AH ANOTHER MONTH
Anyway, you guys, my words are dying. I have nothing left to write about it seems, or I do...only, sigh.
I suppose I need some sort of inspirational confidence. I've been lacking everything lately because I've become a horribly lazy bundle of fun, woo summer.
Oddly enough, life is great, woo summer (a little more genuine).
I'm so grateful for all the reviews this prick of a story has received, I know I've mutilated a lot of the beloved characters but...but nothing, they're just words
and they shouldn't mean so much but they do and I'm sorry. Life can be unapologetic and I like it sometimes.
Moving on, there are two more chapters left after this, so be prepared for a bit more closing drama.
I think you should all be satisfied with the ending, maybe some more than others, but don't worry, it's a happy one :3
Much love to you all, because you are all wonderful for taking the time to read this, anyway, enjoy!
DISCLAIMER: CARD CAPTOR SAKURA BELONGS TO CLAMP
They were puzzle pieces that when formed became another piece to another puzzle, and once that puzzle was complete, they became a sequence of rotoscoping. That's how I remembered you, it's how I remembered Alberto's vague expressions, how I characterized the cobbled streets, and nightly tears, and Syaoran (but not really because his confession came in delicate colors and a bokeh background). And as I flipped through the book that became Europe, I tossed my books aside, reminding myself of school and its grammar and every other square inch left of my last year. When did we return from Spain? Was it when Yelan held in a plethora of frustrations? I couldn't tell. But I never could and especially not now that I stood counting absurdities in my room, memorizing Alberto's number because the napkin had gotten a little dirty and despite the filthy circumstances surrounding a prior biological adventure, I never was a messy girl.
"Sakura, are you done unpacking?"
Touya stood in the hallway, his hair a bundle of European messes. He carried his last bag over his shoulder, aware of the lengthy day Monday normally brought.
And he thought of the paperwork that could not justify any of the previous nights spent with warm hands. I bet he was in love, or something.
"Mhm, just about. Ah, Touya, I really don't want to go to school tomorrow! ...and I really don't want to open this right now"
I pointed towards the flippant screen of my Mac. An assortment of files and tabs, necessities at one point essential to my diminishing high school career. At the main center stood my Columbia University account. Within that tab stood my admissions result. Within those key words hung the priority of my future. And yeah, they're just words. Just words relevent to the magnitude of everything placed in the webs of my heart, because as of Syaoran Li, moving very, very far away suddenly seemed very, very lonely.
I don't think I could afford loneliness.
Touya's eyes delighted in the anticipation those bittersweet pixels ignited in his mind.
He said, "Sakura, open it, right now! Hurry, go, go, come on, you've been waiting too long for this"
the soft ash in his eyes were carefully polished by the bordering outcome of my exhuasted hands reaching for the mouse.
And I hesitated, they hesitated.
New York in my palms developed in shivers, like photographs in the darkness, kept hidden from the sun and developing under obscurity.
New York, you are my obscurity and must I grow beneath your shadow?
But it's the picture that counts.
And the process is of nature.
Columbia University, I have mentioned you in the nature of my no. 2 pencils and dense papers.
And so my hands reached for the link.
"I can't" but the beats elongated the tension, and I stood up from my bed and let my Mac and Touya's complaints be.
I walked into father's library and scanned without intentions, my fingers gracing spines in a form free of flesh and human instinct. They memorized abducted words from foreign translations, savored in names of colorful faces and characters of malice or characters in armor against a defiant life of pretentious lips. In that moment, I wanted to surround myself in a blanket of pages and awake in a gray century. Prostrate in a whirl of worlds beyond my mannerisms, I would then delicately express my confusion, but the nature of it all would be simplistic because it would be instinct. Lost in a past of Times New Roman would be simple because I would have to be lost. Finding a piece of your future shouldn't keep you in the maze, I shouldn't feel loneliness so soon, I shouldn't feel confident in anything when that confidence has confined autumn and warm hands in memories. Memories are books. He could be the greatest book and I haven't even finished reading.
Syaoran Li? Syaoran Li, I think you are to blame.
