Time passed on, as it often did, and the rest of the week - despite how badly it had
started out - went smoothly for Sakura Kinomoto. All around campus, the students were working
their hardest to get ready for the Freshman Festival, the one time of the year when parents were
openly invited to see the school and spend time with their students. The entire weekend was to
be swamped with activities for both the college freshmen and their parents, and Sakura - assistant
for her hall - was expected to work the "evening" shift in the dorms, making sure that the unruly
youngsters stayed relatively sober while their parents were sleeping the nights away at the
nearest Hilton.
It was Friday afternoon when the telephone rang in their dorm room, interrupting the
relatively quiet bliss of the dorms after lunch. On the quad, Naoko was helping their freshman
hall council set up a booth to earn money for building improvements, and Tomoyo had tagged along
with her video camera. She had tried to grab her roommate as well, but Sakura had been adamant
about staying in, citing that she had far too much Spanish history homework to go out and watch
a bunch of freshmen put together their bake sale. The dark-haired girl laughed where she should
have been offended and shrugged it off, grabbing Keroberos by the fluff-ended tail and making him
come along in the brunette's place. Sakura had sighed a sigh of vast relief as soon as her friend
was out of earshot, grateful for the peace and quiet.
Groaning, she rolled out of bed and trudged over to where she'd left the phone that
morning, nestled in a pile of dirty clothes. "Yo," she muttered, plopping down on the edge of her
desk as she continued with her reading. "What can I do for you?"
"Sakura?" came a familiar voice, and she nearly dropped her text book onto the floor as
she recognized it. "Is that you?"
"Daddy!" she squealed, a grin stealing across her face as she tossed down her reading
and nearly fell into her desk chair, the look on her face that of a little girl who had not seen
her father in years upon years. "How ARE you? What's happening? Are you doing well? How's the
university's dig up there in the Yukon?"
Fujitaka Kinomoto laughed at her childish antics and excited voice, and she could only
imagine how his laugh lines crinkled as he smiled. "Things are fine up in the Yukon," he replied,
"but I'm actually back at the university for a few weeks, thanks to some paperwork that magically
appeared on my desk." He sighed, but the lightness was still in his voice. "I felt bad that I
never got to see you and your brother off when you two went back to school, so I thought you both
could come home for the weekend and spend time with your dear old dad. What do you say?"
Her first reaction was to say yes immediately, but her mouth failed and creased into a
frown. "Oooh, I can't," she lamented, kicking the nearby garbage can in annoyance. "It's the
Freshie Fest and I'm covering the dorm shifts while Naoko does all the day stuff. I can't just
up and leave."
"The 'Freshie Fest,' eh?" repeated her father. For a moment, there was silence on the
other end of the phone, as though he was considering something but not saying it aloud. "Well,
you know, I never DID make it to your Freshman Festival. What if I come up for the weekend to see
you? I could stay with Touya and Yukito in the apartment, and we could do all that good family
stuff that we haven't been able to do for a while."
Repressing her urge to scream in absolute delight, Sakura simply smiled, nodding excitedly
at the phone, as though she could see the man on the other end. "I'll meet you down in the
building lounge at noon, okay?" she questioned. "You can meet Tomoyo and EVERYTHING! I can't wait!"
She could just imagine his father, sitting in front of his big desk in his New York
University office, his brown eyes slanted shut behind his glasses as he smiled and nodded back.
"I'll see you then, Cherry Blossom."
========================
"An American Cardcaptor"
A Cardcaptor Sakura Alternate Universe Fanfiction
Written by Kate "SuperKate" Butler
Chapter 6: "Family Matters"
========================
"You really SHOULD have come," Tomoyo admonished her roommate sternly, wagging a
breadstick across the room as though it were an extension of her hand. Sakura was still buried in
her Spanish history homework, and the dark-haired camerawoman was beginning to think that she'd
been telling the truth about her history reading. "It was so funny watching the freshmen girls
ignore a screaming Naoko. She really IS scary when mad." There was nothing more than an "mm-hmm"
from the brunette, and Tomoyo frowned at her. "Are you alright?" she asked after a moment of
total silence. "I order veggie pizza and you won't eat it, and now you're not talking to me. Are
you mad that I wore your sweater the other day or something?"
With a small laugh, Sakura shook her head and closed her text book for the first time in
the two hours Tomoyo had been home. "I'm just being a dork," she responded casually, sliding off
her bed and onto the floor to take a piece of pizza. "My dad called this afternoon, and he's back
from the Yukon for a while, so he's planning to come here tomorrow."
After a rather long belch, Kero leaned back on his stuffed elbows and eyed her up and
down. "Your pa, eh?" he smirked, button-like eyes glimmering mischievously. "If he's da man
dat hates Terada so much, I wanna meet 'im!"
"Cute, Kero." The brunette stuck out her tongue, but she was smiling. "I haven't seen
him in so long, that's all," she explained to Tomoyo, whose mouth was gaping open wide enough to
stick an entire half pizza in. "He left for the Yukon three weeks before school started, leaving
Touya and I to get here on our own, and I haven't been able to get home since. I miss him, and..."
She trailed off as she realized that her roommate was not blinking. "Uhm, Tomoyo? Are YOU okay?"
Shaking her head quickly, as if to clear out cobwebs, the video producer smiled and
laughed at herself, her pale face turning slightly crimson. "No, it's just that..." She paused,
pursing her lips. "Well, my mom's coming this weekend, too, and so I really wanted to hang out
with her. But, if your dad is coming..."
"The uber-business chica is comin' HERE?" gaped the plushie, blinking. "Ain't your ma,
like, a million-dollar CEO or somethin'?"
The blush intensified, and she looked away from both her friend and the Clow Guardian.
"Well... Yeah," she replied, pursing her lips slightly. "And she's really nice, don't get me
wrong, but sometimes... Sometimes, she can be really weird about things." She shrugged and
sighed heavily, turning back to the other two. "It's been a hard life for her and me. She's been
away a lot in my life, and she's always busy. But my dad left when I was a little girl, so I never
really knew anyone else."
Sakura nodded slightly, a frown playing across her lips. "My mother died when I was really
little," she explained, not really caring that she was repeating a story that her roommate had
heard three or four times. "She had a weak heart or something similar, and she was pretty young
when she had Touya and I. Since her death, the three of us have tried to be a good family,
but it's hard. Touya became a second father to me when he was hardly out of elementary school,
and..." She forced herself to smile broadly. "But that's okay! I mean, your mom is a great person,
right? She'll have no problem getting along with my dad! And my dad is a GREAT guy, too! We can
just have them hang out, and go around as a foursome! It'll be fun!"
"Yeah!" agreed her roommate enthusiastically. "I mean, my mom doesn't even hate my DAD
for running off on us! In fact, the only person in the world she hates is her cousin's husband!"
Silence fell over the room, and both Sakura and her guardian blinked up at the still-
smiling Tomoyo, who had begun to blush. "Well, that was phrased REALLY badly," she covered,
moving to scratch the back of her neck guiltily. "It's not that she HATES him. It's just that
she and her cousin were really close friends, and this guy kind of stole her away from him. They
got married really young, and so she never got to go to college like she wanted to, or have much
of a life beyond being a married woman. And then, after a couple years of marriage and a couple
kids - two or three, I think - she got really sick and died. I don't think Mom's over that, is
all."
The orange creature laughed, bits of breadstick flying out of his mouth. "You know what
would be REAL funny?" he chortled, nearly choking on his dinner. "If 'Kura's dad was da hubbie
of Tomoyo's dead kinda-cousin!"
"Please," snorted the brunette with a roll of her eyes. "I think I would know if Tomoyo
was my COUSIN!"
"Exactly," nodded her roommate, chuckling a bit. "Though I admit, that would be kind of
cool..."
Their conversation continued, drawing on the funny adventures they would have had together
had they really been cousins growing up, and exactly how they would make their make-believe,
related parents make amends and get along.
===
Fujitaka Kinomoto was rather attractive for a man in his middle age, or at least that was
what his graduate students were always telling him. With dark brown hair that was only graying at
the temples and bright brown eyes, the only real sign of his age were the laugh lines around his
eyes and mouth, and the thin-rimmed glasses he wore low on his nose. Even as he sat in the lounge
of his daughter's dorm building, college students of the female persuasion walked by and waved,
sending him lusty glances and coy winks. He waved back with his left hand - the hand that he still
wore his wedding band on, even fifteen years after his wife's death - and smiled in the most
fatherly manner he could muster. It wasn't every day that you were hit on by females who really
WERE young enough to be your daughter, after all.
It was after the third set of giggling students had passed that a young woman plopped
down on the opposite end of the sofa he had taken up, crossing her legs at the knee as she snapped
at someone on the other end of a cell phone. She wore her hair short, chic, and dark, and she
peered out at the world through a pair of sunglasses. Her business suit hugged her hips and
legs, the dark red of the blazer almost exactly matching the color of her lipstick, while the
black pants matched her leather handbag. He shrugged as he realized her oblivion to his existence
and went back to watching the college students pass by, still winking and giggling.
