Disclaimer:I do not own Card Captor Sakura
Summary: The sunlight of day is welcomed into the hearts of most people, but in others the humble warmth is shunned. Syaoran Li is engulfed in total darkness when his parents die. He permits no sunlight to pass through the opaque walls he's constructed about himself. Sakura Kinomoto is just the embodiment of the large burning star; cheerful and carefree. Though seemingly polar opposites, their parallel lives intersect in more ways than one. The sun can only penetrate the soul as deep as a person allows.
Italics: Thoughts
"Regular": Talking
Regular: Normal Text
Sunlight
Chapter 10
The Night Misunderstands
Sakura and Tomoyo were sitting in a local sweet shop eating cake and attempting to have a good time. Sakura, despite the sweet, confectionary concoction sitting before her covered in icing and strawberries, was not very happy. Tomoyo had tried to cheer her up from what they had just witnessed, but when she, herself, was infuriated, the job was a complicated one to maneuver.
"Sheesh! I can't believe him!" Tomoyo ranted angrily after realizing that Sakura was not going to smile anytime soon. "Going around with some woman like that when he already has you!"
Sakura's cheeks turned pink from indignation at the suggestion, "Tomoyo, we weren't together or anything! We're just friends!"
Sakura waved a dismissive hand and smiled. She knew she was just using that reason as a cover-up for what she really felt. She was just too embarrassed now to tell Tomoyo that she really had thought she liked Li more than a friend.
It had been three days since Sakura had last been in contact with Syaoran, and it was a giant shock to see him walking around with another female like she and Tomoyo did a couple hours ago. Now she knew why he hadn't been talking to her. He had found him someone important and was spending time with her.
Sakura couldn't blame him; this girl was very pretty with her long, black hair and confident walk. She wasn't shy at all, and her red eyes proclaimed this to the world with their stare of boldness. Basically, she was everything Sakura wasn't and more.
She glared pointedly down at the cake she had just taken a bite out of. Why did it have to be so sweet when she was feeling so bitter?!
"Awwww! These pictures are just too adorable! Say, who is the girl with the auburn hair sleeping beside you on the couch?"
"GIVE ME THOSE!" Syaoran bellowed angrily as he tried to snatch the photos of him and Sakura out of the black-haired girls clutches. He didn't even want to know how she found them.
Seriously, three days ago he wasn't expecting to come face to face with his female cousin, Meiling Li, on his front porch surrounded by luggage. Needless to say, it was quite a shock.
Syaoran walked home with hands shoved deep inside his pockets and mind deep in thought. He was definitely going to forget about his revenge for Sakura and his parents. He had known all along – somewhere in the back of his mind – that his parents would not want him risking his life just to avenge their deaths.
When Sakura had spoken to him, it was as if light had been allowed to finally shine on a room ridden with cobwebs and dust, having not seen the light of day in so long.
He still didn't know how such a fragile girl as Sakura had managed to smile after a year when it had taken him three just to realize everything he had been doing up until now was not what he should have been. But then that would make Sakura tougher than he was, or something like that.
He scratched his head and let out a giant breath of air. He clenched his fist in concentration after bringing it out of his pocket. "Okay, from today onward, I'm going to change myself for the better and forget about revenge."
His determination slowly ebbed away like the waves washing up on the beach, taking the sand steadily away as it drifted back out to sea. Then what was he supposed to do? He was like a lost puppy if he had nothing compelling him everyday. Usually, all his thoughts revolved around giving his parent's murderer what he deserved, but Sakura had changed his goal.
Maybe he could get a job? Even though he had been living off of the money his parent's had left him with, earning his own cash would allow him to – to – gah! He didn't know what! He was just too confused now, but there were two things he was positive he was going to do once he got back.
He unlocked his front door and immediately took off his long, black trench coat. Wrapping it up so that it was just a bundle of dark cloth, he started a fire in his fireplace and allowed his faithful jacket to burn as well. Snatching the notorious white envelope from his room, he tossed it into the fire; he wouldn't need it anymore. This would seal his commitment!
Feeling proud of his self as he watched the flames crackle before his eyes, lapping at the new fabric and paper fuel contently, Syaoran knew he only had one last thing to do.