"You're going to be late"
"Oh really? I'm sorry, in all my seventeen years of proper schooling, I clearly must have confused the punctuality of my arrival if I thought waking up at 8 this morning would suffice, so fuck off Touya"
Shuffling my notebooks neatly into my red backpack, I rushed past the kitchen, where Touya insisted on further aggravating my late morning (in retaliation for last night's suspense), and ran towards the door, prepared for a chilly jog to school. In what dimension could my legs afford the comfort of a walk? One in which I had awoken around 6:30 (as usual) and had plenty of time for every morning routine. But nope, not today, not today when Syaoran was back to being 'Syaoran, why are you plaguing my mind?'-Syaoran.
"Hey, Sakura, dad said he would take you"
Turning back, Touya's voice brought my eyes onto the living room. A difference broke the indifferent atmosphere I typically walked from. And where could I walk into now? Frames. Frames dusted by the significance obscurity crushed but they developed in my eyes. Mother developed in my eyes. And it was perhaps the single frame that ignited this peculiarity, the one golden and adorned French frame of lovers past (because the rest remained occupied by childish hands frighteningly clutched against hair or quaint childhood impressions).
"It's nice, huh?" Father appeared behind me, his frown speaking a compliment.
Her hair tamed in the liberty of a French braid suited for her thoughtful skin, because I'm sure God must have branded her individuality as a painter brilliantly carves at the corners of a his impatient mind for, perhaps, an undiscovered love of his colors. The red frock she normally attired in simple occasions, the worn out smile in which a sensation of delicate happiness glided over to and fro, and her silent eyes, shamefully disguising a sense of reality for the photograph; Nadeshiko Kinomoto was unintentionally intentional when it came to angles and lenses.
"Y-Yeah, I hadn't seen this one before" I laced my fingers against the frame, edging against the carved out designs of the old thing. It was still dusty, father cared but perhaps couldn't as much as he would have liked. Otherwise he would have taken out their wedding one (how unfair would that be? In the conscious of a love as dead as the awakening, incredibly). But a lover's sorrow for the other's intents was vivid, and I could not argue. Nobody wanted to.
"She was a lot younger then, I'd say around...seventeen?"
His hushed voice illuminated the strings harmoniously pulled in our lonely father and daughter words. Touya left for work.
"Seventeen? So then, you guys hadn't met yet, right?"
He paused for thought, and pushed his thick-rimmed glasses against his nose.
"Suppose not" he didn't frown so much.
"Then I suppose that's why she looks so sad"
he chuckled at my childish optimism, which became a tiresome gesture of my own, having been pushed against a rather turbulant amount of prior events.
"Let's go, you're already late enough as it is" nodding, I brushed my uniform skirt and tugged at my socks.
Oh, if only, if only sentiments could be tugged simply so.
"Madoka Kanai?"
"Here"
"Kou Kanashiro?"
"Here"
"Sakura Kinomoto?"
And the clamor set itself aside, a silent wave of unity washed against the seat ahead of me. Of course she wouldn't reply, where was she anyway? Last night's arrival hadn't so much cost her a sleepless night had it? No, definitely not, if anything my ass should be the one crushed against fatigue and dark circles, in a parallel state beside mother.
"Has anyone seen Sakura this morning?"
Terada-sensei's voice searched across an assortment of indecisively careless professionals in the area of indifference.
"Ask Syaoran, they did just come back from their honeymoon" the girl's lips next to me decided Takashi had been much too funny and expressed in a palpating laughter, contagiously spread throughout the classroom, in particular my row. Terada-sensei cocked an eyebrow in my silent grim of embarrassment, setting aside a blush well aware it would only further incite the bashful circumstance I became a part of.
"You're all idiots" I mumbled, particularly to anyone laughing and took out my pencil case only because I needed something to keep me busy (oh yeah, and fuck you, Takashi).
"Alright, guess that's one absence for Kinomoto and - "
Footsteps slammed against the wooden floors, sliding door slammed against the meddling commotion of common adolescence, and in stepped a honey haired bundle of morning excuses.
"No, no, I'm here!" Sakura panted slightly, a manner relatively similar to all those fictional creations of the animated mind, and slid gently and apologetically towards her seat, eyes scrambling for a proper 'sorry' that would fit in the eyes of Terada.