"I don't CARE what you have to say about it, Richard!" the woman shot into the phone, and
the voice caused the sofa-sharing man to blink. Where had he heard that same voice in that SAME
tone before? "I am STILL the CEO of this company! Yes, that's RIGHT! And it's 'Ms. Daidouji' to
you!" There was a beep as she hung up the phone, and Fujitaka tried to force a smile onto his
face as he turned the other direction, looking as far away from her as humanly possible. "I'm
REALLY sorry," she apologized in a sugar-sweet tone, a tone so false he could just picture the
forced smile on her face. The reflection in a nearby window showed her pulling off her glasses
to reveal a pair of eyes, eyes that he knew already were purple-blue. "Sometimes, those idiots
that I work with are just... Childish." She sighed. "One of these days, I will fire that man I
work with."
"Oh, I understand completely," he responded, staring at the door to the lounge and willing
it, with all his might, to open and reveal his daughter and her roommate. "I deal with people
like that all the time."
She sighed a second time, but there was something almost...playful...about her sigh, and
Fujitaka could taste the irony rising in the back of his throat, but it was mixed with bile and
the McDonald's he had scarfed down in lieu of breakfast. "Come now, I'm holding out my hand to
you in hopes of a simple introduction!" she addressed him. Suddenly, a hand snaked around his
shoulders and gripped his chin, and he allowed his face to slowly be redirected in her direction.
"My name is Sonomi Daidouji and - HOLY SHIT!"
As Sonomi tripped over herself to get up and out of the sofa cushions, he himself rose,
brushing off his khakis, and offered a hand in her direction. "Nice to see you again, Sonomi," he
addressed her, watching as the surprise in her expression turned to anger. Another trio of
students passed by, wearing their sorority t-shirts, and he could only imagine what they thought
of a strange-but-good-looking man offering his hand toward a totally random woman. "What brings
you here, today?"
"Don't play games with me, Kinomoto!" she shot, her dark eyes lowering dangerously in his
direction. She stepped up to him until she stood right with him, less than an arm's length
apart, and jabbed a red-painted fingernail into his chest. "Don't think that I've suddenly
forgiven you all your trespasses with Nadeshiko, because I haven't! You're still a bastard,
Kinomoto, and I'm not going to let you forget it!"
"I would not expect any less from you, Sonomi," he smiled sweetly, withdrawing his hand
and placing it into his pocket. He made no motion to dislodge the index finger from his polo
shirt, though it was sharp and slightly painful. "And I hope you know that I still love your
cousin as much as I did the very day she died, and every day before then, and nothing in the
world will change that. NOTHING." His voice grew colder than he wanted it to, but no amount of
forced happiness would make the lightness return. "If you loved her, too, you would let her
go. You would understand what was going on, and - "
The door to the lounge creaked open just then, and two girls walked in, chatting
pleasantly, their arms looped together. The taller of the two was a brunette with a short bob
of hair, her bangs in her green eyes and her hair pulled into two little pigtails. The other
was shorter but more curvaceous, with long, dark waves of hair and bright purple-blue eyes,
her tresses bound together at the back of her neck by a ribbon and still cascading down to her
waist. They both stopped after three paces into the room, freezing in mid-sentence and mid-step,
gaping at the scene before them.
Sonomi stepped away from the man quickly and ran a hand through her hair before forcing
a sweet, innocent smile on her face. "Tomoyo!" she gushed, readjusting the strap of her purse
on her shoulder as she stepped forward to hug her daughter around the neck. "It's so good to
see you again! And this must - " She glanced at the other girl, blinked a few times, and then
gritted her teeth. "Oh my God..."
"Sakura!" grinned Fujitaka, his voice light as his daughter rushed to give him an
enormous bear hug around the waist. "I'm so glad that I was able to come see you today! How's
everything?"
The brunette pulled away from her father after a brief moment, but she was not smiling as
he was. Far from it. Instead, she turned toward her roommate and then to the woman WITH her
roommate, and she frowned, brow furrowing. "Uhm, Tomoyo, is that your mom?" she questioned
carefully, her neck tightening rather involuntarily.
Solemnly, the other sophomore nodded. "And is that your dad?" she ventured, pursing her
lips as her mother's grip around her shoulders intensified. The nod she received in return
was not reassuring in the least, and it caused her to frown noticeably. "Oi, how Kero would
laugh if he could see us now..."
Sakura didn't say anything in agreement...mostly because she didn't have to.
===
The Freshman Festival - or, as the non-freshmen called it, the "Freshie Fest" - was a
bustling hubbub of activity that took over the entire quad and poured over onto the patio in front
of the library. Dunk tanks with soaked professors, bake sales featuring cookies and cakes, and
even the occasional portrait-artist or origami-folder dotted the sidewalks, and the crowds flocked
to booth after booth. Sakura and Touya wandered amongst the throng with their father, though he
seemed more interested in talking to Yukito than he cared about his two children. Sakura didn't
blame him; if she had created a scene like he and Tomoyo's mother had that morning, she wouldn't
have wanted to talk to her children, either.
Her brother was absolutely no help as she tried to pry into the innermost workings the
their family tree, reaffirming the nagging suspicion that she had missed out on a vital piece
of information. "Mom died when you were four, monster," he snorted at her in annoyance, rolling
his dark eyes as the fifteenth or sixteenth question slipped from her mouth and was almost, but
not quite, lost in the crowd. "She was a great lady, and I really miss her. That's ALL you need
to know."
"Touya!" she exclaimed, moving to stamp him on the foot. He yelped, drawing the attention
of his roommate, but not their father. Yukito smiled charmingly before turning back to the
university professor and continuing their discussion on...whatever it was they were discussing.
Sakura honestly did not know what it was. "Why can't you tell me about Mom and Tomoyo's mom?
It's just KIND OF important that I know why my best friend's mother hates my dad, you know?"
He sighed and shook his head, as though he was trying to respond to a small child who
asked nothing more than "why." "Sometimes, Sakura, it's really better NOT to know," he chided,
snatching a free sample of teriyaki chicken from the Japanese Club's booth. "Mom is gone, and
that's that. Sonomi doesn't like him, and that's that. Do you really need to know why everything
is the way it is, and why - "
"I think it's time we did a small changing of the guard!" announced Fujitaka suddenly,
falling back in pace so he could stand beside his daughter, his face alight as he looped an
arm around the young woman's shoulder. "Your roommate is complaining of starvation, Touya," he
winked at his elder child. "I think you should feed him."
"Will do." Sakura scowled at her brother's back as he wandered off, green eyes lowered
to slits. Who was he, acting like that, anyway? And why in the world did he think that he was
so great that he could know all the family secrets while she couldn't? And why was it that, with
his khaki pants and plaid shirt, he looked just like their father from the back?
As soon as her brother was out of earshot, her father sighed and shook his head. "I'm
really sorry, Blossom," he told her, glancing around the quad. The cherry blossom trees - her
namesake, or so the story went - were just now losing their leaves, their branches half-naked
as they stretched into the blue sky above. Just three days earlier they had blossomed, thanks to
the Flowery card, and she and Li had been forced to run around the quad, chasing after a giant
flower. Her father smiled sadly at the leafless branches and shrugged slightly. "Your roommate's
mother is... Well, she has many of the qualities I admired in YOUR mother - passion, determination,
loyalty - but they come out in different ways. And one of those ways was this morning's little
demonstration." His eyes turned sad, and then he turned to her and forced a smile. "But enough of
this dull talk of times past! I got rid of your brother and of Yukito, so now we can have a good
father-daughter moment! What do you want to do?"
She glanced away from him and toward the bell tower, frowning. It was only 2 pm, but it
felt later, and she did have to be back to the dorm by dinner time. Somehow, the delight of
spending quality time with her father had been touched by a dark shadow. What had happened to her
girlish enthusiasm about seeing him?
Sighing, Sakura forced a smile and moved to brush a strand of hair from her face. "I have
to go back to the building," she lied, her tone not reaffirming the happiness of her smile. "We
can do breakfast tomorrow, just the two of us, alright?"
For a moment, Fujitaka frowned, but then he smiled and nodded. "I'm holding you to this,
Cherry Blossom," he retorted, ruffling one of her pigtails with a hand. His fingers and hands
were smaller than she could remember, but then, she had always looked at him with the respect of a
child looking up to their parent...and not as an adult, looking at another adult.
"Of course," she agreed quickly, smiling still as she disappeared into the crowd, not
willing to let her grin disappear until after she was far out of her father's eye line, and then
not until she was in her room...just in case.
===
The autumn wind felt good against her sweaty forehead and her warm cheeks as she
pounded down the pavement, her tennis shoes thumping against the concrete. The side streets around
the college were abandoned save for a few men raking leaves in their front yards. She was a welcome
guest to the pavement and the streets, a visitor they had grown used to since the school year
began, a friend.
