Unlovable

Chapter Ten

School was over. And Kagami really, really didn't want it to be. She watched her classmates hastily gather their things and hurry out of the room. But she stayed firmly in her seat. She didn't want to leave, not yet. That meant she would have to go home. And then she would have to face her father. She wasn't ready to see him. He hadn't given her enough time to prepare herself and Kagami knew that no matter what her father said to her, she couldn't betray what she felt to him. He saw her emotions as failings and wouldn't hesitate to punish her for showing weakness.

The dread Kagami felt welling up inside of her kept her immobile, even when she noticed the twins walking towards her with determined expressions on their faces. In fact, she was almost relieved to see them. They were probably going to try to convince her to go to that stupid dance and being detained by the twins would be the perfect excuse to remain at school for a little longer. It was cowardly of her, but at that moment Kagami really didn't care.

"Kagami-chan!" Kaoru called in a sing-song voice.

"We came up with a great deal for you!" Hikaru continued.

Both of them looked down at Kagami with gleeful grins as they leaned against her desk. Normally, Kagami would never have risen to the bait. She would simply have told them that she didn't care and walked away. But she was stalling so for once she actually went along with them.

"What kind of deal?" she asked warily.

"Well," Hikaru said, "if you go to the host club's dance this Saturday,"

"We won't bother you for the rest of the week." Kaoru finished.

"So what do you say, will you go?" The twins chimed in unison.

That was tempting. Extremely tempting. Being able to read, or study, in peace for even a couple of days would be heaven. The twins had been bothering her more and more lately and it was really starting to frustrate her. She had wanted to avoid them as much as possible for the three years of high school that they would spend together, but instead she was being constantly bombarded by their presence. That made their offer almost good enough to accept. Almost.

While peace and quiet would be nice, it wasn't enough for her to actually go to the dance. Kagami knew exactly what would happen if she went. No one would talk to her. They would all be too scared to approach her. Instead, they would spend the entire evening sending covert glances her way and Kagami would be left in a corner all by herself. Or even worse, the twins would bother her all night and their jealous fans would spend the evening glaring at her with open hostility. Either way, there was no way Kagami would let herself be talked into going to that dance.

"Sorry." she said. "But there's still no way I'm going to go to that dance."

"We'll convince you somehow." Hikaru grinned.

"Yeah." Kaoru agreed. "We'll think of another way to get you to go."

"Why do you even care so much?" Kagami snapped. "There will be plenty of other people for you to annoy at the dance."

"That's not true." Hikaru said.

"All of the girls in the host club like us too much for us to tease them." Kaoru continued.

"Besides you," Hikaru picked up the conversation, "the only other person we get to play with is Haruhi."

"Without the two of you there . . . " Kaoru said.

"It will be boring!" They finished in unison.

"Seriously?" Kagami raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "You want me there so you won't get bored? Well my time is worth more to me than alleviating your boredom so you're just going to have to find a way to deal with it. Don't bother me again because I'm not changing my mind."