how to love . ootori

iv.

Nagako was sure that if she spent five more seconds in that ballroom, she would have a heart attack.

Not just a heart attack, no, she was fully convinced that she would convulse wildly and foam at the mouth, all out of sheer nervousness for what was to come. For a second, she doubted that she would be able to take a breath into her flute, much less get through an entire song.

But she had been practicing for this all week, because Kyoya had asked her to- and if she couldn't do this now, would she ever find herself able to? She was nearly seventeen, after all, spending all of her time working as a cashier with no extracurricular activities to tie a college over. Her grades were impeccable for a public school student, but she knew that they weren't enough get her out of Tokyo.

And she desperately wanted to get out of Tokyo, away from her sister, mother, and her father's empty bedroom.

The evening of the Cherry Blossom Festival started out simple. Nagako, taking her only free day from work in months, spent both the morning and afternoon rehearsing intensely. Feeling generous and just a bit bad, Kyoya let her choose her own music, and by the end of the week she saw everything in eighteenth notes and quarter rests.

The moment the sun started to set, and the sky turned a stunning shade of both purple and orange, an awfully familiar sleek black car pulled up to her modest household for the third time that week. Considering it was only Wednesday, this was alarming.

But she recognized it, more or less- this was the car that every rich person owned, some luxury model that was equally as unreliable, only running on gas sold at the highest caliber of gas station chains. She didn't even know until now that gas stations could be high quality.

Around this time, seconds after she noticed the car and hastily dismantled her flute, Nagako's phone chimed. She looked at the screen with disdain.

HIKARU HITACHIIN: 2 Missed Calls

HIKARU HITACHIIN

we out here boyz

I just would like you to know that I saw your car the moment it pulled up and that it is physically impossible to call someone twice in that amount of time

Give me like ten seconds

HIKARU HITACHIIN

k :)

She shuffled around nervously, unable to shake the feeling that she may just throw up on the spot. She wiped her palms on her poorly ironed skirt and straightened her blouse, only slightly, before bounding out of her door and into the Hitachiin family car.

"I've never been to a commoner's house before, not even Haruhi's complex." Hikaru said, not bothering with a greeting.

The second thing to come out of his mouth was, "It must not be all that special. I mean, look what she's wearing, Kaoru."

Nagako scowled at his dismissive posture and overall punchable face, huffed, and looked down at her constantly twitching hands. She was unconsciously tapping on her handkerchief, her fingers contorting into terrifyingly complex hand positions the more she thought of her situation. Kaoru sighed.

"Well, guess there's no way around it, we can fix her up when we get there. You're lucky that we expected this from you, Nagako." She vaguely heard Hikaru mumble a generic 'what would you do without us?', but was too intent on her own anger to notice.