"Another tardy, and on your first day back? Well, I'll only assume your exclusive visit abroad with Li-san turned out rather pleasant, agreed?"
Terada-sensei's nonchalant response slapped a useless blush on Sakura's cheeks, a little more than useless on my own.
The class quietly gleamed with a razzle dazzle rose of giggles, supressed by caves of skin.
A little to my right, a little behind my desk, and through my peripheral vision I noticed a pouty, though elegantly held, Shouta, as he grumbled (particularly to nobody in particular), "I went too...asshole"
He caught my discretion and grinned in his well-known lopsided charm. All the foolishness seeped from his chalk-white cheeks, all the ill-intentions brushed aside and kept captive by the sincerity of surrender. All in all, Shouta Watanabe knew me too well and my maturity didn't mind.
Sakura sat in front of me, she hardly fidgeted with greetings because her own fixation remained against the board.
And the usual characteristic applied in her behavior, whenever she felt embarrassed, her eyes would compensate for the lack of initiation.
Indeed, she would be important.
"I need everyone to turn in their Macbeth packets, after school will result in a ten point deduction, come on"
the class resumed its usual pace, an ignorance to the blissful, emotionally detrimental days the Sakura, Shouta and Syaoran club untangled.
Everything was too in place.
"Neh, Syaoran.." Little whispers made the board out of focus, as Sakura's hands placed a neatly folded piece of paper on my desk.
I bet she would have never passed notes before.
I smiled and quietly opened the folded sentiments.
I hope your mom's feeling better, I felt as if we all left on a bad note. Anyway..I have news to tell you, please linger on after school with me.
Her grammar and diction was spoken in the regular Sakura Kinomoto valedictorian speech, the one noted print of laughs and carelessness spoke of itself in her clumsy writing. Everything was too in place.
I poked her back and mustered a simple smile for the health of my mother and everyone else involved.
Sakura returned the gesture, her lips involved in the familiarity of our days.
Everything was in place.
"Sakura Kinomoto, what has happened to your life!"
Presently, a girl of passionate fits and trembling friendships prodded in the absence of my puzzled face.
Tomoyo and I sat beneath one of our famously ancient trees in the schoolyard and pretended to eat when our lips were too full with words.
Missed words of falling and falling until someone decided to catch you. But for that very matter, no one caught me and so I might have fallen for Syaoran.
"My life? Oh, Tomoyo, don't exaggerate so much" I plucked at her untouched ceasar salad, a recent creation from her mother's well-kept garden.
"Don't tell me I'm exaggerating when nothing so fascinating has happened to you"
she poked in between the aisles of my bento.
"Well, thanks, but mind you, I've had fascinations occur left and right daily"
a sip from my juice box settled the nerves.
"As dangerously fascinating as a boy?"
She gave me a wink of feigned teenage self-absorbtion.
I fell for it right away and my lips spoke of pretty feelings I couldn't summon alone.
"I mean, I-I think we're official, nothing's been said but the way he looks at me when he thinks no one is looking - "
"Ah, such oblivion 'tis love" Tomoyo fitted her words in interwoven sighs.
"And then those secret smiles of his, have you seen them? Of course not, I mean, that's why I love them so much - "
"A lovers den of hidden riddles" Her eyes glimmered.
"Anyway, we've kissed already...he held my hand on the way to biology, after choir, isn't that valid for some sort of legitimacy?"
"Oh, and to dabble in the uncertainty of lips, w-wait, you've what? When? Why wasn't I notified? Oh my God, Sakura, your first kiss! Confide in me, go!"
And the best friend of a century eagerly clasped my empty hand, hoping to clasp every movement transpired by the simple act of kissing.
Laughing because it eased the rotten nerves of mine, I smiled shyly, reminded of it all and said, "It's a bit of a funny story, you know, well, in a way, the entire trip was...a little funny" I darted my eyes into our hands, Tomoyo fumbled with her slippery smile, knowing of the Sakura Kinomoto/apparently Ricci sudden explosion (or rather rude implosion).
"Yeah well, let's not mess with that. Right now, all I need to know is...are you in love with him?"
Oh, leave that precariously anticipated mess but create a new one? Tomoyo, you devil.
