Tamaki-sempai,

When they ask what I have done with you, I shall say I remembered. I suppose you believe in such things, as the need for people to understand people, for language and money pass hands but remain such a distinct part of us. We are well springs of need, connection, and comfort. What money cannot buy language can earn. You called me poor in this life, but I am rich in words. I am rich in the knowing of one meaning, the hidden body of another. I can ruin you with words, I can take you’re wealth as mine. What is the lessening of one’s self? The loss of language, money can be earned, but language—I remember the smooth way you talked, the harsh “aah” when you were mad, the smooth “ee” when you thought you understood. You once were ring master and dramatist, bard to our small band of brothers. You could woo a woman with a look, but when you spoke she melted. You do not use language like that anymore, I am certain, for Kyoya comes how restless and upset when you meet, Kaoru cannot speak of you fondly. I have not heard you speak in years, for if you still held the King within you he would have burst out long ago. I wonder if perhaps I have him now, in memory perhaps, in youth for certain.

I feel like Thucydides, looking for the right history, precise, taken from fact and not fiction, the undisputed facts. We learned much in Ouran, from the time of instigation, from the moment we fell in love with the pink marble and the men with the degrees we envied. We learned from York-sensei the way the world will fall apart without upstanding men like you. How women must be soft and gentle, I remember the way Emi-sempai would faint into your arms when you spoke of the Aphrodite in her eyes, the muse in her lips, the way the Greek landscape could never compare to her, to her clear eyes, so like the waters of some sultry ecstasy. We were lost in wonder of you, Tamaki King of Hosts, King of Lies. I remember each gentle look they gave you, because I tried to remember them, cultivate their secrets. I could separate the lust from the lies, the love from the lust, and so on, and so on.

Renge mastered the look of desire, the lost puppy look; she looked upon you and lost herself in the story. The King of Lies here to sweep the girl off her feet, such truth such wondrous truth. And then there was the Princess, who scorned me and loved you. You stood beside me when she threw my things into the pond, and I loved your for that, loved that you rolled up pants, and on bare feet walked the wet path with me. I had lost my money; you had lost your mind. Do not think I have forgotten the truth of it, the truth of what you did for me, welcoming me. You are responsible for all this. All the lies you told me, the greatest of them your affection for your friends. You never cared, or perhaps you are changed, like a pair of shoes when worn through the sole. You have worn one pair and need another. France must look beautiful with your skin tone, pale, frigid, ice, your skin is softer in the night, is softer under a lover’s hands.

But you must have moved on to her. Must have, I know for certain you will laugh when I send this, will laugh when I have written my history, the only history I will ever think to write. The history of so few and so great as the boys I once called my own. And those looks those girls gave you, the look a woman gives a man; they reminded me of how my father looks at my mother’s image, worship. It was pure worship. They were lost in lust and love with you. And that is true if memory serves, you worshipped yourself Narcissus. Suppose then I am your Echo. Much as history is an echo, or better put memory.

So, by the looking glass, by your wilting flower form, I write. I am writing from memory, to memory, your memory, for memory. Address this to the child that lives in Tamaki, the King of Liars. The Prince in you must remember me, the pauper you put up with. I have walked hallways just behind you, your long legs taking you faster from me, your ego and beauty unmatched, skilled as you were you earned the right to embellish your life. And this ability to lie, well I have learned from that, I can change my ways the moment the wind adjusts. I can lie like you lied, to gain my good and desperate trophy. I do not remember us ever speaking on the future. You knew I was common. I wanted a common world, to be a lawyer, a sainted path you laughed at. Why not marry, you wanted to know, let a man take care of you, or divorce him for wealth of your own. Wait until he dies, wait until he is old and lock him out of the world simple as that. But I had dreams, some of you, some of my mother, some of my own. I did become a lawyer, I did lose it, and I did become worldly. I did become more than my common roots. They say I am worthy, the ones I help. But what do you say?