Naoko had been sitting at the front desk when Sakura had slammed the door to the dorm
building and started up the stairs, muttering something about taking a run. Her hall advisor,
for all intents and purposes, was quite used to her coping methods, but the outburst caused even
she - the polite little lit major - to arch an eyebrow. Not that it mattered. Within ten minutes,
the brunette had tossed on her wind pants and a tank top and was out the front door, her headphones
dangling around her neck as she plodded toward the back streets of the college, the streets and
avenues that the older students lived along.
Tomoyo had not been in the room when she went in to change, something she had been a bit
too grateful for. A note on the white board confirmed that her mother was taking her out on the
town, and that she would be home relatively late. At the bottom of the note, under the swirly
script spelling out her name, was a single word - "Sorry." As if that one word said everything
that needed to be said.
It didn't.
Nothing could say it. Nothing. She turned a corner quickly, the beat of her favorite
songs echoing in her ears as she hopped over an uneven part in the pavement and kept on going.
Nothing could explain why her father and brother kept family-wide secrets from her, why her
best friend's mother hated her father so much, and why she had never been told that her roommate
was actually a second cousin. Surely, her father had recognized the name Daidouji when she had
showed him her roommate assignment sheet, freshman year. And surely, he had recognized it again
the next spring when he signed off on her room request forms. Surely...
Surely, she was missing a piece of the puzzle.
"You run this way often?" questioned a voice rather loudly, and she tugged down her
headphones to see, of all people, Shao-Lang Li running beside her. Her eyes lowered and she picked
up her pace, but she didn't put the phones back on. He followed her, his longer legs and more
athletic form keeping up easily. "Or is it just today?"
"Li, I really can't deal with you right now," she spat, cutting across the street and
into a small park that was nestled between a few houses. It was her normal route - down the
streets, across to the park, around the park, and then through the trees at the back of the
playground, which would eventually lead to the creek that ran around campus, and then down
the creek until it went back to the dorms. "Go away."
He frowned but didn't stop running, and they fell into a steady pace, complete silence
around them, silence broken only by the rustle of dead leaves in the trees and their own
panting.
She would have expected him to break away when she ducked into the trees and down the
path that she had created the year before, but he followed, hopping over the logs and sticks
along the well-beaten trail as easily as she. "I found this path the other day," he admitted
as they reached the creek, still evenly matched, step for step. "I didn't realize that you had
beaten it out."
"Hn." The comment was a grunt as she hopped over the slowly running water to land on the
other side of the creek, away from him. Here, the ground was not as even - it was, after all,
unexplored territory - but she still continued with her quick jog. "What do you want from me?"
Li shrugged his shoulders, and the wind ruffled both his hair and his t-shirt. "It's nice
to run with someone else," he admitted nonchalantly, the leaves crunching beneath his feet. "I
don't get to do it often." He paused, pursing his lips, and glanced at her. She stared straight
ahead, and pretended not to feel his eyes upon her. "Besides, don't you feel it?"
Her gaze darted in his direction, lowering, but she never faltered in her steps. Not
once. "Feel what?"
"A card. A powerful card. Something that looms over this whole ravine, something stronger
than you or I."
Silence resumed, and this time, it was a real silence. They came into what Sakura called
"the clearing" - a large, rounded area with no trees in it save for one enormous oak that split
the little stream in two - and she wrinkled her nose. With her headphones always on, she had
never noticed how truly quiet it was in the clearing. Not even her footfalls made sound, though,
with the number of leaves she was trudging through, they should have. The power of the Clow
embraced her, turning her over and upside down, and she felt almost nauseas; it always was a
stronger sense when she knew what she was looking for.
Her jog slowed to a mere stroll and then to a stop as she came to rest near the side of
the enormous oak tree. "It's coming...from here?" she asked, her voice soft as she stared up into
the leafless branches with wide eyes. Then, she frowned and shook her head. "That's silly!" she
commented, rolling her eyes. Her walkman snapped off, the tape exhausted, and it caused her to
jump slightly. "It's just that... The tree is very regal, and..." She frowned, taking a shaky
step forward, toward the tree. "You don't think - "
Reaching out, Li grabbed her by her arm and pulled her away from the tree, her steps
silent even as she stumbled through the creek. "Don't!" he commanded, the urgency in his voice
causing her to blink up at him. "You don't have the Key of Clow with you, and it would be
really dumb to encourage a card THIS powerful to show itself when you don't have the power to
seal it."
As much as she didn't want to admit he was right - it was, after all, just another strike
to add to the list - she sighed and slumped her shoulders. "FINE," she shot at him, the annoyance
of the day's troubles resurfacing as she realized that she was still angry with her father, in the
woods, and standing beside her worst enemy with his hand still on her upper arm. She tugged her
arm away and glared at him. "I'll meet you here. Tonight at, I don't know, midnight. And we'll
seal this thing."
Shao-Lang ran a hand through his hair, frowning at the sudden gruffness in her usually
upbeat voice. "That's fine," he replied, wetting his lips. He turned away from her, back to the
rest of the path, facing they way they had come. "I'll see you tonight."
Sakura's mouth opened to apologize, but no words came out. She watched him retreat,
back to the refreshing fall wind, and she sighed, shaking her head.
So much for a relaxing jog.
===
Tomoyo still wasn't home when Sakura returned from her run, and neither was anyone else on
the floor. In the space where she'd rubbed out Tomoyo's note was a note from Chiharu, saying that
they were all going down for an early dinner and where was she, and could she come, too? She erased
that note with the butt of her hand and darted in the room only long enough to grab a towel before
getting into the shower.
The rest of the evening went slowly, as though she was wading through a vat of molasses
and couldn't escape. Her roommate came and then left with Rika and Chiharu to go watch the hypnotist
that was visiting campus, and her excuse was validated by Naoko coming in only seconds before the
trio left to remind her assistant that she would just be down at the quad if she really needed
help. The brunette nodded, content to lay down in her bed with a good book and just forget about
all the trouble that she'd been having.
Forgetfulness was hard in coming, and she found herself to be very restless. The book
wasn't as funny as she remembered, and - with her homework for the weekend totally done (excepting
only an essay that she had to write for Terada's class, due Wednesday) - she had absolutely nothing
to do. Checking e-mail resulted in an empty mailbox; checking voice mail resulted in her brother's
voice, questioning what she "did" to their father that afternoon and if there was a reason she
was being nothing more than a moody little child. She deleted the message before it had fully
replayed itself and slammed the phone back down on the base, muttering.
As much as Naoko had warned her friend about the dangers of Freshman Festival weekend, the
hall was completely dead. If her life had been a bad western, tumbleweed would have rolled down the
tile-floored corridor and into the empty floor lounge. Behind some doors she could hear a little
sound - music, perhaps, or a few friends watching television - but no where was there the clatter
of bottles and cans or the noise of a party, the things she was expected to hear and trained to
quell. She slunk back into her room after a single trek down the hall and back and shut the door
behind her, the heavy noise of wood settling into cinderblock both empty and reassuring.
The room's unerring, unwavering silence was too much for the bored, restless young woman,
and it wasn't very long before her mind, sick of trying to count the number of paint chips on the
ceiling, began to wander all across creation. She imagined her mother, long, dark curls flying,
running with Tomoyo's mother as children, their footfalls pounding through the grass as they played.
But they were torn apart by a man, later. No, not a man. Her FATHER. The bringer of her mother's
death. But how could he have brought her mother's death? He loved her more than anything in the
world, and he still did. And sure, they had married young, but not as young as Tomoyo's story
had suggested....
Sakura growled at her own thoughts as they tripped over themselves in her mind and hopped
out of bed, bound and determined to get her mind off of...everything. Green eyes glanced toward
the digital clock on the microwave once - it was only 8:12 - and she decided it was time to take
matters into her own hands and capture the card that she and Li had stumbled upon that afternoon.
She didn't need his help, not in the least. After all, the Flower and Float cards had both
appeared in the middle of the week, and she had caught both of them with little or no help from her
arch-rival. Who needed him for this one?
She slipped out of her lounge pants and tossed open the door to her closet, flipping
through the hangers to find for herself a clean pair of jeans or khakis to wear. She found nothing,
and a glance at her hamper brought a feeling of dread into the very pit of her soul. In all the
rush to do homework and get ready for the Festival, she had completely forgotten to do laundry,
and now her blue-and-green checkered lounge pants - the pants she wore to bed - were the only
"clean" clothes she had in her possession.
The brunette attempted to find something suitable in her roommate's closet, but it was
a fruitless effort. Whereas they could usually share tops, Tomoyo had wider hips and a slightly
bigger waist. Together, those two simple measurements worked against the duo, and Sakura was unable
to steal her roommate's pants. Never a problem, of course...until now. Now, it was a curse in and
of itself, and she found herself more than tempted to slip on a pair of too-big jeans and just hope
they stayed on.
Then, she saw the garment bag hanging in the back of the closet, and curiosity sparked
in the back of her mind. Once a week - and sometimes more often - Tomoyo would show up with a
garment bag, and it would end up holding one of her "battle costumes," specially fitted for and
only for her brown-haired, card-catching roommate.
As much as she usually dreaded the costumes she was left, Sakura had to smile at the
weight of the bag as she pulled it down from its peg. Maybe things wouldn't be so bad, after all.