Of course, I couldn't answer right away, and so I didn't. But Tomoyo probed upon her own assumptions: well, of course you are! Look at you, all flushed and starry-eyed! What's that? Are those Cupid's wings I hear fluttering in your heart? By God, love indeed!
"You're so lame, Tomoyo" I groped for my shame, hiding behind a casual grin on her lovely face.
"I'm also quite honest...and intuitive"
I rolled my eyes and leaned against the protective tree. The shade argued with the wind, pushing giants of silhouttes until the Goliath was soon dispersed and the misty sun prevailed. Despite the cold nature of natural Decembers, the Tomoeda sun disregarded any invitation and settled above the rather autumn-like embrace.
Hm, autumn.
"I heard from Columbia yesterday..."
Snap, snap, Tomoyo abruptly interrupted our peaceful gaze and hastily sat up.
"What! Did you get in? Hurry, do tell!" And this was a typically vocal pattern found in Tomoyo Daidouji.
Often, her lips spoke with rapid intentions, and I just couldn't keep up.
"Actually, I haven't checked, not yet, anyway" I twirled with my hair and intentionally glanced away, avoiding all harmful looks.
"Oh, Sakura, you really should" but she only sighed, perhaps aware of the current boy/school circumstance.
And yeah, the proper choice is clearly, impeccably obvious...it had absolutely nothing to do with the stitches about to burst.
"I know, I'm just..."
The clouds, which seemed to be exclusively in contentment with heavy days, loomed curiously, staring right into me.
Tomoyo chose to do the same.
"Have you told Syaoran?"
I shrugged, sighed and said no.
She shrugged, sighed and so she said,
"It will hurt"
"I know.." I mumbled.
"But you had this planned for so long"
"Right.." I agreed.
"He'll understand, yeah?"
"Yeah.." I ached.
We sat quietly beneath the branches and beneath the skies, our hands once more clasped. A gesture outgrown for our tender age, but inevitably, a gesture of sleep-overs and giggling fits for pre-adolescent daydreams. And only for that moment did I hope for blatant, impossibly irrevocable rejection.
News, like on the television, radio, online?
"No, more like, uh actually, where do you plan to go after high school?" Tomoeda appeared colder towards the end of the day.
Sakura had fastened the buttons on her lightly colored jacket, her hands tucked inside, shaking, I would suppose. It seemed to be a bad habit.
We walked from school and, preferably, to the cafe just before our neighborhood.
I glanced past our shivering shoulders and at her tight lips, pressed against an uneasy question.
But uneasy? I had a plan, I always had, remember? Of course.
"I'm applying to Todai, it's weird how we've never had this conversation before, huh? Graduating and all.."
I let my words trail purposely, trail alongside Sakura's fading concentration. She beamed gently, though confidently, assured with her response.
"Mhm. You're moving to Tokyo then? I always did think you were a little too cool for this small town"
she didn't smile but she didn't frown. She kept her assured response in the air and grinned a little.
I smiled for the two of us and replied, "Even when you didn't think of me at all?"
She stopped walking and gated the sudden frothy atmosphere from her parted lips.
The words were not pronounced and so she kept on walking. An undesirable tension broke in pieces every inch of sincerity I had read from her small note. Maybe she finally saw her becoming image, maybe she heard Rika's incredulous pitter patter of gossip throughout Tomoeda Academy on a clear day and let it accumulate, maybe I really was just kidding myself.
But she held a piece in her hand and soon in mine. A warmth accompanied her broken silence, she held on tighter and tighter to my hand, hoping to find much more beauty in the symmetry inhabiting the capsized ambitions added with our laced fingers.
"So you'll study architecture in Tokyo?"
She returned to the subject, but a change of direction began to unfold.
A clever hint of carefree intentions pushed against her lips and granted her the usual smile.
She tucked in her hair behind her ear, only to be tucked out by my own hand.
"Mou, Syaoran - " but I gently pressed a finger against her ajar lips and said, "Haven't you ever seen Zombieland?" as I tucked in the same strand behind her ear.
A delicacy of endearing sentiments bordered her countenance, a procuring gesture she made with her eyes, and she scrunched her nose and laughed only a bit to satisfy.
