I am very, very, very, very sorry for my incredibly long absence! And for the previous chapters, I know they haven't been my best work, but I'm trying (believe it or not), but sometimes, writing can become a heavy and serious matter - blah. Well, anyway! I've got too much to say, so much has happened to me! But I suppose that doesn't really concern anyone on here, heh. All I have to say is my break has been incredible, a bit of my life has definitely been imprinted on this chapter. Maybe because I'm aching to graduate already...either way, I've also been incredibly busy, so I hope you all understand the delays. I do appreciate all the encouragement though!
And for my fellow reviewer, I admit, your lengthy review stung the first time I read it, but as I went back and reread it a couple of more times, it sunk in. I had this whole, "Oh, duh!" moment. But in all honesty, I had been feeling very sketchy about the last few chapters (or however many you felt a falling out with), and noted the sloppiness and the hasty wording, so I do apologize for that. As for the title 'Simple Things', I was aiming for the irony of life type of deal, you know. But anyway, I would go into detail in my defense against your honest claims, but truthfully, there would be no point in that. I see exactly what you've read though, and I bared it in my thoughts, fearing someone else would notice, but anyway, all is done. I hope this chapter compensates for my mediocre chapters if you're still reading :)
And here's the thing lovely readers...this chapter is LONG. I mean hella' long. So beware.
If anyone finishes reading it, thank you! XD
DISCLAIMER: CCS belongs to CLAMP
"I always get this really weird feeling, right here, whenever something bad is about to happen" a delicate flesh of right pointed to her left wrist. She fumbled with the oddity that her left hand normally experienced under inopportune situations. The indication that tragedies fell upon her spring-themed kaleidoscope eyes rendered shallow puddles of water in the reality of my soul. There were these instances that collided with my existence. Moments where Sakura sat beside me, pointing out little facts no one else could have easily known, little moments that nurtured the soul…that implied a reality we all lived. Even once above everything, Sakura fell and scraped her knees, just like every other kid.
"Your left wrist? That's kind of weird" I replied, taking a hold of her left wrist. The touch reminded me of words and of the cinema.
A film stripped of pretense and flourishing in skin, and of her lively eyes caught in the death of fall, welcoming winter.
"Well, maybe that's why I didn't tell you" Sakura quickly removed her wrist from my hold, feeling all the more aware of her words and definitions.
She had defined a moment to me, clear as day that whenever bad news came, her left wrist would ache.
I kept remembering words and moving pictures.
"I didn't mean it like that, here, give me your wrist" I reached once more for her hand, disregarding any permission.
When her soft skin enveloped my own, I felt the traces of what I had intended to say come back again.
"Here you go, Dr. Li" her humor convinced her of happy days.
Days of idle pleasure and humble fields, where modest mice never ruined a happy thought with their squeamish interruption.
I chuckled at her comparison.
"Not like that, stupid" my words intended good-natured conversation.
Sakura smiled and relaxed her skin into mine. I felt her wrist, indulging in the sense of cinematography.
And Mexico.
"Um…" there was a tension in her hesitance, as I fumbled with her wrist.
"You know, wrist in Spanish is actually muñeca"
Her eyes widened in the newly informed detail, a detail that had clung on to her body for years, one she barely took notice of, with exception of her bad days.
"Moo – what?" Sakura's puzzled expression softened with an anticipated explanation.
Most of our conversations had been softening since Milan.
The way her pronunciation fell short of mine poked a smile upon my face.
It wasn't to say that I had a clear pronunciation of the romantic language, but it truly accomplished much more than hers could say at this moment.
"Mu-nie-ka" I pronounced slowly.
She captured the words with her eyes, focusing on the invisibility behind me and into the rows of the airplane we momentarily waited in.
Her index fingers traced the words in the air, memorizing the feel of the different 'n' and shortened 'a'.
"Moo-ne-ka?" Sakura tilted her head, her wrist never letting loose of my hold.
I felt a certainty in feeling her hands whilst mentioning languages beyond our comprehension.
There was a clever beauty in knowledge, one I took for granted on occasion…daily.
"Hm, close enough, but more importantly right now, it also means doll in Spanish, so when I'm holding your wrist, in Mexico and Spain and Columbia and every other Spanish speaking country, I'm holding your muñeca and also a muñeca, so through reasoning, it must mean…"
I carefully placed my words, and paused towards the end, squeezing her in my hand tightly.
Crystal green widened, drowning in the sweetness of words any other language but our own provided. "I'm holding on to a doll"
my words grabbed a hold of her countenance and spread a lightly rosy tint, her teeth biting her bottom lip, preventing a smile.
"Ahem, well, I didn't know you knew Spanish"
her delicate eyes coyly looked away, her lips subtly asked for an explanation.
I hummed for one, and looked up at the screen that would soon play an assortment of awful blockbusters.
Maybe this time I could sleep through another Jennifer Aniston sob-intended fest.
"I don't really know the language itself; I just really like Amores Perros"
"I didn't mean that…" the timidity in her lips needed to be felt, soon.
"I know" I grinned, though, realizing it could wait.
Confusion once more wrote about her clear countenance, her small and thinly shaped nose scrunched, her small and pouty lips pursed, her small and cream colored hands returned to her lap.
"Oh and um, that thing, Amoh-raise pear-ohs?" She reminded me in broken Spanish.
I felt a glorious sense of accomplishment polished by the mere coincidence that we had embarked on a topic in which I had the upper hand.
And I know, I'm sitting beside the girl that's suffocated my heart for days and months now, but after twelve years of knowledge storming over her pretty little head and sprinkling over mine (and only by mishap do I harvest more than her intellectual garden), I knew more than Sakura Kinomoto.
Of course, the smile did not miss its chance to spread across my face and alarm her slightly.
"What is it, Syaoran, tell me!" small knuckles began to hit my shoulder; she lightly fussed with the title that stuck to my heart like glue, with the language that invited gritty images.
"It's nothing! Just a Mexican film, a really good one, you should watch it. It's one of my favorite movies" I laughed the beginning and calmly spoke the last words, once her light hits ceased action. She sat in a more comfortable angle, an angle in which she could rest her honey hair on my empty shoulder. Empty bones that enhanced meaning with hers, these were the little moments I used to dig into as a child.
The little moments I lived in when no one else cared.
No one else cared for long.
"Oh, well, what's it about?" the simplicity in her question was compensated by the interest in her eyes.
They swirled in loops and sank in depths of sincerity.
Sometimes, I didn't know if I knew anyone more eager to open up the wounds of history and dissect the body of intellect.
Her mind must have been a trip, but you know, one with morals and a well-controlled conscious.
"It's a little hard to explain in small words, it's a long story, well, they're long stories, three long stories, but they connect… and I wouldn't want to ruin it for you" I gave her the simplest summary my mind could come up with. She nodded, understanding how easily things could be ruined.
How easily simple days could be ruined by unknown information.
She carried all of this on her mind without letting it smother her heart.
She must have had a strong hold.
I held her hand.
"Excuse me!" a foreign voice entered our bubble, shoving his hip against my face and, somehow, managing to elegantly glide beside Sakura. Shouta carried a bright orange hiking backpack (which had coincidentally slapped my face on his way to the window seat).
Our odd stares gave him one impression: WTF?
"Don't ask" he grumbled slamming the orange bundle beneath his seat. We sat in our seats beneath our existences. Shouta had claimed the window seat by ticket, Sakura got comfortable quickly in the middle, and I had no other choice but to endure the aisle seat, where I was greeted by sleeping faces, grumpy faces and determined faces.
Everyone had a story in Madrid.
"What movie are they showing?" Shouta's hasty question was asked as he dug into his orange glob and pulled out a freshly made bag of popcorn.
He munched without concern and offered Sakura a bit, his eyes never leaving the screen.
"I'm not sure, hey um, is it okay to have that?"
Sakura's insecure side became exposed, as her question brought up her ignorance to airplane regulations. It was just food.
"This? Pfft, it's just food, I got some Capri Sun too, if you want some" Shouta's words ignited sparks of laughter from Sakura's lips.
Her ha-ha's were clearer than the day in the clouds, her smiles were longer than her forlorn expressions days ago in just seconds.
"Don't laugh, why are you laughing, hm?" Shouta grumbled, punching his straw into the tiny hole, not missing, and with great accuracy.
He must have been a juice-box boy as a kid.
"Because you've packed a 7-11" I answered between Sakura's light giggles, she was reminded of her own voice.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to laugh at you, it's just – "Sakura's temperate apology was interrupted as Shouta tossed a Capri Sun into her lap.
"It's okay, I can take a joke" he stuck his tongue out in his playful bishounen (don't ask) antics, returning to fast sips of his Capri Sun.
He sunk in his seat, searched for his iPod and proceeded to avoid reality, the Modest way.
"I'm the same as I was when I was six years-old, and oh my God, I feel so damn old, I don't really feel anything~" Shouta had a brilliant idea.
He had brilliant inspiration surging through his ears and nurturing his mind, making its way to the tip of his tongue.
He sang and I thought to do the same.
Taking out my own iPod, I handed an earphone to Sakura, and as we shared a similar state, I played Shouta's song, the timing completely in sync after a few seconds of forwarding.
"On a plane, I can see the tiny lights below, and oh my God, they look so alone, do they really feel anything? ~"
Shouta turned his honey speckled eyes and grinned as I sang along.
