Disclaimer: I do not own Ouran High School Host Club. It is the property of Bisco Hatori; I merely borrow the characters for my amusement.

Of Strawberries and Ice

"Kyouya-kun, I made shaved ice! Come have some!" his sister called.

Kyouya stared at the bowls on the tabletop, "Eh… Nee-san…"

His sister laughed in that carefree way of hers amidst the general wreckage of what was meant to be the kitchen, "I know, but I couldn't find any toppings so I chopped some strawberries!

Strawberries don't match shaved ice, typically for the reason that the trait which makes them both tart and sweet simultaneously, in the presence of cold ice becomes the more sour to the palate.

Kyouya sighed, but gritted his teeth and took a bite all the same.

The third son of the Ohtori family, Ohtori Kyouya, could not be described as a "nice person". He was not polite to you because he liked you, or even because he enjoyed your company. No, he was courteous because you had something he wanted and he would eventually get it, whether you decided to give it to him or he manipulated it out of you. No, Kyouya was not a nice person. He looked out for number one: himself.

When Suoh Tamaki, illegitimate heir of the Suoh enterprises, came forth with a surprising proposal to start a most unconventional club, the Ouran High School Host Club, he had paused briefly to make sure his calculated gains would overweigh his losses. He accepted. A liaison with the prestigious Suoh family would surely be profitable.

And if was thus that he had met the other members. The child-like Haninozuka Mitsukuni and his stoic guardian, Morinozuka Takashi, both third years. A newly-formed connection to two of the most esteemed martial arts styles in the world. Hitachiin Hikaru and Kaoru, identical twins so alike they were able to speak whole paragraphs in perfect tandem. Links to a famous fashion designer.

He had fit his role as the vice president and club manager well. His was a calculating and business-like mind. Arranging opportunities for overeager fangirls to spend a minor portion of their extensive fortunes was nothing short of simplistic.

Hence did their club putter along, gaining popularity every passing day. Days began to settle into routine. School ends, club starts. Girls squeal, products sell. Everyone had settled comfortably into their roles, Tamaki most of all. Everything was bordering on mundane until the day the enigma known as Fujioka Haruhi walked into their lives through the stream of perfumed air and rose petals.

Of course, he had known immediately she was a girl. It was just the way she stood there and gaped at them all that told him. That and what the twins had said. No scholarship student had ever refused contact with their upper-crust society before. Which is another reason why his strategically-placed vase in the middle of nowhere properly served its purpose by dragging a dogsbody into their midst. He was bored, at the risk of sounding like the twins. Exploiting a commoner would surely be of great amusement.

It was the first time any of his carefully-laid plans went awry. Fujioka Haruhi was a girl unlike any other, the first to successfully borrow Hunny-senpai's beloved Bun-Bun and instantly able to shut the mouth of the incorrigible Tamaki. What he had meant to be of temporary amusement had suddenly evolved into the only source of motivation for the host club to exist. It was shocking that such a low-born girl could have such power over them.

He should have been appalled. But instead, he found himself ever more intrigued. A dissection project, if you will. What made Fujioka Haruhi tick?

As time went on, it became increasingly clear that Fujioka Haruhi was no ordinary girl. "Daddy" Tamaki was completely enamored. The way Kyouya looked at, it was pretty smart for someone so usually inane like Tamaki. Allowing his feelings to be expressed through something related, yet so completely different. A truly brilliant move for such an air-brained idiot.

Fujioka Haruhi had almost perfect grades and easily held her first-place scholarship position with close to little effort. It is a plausible given that Fujioka Haruhi is a veritable genius in her own right. Even knowing this however, did not prepare him for her insight into her friends' lives. As if being the only one to borrow Hunny-senpai's bunny or the ability to shut Tamaki up instantaneously wasn't enough, she had become the only person who could guess Mori-senpai's thoughts correctly as well as the only one who could tell which twin was which at any given time.

It is an impressive track record, Kyouya will admit. She knew just what to say to comfort Mori-senpai at his most distressed: the moments his charge was not in sight. Fujioka Haruhi was indeed no ordinary girl, with her blunt nature and the caring individual that was really underneath the visage of the easygoing scholar.

Kyouya could visibly see the progress of Hikaru's own growing infatuation. It was amusing to see him and Tamaki get alternately jealous in their own unique ways. Enough for the thought to create situations where they would be jealous to run through his head several times. But no, Kyouya just wasn't a mean person like that, right?

More than ever now, Kyouya could see how Fujioka Haruhi was gently loosening the tightly-bound chains between the Hitachiin brothers, slowly helping them realize that even though they looked remarkably alike, enough so to be clones, they were their own persons, each with their own minds. It was a realization they had never been able to formulate on their own and Fujioka Haruhi had merely waltzed into their lives and began helping out. It was something else that was uniquely her.

