seven reasons to fall | hitachiin

Fourth

SHE had been spending a lot of time with Giichi Ito lately, Kaoru noticed. Hikaru had too, of course, but not quite for the same reason as his brother.

Since sixth grade when she magically disappeared without a trace, he couldn't have cared less about Shiori Kuromiya. Aside from a girl him and his brother constantly terrorized and teased, she wasn't anymore than a chip in the wall built between them and other people.

Even if she could, somehow, tell them apart, she was nothing like Haruhi Fujioka, so for the most part he'd been just fine leaving her alone. It was no difference from when she came back to when she left, until, suddenly, she was the only girl his brother would talk about.

It started as a small comment on a rainy day that wasn't quite thundering, but the downpour was enough for class 1-A to always hear the constant sound of water on windows: a faint tinkle of drops that only got louder whenever the wind rustled the leaves.

Shiori came to class mere minutes late and a sopping mess in her yellow uniform. The rain had taken a toll on her body and she was shivering mercilessly, with an intrigued class looking on, desperate to hear her excuse this time.

"I walked." Were the only two words she would give, at first. When she was questioned more by her classmates rather than her homeroom teacher, her face was dusted with a faint pink when she admitted: "It was just too scary to drive in this weather."

Gradually, the girl was becoming back to normal, like ice thawing on a particularly warm day in winter. He could tell by the way she'd giggle along with her classmates, even though she didn't find her eccentricities all that funny at all.

Kaoru, on the other hand, was getting weirder by the minute.

It took one look at Shiori to notice that she was still shaking like a chihuahua, even if she'd sat down minutes before without saying a thing. And it was obvious, of course, that she was cold, but even then no one could be bothered to mind. Not even her.

But Kaoru, the saint that he was, furrowed his brow and leaned over, just a bit, to whisper in his brother's ear:

"Should I give her my jacket?"

Incredulous, Hikaru wasted no time in whipping his head in her direction, then back to him. "Why would you?" He didn't bother whispering, and spoke freely despite the hushed atmosphere.

"I don't know," Kaoru, still mumbling, admitted shyly. "It's just, you know, she's cold and we're a part of the Host Club--"

"We're not on duty." He reminded.

"Yeah, but still. Wouldn't boss have an aneurysm if I did, though?" He leaned back in his chair, hands tucked comfortably behind his head to appear nonchalant in attempt to appease Hikaru, but in reality was fooling everyone but him.

So he shrugged, trying to be as impassive as he could (despite the fact that his brother was doing the one thing he'd never done to him before: lie through his teeth), and said "Do what you want."

And he did. He threw a note to Shiori, asking her to hang back after class, and wordlessly tossed his uniform blazer over her shoulders. She tried to refuse, of course, and at his insistence wore it on her way to the nurse's office to get a spare uniform.

It was returned later that day, along with a note that said something along the lines of:

Thank you! I was cold but trying to hide it. Guess I was too obvious! I washed it with the school machines because it was a little damp.

Shiori

And Kaoru, instead of trashing the note immediately, stuffed it in his pocket- something he'd been doing quite often with random slips of paper.