I remember a year after your touch became cold memory. You left with her. I followed and fell into the river. You fell after me, and took me to safety, put me in Kyoya’s arms and went with her. Told him to take care of me, and he is, and he will. And yes, so you wrote me once, to tell me of your wedding. It was two years after your touch was so cold to my memory. Éclair and Tamaki, the names never really fit. Like you were ordering dessert, her name rolls of the tongue like whipped crème and your name, when you say it gently is kind and interesting, but when your breathe becomes harsh and your eyes are rimmed in red, it is an ugly thing. “Ta-MAH-KI! Tah-MAK-II!” Like a disease that one will never cure, like the bad temper of a father, like the darkest cloud on your birthday. I think it ugly now. I think it a dead animal sewn over my heart. It tastes of ashes, a kind of mourning.

The wedding, no shock, no date, just the promise of a union I know you could not want. I think you must have travelled. Kaoru saw you once at the beach. No ring, on your finger or Éclair’s. You put it off, you were never a creature who dallied, or waited. Always instant, always there, like some form of puppy, eager to play. Eager for attention, never thinking things through, no that is not our Tamaki. But still you are not mine anymore. But the last letter, we shall wed, in March, how divine and opportune, children then, unhappy children then who live with unhappy parents, or nannies who never remember to love them enough. Into perspective this letter had exhaled a deep breath. Had it, it has been so long ago that I loved you, it was long ago… twice the time knowing you. Now as I write this it’s been six years since Ouran. Six years since we entered into the deal; pay, or lose everything. You said I deserved everything I got, from the jewelry you gave me to the presents of money you sent me later.

For my daughter, you said in beautiful script, what I owe you in service. You write like a woman. I remember we teased you about that, your penwomanship. How strange is this, to learn so late after the fact what you must have felt for me? I am not sure why you do this. I have given up on you so long ago. Kyoya has a way of bringing things up when you least want to hear them, the bastard mystifies me sometimes. He can be so blunt, but know so many secrets. I suppose he knows when to strike, he would have made a terrifying warlord. Gu would have turned down the sheets on his bed, and Enlai would have made him captain of captains. Mao would have loved him like a son, a brother, an enemy to watch and wait upon. So you see I listen to history and remember. I know how to try a man and how to try and woman. I know how to get a murderer off with a slap on the wrist. I know I am a sinner. I know I am a saint. I know not why you do what you do, just that you have always been too deep a thirst for me to quench; I know I shall thirst for you all the days of my life.

I never really knew you had lied that day, about the vase. Kyoya told me about it later, that you saved all the money I made for me, that somehow you knew, from your father, from the school records, that I was in need. You were the one who argued to let me in, the pretty girl in the picture, the smart commoner. You thought I never knew this, that your father and you had plans for me before I even entered into the school. You knew of my mother, and you had heard of my dreams, I wrote about them in an essay to the school; I want to follow in my mother’s footsteps, to become a lawyer.

Honorable, you would have said to him, and think of all the school could get. We might have a talented lawyer, someone who knows how to work hard. And she is pretty, good for publicity. When I knocked over the vase, you thought the lie up, and made Kyoya blame me. It was no grant treasure, it was a replica, the other sold away for some contribution. I think Kyoya knew deep down you were weak like that, you thought that I might do your friends some good. The whole world needs to be blissful, even if you aren’t.

How amusing, the poor. How amusing the need to be kind to the poor, the desolate, the needy. Perhaps you thought I might refresh your life. Perhaps you thought I would be in awe of you. That I would fall to your feet and become some servant to the high and mighty Tamaki-sempai, and I know you wanted me even then. You blushed. You are a host and you dare blush. That is when you knew I must stay. Part of you knew we would lives and stars. I think I am jumping ahead of myself. Kyoya will give this to you, tell you to read it in private, and after that we will … cease I suppose. We call it closure; you might call it finished business. The law firm is doing well. The past is in the past, and you are whole without me, or think you are. I do not beg; Kyoya likes me to beg him for such favors. And for you I have, I have begged and promised so many things to the man we called the Shadow King. If I cannot have the king, perhaps I will have his shadow. His best friend… did you leave because of that?

