That the people have a right to say no.”

Tamaki’s arms fell back to his sides, his breath coming out in a long, exaggerated yawn. He sighed. “It’s their culture. They can choose not to share it, if they don’t want to.”

On that note, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. He braced his palms against the edge, as if testing his strength to stand, but relented and went back to stretching instead. Haruhi, considering his words, bit down on the side of her mouth to keep it from creeping up into a smile. Doubtless there had been no small amount of distress and disbelief in the conference room that day.

“So did they like the presentation, overall?” she pried.

“I hope so, but it’s hard to say. Although, one person came up to me afterward, asked me to dinner, and said I was so beautiful that they might be willing to overlook my profound naiveté.” He shot her a devilish smirk over his bare shoulder. “Are you jealous?”

“Only of your energy,” said Haruhi.

x

They had finished brunch, prepped the dough for Tamaki’s Sunday baking session, and were lounging on the loveseat, drinking coffee, when Tamaki’s phone went off. The scalding drink in Haruhi’s mug swished at the brim and almost ran down her fingers as she jumped at the sudden noise. It sounded as though it were right there, on top of them. Haruhi set the mug down and patted her pajama pockets to find them empty. It took them several moments of scrambling to realize that the phone had fallen between the cushions sometime last night, and even longer for them to fish it out. Tamaki managed to unearth it from the depths and answer it on the last ring.

“Hello?” he said hastily, not bothering to check the caller ID in his rush.

Hikaru shouted so loud that Haruhi heard him as if she’d been holding the phone: “Where’s Haruhi?”

“Huh—?” Wincing, Tamaki held the phone away from his ear. “She’s right here. Is something wrong?”

“Emergency video conference!”

Click. Hikaru hung up before Tamaki could ask any more questions. Haruhi and Tamaki exchanged a baffled look.

“The hell was that?” she said.

Already scrolling through the phone in search of Skype, Tamaki shook his head in response. Soon enough he found and booted the app, and with the touch of a button sent the feed to the widescreen television several feet in front of them. The fancy television had a tiny camera built into the top of the frame, which Haruhi found both creepy and convenient. More than once she had felt the need to cover the camera with a post-it note, lest the sensation of being watched follow her during her time in the room. But now, as the faces of her friends appeared in boxes on screen, she had no complaints. Kyoya, the conversation host, appeared first, followed in turn by Hikaru, Kaoru, Hani, and then Mori. If something urgent had happened, nobody seemed too worried about it. They greeted Haruhi and Tamaki once they appeared on the stream, all smiles and waves.

“It’s two a.m. in Tokyo,” said Haruhi. “Shouldn’t you all be sleeping?”

As far as she knew, everyone else was still at home. The only one who appeared to be elsewhere was Kyoya—he sat in an office, but over his shoulder Haruhi could see sunlight streaming through the window. Supposedly he was studying for his MBA at Stanford, only a six hour flight away, but he often traveled on business and seldom bothered to let them know about it, much less where he went.

Hikaru squinted at them through the camera. “It’s noon where you are, isn’t it? Seems a little late to sitting around in your pajamas!”

When Tamaki began to splutter some indignant response about traveling all night, Haruhi cut him off: “That’s not important. Tell us about the emergency.”

Kyoya pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one finger. His smirk made her suspicious. “Why don’t you tell us, Haruhi?”

“Huh?”

“You never answer our emails or text messages,” said Kaoru. “So we assumed something horrible must have happened to you.”

“We were worried, Haru-chan!” Hani chimed in, his eyes round with concern.

Haruhi scoffed. “What do you mean, ‘never’? I answered everyone like five days ago!”

“Eight days,” said Mori.

“Okay, so it was eight days ago, but—” Haruhi’s feeble self defense fell short when Tamaki held up his arms to shield her face from the camera’s view.

“My Haruhi is a busy woman, with class and homework to attend!” he cried, climbing over the seat to block her with his body. “She doesn’t have time for chatting!”

“But she’s got time to lay around with you all day, huh?” said one of the twins—Hikaru, definitely. Even without seeing, she could hear that definitive edge of annoyance in his voice, which was much more seldom with Kaoru.

With a sigh, Haruhi shoved Tamaki out of the way. He went sprawling back to his side of the loveseat with a disgruntled yelp, almost toppling over the armrest. She leaned forward, picked up her coffee mug, and took a sip.

“I’m sorry if I’ve left you all feeling neglected, but I have been busy. I only take off one day per week,” she said evenly. “Let’s catch up now, and then we’ll work out a schedule so we can do this more often, all right?”

Initially Kaoru and Hikaru, speaking on behalf of the others, demanded a weekly group chat at least. Haruhi countered with the offer of one chat per month, and emails every other week. After some haggling, they eventually agreed that they would video chat every other week, and that Haruhi would answer their emails at least once a week. She wouldn’t budge on the rule forbidding anyone from texting her during school hours. It was more than Haruhi thought she would have time for, but she nevertheless agreed so that they could move on to more interesting topics. There was something that pleased her about having this conversation, and she found herself feeling quite loved, despite the way the others scolded her for being so absent. By the end of it, when Kyoya announced that he would draft a schedule and forward it to their inboxes, Haruhi had dropped her exasperation.

Tamaki, wounded either by Haruhi’s rough treatment or the fact that nobody called looking for him at two in the morning (aside from the occasional businessperson), spent the majority of the debate sulking, coming around once they had settled the matter and moved on to trying to guess Kyoya’s current location.

VIII

The rest of September passed in what felt like a week. One day Haruhi woke up and found that October had arrived overnight; the skies darkened earlier, and the air became cool and crisp with the smell of turning leaves. On the weekends, she and Tamaki had to don their fall jackets when going out for groceries or their walks with Antoinette, but neither minded. The New England weather charmed them both with its incredible foliage display—just like in Boston, within a few weeks the leaves went from green to intense shades of orange, red, and yellow.

Surrounded by these colors, the law school looked even more like something from a Gothic myth. Haruhi found herself anew with awe as she walked up the library steps in the morning, looking up at the towers against their seasonal backdrop. The wonder only lasted as long as it took to cross campus, however, because the moment she entered the school, she became re-immersed in the day’s challenges. Midterms would befall them beginning in November, and while they did not receive actual grades for these exams, she itched for the opportunity to gauge her success in developing the appropriate study skills.

Only three classes offered midterms this semester—contracts, torts, and civil procedure. For some reason, the constitutional law professor had opted not to have a midterm (though she did post a few examples of previous final exams on the course website, which Haruhi intended to devour). She was up to her elbows in advice. Everyone in the upper class seemed to have a different method of studying, and each one of them seemed more eager to spread their ideas than the person before. In an academic success workshop, she had learned the basics of outlining. The Professor giving the lecture had reminded them that the point was to synthesize and reduce their class notes into something useful for exam studies, and warned them against the dangers of buying commercial outlines. Some of Haruhi’s classmates ignored this lesson entirely, and she spotted them staggering from the bookstore under a stack of outline books.

Along with the pre-midterm workload came another writing assignment from the legal writing professor. Though there were several legal writing professors, the classes had the same curriculum and assignments, leaving all of the first year students scrambling at the same time. For this assignment, due in one week, Haruhi would have to write a persuasive memorandum to the “court” explaining why a Rule 56 Motion for Summary Judgment was appropriate based on the case facts given to them in class. There would be research involved, and she was still not quite comfortable with the online legal research engine. Tricia had walked her through it once already, but she would have to spend more time on it.

And then, on top of that, the career department at the school had scheduled a series of lunch-hour presentations on possible career paths during the second week of October, and how to find internships in those careers. The first was about general litigation practice, and how small firms often brought their interns around to court to watch how things worked; the second featured a woman who worked in the public defender’s office and talked about the importance of representing accused criminals in trial—especially those who could not afford their own counsel; the third introduced them to the famous international human rights clinic, into which only the best students could enter; a fourth speaker explained the fast-paced life in corporate law (“They work you to death, but you die a very wealthy person!”) Haruhi attended every one of these events, listening poised with notebook and pen, though she did so with a heavy heart. Her friends noticed Haruhi’s quiet discomfort.

“Do you not like any of them?” asked Brian, as they left the on-campus courtroom where they had heard the presentation. He sounded disbelieving, almost as though her attitude had put him off.

“No, no, that’s not it,” she assured him, embarrassed that she had been so obvious. “They all sound like such amazing careers… one of the biggest reasons I came to Yale was because of the international human rights clinic. It’s an incredible program.”

“It’s really competitive, you know. Only a few students get in for their second year.”

“I know. I’m not worried about that.”

Brian looked down at her, perplexed. “So what’s the problem?”

“It’s not a problem.” Haruhi struggled to find the words, not wanting to divulge more of her feelings than necessary to get that look off of his face and return to normal. “I just don’t know if any of those careers will be available to me.”

“Uh huh.” She hadn’t cleared the problem up for him, but he took the hint.

“It’s really nothing—”

“Brian, Haruhi!”

Tricia and Kimi caught them on the walkway halfway between where they had come from and their building where they had their next classes. For once grateful for the interruption, Haruhi let them change the topic from the presentation on corporate law to the legal writing assignment.

Haruhi finished said assignment halfway through the next week, leaving some time to edit her paper before turning it in via email on Friday morning. It was a page over the limit, and debating what to cut out had left her with a cold sweat and the threat of a headache. Once again, the birth control alarm on her phone went off at nine p.m. and startled her (along with several others) out of study mode. Killing the alarm, Haruhi closed her eyes and set her head on the desk. Yes, that’s quite enough for one night. She had been researching and writing about employment contracts for so long that her brain had begun to go numb, which made her useless for editing tonight.

On her way out of the library, she fished a packet from the side pocket of her backpack and opened it to reveal a row of tiny pills. She was not particularly keen on bearing any children right now, as she had more than enough to worry about, even though Tamaki was itching to make his little family as big as possible, as soon as possible. If he had it his way, their first baby would arrive nine months and one day after their impending wedding. Haruhi suspected that, despite his harping on the need to at least appear modest before marriage, he would welcome a pregnancy between now and the wedding. Perhaps if things were different, if she didn’t have a dream that trumped all the others, things would be different.

Tamaki can pout all he wants, she thought, holding one pill between her teeth before tipping her head back and swallowing it. These pills would continue to be her line of defense for as long as they could stand it. The need to establish her career trumped all other goals, whatever that career would be.

Thinking of her future brought back a recollection of the workshop series and made her vaguely queasy. Haruhi clutched her casebook tighter to her chest as she hurried off to catch the bus.

x

The rest of October was a daily grind for Haruhi. She rose early, went to sleep late, and did little in between but study. The only difference to her morning routine was that Tamaki had replaced their regular coffee brew with pumpkin-flavored coffee. She liked it well enough, with its odd hint of spice and its jolt of nostalgia. The first time she had ever tried it was in Boston, during her first semester abroad.

“Pumpkin flavoring is a delicacy among New England commoners,” Tamaki had explained to her. “For just a few months out of the year, everything becomes pumpkin. There’s pumpkin coffee, pumpkin pie, even pumpkin ice cream! I realize it’s a consumerism tactic, but I find it charming, don’t you?”

As promised, she and Tamaki spent a few hours every other week in a video chat with their friends, whose lives always seemed so much more chaotic than their own. Kaoru had become partner in his mother’s industry and spent a good deal of time teasing everyone else’s choice in clothing. Hikaru had gone into graphic design, but had enough knowledge to back up his brother and throw gasoline on the flames whenever he could. Sometimes Mei joined their chats, which inevitably resulted in a heated fashion debate between she and the twins, above which the others all caught up with one another’s lives.

Inexplicably, everyone obeyed Haruhi’s ‘no texting during class hours’ rule, instead messaging her in the evenings or sending long emails throughout the day. She called her father every week, just to make sure that he was all right on his own. Life moved quickly and constantly.

Halloween passed without neither outing nor incident. Tamaki had scowled like a scorned cat when she told him not to make any wild plans for the thirty-first of the month, and spent all of Halloween night crouched by the window, jealously watching clusters of tipsy Yale students in costume stagger off in clusters to and from the bars. The only indication that the holiday even occurred was that Tamaki dyed his weekly bread orange that Sunday in an action either celebratory or in protest. She could not be sure, though it thankfully tasted the same when she had it for lunch.

For many of her classmates, November and midterms arrived as a shock—how had two months gone by already? But Haruhi had been prepping for this moment since day one. November had two weeks of class before a week-long Thanksgiving break. In the first week, she planned to take several of the practice constitutional law exams that Professor Murphy had posted online. The second week ended with the three midterms—torts on Tuesday, civil procedure on Wednesday, contracts on Thursday—and her final legal writing assignment due by Thursday at midnight. After the last assignment, the legal writing class would be over, leaving her with more time to focus on her doctrinal classes and begin preparation for final exams in late December. And on top of that, she had to get ahead with the reading for the week after break, in order to make the best use of her time during break.

Haruhi poured over her planner and wondered how she would have time to keep up with the workload. Her lunch breaks would have to go. She made a note on the page to let her friends know that they would not see her for lunch until after Thanksgiving break. Sleep was not something she was eager to sacrifice, but if she had to do it, she would. If she could see straight by the time the Friday before break arrived, it would mean that she had not worked hard enough.

The workload for Tamaki had increased, too. Recently he spent more and more time barricaded in the back office with his laptop, working on whatever projects his father and the Board tossed to him—whenever he wasn’t working on his own project. Once in a while he pulled an all-nighter to work on Japan time, but preferred to keep a normal time schedule if possible. On those rare occasions where he stayed up all night, he emerged the next morning with an armful of empty ramen cups and instant coffee packets, near stumbling with tired but always optimistic.

Tamaki was still working when Haruhi came home on the first Monday of November, but at some point during the day, his work had spilled out of the office and into the kitchen. Several charts of what looked like nonsense sat on the kitchen table. As Haruhi cleared one of the seats of paperwork and set her backpack on it, she heard the nonstop ding! of incoming emails chiming from his open laptop. Tamaki had a frying pan in one hand, a spatula in the other, and his phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder.

“Yes, that’s what the report—yes,” Tamaki said to whoever sat on the other line, speaking in rapid Japanese. There was fish in the frying pan, but he had stopped poking at it with the spatula to listen. “I told her that I think we can stretch out the budget a little more to make it work. Uh huh. No, I’m not concerned.”

The fish had begun to burn. Haruhi rushed over to rescue their supper, ducking under Tamaki’s arm and gently taking hold of the handle. Stepping aside to let her take over, he continued to wave the spatula around as he and the other person went back and forth. By the context of the conversation, it sounded like an argument. By the expression on Tamaki’s face, it looked like he was winning.

“If we don’t include it now, just as overhead, it won’t ever get in. So—yes, I know what the report said, because I wrote the report.” He spoke evenly, never raising his voice, sounding as casual as he could without crossing into the realm of condescension. “No, of course not… which is why today, you’re going to take a walk to her office and tell her to include it in the budget.”

Garbled hollering came from the other end, while Tamaki jabbed at the air with the spatula. Haruhi grabbed the spatula from him to flip the fish in the pan. Luckily, he hadn’t burned anything, though the fish had cooked longer than necessary. She set them on a pair of plates and checked the timer on the rice.

“Yes, that’s… I don’t care about that. That’s not my problem. It’s not your problem either—in fact, it’s not anybody’s problem because it’s not a problem. It’ll work, I promise.” Then he laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment! …Okay, that’ll work. I’m late for supper, so just email me the confirmation when she gives you the thumbs-up. All right, thanks. Thanks. Yeah, you too.”

By the time he hung up, Haruhi had brought dinner to the coffee table in the living room, having decided that shuffling the mess on the kitchen table would inevitably lead to disaster, and returned to the kitchen to fetch the wine glasses. She rounded the corner in time to see him hang up and lean heavily against the counter, sighing.

“Long day, Tama?”

He snapped to attention when he spotted her. “Yes, but it was a good day for progress. I’m sorry you had to hear my ‘bad guy’ voice.”

“That’s your ‘bad guy’ voice?” Haruhi laughed. “I think I’ll survive. Help me with the napkins?”

“Ah! Yes, sorry.” He grabbed a pair of cloth napkins from the drawer and followed her out of the room.

When they sat down to eat, Tamaki went for his wine glass first. He took a small swig, paused as if considering the taste, and chased it with another, longer drink. Haruhi raised her eyebrows at him, her fork slowing to a halt halfway between her plate and her open mouth.

“When was the last time you had time off from work?” she said.

Tamaki had started on his supper. Even with his good manners, waiting patiently between bites, she somehow sensed that he had not eaten all day. Maybe it was the way he barely paused in his eating to cast his eyes to the ceiling, think for a beat, and respond, “Sunday.”

The two of them had incredible worth ethic, she thought, but they also had the tendency to forget themselves in whatever task was at hand. The result could not be healthy in large doses.

“That’s not what I meant. I was thinking more like several days, or a week.”

“Oh. Huh.” A longer pause this time, as he fought to recall. Eventually he said, “When we were moving here, I didn’t work for a few days. Does that count?”

“I guess so.”

Finally he picked up on her signal, the way she chased the bite of food around the plate without picking it up. He set his fork down on the edge of his plate.

“I love my job, so it’s really not a hassle to work all the time,” he said, in an effort at chipperness.

“Well I love school, but even law school students get breaks. After midterms, I get the whole week off. Maybe you should take that week off, too.”

His eyes went round. “You think so?”

“Yeah, if you could work it into your schedule. I’d try to get my homework done ahead of time so I would be free. It might be nice to lie around.” She glanced up, met his gaze, and found him watching her closely. “What?”

“You want to lie around with me, Haruhi? For a whole week?” he said, suddenly smirking.