Turning slowly on his heal, he narrowed his eyes as his feet carried him to his room where his sword was leaning against the wall in the corner. Sighing heavily, he picked the metal weapon up with both hands and entered into his closet. There in the back of his clothes was a cabinet-like, wooden box with two small doors opening outward by a gentle pull of the handles.
Syaoran placed his faithful sword gingerly inside its hollow protection and clamped the miniature doors shut without any force at all. It was done.
Emerging from his closet with a frown, he had to hope he was doing the right thing. He shook away all his doubts when Sakura's image crossed his mind. "That girl … what is she doing to me?"
The ringing doorbell blew away his thoughts of Sakura, and his eyes instinctively moved to the clock. Who would ring his house at midnight?
He opened his front door after traveling through his house to reach it, and his mouth fell agape. He wanted to kick the part of his brain that thought it was Sakura.
"Syaoran!!!! I told you that I would come if you didn't return my phone calls!!!" Meiling roared as she pounced on Syaoran, hands wrapped around his neck. She shook him half angrily, half playfully, but he didn't care her reasons for strangling him. He just wanted her to stop!
"Mie – ling, s-top," was all Syaoran managed to choke out, but she got the message and almost freaked out when she saw how blue her cousin's face had become.
"He he – oops – he he." Meiling laughed nervously as he glared menacingly at her.
"And what's all this about 'not returning phone calls,' huh?" Syaoran had returned many of her calls because Sakura had made him, so what was she babbling about.
"Tisk, tisk, Syaoran. What about my recent calls?"
"Who says I wasn't going to call you?" Syaoran fired back.
Meiling was becoming visible frustrated. "Are you saying you didn't want me to come visit you then!?!"
Syaoran's laughter was uneasy and he rubbed the back of his head nervously. "Um … that's not what I meant … Meiling."
Meiling chose that time to stare at him oddly as if she was not meeting with someone she had known all her life. The truth was that the boy she saw in front of her was not what she had been expecting to see. She was worried about him, so she decided to come and check up on him.
She knew that he was always depressed and angry all the time, so she was going to stomp some sense into his brain and tell him to move on. It had been three years since his parents died and his time for depression had ended a long time ago.
That was why it was odd to hear him laugh and joke with her. She had to admit that she was jealous of whatever did this because she had wanted to save Syaoran herself.
Knocking herself out of her thoughts, Meiling looked over her shoulder at the luggage outside on the front porch, "Will you be a doll and bring my things inside for me. I'm turning in for the night; have fun sleeping on the couch, Syaoran."
She took off with a laugh and dove into the Syaoran's bed after finding his room through a hasty search. Crawling under the covers, she fell asleep instantly while her cousin brought her bags inside the house reluctantly while muttering curses under his breath until he laid himself on the couch with a pillow and small blanket for comfort.
"Aww! Does wittle Syaoran have a girlfwend?" Meiling talked in a tone usually reserved for small infants and pinched her cousin's reddening face.
"N-No! She's just a friend! Give me the dang pictures, Meiling!" Syaoran finally retrieved the photos from Melin's clutches. His heart was pounding and his face was very hot, but Sakura wasn't his girlfriend. That had been the truth, but a small corner of his heart wanted to protest the solid fact. He pushed it away with his entire mind and stared angrily at his cousin.
Now all he needed was for his face to slowly return to its normal color.
"Gee, Syaoran, no need to yell," Meiling smiled slyly, agreeing to let the topic slide … for now, "So is there anything else left in this town that you haven't shown me yet?"
Syaoran, who had calmed down almost to the normal level, racked his brain for anything he had forgotten to show Meiling. He had been forced by her to become a tour guide and lead her around town. He hadn't even had the time to speak with Sakura since Meiling arrived because she kept him so busy! It was starting to get annoying, but he wouldn't tell Meiling that or she might decide to use him as a punching bag. It wasn't that she was stronger than him; it was that he was raised to never hit a girl.
He snapped his fingers suddenly as the light bulb went off in his head. He could introduce Meiling to Sakura and Tomoyo!
"I guess I can introduce you to some friends of mine," Syaoran scratched his chin, still deciding if the idea was good or not. He couldn't see the harm in it, though, and set his mind to it.