We neared the cafe from the distance and entered with heavier buttons and much more grace. She held my hand, all the while I plunged into a dizziness of flushed cheeks as several of our classmates, already seated, devoured our present existence. A girl with dark hair, who I once accidentally insulted by calling 'Madoka' when she was indeed her twin sister, murmured to the group she sat with. Soon enough, a gallery of seventeen year-old eyes pounded into our hand holding, cheek blushing, lip teasing existence. And they giggled.
"Where do you want to sit?" Sakura asked, unaware of the tender audience, as she took off her jacket for comfort.
Immediately, I grabbed her hand and slid her past table one and two, three, four, five, six, and several booths later, we sat at the far end of the cafe, far enough from groping eyes and deceitful giggles (nearly as deceiving as their hair).
"So far! They'll hardly notice us at all" she pouted but sat all the same in the selected booth. I sat across from her, well aware of the uninviting tendencies that would arise were I to sit right next to her. Oh, goodness, a socially inadequate riot of teenage squeals would tear each wall down.
But the waitress noticed us, well enough, another classmate it seemed. Sakura's face lit up like a festive lantern upon her entrance, and they chatted like women, complimenting hair and grinning about class work because it always seemed to interrupt shopping time. Eventually, our orders were placed and she left, after she remembered my name (apparently, I looked a lot like Kenichi from her first period).
"It feels as if it's been forever since I've gotten to actually talk to her"
Sakura sighed into her warm tea. She confided all her missed girl anticipation within flavors of old days (so she said peppermint tea used to be her favorite).
"Good. She didn't even remember me"
I grumbled into my own drink, tucking insults in the roof of my tempered mouth.
"Oh, don't be like that. You didn't even know her name"
her teasing eyes melted into her teaspoon of sugar, placidly conforming to my childish retorts.
"...well, at least I had the decency of recognizing her"
I crossed my arms in accordance to my words. Hmph.
Sakura's lips lightly formed another sweet smile of casual melancholy, but perhaps too well developed so it may have been in pretense.
"Oh...I didn't know you cared so much for the opinion of attractive women" her arms cradled her theaterical concern for absolutely nothing.
I softened by impulses.
"What, attractive? No...fuck other women" I pursed my lips in the last grumbled words and looked carefully around for a sound response.
"...you would like that, wouldn't you" she sniffled more responses.
"I wouldn't! I mean, l-look at you! You're - Jesus, Sakura, why would you even think that, it's like, ah, you're so - "
Laughter.
Laughter poured from her drowning facade of jealousy. Sakura emerged from the convivial sounds emitting from her pleasant lips, her eyes gleaming with pretty feelings that crept into my sleeve, because for all you care, I keep my heart a little more hidden.
"You were kidding, weren't you?"
Monotone.
Sakura glanced away, looked into my foolish eyes and nodded vividly, covering her bursting lips from my failed realization.
"How incredibly dense you are, Syaoran Li" she sighed, swirling another heavy spoonful of sugar into her tea.
Another spoon and the amount would be of concern, for now it's still cute.
"Me? Dense? Oh, really?"
She gleefully nodded as she took a small sip of her tea.
Her hands wrapped around the cup, her manicured nails reflecting gentle assumptions.
"I bet I know something your dense self doesn't" I carefully analyzed my decision in a matter of seconds.
A hasty confession regarding years of denial, Sakura's green, green, oh beautifully green..., anyway, eyes reluctantly gave in.
"I bet I already know because I am definitely not as dense as you are" but her pride insisted, she tugged at her uniform skirt, I took off my jacket.
"No, impossible. It's only recently that I've discovered the truth of this matter" our eyes tangled in a sweet, preferably short-lived, battle of hollow determination.
If anything would compensate, it would probably be the urging words that begged me not to let her know, for fear of unwanted embarrassment.
But, well, you only live once.
"Then tell me" the lovely simplicity of her lips were enough.
I tucked away more sentiments because the girl before me was too much.
"You know how things seem so sudden?"
She paused for a proper answer, and because she held more wit than any other seventeen year-old, replied "They don't feel sudden" I smiled back.
"I know..well, it's because, ah this is kind of embarrassing, I guess, well, not to sound like a creeper or anything but.."
I fixed my vision casually into her intent eyes, a sly crimson tainting the canvas of my cheeks, a horrible scenario of macho demise all for the beloved girl I often admired, and because I had an awfully big mouth on ocassion.
