Israfel's Digitalis

Ouran Koukou ; not mine.

This is the edited and new version of Elanguescence's Abyssus Abyssum Invocat.

Summary: Post Host-Club. Kaiya is your stereotypical I-hate-everyone workaholic law student. She isn't fighting a war; she's the whole Armageddon. But the monsters under her bed are out to get her and it's all bloodshot eyes and chapped lips and too much coffee in the beginning of the end. OC/Kyouya, Kyouya/Haruhi.

. . .

i.

Vintage black-and-white photographs lined the hallways, attempting to give character to an otherwise boring office. The walls were painted columbine white; the furniture tailor-cut and made with the finest black velvet. Plasma screen TVs and an open bar were the center of the Visitor's room and while the wealthy clientele bore over which (rich and successful) lawyer to choose for their (petty) cases, maids and butlers clad in the purest white attended to their every whim, no matter how stupid it was. The reception area was just as luxurious, with imported cherrywood tables and Macbooks and free Starbucks lattes.

It was a beautiful building run by the equally beautiful rich that catered to even more beautiful rich nymphs and their quixotic, love-sick arm-candy.

And how it made her want to puke all that cups coffee she had downed in the past few hours.

Kaiya Nakamura was not an idiot, but stepping into the Ootori & Company Law Offices was a very moronic move, especially for a sane, level-headed woman like she was. How the Ootoris managed to get into law was beyond her, and how she even had the courage to actually ride a taxi to this place was something she didn't want to think about.

She was twenty-one. She was fresh out of college. And she needed a job that would help her parents pay for the (extremely) expensive law school she was attending.

The road to hell was paved with good intentions. She had, after all, no time to ponder at the 'abandon all hope' sign she saw shining in neon in her labyrinthine mind.

. . .

"And…you are?" The receptionist was foreign, Kaiya noted, probably hired to talk to the English-speaking clients who frequented the place. The blonde struggled with her garbled Japanese, wanting the conversation with the girl who had hair the color of burnt cigarette ashes to end as quickly as possible.

"Nakamura Kaiya. I'm here for an interview with Mr. Ootori." The anxiety was clearly heard in her tone, and Kaiya suddenly wished she hadn't spent all her allowance on coffee that morning.

"Kaiya...Hm…Please wait a moment," the receptionist pronounced her name as 'Kaye-ah.' She then started babbling in English into her microphone.

Kaiya wasn't a very patient person, and too quickly realized that the foreign girl didn't quite care about her appointment. But – out of politeness or out of despair, she would never know – she decided to sit on one of the black sofas, watch the TV screen in front of her and wait a little bit longer.

The TV played some sort of song-jingle in a mixture English and Japanese. It was a commercial, showing Yoshio Ootori and his three sons. He was telling his viewers that they got into the law business to connect the three main types of business – law, medicine and stocks. Or something like that, anyway. Kaiya wasn't really listening.

She just knew that she couldn't lie to herself; she was nervous.

Then the foreign girl called out to her, and told her to take the elevator to the thirty-fifth floor and wait for further instructions. From the receptionist's tone, Kaiya could sense that little miss Chanel wasn't quite ecstatic to send a Japanese face up the lift.

But her apathy won against her anger, so Kaiya Nakamura entered the glass elevator in a false sense of peace. The angel Raphael had finally blew the horn and now it was time for the Apocalypse.

. . .

"He is positively guilty. We have sufficient evidence to have our verdict, your Honor." An icy, steel-edged voice shattered the peace that was slowly enveloping her in a hazy cocoon, "No, there are no other suspects…Yes, sir. No, sir. Hai. Yes, yes, yes. Hai."

It was a Japanese voice; a male Japanese voice. Kaiya wondered if he had been treated rudely by the foreign secretary, too. When she had stepped out of the elevator, she could already hear the cold voice from far away. It made her shudder in all her nervousness.

The hallway was quite long; its pale walls were lined with all sorts of memorabilia and old vintage pictures. She didn't glance at them; for her gaze was locked at the silver door so close to her. She was about to touch the crystalline knob when the man with the gelid voice stopped her.

"Father is in a meeting," he told her curtly, light reflecting onto his glasses, "If you have an appointment with him, please come back tomorrow."

Just her luck. Tomorrow, Kaiya had to pass her (still unfinished) report about a par theid in Africa. She had spent most of the week practicing for the job interview and working (yet another job) in Devereux Academy of Law's library, sorting files and such.

She groaned silently, hoping for some sort of miracle to happen. She needed this job. She hadn't passed for a full scholarship, and therefore still needed to pay a third of the tuition.

"Excuse me," the cold-eyed man told her, before she could run back to the elevator, "Are you, by any chance, either Fujioka Haruhi-san or Nakamura Kaiya-san?"

"…Nakamura Kaiya," she replied cautiously. The bespectacled man was one of Yoshio's sons, she recalled from her memory of the commercial. The youngest one…Kyouya, was it?

He then excused himself to call someone on his phone, "Alexa, you said nobody was coming!" He said – in English; his words full of anger, "Father would not be pleased. She is, in fact, Kaiya and not Kaye!"

"Forgive me," He turned to Kaiya, his dark grey eyes boring into her abyssal ones, "But the receptionist does not understand our native language quite clearly, Nakamura-san."

"It's quite al—"

He cut her off before she could utter another word, "I'm afraid father is running late today. The other person he is also supposed to be interviewing is running late for her appointment as well," he mentioned about the other girl using words that were vaguely laced with some foreign emotion.

"You are free to wait in the Visitor's Lobby, if you wish." Kyouya – she was sure of his name now – told her, cueing the girl to get the hell out of the thirty-fifth floor and wait somewhere else.

She nodded quickly before dashing towards the elevator.

. . .

"How did the interview go?" The text message from her mother read. Kaiya was far too tired to reply, and all she wanted to do was to go home and sleep. A soft sigh escaped her lips as she placed her phone inside her bag.

The interview went well, if Kaiya wanted to lie herself. She was pretty sure that Yoshio Ootori hated her. They seemed to have different views on everything – from innocent and guilty to chocolate versus vanilla. And his son wasn't much help, either. In fact, he made matters worse with his habit of getting into other people's business.

Stupid job.

The taxi ride to her apartment she was renting was noisy and unpleasant; not the best way to get home after an awful job interview. The driver wouldn't stop blabbing about his family problems until they reached her poor excuse of a home. Her parents had moved back to their hometown, Kyoto, leaving their twenty-one-year-old daughter in vibrant, lively Tokyo.

Kaiya loved the city. Kaiya hated the city. Kaiya hated being a law student. Kaiya loved being a law student.

Urgh.

Upon unlocking her very unfurnished apartment, she immediately slumped ungracefully into the lay-z-boy she managed to purchase cheaply in one of her neighbor's garage sales. Her rent was a week due and she still had some students fees left unpaid from last semester, but being the stubborn girl she was, Kaiya Nakamura was too proud to actually use the money her parents had given her over the weekend.

Was she independent or just pretty stupid?

Probably both, but she wouldn't go admitting that to any person she would encounter in life.