"Y-Your friends? Why didn't you do that the first day I was here, idiot!" Meiling was surprised at first but managed to cover any trace of it up. She hadn't expected for Syaoran to have come this far when she arrived. She figured that he was still the same as he was three years ago, and she was prepared for the task of washing away three years time of anger and depression.
How could all of it have been washed away already, and who was it that did the cleaning? She wanted badly to find out so she could give them her gratitude. She also wanted to yell at them for doing her job, and deep down she couldn't stop the slight twinge of jealousy from forming. She had wanted to help her cousin overcome his difficult time.
Whoever this person was, they were amazing. It used to be impossible to get Syaoran to even crack a smile, and now he was laughing and holding amiable conversations and smiling and – well, he was happy.
Sakura was not happy. All her sadness had left her, but she was angry now. Here she had been thinking that she had a chance with Syaoran, and he ended up finding him another girl just like that.
It was she who helped him out of his depression; it was she who got him to answer phones and leave the house without wearing his black trench coat, and it was she he cast to the side as soon as he received his thorough cleaning which made him shine brightly and attract people's attention.
Namely members of the opposite sex, Sakura thought with disdain. Syaoran had been handsome the first time she met him out in the woods when his sword was pointed dangerously at her head, but he had come a very long way since then. His eyes were so entrancing, his hair so unruly and naturally uncombed-looking no matter how many times he ran a brush or hand through it, and his smile so captivating that it had so hold over her. It was no wonder she had grown to like him more than a friend without acknowledging the gradual change inside her mind.
It was like he had the whole package: handsome looks, intelligent brains and a great personality. Now she knew she was incorrect. Syaoran wasn't the sweet, caring gentleman she thought he was; he was a player and had played her heart for a fool.
She hadn't really expected him to give thanks to her after everything she did for him; she had hoped, but she figured it wouldn't happen. She had always wanted to repay Tomoyo back for what she did for her, but Sakura was never able to fully pay off the debt with interest like she wanted.
When she found out that Syaoran was just like her, she guessed that she was just trying to reciprocate the kind and caring action of her best friend but with a bit less force. (Tomoyo had flipped Sakura's mattress in a spurt of adrenaline and thrown her into the shower, pajama, sheets and all.)
Wait, Sakura thought unhappily, I was helping him even before I found out about his parents.
She was desperately searching for a reason for why she had gone to such great lengths to save a man she didn't have feelings directed, and was dismayed to see her first explanation go down the drain. Tomoyo could say it all she wanted, but the truth was that she did not like Sya – Li like that.
She had also gotten into the bad habit of calling him by his first name in her mind. Slapping her head in frustration and earning a puzzled look from Tomoyo, which she warded off with a goofy smile, inspiration suddenly struck.
She gasped as the heinous idea flashed across her brain. What if the whole thing about his parents was a lie? What if he found out about my past and used it to lure me to get closer to him because he was a stalker? What if he did something to me that first night where I crashed at his house without fully knowing him to make me feel like this now?
"Aren't you worried about being in my house when you barely know me?" Syaoran said slowly.
"Should I be?" Sakura answered with a quirked eyebrow.
"Well aren't you worried I might harm you? I do have a sword."
"I trust you Li. Something about you … makes me feel relaxed. I'm not scared with you … or of you."
Sakura sighed. What she had said that night had been true, and it was still true today. She shook her head and berated herself for thinking such idiotic thoughts. No one – not even Syaoran – would lie about something like that. Her ability to think so badly of him made her angry at herself.
It was her fault for taking Syaoran's friendship for something it wasn't and for (supposedly) growing to like him more than a friend – from what Tomoyo kept saying and implying with her glances of pity, of course. She would just have to be happy for him as a friend and get over herself because she had begun to think that Syaoran liked her as well.
She gave one muffled, short, forced laugh. This was turning out to be more and more like what she believed to be her first crush. At least then she had her brother and father to comfort her even though Touya's idea of comfort, to Sakura's dismay, was beating up the guy. That time in her life seemed so long ago; five years was a more precise estimate.
It had been her senior year in high school and the senior prom was coming up soon. Sakura finally got up enough nerve to ask the guy she liked out but was crestfallen when he rejected her by using an extremely poor excuse. He didn't even have the decency to say no; he had to lie by saying he was taking his mom to go shopping for socks the same time as the prom.