You lied to me, this is the truth. I have known this for awhile. I know that you don’t want to live like this, separate from everyone. But then where have we come to? We are half the Host Club, most are lost, most are gone, most are unhappy. Some part of me wants to demand so many things of you. To come to you and say such evil common things… I do want it. I want you to say it with me; I want you to die with the memory. And if that is hard to wrap around your pinky, and then say to me, I do not want to die, not yet. Not young and stubborn. But if you say it, Lord mean it. King of liars, mean it. Mean you have grown farther than I can grown and that you love her, dammit please love her. For my sake, you have to love her.

I want you to mean it, the line: I hate to say this, my dear; I hate it to end this way. Hate it! Mean it. That you want me to drop away, free fall from tree to tree and then meet thin air. I want to mean it, the bitter teary part; I want you to die. And I do, but in such a simple way, like a vampire, I want you to die where the heart dies, where the breathe ceases to function, where lung and lips gasp and dry, and then the Great nothing. I want you to want me, in those last moments you will become me, belong with me. And I will look in mine own eyes, in the reflection of polished marble and tradition, in the mahogany of a casket and a heart, and see, the face and eyes of reason. There is no reason for you to not want me, not when I made you laugh, and cry. I taught you to sit down and draw the world to you and love it, and let it go. Not to store it like a million petty diamonds, but to let it come and go as it pleases. You have forgotten that lesson.

And we are so close to escape, from them and from duty. We would have travelled, Kaoru and Hikaru mistaken for the same man, playing games with the women on the island. We wanted Hawaii, the common, American vacation. I had never been, but had seen movies. I wanted Hawaii. And I would have let you pay, let Honey eat cakes with me, and pretend to be so young and innocent. Mori would have taught me to play sand volleyball. He would have run with me in the mornings, I still do that, run until the wind blisters my eyes shut and the tears stay in. We would have run across the sand and tangled limbs in the waves; he would have attacked me, taught me to fight like a dog when cornered. HE was fierce like that, mean and determined I never be pushed around again. He would have taken me back to you around noon, when the sun is hot and you would awaken. You never liked when I woke and left you, but would you have noticed. No, you don’t miss me now, and so I imagine it was only a selfish desire to own me that led you to protest the absence of me. Mori and Honey would have played in the sand while we walked through the town. You would have tried to buy my love with trinkets.

I would want only the shells to send home to my father, who would string them and wear them to work. Hikaru would have been waiting for me, when I went down to the store to look by myself and he would steal me away, Kaoru close at his side. He would have lured me into playing stupid tricks on the world. I would be his fiancé, and Kaoru would have seen us and—the lie would have been exposed. Rich people and their soaps, we would have argued and left. They would remember me as the strange girl with too many men beside her. I would have let my hair grown by then. And it would be harder to wash without you there. Without you beside me in the shower, and it is strange to still have it so long and to shower alone. Kyoya sometimes asks if I want him… but never like that. It is your memory or nothing. Kaoru sometimes enters, and I will not stop him. He brings a memory too, and it is of Hikaru. They were men together, boys together, and now. Lord the mess of our world.

Remember Kyoya’s speech. May your woes be bitter enough that you will take happiness when it comes? May love be hard, because we have worked too hard to give up on our spirit?

It was strange. Something you would have said. But I remember the gist of it, the gist of the boy you had been. You said, in the end, that we would have been men and women ready to take on the world. We were children when we came there, to Ouran, dolls and iron soldiers, toys for our parents. Fickle lad, that’s what you said, with your eyes glowing.