"Oh my God, I've got to, got to, got to, got to move on, where do you move when what you're moving from – "
Sakura's tunes warmed our voices, accompanying in a trio sing-along, one in which disturbed a few sleepers and grumped a few grumpers.
But our thoughts aligned with the one truth we knew in words and sounds.
"Is yourself? ~" The one truth we sang in unison, earning a kick from the prudent businessman behind us who more than likely shared a lengthier and more meaningful life between his paperwork and his didactic tasting office than in his lonely wife and unintentionally neglected teenagers.
Fuck grown-ups (sometimes).
"The universe works on a math equation that never even ever really ends in the end~" became the last lyrics our youthful lips collectively sang, before Sakura's hand slipped into mine, and our blooming happiness transcended into a consoling slumber.
We could save the world at large for another day.
"Waaaaaake up" the traces of water trickling down my nose and into my eyes became my alarm. I fluttered my eyes into reality and focused on the bokeh image before me. Lights behind her face, lights of the passenger's cell phones alarming beloveds or business partners of their arrival.
Sakura stood in the aisle by my seat with a half-empty water bottle. She smiled sweetly, a tired expression glistening in her eyes.
She hadn't slept as much as I had, she hadn't thought as much as I had.
You dream of thoughts and they span throughout your life and are but a mere couple of seconds. I had slept more.
"Mmm, are we here?" I rubbed my eyes and yawned into my question.
Sakura was busy with her luggage, as she tossed her pink pillow at my drowsy face.
The impact was about as heavy as 'pink pillow' sounds to be.
Standing up, I retrieved my own luggage and followed all the nameless faces exiting the airplane.
Catching up with the rest, Sakura and I rested at the benches by the entrance of Madrid-Barajas Airport.
We waited in our tired eyes and our lyrical minds, tapping different rhythms to different heartbeats.
Who knows what went on in her mind (? Wait, no).
"Xiao Lang, it's about time you've shown yourself!" a curtain of the familiar jet black focused on my vision.
My mother stood proud against the bench I sluggishly rested on.
Her sharp brown eyes sunk deeper into the regular nonchalant boy she knew around the house, especially on Sunday afternoons.
"I'm not the one that's been sneaking off with Kinomoto" the ordinary mother-son relationship sometimes would die because we were both dominant in some aspect or another, but it was just a Li trait.
So when I said this to mother, I meant it in the most polite manner.
But she was a Li, too, and replied, "That's not what I've been hearing" winking her small eyelashes in my direction, her eyes casually drifting into the person beside me. Sakura's face was kept in a musical trance, bobbing with the beats, her eyes closed with the rhythm.
I was lucky on some days, because had she been conscious, I would have 'glared daggers' at mother, so to speak.
But Yelan giggled (another new development it seemed) and strolled over to Fujitaka, as they finished their business talk.
Feimei and Touya had grouped into their bubble, Yelan and Fujitaka did the same.
There seemed to be a family unity between us all, a family unity a bit too comfortable and personal.
But I felt relieved in seeing the tall elegance of Kouhei Watanabe, as he disrupted the bubble of Yelan and Fujitaka (a should be forbidden thought).
And then there were three, us three. Sitting on a grimy colored bench, all tied by the boundaries that our adolescence chained us to.
Because otherwise, Sakura would be somewhere in Scotland praising Stuart Murdoch for Tigermilk and Shouta establishing his underwear modeling/engineer career somewhere in London or New York (alright, I'm just kidding about one of those). And me? Me, you ask?
Or you don't, it doesn't matter, because I'll tell you right here and right now that I haven't given a shit for the past few years.
But you know, when you're spending days, hours to make it lengthier, experimenting with laughter and tears and all those fucked up emotional necessities beside and with the girl you, um well, love, you kind of have to.
You kind of have to give a shit about things.
It's the best feeling in the world.
"What is?"
I jerked at the question; Sakura's meek voice violated my thoughts, because I think she could read my mind now.
She had pulled out an earphone from her left ear, the right ear sunk in the noise pop, as she turned in my direction, her legs crossed like a lady.
"Uh, what's what?" my voice was dry and my words were too.
"The best feeling in the world..?"
Oh fuck, you guessed it. You had me fooled, though! Sakura, you mind-reader.
"I-I said that?"
"Yes, you did, out loud and everything" Shouta's dark hair was flopped with his nonchalant hands, his eyes boring into my own as he cocked an eyebrow, being the only one suspicious of my ditzy response.
"He's right" Sakura nodded, her question still lingering for me to respond.
"Oh…well, um… "I was caught off guard by my own thoughts, betrayed by my slithering lips, granting secret sentences freedom when my very conscious had not even accessed any sort of consent.
"Ah, probably not even that great anyway if you've forgotten already" Shouta obnoxiously stretched, his clenched fist gently coming in contact with my cheek.
I let him sink in as much as he could, knowing he was just an irritatingly, 'fun-loving', character. I was starting to appreciate his "ways".
"Or maybe too great to be said out loud" Sakura firmly stated, her lips curved in a content smile in my poor defense.
She stood up abruptly, taking her luggage and waltzing away alongside Fujitaka, Yelan and Kouhei, announcing her maturity.
There was a moment in which Touya was caught gazing at Sakura, but not by her. He looked away and rolled his eyes at me, mumbling a short 'mind your own damn business Chinese kid' in one short breath.
I couldn't help but let my lips grin; sink in the inevitable jealousy that he could not justify against me.
I was a good kid, Chinese, but good. He knew this.
"Li, come on" Shouta stood before me, his hands grabbing his luggage, his hiking backpack slung around his shoulders.
The ridiculous amount and intensity of orange that was plastered about his backpack contrasted gravely with his pale skin and dark hair.
The boy was an entire contrast of warm blends. I think I'm just a contrast of earthly blends, something a bit more dirty.
I think everyone's a little dirtier than Shouta though.
"Coming" after an awkward moment of silence in which my thoughts spoke louder than my lips, I stood up bringing all my belongings and walked beside Shouta. Our steps collected tiles of newfound moments. A couple months ago, you could've mentioned the names Shouta and Sakura and I would have mentioned all I knew, all the hierachy of high school society knew.
Because truthfully, I knew nothing.
"I was reading your mom's book, it's really good" Shouta may have been the last person I wanted peeking into mother's "soul", or whatever most author's write with.
I glanced at his honey eyes and found genuine sincerity, possibly, the best kind.
"I haven't yet"
"Which means you will?"
"Which means I should, she is mother"
Shouta nodded, a grin decorating his pink lips.
The friendly fires sparkling in his eyes reminded me that people really are just people.
We're more alike than we'd like to be, and that said a lot for someone like me.
Someone like you, Xiao Lang.
"Just like that, now practice your swing"
Hands enhanced the beauty of sports, legs provided stability, and Sunday's meant the world.
"One, two, three, four - "
"Xiao, you don't have to count" The man the little boy vehemently admired yelled across the field, his catcher's mitt shaping projection for words.
"I know, but it helps!" Xiao Lang replied in the same manner, his own bat providing absolutely no projection. But the nine year-old spoke loud, the volume in his lungs increased daily, a peak just before a common silence occurring through the animosity of adolescence.
"Alright, here it comes!"
Xiao Lang never left the security his father's mitt wrapped around the ball. He savored in the grip and memorized the contours.
The severity of hands and security meant a lot to the sensitive nine year-old. They meant more than his hands but less than Sundays.
Sundays meant the world.
The ball was unleashed from his father's grip, ripping and crashing against the wind, and Xiao Lang knew of it.
He steadied his grip on the bat and clenched his jaw one last time before relaxing into the sport.
"Five, six, seven, eight!" Grunting the last eight, Xiao Lang swung, the bat igniting a strengthened velocity against the ball, sending it towards the sky beyond his father's mitt.
Eyes wide with surprise.
Lips open with surprise.
Sunshine blessing wide eyes.
Sunshine blessing open lips.
"Holy, oh my God, Xiao, that's amazing!"
"Did you see that? You saw that, yes!"
The nine year-old boy cheered, dropping his baseball bat and jumping like the earth were set on fire. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes dilated on the pure elation one boy could feel.
"It's been decided"
Xiao Lang looked for his father's words, focusing on the meaning each sentence could define.
Everything had to be defined.
"What's decided?" His question captured his heart in a drum beat of anticipation.
He took note of every word his father had to say.
"Baseball needs someone like you, Xiao Lang"
Father meant Sundays and Sundays meant the world.
"Heeeeey yoooou"
"He's been doing that lately"
"Doing what?" My own question brought me into consciousness, well from my becoming flashbacks it seemed.
In no way have I blamed Sakura's own paternal discovery for the reminder of mine, but the itching would not cease.
Hands would be remembered, a catcher's mitt, Sundays in the equivalence of the world, and now, spring in the eyes of the world.
Maybe it's because it's never happened, but I think I was a boy inclined towards falling in love as of Sakura Kinomoto days.
"Spacing out, the cab's here, come on" Shouta replied, signaling the yellow contraption. And it was then when my eyes realized the importance of the ground I stood upon. I stomped once, hearing the safe sound of concrete and smelled the atmosphere. An air composed of sounds and bustling, people and high heel clicking, rolling of the r's and lenthier vowels.
Xiao Lang Li, you are in fucking Spain!