===
"Never again," she muttered, the flashlight she had grabbed off her dresser top casting
very little light against the forest floor as she trudged through freshly-fallen leaves. The
wind tossed the cape that was attached to her shirt behind her and ruffled her Elizabethan
collar. "NEVER again."
The costume, she had been disgusted to know, was labeled "Sakura de Bergerac," based off of
the play "Cyrano de Bergerac" they had read in English 101 the year before. She didn't understand
what puffy shorts, white nylons, and a tank top with a cape attached really had to do with the
book anyway, and she had almost been tempted to leave it at home all together and wear her lounge
pants. But her lounge pants WERE the only clean clothes she had, and damned if she was going to
wear her "de Bergerac" outfit around the dorms.
At least the color of the cape went well with her tennis shoes.
If the woods had been quiet that afternoon, they were even quieter now, her footfalls
even softer when she was walking alone. Her flashlight was unnecessarily dim, and the light it
cast tempted far too many shadows for her taste. She felt her hands start to shake as her steps
began to make ABSOLUTELY no sound, and she felt her mouth go dry when the wind stopped whistling
but the leaves still danced. Li had been right, and the feeling that pulsated through her blood
was even stronger, this time. There was a card around, and it WAS powerful. Perhaps even more
powerful than she was.
"Oh, key that hides the power of the dark," she whispered, afraid to raise her voice into the
crescendo that usually accompanied the words of summon. The ground did not crackle with energy as
it usually did, though, and she could not feel the magic of the Clow embracing her, encouraging her
forth. It was as though the power was reluctant, with the great oak tree hardly ten feet away.
As though it was afraid of what might happened, were the Staff of Sealing fully summoned.
She pressed on, trying to find comfort in the fact that there was SOME amount of power
running around, and that the key WAS changing. "By the contract, reveal thy true form to me. This,
Sakura co - !"
Something happened just then, and she wasn't sure what. The Key of Clow stopped spinning
in the air and dropped to the ground, and blackness - strong, pure, dark - enveloped her body. She
tried to scream out, but she couldn't. Her voice caught, failed, and choked on itself, leaving
her coughing, gasping for breath. It was almost like she was drowning in the darkness, unable
to find the surface or the light, unable to escape the power around her.
Then, like a tunnel's end, a glimmer of light appeared in the midst of the darkness, a
light that grew slightly brighter with every passing second. She reached for the light, running
toward it even though she, somehow, knew that running did her no good. Her fingers reached out,
grasping at it, feeling for the warmth...
A park. She blinked at it, her brow furrowing, realizing that she was not looking around
the park as though she was on the grass in it, but rather, that she was looking DOWN on it.
Above her were branches, branches of a giant oak much like the one she had just been standing
under, branches full of budding leaves, the first leaves of spring. Children's voices echoed
across the grass as boys played pick-up baseball and others went down slides and crossed monkey
bars. Across the street was a school, nestled in a grove of trees. Sakura frowned, swinging her
legs idly from the branch she was perched on. Why did that school look so -
"Will you come down, already?" whined a voice, and the misplaced college student glanced
down to see a teenaged girl, dressed in a navy skirt with a white blouse, staring up at her. She
swallowed, hard, and started to move, but the navy-purple eyes darted around her, toward somewhere
else entirely. "You know what your father has been saying!"
Someone sighed and a branch above her shook. Sakura leaned back and glanced up to see,
at least ten feet above her, another girl. She was perhaps fourteen, maybe a year older, with
long, dark curls and bright green eyes. She wore the same outfit as the other girl - Sakura
realized after a moment that it was a private school uniform - and was climbing steadily through
the branches, like a monkey in its element. "Yeah, I know what father says, Sonomi," she responded,
making a face down at the other girl. She swung under one branch and then over another, her
balance precarious as she made her way higher. "He says that I'm not in good shape, and that I have
heart problems, and all that other stuff. But I don't want to play his games." She laughed,
shaking her head, and plopped down on a thick branch, leaning against the trunk. "Did you see the
new history teacher? He's SO cute!"
Sonomi rolled her dark eyes up at the girl in the tree and sighed. "No, I didn't," she
admitted after a moment's silence. "What's so cute about him, anyway?"
"EVERYTHING!" The dark-haired girl laughed again, her voice high and sweet. "He's smart
and funny, and even after only an hour of class, I was in love!" Clambering to her feet, she
pulled herself up onto yet another higher branch, giggling like only a teenager with a crush
could. "We're going to get married," she decided, moving to stand on this new branch. "We'll have
two kids - or more, it's okay if we do - and we'll name them cute things. Touya... And Sakura!"
As Sakura tried NOT to fall out of the tree, Sonomi tsk-tsked with her tongue and shook
her head again. "'Peach blossom' and 'cherry blossom,'" she snorted, indignant. "Your parents
should have NEVER let you take Japanese in junior high, Nadeshiko. You're starting to think you
speak the language!"
Nadeshiko - her MOTHER, Sakura realized, her stomach turning over itself - shrugged her
shoulders and kept on climbing. "We'll travel all around the world," she pressed on, constructing
for herself the life she wanted. "I'll be an artist or a pianist or SOMETHING and he'll still be a
teacher, but that's alright! We'll go to Europe and Africa and Asia and we'll see everything in the
world there is to see! I'll get out of Albany and get a better life than this one, and it will
be WONDERFUL!" She sighed, leaning heavily on a smaller, thinner branch, putting all her weight on
it until she was dangling, her feet about three stories from the grass below. "And then, I'll
come visit you in your little, NORMAL house and - "
There was a crackling right then, like the sound that sappy wood makes when thrown into
a fire, and Nadeshiko's legs flailed beneath her. "SONOMI!" she shrieked, her elbows slipping.
She grabbed onto the half-broken limb of the tree, holding on for dear life, but it was no use.
The cracking continued, deafening, and then the branch broke away.
Sakura saw Sonomi squeeze shut her eyes and scream, and she closed her eyes, too. The fact
that she was watching her mother - her mother as a GIRL, no less - fall from a giant oak tree didn't
cross her mind as she waited for the thump that never sounded, and the doom that never came.
"Are you alright?" A man's voice. Deep, masculine, and almost disturbingly familiar, it
caused Sakura to snake open one eye and then another. At the same time, Nadeshiko did the same,
only to find herself staring up into brown eyes. The young man, no older than twenty-two or
twenty-three - smiled and set her down on the ground. It was now evident how young she really was;
her form was gangly and not yet filled out, and she looked tiny between the tall man and the more
mature-looking Sonomi. After she nodded, the man - no doubt a young Fujitaka Kinomoto - smiled
and moved to ruffle her hair. "That's good to hear. But you be more careful next time, Miss
Amamiya. Had your friend here not screamed, I might not have gotten over here in time."
Smiling graciously, Nadeshiko reached over and pushed her friend forward. "This is my
cousin, Sonomi Amamiya," she introduced, once AGAIN causing the young woman who she would someday
give birth to almost fall out of the tree. "Sonomi, this is my new history teacher, Mr. Kinomoto.
He JUST graduated from the university this winter and replaced old Mrs. Granger."
"It's nice to meet you, sir." Sonomi shook the man's hand, but there was ice in her voice
and a stoniness to her gaze that somehow gave the impression that maybe she wasn't so pleased to
meet him, after all. "Thank you for saving Nadeshiko. She's a little bit more childish than she
cares to admit."
"SONOMI!" The skinny girl moved to bop her cousin, but she was laughing. They both were.
Spring turned to summer turned to fall, or at least that was the impression Sakura got as
she watched time seem to shift and move fast, passing her more swiftly than it should have. Winter
came and went, and the cycle repeated another time, and then it was spring again. Sonomi and
Nadeshiko sat beneath the oak tree, discussing something in hushed tones. Then, suddenly, the
short-haired teen hopped to her feet. "You can NOT be serious!" she raged, glaring down at her
cousin with anger in her dark eyes. "You're kidding, right? RIGHT, Nadeshiko?"
Nadeshiko stood up, too, but she looked guilty more than anything. Years had definitely
passed, and her form showed it. She was still thin, but she wasn't gangly, and her curves made her
look older than sixteen or seventeen years old. Her long, dark hair was bound with a rubber band
in the middle of her back, but the ponytail still reached past her bottom. She sighed and shook
her head, but she was smiling. Somewhat, at least. "I like him, and he likes me, too," she
responded to her friend's ravings, her face turning somewhat red. "We've been trying to keep it
under wraps, but it's hard to do, and... I thought I would tell you."
"You act like it's no big DEAL, Nadeshiko!" shot back her friend, hands on her curvaceous
hips, and the only thought in Sakura's head for a moment was how similar Tomoyo and Sonomi looked
in terms of body shape. "You are DATING our history teacher! That IS a big deal, and I'm the
president of the junior class! Hell if I'm not taking this to the - "
"You can't." Her voice was a whisper, but it was loud enough, and it stopped Sonomi in her
tracks. Tears welled up in green eyes and then tumbled down pale cheeks, and Nadeshiko swallowed,
hard, before wiping them away with her blouse sleeve. "Sonomi, you know that I wouldn't tell you
to bend the rules any other time, but this is important to me. I... I've dated a lot of boys,
Sonomi. A lot of them. And I have never, ever felt this way about any of them. Fujitaka makes
me feel like I can actually be a pianist, be a writer, see the world. Not even my parents support
me like that, and... I think I love him, Sonomi."
