"Birthday-ruiner!"
My young mistress was quietly brooding on her seventeenth birthday about unreturned calls from friends. I reminded her earlier that night that she would have at least a hundred more, possibly even ten centuries of life. Birthdays would one day become insignificant. Time would not be an unbreakable chain, whose links grew heavier as she pulled it behind her in a human existence. She needed not to believe in heaven or hell, or fear any ends. The universe was for her making and unmaking, wrinkling and smoothing out the grand fabric that made stars out of space dust in its vast darkness, from the dust that all life arose from.
"That sounds… wonderful, Yue," she had replied. It had not been enough. Sakura decided to take a bath in the middle of the night as if to rinse off the pang of my words, which clung to her shifting thoughts of people to future and to the now.
Were my words spiked, fanged or razor-edged with a mysterious malice that manifested in others' ears? Raw honesty was a virtue nobody appreciated.
""Just get her a card!" Kero hissed, motioning at his own paw-drawn version of one on a crisp sheet of white construction paper.
"Keroberos, what is this?"
He jumped onto his little hind legs, stubby and golden, screaming vehemently. "It's you! Can't you recognize your own ugly mean look?"
I looked at it once more, as an earlier casual glance missed the haggard wings and my shoddy armor. Other things were alarmingly amiss. "This card is terrible. You drew me cross-eyed and this isn't even the right blue. I hope it's only your first attempt." Those sentences were unarguably teethed.
He lifted the card to my face, scratched his nonexistent beard, as if he were some renaissance painter plotting his next stroke. "Looks one-hundred-and-fifty percent right to me!" Keroberos laughed, holding his tiny rotund belly, no doubt filled with over-processed foods.
"You're not supposed to laugh at your own jokes, you nitwit." I lifted a clean sheet of paper only to crumple it into a tight ball and smacked him in face with such artful precision. His laughter stopped and his front paws turned into fists. "Good, you've returned to your senses. I was afraid you were going to pop a seam. Your girlfriend Tomoyo isn't here to mend your polyester hide."
Fists shook and a vein protruded from Keroberos' forehead, containing a fiery intensity. The sun burned through his glower at me. "If you're not going to draw something, then you better get her something."
"Let Yukito take care of it when he's done with his thesis," was my retort. Yukito was on his way to earning another degree. My nights were short due to these things humans called college education. I was exhausted and yet here I was, two hours past midnight, spending my limited life on artistic critiques and mastering teenage psychology on my own.
Kero transformed into his true form, a magnificent golden lion, whose beauty was only surpassed by its weight, every massive pound swiftly felt upon my chest.
I hastily agreed to something.
It was a dangerous agreement made in a desperate moment. With incisors pressing against my throat and a raspy tongue lolled on my neck onto my shoulder, I might have agreed to worse.
Worse - could it even be possible?
I agreed to take Sakura Kinomoto on a date.
A date.
Death would have been the wiser choice in hindsight.
I paced in the bedroom, cursing under my breath.
"Is it too late for me to die?"
"Only by me. You are welcome to die of humiliation at any time, brother." On the desk, the sun guardian twisted the orange tip of a bottle of paste and traced the edge of his card to form a milky frame. He jumped into his drawer, rummaging through the many items he impressively contained in the small space. An "Ahah!" and a reappearance with a small shaker filled with gold and silver glitter. He cracked his knuckles and his neck, in the manner that one would imagine a stuffed animal to do so, before vigorously shaking the glitter onto his artwork. It covered the card and much of the desk table with a textured metallic coat. Kero looked at his piece again, making mental notes. His head whipped to where I stood by the windowsill mid-pace to take in his amusing concentration. "Why don't you go pace elsewhere? You're ruining the chi in here. I can't finish with your depressing aura; its stink is scaring away inspiration."
"How am I-?" A buzzing sound interrupted. Our keen ears followed it to the pillow on the bed as it gently shook. We exchanged looks. "I believe she'll be fine on her own."