Spain, oh how you dazzled my summer during the FIFA, how you defeated the Netherlands (who I still believe played a better game), oh and your beauty in the dark tresses and shapely hips born in rhythm and the flamenco, oh God, the flamenco...it originated here, right?
Maybe it's Columbia I'm referring to, the hips, huh?
"Here we are, Madrid" Sakura announced comfortably sitting by the window, Shouta in between us.
Touya and Feimei had opted for the two front seats, our driver the least interested in our interest.
"Madrid, indeed" Shouta sighed, stretching as much as he could in the tight space.
"Indeed, Madrid" I repeated inversely, closing my eyes but then remembering the 'scenary'. I looked to my left, past Shouta and towards Sakura. Her frame remained delicate even when her heart had hardened. Her lips remained small and pouty, mustering the simplicity of early days of morning sun. You know, when she liked waking up early. The brass heart-shaped buttons on her light pink jacket secured cold sentiments wisped by the early December.
December embraced new days, where the sun and the moon collided with one another, or in which the formation of two opposite collisions occurred. Sunny days with cold weather, Madrid concrete with I'miusa brand boots, green eyes filling up the sky,
or skies in which I would happily live under.
"I want to see Two Door Cinema Club"
We all turned to Sakura, whose strangely announced desire sketched curiosity on our morning faces.
"Don't we all" Shouta spoke in his nonchalant position.
"No, I mean, we should, we really should, look" Sakura pointed towards a building plastered with a small moss-colored poster.
The following could be read: December 1st - 7:00 PM GOODBAR welcomes TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB - WAVVES - LYKKE LI. Tickets $18 at door $25.
I could feel the essence of youthful caresses flourishing in Sakura's ivory skin, if her hair matched our evening, it would be spent in twists and turns, preferably beside the skin of others before three special performers.
"We don't have the time" Touya's monotoneous reply shrilled my bones and flew out my brain.
I couldn't remember the last time Touya's orders had gone as planned.
"Well, I do" waves of nonchalance boded with Wavves, conjoining carelessly and pleasantly, as Sakura tested Touya's somewhat brotherly disposition.
But she was greater in heart and knew of youth closer than Touya did, momentarily.
In her youth, she spoke in thoughts to listen to everything packed in her iPod, and she spoke clearly.
"No you don't" he muttered.
"I always do" she spoke.
"And that's why she's valedictorian" Shouta's playful intentions attempted to control the potential severity in the siblings's words.
He smiled meekly at Touya, waving childishly when he turned to look at him. Defeated, Touya sighed.
"I'm chaperoning"
My hands shook and clapped in my mind, my lips curved in gratitude for both Sakura and Shouta.
And this proved most of my life, sitting by the window, observing from the inside as the two take the lead.
I like the change.
"Looks like we're here" Feimei spoke from the front seat, she turned to me.
We were like sailors on a long, vigorous journey of tugs and turns, waves and salty air. Sakura being the thirstiest, nearly dove off the taxi cab and ran up the steps of our Castlevania-like hotel, vast with antique European architecture and intricate creases of Catholicism.
"Wow, look at this place, it's like...straight out of - "
"Straight outta' Compton! Crazy motherfu - " Sakura's astonishment was shortly cut off by Shouta's plugged ears and functioning iPod, only to be cut short by my hand, becoming a cage for lyrical advisory.
"I really doubt this hotel has any form of association with Niggaz With Attitude"
I informed him as he protested violently against my now slobbered hand...ew.
"Don't say that. It's N.W.A, old man" Sakura cleverly said, as Touya handed her her luggage while rolling his eyes.
"You're older, weirdo" soon came my reply packed away in my luggage.
"Which makes me correct" she extended her handle on the luggage and headed towards the wide steps of the hotel.
Shouta remained iPod-ed and lingered behind with Touya and Feimei.
"It makes you bitter"
"And wiser" she always had something at the tip of her tongue.
"With stress and debts, messy children and mid-life crisis', and only sunny memories as sunny as your dress to rely on"
"My dress is blue"
"The skies are blue when the sun is sunny, so by those awful laws of logic we learned in Geometry freshman year, your dress is sunny"
the architect in me secretly loved Geometry class when fifteen or fourteen. Sakura's eyebrows knitted in the known frustration I had seen in a few of her debates for school (the ones where she got stuck and felt like crying).
Without a witty retort, she said, "I'll have to kiss the brilliance out of you if you don't stop now"
We reached the second set of steps, realizing they were a monstrosity against our mere luggage. Not to mention a pain.
"That sounds improbable" I replied with heaving breaths.
"You're right...and I probably wouldn't like you so much without it" her hands found mine, we found more stairs.
There was a blush on my face, there was a blush in the sky.
"But the kissing part...we could reconsider?" A drunken smile graced my propostion, and she smiled just as foolishly, leaving me behind.
"Plaza de Aragon..." Sakura silently read, her brows knitting in slight confusion as she caught a glance of the hotel's name, and she spoke of it, "w-wait, this isn't a plaza, and why is it called Aragon when we're in Madrid? This hotel makes absolutely no sense, its nonsense!"
But within all her accurately pinpointed nonsense, she rounded the steps and rolled her luggage against the flat handicap entrance, finally. Her light blue dress swam along the atmosphere and white tights pronouncing Lewis Carroll's nonsensical Alice in an allusion ironically parallel to her situation.
"Well, keep looking Alice, you might find a way out of this madness" I called out childishly behind her. She turned to me and in the same manners, stuck her small tongue at my comment and began to walk backwards before bumping into the tusk mahogany doors.
"Is she your Alice or your Rabbit, hm?" A sly voice appeared behind my ear, slipping in slithering tones a near riddle I could only expect from Shouta.
And as my feet turned to face the owner, I might as well have remained when approached by honey eyes and coal hair.
"Don't be ridiculous" I mumbled, and still, that mumble melted within each step that Shouta's charismatic grin grew.
"But if I must answer, would it matter?"
"I suppose not. Either way you'll fall into the madness. Love is madness"
he stated in pretty words for the insane, strolling alongside as his baggage jerked all the more in contrast with his smooth wording.
"How would you know?" I hardly knew of a single blood in Shouta to love more than his years.
"Well, so I've read" he smiled once more, his crooked lips cracking the wise facade he performed, and he was pulled down by his shoelaces down to the ground, planted in the soil where we all belonged. We each carried our own baggage but we stood next to each other.
"I thought so" my final statement brought us to the entrance of thick trunks, the mahogany doors carved with pious sentiments.
As we arrived, we noticed Sakura on a red Russian arm chair, lazing throughout Fujitaka's conversation with the concierge concerning their keys and room numbers. Yelan stood by his side proudly but always separate. Kouhei mumbled Spanish into his cell phone, a frustration arising from his rolled rrr's and elongated hisses for accents. His hands were clenched when not jittery. Feimei and Touya entered lastly, she flipping through a Spain Vogue magazine nodding or shaking her head regarding approval.
Touya's dull appearance hardly changed but when glancing at the auburn headed, 5'6" sister of mine.
"It seems there's been a bit of a mishap concerning room management, but we've fixed a bit of it, so for Madrid, Feimei you will be rooming with Yelan" Fujitaka handed a card to Yelan as she nodded.
"Watanabe-san, you and Li-san will be rooming the same"
a card was handed to me, a glance exchanged with Shouta and a knowing familiar smile of comfort received sealed our arrangements.
"Sakura, Touya, you two will have your own rooms. Enjoy"
his smile felt warm with velvet corners for the two siblings that still remained.
"Kouhei and I will be in room 604 if anything may occur" he promptly bowed as his luggage was taken up to his room.
"Yelan, Kouhei and I must attend a meeting, we'll be back around dinner, perhaps after"
The three announced their departure and left us in the sole company and mostly protection of Touya and Feimei. The two were engaged in their words, hand gestures producing laughter or laughter producing hand gestures, we couldn't follow as outsiders. Their lips moved faster than their thoughts and their eyes fluttered closer and closer until they were shut with happiness (not tears).
"They look nice together, don't you think?" A sweet link of syllables startled my solitude of thoughts.
Sakura stood next to me, ready to leave for her room but not without delving into the figures that ignored the others.
"The madness has gotten to you, Alice"
"Shut up, Rabbit"
Sakura's spring connected with my autumn once more, a glint in her eyes, her lips softer than the anticipation of them.
She left my sight.
Wait.
Rabbit?
I'm your rabbit?
Crystal eyes awaken a practice,
I am your Rabbit
And you are my Alice.
Whether or not these trivial words and heavy eyes sink into my heart before I may escape from the madness...I wanted to be happy with Sakura because her madness was my missing puzzle. The E to my mc squared, then I was the a squared, she the b and when together our hands were the c. But the heaviness in my anchor could only hold on to the pretty soil for too long, and the windy skies would tear me apart and the turbulent waves would wash me out if my hands did not open those pages.
Mother's pages.
Shouta and I walked in prominent silence to our designated room.
Prominent might be proper because Shouta smiled gracefully at all the pretty girls that passed our direction.
"Two Door Cinema Club and Madrid, how lucky are we?"
My rhetorical question brought an inevitable brooding gloom over Shouta's impromptu girl parade.
"Some of us more than others, yes"
and though the words felt sour, his grinning eyes kept going strong.
I couldn't assume whatever matter it was that occassionally drizzled over his typically polite surface. But in the depth of all the complexities and drama occuring in the past few days, I found the ground to the importance of Sakura Kinomoto to Shouta Watanabe.