Her cousin snorted and tossed her short hair. "My God, Nadeshiko, you are sixteen years old!
SIXTEEN! You can't actually believe that this...this little GAME of yours...is love!" Green eyes
stared at her, teary, and she sighed, her shoulders drooping slightly. She pursed her lips and
glanced over her shoulder, at the high school in the background, and she chuckled slightly to
herself. "Dammit, Nadeshiko, if this gets me in trouble, I'm going to kill you."
Nadeshiko shrieked in delight and pounced on her cousin, hugging her tightly around the
neck. "Thank you SOOO much!" she laughed, hopping up and down in excitement as she pulled away
from the embrace. "I absolutely PROMISE you that I won't make you regret this, Sonomi. I PROMISE."
Time passed, again, and it was a summer, a year later. A young man, in his twenties,
stood underneath the thick branches of the oak tree, caught up in a passionate kiss with a younger
woman. Her long curls of dark hair were ruffled by the wind, as was her white graduation gown.
After a moment, she pulled away, her fingers lingering in his brown hair before she stepped fully
away from him.
"I have to go, Fujitaka," she whispered, casting her green eyes on the ground beneath her
feet. "I told my parents that I was running to catch up with a friend I wanted to congratulate,
and I'm sure they miss me."
Fujitaka Kinomoto smiled, moving to brush her bangs from her face gently. "I want to meet
them, Nadeshiko," he breathed, landing a butterfly kiss on her forehead. "You talk so much about
your parents. I want to see what they're like."
She blushed, pursing her lips, a smile stealing across her face. But the smile turned sad,
and she shook her head slightly. "I can't let you do that," she responded softly. "They would
think it odd, me introducing my history teacher from the freshman year to them! And Sonomi would
kill me for doing it."
There was the rustling of cloth against grass as the dark-haired man knelt down on a
single knee and reached forward, catching her hand in one of his. He kissed it gently, not noticing
even as the young woman's eyes blossomed. Then, he reached into his blazer pocket and drew out a
black box. Inside was a tiny diamond ring, the single stone set in a band of gold, the metal
gleaming under the sunlight.
"Don't introduce me as your teacher, then," he responded, slipping the ring onto her finger.
He smiled up at her, eyes bright, and she smiled back at him, though tears coursed down her
face. "Introduce me as your fiancé."
More time passed by, and Sakura watched as her father and mother said their wedding vows
in the middle of the park, and then walked hand and hand through it years later, Nadeshiko's belly
sticking out in front of her, bloated from carrying her yet-unborn son. And then, again, she
and Sonomi were under the tree, each of them with a baby stroller, a little boy playing nearby
as they argued about something.
"You're sick, Nadeshiko," Sonomi lashed out, her dark eyes piercing, cold, her voice
bitter and harsh. "You don't want to admit it and you don't want to tell your family, and I can
only guess why, and his name starts with an F. And that's fine, I'm USED to that, now. But my
God, you could die!"
Nadeshiko was more pale now than after, her face gaunt, her cheeks completely without
the ruddy tones they had held years before. She was perhaps twenty-five, perhaps older; it was
hard to tell, thanks to the lines that had set into her face earlier than they did to most. "I
know, Sonomi," she responded softly, hardly able to annunciate the words as well as she used to.
"My heart is really weak, and they think it's because of Sakura. But I think I should be alright.
I mean, I had Touya when I was nineteen, and I was doing quite fine." She pursed her thin lips
and glanced into the stroller, chuckling at the sleeping infant bundled within. "Besides, would
you run around announcing you were sick to the entire world, even if you WERE?"
Her cousin said nothing and turned away, and the slender woman - once beautiful, now
simply sickly - smirked slightly. "I thought so." She turned toward the nearby slide and cupped her
hands around her mouth, and for a brief moment, her face regained some of the determination of
a woman who knew and understood her inner strength. "C'mon, Touya!" she called out to the six-year-
old at the bottom of the slide. "We're going home, now!"
The movement of time all around, pushing in and out of her, causing her stomach to flip-flop
and her hands to shake. Another year, then two, and then it stopped again. This time, it was her
father underneath the oak tree, his brown eyes sad, and Sonomi right up in his face...just like she
had been that morning.
"You killed her, even if you don't want to admit it!" spat the businesswoman, her eyes
dark, slivers of purple against a pale face. "You married her two young, you made her have your
babies, and NOW look! She's gone, Fujitaka! Totally gone!"
"I know," he nodded. His voice was course, sandpaper rough, and he couldn't bring himself
to meet her gaze. "I know she's gone. But I would rather not look at this as a blame game,
Sonomi. I think - "
"It's always about what you think and want, Fujitaka." Her tone was like ice. "You wanted
a sixteen-year-old girl, and you got her. You wanted a wife, and you got that. And you wanted
children. Oh, look. You have them, too. You have EVERYTHING, Fujitaka. But Nadeshiko never got that
chance."
For a moment, the young man looked like he was going to cry, but then he laughed and
shook his head slowly, as if he just remembered a joke from years ago. "I heard you two, twelve
years ago, when Nadeshiko was climbing the tree," he told the dark-haired woman softly, her
face registering shock as he spoke. "I didn't mean to listen in, but her voice carried across the
whole park. I heard about her dreams, about getting out of Albany, about living her dream. And I
told her that the other day, right before..." He trailed off, his gaze snapping up to meet Sonomi's.
"You know what she said? She said that her dreams - her REAL dreams - came true in the life she
had, and that traveling and being a writer or an artist, it never meant as much as being with
Touya, Sakura, and I. And I believe her."
Sonomi opened her mouth as though she was about to say something, but time froze at that
moment, and the world slowly began to turn around from within, shadowing and fading until it was
darkness again. She choked on the darkness, feeling it pull her deep, unwilling to let her go.
It was as though she was sinking into the dark, unable to kick her way away from it, unable to
move.
And then, the light broke through the darkness and she was in the midst of leaves and
sticks, gasping for breath, her head hanging between her arms. Since when had she been here, on
hands and knees, and so -
"SAKURA!" Tomoyo's voice was loud and clear, and it rang in her ears like the campus bells
rang every morning. "You HAVE to seal the card! NOW!"
She clambered to her feet before she could really process what was going on, bending over
only long enough to grab the Key of Clow from the ground. This time, the words of summoning
brought all the familiarity of the cards' magic flowing into her veins. She whirled around on one
heel, ready to fight the card, ready to do whatever she needed to.
And then, she froze.
There was nothing there. No monstrous bird-thing, or floating balloon, or anything. Just
Tomoyo, looking scared, her purple eyes waiting for her to move, and Li, kneeling, his sword
digging into the ground. No, she frowned, looking down at the tip of the sword. Something was
keeping the tip from touching the ground. A card.
The Time card.
"SAKURA!" This voice had an odd twang to it, and she turned her head to see Kero diving
toward the trio of college students, his face a mask of panic. "You gotta seal the card, an'
fast! Li ain't got much more power!"
"But..." She glanced at the trunk of the tree, which was just as it had always been. It
looked almost exactly like the tree she had been sitting in, the tree that her mother had fallen
out of, years before, the tree her parents had gotten engaged under, the tree that -
"The card is IN the tree!" screamed the orange plushie urgently. "Stop thinkin', Sakura,
and SEAL it!"
Shaking her head, Sakura flipped the staff into her hands and raised it over her, setting
herself into a resolved state of mind. The past was over, and she was here, now.
Tomoyo stared at her, as did the Guardian of the Clow. And despite the fact his eyes were
scrunched closed and that all his energies were focused on the Time card, she knew that Li was
depending on her, too.
"Return to your true form! CLOW CARD!"
Energy flowed around the tree, pulling from it what appeared to be a ball of black. The
blackness slowly took shape and form, turning from a sphere of nothingness and into a Clow card.
It wafted through the air on an unseen breeze before landing next to Li, who collapsed onto the
ground, exhausted.
"Li!" Sakura stumbled over herself as she dropped the Staff of Sealing and moved to help
the brown-haired young man sit up, his side leaning against the giant oak tree. His eyes were
bloodshot, as though he hadn't slept the entire night, and his chest rose and fell in long,
shuddering breaths. "Are you alright?"
Keroberos landed on the ground lightly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Kiddo here
decided he dun wanna wait for the Return card to go an' catch you up to real time," he explained,
smirking rather haughtily. "I told 'em that the Return ain't able to hold you in the past DAT
long, but he dun listen to the Guardian of the Clow."
The young man moved to smack the plushie, and Kero flew through the air and into a nearby
log. "She'd already been there for several hours," he shot, glowering weakly at the swirly-eyed
creature. "I wasn't going to trust the card..."