A blush rose unbidden up her neck. “You know what I meant!” she replied, hastily returning to her plate.

Tamaki hummed thoughtfully as he turned back to his meal as well. “Maybe we should do a little traveling,” he said, after some time. “Would you be opposed to lying around somewhere we haven’t been yet?”

Haruhi shrugged. “Not as long as it’s warm.”

It had been so cold recently that Haruhi already found herself fantasizing about summertime. Layering up with coats and scarves and the rest was too much trouble. The notion of traveling someplace warmer for the week hadn’t occurred to her, but now that Tamaki had put the idea in her head, she liked the visual of herself stretched out in a hammock under the sun.

“Maybe California,” she offered. “The southern part.”

“That would be warm,” he said.

“And the time change wouldn’t be too much, either.”

“I like it,” said Tamaki, who she knew tired of constantly crossing time zones on business trips. He was grinning now, probably having the same daydream as Haruhi. “I’ll send the Board an email about getting the time off. I’m sure it won’t be a problem, not with all the hours I’ve logged…”

The meal ended on a much higher note than it began with, and Haruhi sipped her wine long after she had finished eating. Something about just having vacation plans gave her a preliminary relaxation, lifting some of the weight that she had not realized she carried. She was glad she had spoke on impulse. They had not done any traveling since early summer break, and she longed for a change of pace.

Because Tamaki had done the cooking, she took care of the dishes while he attempted to sweep his overflowed work back into the confines of his office. He dropped heavily into one of the kitchen chairs when he was done, and typed out the email on his phone while she finished wiping off the cast-iron pan. His posture had become rounded again, and with his back to her he did not see her come up behind him. He did not speak when she set her hands on his shoulders, but a telltale sigh escaped when she dug her fingers into the muscle, rubbing out some of the tension.

“It’s been too long since we did something for ourselves,” she concluded, yawning. “It’ll be nice to get away, even if it’s just for a few days. The next two weeks are going to be hell for me, but I’ll make sure to get everything together.”

Tamaki shook his head. “Leave the planning to me.”

“Are you sure? It was my idea. I wouldn’t want to dump it on you…”

“I’ve got big ideas already.”

IX

As predicted, Haruhi had to cut back on sleep to accommodate her schedule. She spent all her free time on Tuesday reviewing her notes on substantive due process and the multi-factor test for determining whether a Congressional act was permissible under the Constitution. On Wednesday after class, she got together with a few classmates from her constitutional law class in a room of the library that they had reserved for a practice test.

Law school exams were typically three to four hours long, and Haruhi intended to use every minute of that time to her advantage. The group mimicked testing conditions. They arrived ten minutes beforehand, left a desk between each person and the next, and took out their laptops. Right around test time, Pete-the-smoker came sauntering into the classroom with a stack of papers under one arm.

“Fresh off the press,” he said with false enthusiasm, handing one to each of his five present classmates and saving one for himself. “I hope nobody looked at them ahead of time!”

Miranda, a full-bodied redhead who Haruhi knew to be involved with the student government, rolled her eyes at Pete as she accepted a packet from him. The two of them went at each other as often as they could, but the dynamic felt more flirtatious than contentious.

“Don’t sit near me; you smell like the inside of a smoke shop,” she said.

He took the first open seat he found, which happened to leave just one desk between them. “It just so happens I like the smell of smoke shops,” he said, finagling with his laptop cord. “So thank you.”

“All right, can we please get started? I’m too tired for this,” interjected Taylor, a twenty-six year old from Texas.

Haruhi took a deep breath, determined not to let the nervous bickering tamper with her mood. On Pete’s cue, the timer began and the students delved into the practice exam. Haruhi turned to the first page and began to read.

Question 1. In 1934, Congress passed a federal act imposing a mandatory tax on the purchases of all firearms, and mandating that the owners of said weapons register their weapon with a national database. John is a thirty year old gun owner from Tuscaloosa, Alabama and a card-carrying member of the NRA. He filed suit in the federal district court, alleging that the power to enact this restrictive law is not within the scope of Congress’s authority under Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, and that the law unduly restricts his 14 ^th amendment right to due process. Using the facts below, consider the merits of the case and write a memo discussing whether the case is likely to succeed…

She did not stop typing for four hours, but when the alarm went off, she felt as if she had only just started. The students did not discuss the exam as they emailed their practice exams to the professor (who had graciously agreed to review them and provide feedback). Together, they left the library in a haze, squinting when they got outside as if they had not seen the sun in ages. Pete immediately lit up a cigarette.

“I need a drink,” he said. “Anyone down for Snappers?”

Taylor stretched, replying, “Absolutely. I am so down.”

One by one, the others agreed to join. When they all turned to Haruhi, though, she had to hold up her hands and politely decline.

“Thanks, but I can’t,” she said. “I’ve got to catch up on some things.”

“You’re a machine,” said Pete, before turning to the others to add: “She takes more notes on one case than I take in a week of class.”

Though Haruhi had planned to take another practice exam, she felt something of an exam hangover when her alarms went off on Thursday morning. Instead of forcing herself to sit through another, she saved the other practice exam questions for finals preparation and went about reviewing her answers from yesterday. This took most of the day, since she had to rifle through countless pages of handwritten notes every time she wanted to check a fact, but she left feeling certain that she had answered the questions correctly.

Once satisfied with her exam, she turned to working on the final draft of her legal writing paper. Since she would not have much time to work on it come next week, she wanted to finish it by tomorrow evening, if possible, and have it ready to turn in before midterms began.

x

She studied all weekend. On Sunday, the door of her bedroom office opened and Tamaki slipped into the room, uninvited. Haruhi was so engrossed in her torts casebook that she did not notice his presence until he was sitting on the edge of her desk, twiddling his thumbs.

“What happened to relaxing one day per week?” he said, all too casually.

“Not this week, not if I’m going to take off all that time.”

He sighed. When he continued to sit there, she ignored him at first. But this became increasingly difficult as he grew bored and began harassing her. First he nudged her knee with his foot. Then, when that proved fruitless, he slid off the desk and draped his arms around her neck. He kissed her behind the ear, then on her jaw, then her pulse point. Two fingers snuck beneath the high collar of her shirt and played lightly across her collarbone.

“You’re always working so hard,” he whispered into her ear, making her skin prickle. “You deserve a break.”

It was not without effect. Her eyes, so intent on taking in the reading about strict liability, became unfocused as she felt his affections ripple through her. A break would not take long. In her periphery she could see the bed in which she had never slept. It was right there, it would be so easy—hell, her desk was right here; one good swipe and it could be clear—but as she began to let him get to her, the stress of three looming exams and even more assignments came rushing back.

“Stop distracting me,” she said, reaching up to grab his hand before it could wander any further down her shirt.

“I take it that’s a ‘no’.”

Sounding defeated, he let his forehead fall on her shoulder, which only made it easier for Haruhi to set a palm on the crown of his head and give him a little push toward the door.

“It’s a ‘save it for later’,” said Haruhi dismissively, already returning her focus to the reading. Then, assuming that he had taken his place in the corner to mope, she added: “Quit sulking. I promise I’ll pay you back once my exams are done.”

“Don’t say it like that,” he grumbled from somewhere over her right shoulder. “You make it sound like a favor.”

With a long sigh, Haruhi rubbed her eyes with the hand not already occupied with taking notes. “By the time I’m done with all of this, it’ll be a favor to myself,” she muttered.

She did not hear him slink out of the room, but when he returned, it was with supper. In one hand he carried a teacup, and in the other, a bowl of hot stew with a chunk of fresh baguette sticking up in it like a sinking ship. Wordlessly he set them down on one corner of the desk, accepted her hasty word of thanks with a hummed “mhmm”, and left her to her work.

x

Tuesday’s torts midterm crept up on her. She had spent so much time studying the negligence principle that when she opened the exam packet and discovered an in-depth question about products liability, she almost put her head down on the table. Several students did exactly that. Professor Jones had only started the topic last week, leaving them little caselaw with which to work, and even less ability to converse on the topic. Still, because Haruhi had already done the reading for after break, she had enough familiarity to work her way through the question. Every time she began to feel distressed, she forced herself to recall the professor’s words of comfort the day after her first cold call:

“There are rarely right and wrong answers in law school, aside from maybe procedural questions. What I’m looking for is that you have enough of a grasp on the concepts to think critically about them.”

If a conversation about the material was what he wanted, then she could give him that much. Analyze the facts, apply the knowledge, and determine how the law could work for either party’s favor. The torts mantra ran repeatedly through her head as she wrote: Duty, breach, causation, damages. Duty, breach, causation, damages…

She finished her first draft within three hours and spent the last hour cleaning up her work.

x

For dinner that night, Haruhi whipped together a hot pot and sat at the kitchen table to study for civil procedure while it cooked. The kitchen lighting made it easier to stay awake anyway, and with Tamaki holed up in the back office, there were few interruptions to take her away from work. The biggest distraction turned out to be herself. More than once, while trying to absorb the contents of Congressional statute §1332 to better supplement her understanding of diversity jurisdiction, her vision blurred over with daydreams of their forthcoming vacation. Haruhi imagined herself lying in bed in a small room someplace remote, the windows and the doors to the outdoor patio thrown open to let in the warm, dry breeze, her backpack and casebooks locked up far away in the apartment.

The long hours of studying had begun to round and stiffen her shoulders, making it more difficult than ever to heave herself out of bed in the morning. Her eyes burned from countless pages of reading—she suspected that she would need to update her glasses prescription within the next year, though she had gone through an eye exam just before school began. She decided then that they would spent at least one day of vacation doing absolutely nothing. Preferably the first day.

When supper had finished cooking, she spooned some into a bowl and delivered it to the back office. As always, she knocked and waited for him to bid her enter before turning the knob and easing the door open. She had been inside many times, though she tried to keep out of his private work space. There was one large window that shared a wall with a dozen photographs and two small banners for the Yomiuri Giants and the Boston Red Sox. Like the rest of the apartment, the floor was made of porcelain tile that didn’t feel freezing underfoot. She could not see the tile today, however.

The office was in rare form. Usually Tamaki kept the clutter organized, but now only the space directly behind his computer was spared the disaster. A stack of file folders marked the exact border where his co-workers would not be able to see if he used his webcam. Across the room, books and papers took up every surface, including the floor and the shelf space between his cereal box collectibles and a framed photo of their last visit to Spain with their friend group.

Tamaki himself sat upright in the computer chair, the king of the mess. He had been typing furiously when she entered, and paused long enough to look up from the screen and say “Good evening!” before returning to his work. The loose tie around his neck told her that he was at least done with video conferences for the night.

As Haruhi approached, she spotted several California travel guides on the desk; one of these she moved aside to make room for the bowl. She almost commented on the level of disaster that had taken hold of the room, but bit back the offer to bring him a snorkel, in case he should drown in all the paper. His room, his rules.

“Are you all right in here?” she asked, setting down his supper.

“Quite, thank you.”

Tamaki did not stop typing as he glanced up again. He looked hard at her face for several seconds, and with such a curiously blank expression that Haruhi became self-conscious about it. It was the stare of someone with secret thoughts, someone who could read her mind and invited her to return the gesture. Somehow she managed to fight off the blush, keeping a straight face until she had closed the office door behind her.

She returned to the kitchen, fell back into her seat, and tried to shake off the flustered feeling. But when she picked up her highlighter and went back to the U.S. Code, the visions of vacation returned in full force. This time, Tamaki played a larger role in these daydreams. Eventually she had to get up and brew herself a strong tea to reclaim some of her lost focus.

They would spend at least one day of vacation doing almost nothing. Maybe they would not even get out of bed.

X

After just a few short hours of sleep, the alarms startled her out of her rest the next morning. When she jolted awake, she found herself tangled up in limbs and white cotton sheets. Tamaki had migrated onto her side of the bed and taken up half of it (as well as more than half of her personal space), and she could feel his breath against her neck. The alarms did not affect him anymore. Haruhi made a deliberate effort not to wake him as she extracted herself from his arms and rose to cancel the alarms. It was a good thing she kept them out of reach; if not for the dizzying twang of country music coming from the other side of the room, she would have been tempted to stay as she was.

Haruhi found a handwritten piece of paper next to her backpack, where she had left it in the kitchen. Beside it sat a pencil. Time was scarce that morning, but as she skimmed the note, she felt some of her urgency ebbing away. It was a draft of their trip itinerary—or, rather, several options for the trip. The page was divided into two columns, separated by a bold-printed “OR”, with a heading labeled “Pick!”. Glancing at the clock to make sure she had time, she eased herself into a kitchen chair and took up the pencil.

Hotel OR Rental

Interactive OR Secluded

Cook OR Restaurant

Entertainment OR Not

Rustic OR Modern

City OR Town

Red Wine OR White Wine

The list went on until the bottom of the page. Haruhi let her gut carry her through the choices, and circled the one that most appealed to her on the spot. The subtle mystery of the options left her wondering. It seemed that her personal planner had taken the getaway to heart in the same way that she had, only he had made the time to refine the details. She felt a rush of gratitude as she heaved her backpack on and hurried off for the bus.

x

Haruhi left her civil procedure exam a little more disheveled than she had for torts. Professor Connor had picked a relevant topic—jurisdiction—and asked them to determine whether the federal law infringed on the state’s rights, based on a series of tests. One at a time, Haruhi went through the tests, citing the relevant rules and cases as they came up.

Despite her familiarity with the material, however, something about this exam felt different than torts had. Her essay was more segmented, more like an outline of applicable rules than a conversation about the law. At the end of time, she chocked it up to the fact that civil procedure was inherently rule-based. Professor Connor would see that Haruhi had mastered the material. Hopefully that would be enough.

That same day, she had her constitutional law exam. Cruel as it was to force students to sit through eight hours of examination in one day, it seemed even crueler that when she finally got out of the stuffy classroom and onto the bus, there would be more work waiting for her at home.

x

Haruhi studied well into the night for her last midterm exam. Contracts class had long since become a course on learning a second language. The terms were vague, the case law often riddled with ambiguities and contradictions within the same jurisdiction. This class left her scratching her head more often than not, and she scratched it some more in the early hours of Thursday before she decided that she would be better off sleeping than trying to understand the material.

As she dragged herself to bed, she could hear Tamaki in a conference call in his office. He had put in just as many hours as she this week, and to Haruhi seemed as though she had not seen him in days. They had eaten their meals separately, gone to bed at dissimilar hours, begun their days at different times in the morning. If nothing else, the next week would be a well deserved opportunity to spend some time together without all the background noise (and there had been plenty of that this term).

They had been to some incredible places over the last few years; some experiences had been good, others not so much. When traveling time drew near, she always began to worry that their days might better be spent on something a little less indulgent. But this trip was different. She found herself itching for the end of exams, itching to board a plane and soar off to someplace new, just to get away. One week to themselves. For some reason it felt like asking for a year.

She did not wake when Tamaki came to bed that night, and found herself alone in the room when she got up the next day. If not for the drool splotch drying on his pillow, she would have thought that he had not gone to sleep at all. There was no sign of him in the hallway, nor in the bathroom where she showered and brushed her teeth, nor in the bedroom when she returned to dress. Haruhi pulled on her slacks, straightened the collar of her button-up and laced up her shoes, listening all the while for sounds of life within the apartment. If she kept silent, often she could hear his voice from all the way down the hall—quick, animated, accompanied by the clacking of the keyboard—even if he had the office door closed. It should come as a murmur, intelligible but present, yet she heard nothing.

She caught sight of the vacant kitchen when she rounded the corner, tucking in her shirt. Antoinette sat in the living room, gnawing on a rawhide bone, but she was alone. Haruhi stood watching the dog as she threaded her belt through the loops of her pants and tightened it.

“Where’s Tamaki, Antoinette?” she asked, but the dog ignored her. Haruhi turned away as if slighted by the silence. “He must still be working, then…”

Haruhi paused outside his office door after she knocked, and when no response came, she cracked the door and stuck her head through. The mess had multiplied since Tuesday night, but Tamaki’s computer chair was empty save for a jacket draped across one armrest.

The front door opened. The sound of jangling keys preceded a series of sharp, heavy thuds. As Haruhi ventured back toward the entry, Tamaki appeared in the hallway. Clutched in both hands was the handle of a large dog crate, which whacked against the wall when he spotted her and turned.

Thud. “Haruhi!”

Grinning broadly at the look of bewilderment on Haruhi’s face, Tamaki followed her into the kitchen, the door of the dog crate rattling in front of him, and set it down on the tile. Stirred by the commotion, Antoinette appeared to investigate the source of the noise. Upon spotting the crate, she dropped into a defensive position, growled, gave the crate a wary sniff, and then scampered from the room.

“You’d think she’d be more excited to go on a trip,” said Tamaki amusedly, knowing full well that flying made Antoinette transform from excitable canine companion to untamable beast. Haruhi grimaced at the looming prospect of chasing the dog around and cramming her into the travel carrier.

The wariness was short lived, however, for a moment later Tamaki rounded on her. She had found her backpack by the dishwasher and was checking that her contracts outline was still inside (a needless precaution, as she had made a point of putting it there just hours beforehand), but she stood when Tamaki’s shoes appeared in her periphery.

“Everything is set,” he announced with a satisfied sigh.

Having found her class materials exactly where she had left them, Haruhi straightened up and appraised him with a look.

“My exam gets out at eight, so I’ll be home right after,” she told him, though he already knew; he had asked her for her exam schedule right after they conceived the idea of a week-long getaway. “What time is the flight?”

With a few long strides he came up beside her, took the backpack by the handle as she struggled to lift it, and set it on the countertop with the straps facing out.