"I'm sorry" the words slipped my mind, he appeared alarmed.
But how could I not, in some way, apologize? Sure, I hated pretty boy's guts but that was before I knew he had any. Indeed had Sakura skimmed over my, hypothetically, handsome nose, bright eyes of sympathy, and thin lips of inviting charisma like a cheap, clearance aisle romance novel...I would ask Fate and Irony, Karma and Empathy for a few sick days as well.
"There's no reason for you to be sorry, Syaoran. Sakura's just not the one for me"
he dismissed my apology with the gentleman he only knew, shaking his head silently.
I understood his words, all but the latter.
"One for me...you sound old" we reached the room and slid the card in; Shouta claimed the bed furnished with red wood, perhaps for some honeymoon misery.
He replied while throwing himself against the bed,
"You don't have to be forty to believe in soul mates"
I chose the bed beside the windowsill, the sheer curtains cascading on the edge.
"You don't because by forty you're smarter than that"
his eyes never left the Romantic solid patterns of his bed, they didn't even look at my reply.
"How can you be with someone like Sakura and not believe in love like that?"
Here's the mystery of Shouta. He'll speak in riddles and answer in clarity through even more puzzles. But sure, that's only on the surface and that doesn't even matter. What intrigues me so much is just how the hell every single trace of bitterness evaporated between us two.
Are people supposed to be this forgiving?
Yeah, I think so.
"Someone like..?" I knew he spoke of Sakura, I didn't know what he meant.
He looked towards the windowsill but never at me. He said, "I think...to believe in love like that for Sakura shouldn't have to happen, because to love her would mean to find a soul mate, not pretend one" his eyes found mine and then let go. Shouta's hair spread against the bed as he lay on his back.
I didn't speak knowing a part of me agreed and the rest just had to let go. How do you believe in that when it's not real? What is real then, if we can't believe then nothing. Does believing mean soul mates? So then soul mates means Sakura?
I think therefore I am...oh, fuck off Descartes.
"You should write that down...before Nicholas Sparks does"
he grinned into the bed with my words.
"And you should read your mother's book, you could learn something"
I grabbed my sweater and headed for the lobby, without another thought.
What was there to learn that I hadn't loved?
Entering the lobby, my steps chimed along the chandelier of too many glasses, each bouncing off the other, creating prisms of color and sound, entirely loud and entirely transperent.
I instantly searched for the Russian arm chair, familiar with the pretty face absorbed in some pages. It was that red cover.
And that name.
Sakura turned the page, her eyes dimmed by whatever broken words nearly brought her to tears. If she cried, I think it would make me happy, I think it would make me angry.
She would be crying for someone only I knew at best.
As I neared her, she became aware of my discretion and looked up, her eyes coming back to life. Is that what reading does? Does literature kill you page after page?
Do words and sentences build a somber architecture in your mind?
Even happy books made me sad.
"Syaoran..." She sighed without worry, she smiled without highlights.
"You busy?" She said no.
"You need to read this!" She stood up, the bold, red book clasped tightly in her hand, securing all the feelings in her grip.
"I don't know, you see - " but she kept talking about my mother's brilliant prose, and about her windows and how she could she everything and sometimes the house needed a few renovations because it was falling apart but on special days, when everything was kept a secret, the closet doors were closed and she couldn't see the skeletons...just happiness.
"Is that so?" She said it was so. In fact, she said many more adorable admirations, her lips moved word after word and her eyes sunk into the sadness with pleasure, she spoke until I could no longer listen because I didn't want to. The sounds emitting from her lips were of inconvenience. No, they didn't meet in Singapore, it was Vietnam, he wasn't married, Mother's creating fictional webs there, but yes, and it was a balcony.
Only it was raining.
The rain didn't make an appearance because the tears compensated, moment after moment, night after night of unfinished math homework.
"Syaoran?"
Maybe if I tore a page Mother would stop hurting too.
"Syaoran..?"
Or if the book was left outside on a rainy day, the ink would
drip, drip, drip until her heart was clean and healthy.
"Syaoran" her tender voice cleared the calamity instantly.
Sakura's hand ran through my unintentionally tousled locks, she smiled at my reaction, another smile.
"Are you OK?"
I thought but it's all I've been doing.
"Yeah. We should buy those tickets, I saw a venue selling nearby, shall we?"
Sakura tugged on her light pink jacket and shivered in her flats. She nodded gently and blushed like our first words had remembered when I held her hand.
We exited the lobby and entered the gray mood of our skies.
"The weather's so pretty! It's been so long since Tomoeda's felt like this, I do miss it" Sakura sighed into the cool, minty crisp of early December. The sky frowned in gray patterns but the ripeness in the atmosphere kissed Sakura's hair, her eyes blinking with content. Her earlier description I had mindlessly muted vanished, only leaving a sour taste in my mind.
"Yeah, it feels like it. As far as I can remember though, Decembers in Tomoeda have always been a little mediocre" as far as I knew
(which was about 16.9 years, yes, I knew early on), Tomoeda's weather paled against any other, but never in the summer.
We were a city by the coast.
"Syaoran...are we having a conversation about the weather?"
A grin graced my face, realizing anything could be of interest with spring eyes.
We may as well have continued our discussion over the explosions in the sky and it wouldn't have mattered at all.
"I guess it always goes back to small talk, hm?"
"Does this mean we've run out of things to say?"
Her head tilted to the side, her eyes laced with worry.
"It's the small things that make all the big difference"
stated in a Hallmark tone, she giggled, covering her lips from a hidden "you're so cheesy, Syaoran"
More steps were taken, reminding me of our walks in Tomoeda. To the Cafe, midnight run-ins, 'I need to talk to you/I'm sorry' walks, they all seemed years old. These sentiments clogged in me reminded all of reality of lovelier days with sunny skies and sunny dresses, doe-eyed hearts, soft, pearly fingers waiting to promise moments for happiness.
They all fit with you. Hands fit with hands.
"How much further is this place Syaoran? I'm getting tired"
her Alice legs kept walking without a hint of tiresome words.
"Don't act like we've been walking forever"
"With you, forever is only seconds away"
I deadpanned at her corny remark, tightening my grip on her hand until she jerked away.
"Ow! Neh, blockhead"
"You're not allowed to say things like that"
Sakura was allowed many things.
I just wasn't sure how much her words could impact me without making me question their liability.
"I do as I please"
Oh do you? You do, I've seen the pink ribbons and the lacy dresses too short for windy days, and they kiss your hair and hips elegantly, whispering secrets of rebellion without consideration only to be worn on days where feeling beautiful was all you wanted to do.
You did as you pleased, love.
And so she held my hand.
"What do you mean you forgot to buy my ticket?"
Yes, Touya. It's a little friend called Karma.
"It's not like that! They were sold out, I'm not even kidding"
Sakura's shrill desperation for her brother's trust began to itch.
"Oh right, I'll try believing that" he grumbled, arms crossed, lips tight.
"You must...unless you want to go back and check, I warn you though, you'll return just as we have" she then tried reasoning, though she knew logic hardly ever interferred with his brotherly instincts.
"You mean with three tickets?"
I saw the frustration in Sakura, I did! Just now.
"Don't be stupid Touya"
she sighed, rubbing her temple, hoping things wouldn't jeapordize tonight.
"Touya, if you'd like, maybe...perhaps, since there are no tickets for us, we could go out to dinner? I saw a wonderful restuarant nearby, it looked cozy and hardly expensive at all. We could! Since the others will be busy as well..." A small, uncomfortable squeak came from Touya's hotel room door, nearly as audible as the door's creaking. Feimei's unexpected presence appeared, calling Touya in all her auburn headed makeshift daintiness (perhaps emulated from Sakura because it was news to me). I hadn't seen much of Feimei as Touya had, and it only dawned on me at that moment, particularly this moment, that the two older souls may have intertwined.
Touya's fidgeting eyes struck Sakura as the main vulnerability, a loose thread waiting to be pulled and pulled until every secret scrambling beneath his tailored suits and occassional baseball-t's fell into the delicate, though strategic, lacy fingers of hers.
"Besides...even if we did manage a ticket for you, what should Feimei do? Everyone else will be out. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't like being alone in a foreign city for the first time" Sakura's sly intentions were too visible, they could not have slipped by Touya's own trickery, but because she presented files of pure facts, the very firm and decisive Touya Kinomoto had to reconsider.
"Alright then. Jesus, how on Earth should I say this? Ahem, OK, I got it. I, dear God please bare with me, I trust you three to behave. A behavior which would automatically imply an absolute zero tolerance of drugs - "
"Got it" we both nodded and checked the list of invisible Touya requirements.
"Alcohol"
"Right" Sakura nodded.
"Sex"
"...yeah" I nodded (eh).
"Talking to strangers"
"Alright, Touya, we're not eight" she mumbled with the becoming list of restrictions.
"Hitchhiking"
"We get it" her mumbles persisted.
"Dancing, interacting, or glancing flirtatiously with others" and so did his list.
"I know, I know! Ugh, we haven't gone over this list since junior high" Sakura huffed lightly in a haze of pre-teen years of shorter hair and mousy eyes.
I remembered her all the more untouchable, a thin girl with kaleidoscope eyes still deciding whether or not she liked lace or cotton, patterns or solids, and pink or blue.
