Do You Want A Book?
By isabellegiv
Disclaimer: I do not own the plot nor the characters in this story. The plot is from a story by Tennessee Williams. And the characters are from Cardcaptor Sakura owned by Clamp.
I hope you like this story; it touched me when I read it. I just used the character from CCS to substitute the characters from the original story. By the way the original story's title is "Something By Tolstoy" (To add to your knowledge Tolstoy is an author)
Forgetfulness can sometimes be very painful and tragic. Consider this story as a reminder to not forget love. (A one chapter story, a short story)
Sakura Kinomoto, a shy Japanese high school graduate, had a father named Fujitaka who owned a bookstore. Mr. Kinomoto wanted his daughter to go to college. Sakura, on the other hand, desired nothing, but to marry Syaoran Li, her childhood sweetheart --- a Chinese boy as effusive and energetic.
A couple of months after young Sakura went to college; her father fell ill and died. The daughter returned home, buried her father, and married her love. Then the couple moved into the apartment above the bookstore, and Sakura took over its management.
The life of books fit her perfectly, but it cramped him. He longed for more adventure --- and he found it, he thought, when he met an agent who praised his talent and enticed him to tour Europe with a vaudeville company.
Sakura was devastated. At their parting, she reached into her pocket and handed him the key to the front door of the bookstore. "You had better keep this," she told him, "because you will want it some day. Your love is not so much less than mine that you can get away from it. You will come back sometime, and I will be waiting."
He kissed her and left. To escape the pain she felt, Sakura withdrew deep into her bookstore and took to reading as someone else might have taken to drink. She spoke a little, did little, and, most times, could be found at a large desk near the rear of the shop, immersed in her books while she waited for her love to return.
Nearly fifteen years after they parted, at Christmastime, he did return. But when Sakura rose from her reading desk that had been her place of escape for all that time, she did not take the love of her life for more than an ordinary customer.
"Do you want a book?" she asked
Li was startled that Sakura didn't recognize him at all.
But he took hold of himself and replied, "I want a book, but somehow I've forgotten its title."
Then, he told him a story of childhood sweethearts. A story of a newly-married couple who lived in an apartment above a bookstore. A story of a young, ambitious husband who left to seek a career, who enjoyed great success, but could never relinquish the key his wife gave him when they parted. He told her the story he thought would bring her to herself.
Her face, however, showed no sign of recognition. Gradually, he realized that she had lost touch with her heart's desire, that she no longer knew the purpose of her waiting and grieving, that now all she remembered was the waiting and grieving itself.
"You remember it… you must remember it --- the story of Syaoran and Sakura?" said Syaoran.
After a long, bewildered pause, she said, "There is something familiar about the story, I think I have read it somewhere. It comes to me that it is something by Tolstoy (an author)."
Dropping the key, he fled the shop. And Sakura returned to her desk, to her reading, unaware that the love he waited for had come and gone…
The End.
Sad isn't it? I know, that's how I felt when I read the story. The most important things in the world are not things. They are people. They are relationships. Please don't forget that.
And now that you have read the story please review it.