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It had been ... not a week. More than a week. At least two weeks, if he were keeping correct track, and Kyouya Ootori was a professional at keeping track.

He debated for another day or two, before finally deciding to take matters into his own hands, and sent Strawberry a text.



Two soft taps, and it was sent, and he would wait.

It was his habit to be early, and the ongoing soft drizzle pushed him to move faster as well. So it was shortly after the dismissal bell for lunch rang that Kyouya settled on the steps of the tea house, in the back corner of the garden. He opened up his bento and began to pick at it as he waited, the winter weather shrouding the garden in a loose haze.

"It is that," Kyouya agreed. That she hadn't started in on her food hadn't escaped him. He took another bite of his, and chewed thoughtfully, giving her a moment to start.

When that moment looked like it wasn't coming, he set his chopsticks aside for a moment, and looked out at the bridge, slowly being spattered with rain. "Not hungry?"

Kyouya looked quietly amused, though again, her nerves did not escape him. "Busy. But when am I not? And you?" He returned to his lunch, with a sideways glance at her through the frames of his glasses. "You know, that's intended to be food, not sculpture," he said lightly.

If an Ootori ever snorted, he might have. Drama queen, he thought, with mild amusement, and settled for a cool glance over the edge of his glasses. "For what? Avoiding me? You're hardly the first person, and I'm certain you won't be the last, though I'm suspecting the motivation is not any of the usual ones."

He leaned back against one of the pillars supporting the overhang, and studied her. "I suppose I could just let it go, and you could keep on avoiding me, but that strikes me as an inefficient use of your energy, and rather inconvenient at the host club."

"If you really wanted to avoid me, why did you come?" he countered. "You could have made an excuse, but you didn't." Kyouya selected a dumpling from his lunch and chewed thoughtfully, giving himself time to watch her expression.

"Whatever it is, it's bothering you, and somehow it involves me, but you haven't wanted to say anything directly. If I did something that angered you, you'd have already told me, either verbally or physically, so it isn't that." He opened his thermos, steam from his tea slowly rising in the damp air. "So what's so terrible that you don't want to tell me about it?"

Feelings. Always messier than numbers. Kyouya took a sip of his tea to give himself a moment to collect his thoughts. Best to unravel this from back to front, he decided. "So avoiding me is somehow supposed to keep our friendship more secure? That seems counterintuitive," he noted, a gentle reminder that her logic had gotten completely crossed in that regard.

"Why do you think that I wouldn't believe you? You've already said "you can't lie to Kyouya Ootori." If that's your presupposition, don't you think I'd already know if you were?" he pointed out. He wasn't going to argue if her presupposition was true or not; it was beside the point at the moment. "And why do you think I'd be upset if you liked someone else? That would be rather hypocritical on my part, wouldn't it?"

There was a subtle pause, and a quiet flicker of a calculation behind those rimless glasses. "Surely you don't think I invested my time and attention with no expectation of return on my end. It would have been a poor investment on my part if I'd accrued no interest at all," Kyouya pointed out, using her unwitting metaphor to speak in the language he was most comfortable in. It was much easier for him to talk around the feelings, rather than acknowledge them directly. "On the contrary; the reward outweighed the risk. While the eventual results were not necessarily as predicted, I'm still satisfied with the overall investment." I'm glad to have you as a close friend, 'Lana.

He studied her thoughtfully. "So, are things still 'messed up'?" he asked her directly. "Or is there anything else I should be asking you about, aside from the nature of your potential new investment?" A quiet smile curved the corners of his mouth. It wasn't that he hadn't noticed that she'd been oddly preoccupied lately, but he hadn't been fully briefed on the details ...