"What happened in there?" Suddenly Tomoyo was kneeling on the forest floor with her best
friend, concern in her purple eyes. Sakura couldn't help but see the family resemblance between
Tomoyo and Sonomi...and between Tomoyo and her second cousin, Nadeshiko. "When I got home at 9, you
and the costume were gone, and Li came by at midnight saying that there was a card in the oak
in the ravine, and..." She trailed off, brow furrowing. "What did you see?"
The brunette removed the ridiculously large hat from her head and hugged it to her chest,
glancing up at the sky. The sun was already coming up, and the serene bluish-purple hues that
were stealing across the heavens were beautiful, almost as beautiful as the bright green eyes
of her mother. But how could she explain all that to her roommate and her arch enemy?
Shrugging, Sakura climbed to her feet and offered a hand to Li, who excepted it - and
the aid of a shoulder to lean against as he walked - with a coy reluctance. "I saw the way things
were," she responded with a half-smile, her eyes alighting as they started down the path toward
the college campus. "And it was really nice, but... I'm glad to be here, now."
She paused, her grip around Li's waist tightening as she remembered the pure delight in her
mother's smiling eyes on that day when she had decided she would marry her history teacher and
live her dreams.
"I'm glad," she amended, her smile brightening, "that things are the way they are, now."
===
"You were Mom's teacher, weren't you?"
The little corner restaurant was bustling for the breakfast hour, but it was not silent
enough to drown out the sound of a fork smashing against a plate. The waitress who was refilling
Fujitaka's coffee cup shot him a rather disdainful look and then sighed, muttering something about
college towns as she stalked off toward the kitchen. Her patron coughed and picked up his utensil,
smiling charmingly as he speared a piece of pancake. "Why in the world would you say that, Sakura?"
he questioned, acting as though he was the most innocent person in the universe. "Have you been
listening to your brother's tall tales again?"
It had been six a.m. when they made it back to the dorms, and Sakura had hustled to shower
and dress (in a skirt, since she was out of clean pants) for her breakfast date with her father
that morning. Touya had called to apologize for his behavior some time in the wee hours before the
dawn, and she had smiled when his recorded voice promised up-and-down to tell her anything she
wanted to know from now on. She deleted the message and shook her head; she would now get the
chance to gloat that she didn't need his information. And he would tease her back, but that was
part of being siblings. Part of being a family.
Rolling her eyes, Sakura set down her coffee cup and sent her father a dubious look.
"Tomoyo told me a little story about her mother's cousin," she half-lied, trying her best not to
smile. She wanted this to be a serious discussion, even if it was a discussion she - and probably
only she - could smile about. "You see, this woman - Nadeshiko Amamiya - married her history
teacher and had two children. But her body was weak, and she had heart problems, and so she ended
up dying at 27. Sound kind of familiar?"
Her father smiled sadly and sighed, shaking his head in her direction. "When I saw the name
'Tomoyo Daidouji' on your roommate slip freshman year, I prayed that you would hear the story from
your brother. But Touya is... Touya." She laughed, and he nodded, his smile losing a bit of it's
more solemn quality. "He said he wouldn't tell you, and that it shouldn't be important. He doesn't
really like Sonomi any more than she likes me." He paused, taking a long sip of his drink. "And I
wanted to tell you, but how do you tell a story like that to your daughter, when she only remembers
bits and pieces of her mother's life? I didn't want you to think that she was some sort of
promiscuous girl, or that I was some sort of pervert. Your approval of me is important, Blossom,
and... I was kind of scared.
"Of course, the incident with Sonomi yesterday was...unexpected," he pressed on, taking a
bite of his breakfast as he spoke. "It brought out a rather ugly truth, and that is that I did
indirectly cause your mother's death. I won't stop loving her, or stop feeling regret for what
happened to her, but I will always feel guilt for stealing her life from her." He pursed his
lips, frowning. "Sonomi told me yesterday that I kept your mother from many things she wanted to
do with her life...and she's right. I kept your mother from her dreams, and I will never forgive
myself for that."
Sighing, Sakura reached across the table and took her father's hand in her own, squeezing
it tightly. Fujitaka looked surprised by this simple motion, but he reached to lay his other hand,
the one with his wedding band, over hers. "I think that Mom was happiest with us," she responded,
smiling brightly up at him. "And I think we made her dream come true, by loving her back as much
as she loved us."
Her father smiled, the laugh lines around his eyes crinkling pleasantly. "You know, Sakura,"
he commented, squeezing her hand back, "in some ways, you really are a lot like your mother."
She said nothing, but she did smile back.
===
"Hello?"
It was three in the afternoon, and Shao-Lang Li had planned on taking a run. He'd cleaned
the mud from the day previous from his shoes, pulled out his favorite pair of jogging shorts, and
even taken the time to burn a new "Running" CD. But then, just as he was ready to change, the
phone had rung.
The voice on the other end caused his brow to crease and a frown to play across his face.
"Yes, Mother, I'm doing well. How are you? Glad to hear it. And the girls? That's good to hear."
He tapped his toe impatiently on his carpeted dorm floor, a bad habit that came from years of
disliking the phone call. "Really? Well, I hope Sai-Lau finds her cat, then. Yes. No, Mother,
I'm doing FINE with the English language. And I'm eating well, too."
And then, the voice of his mother - a voice he had heard every day since he had been
born, a voice he had learned to tolerate and smile at and love - said something completely
unexpected, and it was all he could do to keep holding onto the handset of his cordless phone.
"She's WHAT?!" he gaped, trying his hardest to remain standing. "Why in the WORLD is she - Oh.
Okay. Yes, Mother. So long. You too. Bye."
The beep that sounded when he hung up the fell on deaf ears as he leaned against the
cinderblock wall of his dorm room and blinked into space.
His cousin...coming to THIS college?
Suddenly, he wanted to run a lot further than to the ravine.
===
End Chapter 6.
started out - went smoothly for Sakura Kinomoto. All around campus, the students were working
their hardest to get ready for the Freshman Festival, the one time of the year when parents were
openly invited to see the school and spend time with their students. The entire weekend was to
be swamped with activities for both the college freshmen and their parents, and Sakura - assistant
for her hall - was expected to work the "evening" shift in the dorms, making sure that the unruly
youngsters stayed relatively sober while their parents were sleeping the nights away at the
nearest Hilton.
It was Friday afternoon when the telephone rang in their dorm room, interrupting the
relatively quiet bliss of the dorms after lunch. On the quad, Naoko was helping their freshman
hall council set up a booth to earn money for building improvements, and Tomoyo had tagged along
with her video camera. She had tried to grab her roommate as well, but Sakura had been adamant
about staying in, citing that she had far too much Spanish history homework to go out and watch
a bunch of freshmen put together their bake sale. The dark-haired girl laughed where she should
have been offended and shrugged it off, grabbing Keroberos by the fluff-ended tail and making him
come along in the brunette's place. Sakura had sighed a sigh of vast relief as soon as her friend
was out of earshot, grateful for the peace and quiet.
Groaning, she rolled out of bed and trudged over to where she'd left the phone that
morning, nestled in a pile of dirty clothes. "Yo," she muttered, plopping down on the edge of her
desk as she continued with her reading. "What can I do for you?"
"Sakura?" came a familiar voice, and she nearly dropped her text book onto the floor as
she recognized it. "Is that you?"
"Daddy!" she squealed, a grin stealing across her face as she tossed down her reading
and nearly fell into her desk chair, the look on her face that of a little girl who had not seen
her father in years upon years. "How ARE you? What's happening? Are you doing well? How's the
university's dig up there in the Yukon?"
Fujitaka Kinomoto laughed at her childish antics and excited voice, and she could only
imagine how his laugh lines crinkled as he smiled. "Things are fine up in the Yukon," he replied,
"but I'm actually back at the university for a few weeks, thanks to some paperwork that magically
appeared on my desk." He sighed, but the lightness was still in his voice. "I felt bad that I
never got to see you and your brother off when you two went back to school, so I thought you both
could come home for the weekend and spend time with your dear old dad. What do you say?"
Her first reaction was to say yes immediately, but her mouth failed and creased into a
frown. "Oooh, I can't," she lamented, kicking the nearby garbage can in annoyance. "It's the
Freshie Fest and I'm covering the dorm shifts while Naoko does all the day stuff. I can't just
up and leave."
"The 'Freshie Fest,' eh?" repeated her father. For a moment, there was silence on the
other end of the phone, as though he was considering something but not saying it aloud. "Well,
you know, I never DID make it to your Freshman Festival. What if I come up for the weekend to see
you? I could stay with Touya and Yukito in the apartment, and we could do all that good family
stuff that we haven't been able to do for a while."
Repressing her urge to scream in absolute delight, Sakura simply smiled, nodding excitedly
at the phone, as though she could see the man on the other end. "I'll meet you down in the
building lounge at noon, okay?" she questioned. "You can meet Tomoyo and EVERYTHING! I can't wait!"
She could just imagine his father, sitting in front of his big desk in his New York
University office, his brown eyes slanted shut behind his glasses as he smiled and nodded back.