Because the more he watched, the more he could see that Fujioka Haruhi had a built-in mother complex. In seeing others in some state of distress, it was obvious she felt an insuppressible urge to offer some words of comfort. It was one of her stronger points; he could make this much out.

Fujioka Haruhi wasn't your normal run of teenage girl. But neither was Kyouya your typical adolescent male. Fujioka Haruhi might have been a new species altogether, but whatever she was – is – he had figured her out. Or so he thought.

He had set himself a cover, a façade to protect himself. He came across as a manipulative, unfeeling jerk whose only pleasure in life was to make someone else's existence miserable. As a matter of fact, the mask was so perfect he believed it himself, most of the time.

When the idiot Tamaki had come up with the idea to attend a commoner's supermarket sale, he found himself crossed over into the completely alien environment that belonged to the working class and in the company of one Haruhi Fujioka. It was almost amusing how much she really wanted to know them for who they were and not for the individual companies they represented. It was almost unheard of in his society but with her, it wasn't surprising at all.

What was surprising was how easily she could see through the barriers he had set up. He hadn't even realized he was sticking up for her until the words slipped out of his mouth, unbidden, even as the expression of the rich and arrogant bastard dropped over his features like a well-worn glove. The unfortunate conman didn't stand a chance.

"You did it because he was so rude to me, right?"

Remarkably knowing expression that reminded him of yet another occasion at a beach house.

"You played the bad guy to teach me, right? I get it. You're being nice."

Nice. Hah. He would have scoffed, if he just wasn't so blown out of his mind. "Nice" was not a word in Ohtori Kyouya's extensive vocabulary. He wanted things and he knew how to get them. Nothing nice about that.

Kyouya began to tread subtly – carefully – around Haruhi Fujioka as if she were a dangerous animal. What was necessary to be known about her, every story from her pre-Ouran days, every trivial like or dislike, every quirk, elucidated in detail to him by an overindulgent father were duly recorded in his laptop files. Every little tidbit of that ever-growing gigabyte of information counted in his continuing struggle to understand this particular phenomenon before him.

She should mean nothing to him, nothing to the notorious Shadow King and he had almost convinced himself of this fact but for yet another impulsive act on his part.

Later he would tell himself that it was only because he was interested in making sure Haruhi Fujioka finished paying her debt. He would even tell himself it was to join the abusing of "BossaNova" Kasanoda, as weak as that argument may seem but the damage was done. He had threatened one of "their class" for the sake of protecting her secret. Incomprehensible.

Putting all that behind him, he relished the idea of one day discovering exactly why Haruhi Fujioka didn't function as a normal human being. A challenge unlike any other and one he relished.

Until the day it slapped him forcibly in the face. Her discontent at the time Tamaki was forced to spend with Miss Éclair irritated him to the point of boiling with anger. He told himself that he was being unreasonable, but he had sincerely (truly an oxymoron for him) thought she was different. A lesson taken from history: when you get too close to the sun, you get burnt… and fall, tumbling to earth, your illusions inevitably destroyed.

The mystery was solved. She was human after all. He had won this game, as he always won every game. She wasn't different after all. There was no reason for her to stay. He had known she would never be able to pay off all that money. There were only a little over a thousand girls in the school anyways. Her debt was "repaid" or so he told her. She could get out of his life now, and he told himself firmly that he was only disappointed that she wasn't all he had thought her to be… not that she was upset over Tamaki and the lovely Miss Éclair.

She actually stood up and told his father off. Told his multi-millionaire, indubitably powerful father off. It was something he had never seen done even a single time in his seventeen years. Kyouya Ohtori had never been floored so completely and by a commoner girl at that. Her audacity was his motivation to excel above his own standards, to relinquish the dream he had harbored for years, the very one that he had known he was within reach of not two months ago. After all, collecting money was a simple matter for him. But an as-of-yet unsolvable puzzle, a veritable Rubik's cube that had thrown him for a loop… The world is indeed coming to an end… isn't it?

The Ouran High School Host Club continues, functioning for those of the upper class who have time on their hands, functioning with all seven of their members, six boys and one, gender-oblivious girl. Everything was back in place, but with one distinct difference. The mindsets of the club members are completely reformed.

Take, for example, if you decided to ask Kyouya Ohtori-senpai if he wasn't a little fonder of the scholarship student than he let on, he would look at you as if you'd finally said something worth considering and give you his trademark vague smile,

"Do you mean Haruhi? That's a very interesting theory."

…perhaps the sweet tartness of a strawberry matches the burning coldness of ice after all…