"And that was during the time that awful Taneguchi asked you to the winter formal"
Touya's eyes set against his hard work.
"What, Taneguchi actually went through with it?"
This old bit was news to me.
Sakura rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, glancing at her tapping shoes, she was reminded of a much more important matter.
"Anyway! We have to go refresh and stuff, so come on, Syaoran" my wrist was held by the girl that once tried dyeing her hair blonde (just like Ayumi Hamasaki), once wore lipstick for the first time to the winter formal (and all the boys loved her more that night), once decided that eyeshadow was not for her (after that school picture incident).
A flood of details I had forgotten from junior high carried me away through the corridors, forgetting Sakura had, at one point, listened to the radio.
"I keep forgetting how different you were in junior high"
Her cheeks flushed in the mild difference her experimental days had displayed.
"I was young and reckless" she said.
"What happened?"
"Columbia" and so we reached my room, her last word plaguing my mind in unfulfilled curiosity.
Columbia? Like, the country? Or like, it's coffee or cocaine? Shakira? Hips speaking truths? A Columbian boy of fair tans and ruffled hair?
Columbia.
"Columbia..."
"Yes" her enigmatic response gave me nothing, though it should have been obvious were it not for my dense luxuries.
She flipped through the items of her purse, and once the red book was in sight, she fished it out, clutched it with determination.
You need to read this, she said.
Other thing were said too.
I muted other things.
And she smiled and she left.
I couldn't concern myself with her lips when the redness was in command. I didn't want to touch anything bloodier than those ill-reminiscent pages. It reeked of foul happiness when everything felt real. The spine was a support for fickle moments I knew I was in.
But I held it in my hands, still standing at the doorway.
Chasing Singapore by Yelan Li.
Why not a pen name, Mother? Why not a shield to keep you from melting into the fictional reality you molded? Because you still love him? Please...it's been years. Do you miss his voice? Do you want him to know your ink, read the words aloud and cry so loud countries far from his reach can hear his eyes? Maybe then he'll remember all the love he left behind.
Urges itched in my heart.
Urges to tear a page and then another and another.
Urges to scratch out with red pen the words:
love, eyes, sentiment, miss, baseball, gone, memory, and distance from the book.
Urges to teleport.
Urges to disappear.
Pushing aside all the mindless violence in my mind, I slid in my card and noted a missing companion.
Something told me Sakura had mentioned the words 'Shouta' and 'gym' earlier.
It clicked.
I cleared my bed for the wounds that would be opened.
And I lay in bed, on my back, my eyes counted the pretend stars in the ceiling.
They were dull and gray, a premonition of my actions.
Fuck this.
I opened the red villain and pretended I was an outsider.
June some day 1987
The red dress did nothing for my pale figure. The balcony of strangers stood still for a moment, and no one else noticed. My hands held on to a drink I was allergic to, so when we met, I sneezed and itched on his suit, the same one sleeping in the closet.
"Something insignificant is being said. Answer politely" the man with stained yellow teeth always smiled irrelevance at my allowing disposition.
Why do I always smile?
"Yes, it seems so" I'm out of place with this face. I've got nothing to my name.
A mere writer in the hands of a silly father.
But you always looked sad.
And so when everyone left, I didn't.
The balcony was yours. Alone, you drank more than I assumed you could, quoting poets. You were an open house, just like you said Woolf said, but then I said it was Roethke. "Wrong, wrong, I know my poets!" I smiled because you were so foolishly handsome, and I couldn't help the liquor on your straight teeth and or the mess in your chestnut hair.
Something insignificant was said.
For too many years.
I skipped pages because mother's indifferent happiness was uncomfortable.
Who knows how long I've loved you
You know I love you still
Will I wait a lonely lifetime
If you want me to, I will
Oh, you still sing sweet simplicities to our love. You wipe his forehead when the baseball's done enough. Do you miss it? I miss that, I miss Singapore, I miss the clean smell of your cheeks, the prominent way you used to speak. So I find myself tearing at the seams. I tear at your shirts and the stupid ties that never fit all the stupid fabrics that made you.
But you've always been suited for my hate, I remember.
"Oh, Huan, what do you think father will say when you show up like that to his funeral?"
I blinked and remembered to wear black.
"Your father would hate anything I wear, what does it matter?"
He grinned, if his heart was hurting, he didn't lie.
"You don't look sad"
He blinked and remembered.
"I am"
"You don't look sad enough"
"Father said if I cried, he would come back to haunt me"
I kissed Bai's forehead, kissing my words into his brain and smiling a pretense into his eyes. They were red.
"Then maybe you should, then he would come back" and he left. Bai asked to leave with him. "Don't, he needs to be alone, sweetie" but what was it? Did he cry? Cry because his father preferred the comfort of a noose than the preaching sentiments of a thirty-five year-old who's sadness was of the same milk? Did he cry because each speck in my eye faded every other day? I couldn't reach him. I never could. But he just let go more every day.
I know he loves/d me, many moments on the balcony. When we both were sad together. And now our sadness was a split of an intellectual and an architect. He build homes within his mind but never for the two. Not today or yesterday. Tomorrow?
The little birds of my cage would chirp.
Tomorrow.
Bai would smile.
And so I kissed more words onto his cheek and prayed the loneliness was fixed, or shared. "What's wrong?"
Oh, everything.
I turned the page and the next and the next until my hands were full, and my eyes would hurt, and my lips would squirm.
I felt for Bai and I felt for Huan. Huan...what happiness do your letters posses?
I would have cried were it not for the prose, I would have cried were it not for the fictional moments, I would have cried and so I did.
But only a little because like Robert Smith once advised me in the 7th grade, boys don't cry.
My fingers swept the happy moments of the book, touching every word, remembering.
But even that hurt.
And so when my eyes had nothing left to do, I slept the negativity away, because sometimes, that's all you can do.
"You've been sleeping so much!"
Sweet lips brought reality into my eyes. Sakura kneeled beside my bed, her hands tucked in beneath her tilted face, rosy lips sealed with concern.
"You think so?" I spoke into consciousness, noticing another figure in the room.
And a proper one too, since it was Shouta's room as well.
Sakura nodded her wavy locks onto my bed. Her eyes dressed in worry for my sleepy state.
Of course, anyone could vouch for the goodness and well-being of sleep, insomnia was definitely a thief.
But when the greatness is too great, are you missing out? I, Syaoran Li, was missing out.
"I wasn't aware"
"Because you've been asleep" she cutely replied.
Shouta's outline became defined as he reached for his purple Vans.
"The taxi cab should be here in twenty minutes, you should get ready soon"
his advice brought me to my feet, as Sakura noticed the red book by the windowsill.
She didn't say a word, but her soul was smiling and so was she. I didn't understand how my unhappiness mended her happiness.
But then I felt her hand on my shoulder and the world was right again.
"I'll be waiting in the lobby, 'kay?" I nodded and she left downstairs.
I got up and headed for the restroom, a fresh shirt in my hand, and thoughts of a steady taxi ride and pumped hearts for tonight.
After washing my face, my teeth decided for some treatment.
"So, the deed has been done, I assume" Shouta's cryptic words pointed to an object I couldn't, from my position, see but I could blindly assume.
And so I nodded my teeth against my toothbrush. But all he heard was silence.
"I meant the book...Chasing Singapore" he repeated my suspicions.
The new shirt fitted all my insecurities and secrets comfortably, and of course, it only spoke in digitalized fabrics of Lennon.
Woo, Lennon.
Back on subject, "I know. And yeah...it's a trip, man" I sighed the last bits.
"Good"
I entered the room, confused again.
Was he applauding my newly inducted preoccupation?
The opening of flesh purely for the satisfaction of another? Pfft.
"I guess" I stretched and reached for my brown RVCA sweater, heading for the door.
"I meant it" he repeated, following my exit.
"Me too" I nonchalantly replied, hiding nothing.
Shouta allowed a lopsided grin, pressing the elevator down button and slipped into his black jacket. I had a strange, and I mean fucking strange (not just any kind of strange) connection, friends? Okay. We reached the lobby with ease. I searched for the familiar Russian chair on Spanish grounds. Of course, her lively eyes sat quietly on the chair. Glancing our direction, we two saw eye to eye. Standing up, her appearance became of carnal instincts to my empty hands. Sakura, may I finally allow myself to describe, bared the loveliest of shoulders, soft skin stretched against bones of charm, they could only hide beneath her honey locks. It's safe to say Sakura blossomed a hidden feminine allure in her youthful body, an older Lolita of my own (had I been much, much, much older, though attractive).
But perhaps the silkiest of attributes blessed upon her healthy body appeared to be her lengthy legs (for a 5'5" height). Through years of tumbling and JV cheer leading, shadows of toned memories accumulated fairly in her, but despite the strenuous work-outs, they kept their Victorian smooth appeal. It's been mentioned that Sakura's beauty speaks for itself, but thanks to the proximity of our circumstances (and being a healthy, sane boy, nearly man), one couldn't help but swim in the thought of her sensual skin. I apologize.
"I think the cab is here, we should get going" her lips interrupted my steamy truths, as I saw it anyway.
She carefully tugged onto her dark blue, over-sized sweater, brimmed with mustard stripes. Her fall khaki shorts pinned with large brown buttons complimented her solid brown leggings, as her black boots elevated her by a centimeter. Sakura stood before us, wavy strands left alone, bright eyes glazed with a thin addition of eyeliner, and nails hygienically polished, of course, it's a sure thing.