"I'll see you then, Cherry Blossom."
========================
"An American Cardcaptor"
A Cardcaptor Sakura Alternate Universe Fanfiction
Written by Kate "SuperKate" Butler
Chapter 6: "Family Matters"
========================
"You really SHOULD have come," Tomoyo admonished her roommate sternly, wagging a
breadstick across the room as though it were an extension of her hand. Sakura was still buried in
her Spanish history homework, and the dark-haired camerawoman was beginning to think that she'd
been telling the truth about her history reading. "It was so funny watching the freshmen girls
ignore a screaming Naoko. She really IS scary when mad." There was nothing more than an "mm-hmm"
from the brunette, and Tomoyo frowned at her. "Are you alright?" she asked after a moment of
total silence. "I order veggie pizza and you won't eat it, and now you're not talking to me. Are
you mad that I wore your sweater the other day or something?"
With a small laugh, Sakura shook her head and closed her text book for the first time in
the two hours Tomoyo had been home. "I'm just being a dork," she responded casually, sliding off
her bed and onto the floor to take a piece of pizza. "My dad called this afternoon, and he's back
from the Yukon for a while, so he's planning to come here tomorrow."
After a rather long belch, Kero leaned back on his stuffed elbows and eyed her up and
down. "Your pa, eh?" he smirked, button-like eyes glimmering mischievously. "If he's da man
dat hates Terada so much, I wanna meet 'im!"
"Cute, Kero." The brunette stuck out her tongue, but she was smiling. "I haven't seen
him in so long, that's all," she explained to Tomoyo, whose mouth was gaping open wide enough to
stick an entire half pizza in. "He left for the Yukon three weeks before school started, leaving
Touya and I to get here on our own, and I haven't been able to get home since. I miss him, and..."
She trailed off as she realized that her roommate was not blinking. "Uhm, Tomoyo? Are YOU okay?"
Shaking her head quickly, as if to clear out cobwebs, the video producer smiled and
laughed at herself, her pale face turning slightly crimson. "No, it's just that..." She paused,
pursing her lips. "Well, my mom's coming this weekend, too, and so I really wanted to hang out
with her. But, if your dad is coming..."
"The uber-business chica is comin' HERE?" gaped the plushie, blinking. "Ain't your ma,
like, a million-dollar CEO or somethin'?"
The blush intensified, and she looked away from both her friend and the Clow Guardian.
"Well... Yeah," she replied, pursing her lips slightly. "And she's really nice, don't get me
wrong, but sometimes... Sometimes, she can be really weird about things." She shrugged and
sighed heavily, turning back to the other two. "It's been a hard life for her and me. She's been
away a lot in my life, and she's always busy. But my dad left when I was a little girl, so I never
really knew anyone else."
Sakura nodded slightly, a frown playing across her lips. "My mother died when I was really
little," she explained, not really caring that she was repeating a story that her roommate had
heard three or four times. "She had a weak heart or something similar, and she was pretty young
when she had Touya and I. Since her death, the three of us have tried to be a good family,
but it's hard. Touya became a second father to me when he was hardly out of elementary school,
and..." She forced herself to smile broadly. "But that's okay! I mean, your mom is a great person,
right? She'll have no problem getting along with my dad! And my dad is a GREAT guy, too! We can
just have them hang out, and go around as a foursome! It'll be fun!"
"Yeah!" agreed her roommate enthusiastically. "I mean, my mom doesn't even hate my DAD
for running off on us! In fact, the only person in the world she hates is her cousin's husband!"
Silence fell over the room, and both Sakura and her guardian blinked up at the still-
smiling Tomoyo, who had begun to blush. "Well, that was phrased REALLY badly," she covered,
moving to scratch the back of her neck guiltily. "It's not that she HATES him. It's just that
she and her cousin were really close friends, and this guy kind of stole her away from him. They
got married really young, and so she never got to go to college like she wanted to, or have much
of a life beyond being a married woman. And then, after a couple years of marriage and a couple
kids - two or three, I think - she got really sick and died. I don't think Mom's over that, is
all."
The orange creature laughed, bits of breadstick flying out of his mouth. "You know what
would be REAL funny?" he chortled, nearly choking on his dinner. "If 'Kura's dad was da hubbie
of Tomoyo's dead kinda-cousin!"
"Please," snorted the brunette with a roll of her eyes. "I think I would know if Tomoyo
was my COUSIN!"
"Exactly," nodded her roommate, chuckling a bit. "Though I admit, that would be kind of
cool..."
Their conversation continued, drawing on the funny adventures they would have had together
had they really been cousins growing up, and exactly how they would make their make-believe,
related parents make amends and get along.
===
Fujitaka Kinomoto was rather attractive for a man in his middle age, or at least that was
what his graduate students were always telling him. With dark brown hair that was only graying at
the temples and bright brown eyes, the only real sign of his age were the laugh lines around his
eyes and mouth, and the thin-rimmed glasses he wore low on his nose. Even as he sat in the lounge
of his daughter's dorm building, college students of the female persuasion walked by and waved,
sending him lusty glances and coy winks. He waved back with his left hand - the hand that he still
wore his wedding band on, even fifteen years after his wife's death - and smiled in the most
fatherly manner he could muster. It wasn't every day that you were hit on by females who really
WERE young enough to be your daughter, after all.
It was after the third set of giggling students had passed that a young woman plopped
down on the opposite end of the sofa he had taken up, crossing her legs at the knee as she snapped
at someone on the other end of a cell phone. She wore her hair short, chic, and dark, and she
peered out at the world through a pair of sunglasses. Her business suit hugged her hips and
legs, the dark red of the blazer almost exactly matching the color of her lipstick, while the
black pants matched her leather handbag. He shrugged as he realized her oblivion to his existence
and went back to watching the college students pass by, still winking and giggling.
"I don't CARE what you have to say about it, Richard!" the woman shot into the phone, and
the voice caused the sofa-sharing man to blink. Where had he heard that same voice in that SAME
tone before? "I am STILL the CEO of this company! Yes, that's RIGHT! And it's 'Ms. Daidouji' to
you!" There was a beep as she hung up the phone, and Fujitaka tried to force a smile onto his
face as he turned the other direction, looking as far away from her as humanly possible. "I'm
REALLY sorry," she apologized in a sugar-sweet tone, a tone so false he could just picture the
forced smile on her face. The reflection in a nearby window showed her pulling off her glasses
to reveal a pair of eyes, eyes that he knew already were purple-blue. "Sometimes, those idiots
that I work with are just... Childish." She sighed. "One of these days, I will fire that man I
work with."
"Oh, I understand completely," he responded, staring at the door to the lounge and willing
it, with all his might, to open and reveal his daughter and her roommate. "I deal with people
like that all the time."
She sighed a second time, but there was something almost...playful...about her sigh, and
Fujitaka could taste the irony rising in the back of his throat, but it was mixed with bile and
the McDonald's he had scarfed down in lieu of breakfast. "Come now, I'm holding out my hand to
you in hopes of a simple introduction!" she addressed him. Suddenly, a hand snaked around his
shoulders and gripped his chin, and he allowed his face to slowly be redirected in her direction.
"My name is Sonomi Daidouji and - HOLY SHIT!"
As Sonomi tripped over herself to get up and out of the sofa cushions, he himself rose,
brushing off his khakis, and offered a hand in her direction. "Nice to see you again, Sonomi," he
addressed her, watching as the surprise in her expression turned to anger. Another trio of
students passed by, wearing their sorority t-shirts, and he could only imagine what they thought
of a strange-but-good-looking man offering his hand toward a totally random woman. "What brings
you here, today?"
"Don't play games with me, Kinomoto!" she shot, her dark eyes lowering dangerously in his
direction. She stepped up to him until she stood right with him, less than an arm's length
apart, and jabbed a red-painted fingernail into his chest. "Don't think that I've suddenly
forgiven you all your trespasses with Nadeshiko, because I haven't! You're still a bastard,
Kinomoto, and I'm not going to let you forget it!"
"I would not expect any less from you, Sonomi," he smiled sweetly, withdrawing his hand
and placing it into his pocket. He made no motion to dislodge the index finger from his polo
shirt, though it was sharp and slightly painful. "And I hope you know that I still love your
cousin as much as I did the very day she died, and every day before then, and nothing in the
world will change that. NOTHING." His voice grew colder than he wanted it to, but no amount of
forced happiness would make the lightness return. "If you loved her, too, you would let her
go. You would understand what was going on, and - "
The door to the lounge creaked open just then, and two girls walked in, chatting
pleasantly, their arms looped together. The taller of the two was a brunette with a short bob
of hair, her bangs in her green eyes and her hair pulled into two little pigtails. The other
was shorter but more curvaceous, with long, dark waves of hair and bright purple-blue eyes,
her tresses bound together at the back of her neck by a ribbon and still cascading down to her
waist. They both stopped after three paces into the room, freezing in mid-sentence and mid-step,
gaping at the scene before them.
