The invitation had arrived in the morning. His little sister was finally going to go through with it – she was going to marry The Brat and start a family of her own… in China.
He'd finally lost.
The ceremony was beautiful and had (of course) been jointly organized by Tomoyo and Meilin. Sakura had a grand total of five wedding dresses; and if the wedding guests were dazed by all the flashing cameras, the bride and groom were half blind.
There was an air of celebration around the party that went beyond the bright lights and festive colours; perhaps aided by the subtle touch of magic. Everybody seemed to be having a grand time. There were smiles all around – with one prominent exception. Touya had brought along his own little raincloud and was nursing his drink in a dark corner. His glare had lost some of its intensity (due to the massive amounts of alcohol in his system) but his aura continued to radiate hostility.
"Or else what? What can you possibly do? Face it, you barely matter anymore"
And damn it all if The Brat wasn't right. Sakura had no use for me anymore, dad was finally free to travel and it was time for me to get on with my own life.
Except I didn't know how.
How to cope with the loss of everybody close to me, how to cope with losing my purpose, how to cope with suddenly being very alone.
Things seemed so much more alive around Sakura. He knew some of it was magic but he had no way of knowing anymore. She had always been special and he had always found a special place in her life. Had. Past tense.
Tsukishiro-san was somewhere out there and so was Kaho. Large portions of food seemed to be mysteriously disappearing from the dessert table so the stuffed toy had to be buzzing around here somewhere. He'd successfully managed to avoid Akizuki so far, but it would be too much for his luck to last through the night.
That empty smile with Yue's eyes hovered just beyond his field of vision. The constant ache within seemed to magnify whenever he was close and try as he might, ignoring his presence was impossible.
He wondered sometimes if Yue didn't enjoy tormenting him like this.
"There was no need for him anymore. I will be travelling with the mistress and shall not be required to maintain a human identity within the Li compound."
In the light of the full moon, Yue could not have appeared more unearthly beautiful and farther from human. Those eyes…
"If needed, altering my appearance is fairly simple and I will be able to maintain the guise of a human for sufficient amounts of time. Yukito has served me well but I see no reason to expend energy in preserving the personality and memories of what is, essentially, nothing more than a shell."
Those eyes held nothing of the closest and dearest friend I would ever have.