“First thing tomorrow morning.”

“Oh.” Haruhi had grasped one of the shoulder straps in preparation to slip it on, but faltered mid-gesture. Releasing the backpack, she turned to face him again. “Thank you for taking care of this, Tama. I feel guilty for not helping out more, but…”

“It’s nothing. I enjoyed planning it.” He had waved her apology away before she could complete the thought. “And besides—”

When he moved forward, Haruhi took an automatic backward step. When the small of her back connected with the edge of the counter, she jumped. Tamaki set one hand on either side of her and leaned forward with the obvious goal of unsettling her.

“If doing a little extra work always meant that I could spend more time with you, I would resign from the family business and make it my profession,” he said. He supplemented the low tone of his voice with a sultry smile.

Luckily, she had more than enough practice in dodging this sort of advance. Haruhi gave a snort of laughter, pressing her hands against his chest in a halfhearted effort to shove him off. “Quit trying your silly host club moves on me,” she said.

“Just think! This time tomorrow we’ll be settling into our room in San Marino, with nothing to worry about except which reservation to keep for dinner.”

“San Marino,” Haruhi echoed, her laughter cut short. “That’s really far south, isn’t it?”

“Is—is that okay?” said Tamaki, suddenly apprehensive.

“It’s just right.” Tipping her head to one side, Haruhi winced as her stiff neck twinged. “I’ve really been looking forward to this break.”

With a half-step forward, Tamaki had her locked in between himself and the kitchen counter. Her hands, still flat against his chest, slid up to straighten his collar.

“We’re staying at a suite in this famous vineyard,” he said. “It’s small, standalone, set apart from the others. I picked it because it has this wooden deck that you can’t see from the other buildings… it gets full sunlight during the day, with an excellent view.”

“I can’t wait,” she muttered in earnest.

“One more exam and it’s yours.”

“Ours, yeah…”

Bending his elbows, he tilted his face a little closer to hers. “I’ve been thinking that we ought to just take the first day and rest,” he said. And then, in her ear, in whispered French: “What do you say, Haruhi? Will you lay around with me?”

And then they were kissing.

Haruhi had such pride in her ability to maintain a firm grip over herself that these twists always came as a surprise. One moment she was reciting a mental list of cases dealing with the statute of frauds, and in the next, her tongue was in somebody else’s mouth. There was no logic to it. Sometimes she wound up here and could not say why. The only thing she knew for sure was that her day had markedly improved.

One of her arms had locked around Tamaki’s neck and held him there, her willing captive. A group study session began in twenty minutes, but Haruhi let her urgency slide away for a few long moments. Her classmates would not disband if she ran a little late.

Still braced against the counter, Tamaki kissed her hard, pushing her back, relenting before her spine bent uncomfortably against the granite. Without breaking contact, he lifted her by the waist and set her on the counter. Haruhi’s ankles linked familiarly at the small of his back. His fingers found her belt loops and yanked her closer still.

Almost three weeks had gone since they shared anything like this. She had almost forgotten the strange sensation, the odd balance between an acute sense of physicality and partial paralysis, that faint tingle that crawled down her throat and dropped into the pit of her belly. Urgency took hold, as though she had found something forgotten, and Haruhi became eager to reconnect. She broke away, breathed deep, sought his lips—soft lips, chilled a touch from being outdoors, not chapped and bitten like her own. His breath had sped up; she could feel it, heard him try to catch it between kisses. First they were aggressive, then slowed once the initial, frantic rush dwindled into a slow burn, relaxing into it, letting tongues linger and pulses settle.

A warmth spread over her body, and though she had not realized it left, she welcomed its safe return. The arm not around his neck had slipped down and snuck up the back of his shirt. Haruhi strummed along the line where jeans met skin, climbed the ridge of his vertebrae up to the center of his back and slid back down again. Tamaki shuddered, but he did not return the favor, no doubt intending to keep her in one piece for school, since they both knew that this spontaneous make out couldn’t lead anywhere until—

“Eight o’clock,” gasped Haruhi, forcibly willing herself away to say it.

“Mhmm.”

He kissed her again when she opened her mouth to speak, catching her bottom lip. For another few seconds they were caught up again. Eventually she had to break it off, when the recollection of her contracts exam came flaring back into the forefront of her mind. Obligations beckoned her and she could not refuse, but she did not have to like it either; she groaned as she leaned away. Understanding the meaning behind her disgruntled sound, he twisted his fingers in her belt loops and gently tugged her forward until she slid off the countertop and landed neatly on her feet.

“Tamaki,” she said, giving him a stern look as she wiped her mouth and fixed the tuck of her shirt. “You had better be here when I get back.”

He smiled a crooked smile, one side of his mouth turning up. Then he kissed her forehead. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and took two steps back.

“In this exact spot.”

“Cross my heart.”

As she saddled up with her backpack, she began to purposely shift focus, setting aside Tamaki and her own nagging arousal in exchange for school. He saw the change move across her face and shook his head in wonder.

XI

All in all, Haruhi felt that her side venture this morning had been well worth three minutes of tardiness. If it set the precedent for how her evening and the subsequent week would follow, then she was perfectly content to work hard for the next few hours to ensure that she deserved the reward.

Since the legal writing class had ended with the return of their final papers, they used that block of time to meet in the empty legal writing classroom and study for the contracts exam. Haruhi liked this small group, a band of five students with unquestionable work ethic: Brian, looking as always like a lumberjack in flannel; Michelle, the beautiful brunette who, without question, sat at the top of the class; Adam, who posed ridiculous questions during class, but who surprised Haruhi with his competence. There was also Taylor, who had taken the practice constitutional law exam with Haruhi last week, and who purportedly drank iced coffee all year round. Taylor was the only one missing when Haruhi came running through the door, but they arrived before the rest of the group had finished pleasantries. As always, Taylor carried in one hand a plastic, condensation-dotted Dunkin Donuts cup. And today, on one of the days where Haruhi had forgotten to eat, they brought bagels.

“I was going to offer these as penance for being late, but I see you haven’t accomplished anything yet,” they said, opening the lid of the box and sliding it across the long table, where it bumped into Adam’s coffee cup and almost knocked it over.

“I hereby forgive you,” said Michelle, who plucked up a bagel as the box glided past.

Brian reached for the everything bagel, but Adam snatched it up first. He made a show of pretending to take a bite before he handed it over and took a plain one instead.

“I would forgive you,” said Adam, “but you forgot the cream cheese.”

Taylor reached into their shoulder bag, withdrew the packets of cream cheese, and chucked them at Adam’s head.

“I brought knives, too. You want those next?” They grabbed a handful of plastic knives and held them up.

“Nah, I’m good.”

Haruhi waited until the others had selected their bagels before she took the last one in the box. She thought it was blueberry but it turned out to be cinnamon raisin, which pleased her. Adam looked as though he would like to chat through breakfast, but Haruhi commandeered the conversation before he had the chance to bring up some distraction, opening her notebook to a page marked with a lemon yellow sticky.

“The parole evidence rule,” she said. “Am I missing something, or is it as simple as it sounds?”

“The professor gave some really confusing examples, but it’s probably as simple as you think it is,” Michelle confirmed. “When you choose to write a contract, there’s an assumption that there is no room for any oral agreements beyond that contract. So when courts analyze the contract, they do so under the assumption that they only need to look at the four corners of the document to get everything they need.”

Brian had his head bowed over his outline. “The type of questions you want to ask for a parole evidence question are ‘what is the effect of this writing?’ and ‘was it intended to be complete?’. If you can’t add anything, what’s the point of asking whether or not it was intended to be complete?”

“Because there can still be ambiguities,” said Haruhi. “For example: If there’s a word that can mean many things, then by analyzing whether the contract was intended to be complete, they can decide whether the judge the word based on the context of the document or look elsewhere.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

Haruhi let out a relieved breath when Michelle confirmed that she had been right.

“Thank you for the clarification,” she said, smiling apologetically. “I worry sometimes that my English keeps me from getting everything right.”

“Seriously?” said Adam. He had shoved the rest of his bagel into his mouth, and the words came out in a muffled jumble. “Your English is better than mine! And I’m from this country.”

Haruhi tried to hide her blush, but failed.

x

After the first hour of class, Professor Jones stopped mid-lecture and demanded to know why three students in a row had been unable to stand up to his cold call. It happened that the three unfortunate students he had called on had their contracts midterm just after his class, and it was evident that some of Haruhi’s classmates had skipped the torts reading to study for it. Most of them, like Haruhi and her study group, had spent their free time that morning and the majority of their lunch break reviewing their midterm outlines, trying to force the dense material to adhere instead of falling back out of their heads.

Professor Jones softened up a bit after someone had explained it to him.

“Ah, I see,” he said mischievously, smirking. “I suppose I can forgive you for prioritizing, even if it does hurt my feelings. But tell me, did anyone read enough to tackle the hypothetical? Anyone?”

Haruhi had read the material for class, but with her gut wrought in contracts-induced knots to begin with, the prospect of juggling Professor Jones’s multiplying hypothetical questions held little appeal. Instead of volunteering, she bent her head low to her notebook to avoid drawing his gaze, dutifully taking notes as one of the students without a looming exam offered to answer. She remembered little of the lecture the next morning when she perused her notebook, but the handwriting was definitely hers. Luckily, she was so thorough that it wasn’t like learning from scratch.

x

The contracts midterm dawned upon her, a silent, grim beast. At the close of torts lecture, with just fifteen minutes until the start of the midterm, the people in Haruhi’s contracts class rushed out of the room, leaving the others in the dust before they could pack their backpacks. Haruhi was in the first wave of students to arrive. Contracts class was not held in this classroom, but the room looked like a much bigger version of the same place. They took seats in places similar to where they would have sat in the contracts classroom, except that they made sure to leave an empty desk on either side of them.

The mood of the classroom seemed normal enough, if not tinged with a sort of eagerness—eagerness to begin for some, and for others, eagerness to be done with it and get started with break. Haruhi experienced something of a middle ground; her unease would vanish when the proctor bid them start, but until then, she had the sort of feeling that one might have at the starting line of a major race. There may not be grades, but the stakes were high. This exam, more than all the others, would indicate Haruhi’s proficiency with this new “legalese” language.

The proctor arrived ten minutes before four o’clock to hand out exam packets and earplugs. Haruhi recognized her from the admissions office, though Haruhi could not recall her name.

“Without opening the exam, please read the cover sheet. If you agree to what you read, then sign on the bottom line.”

All exam cover sheets bore the same list of university policies on academic dishonesty (cheating, in other words). Haruhi stole a glance around, just to see if anyone would refuse to sign, although she knew that nobody would. After spending months preparing in class, who wouldn’t agree not to cheat? It was a formality, of course. Another contract, to hold them liable and cover the school in the event that someone did cheat. What was more, cheating on a laptop exam was almost impossible, since the software they installed on their computers blocked any other sort of programs from running—especially internet browsers. She thought it quite a clever system.

Haruhi signed her name after skimming the document, set her pen aside, and squared her laptop in front of her. Some students signed without looking at the sheet. A handful of other students read the words over thoroughly before they signed, as if expecting this cover sheet to be different from the one they read before the civil procedure exam. Perhaps they thought it was the first test, and that the cover sheet contained some contractual provision that they would only catch if they were extremely careful.

Once everyone had put down their pens, the proctor beamed at them all. Twenty-one blank faces looked back at her. Across the room, on the other side of the same row as Haruhi, Brian tried to smile back and succeeded only in looking constipated.

“Please remove the cover sheets and pass them to your left.”

A shuffling of papers ensued as the students obeyed the command. Beneath the cover sheet was a secondary cover sheet, bearing the class title, the professor’s name, and the time and date of the exam. Haruhi already had one earplug in, and now she twisted the other plug in anticipation of the signal. She took one of countless deep breaths to clear away some of the stress. Outwardly she looked calm, even apathetic, but her insides felt like they were vibrating with anticipatory anxiety.

Once the proctor had stowed the stack of signed forms into her bag, she turned back to the class and checked her watch. “You have until eight o’clock. Begin!”

Haruhi forced herself not to turn the cover page until after she had stuck in the twisted-up earplug. Artificial silence fell over the room as the bit of foam swelled up in her ear canal. One more long breath, and she turned the page.

The exam had two fact patterns. Each fact pattern came with its own set of questions, asking for her analysis. Haruhi read over both questions, decided how much time to dedicate to each, and began work.

The first fact pattern concluded with the instruction to assume that there was a legitimate contract, and to assess whether the jury’s award of $20,000 in expectation damages was appropriate, considering several factors. Haruhi tackled this one easily enough—to determine whether expectation damages were appropriate, there was a simple equation based on expectation and loss. The amount awarded varied depending on factors like whether the plaintiff had the change to “mitigate”, or lessen, the losses, among other things. She almost said that the plaintiff’s failure to mitigate meant that the award was inappropriate, until she remembered that the plaintiff in these facts was an actress who could only take a lesser job after the defendant breached their movie contract. There was an exception for those sorts of things, and she said as much.

The second question asked whether there was a valid contract at all. Haruhi spent a solid hour outlining the different issues that arose when the validity of a contract was called into question. For the last hour, she frantically typed up her analysis, until at last the proctor announced that time was up. She had just finished typing her last sentence, leaving no time to review her work before the end. The thought of an unedited essay left her slightly nauseous as she submitted her work, but she shook off the sensation. It was over. Now she had an entire week off, and the last thing she wanted was to stew over her grades when she could be relaxing.

As she filed out of the room with her round-shouldered classmates, she recalled what she had said to Tamaki this morning and began fishing in her backpack for her phone. She had turned it off upon her arrival at the school this morning and not checked it since. No doubt Tamaki had broken her strict “no texting while Haruhi is at school” rule. Generally he obeyed it, but made exceptions for exam day, as she had learned on the day of the civil procedure exam, when he had texted her several good luck messages. She found the phone buried beneath her pens at the bottom of the bag.

Beside her, Taylor was stretching their arms over their head, accompanying the gesture with a long, loud yawn.

“I’m gonna go home and sleep for a whole week,” they said.

Brian nodded. “Ah, me too! Well, just for a night. Then I’m going home for break and sleeping for a week there. In my own bed.” His eyes became dreamy as he sighed, looking through the stone wall of the school as though he could see his own bed waiting for him.

“All the way to Missouri?” said Haruhi, as she booted up her phone.

Brian nodded. “It’s Thanksgiving. Everyone goes home for Thanksgiving.”

“Oh, right.” Haruhi had almost forgotten the purpose of the week off from school, given that she did not celebrate U.S. American holidays. At least not in any official capacity.

“I take it you’re not going home, Haruhi,” said Michelle.

Haruhi shook her head and returned Michelle’s customary smile with one of her own. “No,” she admitted. “I’m going away for a few days, but not to Ja—”

The phone had begun to vibrate in her hand. Not once, as if there were only one message, but so many times that there seemed to be one long, continuous buzz. Breaking off her thought, she dropped her eyes to the phone screen, half expecting there to be some malfunction. Instead, the little alert box told her something that made her stutter-stop to a halt.

Four missed calls. Sixteen text messages.

“What the hell—? Ow! Sorry, Brian—”

Not seeing that Haruhi had suddenly stopped, Brian walked right into her, almost knocking her over with his much greater mass. He threw out an arm to steady her when she stumbled forward, saving her from falling on her face. Haruhi barely managed to keep hold of the phone.

Bewildered, Haruhi unlocked the phone and went first to the call list. Tamaki had called all four times, all in the time period between the commencement of her study session and the beginning of torts class, but had left no voice messages. Stopped halfway down the hall between the classroom and the front exit, Haruhi opened her texting application and gaped at the messages she found there. The first five were from Tamaki.

-9:45 A.M. Good luck on your exam, brilliant future wife! <3! <3! :3

-10:04 A.M. We may have a situation. Call me when you get this.

-10:10 A.M. We definitely have a situation. Call me.

-10:35 A.M. I am dealing with this but I think we may have a change of plans..

-11:00 A.M. FUTURE WIFE: I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH BUT WHY IS YOUR PHONE OFF WHEN YOU ARE NOT IN CLASS????! >:(

The other eleven texts were individual messages from the host club crowd, all clustered within the span of three hours. Some were in Japanese, but most were in English.

From Hikaru. 10:11 A.M. RED ALERT. RED ALERT.

Kyoya. 10:13 A.M. If only you had told us about the trip, perhaps we could have prevented this turn of events…

Kaoru. 11:16 A.M. DIVINE INTERVENTION! see haruhi this is what happens when you leave us out of your fun plans

Hani. 11:34. haru-chan! Im sorry about your trip! but dont panic, I am overnighting you some of the perfect cakes for this sort of situation

The texts went on, painting the picture ever clearer in Haruhi’s horror-struck mind as she read. It wasn’t until Adam read one of said messages over her shoulder that she remembered she had not dissolved into thin air, but rather was standing in the law school hallway with a handful of perplexed classmates around her.

“‘Better hide the shower lube’?” Adam read aloud, phrasing Hikaru’s all-capital letter exclamation as a question.

Haruhi snapped to attention at the sound of his voice. Of the classmates with whom she had spent the last four hours, only a few remained: Michelle, Brian, Adam, Taylor—all looking at her with curious bewilderment. She was too stunned to be embarrassed. She had just read the last text from Kyoya three times over, and the message was still sinking in, but she was beginning to understand—

-12:57 P.M. Don’t worry Haruhi, the vineyards in southern California are off season anyway.

“No,” Haruhi muttered.

“Haruhi? Are you all right?”

Michelle had crept closer and raised a tentative hand to set on Haruhi’s shoulder, but she flinched back when Haruhi looked up at her. The world came rushing back in a swell, like a tidal wave.