Shouta's heart could have been beating in accordance to mine.
You had to be blind otherwise.
"Mhm" and "Y-yeah" shy with teenage dreams, we both stuttered and mumbled, profusely in an exchange of similar comfort.
The crisp feel our skin crossed on the way out hit us like epiphanies for the divorced.
People exited and entered the hotel, beyond our existences and proceeded to converse.
I couldn't eavesdrop, even if I knew Español (or Gallego).
"Syaoran, cab's here, let's go" the closer Sakura's hands were kept in mine, the longer our heart's held one another, and they couldn't part, not from light and sounds. We held hands under the cover of darkness throughout the cab drive. My hands could not let go. My thoughts could not let go. Red pen markings branded that red book. I annotated reluctance my soul felt in dividing all my memories into chapters (and mine were about eight). On the side, the ink whispered "I hated you so much that day" because it was now a distant feeling.
At the bottom, I left words that puzzled me, like when Huan said, "If you leave tonight, it's all you'll ever know" Liar.
I bet he knows so much more.
"Hoe! Look at that line!" The endearing vocabulary of Sakura Kinomoto erased my melancholy as I noted her very accurate observation. The entrance had, but a few seconds ago, opened and lovers of most races (but mostly Spanish) began to enter. Blue tights, Oxfords, blue eyes, elongated noses, fresh t-shirts, monotone kids, loud kids, all a varying assortment of humanity crowded into the venue.
"Aquí es, Sala Heineken! Que se la pasen bien jóvenes, pero recuerden, la cocaína es ilegal, hecho? Bah! Es broma"
our driver huskily bantered with the nonexistent humor in our foreign tongues. All but Shouta, he chuckled lightly and replied something Spanish and handed him the fair. Reaching the line, the nerves began to shake Sakura by the hands. She danced, involuntarily, about the line, earning a small glance from spectators that needed a clear excuse to awe at her.
"Relax, or else the nerves will eat you up whole" Shouta said, his calm composure collecting spectators of his own.
She nodded firmly, her eyes determined to claim victory. I couldn't understand her destructive shivers, but I knew a surge of energy would soon blow us into the atmosphere as we lingered in the hearts of youth and abandonment tonight.
"We better get close to the stage" Shouta mumbled.
"I'm a professional crowd surfer, you've got absolutely nothing to worry about"
the one redeeming ability in my otherwise panorama of mediocrity could indeed save our suffocating, fateful night.
"Please don't let go of my hand, then" Sakura's voice revealed the rigid guise of her firm position.
Was she that nervous? Where were the nerves anyway? In her heart? Or her lips? Her chattering teeth or meek disposition?
No, her experience shook and developed.
"Sakura...correct me if I'm wrong but...is this your first show?" A small blush tagged along my words and marked her hidden cheeks. Her crystals flustered, her hands played with one another as she replied, "Well, there was this one time Tomoyo and I saw Ayumi Hamasaki live in the fourth grade?"
Silence.
And then.
One.
Two.
Three (glance).
"Bahahaha-hahaha-ha-ha-haha-ha!"
It was a loud and close mirth that missed Sakura's pouty lips, but certainly claimed our own.
"I must admit, you did make a pretty cute twelve year-old Ayumi Hamasaki, now that I remember" Shouta concluded his laughter.
Sakura itched at her hands, rubbed them together, perhaps for a comfort in her own temporary skin, but also because she felt embarrassed.
But why embarrassed and why flustered, love? You're a pretty blond, a copper, an auburn, a raven, a honey like your waves intended.
So, stop kissing your eyes with embarrassment!
Although again...endearing.
"I was thirteen" she mumbled into her hand.
"And still listening to Hamasaki? You've certainly come a long way"
I squeezed her warm hands before the embarrassment in a foreign place, with strange eyes and long lines continued.
"I suppose I should be proud" she smiled into my shoulder, another kiss.
Shouta would never look.
The line began to move significantly and within seconds we reached the entrance.
My eyes reached an assortment of youth clad in mod or carelessness, or upright fashionable, and us.
The main area of grinding, jumping, dancing, singing, touching, loving, smiling concentration crowded more and more by the second.
Roadies still prepped the last minute instructions, while the lights remained dimmed. People grew anxious. Young people (mostly).
A riot could ensue, seriously, I could try my best. But I remained composed intact with cherry blossom hands, Shouta lingering in our presence.
"How the hell do we get all the way over there?" Shouta's question pointed to the bones bundled up by the stage, the exact preparation for crowd surfing (although...I'm not so sure exactly how much intense action you could get from a Two Door Cinema Club show, then again they are Irish...I'm kidding).
"This is the part where you hold my hand and listen to every word I say" Sakura's startled eyes fell into the tenth grade feminist paper she wrote. "And succumb to man's every demand? Never!" Her palms left mine in a minor tiff of light offense.
"The nerve of men nowadays" a dramatic Shouta sniffed the air in a mock 'hmph' for Sakura's lighthearted defense.
"You said it" her smiles evaporated the misunderstandings polluting our crowded bubble, her found hands provoked a roll in my eyes.
"Stop acting silly. People will think you're mad" I flicked her nose and returned to the necessary instructions, "anyway, we're stealing our way inside. So, expect complaints, but utter one apology and this - " I shook our hands, "gone. Completely. No more. Yes?"
Sakura nodded. Shouta yawned.
I received acknowledgment.
"Generally, people tend to be supportive of this, but just in case...shove" upon my last word, I delved into the persistent crowd of Sala Heineken.
As expected, there was a curse word or two, more than likely in Spanish (because what the fuck is a 'hijo de puta'?").
But we managed a spot right at the center of the crowd, directly from the stage.
But people got antsy.
Hands shook and stretched, mindlessly propelling a broken engine for stubborn bodied in impatient restrictions.
"Come on!" Shouta finally joined a previous chorus of impatient spectators.
"Any time now!"
"Boo! Apúrense, que me aburro!"
"Two Door Cinema Club!"
"Cinema Club! Cinema Club! Cinema Club!"
Chant, chant, stomp. The bodily patterns began, the bodily actions of the petite soul beside me began. Sakura's excitement reached the lid or surface. She clapped her seventeen year-old hands, a minor friction of anticipation her harbored love for indie, pop, dance, guitar, and rhythm thought of. She would kiss the musical notes endlessly were it not for the oddity she felt for kissing in public.
The stage lights dimmed and then appeared once more.
A cue? Perhaps?
Fuck yes!
And Three Figures graced the stage.
"Sorry 'bout the wait, but we're Two Door Cinema Club!"
Her trembling invaded my heart, and then the notes settled in.
"That was amazing!" Sprightly in the night that secluded three youths from sleepiness, Sakura's lively words encompassed, perhaps, the only shared sincerity in our first Madrid stay.
The concert had ended about thirty minutes ago, and after bustling through the crowds and having our hearts lightly cry to Lykke Li
(Sakura's, anyway), the three of us walked down the busy, cold streets of Plaza España. There were too many smokers, elegantly flaunting their early kick start towards a risky lifestyle, and there were too many girls without love on the streets alongside boys who thought to be men. Their arms linked, their love completely missing the 'X' marked on their chest and falling through the cracks on the sidewalk, becoming dirty and alone.
I could feel the tension of the bright morning with happy tourists melt into the sneering lips of our dark evening.
I fit in too well.
"Amazing? That was great! When 'Love Out Of Lust' played, I thought we were all going to grow wings and fly off into Never Land" Shouta's theatrical antics flew from his words and into his feet, as he twirled onto a light pole.
"...alright, so you did buy the green 'x' from that guy then"
my suspicion concerning a drug dealer during the event arose once more, as I playfully (but you never know) questioned Shouta.
"What? Hell no! I mean twenty for a pop? Fuck that!" Shouta shot back, in assumed pretense.
"Well, aren't you a smart buyer, and anyway, Peter Pan didn't have wings"
I replied in regards to his former statement.
"But Tinker Bell did, and what better way to represent a night as magical as tonight's with a fictional fairy?"
Sakura began to walk backwards, her hands warming each other, her lips dancing in the rhythm one could feel.
"All fairy's are fictional"
I spoke as I extended my hand into hers, reeling in her body against me. Warmth.
"You know what's not fictional tonight? This!" Shouta extended his arms across the beauty in a bright city. He walked ahead of us, bumping into windows of bars but never allowed entrance. Two more months, buddy!
"He's right, we need to take advantage, starting...now!"
Before I knew of any plans, Sakura dashed from my reach and joined Shouta, she pulled his arm and dragged him into a nearby bar.
That became my alarm.
Think about it, Xiao Lang:
Loud setting
Rowdy drunks
Game night (by the looks of it).
Where the fuck did the bouncer go? They're seventeen, Jesus! Where the hell does common sense stand tonight? Well, certainly not by the entrance. My thoughts brewed a worthy batch of worry on my way to the entrace, one last glance at the neon lights and I felt like a parent. Awesome.
Missing any sort of barrier, I carelessly walked in and immediately spotted the clumsily reckless girl.
Shouta sat at the bar close to Sakura, a local with honey freckles and sandy hair chirped away into Sakura's smile, pushing a drink into her hand.
She would smile and say no.
"Sakura!" I called through the rough sounds of guitars and heavy drum solos.