“We rich bastards are the toys of our riches; they buy us nothing but unhappiness.” I wanted to take back what I had said, that you would never understand the needs of the poor. You made it a game, the commoner ways. Let us play this, we are exploring like commoners, we are dancing like commoners, we are kissing in common ways. Like rich bastards could kiss with the freedom of the poor. We common people know how to let go. I was so angry. I suppose you never really knew how much hate and thunder was in me, how I stormed and strode through this world. I seemed happy. I was lying to myself.

And you told me you wished to be poor. To be poor for one day, to let yourself need. I said it was not possible, you would not give up travel and thousand thread counts, and yet you wanted to need. I laughed at that.

But you said, no… to be poor in the soul, and rich in the world, to understand religion is not a science of delusion, but a hopeful acceptance of not having control. Money, you had so much money, and looks and fear.

I remember seeing you for the first time, roses in your hands, eyes the color of violets. It is not as simple as we tell it, the way we glided into the others life. It was never as simple as “yes” and “no” and “come along now.” It was never as master and servant, or as brother and sister that we loved and listened to the other. There was something attractive about you. You called me a virgin when no one was listening, and goaded me into admitting the body was the last frontier. You tempted me, and told me to kneel before you. I told you to shove it up your ass.

The rest thought me proper; the twins knew for the most part how dark and angry I was with my mother dead, my father gone in his strange ways. They understood they were two people in the same body, unable to exist without the other but needing to exist alone, solitary. Lost. They needed me because I could tell them apart. They needed me because I demanded personality, difference, truth. Kaoru needed silence, he needed me to listen to his silence and understand. Hikaru needed me to yell at him, to scream and hit and scratch. He would kiss me sometimes, fierce on the mouth and push me up against the wall. He told me he wished he could love me. I knew he wanted to die. He could not live without Kaoru, and Kaoru could not live with a living reflection of himself. The balance shifted and fell. They were young and in love with distance, and hurt and pain. They said their mother never loved them, not as more than a set pair, as more than a matching set of fine dogs. I was young and like the way they owned me.

You would think that I was mousy. You said that once. You were mean boys. I liked that. You pretended and loved each other, but in the end you were mean and always right. You knew wealth is truth, power trumps honor. But you pretended so prettily. I was the poppet. I was the experiment, your desperation for anything that wasn’t a game. But you learned even the poor have appetites and games, even the rat knows how to enter the cage and leave at will. I knew how to walk among you and to walk away. You hated me for that. And so you owned me, for the reason alone, that you knew I was playing. The rest, among the rest I think only Honey and Mori were honest with each other, master and servant, protector and protected, general to soldier. Mori was tall and handsome and silent. He was like me, he knew the games and tried to stay away, but could not. He followed the only one who loved him. I think if Honey knew how unnatural Mori felt next to him, how tall and awkward, how in love with the childish side of him, then he might have stayed with us longer, and not have left for the world and the fates. I haven’t heard from Mori since and doubt he still—

You don’t remember that day do you? Honey was worthless that day. We all said so; he had a cold, and was so small. I think Mori could have taken them, cold and all. But Mori was stronger, a pack mule in that world. He had riches, but a nice corral does not make a purebred. I learned this too. His clan was one of service. I think that he knew this as well. He kissed me too; I think you all used me once or twice, to goad into affection. Mori was the one who was honest. We never went that far. He kissed me and turned away. I was no Honey. He was not you.

But that day, September 13th, a Friday oddly enough, unlucky day… Honey was sick, sick and losing grips with reality. Chika had died you know, earlier. Something with the heart. And so it was no ruse or lie that Honey would hurt for him. They battled long into life, and so without that, perhaps Honey had lost his fight. Perhaps he had grown human. Perhaps being cute and little and happy all the time made him believe in make believe. I doubt he saw them coming. Mori was with me that day. He remembered I was crying before I left the Host Club and he followed me. Honey had released him from service. Honey had broken his heart.

