The Disease that Killed Love

Chapter 15-Sakura



I stared at the running water, my hands as cold as stone and my heart stone within me. I looked at the jade in my hand.

" When I was young I always heard that my father disappeared somewhere. There were no stories about him dying or such things like that. They always told me that he disappeared, that he disappeared. One day my grandmother bought me this jade when I was around five years old. It always had some kind of good luck thing to it-I never was physically wounded by falling or things like that. I took it to every cello competition and to every concert. Every time I train in martial arts I took it with me. At night I'd pray for my father to return."

I stared at my reflection in the water. I saw a different girl. I was no longer the cheeful Sakura who use to laugh and jump around in delight. I saw before me a thin, shattered girl, with lifeless green eyes and dirty auburn hair.

I didn't cry when they told me. It felt so strange. Anyone who knew me would suppose I would cry my eyes out until they are as blind as Syaoran's when he died. But it felt like Syaoran was nothing to me anymore. It was as if his death had no significant meaning. Syaoran's dead. So there.

" Now that my otou-san is back, I don't need to pray for him any longer. I don't need that good luck or protection. I want you to have it. I want it to serve you like it had served me. Make you successful. I want you to keep it safe like I did. You will need it, trust me."

I stared at the jade in my hand. Make me successful. I will need it.

Really, Syaoran? After everything that happened, all you left me was this? This poor excuse for a jade.

I stared into the water, and I fingered at the pendant around my neck. I was the Card Mistress. But what use is that if I can't protect the ones I loved?

Love. Ha, so funny.



Yue would not let us touch the body. None of us knew what happened to it. If there was a funeral, none of us were invited or knew when or where it took place. He, like me, didn't cry when he told us that Syaoran was gone. Forever. We will never see him again, blind and disabled though he was. We will never hear him play the cello. We will never hear him call " Royal Flush in Spades!" or " I win this round!". We will never speak to him again because there will be no response, Yue or no.

I took this in without any tears. Let Syaoran die. He deserves to die anyway. For all the lies he told us. All the useless hope we had wasted on him. Those times we shared together-all for nothing. Card captures. Trials. All for nothing.

I wasn't there when he died.

Should I regret it? Should I have wished that I was at his deathbed the minute he died? But I didn't regret it. It didn't occur to me that when he died he lost all sense of feeling and it was purely because Yue was there that he was able to die in peace, safe within Yue's aura.

Not that I would care if it did occur to me. What do I matter to him? He's the half mortal, the odd wizard by who knows how, the child of the dead that also abandoned him. I'm the Card Mistress. I am Kinomoto Sakura. I have a life. I have a future.

" Sakura-chan..."

I didn't turn around. I saw, in the water, the reflection of Tomoyo coming up to me.

" Sakura-chan..." She raised her hand and rested it against my arm.
" What are you doing here?" I asked.
" Checking to make sure you're alright." She answered.
" I'm fine."

Tomoyo's eyes glazed with hurt as she stepped back and I didn't blame her. We use to trust each other. Loved each other dearly. It must have affected her deeply to see me thus removed from her. But I did not sympathize. I did not care.

Tomoyo sighed softly, then left my side. I was alone.

Around me were many trees. Trees, all green with their deeply colored leaves. The ground was littered with fallen fruit, some overly riped, some still small and green like tender young leaves that sprouted after a fresh rain. Tomoyo's footsteps faded as she moved further and further away.

I closed my eyes. Vaguely I wondered. What happened to me? Why do I feel so insensitive, as if what tragedies in the world would never stir my stone heart? Do I really have a stone for a heart?

No answer. Beneath the shining waters, the pebbles spun with the current. Leaves floated downstream.

I stared at the jade. I have Syaoran's pictures. But the jade was the only real thing. It's like illusions. You may see them, but you can never be sure that they're real. Photos are like that. They capture that moment, but it is never the same again, simply because it was on a frame and placed for all to see, stopped within time.

I stared at the jade. It was simple. It wasn't even beautiful. I remember what I thought three months ago. Such a simple thing, yet so much meaning.

Empty meaning.

Angry now, I flung the jade into the water, watching it as it cracked and settled to the bottom of the waters. Curse you, Syaoran! I cried in my mind. Curse you and all your filthy words and promises! All those fake, made up stories, empty gifts, and an empty love that you've shown me ever since I confessed my love for you! Curse you and the day that we first met. I wish you never came to Japan. I wish I never knew you. I wish that day when you were returning to Hong Kong that I never went with you, nor Yue, nor Tomoyo, or Touya and Spinel and Kero and Nakuru and Eriol...

Turning around, I brushed my eyes. Was I crying? Crying for what? Perhaps for the piercing pain I now felt in my heart. Like knives, digging deep into the soul. I thought about those dreams we shared, how Syaoran was always there. Those prairies and meadows and beaches and forests. He was alive. He had his eyes, his ears, his voice, his movements. He was whole. He was healthy. He was unmarred by the filth of disease.

He never even said goodbye, that treacherous bastard. He never came to me in my dreams, even when he knew what would happen. No, he spent all his time, alive and awake, with his father. What about me? Why does it seem that the girls always get hurt? Every time a boy tells a girl he loves him, the girl smiles, and then they lie down in bed together. Then, when the girl needs him the most, the boyfriend leaves her to her fate.

Damn you Syaoran.

Then I fell to my knees. Iie. Syaoran never took advantage of me. He truly did love me. He wasn't like one of those gruesome stories. He was honest. He was calm. He was understanding. He stayed away from me because he didn't want me to feel too much pain. He wasn't a bastard. He was a sympathetic and soft hearted baka.

Tears welled up in my eyes again. This time I didn't brush them away. I sat there, on my knees, for a long while, staring at the ground in front of me. I closed my hands and tried to clasp the jade to my heart, to tell Syaoran that I wasn't really angry at him-

The jade.

In horror, I jumped to my feet and ran back to the edge of the stream, remember vividly how I had, in my rage, so rashly thrown that precious stone into the waters.

It had cracked.



I stared at the water with disbelief. I did not hear the footsteps behind me. I remembered how one time I had thrown the jade to the floor before Syaoran, cursing it and crying. It didn't break then on the hardwood floor. Why did it break now?

Without thinking, I stretched my arm out and snatched the last piece of the jade out of the water. Someone held me back and I fought against the arms, shrieking and crying as I went. Let me go! I have to rescue the last of what Syaoran was. Syaoran gave that to me on my birthday. My last birthday present from him-

But then...

Before my tearfilled eyes I saw the piece of shattered jade float suddenly, and ever so slowly, drift downstream. I made a move to catch it, but it floated out of my reach, and down the stream, far away. I got up and rushed to chase it. But it was gone. I could no longer find it.

" Imotou!"

I did not respond to Oni-chan. I dropped to my knees again and cried. I cried because I was not there for Syaoran and that I had given up on him. I cried because I destroyed the last thing I had of Syaoran. But most of all I cried because I felt so betrayed and so empty that it seemed like the only thing my heart still holds were my tears, hot and fresh, coming from one who lost everything dear to her.