“Yeah. I’m—sorry, but I have to run,” said Haruhi, already resuming movement and picking up the pace. She waved a hand over her shoulder and called out the least earnest goodbye she had ever heard: “Have a nice break, everyone.”

The bus was too slow for this matter. Haruhi turned the corner outside the law school gates and broke into a full-out run. Within moments her back began to ache from the strain of the overstuffed backpack weighing her down. Her legs went stiff with an acid burn, the cold November air turned warm, and then stifling, but Haruhi did not rest until she had reached the apartment complex. She passed through the sliding glass doors like a runner crossing a finish line, slowing to a brisk walk only once she caught the disapproving stare of the security guard at the front desk.

Once inside the elevator, she stooped over to catch her breath. The elevator took forever in rising up the shaft to the twenty-ninth floor, but the trip gave her time to collect herself and brace against what she might learn in the next few minutes. Initially she had thought that the host club had caught wind of her trip and showed up to retaliate for their deliberate secrecy, but the texts as a whole said something else.

As the elevator slowed and stopped, and a soft ding! announced her arrival, Haruhi straightened up and tightened the straps of her backpack. The short stretch of hallway between the elevator doors and her home seemed twice the real distance, but she kept herself calm. The exam had been so long; it was possible that four hours of contracts had messed with her head. Perhaps she had imagined the long string of taunting text messages from her friends and would find her carry-on packed and ready to depart in the morning.

At first, Haruhi thought she may have let herself into somebody else’s apartment. The door in her apartment usually opened up into the main living room, which was sparsely furnished with a modern-style loveseat, a large sofa, coffee table, and a few side tables. That furniture had disappeared, and the room seemed to have doubled in size, turning into both a sitting area and a full, formal dining room, complete with crystal chandelier over a polished oak table. The apparent dining room took up the far half, while a set of straight-backed sitting room chairs had been arranged around the wall-mounted flat screen closer to the entry way. Their grey patterned rug had also disappeared, replaced by a far more ornate rug imbued with mahogany and gold. When she turned around, a vase of fresh flowers sat in the place where Haruhi usually put her keys. She recoiled, wary of what must be an expensive piece of pottery.

It was then that she spotted her confirmation. A stack of airplane luggage sat just inside the doorway, but it was not hers. Before she could take a look around to confirm it, her vision became obscured by a mop of brown curls as someone tackled her with an embrace, nearly sending them both to the floor.

“Haruhi!” The shout rattled around in her head, dizzying her.

She came-to after her assailant had planted several kisses on the side of her face and the top of her head. “Dad?” she managed.

Ryoji Fujioka stepped back to better appraise his daughter, flinging his long hair over his shoulder as he did so. Standing there in high-heeled boots, with his hands braced on his hips, he towered over Haruhi by well over a foot. He also appeared to be on the verge of tears.

Haruhi struggled to regain control of her voice box, but before she had recovered enough to ask how he had gotten there, two others appeared in the entry way to greet her. First came Tamaki’s father, donned in a white suit and traveling coat. Then, trailing right behind him and looking as reserved as ever, came Tamaki’s grandmother.

“Haruhi,” Shizue greeted her, with the faintest hint of a smile.

Haruhi looked at each of the faces in turn, unable to speak, then passed her gaze over the space behind them, searching. And there he was. Tamaki was right where she had left him that morning, standing by the kitchen counter. He had obeyed her command to be there when she returned from school, but the game had changed. Their eyes met over the heads of their family, and they knew. They would not be alone tonight, nor tomorrow, nor for the rest of the week.

Her father threw his arms wide and flashed her his straight, white teeth. “Aren’t you so glad to get a break from school?”

XII

“It was a last second decision, but I was able to get the time off from work,” said Ryoji as he held Haruhi at arm’s length and inspected her.

Haruhi had been too stunned by the change in her home and the sudden appearance of her family that she had forgotten her courtesies, but everything came rushing back before anyone could suspect that she was distressed. She managed a polite bow. The smile came naturally enough to her, and her voice sounded genuine when she answered, “It’s good to see you all. Welcome.”

“I’m glad we caught you as soon as you were done with class,” said Yuzuru.

“Yes,” said Haruhi. “Your timing is really something.”

Yuzuru looked quite proud of himself for having spawned the idea. “Yes, well when Tamaki told me he was taking a few days off from work to match your break, we thought it was the perfect time for a surprise visit,” he said.

Haruhi would have thought that an engaged couple taking an entire week off from school and work was an unequivocal signal for the rest of the world to stay away, but clearly he had not thought of this. She dismissed it as a case of Suoh-headedness and answered his comment with a genial nod, glancing covertly past him to see if Tamaki was still watching from a distance. He had disappeared from view. Most likely he had taken her arrival as a good chance to steal away for a few moments and privately mourn the loss of his meticulously cultivated plans. Haruhi didn’t resent him for it; he loved his father and idolized him as a businessman, but being around him always made Tamaki strangely formal, in a way that left him exhausted if it went on for too long.

“Tamaki has already given us a tour,” said Shizue. She had swapped out her traditional Japanese wear for US-American business, and now looked to Haruhi like an aged secret service agent in a black pantsuit. “Though it was a rather short tour.”

“It is a small place,” Haruhi agreed, “but it suits our needs well. Will you stay with us here, or would you be more comfortable in a hotel—?”

“And miss out on a sleepover with my one-and-only child? No way!” Her father cut her off, affronted. “We didn’t fly across the world to stay in some hotel.”

Shizue spoke up from near the kitchen. “My grandson has offered me your bedroom for the week, but I should like your permission before I accept.”

“Of course! I just hope it’s comfortable enough…” Never having slept in that bed, Haruhi could not speak to its quality, though she did not offer that rationale.

“I even turned down the guest room so I could spend more time with you!” said Ryoji, tugging Haruhi into a one-armed embrace. “We’ll be in here tonight, on sleeping mats.”

“Oh, good.”

Just then, the memory of the long day flooded back to her, and Haruhi the full weight of the backpack plummet back onto her shoulders. Fewer than two minutes had passed and already she felt as though the exam had happened ages ago. She slouched, suddenly exhausted, and edged away from her father to heave the backpack off and onto the ground. Ryoji, seeing her stagger as she hefted the enormous bag, resumed his fretting.

“You must be so tired, Haruhi! Why don’t you sit down and have something to eat?”

Grateful for something to do that was not standing in the entryway and looking perplexed, Haruhi allowed her father to usher her into the kitchen. He started poking at her waistline, inspecting her leather belt and the fabric of her slacks. “You never eat enough when you’re studying… have you lost more weight, Haruhi? Is that why you’re not wearing any of the clothes I sent you? Which reminds me—Tamaki!”

At the sound of his name, Tamaki dutifully appeared in the kitchen. Haruhi could tell that he was stressed, though nobody else would ever be able to tell. It was the stiffness in his posture when he moved, so slight that even Haruhi almost missed it. But in spite of whatever he may be experiencing internally, Tamaki was wearing his host face—handsome, pleasantly curious, eager to welcome his guests. He only faltered a little when Ryoji rounded on him.

“Can you explain to me how you let this happen?” At first Haruhi thought he was making a grab for her arm, but he only grasped a handful of her sleeve.

Tamaki looked from Ryoji to Haruhi, and then back. “I… don’t follow—”

“All the fashion possibilities in the world, and you let her walk around in this low grade men’s clothing!”

Tamaki laughed, lifted a finger. “We have but one fashion rule in this home, Ranka-san: only wear it if it fits.”

“It’s not men’s clothing,” Haruhi said, which was not technically a lie because she had got it from the boy’s section of the local department store (the boy’s section always had the best sales).

Ryoji ignored her. “You can’t be serious.”

“I assure you, Ranka-san, all of Haruhi’s clothing has been custom tailored!”

Sighing, Haruhi extracted herself from her father’s grip and ducked under his arm. “Would anyone like a cup of tea?” she asked to the room.

“I would love some,” Yuzuru answered, as Shizue said, “Please.”

x

Officially speaking, this was the first time that Haruhi and Tamaki had ever lived ‘together’. In Boston, they’d had two apartments separated by the ‘love door’. After that year, Haruhi lived back at home with her father until graduating from high school, at which point she enrolled in Ouran University’s Law Department on scholarship and moved into an apartment closer to school.

During those three years, they technically lived apart. Tamaki was one year ahead of her at business school, and lived down the street in a neighboring complex. In reality, the only nights they had spent apart were the ones where he was out of the country on business. Migrating between the two apartments had been supremely annoying; it had meant shuffling groceries back and forth, forgetting books in one place or the other, and occasionally having to wear the same dirty socks two days in a row because she forgot to bring a spare pair. Haruhi was glad when finally they had a good enough excuse to knock down the façade and find a place together.

All through the years, however, they had kept up the impression that they maintained rather separate lives. This had happened purely by chance on Haruhi’s part; she didn’t care about hiding their pre-marital cohabitation, especially since her parents’ history gave her father zero excuse to make any fuss about it. Tamaki had taken his personal back story as more of a warning. He hadn’t ever lied, mostly because nobody in his family had ever asked about it. He simply hadn’t offered that information. Haruhi knew it gave him anxiety to bend what he saw as ‘rules’, or the proper order of things for a person of his rank in society: courtship, then marriage, then cohabitation, and maybe even sex. Haruhi reasoned that turning their little New Haven home on its head was his coping mechanism.

Tamaki had found out about their guests’ impending arrival when he called the primary Suoh mansion at ten o’clock that morning to tell them that he would be away for the week in case anyone needed to get a hold of him, only for one of the staff to tell him that his grandmother, father, and Haruhi’s father were already on a plane heading for New York. As evidenced by the barrage of text messages in Haruhi’s inbox, the first thing Tamaki had done was try to get in touch with her. Failing that, he had contacted all the other host club members in a panic and asked them what he should do. They were so annoyed that Tamaki and Haruhi had kept their trip from them that they refused to give advice, and turned instead to taunting him and harassing Haruhi by text message.

With no other ideas, and no clue as to whether the guests would want to stay at their home, Tamaki had launched into preparation mode and had all the furniture re-arranged to better accommodate them all. More importantly, he apparently felt the need to hide any sign that he and Haruhi shared so much as a couch. When Haruhi stole a peek into Tamaki’s bedroom that evening, she found it completely devoid of her presence. He had transferred all of her clothing from their shared closet to the closet in her bedroom, along with her hair brush, her alarm clocks, and even the hair tie she kept in the bedside drawer.

His behavior toward her, too, became more distant from the moment Haruhi walked through the door. He didn’t ignore her, but neither was he his needy, affectionate self. All of his attention went to ensuring the comfort of the visitors, making sure the accommodations met their needs, and giving them his undivided attention during conversation. Two sentences hardly passed between him and Haruhi that first night, and even fewer the next morning.

Though Tamaki did fear her father’s (lacking) wrath, Haruhi knew that his primary motivation was one of respect. Even though Tamaki and Haruhi had been engaged for almost a year, and had dated for five, in traditional Japanese culture it was still not customary for unmarried couples to live together before marriage. And the powerful, ‘old money’ families thought custom was the most assured way of maintaining social status.

Shizue, a successful business woman who had built an empire up on her own, could hardly fit into the category of “traditional”, at least not in terms of work, but she was old enough to warrant the concern. Over the years, the bond between Tamaki and his grandmother had grown strong. It was exactly this sort of mutual esteem that made him overhaul all the rooms in their home—he treasured his familial links, and handled them with all the precautions of fragile, precious glass.

That was why, when the next afternoon they finally had half a moment together, Haruhi did not tease him for being so uptight. While their guests were all occupied in the sitting room, Haruhi stole into the kitchen to boil some water for tea and found Tamaki washing the last dishes from lunch, his sleeves rolled up past the elbows. By his feet, Antoinette sniffed around in search of fallen morsels.

Haruhi came up alongside him, empty tea pot dangling from one hand, and reached across him for the faucet. The way her shoulder pressed into his arm may have been incidental, except that it wasn’t.

“I’ll have you know that my phone blew up yesterday,” she said, as she stuck the kettle under the tap and began to fill it. “You told them about the shower lube. Seriously?”

“I didn’t think it was a secret,” he answered in a whisper, glancing over his shoulder to check that nobody was eavesdropping in the doorway.

“Uh huh.” Haruhi started the gas stove and set the kettle on to boil. “I also got this other interesting text from Kaoru, warning me to hide a certain set of lacy red lingerie that I didn’t know I owned. Unless there’s something you told them that you haven’t told me…?”

His face reddened at that. Haruhi smirked as a spoon fell from his hand and clunked back down at the bottom of the sudsy sink water.

“That—it was—just a joke!” he stammered, blushing further, setting the last dish in the drying rack with a little more force than necessary. Sounding almost mournful, he added: “You haven’t got anything like that, anyway.”

“And as a reward for your discretion, I never will,” said Haruhi.

Tamaki hung his head, drooping in defeat. With the recent change of plan, it was impossible to tell if his disappointment was feigned or not. Just to be safe, she followed the comment with a quiet laugh and patted small of his back.

He finished the dishes in silence while Haruhi waited for the tea to boil. There was a gurgling sound as he pulled the plug from the drain and let the water run down the sink. He rinsed his hands under the cool tap, dried them on the hand towel hanging from a cabinet handle, then made a quarter turn to face her. His easy smile had returned, but not fully enough to reach his eyes.

“I had Kyoya cancel all the reservations for me,” he said, and shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Tama. We can try again in December.” Haruhi reached up to brush aside the lock of hair that had fallen over his eyebrows. “I’m sure we’ll still need a vacation even more by then.”

“Yeah. And now that we’ve got more time, we can plan something big.” Tamaki caught her hand on its way back down, pressed a kiss to a vein in her wrist, and said, “In the meantime, we’ll make do.”

“It won’t be too difficult. I am glad to see my dad, even if the timing’s not great.”

Tamaki nodded. “Grandmother, too. I’m glad I can finally catch up with her.” He spoke to his father almost every day on business, but ever since his grandmother had retired, he had had less contact with her. At dinner last night the two of them had debated which of their shows they ought to watch during the visit, shooting suggestions back and forth until they had settled on some U.S. daytime drama.

And so, with Haruhi’s adaptive nature and Tamaki’s stubborn optimism, the pair came to terms with the ordeal. It seemed a waste to lament what they could not get back, especially since their week off would keep on ticking by no matter where they were. There was only one problem, and Haruhi knew that while he would never bring it up, it would continue to fester between them like some awful teenage wound unless she dealt with it head-on.

She stole a backward glance toward the living room. Their fathers’ voices rang in from the other side of the wall, but the doorway was empty.

“I’m sorry for telling you to save it,” Haruhi said bluntly.

Tamaki, pouring the tea into a set of cups, had apparently forgotten their conversation from last week. “To save what?”

“The sex.”

A stream of tea spilled across the countertop as Tamaki’s arm jerked. He recovered clumsily, grabbing the closest hand towel to catch the water before it could reach the edge of the granite.

“Shh! Don’t you know that word is only meant to be spoken between married people?” he hissed.

“Is it? Normally you don’t seem to have any trou—”

He clapped a hand over her mouth, as if afraid she would start shouting. Her reply had been rhetorical, but Tamaki answered anyway, leaning close as if to share a secret in her ear. “This week it is. Nobody can know about our secret rendezvous, passionate though they may be.”

“They’re not stupid, Tamaki,” she said, muffled against his hand. After some struggle she managed to pry his fingers away from her face. “We live together. They probably assume—”

“Not Grandmother. I have to show her that I have the willpower to prevent the mistakes of my parents.”

“Some mistake,” Haruhi said dryly, fleetingly annoyed. “And even if she does have some bizarre fear of illegitimate love children, this is different. We’re engaged.”

“It’s not the same.”

“All right, then. I guess I won’t be paying you any late-night visits, then.”

Tamaki eyed her warily. “Were you… planning a visit?”

“Maybe,” she said, though the thought had only just occurred to her.

With Yuzuru staying in his bedroom, Tamaki had relocated to the office that Haruhi’s father had turned down. In some miraculous feat, Tamaki had cleared the office of its increasing mess and transformed it into a spare bedroom. Haruhi had no idea where all the furniture had gone—their storage space in the complex basement was far too small to house all of the apartment’s replaced furnishings, so most likely it went into a separate storage facility. The office guest room’s location, all the way down the hall, with the guest bathroom standing between it and the sitting room, happened to be the most remote part of their home. Her father could sleep through a typhoon (and had done so, more than once); he would never notice if she disappeared from the adjacent sleeping mat. It would be too easy to sneak down while the others slept, slip into the dark room, and spend a little time together. She had promised to pay him back, after all—

“No, we can’t,” said Tamaki, and she knew by the quiet strain in his voice that he was serious. “I’d be too worried about getting caught.”

He looked almost pained to say it, as if turning down her proposition forced him to swallow a needle. Haruhi sighed. “All right. We’ll wait.”

She sensed him watching as she went to setting the filled tea cups on a tray, felt his appraising smirk.

“How unlike you, Haruhi,” he teased.

“Wanting to spend time with you, you mean?” she replied, using the cheap shot to distract him from perceiving her genuine disappointment. It had been a silly, spur-of-the-moment sort of idea anyhow.

He did not have a chance to act wounded by her comment, because when he turned around with the tea tray balanced in his hands, his grandmother was rounding the corner into the kitchen. Thinking that she had something to discuss with Tamaki, Haruhi moved to take the tray from him, only to stop when Shizue addressed her instead.

“Haruhi, have you reached out to any of the law school faculty yet?”

Haruhi blinked. “Not aside from my professors.”