When she thought about it now, she regretted not slapping him on the spot when he gave her an indirect "no," but she was too much of a coward without a backbone strong enough to stand up for herself. She wished she wouldn't have cared so much about what others thought about her in high school, but she was just too sensitive to criticism and too kind for her own good back then.
She couldn't say truthfully that she had done a full 360 turnaround since that time, but she could say that she had progressed into a more outgoing person than back then.
And now, all her "outgoing-ness" had led her to helping someone in need which now led her to drink from the cup of jealousy and sit in the seat of rage. Syaoran was so going to get a full blast of just how outgoing she really could be.
Clenching her fists, Sakura shook her head disappointedly. It had been less than five minutes, and she was already breaking her promise to just be happy for him.
Tomoyo watched her troubled friend from across the room and saw the myriad of emotions playing out in her eyes like a movie theater showed their films on the big screen. For as long as she had known Sakura, which was since elementary school, Tomoyo had always been able to read her friend like a book via her emerald eyes.
Syaoran, however, was harder to decipher because she hadn't known him all her life like Sakura. He kept his true feelings hidden – or at least tried to. Tomoyo had been so sure that the chestnut haired, amber eyed male harbored feelings for her best friend. She had always prided herself in being able to read people's emotions and actions pretty well, but this was one of her worst screw-ups ever.
Syaoran had chosen another girl! He didn't pick Sakura at all like she thought he would. Tomoyo knew Sakura had unconsciously fallen for Li even though the girl's pride would never let her admit it now they had witnessed Syaoran walking about the town with another woman.
Maybe it wasn't what it seemed like though. Tomoyo didn't remember those two holding hands or anything, so they could have been old friends out for a walk. That must have been it because she had never failed this badly about someone's feelings for another. Her intuition as a woman was exceptional!
That was it! She was going to get to the bottom of this right now! Marching over to the door, she flung it open and power walked down the street at high speed to Syaoran Li's house.
"Come on, Meiling, I don't have all day," Syaoran called impatiently from the front door. What was it with women and their inability to leave the house without a full face of make-up and the "perfect outfit" for the occasion?
There was a loud, frantic knocking on his front door, and he wrapped his fingers around the doorknob curiously before swinging it open. Where he thought Sakura would be standing stood a frazzled Tomoyo instead.
"Tomoyo? What are you doing here?" Syaoran asked with an eyebrow raised. Tomoyo finished panting from her trek to his house and opened her mouth to speak.
"Listen, I have a quest –" Tomoyo was interrupted by a voice coming from somewhere inside the house, a female voice.
"Syaoran, who is it?" Meiling inquired innocently as she walked into view from around the corner. Tomoyo's voice fell open at the sight of the women she had seen walking around town with Syaoran the other day.
"You pig!" Tomoyo launched her angry words and her furious hands tightened around the handle of her purse. She didn't want it to fly out of her hands because the next moment she was beating him repeatedly with it.
"Tomoyo?" Sakura's sing-song voice called through the house to locate her friend and dissuade any worries about her feeling depressed about Syaoran's new girlfriend. She remembered hearing the door slam and now her friend was missing. It was odd for Tomoyo to up and leave without telling her, so what could have been so important for her sudden absence?
Dropping the fake smile her lips were forming (her face was beginning to hurt), Sakura filed out of the door with a frown to search for her best friend.
"So that was why you decided to pulverize me. What do you have in that thing anyway?" Syaoran gestured to Tomoyo's now inanimate purse sitting innocently on the coffee table of his living room. It was a good thing for him that he knew how to defend himself, but a few of her mad swings made contact with different parts of his body.
Meiling, Tomoyo and Syaoran were all seated on the couch trying to iron out the wrinkles of misunderstanding. Tomoyo had just explained to the other two her reasons for barging into the house uninvited and attacking Li.
"Oh, just the normal things." Tomoyo waved a dismissive hand about the mysterious contents of her pocketbook.
"So wait, let me get this straight. You and this Sakura girl thought that Syaoran and I were a – a – couple?" Meiling was succumbing to her laughter near the end of her declaration.
"Yes, that's correct." Tomoyo smiled genuinely, and both Syaoran and Meiling burst into uncontrolled laughter at the mere thought.
