seven reasons to fall | hitachiin

First

WHEN they were in the Fourth grade, Kaoru Hitachiin saw Shiori Kuromiya get scolded for sneaking a stray cat into her backpack. Him and his brother later tried to drop the animal from the top of a vending machine to see if it would land on all fours.

She punched both of them square in the nose immediately upon finding them, and was sent to the office with her chin up. 

In the Fifth grade, Shiori came to school with a chunk of hair yanked out and a big smile on her face.  The tiny girl both tried and succeeded at keeping a classmate from getting beaten up, which had been the first act of violence in her life. She left school with another lock of blonde missing; an unfortunate result of a haircut the twins had attempted to give her.

She laughed it off and told her parents that the boys were just trying to help. Except, they definitely weren't trying to help.

In the Sixth grade, she carried a small porcelain doll around with her at all times, and broke out into pitiful sniffles when he and Hikaru stole it to play a game of catch. To this day, they never quite understood why.

But by the time they arrived at the Seventh grade, Shiori Kuromiya disappeared without saying goodbye. To him, to his brother, or to anyone else. It was hard not to care, but neither of them had ever said they did. 

Hikaru could tell that some part of his brother assumed it was their fault. Some part of him knew that it probably was. But neither of them could face the fact that Shiori was truly gone, and that it had to do with something much bigger than themselves. 

They cared for two weeks, until they found much nastier things to invest their time in.

Nastier things, like making their lives only revolve around one another; shutting anyone else out in a way only they could manage. And if Shiori thought they were bad before, she was nothing but lucky that she wouldn't have to face them in those next few years.

She was gone for three years and two days, but who was counting?

Shiori was counting, and if she was in Yokohama, she still would be. Like tick marks on a prison wall, Shiori longed for the day she would come back to Ouran. To Bunkyō. To her sister.

But Ouran, just like everything else she remembered, had changed. The girl found this out on her first day of High School (which was the second for everyone else) when she looked at herself in the mirror, clad in a gorgeous yellow uniform that didn't fit her quite right, which in itself made the garment considerably less gorgeous.

Ouran changed in the way her sister, Chiharu, wasn't with her, in the way that there wasn't a porcelain doll in her hands nor a stray cat in her backpack. And, honestly? It felt awfully lonely walking those halls, even with the buzzing murmurs of others around her.

Her first day was a nightmare.

Whenever she took a look down the cascading halls. Shiori felt like she would throw up; the dizziness enveloping her until she felt like she would melt. It was similar to her first days in Kanagauda Gakuen, which was a mere 17 miles away but felt so, so much farther. Her school in Yokohama was nowhere near as large as Ouran Academy, but no matter the size, she couldn't shake the sickening feeling of being new.

Surprisingly, she was admitted into class 1-A*, and was relieved to find that she did not have to introduce herself to the class. Everyone knew everyone here, even Shiori.

And truthfully, nothing outstandingly terrible happened on that first day of hers. Even if it had, she still would have felt the same way about the school regardless: it was terrifying, so much more than it was when they were younger.

She drove home alone that day, in her own car, and was up against her old, empty room that still had bunk beds set up.

It was on her third day that Shiori's otherworldly kindness piqued the interest of Ouran's student council (who, frankly, had nowhere near enough influence compared to other clubs around campus). Giichi Ito, the student council president, approached her with such stunning grace and a smile that she couldn't possibly say no to.

She believed his exact words were, "Hey, you look young and impressionable enough to be this year's Fundraising Officer."

And the girl, absolutely elated, had her response down to a 'T', starting with, "That would be awesome!" So they smiled, and so it happened, and that was how things worked at Ouran. For a moment, she let herself be happy.

Shiori didn't notice that the twins were in her class until her second week, and that was when the school began to grow terrifying all over again.

She was able to handle them for a bit, because they both suddenly became attracted to Haruhi Fujioka, an honor student who declined an invitation to student council and instead let his loyalties lie in Ouran's Host Club. Allegedly, Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin belonged to them, too, but she was too stunned by disbelief  to see for herself.

Now, even as the only people Shiori had ever punched in her life, she could pride herself on not hating anyone. The girl's family owned a string of retirement homes, and being constantly bombarded by senior citizens (even the crazy ones) left her in such a loving state that she couldn't bear to subject people to the paranoia of being hated-- although she had this same feeling herself.

This was, undoubtedly, because of the Hitachiins, who had tormented her as equally as they had anyone else. Who had hated her as much as they hated everyone else. And being born and bred not to hate, to tell anyone she could the good of being good, the feeling was always going to be unfamiliar. So, she couldn't let herself hate them.

But when she reached out to them years earlier, it proved to be her first mistake, because it led to the twins getting punched in the nose and hating her almost immediately after.

THEY almost didn't recognize her when she got back. It had been a good five years since she had sworn off haircuts, and a solid three since she had left the two of them in the dust, like they hadn't spent a good portion of their time together trying to grab her attention.

The way she walked was a drastic change from the sixth grade, when she used to be clumsy and bumbling, and yet so much more herself. Now, the way her shoes clacked on the ground was as hollow and scared as she seemed.

She was so unlike herself; how else were they supposed to recognize her? How could it have been their fault that she was so unfamiliar?

It was almost as if she was a shell of who she was before, as if years at a boarding school changed her to be hollow. Both were under the assumption that, while sensitive, the girl was rather okay before.

Shiori Kuromiya was always polite, even when her fist was colliding with someone's nose. She carried herself high back then, not because she was scared, but because she wasn't alone. But when she came back to Ouran, she drove herself. She didn't show a trace of 'I-slept-on-the-bottom-bunk-in-an-empty-room' the next day. She didn't smile much, either.

No, Kaoru Hitachiin, who recognized her before his brother had, only knew Shiori was herself by the things she said.

It was hard, they knew, for her to stomach her fear and walk up to them, all smiles, and say, "Kaoru and Hikaru, I like your haircuts."

It was hard for her, but it was pleasant for them. Pleasant, mainly, because with each name Shiori said, she looked the right person in the eye.

❅

hey so, shiori??? ya, the light of my life

* so in bisco hatori's manga, classes were ranked by nobility/business/honor student importance instead of placement tests or last names, and i thought that'd be kind of interesting to include!

[minor edits on 10.23.19!]