“I thought not,” Shizue said, without any hint of what that confirmation meant to her. “I have an acquaintance at the law school who I think you should meet. His name is Itsuro Furuta. I’ve contacted him to arrange a meeting for you to meet him. Will you be free on Monday?”

“Uh—yes, I’m free all week, actually,” Haruhi said, stumbling over her words in surprise. She had not heard of this professor, but then, she had not spent much time in any offices save for those of her instructors this semester.

“Excellent. You will meet him at four-thirty on Monday in his office. I trust you will be able to find it?”

“Yes, I’ll look it up.” A pause, and then Haruhi added, “Thank you for thinking of me, Souh-sama. I really appreciate it.”

Yuzuru chose that moment to appear. “How many times have I told you to drop the honorifics, Haruhi?” he said, feigning frustration. “You already have a ‘Dad’, so ‘Father’ suits me just fine! And ‘Grandmother’ for my mother, as I’ve said.”

Shizue and Haruhi shared a long stare, Haruhi hoping that her smile appeared unfazed. At seventy-six years old, Shizue had mastered her expressions, making it impossible for others to tell what she was thinking. Even so, while her face almost always retained a stony, unbreakable look, Haruhi thought she saw something in her eyes—grey eyes, darker than the steel-colored hair she kept pulled into a taut knot at the back of her head.

“Just one more time, as always,” said Haruhi. “At least until June.”

“At lease somebody here has manners,” she said, confirming Haruhi’s suspicion with a wry smile.

Without giving Yuzuru the opportunity to object, Shizue rounded on Tamaki, who had been standing there with the tea tray, glancing round-eyed back and forth between Haruhi and his grandmother, clearly worried that some sort of dispute might break out.

“Tamaki, don’t let the tea get cold.”

He snapped back to attention at the sound of his name. “Yes, Grandmother!” And he scurried out to serve the tea with his father at his heels. With one last knowing glance at Haruhi, Shizue followed him, leaving Haruhi alone in the center of the room.

Shizue’s interest in Haruhi’s studies was not itself peculiar; while she ate dinner last night, all three of her guests sat around her at the table and pelted her with questions about school. How she liked it, what classes she took, how she thought she had fared on the midterm exams. Her father had been surprised to find out that Yale Law did not grade its students like a normal law school, but Shizue seemed almost familiar with the curriculum. Haruhi ought not to have felt any amount of shock upon learning that Shizue had contacts at the school—it was a famous school, globally renowned, and anyway, she seemed to have contacts in every corner of the world. The surprise came from the affirmative effort to connect her with important people. Haruhi had an inkling of what this could mean, what Shizue’s intentions might be, but she resolved not to worry about it until after the meeting. Maybe Professor Itsuro worked in the public sector, or could help her decide what to do with respect to practicing law in Japan.

Scheduling a meeting for Haruhi without her permission might be considered too forthright, even rude, if Haruhi did not understand how these rich business people operated. But years of living among this strange social class had smartened her to their ways, and she knew to accept the gesture as the compliment it was.

x

Sleeping in Tamaki’s bed had ruined her. For the first sixteen years of her life, Haruhi had slept on a floor mat without ever once wishing for a mattress. Coupled with the long hours she spent passed out over her textbooks at the supper table, Haruhi boasted the talent of being able to fall asleep anywhere, at any time. Once, she had fallen asleep in a corner of the music room just before the host club opened for business, and the twins had convinced Tamaki to let her sleep there for the day’s activities. The guests had been amused, though she had not…

Apparently the soft, king-size mattress in Tamaki’s bedroom had ruined that for her, stealing away yet one more feature of her “commoner” personhood. The first night, she had blamed her lack of sleep on her father’s snores. By midnight on the second night, however, she knew that it was the tatami that bothered her. If she lay on her back, her shoulders ached. If she turned to one side or the other, the floor dug against her hip, leaving her joints sore. Eventually she wore herself out turning over and over on the floor and fell asleep face-down, though she awoke just after sunrise feeling less energized and stiffer in the neck than yesterday.

Having Tamaki’s grandmother sleep in her office-bedroom would have left Haruhi in the awkward position of being stuck in her pajamas until Shizue awoke, except that Haruhi had thought ahead and stashed a change of clothes in one of the empty cabinets in the living/dining room. Her father did not stir when she stepped over him en route to the guest bathroom, but slept on with his pillow clutched under one arm.

As she hurried past the kitchen entryway, she heard Tamaki and his father discussing something about the Nasdaq, the soft sounds of clinking china accompanying their voices. For the majority of the last few days, when the group wasn’t sharing meals or touring the downtown business district of New Haven, Yuzuru pulled Tamaki aside to talk business. The extent of it was such that even Shizue couldn’t be bothered to listen, preferring to join Haruhi and her father in less business-oriented conversation and on walks with Antoinette, all under the excuse of being “retired”. Still, when the topic turned to Tamaki’s proposal to the Board—a total shift in the way the hospitality faction of the company did business—she lingered close by the door. Occasionally she offered input, but the project was mostly complete for now. The Board had been sitting on it since mid-September, carefully working over the details and comparing numbers. Haruhi had faith. Nothing brought out Tamaki’s meticulous perfectionism like a multi-million dollar project.

At the end of the hall, just before Tamaki’s office, Haruhi found the bathroom door closed. By the sound of the humming fan and the shower faucet, Shizue had beat her to it.

That was just as well; Haruhi had only headed to this shower because it aligned better with Tamaki’s fabricated version of their lives, given its close proximity to the place where she supposedly slept when there were no guests around. In truth she preferred the bathroom across from her and Tamaki’s bedroom. It had a double sink, a larger shower, and a marble tub that could easily (and had, easily) fit two. The porcelain tile was cool but not cold beneath her feet as she locked the bathroom door behind her and undressed. This room, too, bore the signs of Tamaki’s last-second frenzy. For some reason he had felt compelled to buy new, forest green bath towels to replace their purple ones. She took one down from the cabinet and felt the fabric before setting it in the towel warmer, but could not tell the difference from the old ones.

Inside the sliding glass shower door, Haruhi found new bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and soap. And yes, as Hikaru had so aptly warned, the shower lube was nowhere to be seen. She did not hold that one against Tamaki, though she did poke around the cabinets to see where he may have hidden it (not in the bathroom at all, apparently). Haruhi slid the glass door closed. The shower was enormous, with two separate shower heads, a short bench, a detachable head, and several jets running from top to bottom that one could toggle on or off. The second shower head had disappeared with the rest of it, apparently too conspicuously “married” to pass inspection.

A thick vapor still hung in the air, heavy with an odor she well recognized. Tamaki had been the last one in here. He may have replaced all of the toiletries with unfamiliar, designer brand names, but she could tell that he had brought his preferred shower gel in with him this morning, and took it back to his bedroom when he was done.

The lingering scent of him, his soap—neither rich cologne nor a feminine floral perfume, but something in between—caused an unexpected side effect. Somehow, in a way that had not happened since high school, it triggered a response in Haruhi, as if reminding her body that she had not allowed herself any amount of intimate attention in almost three weeks. She had promised herself (not to mention Tamaki), that by now they would have had some time to catch up, to reacquaint themselves with one another’s bodies.

That plan was far gone now, and though she told herself as much, it didn’t make the yearning any less acute. The location didn’t help, either. As she adjusted the warmth of the spray and tilted her head back to catch the stream, the recollection of past showers came swimming back to mind. If she closed her eyes, it was almost as if he were there; she could see the steam rising between them, see a red patch where the spigot had beat scalding water against one of his broad shoulders. And all of a sudden she felt his mouth on the pulse point of her neck, her back pressed against the slick white shower tile, his full length inside of her, filling her up—

Haruhi’s hand slipped, unbidden, between her legs and found her lips swollen and aching. A shudder ran through her as she caught the sticky wetness on one finger and circled around her clitoris, once, twice. If Tamaki would not be pleasing her this week, she could always do it herself—

But no, she ought not to take any longer in here than needed. Anything more could arouse suspicion (if nothing else, suspicion that she was unnecessarily wasteful with water). With some effort, Haruhi withdrew her hand and reached out blindly for the shower handle with it, giving it a quarter turn so that the water ran cold. She shivered, and the impulse was chased away at once. Haruhi washed her hair, the room filled with the ambient noise of the fan and running water, and the scent of the shampoo replaced the smell of the shower gel. Tamaki, too, would be abstaining from any self-help measures this week, she knew. He had an odd combination of unnecessary nobility and the need to punish himself for perceived wrongdoings. If he was going to make himself suffer through it, then she would too, even if it was a meaningless act of solidarity. They were in this together, after all.

As much as she would have liked to linger, Haruhi hurried up in the bathroom and emerged after just a few minutes with her damp hair brushed straight. Her father’s snores rang down the hall as she proceeded to the kitchen, where the entire Suoh clan had congregated, all dressed for the day and drinking out of matching tea cups. It was Sunday, but Haruhi noted with no little amount of disappointment that the windowsill was empty.

“No bread today, then?” Haruhi caught herself peering hopefully around the room, as if expecting to find the weekly dough rising in some other spot of the kitchen. She had spotted a recipe for pumpkin bread on the counter a few days ago and crossed her fingers that it might re-appear today.

Tamaki brightened when he spotted her, but his father got the first word.

“Ah, there’s my favorite beneficiary!”

Haruhi started to respond, falling short when Tamaki cut across her with an annoyed, “She’s not your beneficiary!”

“Sure she is,” said Yuzuru, with a dismissive sip from his cup. “Don’t you know that I’ve been supporting her education since she was an honor student at Ouran Academy?”

“That’s not true,” Tamaki said. “I’m supporting her while she’s in school, which makes me her sole benefactor. Right, Haruhi?”

“Isn’t it a little early to be talking about money?” said Haruhi, who knew that for these people, no time of day was too sacred for conversation about money.

Tamaki didn’t need her validation anyway, and went on without it. “I sign the checks and pay the bills, so there.”

“I sign your checks, so by extension, I’m the benefactor for you both,” said Yuzuru.

“That’s not how it works,” Tamaki said, squinting petulantly at his father. Haruhi sighed.

XIII

The first time Haruhi experienced the thing she later identified as “sexual frustration”, she was sixteen and living out her first semester in Boston. Even with hindsight, she could not say why this particular event triggered it, given all the more awkwardly intimate situations in which she had found herself during high school. But on a nondescript Wednesday in December, a few short months after first moving into the flat with Tamaki, her cell phone rang in the kitchen.

For the past three weeks, her father had been vying for a promotion at the bar, and had promised to call her that morning at precisely 11:15 that morning (her time) when he found out the news. When she heard the patterned buzzing sound, Haruhi was in her bedroom, dressed in underwear and struggling with the clasp of her bra. She cursed when she realized that she had forgotten to bring her phone back in with her after breakfast. Finally fixing the clasp behind her back, she darted across the room. She cracked the door, peeked into the kitchen, then hurried out to catch the call before it could divert to voicemail.

“Dad?”

“I got the job!”

“Ah, I knew you would!”

Momentarily forgetting herself, she leaned on the kitchen counter and listened while her father launched into a story about how his boss had announced the promotion over the bar’s loudspeakers and sent his regular customers into such a raving celebration that a fight broke out and one guy had to be arrested.

The whole of the story took one minute, maybe two. But Haruhi suspected that the shortest window time possible would still have been enough for Tamaki to show up and catch her in her underwear. He was supposed to be in class, blocks away from the apartment, but it didn’t matter; the universe had long ago decided that she ought to experience every instance of bad timing.

Through the door he came, accompanied by the light jangling of keys. With her back to the door, she heard rather than saw his gasp, a loud thud, and a strangled yelp.

“What’s that noise?” said Ryoji.

“Just some squawking bird,” Haruhi said casually, turning around to assess the damage.

To his benefit, Tamaki had the manners to close his mouth and look embarrassed when she caught him gaping. He was standing just inside the apartment door, the outer hallway visible over his shoulder, shaking the foot upon which he had dropped his enormous anatomy and physiology textbook.

“A bird?” Her father sounded puzzled.

Haruhi cradled the phone between her ear and her shoulder and leaned back on her elbows. It was a bolder move than she could have foreseen—opening her posture, daring him to look. “Yeah, it comes around when you least expect it and just kind of stares at you. It can be a little obnoxious.”

Tamaki understood, but nevertheless seemed incapable of diverting his eyes. He raised a hand, as if he meant to speak, but halfway through he gave up and pointed at her instead. His face had gone so scarlet that it looked almost purple. Quite possibly he had forgotten to breathe.

“Speaking of obnoxious, how’s your neighbor?”

Despite the fact that the only thing separating Tamaki and Haruhi was the couch that she had originally shoved in front of his apartment door, Ryoji still refused to openly acknowledge that she had gone off to live in a foreign country with the enemy. In reality he was so grateful that she had the opportunity to travel that he didn’t mind her fleet of male traveling companions. Still, she tried not to think of what his reaction might be if he knew what was unfolding in her kitchen.

“Oh, Tamaki-senpai’s fine enough. Last I saw, he looked a little hung over.”

“On a Tuesday?” her father said incredulously. “You kids are too young to be indulging like that during the week.”

“I’ll let him know you said so,” said Haruhi, and then added: “I have to talk to him today anyhow. He has this annoying new habit of leaving my apartment door open.”

Tamaki regained enough of his composure to reach blindly behind him and grab around until he found the doorknob.

“Hey, listen Haruhi, I’ve got to get back to it. But I’ll talk to you soon! I love you!”

“Congrats again, Dad! And please take care of yourself.”

The moment she hung up, she rounded on her red-faced flatmate-slash-boyfriend. “I’m sorry, did I surprise you?”

Tamaki said nothing. He seemed to have lost that ability.

“Get a grip, Senpai. It’s not like I’ve been hiding anything extraordinary under my clothes.”

Haruhi made a vague gesture to herself as if to clarify what she’d meant. It might have made sense to add that if he was going to insist on barging into her apartment without notice, he ought to just expect these things, but the point would have been lost on him. Instead, she turned and scooped up her phone. Out of spite for his ludicrous expression, she tossed one more jab over her shoulder as she padded barefoot to her bedroom:

“Besides, aren’t you the one always talking about getting married? Maybe you should just get used to it.”

That had not been the moment, though. She shook off her embarrassment and carried on like nothing had happened. Even after they had a brief argument about whether Haruhi’s half-nakedness amounted to an indecency that should be banned from the common areas of their apartments, she felt no more tension than she ever had. Getting caught wearing the world’s most boring cotton bra and underpants did little other than remind her that Tamaki, for all his grown-up looks and responsibilities, was still a teenager (if only for four months).

The revelation came that night, when she dreamed that Tamaki removed those unremarkable clothes and allowed her to return the favor. She awoke in a sweat, the memory of his hands still tingling on her skin. It had never happened like this. It had always been romantic feelings and a dismissive aesthetic appreciation.

Until this point, she had not believed that she could feel this way. It seemed bizarre, as if she had done things out of order—the romantic feelings preceding the sexual, as if the latter had been borne of mutual love and esteem, a by-product rather than a trigger. And as she lay there in bed, hands pressed over her eyes to trap the dream inside, Haruhi felt for the first time that aching tenderness, the sensation of need.

x

Three days had passed since her family showed up at their home. Haruhi had never noticed how intimate she and Tamaki had become until she had to make a conscious effort to seem indifferent. All of a sudden she caught herself stopping gestures she had not known she made—brushing his arm with her shoulder, setting a hand at the small of his back, catching his fingers in hers when they stood idly side by side. It quickly became annoying.

One such moment occurred Monday morning, when their paths crossed on Haruhi’s way to her appointment with Professor Furuta. He had just returned from his morning walk with Antoinette, carrying a newspaper under his arm which he dropped upon seeing her. They knelt in unison to pick it up, almost knocking skulls, and Haruhi took care not to touch him as she handed the paper back.

“Thank you,” he said, apologetically.

“Don’t you read the paper online these days?” she said.

“Grandmother still likes the print version, so I thought I’d get her a copy.”

“How thoughtful.”

Tamaki stole a glance around the room and, seeing nobody, started to steal in for a kiss—until somebody dropped a spoon in the kitchen and he jerked back again in alarm. It triggered in her that peculiar sensation, more frustration than pleasure.

“Are you leaving now?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Remember: if you get nervous, just write the kanji for ‘beauty’ on your palm three times,” he said.

“I’m not nervous. Just a little under-prepared.” She forced her gaze downward when she felt a wet nose brush her hand. Antoinette still panted from the walk, but no amount of exercise could drain this dog’s energy. She seemed almost to smile at Haruhi as she whined and licked Haruhi’s chin.

“No preparation required,” said Tamaki. “Just be you.”

Haruhi hadn’t lied about not being nervous, but she did worry that she presented as somewhat underwhelming. She had no grades yet, had accomplished nothing aside from participating regularly in class. Even her appearance felt plain this morning; she had brushed the knots out of her shoulder-length hair and clipped her side-bangs back in a barrette because they had gotten too long and unwieldy. While so many Yale Law upperclassmen had already achieved so much, Haruhi feared that she would have little to offer in those terms, especially since she still had no idea what she was going to do with her life once she got her degree. Until just a few months ago, the Juris Doctor had been her endgame. Maybe this professor had agreed to help her explore the options.

Professor Furuta was far older than she had anticipated, at least seventy, with thin white hair and comically tiny, round eyeglasses. The sight of his un-tucked collared shirt, khaki shorts, and high socks put away her fears of looking too casual and ordinary. He had a deep, sturdy voice that did not match his wiry frame, and an energy that exceeded his age.