"Yes?" She peered into the blush of my discontent but enjoyed every hue.
"I've had a crush on you for a very long time now" one, two, three, four, not it!
Wait, no, that wouldn't save my betraying lips, that wouldn't save any dignity I craved every so often. And so I looked away, it was all instinct, the act of pretending not to care for the ideals in Sakura's kaleidoscope eyes, because the sun would still shine without them. I'm a terrible liar, by the way.
"Like I said, not in a creepy way or anything just like - "
I glanced with the deepest of discretion in the surfaces of my brown eyes, but it suffocated under the enticement of her soft hands on my own.
The background settled, if one could even attempt to describe, in a sequence of glamorous pens and colors, only inked on the screens and faded pages of those pleasantly, though entirely misleading, drawn shojo illustrations. Not something I would be proficiently familiar with, you know.
She bit her shy lip and glanced down, her eyes partaking in the coy mannerisms that characterized her too well for the health of any man.
But the shyness fled and the words returned.
"I'm really happy I met you"
And our background had settled too confidently, blurring out the real background, fading away our waitress and her shamelessly deafening,
"Soooo cuuuute!"
So we're walking.
Walking home takes time.
Difficult words take time.
More steps and steps, ugh, why, why, why!
He's looking your way, and he's smiling even more so about Tokyo. Bright lights, beautiful faces, nocturnal adventures beneath a stark layer of unfinished papers, girls with which to flirt casually and never speak to again, faces to etch in your palms because that's all they'll ever be. Why do I find it this upsetting?
"So yeah, that's basically what I'm going to do, and you?" Syaoran closed his future plans with a basic formality. What about me?
Oh, if I could tell him as perfectly as he did, without a stutter to my lips, without a hesitation to my sighs, and without a tear to my shredded eyes.
We keep walking home.
He keeps waiting for me.
"I, uh, I have plans too" I smile a little too nervously, speaking in stutters.
He grins expectedly, flicks my nose and says, "Well, of course, you're still Sakura Kinomoto, aren't you?"
His rough hands shrug my shoulders as if to, by natural occurance, search for a lost fragment of the scholastic girl he used to know (and just that).
"Ha-ha, yes, very much so" I sighed, hoping for fictional faces to set aside the reality matters.
He remained quiet, waiting for me to tell him the dreams of a seventeen year-old girl.
My house loomed into sight, our distance from it closing, as if to indicate the approximity of our ending high school ideals.
I had to rush with my reply.
"Since I was, maybe like thirteen? Yeah, I've always wanted to live in New York. I remember some of Grandpa's clients were tough, a little presumptious, New Yorkers that lit up the conference room like no one I had seen ever before. And the stories they would talk about during dinners, it's like a replication extracted out of the cinema, right?" I swept my fears aside and noted the quiet sparks that highlighted Syaoran's pensive eyes. We both remained silent, parting ways in the delays of our spoken plans. We walked in an existential charm of life because we had already planned our exit.
"That's really far away..it's another country, I mean, damn. So, how are transferring from here?"
Syaoran ignored the moment of brewing silence and spoke as if the magnitude of miles made an exception for him.
But he was a little mistaken.
"Ah, actually, I'm not leaving for graduate school or anything..I applied to Columbia, and if I get in, then I should be leaving by the end of June"
before our flickering eyes could count the steps to 'goodbye', we arrived at my house. It was a little darker than it should have been, the sun was middway into another day and the emptiness that a cluster of fickle clouds normally claimed took a day off.
We stood firmly at the gates, like almost any other time. Except it wasn't, because whenever I looked up, the sky was gray and the clouds were gone and I couldn't hide beneath anything. And as I stood there, fidgetting with my feelings and gnawing at my thoughts, I thought, well, Stuart Murdoch, you are right once more. There is no hole in which to hide. This was my fear.
But because I couldn't hide, I stood with Syaoran.
"So, yeah. I've kind of been working for this since freshman year, it means a lot"
Quiet, it laced my hair and held the elasticity of our walk.
Why do we mean so much in so little?