She twirled gently at the sound of her name, her eyes flashing with mild guilt but tender relief.
She ran towards me, as if forgetting the interruption caused by her two feet.
"Syaoran! Good, you followed!"
She giggled into my shoulder as she gravitated closer in my arms.
"Uh, well, yeah, what the hell was that about?" The hell in my sentence concerned pure diction, free of true conviction
(just a mindless, a bit concerned term, for now).
Eyes casted down, lips fumbling, and an eventual smile suited Sakura's countenance.
She glanced at Shouta whose attention had turned to a brunette with sharp eyes.
She giggled and twirled her hair. Her brown boots shook with delight.
I bet she liked foreigners.
"I'm really sorry about that, but I mean, listen, don't you ever get those feelings where you have to do something and if you don't you feel like you might vanish into useless particles of dissolved sadness?" Her rambling was cuter than Easter cupcakes.
"You mean like an impulse and regret?"
I replied, allowing a smile to melt my frown.
Her eyes widened. She smiled right back.
"I knew those feelings had terms" with grinning lips, she leaned forward and grinned all her sentiments onto mine.
I could have sworn I felt an 'L' or maybe even an 'O', both coming close to a 'V' and 'E'. You feel it too?
"Yes...so, Shouta looks happy.
Maybe there was a reason for your impulsivity"
Sakura's eyes perked knowing I may be right. Not fate.
"Even subconsciously am I selflessly generous, hm?" She flashed her lucky cards at me, her teeth baring naked lighthearted tones.
"Don't push it" I linked our hands together and walked towards Shouta. He sat on a stool, smiling politely at the clumsy, visibly older, brunette that laughed and waved her hand in protest, denying whatever humorous insult Shouta may have managed to sneak in.
"No, no es cierto, fue sin querer!"
Her girlish foreign words giggled into his sweater, as he shrugged and replied in her language.
She nodded and noticed Sakura and me standing a bit awkwardly by Shouta.
Her lips stiffened a bit, but melted as she took a gulp of her drink.
Her bright pink eye shadow indicated rebellion.
"Oh hey, um, she's great! She's a sophomore in college with a girlfriend, but, she likes boys too...damn! What is it with college girls, it's wonderful" Shouta's fast-paced words turned into sighs of delight, as he sunk into his stool and the girl waved a goodbye, slipping a napkin into Shouta's hand.
"Men" Sakura huffed, turning towards the exit as I vocally agreed, though managed to wink at Shouta's fortunate nights.
He grinned and nodded, all shame lost.
We stood up and realized sneaking drinks into our system were not nearly as simple as sneaking into an unsupervised bar.
Besides, the night could unfold many more tales.
But our fun was soon cut in half with the familiar ringtone that vibrated in Sakura's bag.
"Yes? Oh, hey dad, what is it?"
A pause in her lips and mumbles in her ear.
"Oh, ten already? Sorry, we forgot"
she nodded her head as she checked her Hello Kitty watch. Indeed ten thirty-five.
"Um alright, we'll be there. Love you, bye" she hung up her phone and with deafening steps, she subtly sighed, leaning against my shoulder.
Deflated and unhappy, Sakura's lively disposition plummeted.
"What happened?" I asked with careful tones.
She grasped her left wrist, wringing it gently and then muttering an 'ow'.
Sakura said, just for her own ears, "I knew there was a reason it hurt" as she massaged her superstitious wrist.
And the fear sunk in my throat, traveling down and toward my gut. Did I know of bad news?
"Well, the...our, um, this trip it's been, eh, well canceled"
her sulking words crashed around, splashing the rich soil around me and tarnishing the blossoming garden.
Why? We just started! Is it Mother? No, no.
"What! Why?"
Shouta's disappointment beat mine vocally, his eyes upset with the last night in European soil.
Sakura fumbled with her thoughts, once a convivial of adjectives, now a messy closet of poorly organized archives, in search of the adequate phrasing. But she could only hope.
"It seems that...the BBC has postponed the film agreement they had with your mom, we tried to make more arrangements but they decided on another book right now..."
It felt a bit unfair. A bit uncertain. A bit betrayed. How the fuck is your book not good enough? I cried and I have cried for you already...and still, you make her sad by splattering all about her mind and into pages and still...even a book of your isn't enough. I guess we just haven't suffered.
"Come, let's go" my stiff command brings Sakura's steps behind mine and soon Shouta's.
We walk in a familiar silence, groaning internally, aware that all our experiences have dispersed with a simple 'no'.
Blocks later, we sit at a bench by the corner of so and so street because who cares, I don't need to memorize names anymore.
The taxi cab promised us warmth ten minutes ago.
It's late.
I feel a small tug on my jacket and turn to look at the cause. She sits there, by my side, shivering in the interrupted joy. But she smiles, clinging on to the shredded bits of hope. Sakura says, "You know what I liked about today?" I shrugged.
She hummed, her tongue speaking of notes and melodies,
"Let's make this happen, girl, we're gonna show the world that something good can work and it could work for you-ooh-ooh, and you know that it will~"
I gave up and smiled at her foolish attempts, as she sprung to her feet and lightly danced to the lyrics of Two Door Cinema Club. I couldn't help it.
"Let's get this started, girl, we're movin' up, we're movin' up, it's been a lot to change but you-ooh will always get what you want~"
I sang with her, standing up and grabbing her hands in a poor attempt of a waltz or slow dancing (which fit neither Sakura or the song).
"It took a little time to make a little better, it's only going out, just one thing then another you kno-ow, you kno-ow!~"
Shouta joined our impromptu musical, completely disregarding sulking and moaning as an option.
Sakura giggled as she said, "You know, our lives might as well be a musical, if we keep doing this"
she went back to the bench, but soon the taxi cab arrived.
"If it's anything like...well, never mind, I just realized I don't like musicals"
I said only to earn a nudge from Sakura.
"Come on!" Shouta announced our departure from inside the cab.
We both entered, a feeling of closure and yet disappointment fleeting in our minds.
"Just, whatever happens Syaoran, remember you had fun, 'kay? And that...your mother's writing is too good for those 'bloody bastards' anyway" she lightly spoke into my ear, leaning against my shoulder. All the thoughts to tear pages and wash away ink...they remained but they coexisted neatly with the thought that Mother loved me and Feimei and Fanren and Fuutie and Shiefa.
I'll miss you another day, perhaps.
Where are you?
Sleep, you selfish thief, where have you gone?
Are you by the curtains serenading the moon or begging for forgiveness?
But more importantly, why aren't you with me!
I stood up from my disheveled bed, the blankets have been defeated from a restless argument in which words were useless, and I emerged victorious in the most bittersweet of battles. Sleep, you vulnerable romantic.
The clock read 2:00 AM but my thoughts ignored it.
I reached for my bottled water but found the refreshment to no avail.
Where had my mind gone? I remember arriving back to the hotel, bidding Sakura goodnight (and tastefully discovering she does prefer cherry lip balm over strawberry lip gloss), washing away my worries, and pretending to sleep, for three straight hours apparently. And still...even when I had arrived safely to the hotel, even when I had managed to search for Mother's presence, I could not find her. I worried because she may have cried her eloquent thoughts into poetic sadness and delved into the depths we couldn't bring her back from that time.
Maybe that book could seal the contract.
Fuck it.
Walking out into the hallway, I carefully closed the door so to not wake Shouta's snoring ass up, and began my search without a true goal.
But as the hallway's lavender carpet continued, I realized I ached for the soul of another.
For the body of warm feelings and sensitive eyes. I looked for the number I was sure belonged to Sakura.
'506...506...506? ...506!'
I inhaled and didn't breathe for about five minutes (just kidding).
My feet remained planted a little too firmly on the carpet, itching for a sure response.
To knock or not to knock? Did you ever ask yourself that, Shakespeare?
But I exhaled, sighing in the reality of 2:00 AM bodily desires, one of which would be sleep.
Of course, like in every thought I could have daydreamed about, I heard a stirring in 506.
I heard footsteps. And so I remained. Step, step, step, step, unlock...
"S-Syaoran..?" Her lovely waves appeared, sleepy eyes rubbed against Sakura's smooth palm, her silk nightgown reminded me of the dangers that could ensue with our late night company. But no, no, no, she's not like that, and yes, you're a boy, you are naturally like that but the point is that she isn't and that's final! OK? OK.
"Er, well, yeah...hi" I waved despite my apparent confusion and sudden lack of assumed confidence. Her brows furrowed in a parallel confusion, but she resigned and allowed for a sleepy smile. She tugged on her cotton-blue, silk night-gown, unwillingly revealing a bit more skin, her pearly smooth chest inviting me, oh, wait, no, that's her inviting me.
"Are you okay? Do you need anything?" She stepped aside allowing me entrance. Her room was definitely bigger than mine. The mustard sofa was under an invasion of Sakura's pink pillows and stuffed animals, underneath lay the homework I had completely forgotten about. It seemed she would be way ahead in Calculus, again.
"Do you need a glass of water? Is Shouta okay? What's wrong? Please, take a seat, oh sorry about the mess, I secretly can't stand being away from home" her hands ushered me to the sofa, as she referred to the stuffed animals while they were shoved onto the glass coffee table. She reached for a glass of water, and handed me the remote control. I passed on any late night viewings. Her eyes ruffled with her sudden appearance, her hands began to mess with her hair in last minute attempts to beautify whatever sleep managed to untame. And I couldn't help but carve into the details that framed Sakura's exquisite features. Her long, thin nose suited her doe-eyed fields of green, the lips that she had definitely gotten from Alberto pouted naturally without intent, her chin prim and soft...and I couldn't succumb to the threat that her soft body posed, not in its bare condition.