"Aside from us being engaged to marry when we were younger, that's the closest our relationship has ever remotely come close to being like that." At the distressed look on Tomoyo's face, Meiling decided to clean up her statement a bit. "Oh, don't worry. We got out of that arrangement a long time ago when we found out exactly what our parents were proposing. You see, we were very young when this idea was concocted."
Tomoyo still looked uneasy so Meiling spoke her next words very slowly and confidently, "I have a boyfriend." Tomoyo nodded slowly and smiled, all her worries evaporated.
"Li, I think you need to tell Sakura that Meiling is just your cousin. She isn't very cheerful right now after seeing you two walking together."
"Wait, she's jealous?" He asked incredulously, hardly believing what he was hearing. Tomoyo bit her lip at Syaoran's question. She didn't know if she should tell him or not. She decided to leave it up to Sakura whether she informed Syaoran of her true feelings or not.
"You better find her before she finds you is all I can say." Tomoyo was delighted with her answer and the priceless look of confusion and worry on Li's face.
"What do you mean?" Syaoran asked warily, realizing he had never really seen Sakura when she was angry.
Tomoyo sighed, grabbed him by the ear and drug him towards his front door. Pushing him through the threshold, she told him not to come back unless he'd patched things up with Sakura.
She slammed the door in his face just as he was beginning to oppose her authority and locked it. Ignoring his fists beating angrily against the wooden surface of the door and his cries of "this is my house; you can't do this to me," Tomoyo returned to the living room, sat down gracefully and folded her hands in her lap innocently.
Meiling eyed her with a wide, shocked gaze, calmed down after a few moments and asked the question she had been dying to have answered the entire conversation. "Who is 'Sakura', anyway?"
Tomoyo looked at her in surprise. "You mean he didn't tell you about her?"
Meiling could sense the anger bubbling just beneath the surface of her words and hastily furthered the conversation to keep her from attacking Syaoran, whose beatings on the door had now reduced to tired, defeated knocks every other minute.
"Well, we were just going to go meet all his friends right now. I guess I would have met her then," Meiling paused, unsure if Tomoyo was his friend or not because of the way she greeted him earlier, "and you as well."
Tomoyo nodded, but she still wasn't smiling. "Well, Sakura is – well, they're – hmm, they're close friends." Tomoyo couldn't decide how best to describe the "Li/Kinomoto" relationship.
Meiling, sensing her confused reluctance to divulge the level of her cousin and this Sakura's relationship, retrieved a photo from Syaoran's room to try her hand at answering her own question.
"Who is this girl?" Meiling gestured to the auburn-haired female sleeping beside Syaoran on an unknown couch after returning from her scavenger hunt through her cousin's now-dirty room. She would apologize for that later.
Tomoyo let out a squeal of excitement, having been reacquainted with one of the most treasured photos she had ever taken. "That would be Sakura! Aren't they adorable?"
Meiling nodded slowly, her full attention on the picture of the sleeping girl. She looked to Syaoran's face; his face was so peaceful, and he didn't seem plagued with nightmares.
"So does my cousin like this Sakura … um," Meiling paused, prompting for a last name.
"Kinomoto, Sakura Kinomoto, and as for Li liking her, I have my suspicions." Tomoyo spoke in a business-like manner, her posture perfect as she sat on the couch, but the wide smile across her lips and eccentric glint in her eyes told a different story rather than refinement, her pride bleeding subtly through her lips and eyes. She was never wrong about these kinds of things.
"Where could that girl have gone off to?" He had checked her house, but she hadn't been present and all the lights were off. He was traveling around via the sidewalk to locate Sakura somewhere in the town.
Syaoran, for some odd reason, couldn't stop the swelling pride within in from growing. Sakura had been jealous when she thought about him being with someone. Hmm, maybe he could pretend he and Melin were together (if his cousin consented) to see if Sakura wanted to be in his cousin's place in a real relationship.
Syaoran shook his head. That was too cruel a way to go about discovering the truth. Still, she had been jealous, but if she had been jealous, she had been angry. His smile dropped for the first time after leaving Sakura's apartment. She was probably still angry.
As if on cue, he saw the back of her head exit an electronics store and walk in the opposite direction of where he was standing idle. He began to walk and called out her name. She didn't respond so he called after her louder. She still made no inclination of hearing him, so he hastened his walk into a power walk.