"Yeah, it should, I mean it's like growing up and shit, right?" He was uncomfortable because he was cursing, a subtle inconvenience he slipped by me during our airplane talks. But his disposition elongated the anticipation I couldn't tolerate. He was still, and calm, frustratingly...OK.
Nothing was undone, his jacket was in place, and I was pulling at the threads, but he didn't walk away.
"Exactly! And well, yeah, I actually got the results in today.."
I looked away, absolutely detesting his aloof display of strange relations. He didn't know me for the moment.
But I couldn't look away for long because words I longed for reeled me in.
"W-what? Already? So did you get in or? Damn, I'm not sure why I'm freaking out so much, I mean, it's your decision, yeah it's been made, I-I know, but it's happening to you and here I am! Stammering like a fool, sorry" he sighed his clumsy discontent into a shaky chuckle, covering his face because maybe that's how he liked to hide.
I didn't feel like it though.
"I guess it is a really big decision huh, I mean, it's got us in a temporary portmanteau of...of.."
I stopped but couldn't, I couldn't dash the word that slipped the unusual frigid nature my mind found.
"A portmanteau of love"
Syaoran held my hands, and I looked up but the sky was still sad but I didn't care.
"Love? How lame" I mumbled into the air that cared little for my mood.
Syaoran's rough sketches drew upon my hands and I wanted them permanent. If only, if only.
"Not as lame as you leaving for another dimension" he twirled my hands and pretended as a ventriloquist did.
"It isn't that lame.." But the words left in a mumble too stiff for any compromise.
Dimensions of a distance too improbable.
I liked how he exaggerated though.
"If you ask me..well, no, don't ask me"
He let go, and turned his back to me. I baffled in the steps he stole from me, his eyes characterized in things that would dissolve into particles of sadness.
Regret.
"I'm asking you, so go on"
He faced me slowly, forgetting that months would devour the lips that kissed too much and eyes that hid so little but encompassed every detail together.
He chuckled, so very lightly that it didn't mean anything and said,"Well, if you ask me...you should go to Tokyo with me and we'll open up some cool coffee shop that also looks like a quaint 70s-styled home. All the cool kids will hang out there, mostly because of the pretty co-owner, but also because we'll play really good stuff. Of course, we'll be studying too because life wouldn't be the same otherwise. How does that sound?" Syaoran grinned like a boy that he used to be and on occasion, still was. He winked the daydreams away and held my hands again, reminding me of reality.
"But...I think Columbia deserves you more"
The chimes that played memories all around me started and ended with his indecisive lips.
Syaoran Li was the sweetest thing in my seventeen year-old life. And he was letting me leave with that.
"I've had it planned for so long, you know.."
He nodded, a comforting smile replacing the warmth of his hands, "I know, and no matter what happens, I'll stand by you. You're smart and I trust you and I..."
"I really like you?" I giggled because the words he expected from his lips grew as a blush on his vacant face.
"I really do"
Space held an absolute insignificance between us.
"Fucking piece of shit! Gah!"
Shit, shit, shit.
I held my bloodied hand and pressed it against any piece of fabric around.
On any lucky day, Sakura would have been fumbling with her first-aid kit, and after laughing, I would have gone home with a Hello Kitty bandage despite my pride.
Today is the day everything was nothing.
Everything, for a twinkling, sorbet frosted, flesh comforting moment, was Sakura.
Nothing, for an elongated, grimy, slate colored noir excerption film moment, was Sakura.
And as I stood in the elongated nothing, I held my wound in my jacket, as it only stained the fabric a bit.
Temper is a word of which it's corners of meaning have been well stretched over the canvas of my life, much like the sheet on my bed. My bed was always made.
"I'm home.." I announced although I shouldn't have because my hand was bleeding and mother hates blood.
"Xiao Lang! What happened to your hand?" And before I could hide the bleeding hand from sight, mother appeared a bit faster than I could have liked.
Of course, she had been home all day, and as I suspected, pounding on gallons of Ben & Jerry's.
"I...I, uh...I hit the mailbox"
Between the trickling of blood and the dripping into the fabric, I couldn't muster a lie logical enough for the musings of my mother.
Because the truth was said, and this she knew, Yelan sighed and walked into the kitchen.