“Shizue is an ooold friend of mine,” he explained as he ushered Haruhi into his office and sat down, not at the broad chair behind his desk, but beside her in one of the two overstuffed chairs. When he sat down, he all but disappeared into it. “We met back in… I forget the date, but it was the early 1950’s anyway. She had just started getting attention for running the family business and hired Tokyo’s most renowned firm to represent her in a contract matter. Whenever she found out that her lawyer had just passed the bar!”

He laughed. Haruhi smiled politely and said, “The fact that you passed at all said enough, I’m sure. The rates were so low, weren’t they?”

“Around three percent. Compare that to the lowest bar passage rate in the country—I believe it’s California, at around seventy-seven percent—and you got yourself one small elite. Most people at that time had to take it more than once, too, but I passed it on the first go. Shizue wasn’t impressed until I won the thing for her, though. Typical business skeptic. Think you’ll want to take the Japanese bar?”

“I’m not sure what I want,” she confessed. “But probably.”

He waved away the concern in her tone. “You don’t need to know yet. You haven’t even finished the first semester. I’m sure she’s been hounding you about the family business. Probably has big plans for you, eh?”

“…Not to my knowledge.”

“But to your best guess, as well as mine? Probably. Does that scare you?”

Haruhi felt the blood drain from her face. “I’m not sure.”

“It should. She’s a scary woman, and she runs a scary business. If it’s not what you want to do, then you’ll hate every second of it. And since you’re married to her CEO in training—or almost married?”

“Almost.”

“Since you’re engaged to the future CEO of the business, it’s going to mean double the pressure not to fail. Failure would mean not only shame for the business, but shame on your husband as well as yourself. It’s a heavy burden.”

Haruhi was suddenly unsure why Shizue had sent her here. Could it be a trap? It would not be beyond Shizue to test Haruhi’s resilience by presenting her with all the possible downfalls of partaking in the family business, and deciding based on this conversation whether or not she had skin thick enough to handle such a giant venture. At this point, Haruhi wasn’t sure that she would have much choice in the decision anyway; now may be the best time to have her opinion heard, even if Professor Furuta wasn’t a neutral witness.

Haruhi took care not to fidget under his eyes, though the professor was such a non-threatening figure that this took minimal effort.

“To be honest, I’m not sure it matters at this point,” she said, choosing each word as one might choose a weapon or a piece of armor. “And I don’t think it would be smart to make that kind of choice in my first semester of school.”

The smile on Professor Furuta’s face looked almost wry. “I understand that you’ve devoted this entire semester to the learning curve,” he said, squinting at her behind his tiny glasses. “If I could give you one piece of advice for next semester, it would be to get behind the wheel. Yale isn’t just famous for its academics. The university has more pro bono opportunities than almost any other legal institution.”

This was not news to Haruhi, who had accepted Yale’s admission in part because of their famous international human rights clinic. Whether or not she could get into the clinic was another question, but it had always been on her list. Originally, she had decided to wait until completing her first year to seek any actual work. The idea of representing clients without a solid foundation seemed almost irresponsible.

“So soon, Professor?”

“The sooner the better,” he said firmly. “Law school is only three years. Six semesters, and you’ve already let one pass. If it makes you feel more secure, you can start small—there’s one clinic out of the Good Faith Homeless Shelter where you can help fill out housing applications and tell people how to get pardons. But make sure you do something.”

“All right,” said Haruhi, and found that the confidence came easily.

They chatted some more about Haruhi’s first semester of law school, particularly how she had managed the work load. Haruhi never complained about the work—it was too much of a privilege to say one negative thing, and she was too good of a student to let the workload discourage her—but he did sense that she had done little else but study this semester. He advised her lesson up on the notes just a bit, maybe go out for a drink once or twice, spend a little time working on something like her wedding plans to take some of the edge off. It would help next semester, when she had to learn to balance class work and practical experience, or so he said.

“—And when it comes time to study for the bar, come talk to me. Come talk to me any time, as you need it. All I do during office hours is sit here feeling lonely.”

Haruhi chuckled. “Thank you for your advice, Professor.”

The professor made a noise that was almost a laugh. “Eh! It’s nothing. In this elitist business, it’s easy for the super privileged to dismiss the rest as inferior, and it’s easy to forget who you were once you start climbing the ladder. To keep ourselves in check and spread the wealth, so to speak, us ‘commoners’ have got to stick together.”

On her way out of campus, she ran into Kimi sitting on a wooden bench with a tablet on her lap. Judging by the thick scarf around her neck and the socks poking out from the tops of her boots, today was one of the coldest of this autumn season, even with the sun beaming down on them from the cloudless sky. She had on a puffy black coat that rounded out her generous frame, and a pair of fuzzy earmuffs over a hat that came down past her eyebrows. Kimi didn’t hear the approach until Haruhi started wading through a pile of leaves to reach her.

“Hey!” Kimi set her tablet on her lap as Haruhi reached the bench.

“What’re you doing out here? It’s freezing!” Haruhi turned up the collar of her fleece. Though the breeze that came in was warmer from coming off the salt water a few miles away, she had still underestimated the seasonable cold. She had come close enough to see lines of text on the screen of Kimi’s tablet. “Are you reading for class?”

“No, just some book,” said Kimi dismissively, swiping at the screen so the text disappeared. “Aren’t you and mystery fiancé supposed to be on vacation somewhere?”

“Yeah. Change of plans.”

“I was talking to Brian and he said you ran off after the midterm… I wanted to text you, but then I realized, I don’t have your number!” Kimi’s laugh was more of a titter, a light sound. “We all see each other every day, so I didn’t even think of it. And you don’t even have a Facebook, so.”

“Ah, you’re right. We should exchange numbers. Here—” Haruhi found her phone in her pocket and turned it on. There was a text from Hikaru, which she read and closed before opening up an empty text. “What’s your number? I’ll text you my name,” she said.

Kimi gave it. Haruhi had just pressed the ‘send’ button when Kimi gasped, so loud and suddenly that Haruhi spun around, half expecting to see someone standing there with a knife. It was no murderer, though.

“Look at that car!” gasped Kimi.

A Rolls-Royce hummed up to the school’s front gate. Sunlight gleamed off of paint black as ink, off of the New York license plates and the polished rims. Haruhi knew it was a Rolls because Yuzuru had told her all about it when he and her father had insisted, much to her mortification, that they take it out to dinner last night. She suppressed a groan at the sight of the car and its tinted windows, not because she was displeased about the people inside it, but because she knew this meant she had been caught red-handed. It had been bad enough not letting Kimi, Tricia, and Brian into her apartment in the high-rise; this was a symbol of wealth too blatant to smother with an excuse.

Haruhi slowly turned her head to give Kimi a flat look. “You… like cars?”

“Who doesn’t? At Stanford, Royce brought in the design for their 2015 model engines and let me keep a copy—it’s on the wall in my apartment!”

Right. Kimiko Takeuchi, mechanical engineer, aspiring intellectual property lawyer. Without being permitted to pick any of their own classes in the first year, Haruhi had forgotten that some of them actually had career plans that were not amorphous and confused.

The back seat window slid down, and her father leaned out to wave at her. “Hi, Haruhi!” he called in Japanese, as Antoinette appeared beside him in the window. “Haruhi! I’m here to pick you up from school!”

Kimi stared as the car halted, the driver exited, and her father got out of the car before the driver could open the door for him. Ryoji had his hair up in a bun today, styled so as to seem haphazard yet still put-together. His long scarf flapped behind him as he ran across the quad to where Kimi stood with her mouth open. Beside him, Antoinette loped along with her tail wagging.

“Is that… your car?” Kimi hissed. A grin spread over her face. “Can you give me a ride home? Please?!”

Haruhi had never seen her so excited, not even when she had been so enamored with Antoinette that she’d let the dog knock her backward. This time, when the dog approached, Kimi merely stuck out a hand and scratched her behind the ear, paying little attention as Antoinette tried to lick her fingers. She didn’t seem to even notice Ryoji until he had thrown his arms around Haruhi and squeezed the air out of her.

“How was your meeting? Introduce me to your friend!”

“Kimi, this is my dad, Ryoji,” said Haruhi, also in Japanese. “Dad, this is Kimi. She’s from Japan.”

“Please, call me Ranka.”

“Glad to meet you, Ranka-san! I love your car.”

Haruhi’s father clapped a hand to his chest and laughed. “It’s not my car! Yuzuru keeps a whole fleet of them at the airport for when he does business in New York City. Speaking of which, it has been decided that we’re going to the City tomorrow for a few days.”

“Decided by who?” Haruhi said, as Kimi cried, “A fleet?”

x

The daytime television show was only familiar to Haruhi to the extent that she heard the characters’ voices seeping from behind Tamaki’s office door once a week or so, accompanied by his occasional “Oh no!” and “Don’t do it! You just got back together!” It was odd to see the faces that belonged to the characters’ voices. There was some sort of dinner party going on in the show, with all the wealthy entrepreneurs and models in donned in evening gowns.

Somehow Shizue did not come off in her day-to-day life as an avid soap opera fan, but then, she did not come off as a fan of anything. She looked disinterested, sitting beside Tamaki on the couch with her ankles neatly folded and her hands on her lap, but she and Tamaki had the exact same reaction when the woman on screen whipped around and began to shout at the man.

“You always do this, Victor!” said the woman, a middle-aged blonde clutching a handbag to the front of her white gown. Her hair was deliberately mussed to give her a frazzled-yet-sexy look, and when she wept, no real tears fell. She was standing at the base of some grand staircase, with an older man standing several feet away, expressionless.

When she hollered, both Tamaki and his grandmother gasped and put their hands to their mouths—though to be sure, Shizue’s gesture was a little more reserved, and she didn’t come as close to launching bodily from her seat.

“Just when everything’s starting to work out, you go and ruin everything! Everything’s ruined!” cried the woman.

The man, handsomely stoic with artful streaks of gray in his hair, did not seem ruffled by the woman’s accusation. On the contrary, he sounded almost bored as he answered, “The night isn’t over, Victoria.”

The screen faded to black. Credits began to flash to the sound of dramatic piano. Unnoticed, Haruhi stood watching from the doorway, almost embarrassed to catch Tamaki and his grandmother watching a soap opera with such exceptionally poor dialogue. She hadn’t found the lines compelling, but both spectators were in on the scheme. Tamaki had leaned as far forward as he could before his rear end lifted off the couch, as if the screen were tugging at him with its own gravity.

“Did you catch that?” he hissed through his fingers.

“Were those the same words—?”

“The very same.”

“My. So much for ‘finished’ with the affair,” said Shizue. “I can’t say that I’m terribly invested.”

Tamaki raised a finger. “You would be, if you had watched from the beginning! These two have been on the show for years. They’re practically soul mates.”

That was when he spotted Haruhi lurking in the entryway and flung one arm over the back of the couch, twisting in his seat to greet her.

“Ah, you’re back!” She saw that behind his casual smirk, he was trying to read her. “Grandmother and I have been catching up on The Young and the Restless.”

In the United States, they didn’t have historical dramas. The closest thing Tamaki had been able to find was daytime television programs called soap operas, which mainly consisted of rich white people treating each other poorly. At first he hadn’t enjoyed them, claiming that they had too much violence and sadness, but they had gotten to him in the end.

“I can see that. How long have you been watching this?”

“Three hours,” said Shizue, who had risen and was straightening the cushions where she had sat. “They don’t make them here like they do at home. So far my favorite part is the opening music. Have you played it, Tamaki?

“No, but it’s fairly simple. Unfortunately we don’t have much room, so I only have a keyboard in the office.”

Shizue scoffed at that. “Perhaps if you had a suitably-sized apartment, that wouldn’t be a problem. How much is your monthly rent?”

“Only about fifty-five hundred.”

“Well, at least the price is low.”

“We picked it for the view,” said Tamaki, with an unnecessary gesture toward the floor-to-ceiling window to his left.

Dusk had already fallen on the harbor, and from this height a ship moving out on the water looked like a set of moving stars. All three heads turned to peer into the dark. The television had quieted, leaving the room still save for a faint clicking sound from down the hall—no doubt Tamaki’s father working at his laptop. Haruhi said nothing, enjoying the near-silence as if she had not experienced such stillness in years.

At last, Shizue sighed. “Tamaki, there’s a piano in the hotel in New York. Won’t you play for me then?”

“I would love to,” he replied, sincere as always. He stood, stretched, turned to Haruhi, and said, “Did you hear we’re going into the City tomorrow?”

“Yeah, my dad told me.”

“Good! Wait—where is your dad?”

“He’s out with Antoinette, but he’ll be up,” she said, and jerked her thumb over one shoulder.

The full truth was that he had offered to walk Antoinette so that he could linger by the car and attempt to chat up the driver, but Haruhi didn’t bother explaining that part. On the way home, she had asked her father why they were going on this trip, but he had either not known of was not willing to answer—by the mischievous smile he had given her, she suspected the latter.

“So why are we going to New York?” she asked, hoping to get a more straightforward response out of Tamaki.

If there was some secret, Tamaki didn’t know about it. He explained to her that his father had scheduled a meeting with the company’s Board of Trustees for Wednesday, and that they had decided to make a few days’ trip out of it. They hadn’t been to the City for so long that it would almost feel like the first time. Like a vacation. Tamaki hadn’t said it, but she understood the subtle homage to their long lost trip to California.

Her father returned as Tamaki and Haruhi were setting the table for dinner. The first day of their visit, Yuzuru had asked how often the apartment staff came to dust, change the linens, and prepare meals. Haruhi had grown used to the Suoh family’s continuing surprise at Tamaki’s adapting to a more ‘common’ lifestyle, and not reacted at all when Tamaki had to explain that they did their own chores—though she’d had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at her father’s bewildered expression when she saw him listening from across the room. By now, three days after their arrival, they had accustomed to the sight of the family heir serving dishes and washing pans. Haruhi had been a bit concerned about cooking for them, but Tamaki had been the one to shoot down the proposal that they hire a more practiced chef for the week. She’d felt a twinge of pride at that, for whatever reason.

Ryoji let Antoinette off her leash so that he could hang it by the door and shrug out of his coat.

“Guess what?” he said, as he dropped into his seat at the dining table. He didn’t wait for a response. “I met one of Haruhi’s friends!”

Tamaki gasped. “You got to meet Haruhi’s friends? That’s no fair!”

“Have you not been introduced?” said Yuzuru, who had appeared in the room just moments before Ryoji, no doubt lured by the sound of china on wood.

“No,” Tamaki huffed. “Which one did you meet? Tricia? Kimi? Brian? Haruhi’s told me all about them, even though she won’t introduce me.”

“I won’t not introduce you,” said Haruhi, with exasperation. She had begun pouring wine and had to pause to keep from sloshing it on the tablecloth when her head snapped up. “I just—haven’t had the chance yet. We’ve been so busy.”

“It was Kimi,” her father said. “We gave her a ride home and she spent the whole time with her head out the window, watching the front tires.”

“She likes cars,” Haruhi explained, when Yuzuru squinted and said in confusion, “You mean like a dog?”

“Kimi’s a mechanical engineer who’s going to be an intellectual property lawyer,” said Tamaki, as if he had known her for years. “I hear that she’s as cute as she is smart. Maybe someday I’ll get to find out.”

“Maybe,” Haruhi said pleasantly, but with a look that shut him up.

XIV

Haruhi would have liked to take the train. From New Haven Station, the ride into the city took just under two hours if they took the off-peak metro. Along with the ticket came a tour of the morose post-industrial coast, which eventually fell away to a brilliant view of the New York City skyline. The ride ended at Grand Central Station, where Haruhi and Tamaki always stopped to stare at the constellations painted on the robin’s-egg ceiling. Unfortunately, the elders of the Suoh clan preferred the comfort of their chauffeured vehicle and the absence of a train car packed full of strangers.

Traffic made the journey last almost three hours. The majority of the ride they spent discussing what sort of things they had seen on previous trips to New York. Tamaki kept his head bent over his phone the entire way, reading as if the rest of the car were empty. With tomorrow’s meeting so close, he had little attention to spare. By the time they approached the valet drop-off of their hotel, Haruhi’s stomach churned from the city’s constant stop and go traffic. She stumbled out of the car, wincing and stretching. When the valet rushed forward to assist her, she waved him off with a polite smile and an “I’m fine, thank you.” It was unclear what he had intended—to carry her off to her room with the rest of the luggage, perhaps.

Tamaki appeared at her side. The phone had disappeared back into his pocket. He looked far more collected than she felt, with his sunglasses on and the topmost buttons of his coat unfastened. Together they peered up at the countless rows of windows. The hotel dwarfed the surrounding buildings, its topmost floors so high up that Haruhi had to shield her eyes from the sun to see it. The city pressed in on them from three sides, tall enough so that the skyscrapers seemed to bend over them. At their backs, Central Park was at its peak lunchtime rush. November’s cool and breezy weather had seemingly no impact on the locals, who filled the sidewalks in the same volume all year, the only difference being that most had swapped their summer clothes for jackets. Tamaki sighed when he spotted an elderly man walking a pug out of the park.

“Poor Antoinette,” he said, voice heavy with sadness. “Locked up in a kennel while we’re out having fun. It’s just wrong!”

Like with so many other things, Tamaki had a distorted sense of what the average ‘kennel’ was actually like. When they had dropped Antoinette off, Haruhi had spotted a sign on the wall that listed the hours for pet spa treatments and meals prepared by a gourmet dog-food chef. Tamaki had wept as he bid Antoinette goodbye. By that time, Antoinette had wriggled free of his arms and gone bounding off to play with the other dogs inside what looked like a doggy amusement park. There wasn’t a cage in sight.

“I’m sure she’ll be all right.”

Tamaki bit his lip. “You really think so?”