Just as he was ten feet away from her and ready to call her name out again, Sakura smiled and linked arms with a man walking down the street as if she knew him. Syaoran froze; he was so shocked he couldn't move. The crowds of people had to separate in half to pass by the one stationary male in the center of the walk.
He didn't even hear the rude comments or see the rude gestures of the passer-bys. All he saw was Sakura smiling happily at another man, and all he heard was the sound of her cheerful laughter directed at a male that wasn't him.
What is going on …? Why is Sakura … on a date … with some guy?
Syaoran watched helplessly as the pair turned the corner and disappeared from his line of vision. He slowly walked home with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. Sakura hadn't been jealous at all. Tomoyo was a liar.
Tomoyo and Meiling were chatting contentedly about the subject of fashion when the doorbell of Syaoran's home rang once. Smiling, both believing they knew which couple was hidden behind the wooden cover, went to answer the door.
"Who is it?" Tomoyo asked in a sing-song voice even though she already knew who was there.
"It's me. Let me in," Syaoran said quietly.
Tomoyo frowned, but Meiling beat her to the punch. "You mean to tell me after all this time, you still didn't make up with Sakura? What did you go out and do the entire time? You are such an idiot!"
Syaoran didn't respond, so Tomoyo picked up the conversation. "I told you that we aren't letting you back inside until you have Sakura with you. Just turn right around and go back to get her. Geez, do women have to tell men how to do everything?"
Tomoyo's exasperated voice and Meiling's tired sigh filled the room. Still, Syaoran did not respond.
Meiling, worried about her cousin's sudden muteness, addressed him nervously. "Syaoran … is something wrong?"
Tomoyo had sensed it as well. He wasn't banging on the door angrily or arguing heatedly with them. This was a bad omen.
After exchanging uneasy glances, they quickly unlocked the door and pulled it back slowly. They were astonished to see that Syaoran wasn't even there.
Before the agitation of being walked out on could reach the surface of their minds, the back door slammed shut and hasty footsteps were heard. Then Syaoran's door was jerked open and forced closed with a loud boom.
Both girls fled from their position by the front door and began to bombard Syaoran's door with dainty, fisted hands.
"Syaoran Li! You get your butt out here this instant and go find Sakura Kinomoto! Even if you don't want to make up with her, I want to meet the girl! And Tomoyo," Meiling rounded suddenly on her newest friend, "how could you forget to lock the back door?!"
"It's not my fault! I didn't even know he had one. Anyway, Syaoran, why don't you act like a man and deal with your problems?!"
Syaoran couldn't take anymore of their obnoxious voices. "Because," he began in a bellow of bubbling rage, "my problem is out on a date with another man!"
Tomoyo and Meiling didn't speak after that. They were running his sentence over and over in their head to make sense of it all.
My problem is out on a date with another man
My problem … on a date … another man
Problem … date … another man
It clicked for both girls at the same time, and their eyes widened.
"SAKURA'S ON A DATE WITH ANOTHER GUY!?!"
A/N: Mwhahahahaha! This is fun! Weeeeeee! Sorry, I'm a tad hyper at the moment. It might have something to do with the hot fudge sundae pop tarts I ate, but who knows? Ha ha.Originally, I was going to continue and make this chapter longer, but I didn't feel like it and decided to put the rest in the next chapter. (I haven't typed that part yet, but I know exactly what is going to happen.) Anyway, thanks for the advice on the dilemma I had last chapter in my A/N. It helped so thank you everyone!
I can't believe I didn't update AT ALL in July! That's horrible! And it's not going to get any better with school starting. I'm going to be swamped this first semester so I apologize in advanced. I'm going to be having all honors classes when the most you're allowed to have is 3 out of the 4 classes be honors level. I've gotten screwed over, I tell you! On top of that, I'll have tennis practice daily and freaking homework! So. Much. Stress. And I still haven't finished my summer English project!!! And I'm going to the beach this Saturday through the next Friday without my laptop to work on my project with because it's freakin' crashed on me! Plus, our internet wasn't working properly for a while and it kept going off and staying off for hours at a time! (Thankfully, the internet is fixed now.) Ah, it feels good to vent.
Well, please review and thank you for all the reviews I've received! It means a lot to me!
See You Next Chapter (hopefully, if i survive everything in the paragraph above),
RadiantSun