Kero wings flitted in the air, and he swooped under the pillow to retrieve the source of the vibration. "Idiot, it's her phone," he said, pulling out the small rectangular device into view. On the screen flashed two notifications: '28 New Text Messages. 5 Missed Calls.'
"She left it on silent for class. She must of forgot to turn on the volume afterward." He pawed at the screen, unsuccessfully making much of its digital contents. "It's touchscreen, so I need you to slide across down here. My paws aren't sensitive enough for this."
My index finger grazed the bottom of the screen, where 'slide to unlock' command glimmered. The gesture revealed a home screen with twenty small, colorful squares.
"Touch the one that says 'Messages,'" Kero instructed.
"Should we even be doing this?"
"Don't you want to cheer her up?"
I followed his instructions. 'Syaoran,' 'Tomoyo,' 'Touya,' 'Yukito,' and several other names appeared. Out of curiosity, I tapped the first, 'Syaoran,' and eighteen text lines appeared on the screen. Each message, was held captive in small shadowed white bubbles:
12:00AM – Happy birthday, Sakura! In honor of your 17th year alive - 17 short confessions. You always tell me to express myself more. The 1st: You're beautiful.
12:01AM – Nobody can make people feel as special as you can.
12:02AM – School and the drudgery of classwork was only bearable when I had you to look at.
12:03AM – You're braver and stronger than you look and than you think.
12:04AM – You're also more amazing than you could ever imagine.
12:05AM – I'm lucky to know you, to call you my friend.
12:06AM – You're a better magician than I ever was.
12:07AM – Also a more skilled skater, and video-gamer, among many other things.
12:08AM – Your smile lights up the world, brighter than any of your cards.
12:09AM – You look great in anything, no matter how poofy or colorful the latest Tomoyo couture wear is.
12:10AM – Even when you look like a pink cupcake, you're still cute. I'm very fond of cupcakes.
12:11AM – I don't regret our early spats, because I look back now and laugh at how red your face would get and how stupid I acted.
12:12AM – Then I remember your laugh, how it filled a room with its beautiful energy.
12:13AM – You're the most interesting person I know.
12:14AM – And I wish I can keep learning more about you, so you continue to feel close to me when you're many miles away.
12:15AM – I think about you a lot. The memories of us in Tomoeda are too few and bittersweet. They leave me wanting more, and envying those around you, hoping they know the privilege to be near your starlight.
12:16AM – I miss you more every day.
12:17AM – I'm coming to see you soon… to tell you the 17th message in person.
12:25AM – Call me back when you can.
Kero's eyes skimmed each conversation bubble with fervor that matched mine. "That twerp. Is that the best he can do?" He paced around the phone, the newly acquired fiend in the room. It began buzzing once more with a villainous intensity, greater now in the bare fluorescent light. "We're gonna have to turn the volume back on, but we can buy us some time by not doing it until tomorrow morning. And you're gonna have to ask her out now. It's not a great plan, but it's all I got."
"I have seventeen reasons not to follow through," I said.
Kero puffed his chest and positioned his fists in my face, shifting his weight in the air like a miniature boxer. "I have two right here that say otherwise." I waved the small menace away. "Besides, you're here now and he's not."
True, Syaoran wasn't here, but he would be sooner or later.
I felt a hint of remorse form in the pit of my stomach for the teenage boy my brother openly despised. Touya had expressed concern on several occasions to Yukito about the growing affection between his little green-eyed monster and the brat that threatened to take her away from him.
I only held indifference at the thought. Even when he sought the Clow Cards for himself, Syaoran never posed a real danger. As long as either Sakura and he contained the awkwardness that seemed to arise whenever in my presence, I was unperturbed by their union.
Most of my actions were motivated by two fundamental needs: to protect my little mistress and self-preservation.
My savior was an unlikely prince for the both of us.