"Really, Xiao Lang? That terrible temper of yours sometimes..." And she came back with the regular first aid kit and motioned me to sit on the stairs.
We certainly couldn't stain anything else.
Grabbing my hand, free of care and motherly intentions, she took out the alcohol and poured it over my wound, disregarding any thought to my comfort.
She figured if I was idiotic enough to express sentiments at the expense of my own well-being, who gives!
"Sorry" I mumbled because I was a kid again.
She shook her head and mumbled something but I didn't bother asking because truth be told, I was a little scared.
"Don't apologize. Just think next time"
I nodded and she clipped on the final bandage.
I hesitated but stood up, realizing her mind must have been drowned in her own thorns and couldn't prick at anything else.
"But, can you please explain to me just why our innocent mailbox had to take such a beating?"
Flinching.
Flinching because a summer job would be in the works and that would require hours taken from me, steps to growing up, steps to leaving pretty faces and experiencing wrinkled, though fairly accepting, faces, and all for the sake a humble living.
A humble living for the fucking mailbox my anxious fists assaulted on the account of anger issues and other girl related issues.
I'll stand by your side no matter what..
What the fuck was I thinking?
Stay?
"Xiao Lang?"
Mother posed my name in a subtle manner of authority.
"Uh yeah, well, like you said, this terrible temper of mine!"
And I rushed upstairs because discussing bottled feelings with a woman who daily inked them on her skin would not be OK.
Not another word entered my room, and I didn't care because caring meant feeling. Feeling was a luxury reserved for those living in the real world, and I for one, did not know how to do it. And it's funny, isn't? It's kind of a funny little thing that a girl you used to stare at without the least amount of understanding is now everything and nothing.
Sighing, I dropped myself onto my bed and grumbled the sky and the sun into the pillow I hadn't remembered since the insecurity days of junior high.
I turned on my back and came in contact with my ceiling.
Flat, dull, and incredibly obvious. My lips twitched in the confidence I found to parallel my own appearance.
Make me forget of everything?
But the oblivion I was granted in the makeshift hypnosis I found was shortly cut my the vibration in my school bag.
And it kept going and going and going...
"Hello?" My voice was startled and gruff, indicating the previous matters in my mind.
"Syaoran? I got some good news!"
Sakura's voice illuminated the flaky paint screeching at the edge of my bed. I bet hers was pink or some other pastel dream.
"And what are these news?" I forced a smile into the phone, hurting myself in the process.
"You know how you said you would stand by my side no matter what?"
Her voice quivered, I wish it hadn't.
I thought of the words beside my chest and dampened the depth of its meaning.
I was seventeen, I was a boy. Do I ever mean anything?
"Erm.." Sakura fell apart.
And her paper lips and paper eyes cut into my own. Maybe it wasn't about being young, or feeling, or meaning, or thinking more than I should, or touching, or anything I thought I had figured out. Maybe it was just about being happy.
"Yeah, what happened?" I coughed before I spoke.
It was silent for long before she professed a love for ambitions.
"I got in! I-I actually got in! Isn't that amazing? I mean, I know I worked hard for this but, but it really did happen! I could just cry, I almost did but then Touya came in and laughed and picked me up and spun me around so all the tears I felt like crying kind of just dried up that way...oh, so sorry about all this, I'm just so happy!"
I bit my lip and coughed another sentiment obscured by the wall that began to build between us.
"Nah, it's totally understandable! I mean, congrats! I'm really happy for you, I knew you'd make it though"
and the wall fell again, brick by brick and I almost felt her euphoric pink lips on my own.
She smiled some more.
"I'm really happy for you.."
"Thanks, Syaoran"
We both stood by each other amongst fragile things and paper thin walls.
"Hey, can we, like, make a promise or something?"
Sakura's voice poked a hole between our rooms.
"Sure thing" I replied in the same way.
She never sounded so sure of herself but it was all I needed to hear.
"Promise to make the most of it?"
Grinning because today, I was only a boy in the search for a happiness of my own, I said, "Promise"
We laughed into more words without meaning,
we imagined into hands that would always hold,
and we didn't sleep because it was never enough.
Wow, super boring lol. This, actually, is a very important chapter because the next one is just going to jump into the end.
Feedback is appreciated, so please, please do so! xoxo