Princess Ouran-Chp2

“Welcome to Hitachiin Manor, Haruhi Fujioka-sama.”

Haruhi was caught off guard as the strange man opened the door for her to come out. It was the first time he spoke since they left the village. As she got off tentatively, she found herself standing in front of a huge manor on the mountain outback. There was an enormous wooden warehouse just right beside the manor and a couple of stables for horses, a cattle ranch, and a sheep farm behind it. There are also a number of chickens pecking here and there on the ground that came from the little pen beside the stables. There were servants and maids and errand boys and girls going about their businesses, helping the strange man to unload the rest of the stuff that were taken from her room out of the carriage. At least she knew where she was: carried off from her nice, quaint village to the rich, isolated manor of the famous twin siblings Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin, the one and only Counts in the entire region where she lived.

“Kyouya-san, shall I call the Master?” an errand boy asked while carrying Haruhi’s suitcase of clothes.

“No, Mori. I’ll do it,” the strange man replied, then turned to her and said, “Wait here, Fujioka-sama, while I call the Master.”

Haruhi watched as the strange man called Kyouya left her alone outside and went into the house. She watched as the servants gathered her belongings into the house, forgetting her presence momentarily. Why was she here? What was she doing here? Why was she taken away from her family to be here? Why didn’t her father stop Kyouya from taking her away? Why were the village people standing there doing nothing but watch her leave? Why wasn’t anyone willing to tell her anything? Why was she kept in the dark for so many years, only to find herself in a strange place without knowing head or tail what was going here and with more questions than answers? This was all very confusing for her.

Suddenly she heard a sound. More like a sound made from baby kittens or something. She turned around and saw something peering out from behind a rock. As she came in closer, the thing came into view. It looked like a newborn kitten that has just opened its sparkling blue eyes to the world, looking back at her naughtily.

The only difference it had compared to normal kittens was that it had some sort of film-like transparent wings sticking out of its back.

Haruhi’s eyes lit at the sight of it. It was the strangest oddity she had ever seen! Who had ever thought of a kitten with wings? It’s almost as bizarre as the stuff she read in storybooks! Without thinking, she quickly made a dash towards the rock to try and capture it. It slipped out of her grasp and flew further away from her reach, despite the fact that those wings looked as if it couldn’t support its master’s weight. She gave chase and soon found herself in front of a towering stone entrance. In the middle of that entrance was a symbol, or to be more exact, a stone face that showed features of a hideous cat with piercing evil eyes. If she’d thought any further, she might assume that it looked like the demons described in her storybooks.

The kitten sound brought her back to what she wanted to do in the first place. She quickly followed after the winged kitten which led her deeper into the stone entrance. There were stone walls around her that twisted and turned like a maze, and tall dark trees with its long branches hovered above her head like long, spidery fingers ready to snatch her up and eat her whole, with the dark night sky above her like a gaping mouth. Dead leaves and rocks crunch and crumble at each step she took and the night sounds did not seem very comforting either. Before she knew it, she was deep inside the maze and not knowing where she was anymore, the winged kitten gone out of sight.

“Fujioka-sama, you shouldn’t be in here.”

Haruhi spun round to see Mori, the errand boy, right behind her. Seeing him up close, she could tell that this tall stoic-faced teenage boy was someone who has a mind well beyond his age. With dark grey eyes and black hair, he definitely seemed like someone who had seen more troubles than a man of war. She shifted her gaze towards his wrist. There was a red string tied onto it and the rest of it led towards outside. Mori realized her staring and explained.

“It’s a fail-safe precaution. No one should be in here. This is The Labyrinth. This place has existed even before the manor was built. People who go in often don’t come out. Considered one of the Devil’s Playground.”

“Arigato,” Haruhi replied timidly.

“My name’s Takashi Morinozuka. Everybody else calls me Mori. Pleased to meet you, Fujioka-sama,” Mori said, nodding his head politely. Haruhi reciprocated.

“Can I know…why am I here?”

“Didn’t anyone tell you?” Mori asked in a slightly surprised tone, although his face remained stoic. Haruhi shook her head as a reply. Mori sighed quietly and said, “I suppose that’s what you get when you have Renge-sama to do the matchmaking. She’s just full of surprises. Come, Fujioka-sama, I’ll tell you everything on the way.”

“You can call me Haruhi.”

So, as Mori the errand boy led Haruhi out of the labyrinth with the help of the red string, he told her everything that was going on. It turns out that the Hitachiin brothers had a rather ‘colourful’ past: the twins, who were born three minutes apart, somehow developed feelings to each other and announced to the family that they would not marry anyone else but each other and when their parents decided against it, they apparently disowned themselves from the Hitachiin lineage and moved down to Haruhi’s region to start their own line of Hitachiin-s. Rumour has it that it is possible that before they left the Hitachiin manor back in their hometown, they murdered their parents and sent death threats and blackmails to the rest of the family tree not to look for them, although such rumours have never been confirmed. Both of them tried to have a child of their own and succeeded after 5 years of trying when a gypsy medicine woman gave the younger twin a remedy that allowed him to conceive.

Just when they were celebrating their good fortune, Renge-sama suddenly came to their door with a vision and had made a prediction for the Hitachiin brothers: Kaoru, who was currently with their child, will give birth to a stillborn son unless they were to hurry and match-make and immediately engage him with someone who has the physical and spiritual compatibility with him while he is still pregnant. It was something very unorthodox and out of the ordinary—bizarre, even—but the Hitachiin brothers had wanted a child for years, and although they were not very superstitious, they would not take any chances. They immediately gave the order for Renge-sama to find a suitable daughter-in-law for them, and that was where Haruhi came in.

“You see, Haruhi-sama, you are chosen by Renge-sama because you are compatible with our future Young Master. Our young Master will be born under the constellation of the sun and you are born under the constellation of the moon. A perfect match. At least that’s what she says.”

“Then…why didn’t anyone tell me about something this important?”

“I think maybe they didn’t want to tell you because they thought you weren’t old enough to understand all this. Getting engaged and married in a situation like this, and at your age, is not exactly a walk in the park, I can tell you that.”

Haruhi couldn’t agree more towards this statement.

Soon, they both got out of the labyrinth with Kyouya and his other strange men looking at them in disapproval. Kyouya went forward and took Haruhi by the shoulders.

“I’ll take it from here, Mori. You go make sure that Fujioka-sama’s room is ready.”

“Yes, Kyouya-san,” Mori replied, then turned to Haruhi and nodded courtly with a hint of reassurance before leaving. Haruhi nodded as well and allowed Kyouya to lead into the manor. It was done and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She was no longer Haruhi Fujioka, but the future Young Mistress Haruhi Hitachiin, and she will be living out the rest of her life on the mountains in her new home.

And her new family.

As she walked in with Kyouya to face her fate, the blue-eyed winged kitten perched quietly on the stone entrance and watched.