"Neh, Syaoran? Are you okay?"
Her frail concern woke me up, aching away the boiling desire I desperately tried to blush away.
But it was all I did.
"Oh, y-yeah, just...I couldn't sleep, so I didn't know where to go and well, here I am"
the sheepish explanation I gave her melted within her reach pleasantly.
"I see...well, if it helps, I couldn't really sleep either, it's a little hard to all by myself in a strange place" What the hell! It's like she's practically inviting you, Syaoran! Alright, little wolf, think! This is Sakura, not...not some late night dream you know would never happen because dream girls are teases. Besides, isn't this better?
Her crystals yawned.
Yep.
"At least you're not alone anymore?"
I gave her that, unable to think of anything in conversational skills at 2:00 AM.
"Yeah, hey do you want to, well, you know, we could - "
her blush initiated too many thoughts, and so I cut them short.
"Sakura! I-I can't! Well, no, I can, it's cool with me, but I mean, think about it, is this what you really want? Sure, I like you, a lot and everything, and you like me, yeah? Well that's all good stuff but maybe this is too soon for you and it probably is, so let's just stay and - "
a pillow shot my words back into my mouth. Reverse word throw-up.
"Dirty pervert! What have you been thinking? I was going to ask if you wanted to stay up with me"
She laughed and fell onto her back as she landed on the mustard-honey sofa. Her arms hugging her waist, securing the laughter for herself.
Cheeks flushed, eyes tickled, Sakura composed herself and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
The blush did not leave. Aren't I a little too old to be blushing?
Ffffffuuuuu -
"Sorry" I mumbled, shoving my face into one of her cat stuffed toys.
The plush did not settle the blush.
"It's fine, I just don't know why that's the first thing you would assume, I mean, it's not like we've thought about it" she yawned, flopping her petite frame against the plethora of plush. Her legs stretched on the sofa, her lovely, lengthy, legs.
Damn excessively short night gowns.
"What are you talking about, I think about it all the time"
my casual conversation began, as another stuffed animal was unwillingly shoved at my face, followed by a grumbling, "Syaoran!"
The room swallowed the silence and found a small comfort in plushies and mustard colored cushions.
Sakura lay on the sofa, our legs nearly intertwined from our opposite positions. But she always moved.
"Why can't you sleep?" Her question was my own.
"I don't know"
"Yes, you do" her persistence may have worked.
"I think it has to do with all this...stupid family shit"
I sighed the last three words.
"Like? Maybe it's not as stupid as you think"
There was another pause, too many in my head, I wasn't sure what to tell her.
"It's my dad. I guess I miss him, still, sometimes and when I was reading Mother's book, it felt like everything in me was flooding and well, there's just absolutely nothing I can do about it"
Silence between my words and silence suffocating the room.
Nothing.
But then there was skin, warm, soft skin, warmer than any sentiment coursing in my hands, skin so adoring, instincts was all I had.
She lay next to me on the narrow mustard-colored sofa, all her plushies thrown on the carpet, the girly desires she pursued in junior high gone, they had hit the floor of her life, becoming a part of her foundations but inevitably escaping her lips and her eyes.
Pink lips found flushed cheeks. Lips found lips. Loneliness found happiness. I love you?
I pressed her further and further, hoping for her lips to part, hoping for her approval because I was too cowardly to search for it.
And so her lips grew impatient, and they parted casually, much too lightly, but I took advantage of my invitation and found the heat to hands clutching hands, her grip growing tighter on mine. She lay above me, her skin pressed against mine, and yet, she held absolutely no control.
Her moves mimicked mine, her lips and tongue were in my care, her waves of honey dripping on her shoulder, cascading around my face and they became a curtain for our world.
"Syaoran, you need to stop" her heavy words held meaning but they were free of structure.
"Okay" I mumbled into her neck, loving bits of her skin.
"Really..." She groaned, afraid but still.
She remained against me, skin with skin.
"You're the one on top of me" I lightly nuzzled into her ear, a sudden reality call.
And I found myself alone again, Sakura swiftly climbed away and plastered herself against the opposite side of the sofa.
Her cheeks in a turmoil of teenage daze, her lips parted in the clash of innocence and desire, her waves crashing about her shoulders. I love you.
"That woke you up" I smiled as I intended.
She grinned, nervously, glancing around my eyes. Never at them.
"I...I didn't mean, well, I just, I like you" she stuttered around her words, but they met me halfway.
"So I've heard" but I like hearing it.
Our eyes slept into each others, and soon enough my skin wasn't alone again.
We switched spots, she lay down against the sofa and I lay beside her, scooting into the small space that remained.
I tangled my fingers with hers and managed a few blinks into sleep.
But they didn't last.
"I'm sorry about your dad"
"It's okay"
"It will get better"
I turned my eyes to her, my lips in her direction. She looked back.
"It is...better" what could be better? You're right beside me.
My hand is with you.
"Something good can work?" Her small question poked into our night.
"And it could work for you, and you know that it will~" I sang back.
Her eyes drifting into sleep once more.
I would stay, I had to stay given the opportunity, but considering that Touya's room was right across...there was absolutely no risking it. Standing up, I gently and carefully tucked in a blanket across the sleeping beauty and picked up a yellow lion plushie with a red collar that read 'Kero' and slid it beneath her arm.
Why couldn't all things be this simple? Simple as kissing and not being able to control it, simple as laughing and relating lyrics to actual life events, simple as the feelings flourishing for the cherry blossoms in my mind. Oh, I love your eyes and how they're like green crystal kaleidoscopes, I love your lips and how when we kiss I can't feel loneliness, I love your nose and how when you sneeze it scrunches up. They're just thoughts.
And the last I had as I headed for the door.
I left Sakura's room and looked for the fire escape, seeking that elevated sensation of the hotel's roof, knowing the windy smotherings of nature could knock some sleep into me (which I desperately needed after my little romance episode with a seductively attired Sakura).
But as I passed all the remaining stairs and paused my hands on the door, through the window, I caught a glimpse of a lonely soul.
"Xiao Lang...You're up late" the small 'click' of the door alarmed Mother, her long, wispy hair mourning the loss of an opportunity.
Her eyes a little sad, but it was enough.
"Yeah, well, sleep isn't really in the Li blood, huh?"
She stood by the edge, her hands resting on the railing next to what looked like a gargoyle. I stood beside her.
"Hah, yeah...your father never liked sleeping" the words in her lips matched the words in her book.
The ink was alive...it had been alive before me all my life, but never this directly.
"What else didn't he like?" The bravery I was suddenly consumed by didn't phase my mother.
She simply kept her stare on all the lights in the city, hoping they could reflect in her.
"Don't you remember?" Of course I did.
"Remind me" or don't, I'm not sure.
She paused, hardly to think because I'm sure she still knew, and said, "Well, he hated visitors, especially in the afternoons because that was strictly Russian Literature time...I swear, he paid more attention to Gogol than whatever I had to say sometimes. He also hated loud music, he was always listening to Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata, ironically he hated Tolstoy's "The Kreutzer Sonata", it was his least favorite Tolstoy work. He didn't like it when I went to a local writer's social gathering because men would look at me...and for that very reason he didn't like going with me at times, oh, make sure you warn Sakura that the Li men are very, very jealous beings!" She pointed her amused finger in my direction, wagging a warning with a small smile plastered delicately. I laughed a little, having experienced father's blood and traits.
"I'll try"
She smiled into the stars; hoping one could fall as if to remind her that all beautiful things must end. And maybe that could justify her marriage.
"You know, Xiao Lang, I really wanted this to work...for you too"
her voice began to crack, perhaps, melt into potential tears. Dear, God, please don't.
"Wanted what to work?" I didn't follow. I didn't know if I wanted to.
"My book, the film contract, I mean, we were so close! Just a few more cities and it could have been a done deal. I wanted you to see it, since I know you never read unless there's a movie adaptation" I gave her a 'oh, you caught me!', mediocre smile, allowing her to cry maybe for tonight.
"Well, that's starting to change" I said, letting her know of all the things read in my mind, all the ink she knew in my mind. She smiled heavily, her eyes brimmed with crystal tears, waiting for the proper moment to let go. They did when I mentioned Grandfather's funeral.
"I'm sorry, Xiao Lang, this isn't like me" she said, her voice healing, the tears rewinding into her eyes, and everything in her broken appearance was fixed. Mother never cried.
"I know. But, it's okay. Maybe he's read the book too" Maybe he's crying too.
But I couldn't bring myself to these words, not when Mother's dam was so overwhelmed.
"That's what I want also. I want him to know everything on my part, then he could put the pieces together" she didn't finish.
"And then?" The tension carried through my question.
"And then that's it. What else could I want?" She seemed convinced, and I felt convinced.
What else could she want? A reunion? A happily ever after?
But her magenta lips dove in happiness. She couldn't ask for anything else, whether I wanted it or she wanted it.
But she was happy.
"Mom...I'm adding Chasing Singapore to my favorite books section on Facebook"
Mother laughed and her thin fingers invaded my messy hair.
"Good"
And I was happy too.