“Yes.” The dog might even fare better than the rest of them, she thought, watching as a bellhop struggled with their stacks of luggage. Haruhi stopped herself from linking her arm in Tamaki’s and instead gestured toward the door. “Come on, Tama, let’s check in.”

“Sure, let me just…”

He had taken his phone out of his pocket and was reading something on the screen. She knew that it was not unusual for Tamaki to spend a good chunk of time on his phone—usually texting one of their friends—but he never did it when they were together. Today’s change in behavior told him much more than when she asked him if he was nervous for the meeting and he replied “Not really.”

“Well if you do get nervous, just write the kanji for ‘beauty’ on your palm three times.” She meant for that to provoke him. His lacking response said enough.

His father had told him it would be a quick meeting, just a review of the budget. And anyhow, as Yuzuru had said on multiple occasions during the visit, Tamaki’s project proposal was as good as granted. Tamaki looked cool enough, his features smooth and his expression free of worry. It was the absent look he gave her that let her in on the secret. His smile came easy, but his eyes looked right through her, through the grand hotel lobby, the doors of the elevator.

They had five rooms in a row, all facing out over Central Park and the steep drop to the sidewalk. Haruhi received the keys for her room, the one directly in the center between Tamaki’s room and that of her father, and found her single carry-on already waiting inside for her. The wild extravagance of these places continued to baffle her. The room, with its king-sized bed and full living room set, could easily have slept their entire party. Among other things, she spotted a working fireplace, a bottle of vintage wine chilling in a bucket on the coffee table, and a baby grand piano. She helped herself to a few of the crackers in the kitchenette to settle her carsickness.

The better surprise was a narrow balcony attached to each room. The balconies were close enough together so that she could have a conversation with anyone sitting next door, but too far apart to touch one side from the other.

Admittedly, the New York skyline had a little more to offer than the apartment back in New Haven. The balcony had bars trapping her inside to protect her from a fall to her death, but if she put her face right up to the bars, she could get an unobstructed view that reached all the way to the sea. She spent a few minutes looking out over the city while the others unpacked their bags and assessed the amenities. Up this high, the breeze bit right through her pea coat and sent her skin prickling. She stayed as long as she could bear the cold. Her hair was wild when she rejoined the others in the hallway to discuss their plans. Tamaki tried and failed to conceal a smirk when she sidled up next to him, looking as though he was struggling to keep from either patting her hair down or hugging her.

“It’s already getting late,” said Shizue, eyes on her wristwatch. “I think I’ll just stay here and settle in for now.”

Yuzuru nodded. “We’ll have to have supper early to make our concert at seven-thirty, so stay within a few blocks of the hotel and be back by quarter of five.

When Tamaki started pulling his coat back on, his father held up a hand. “Not you, Tamaki. We still have preparations for tomorrow.”

“Right,” said Tamaki.

Haruhi chanced a sidelong glance to see him looking neutral; she watched him and his father tread back off down the hallway, having half a mind to wish him luck, but he didn’t appear to need it. He had slung his jacket over one shoulder and walked off without a single morose sound. Her first year of high school came to mind then. For the weeks that Shizue had kept him locked away in the first mansion, he had set aside every personal need in exchange for work, including most meals and his treasured host club family. The result had been success at the expense of his well being. He was starting to look that way again.

Never once had he felt secure in his pseudo-inheritance, something which became even more apparent when standing adjacent to his father—something Haruhi found peculiar. He had worked so hard on his proposal to the Board; she was looking forward to the payoff. Whenever that arrived. By the sound of it, this meeting was just for the regular course of business.

Shizue sighed the sigh that Haruhi had been stifling. “Enjoy the city, you two,” she said to Haruhi and her father, her tone making it perfectly plain that she was paying more attention to her adoptive grandson and his father turning the corner out of sight. “But don’t stray too far. We have reservations.”

“You can count on us,” said Ryoji.

Linking his arm in Haruhi’s, he started off for the elevator with Haruhi jogging along behind him.

Haruhi’s father had never been to New York City, and seemed determined to see the entire city in the four hours they had before their deadline at the hotel. Lost in the commotion of the busy sidewalks, he seemed so starry-eyed that Haruhi believed he hadn’t noticed any of the exchanges among the Suoh family. They cut through Central Park to reach Times Square, where Haruhi had to grip his arm to keep him from running into the closest store. Like Haruhi, he was conservative with his small income, but unlike Haruhi, he could window shop for hours. At one point he became so excited about the vast number of flashing billboards that he flung out his arm a little too enthusiastically, so that instead of gesturing to a Broadway sign, he almost put out the eye of a passer-by.

By the time they reached the other side of the square, Haruhi was ready to go to sleep. They had skipped lunch. Upon sensing a crawling in her belly, Haruhi slipped out of a store while her father was trying on clothes and bought them a small bag of candied mixed nuts from a street vendor outside. These they ate warm, sitting on the edge of a fountain they discovered just a block from the square.

“What a weird family, huh?”

With a shrug, Haruhi popped a cashew into her mouth and said, “Maybe, but we’ve always been this way.”

“Not us, them,” he said, as if that clarified things.

Haruhi looked around, expecting to see some number of people doing something bizarre. A few meters away, a woman was washing her hands in the fountain despite the cold. Another person stood on the curb with a big red sign that read ‘THE END IS NIGH. HONK FOR ABSOLUTION’.

“Who?”

“Tamaki’s family.”

“Ah. Yeah.”

“It’s not too late to back out, you know,” he said. “If you wanted to.”

Haruhi laughed darkly, handing over the bag when he gestured for it. “Starting to regret giving s permission to marry?”

He gave an incredulous snort. “Yeah, like that made any difference. And no, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that… when you get married, it seems more and more like you’re not just marrying him.”

“I know.”

“And I like them,” he added, sounding almost defensive. “Yuzuru and I get along great, but… the whole family business thing?”

So he had noticed. She had wondered whether the true purpose for the visit had been subtle enough to escape her father’s attention, but the tone of his voice told her that it had not. She took her time chewing before she said anything else, letting the sugar melt on her tongue. All around them, people passed without noticing the bundled-up father and daughter sitting cross-legged on the concrete fountain’s edge.

“I’m not so sure about a lot of things right now,” she said. “It’s too early for me to tell what I’ll do about that, when I graduate. But I am happy.”

He seemed to relax when Haruhi smiled, and so did she; years of trying to read her mind had made him adept at telling authentic smiles from the rest. Helping himself to the rest of the bag, he tipped his head back to empty the paper envelope into his mouth.

“Well, come what may,” he said with his mouth full.

“Come what may,” she agreed.

x

Her cell phone would not stop ringing on Wednesday morning. In one of her less brilliant moves, she had set it just out of smacking range last night. When they had returned from the New York Philharmonic concert around one in the morning, she undressed and fallen asleep halfway under the blankets.

The phone had started going off at six in the morning. The ringing had interrupted a dream—she was taking the bar exam in Japan, in her freshman homeroom at Ouran for some inexplicable reason, and all the questions were about the life cycle of caterpillars. She had been trying to remember how to translate chrysalis into French when the first ring went off. At first she ignored it, but when it didn’t stop she woke up and found herself lying face-down on a foreign mattress. The sun had not yet risen, and it took her several dazed moments to remember why she was lying in the dark by herself. When she remembered, the reason for the phone’s non-stop humming suddenly became clear.

How many grown men does it take to pick a suit and tie? she wondered in annoyance.

The answer was six. Grumbling, Haruhi raised herself up on her knees and shimmied her way across the bed to where she had tossed her phone the night before. The light blinded her at first, and it took several seconds of fumbling to turn down the brightness before her eyes adjusted enough to read the group text. She tucked a pillow under her chin and scrolled to the top of the conversation.

Tamaki had sent the first message at five-thirty, a picture of a grey and a black suit lying side-by-side on a blanket whose mauve silk fabric matched the one currently pulled over her head.

Tamaki. 5:32 a.m. Somebody help me I cant decide. Meeting in only four hours!!

Apparently the others were already familiar with the nature of the meeting, because the text sparked a dialogue about what sort of apparel was more appropriate for a budget meeting with a Board of Trustees. Hikaru said that black was better because ‘it shows u r not screwing around’, while Mori said that grey was ‘softer on the eyes’. Kyoya said it didn’t matter what he wore, because they had probably already written the agenda and wouldn’t deviate from it. Then Hikaru said they wouldn’t be able to tell unless they could see it on him—ridiculous, since they had already seen him in just about every kind of apparel.

That started the long chain of selfies that had awoken Haruhi. Tamaki would send one of him in a different suit and tie combination, to which the others replied with selfies of their own. Hikaru took his first photo in the back seat of a car, presumably on the way home from work, his expression deliberately skeptical.

Hikaru. 5:47 a.m. I dunno boss, red on grey??

Hani, with an attachment showing him in the locker room of the dojo. 5:49 a.m. I like the lilac one tama-chan! it complments your eyes :3

Mori. 5:49 a.m. Not red.

Even Kyoya, who could not ordinarily be persuaded to participate in such ‘childishness’, sent a photo of himself. As usual, Haruhi had no idea where he was at the moment, given that it was two a.m. in California and daylight lit the photograph; wherever he was, it was raining outside. His back was to a glass door through which she could see a gray sky and tree limbs drooping under the weight of rain. The cool smirk on his face was familiar, at least.

Kyoya. 5:50 a.m. Maybe you ought to try on the black suit again and refresh our memories.

Not realizing that Kyoya had been teasing him, Tamaki did as he was bid and, at 5:53, sent another picture wearing the black suit and a blue tie. The exaggerated concern on his face made her chuckle into her pillow.

Tamaki. 5:53 a.m. maybe black’s too harsh for this early.. but it might make me look older!

And so it went on, until at 5:58, when Kaoru finally appeared in the conversation. His selfie confused her because it was not even seven in the evening in Japan, yet he was in bed. He had clearly just turned a lamp on; both his squinting and his bedhead told her that he, too, had been rudely awakened by this conversation.

Kaoru. 6:00 a.m. what the hell is the boss doing up at this ungodly hour??

Tamaki. 6:01 a.m. thank god kaoru HELP ME! they are so unhelpful

Tamaki. 6:01 a.m. well except for hani and maybe mori

Hikaru. 6:02 a.m. fuck you too boss

Kaoru. 6:02 a.m. couldn’t you just ask Haruhi?? Isn’t that her job

Tamaki. 6:03 a.m. Alas! Custom keeps us apart. :( separate hotel rooms until we get back home and family leaves. she’s sleeping just a wall away!

Mori. 6:04 a.m. Not for long.

Kaoru. 6:05 a.m. he’s right. she wont be sleeping long with all this texting…

Haruhi took this as her formal invitation to appear. She rolled onto one side on the bed, with her back facing the French doors that lead to her patio. Outside, the dimmest light had begun to shine through, just bright enough so that when she took her picture, a faint outline of her head and shoulder appeared on the camera, though it was obscured by the blanket and the darkness of the room. She sent the photo along with a short caption.

Haruhi. 6:06 a.m. I hate all of you.

Tamaki. 6:06 a.m. Haruhi! Good morning! what should I wear today?

Haruhi. 6:07 a.m. The charcoal suit. I am turning off my phone now.

Without waiting for a response, she hit the power button, dropped her phone on the mattress, and didn’t stir again until her father came knocking around eight. They met up with Shizue for breakfast and discussed their plans over coffee.

“I have an errand to run this morning, if you wouldn’t mind accompanying me,” said Shizue, as though she were delivering a report. “The older I get, the more venturing out on my own becomes a chore.”

Haruhi and her father both agreed to join her, wherever she needed them to go; her father responded as if she’d asked him to join her on a theme park ride. Haruhi took this as his typical enthusiasm, a repeat performance of yesterday’s excitement over spending the day exploring a famous city for the first time. He all but danced when they boarded the subway, and spent the ride chatting with a boy Haruhi’s age who had headphones in and looked as though he had never spoken to someone on public transit before.

Haruhi had been surprised when Shizue said they would take public transit instead of getting a ride from her driver. Watching her purchase a metro card and go through the turnstile without any assistance or hesitation had been even more surprising; according to Mei, who had been present Tamaki’s first time on a subway, he had gotten overwhelmed by the options and accidentally bought a thousand dollars worth of rides.

While her father was preoccupied, Haruhi studied the map along with Shizue, inquiring politely about her previous visits to New York. Stern as she was, Shizue continued to astound Haruhi with her competence and experience. She told her a story about the first time she came to New York to run a conference on financial consulting, and how when she showed up, she was the only woman in the room and several men mistook her for the concierge clerk. At the end of the recollection, they shared a look that substituted for a bitter laugh.

This was not Shizue’s first commentary on the progress of womankind, though the fact that she spoke little on the matter said more to Haruhi than anything else. Once, when Haruhi had made a comment on it, Shizue had scoffed at her. She had made the analogy in which white men stood on one side of the road and everyone else crowded together on the other, with puddles of something toxic flooding the street between. One side held every opportunity and the privilege to take them; the other side had nothing.

Progress, as she had explained it, was one woman lying face-down in a puddle so the next could step on her to cross without getting her own feet wet. But when she reached the end of the bridge, there’s still too far to go. All she can do is lie down, take the pain, and hope the next one in line can finally reach what’s waiting on the other side.

The three of them rose together as the subway stopped, holding back to let others disembark before them, waiting for a clear path. Haruhi offered Shizue her arm. Shizue took it, held steady.

XV

Once she had a mimosa in her hand, she felt a little better, but not by much. Her father had been so exceptionally excited, Shizue so cryptic with the nature of her alleged “errand,” that Haruhi ought to have realized the truth of it.

But in classic Haruhi form, ever oblivious to schemes concerning herself, Haruhi did not realize she’d been tricked until they were standing in front of the bridal shop—and even then, she peered around in bewilderment, looking for the sort of building in which Shizue might reasonably have an errand. It took her father’s shout of “Surprise!” to get the message through.

Just like with the hotel, Haruhi had taken one look at the building and felt her stomach drop. This time, though, the tall windows were a showcase for mannequins posed in various shades of white.

“Oh no.”

She had never fantasized about her wedding, much less the gown that came with it. At the time her mother passed, she was too young for the thought to occur to her; afterward, it made her too sad, and she pushed it away. The rest of her life she had spent in blissful indifference, which, truth be told, continued to this day. If Tamaki said this evening, when he returned home from his meeting, that they ought to run down to city hall and get married by a justice of the peace, she would be fine with that. It would mean one less thing to worry about during finals season.

All this didn’t mean that she couldn’t try to enjoy the moment. With the Suoh family insisting on zero wedding expense contribution from Haruhi and her father, common courtesy meant she must show some of the gratitude deep in her heart. So she accepted the drink, took a long sip, and hoped the alcohol might quell some of the stress that rose up at the sight of all those dresses.

The consultant had enough energy to make even Ryoji seem listless. Her long brunette ponytail swished like a pendulum whenever she rolled back and forth on the points of her high heels. Around her neck she wore a measuring ribbon, which she used to take Haruhi’s measurements, all the while humming some vague tune.

When she was done, she draped the tape back around her neck and beamed.

“Well, the numbers match up, so I’ll hand you over.”

“Match up?”

The consultant nodded. “Yup! The designers told me they already had your measurements, but I wanted to be extra-sure they were accurate before I sent you off with them.”

Haruhi blinked. She hadn’t given anyone her measurements because, to the best of her knowledge, she had never been measured. She had a fleeting image of Tamaki bending over her with a tape measure while she slept, but before she could get annoyed about it, the consultant clapped her hands, making them all jump.

“Ah, here they are! Ms. Fujioka, I believe you’re already familiar with the designers—?”

Out they came through the stock room door, two of them, and Haruhi found herself sandwiched between them in a tight hug.

“Wha—what’re you doing here?” Haruhi managed to gasp, after prying herself free from their grip. “Do you work here?”

Mei had long since eased up on the ganguro trend; all but her bleached blonde hair, which today she had piled atop her head in an artfully careless bun. She shook her head as if Haruhi disappointed her.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said, but she was smirking. “You think I’d give up a fashion empire in Japan for this place?”

“We’re just here to make sure you don’t show up to your wedding in your pajamas,” Kaoru said. “Our gift to you.”

Having them here put Haruhi at much greater ease, more so than the mimosa had done. They would be the best sort of allies in this place. For the first time, Haruhi felt genuine excitement over this appointment—if not for the appointment, then for the chance to catch up. She watched in a daze as they greeted her father and Shizue, neither of whom looked surprised to see them.

“How long are you staying? Where’s Hikaru? Are you going to help me?”

She had about eight-hundred questions, but Kaoru only answered one right away.

“Better than that,” he said. “We designed your dress.”

“A few of them, actually,” said Mei. “You get to pick which one to wear.”

“Me?”

Kaoru snorted. “Okay, clearly she’s short-circuited. Let’s just get the first one on her and see what happens.” He exchanged a thumbs-up with Haruhi’s dad, and the two designers dragged her off to the dressing room.

x

Everything was white. Haruhi was familiar with some of the concoctions the Hitachiin family dreamed up and sold for more money than she had ever had in her bank account (her personal account, not the one she leeched from). Most were colorful, trimmed with peculiar fabrics and metals. Only Kaoru had gone into the family business. Both had attended art school, but Hikaru preferred graphic design and left most of the fashion business to his twin. Mei always seemed to be in a bad mood when she designed her clothing; it showed in the sharp lines of her work, in the dynamic cuts she made with her scissors. The combination of these brains, Haruhi thought, could only result in something bizarre. When they covered her eyes and showed her into the dressing room, she was on her guard.

But everything was white. Blindingly white, all but the occasional trace of gold.