I know only that his body was broken. I followed Mori to the hospital. Seven men from some damaged clan had followed Honey out of school and into some dark alley. Mori said he must have been looking for my house. But the rich have no sense of time and alleys and the poor rise up around them dangerously. Perhaps they wanted money, perhaps they wanted honor back—though his death could never be called honorable. He did not fight back. He could have, Mori said, but he… Mori knew he didn’t.

You must wonder why I say all this. I say it because I want you to know I remember you all so vividly, even six years late, even as drawn and lonely as I am. You made me want to live, and now you make me want to die. Mori wanted to die. I know how he feels. I wish he were beside me, and then I could tell him, yes sempai, I know now. I know. Damn it.

I have become something fierce they say something unmatched in hate and assurance. You sent money, and so I have influence now. I have something to gloat over. I have something to save people with. I do not have to worry. But I do. Money is nothing without something to do with it, and I have nothing to do, nothing to share, no one to love. To think he was fifteen, when he died. To think he was alive and then he wasn’t. To think… and then to not, to not know, to not feel, to not be aware.

Honey was the only one of you who was honest. And he was the only one who lied. He was not happy, not carefree, and not content to eat cake and be merry. Antoinette he was not, he was generous and patient and he loved me like a brother does a sister. He was the only one to kiss my cheek, the only one to hold my hand. The only one I imagine who could have lived with being like me, who could have been happy poor as long as there was love and cake.

I don’t even know what he planned to do with his life. I know he wanted to kill something inside him. The need to fight seemed at such odds with him. He seemed to want something to cling to. Chika was his only true family. The rest were soldiers to the riches. They fought for some stinking honor, some lost cause. To never die, to have a body that was always strong, to never grow weak. It must have killed Honey… it must have hurt him to love the sweetness in life and have to hurt those he loved. Remember the day I first met Chika, he came into the club fighting. Mori said that Honey would let Chika win, when they battled for honor, over sweets of all things. Children arguing about sweets, how silly that family could come to that.

We thought Honey would let the boy win, would give up cake. But the truth was we thought Honey was willing to sacrifice himself for anyone. That Chika would have earned something, some right to win, over his brother. But the truth is Chika won nothing that day because Honey had nothing to lose but cake, had nothing left but cake. Cake and that damn bunny. How sad, that despite us, despite Mori, the only thing Honey had in life was cake. Nothing mattered more. Because, Honey knew, and perhaps we never should have let him live like he did, Honey knew that people you love die. He could not comprehend that the sweet things could become sour.

Mori told me this strange thing, after Honey died, “Honey wanted you to know, you can have Usa-chan, because Usa-chan and you are the same.” I didn’t know what he meant, I didn’t. I think I do now, and I still have the rabbit, stained as he is with frosting and jelly. I eat cake with him, if I eat cake at all. Sometimes it is so dry in my mouth I can’t breathe. The rabbit is worn. The rabbit is glassy eyes. I have the same eyes as that rabbit; they are filled with nothing but the light of the world around them, waiting for someone else to pull a personality from them. It serves a function. I wanted to be a lawyer, so I studied, and served a function. You wanted me to be something alive, so I was. And now the toy still holds the stains of the master, and no one to understand the games it once played. It’s not the same newness, the same life as before. Perhaps that is what he meant; I was your Usa-chan.

Kaoru still calls me. When he comes over we make do and we make love. Then he leaves. I think perhaps Hikaru had the wrong of it. Kaoru wanted to be with him always. Perhaps Hikaru was the selfish one, perhaps not. I will never know. I was not invited to the funeral. I was not told how and why. All I know is Kaoru cries out for him to stop in his sleep. He must have been there, watching. I wish I had that kind of closure, that kind of understanding of the why and the how. Kaoru is daunted and damaged, but he knows everything about Hikaru, and will know more than anyone else. He will never have to fear Hikaru will fall in love and leave him. It was for love he died and for identity, for Kaoru to be free. Perhaps he didn’t know that freedom is common things, consistency and the right to be consistent. The need to be free, the need to break the mold that was Hikaru, not Kaoru for he was different, Kaoru is different. Kaoru loved him, a great brotherly love that went deeper than the host clubs plots for money, it was not romantic or sexual, and it was soul searching and life itself. They came from the same place. They did not live without the other. And now… how do you do that I wonder?

