A Story of Chestnuts and Mocha

-What Mops See Nowadays-

Sakura Kinomoto was many things. She was pretty, intelligent, hardworking, and athletic. One of the things she was not, however, was punctual.

She raced through the road leading to her high school as cherry blossoms seemed to grace her presence with their petals. Today would be another one of those days, she would think to herself. She had morning duty that week and so she had to wake an hour earlier, but since this is Sakura we are talking about, fifteen minutes would go by before she would rouse from her sleep upon realizing that her alarm clock wasn't lying to ring its announcement that it was time for her to wake up.

"Morning duty's the pits!" she hissed to herself as she rounded a corner. "Huh?" just when she was about to reach the area leading to the sophomores' classrooms, a figure caught her attention. "Someone's up and early…" She cautiously tiptoed her way towards the shadow of the student, wondering why on earth he or she would be in campus so early.

She thought she had seen a sleeping angel.

A boy with thick lashes that delicately whispered shadows on the lower area of his eyes lay there. His bushy eyebrows framed his face as they slightly furrowed in his slumber while copious amounts of sepia tendrils sticking out in different directions adorned his head and a delicate touch of rosiness blessed his skin. He rested his back against a tree as his right leg was bent before him while his other one stretched out leisurely in a rather ungraceful position. A thick book was placed clumsily on his chest.

She wondered if it was possible to fall in love with strangers. As she was about to leave, her gaze still stuck on the lad, his eyes opened.

And that's when she understood that love at the first instant of sight could be possible.

She had never seen anyone else with the same color of irises before. They were the color of newly ignited flames and molten lava. They were fire.

He looked at her rather questioningly, as if he was trying to figure out where he had seen her before. A look of intensity could be sensed as an expression of realization dawned upon his features.

Oh, he knew who she was. He watched as she hesitantly jogged towards the second years' rooms after staring at him. He would always go to school earlier than the rest of the students, afraid that his favorite spot by the window in the third row would be taken from him. That day should have been the same but seeing that it was the first week of classes, his classmates would be different and so new surprises would be in store.

She would be, predictably, in the same class as he was in. They were of the honor roll after all. But what he didn't expect was that she would win in popularity as well. He observed the rest of the class as they surrounded the girl of his nightmares, the adulation once reserved for him now shared with her.

Sakura listened as her colleagues talked to her, asking different questions all at the same time that it almost seemed like they were speaking in one voice. She would have given them her full attention were it not for the awareness that he was seated at her right, behind her.

He was so handsome. Even in the school she had attended to before, nobody could come close to how good-looking he is. Of course, that opinion was biased but she was quickly becoming one of his ardent admirers. Her older brother had warned her that pretty boys were always bad news because you could never tell if they were really women or not, but Syaoran was different. He was most certainly a man. He had the aura of an almost-bad boy. She wouldn't have had figured out that his intensity was only due to the fact that he disliked her, but let's make her believe her assumptions in the meantime.

"What to do…" he thought out loud as he enumerated the possibilities of overpowering the girl seated at his left, right in front of him. He paid no attention to the usual crowd of fans he had for that day. He didn't like sharing, and especially not to someone who was close to his credentials as she was. He worked so hard to get to where he is now, and she would have to pay for being such a sightly hindrance to his claim to high school fame and worship.

Li Syaoran was many things. He was charming, smart, diligent, and sporty. One of the things he was not, however, was…

"That can't be right." He frowned to himself. He was, in his mind, not just many things. He was all things. He was that great and wonderful and magnificent and etcetera, etcetera.

He was also that egotistical.

It would remain that way for a month: her liking him and him disliking her. Council meetings were awesome for her and unbearable for him. School days were a daydream to her and a horrendous dream to him. Dismissals were sad for her and bliss for him.

What Li Syaoran wouldn't have anticipated was the scene in which he was in right now. He blinked a few times to see if the sight before him was real.

He had gotten a note during English class that someone had wanted to meet him on the rooftop during lunch time. He never expected it to be that person. And yet he was really looking forward to turning down yet another one who would have a crush on him. Looks like today wouldn't be one of those days.

He never expected it to be Takashi Yamazaki.

Takashi, due to his slanted eyes, was, in Syaoran's vision, looking at him with earnest love. What he didn't know was that the taller guy was actually staring at him, equally befuddled.

"What the heck are ya doing here?" Just when Syaoran was about to open his mouth to say something, that question was spat out by the yakuza fan who is Takashi. The yakuza were badass for the said fellow, and he habitually yakked in a strange inflection that he thought was similar to gang talk.

"…E-excuse me?" Wasn't the Chinese lad supposed to be the one asking what he was doing there?

"This is my territory; ya ain't s'pposed ta be here, punk!" he punched his right palm as he attempted to threaten the most athletic lad in the grounds.

"Oh! Sorry, Takashi… I was the one who asked him to come here…" A high voice made the two men look at the source in unison. "I didn't know this is where you would be hanging out during lunch hours… sorry…"

"M-Miss Kinomoto…!" the Yakuza fan appeared flustered as he bowed and quickly changed his disposition… as well as his accent. "Sorry about that, as well! I… didn't mean that this was my territory! You can use the rooftop any time you want…!" he paused before squeaking out a 'bye' and leaving the two behind. Unbeknownst to Syaoran, Sakura had beaten Takashi in an arm wrestling game over the last copy of a Shoujo manga before and he was mighty scared of her.