Mei scoffed when Haruhi voiced her surprise. “No faith at all in your maid of honor. What do you think this is, a cosplay?”

It may have felt like one to begin with, but once Kaoru showed her the three dresses they had brought with them from Japan, it started to feel startlingly real. The first gown was huge and puffy from the hips down, and trimmed with satin. The second had no straps. The third was sleek, its long train falling like a thick silk ribbon across the floor. Haruhi touched the gems along the neckline and tried not to wonder what sort of stone they came from.

“You really designed these?”

“The three of us did, yeah. We should point out that whatever dress you do wear will be the next big thing of the season. But no pressure, you don’t have to pick one of ours,” Kaoru said heavily. “It’s only our sweat and blood in dress form.”

“Why’s it such a big deal what I wear?”

Kaoru sounded surprised. “Didn’t anyone tell you? Photographers have started bidding on the wedding.”

“Bidding…?” The mimosa churned in her belly. “To photograph…?”

“Well yeah! It’s only the biggest wedding of the season. The future CEO of a multi-billion dollar business is getting married at twenty-three to his high school sweetheart in an exclusive, invite-only ceremony.”

“Forbes, Fortune, and The Economist are all trying to outbid each other to cover the story and get pictures,” Mei said, as she took down the first dress off its hook and held it up to Haruhi’s frame. “It’s a business mag’s wet dream. Now take your clothes off.”

Once Kaoru had ducked behind a stack of dresses to give them a little privacy, Haruhi did what she was told. It took some time for Haruhi to shed her winter layers, and even longer to pull the dress up all the way. Kaoru came around to straighten the front while Mei swore over the hundred or so buttons.

With nothing better to do but wait until they were done fussing, Haruhi asked, “How come Hikaru isn’t here?”

“He’s at a show in Rome,” Kaoru said distractedly. His eyes were fixed on untwisting the straps. “He wanted to come, but someone had to represent us over there. He was pissed, especially since that’s not even his career, but it’s whatever. It made more sense to send me here, since I actually know what I’m doing.”

“He’ll survive even though he’s a sore loser—ah, fuck, I missed one,” Mei hissed. Haruhi felt a little tug at the small of her back, and then Mei reappeared over her shoulder. “Good enough. You got her all strapped in, Kaoru?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Sweet. Where’s the mirror?”

It took all three of them to shuffle her over to the mirror, mostly because Haruhi’s legs had turned to lead at the thought of stepping on a hem and tearing the dress. She didn’t react much at the sight of her reflection. Not outwardly, anyway.

“Nice,” she said, turning sideways. The dress had layers and layers of fabric that bunched like ribbons from the waist down past her feet. The lack of discomfort surprised her; she had expected to feel constricted, restrained, but it fit like any other common dress.

“You look like a princess,” said Kaoru, as Mei gave an annoyed sigh.

“I told you this one was a long shot, Kaoru. It’s a too puffy.”

Mei tried patting down some of the puffiness, without success.

“I think it’s beautiful,” Haruhi offered, tracing a hand along the embroidery at the waist. “You did an incredible job.”

“It’s not about the dress,” said Kaoru, as Mei gave up on adjusting the dress and began attacking Haruhi’s hair instead. “It’s about you in the dress. How do you feel about the look as a whole?”

“Overwhelmed, and—ouch—happy to defer to your professional judgment.”

“Fair enough. Mei, let’s just bring her out and show the others, just to make sure we’re all on the same page. Then we’ll do the second one.”

In the span of about ten seconds, Mei had gathered up all of Haruhi’s hair, twisted it into a knot, and pinned it up off of her neck so that only a few stray pieces in the front hung down. Mei’s hands were deft and masterful. It looked professional, though Haruhi had yelped and swore when she dug the bobby pins into her scalp.

They paraded Haruhi out into the showcase room for everyone to see. Mei warned her to lift the skirt and tread carefully, since the fabric cost more than her law school tuition. When she tried to obey, Kaoru laughed and told her she looked constipated. At that point, she made them help her lift and carry the long ends of the dress out the door and up onto a small, circular platform someone had set in front of the sitting area where her father and Shizue waited. Their reactions were much as Haruhi had expected. While her father nearly choked when he spotted her shuffle-walking across the room, Shizue maintained an air that was half clinical and half scrutinizing. Both of them listened as Mei and Kaoru explained the pros and cons of the dress, Ryoji with his chin in his hands.

“We could remove some of the lace to give it a little less volume, but at the end of the day, it’s still very much a ‘princess’ look. And that shoe just does not fit.” Kaoru gave Haruhi an amused look, which she did not return.

“How many others did you bring?” Shizue asked.

“Two.”

“Let’s see the second one.”

“I like this one,” Ryoji pointed out.

Haruhi smirked. “Are they any you wouldn’t like, Dad?”

“Not on you!”

Conversation didn’t turn to Tamaki until she was back in the dressing room and halfway out of the first dress. From behind a row of wedding gowns, Kaoru asked in a bored voice whether she’d ever chosen wedding details out of the options Tamaki and his mother had posted on their private website during his trip to France in September. When she admitted she hadn’t yet, that she’d been too busy, he snorted.

“Doesn’t sound like you’re very invested in this wedding.”

“That’s because I’m not. This is Tamaki’s extravagance, not mine.”

“Obviously. We all know you’d prefer to take a little jog down to town hall during lunch hour, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help.”

“I’ll help! As soon as finals are over, I’ll help all he wants.”

It was then that Mei finally unfastened the last buttons and Haruhi was able to escape from the dress. She hung it up with meticulous care as Mei grabbed the second dress from the rack. “Does he know you two are here, by the way? He’d be heartbroken if he knew you were so close by and didn’t even say hello.”

Mei shook her head. “We didn’t tell him. We have to catch a flight to Rome right after lunch, and he won’t be out of that meeting until, what? Five?”

“I have no idea,” Haruhi admitted. “He seemed to think it would be quick, but I suspect he won’t be back until after dinner, at least.”

“I wonder if they’ll an answer back on his proposal,” said Kaoru. “He told us that his dad said his presentation of the project went really well, and that he expects them to approve it. His dad said it was practically a sure thing.”

“I don’t know. He said it’s just a budget meeting, so I don’t know if they deal with those sorts of things.”

Mei was ready with the second dress, which meant Haruhi had to stop talking and instead concentrate on not tearing anything. This gown had no straps. She eyed it cagily as Mei commanded her to take her bra off.

“I’ve never worn a strapless dress before,” she said, nevertheless obeying and allowing Mei to pull the gown up under her armpits.

Mei snapped her gum and dismissed her concern with a short, “First time for everything.”

She turned Haruhi around so her back faced the mirror, then straightened everything out with a few tugs and pulls while Haruhi clutched the top to her chest. After a few moments of silent adjustments, Mei straightened up and appraised her. Then she smirked and uttered a low laugh, like she had encountered some unexpected dilemma and wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it.

“What is it?” said Haruhi, looking down to check that she wasn’t stepping on anything. “What’s the matter?”

“Kaoru!”

On cue, Kaoru reappeared. He took one look at Haruhi and laughed just the same. More a laugh of surprise than amusement.

“Ah,” he sighed, “looks like Hikaru was right again.”

“You do the buttons this time. I’m sick to death of looking at them.”

At once they went to work, Kaoru attending the long column of buttons up the back of the dress while Mei made sure everything was on straight. Still Haruhi had not seen it, but she had little urge to turn around and confront her reflection. Their reactions had not just been strange, but uncommonly hard for her to place. Wary, she held the top of the dress in place and waited for Kaoru. She could feel his fingers working at the small of her back, hooking the little buttons into their loops with a series of minute pulls and tugs.

“Whose idea was it to put a million buttons, again?” he groaned, halfway up the small of her back.

Haruhi heard Mei answer from somewhere around her knees, where she knelt rearranging the gown’s layers: “Nobody; it was a given. Only a novice puts a zipper on a wedding gown.”

“Are you sure? I could have sworn it was you…”

“Shut up and finish it!”

He did, though with a mocking sob of, “Mei-chan’s so mean to me, Haruhi.”

It took him another minute or so before he was done. And then, without warning, Haruhi felt a mighty jerk between her shoulders and almost flew backwards.

“What the hell are you doing back there?” she said, gasping for air as he pulled her back straight.

He replied with an impish laugh. “Sorry, just tying up some loose ends,” he said, without a trace of apology in his voice.

The pulling sensation moved in a downward fashion, to finally end at the base of her spine. By the end of it, she felt quite tight around the chest and waist, far tighter than the first gown. She heard the whisper of fabric rubbing together, and then Kaoru stepped out in front of her. Mei straightened up. They both took a step back, Mei flipping the loose locks of her hair out of her face. The strange grins had reappeared on their faces.

“You don’t have to keep holding the top up,” said Mei, and Haruhi lowered her arms to her sides. “How does it feel?”

“Surprisingly comfortable. A little tight around here, but not bad.” Haruhi gestured to her torso. “At least I can breathe. I didn’t think I’d be able to.”

“Have a look, then.”

The first dress had overwhelmed her. It had felt foreign to see herself wearing it, with its many rippling layers and thin shoulder straps—which made little sense, since it fit much the same as any other dress. This one, though, fit much differently. Kaoru had strapped her in so snug that the dress seemed to meld in with the rest of her body, letting her move without fear of tearing. The bust had a moderate cut, low enough to lift and support her chest without crossing out of the realm of modesty. Like the other gown, this had embroidery along the top and down her torso with stones that winked when she turned under the light. The bodice followed the crest of her hips, giving way just past her pelvis to a more flowy fabric. There was some puffiness, but not in horizontal bands like the first dress, and not so much that it poofed when she dropped her arms down. Haruhi traced the line where the skirt and bodice met, fingering the golden thread embroidered there. It ran in curving, elegant lines around her waist and the hem by her feet.

Haruhi turned, craning her neck to get a better look at her back in the mirror, and the source of the tugging sensation became abundantly clear. A long, silk ribbon held everything together. It started at the top of the gown, just below her shoulder blades, and crossed over and over in an “X” pattern down to the end of her spine, where Kaoru had tied it off in a bow. She didn’t realize that her pulse had quickened until she looked back at the others and saw them watching her.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” she said, fighting the urge to cough and clear her throat.

“Because you look incredible,” Kaoru said.

Mei came up alongside her, took Haruhi by the hips, and turned her square with her reflection.

“Who would’ve thought you had a woman’s curves?” she teased, running her palms once up and down the sides of the dress, along the barely-sloping hourglass that Kaoru had revealed by pulling the ribbon tight. Ordinarily Haruhi would answer Mei’s nonsense with some terse little retort, but she was too stunned to say anything.

Mei grabbed Haruhi’s shoulders and forced them straight with a throwaway comment that law school had ruined her posture.

“How do you feel?” Kaoru asked.

He hadn’t asked specifically for her feelings about the dress, or about how it compared to the last, and Haruhi suspected she knew why. No doubt the answer showed plain on her face; all this time she had yet to smile. On the contrary, she clenched her teeth in a determined effort to stop her bottom lip from trembling. She did feel something, and it was not the same sense of drowning that first had washed over her when her father dragged her into the bridal shop. Instead, when she looked back at herself and saw a professional standing there, a grown adult, she had a sudden and acute sensation of reality.

She thought of Tamaki, on the day he mortified her by pulling her into an empty gate at Narita International Airport and dropping to his knees—not one, but both knees.

“Please marry me, Haruhi,” he’d said, grabbing her left hand and pressing it to his forehead like a beggar.

She’d looked down at him in bewilderment. “Huh?”

“Will you marry me?” he’d repeated, as though the words pained him. After several seconds of perplexed silence, he jolted and cried, “Oh! I have this!” and drew a tiny ring from his breast pocket.

He later explained how he had planned a huge public proposal in the gate where she had first told him she loved him, but at the last second realized that she would hate being asked in front of other people and dragged her off to a more private corner. As it was, at the time she had whirled around, half expecting a camera crew or a marching band to be standing behind her, and sighed in relief upon seeing that they were truly alone. She had made him stand up, then asked him why the hell he would risk them missing their flight to ask a question for which he already had an answer.

“Half the sentences out of your mouth start with ‘when we get married’,” she’d said in disbelief. “You’ve been reading books about how to be a good husband since we were in high school. Do you really think I’m so cruel that I’d let you carry on like that if I didn’t think we’d actually get married?”

He had looked at her then, with the same effortful blankness on his face that she now wore herself, and said, “Would you please answer my question?”

“I thought we’d settled that already,” she’d said stubbornly.

“I’d like to hear it in full.”

She’d sighed then, half out of exasperation and half to quell the jitters in her gut. “Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, Tamaki.” And then, more confidently: “Yes, I will marry you.”

At the time, she had thought she’d understood the look that had risen on his face at her response. She had chalked it up to relief, but now she understood that she had been wrong. The feeling came over her slowly, like someone had cracked an egg over her head and let the insides run down the top of her skull and neck and back. It could be neither dismissed nor shaken, and it didn’t have one name, but many—relief, security, excitement, and above all: joy.

“You guys—” she began to tell them that they’d done it—made her not just accept this wedding as a happy inevitability, but made her excited for it—but broke off when she saw Kaoru in the reflection.

At first she thought it might just be the fluorescent lights, but there was no mistaking that his eyes had become wet and glassy.

“Are you all right?” she said, rounding on him. “Is something wrong?”

While Kaoru blinked rapidly and tried to deny what she had seen, Mei just patted him on the back and said, “He’s just sad that you’re going to get married in the dress Hikaru did the most design work on instead of him. Assuming that you want this one, obviously.”

“I…love it,” said Haruhi, after a pause. “I’m a little worried the top will fall down… the last thing I need is to flash everyone I’ve ever met.”

“It won’t,” Kaoru promised.

“Then yes. Unless you think I still look too much like a princess…?”

Wiping his eyes on his sleeve and looking almost annoyed at himself, Kaoru shook his head.

“No,” he said, and then he laughed. “Like a queen.”

Haruhi got similar reactions when she went out for a second round of commentary. In the close, narrow changing area she hadn’t realized that the gown even had a train. It trailed weightlessly behind her as she crossed the room, long enough so that when Mei pulled it out like and sheet and draped it at her feet, there was enough fabric to wrap all the way around the base of the podium. Her father began to cry as soon as he spotted her.

“I thought you liked the other one, Dad,” said Haruhi, who had finally found her humor.

Shizue eyed her and the gown both, clearly looking for something to criticize. Haruhi didn’t blame her for it, and found herself feeling grateful for the honesty—if this wedding was going to be the sort of event that Kaoru and Mei had suggested, then she was happy to have detail-oriented people who weren’t afraid of offending her. She took it as a good sign that Shizue had little to say.

“Can you shorten the train, if need be?” she asked.

Kaoru nodded. “Of course. There’s a clasp on the underside, which attaches here, at the back.”

He lifted up the bow in back so that the others could see a hook hidden beneath it.

“Very good. And the veil?”

“I’ll get it.” Mei jogged back to the dressing room, returning with a bundle in her arms. As she unraveled it, lying it in a careful line, Haruhi saw that the fabric was sheer and had a subtle shimmer. On one end, there was a comb-like clip, which Mei lifted and gently tucked into the knot she’d done up in Haruhi’s hair. Standing on tiptoe, she got uncomfortably close to Haruhi’s face and began fussing with her hair again.

“It’s one-hundred percent silk tulle,” Kaoru explained as Mei turned a shorter section of it down over Haruhi’s face. “We made a separate one for each gown. If you look closely, you’ll see we’ve detailed the headpiece and the ends both with the same embroidery as the hem here—” he gestured to the gold threadwork at the top of the bodice, and then at the base as well, “—and here.”

Shizue touched two fingers to her chin. “Is the silk tulle French, or Italian?”

“French, of course.”

“Very good.”

“And a real bitch to work with, so don’t rip it,” Mei whispered, so that only Haruhi could hear. She licked her thumb and smoothed Haruhi’s eyebrows over.

In the end, this dress won the contest as if there were no contest. She tried on the final dress at Shizue’s suggestion, just to be certain, and to pay homage to the three designers. Like the first dress, the third was beautiful and artfully-crafted, but it didn’t elicit any particular emotion when she stood before the mirror.

“The second one was always our favorite,” Kaoru confessed, once she had changed back into her street clothes. “Mei and I didn’t think it would win because it was a little sexier than we’re used to seeing on you, but Hikaru insisted we include it in the top three.”

“He was biased because he designed the embroidery and added the corset lace-up in back,” said Mei. “But I was the one who sewed all that gold in there, so I’m the real winner.”

“Thank you all, so much,” said Haruhi, for the third or fourth time since they returned to the dressing room for the last time. “Maybe we should have taken a picture to send to Hikaru.”

Mei scoffed, “And risk it getting into Tamaki’s hands? No way!”

“The boss is gonna go nuclear when he sees you,” said Kaoru, laughing. “Total meltdown. Oh man, I can’t wait until June—what’s the day?”

“The seventh. It’s the first Saturday.”

They had left the dressing room together, and walked out into the open floor to find her father and Shizue already standing there in their coats.

“The excitement of the morning has fatigued me. Your father has volunteered to escort me back to the hotel,” said Shizue, who had looked neither tired nor excited throughout the ordeal. “I trust you can make it back in time for supper?”

Haruhi offered her a reassuring smile. “Of course. Thank you for spending your time with me today.”

Her father’s eyes were finally dry, but he still sounded on the verge of tears as he hugged her and cried, “I’m so proud of you, Haruhi! My little lawyer-bride!”

“I’m not a lawyer yet.” She wasn’t a bride yet either, technically, though for the first time she started to feel like one.