Perhaps you cannot. Perhaps you have to take what you can and run with it. If I asked him to live with me, he would say yes. If I asked him to never return he would say yes. He would live. He would have his wealth, his bodily comfort. The rich live a dead life, dead inside, dead to the common threads of connection. He had that, how can he give it up.

You would scream, I imagine, with laughter or indignity, if I told you Kyoya asked me to marry him. Which he did, and he is waiting for my answer. I told him I would tell him sometime soon. He might charge me you know. This is where I have come to rest, in his arms. Kyoya has always cared for me, because I have always been laced with money and earnings. He made a bundle off me and my natural talent for hosting. And later off some of the legal work I did for him. He says he will give me all I want, a law firm of my own, money to help the poor, allow Kaoru to be my lover should I please. It is a nice deal. He will even buy the bar my father works at, so that he will always have that, always be content. I think he is trying to be you. On some level you always out shown him. You owned the world we inhabited. Your father built the walls, and you were allowed you will within them. Something Kyoya only got when his brothers died. Something only the luck of the draw allowed him. In some ways he feels he owns part of you, part of your testimony to greatness, because of me. Because I hold what you held, you left it to me. I think he wants to own you too.

I want to say yes. Because without you there is nothing left to deny. I loved you and you left me. Some part of me wonders why you are still in my dreams. Do you haunt me for a reason? Do you make me want things I cannot have. I cannot touch you or hold you or make you want me. I cannot understand why I am lost here, why I am lost at all. When we were children, you said you wanted me. Childish as always, wanting toys that no one else could posses. Then you wanted to leave with her, you want to leave me for some great irrational beauty, some rich and famous Helen.

Who am I? I am plain, I dressed like a boy, and I studied and dreamt and studied because of a dream. I was poor and lost and lonely. My father was never there, my mother was dead. And yet you think you are nothing to me, I know you still believe this. I followed you one day, that day you kissed me for the last time. I followed you just to see your path, your intentions, where the rich hearts go and flutter. You met her, Éclair, blonde, pretty Éclair, and she said to the shadows in your eyes, come away with me, I might not be light, but I suffer with you.

And lo you promised her the world. Like she would understand the way you walked and talked is nothing but a faded intention, a child’s broken toy. You were more and less than you pretended to be. You are handsome and lonely. You are rich and poor in strange daunting ways. You said I would never be content in your world. And you would know, for you are unhappy still. Don’t think I have not talked with Kyoya about his meetings with you, about how you never dramatize the world. You have given up. You are ugly in so many ways, ugly enough to leave me for the good of your thorn and briar heart, your name holds you hostage and drags you under. You said yes, because it was easy. And you took her hand and never once saw the brown mouse behind the statue. She did, and she smiled.

I have won. She said in her sneer. But have you seen your face, Kyoya said it is still young and still lost. He said you have lost that smile and sparkle. She has possessed you and lost part of your soul. I wonder if you will ever throw roses into the air and demand the attention of a room. Your eyes, he says, are black. The purple has drained from them. And your hair is yellow, not gold. You dress in grays and answer to Tamaki-san, not Chan or Kun or sempai, or King. He has called you that and you flinched. He has mentioned me and you strain at the neck like some bridled horse.

Why do you think you have to be lost in this world? Come away with me and be poor, poor and in love. I offered you that, once upon a time. And now you have left me money, and memory, and Kyoya has taken me and made me into something new. I think he might know what it is like to be thrown away by the one you want most.

Him by his family.

Me by you.

Haruhi Ootori.