"That Takashi…" she sighed before pouting at the direction that the guy left at.

"Sakura?" Li Syaoran began, relieved that a member of the opposite sex would be confessing to him. Then again, he wasn't sure if the girl before him would be confessing. That would be even stranger, he thought as he recounted the times men have admitted their attraction to him. "Four times…" he silently said to himself. That was quite a lot.

"Oh… um… here…" she shyly handed out a neatly folded note.

Could it be?

Syaoran gawked at his female companion. It was undoubtedly a confession of some sort.

Was it real?

He looked at the piece of paper then at Sakura, then back at the message written again.

It couldn't be!

…Right?

There was only one way to find out.

As he took the letter from her thin fingers, a sudden gust of wind could be felt. "It's especially windy… today…" he looked at the spot where Sakura was just an instant prior.

Realization dawned upon him as he came to his senses.

His competition was already running away from him.

…Literally.

"Sakura! Hey!" he sprinted after her. "Come back!"

"NOOOOOOO!" she was speeding away so fast now, her eyes squeezed shut with the humiliation of the thought of what might happen once he read what she had written during English class.

"Sakura!" for once, jogging every morning for his baseball training came in handy. He was almost nearing her as they wove their way through the already-empty corridors of the school, as everyone else was in the cafeteria or outside the campus. "Sakura!" although it was uncharacteristic of him to race after someone while yelling, the situation left him no choice.

"GO AWAY!" as she was about to round another corner, luck proved to make fun of her in an ungainly fashion.

She fell down the stairs.

All five steps, so it was just a minor fall, if you're worried.

Nonetheless, she fell.

…Because there was a mop on the floor, much to her dismay.

She really shouldn't run with her eyes closed next time.

Syaoran skidded to a stop upon seeing Sakura landing on her rear end. He was panting quickly now. No wonder she was named the fastest runner in the school's track-and-field team. "Sakura…? Are you alright?"

His breathing slowed down a bit. "Here, let me help you." A large hand presented itself before her as he knelt down.

For a while, she just stared at his fingers. Then to his shoulders. Then to his face. And finally, back to his black leather shoes. She shook her head. The back of her eyes stung, partly because of the impact of her fall but mostly because of the embarrassing circumstance she led her pathetic self into. She blinked rapidly to stop the tears from falling.

Syaoran wanted to laugh at her. But he was anxious that someone might see him, and he wouldn't dare tarnish his flawless reputation of being a compassionate kind of individual. This was probably the first time she had confessed her attraction towards anybody, given the fact that she ran away from him like that.

She was trembling now. He knew it wasn't from the cold.

Without further hesitation, he pulled her up by placing both hands on her arms. It didn't take much effort to help her stand. Not surprisingly, she was as light as a feather. "Are you okay, Sakura?" he inquired again. It was a dumb thing to ask. She was shaking now, her mocha-colored hair covering her face as her head bent down low. She really didn't want to talk to him at the moment.

Sakura hardly understood what her admirers felt like when they confessed their desirability towards her. She once confessed her like towards somebody, but that was long ago. She even started to forget what this sort of humiliation felt. Until now, that is. She desperately didn't want him to toss her feelings out the window, the way she was forced to do so with her admirers. It was utterly mortifying that she ran away afterwards, afraid of being rejected.

"I'm sorry…"

He was startled by the sudden statement from the girl.

"I really… I really shouldn't… have… I really shouldn't have… done that." It took all of the courage in her to look straight at him. "I really shouldn't have put you on the spot a while ago." She bowed. "I'm sorry!"

He let go of her arms. Her legs almost buckled from the sudden loss of support.

She was still blinking hard to stop the tears that were threatening to fall anytime soon. "But I still would like to know what you… you know. What you would like to say… what your reply is."

This wasn't the first time that he would deny a girl's affections, right? He should be used to it by now.

But the way her eyes looked at him pleadingly made it seem so difficult at that instant.

Still, that doesn't mean that his vain nature wouldn't register what she had just confessed to him. While he stopped his conceited self from making his head even larger before, now was different.

She liked him.

His rival actually liked him.

This was going to be interesting.

"Sakura…" he started as he felt his head get bigger and bigger, almost enough so that it would break his neck… well, you get that that's an exaggeration.

She held her breath.

"I think that it's too early to… conclude anything."

Her shoulders hunched in degrading defeat.

"But."

She looked up again. "But…?"

"I would really like to get to know you more..." He flashed a smile at her.

Her eyes widened with shock. It wasn't a direct 'yes,' but a small amount of hope was still there. "Thank you!" her trademark smile was plastered on her face. A rush of sudden relief mingled with joy consumed her entire being. She couldn't hug him because of her overwhelming glee, so she just shook his right hand fervently.

He had granted her something so many women could only dream of.

Li Syaoran, their high school's most eligible student, had actually given her a chance to show him how much she liked him.

"…Shall we, then? I'll walk you to class. It's getting late." he offered his left arm to her. She nodded, the strands of her hair bouncing along with the movement.

The mop that caused her to trip over a while ago would bear witness to this event.

A/N: Some of you who have read this story before may have noticed a lot of tweaks here and there, and that's the plan. Expect more deviations from the original from hereon out. Please leave comments or suggestions by reviewing. Or you can just review. Say what you want to say by reviewing... bottom-line is, please review :) Happy reading for now!