Sonomi stepped away from the man quickly and ran a hand through her hair before forcing
a sweet, innocent smile on her face. "Tomoyo!" she gushed, readjusting the strap of her purse
on her shoulder as she stepped forward to hug her daughter around the neck. "It's so good to
see you again! And this must - " She glanced at the other girl, blinked a few times, and then
gritted her teeth. "Oh my God..."
"Sakura!" grinned Fujitaka, his voice light as his daughter rushed to give him an
enormous bear hug around the waist. "I'm so glad that I was able to come see you today! How's
everything?"
The brunette pulled away from her father after a brief moment, but she was not smiling as
he was. Far from it. Instead, she turned toward her roommate and then to the woman WITH her
roommate, and she frowned, brow furrowing. "Uhm, Tomoyo, is that your mom?" she questioned
carefully, her neck tightening rather involuntarily.
Solemnly, the other sophomore nodded. "And is that your dad?" she ventured, pursing her
lips as her mother's grip around her shoulders intensified. The nod she received in return
was not reassuring in the least, and it caused her to frown noticeably. "Oi, how Kero would
laugh if he could see us now..."
Sakura didn't say anything in agreement...mostly because she didn't have to.
===
The Freshman Festival - or, as the non-freshmen called it, the "Freshie Fest" - was a
bustling hubbub of activity that took over the entire quad and poured over onto the patio in front
of the library. Dunk tanks with soaked professors, bake sales featuring cookies and cakes, and
even the occasional portrait-artist or origami-folder dotted the sidewalks, and the crowds flocked
to booth after booth. Sakura and Touya wandered amongst the throng with their father, though he
seemed more interested in talking to Yukito than he cared about his two children. Sakura didn't
blame him; if she had created a scene like he and Tomoyo's mother had that morning, she wouldn't
have wanted to talk to her children, either.
Her brother was absolutely no help as she tried to pry into the innermost workings the
their family tree, reaffirming the nagging suspicion that she had missed out on a vital piece
of information. "Mom died when you were four, monster," he snorted at her in annoyance, rolling
his dark eyes as the fifteenth or sixteenth question slipped from her mouth and was almost, but
not quite, lost in the crowd. "She was a great lady, and I really miss her. That's ALL you need
to know."
"Touya!" she exclaimed, moving to stamp him on the foot. He yelped, drawing the attention
of his roommate, but not their father. Yukito smiled charmingly before turning back to the
university professor and continuing their discussion on...whatever it was they were discussing.
Sakura honestly did not know what it was. "Why can't you tell me about Mom and Tomoyo's mom?
It's just KIND OF important that I know why my best friend's mother hates my dad, you know?"
He sighed and shook his head, as though he was trying to respond to a small child who
asked nothing more than "why." "Sometimes, Sakura, it's really better NOT to know," he chided,
snatching a free sample of teriyaki chicken from the Japanese Club's booth. "Mom is gone, and
that's that. Sonomi doesn't like him, and that's that. Do you really need to know why everything
is the way it is, and why - "
"I think it's time we did a small changing of the guard!" announced Fujitaka suddenly,
falling back in pace so he could stand beside his daughter, his face alight as he looped an
arm around the young woman's shoulder. "Your roommate is complaining of starvation, Touya," he
winked at his elder child. "I think you should feed him."
"Will do." Sakura scowled at her brother's back as he wandered off, green eyes lowered
to slits. Who was he, acting like that, anyway? And why in the world did he think that he was
so great that he could know all the family secrets while she couldn't? And why was it that, with
his khaki pants and plaid shirt, he looked just like their father from the back?
As soon as her brother was out of earshot, her father sighed and shook his head. "I'm
really sorry, Blossom," he told her, glancing around the quad. The cherry blossom trees - her
namesake, or so the story went - were just now losing their leaves, their branches half-naked
as they stretched into the blue sky above. Just three days earlier they had blossomed, thanks to
the Flowery card, and she and Li had been forced to run around the quad, chasing after a giant
flower. Her father smiled sadly at the leafless branches and shrugged slightly. "Your roommate's
mother is... Well, she has many of the qualities I admired in YOUR mother - passion, determination,
loyalty - but they come out in different ways. And one of those ways was this morning's little
demonstration." His eyes turned sad, and then he turned to her and forced a smile. "But enough of
this dull talk of times past! I got rid of your brother and of Yukito, so now we can have a good
father-daughter moment! What do you want to do?"
She glanced away from him and toward the bell tower, frowning. It was only 2 pm, but it
felt later, and she did have to be back to the dorm by dinner time. Somehow, the delight of
spending quality time with her father had been touched by a dark shadow. What had happened to her
girlish enthusiasm about seeing him?
Sighing, Sakura forced a smile and moved to brush a strand of hair from her face. "I have
to go back to the building," she lied, her tone not reaffirming the happiness of her smile. "We
can do breakfast tomorrow, just the two of us, alright?"
For a moment, Fujitaka frowned, but then he smiled and nodded. "I'm holding you to this,
Cherry Blossom," he retorted, ruffling one of her pigtails with a hand. His fingers and hands
were smaller than she could remember, but then, she had always looked at him with the respect of a
child looking up to their parent...and not as an adult, looking at another adult.
"Of course," she agreed quickly, smiling still as she disappeared into the crowd, not
willing to let her grin disappear until after she was far out of her father's eye line, and then
not until she was in her room...just in case.
===
The autumn wind felt good against her sweaty forehead and her warm cheeks as she
pounded down the pavement, her tennis shoes thumping against the concrete. The side streets around
the college were abandoned save for a few men raking leaves in their front yards. She was a welcome
guest to the pavement and the streets, a visitor they had grown used to since the school year
began, a friend.
Naoko had been sitting at the front desk when Sakura had slammed the door to the dorm
building and started up the stairs, muttering something about taking a run. Her hall advisor,
for all intents and purposes, was quite used to her coping methods, but the outburst caused even
she - the polite little lit major - to arch an eyebrow. Not that it mattered. Within ten minutes,
the brunette had tossed on her wind pants and a tank top and was out the front door, her headphones
dangling around her neck as she plodded toward the back streets of the college, the streets and
avenues that the older students lived along.
Tomoyo had not been in the room when she went in to change, something she had been a bit
too grateful for. A note on the white board confirmed that her mother was taking her out on the
town, and that she would be home relatively late. At the bottom of the note, under the swirly
script spelling out her name, was a single word - "Sorry." As if that one word said everything
that needed to be said.
It didn't.
Nothing could say it. Nothing. She turned a corner quickly, the beat of her favorite
songs echoing in her ears as she hopped over an uneven part in the pavement and kept on going.
Nothing could explain why her father and brother kept family-wide secrets from her, why her
best friend's mother hated her father so much, and why she had never been told that her roommate
was actually a second cousin. Surely, her father had recognized the name Daidouji when she had
showed him her roommate assignment sheet, freshman year. And surely, he had recognized it again
the next spring when he signed off on her room request forms. Surely...
Surely, she was missing a piece of the puzzle.
"You run this way often?" questioned a voice rather loudly, and she tugged down her
headphones to see, of all people, Shao-Lang Li running beside her. Her eyes lowered and she picked
up her pace, but she didn't put the phones back on. He followed her, his longer legs and more
athletic form keeping up easily. "Or is it just today?"
"Li, I really can't deal with you right now," she spat, cutting across the street and
into a small park that was nestled between a few houses. It was her normal route - down the
streets, across to the park, around the park, and then through the trees at the back of the
playground, which would eventually lead to the creek that ran around campus, and then down
the creek until it went back to the dorms. "Go away."
He frowned but didn't stop running, and they fell into a steady pace, complete silence
around them, silence broken only by the rustle of dead leaves in the trees and their own
panting.
She would have expected him to break away when she ducked into the trees and down the
path that she had created the year before, but he followed, hopping over the logs and sticks
along the well-beaten trail as easily as she. "I found this path the other day," he admitted
as they reached the creek, still evenly matched, step for step. "I didn't realize that you had
beaten it out."
"Hn." The comment was a grunt as she hopped over the slowly running water to land on the
other side of the creek, away from him. Here, the ground was not as even - it was, after all,
unexplored territory - but she still continued with her quick jog. "What do you want from me?"
Li shrugged his shoulders, and the wind ruffled both his hair and his t-shirt. "It's nice
to run with someone else," he admitted nonchalantly, the leaves crunching beneath his feet. "I
don't get to do it often." He paused, pursing his lips, and glanced at her. She stared straight
ahead, and pretended not to feel his eyes upon her. "Besides, don't you feel it?"
Her gaze darted in his direction, lowering, but she never faltered in her steps. Not
once. "Feel what?"
"A card. A powerful card. Something that looms over this whole ravine, something stronger
than you or I."
Silence resumed, and this time, it was a real silence. They came into what Sakura called
"the clearing" - a large, rounded area with no trees in it save for one enormous oak that split
the little stream in two - and she wrinkled her nose. With her headphones always on, she had
never noticed how truly quiet it was in the clearing. Not even her footfalls made sound, though,
with the number of leaves she was trudging through, they should have. The power of the Clow
embraced her, turning her over and upside down, and she felt almost nauseas; it always was a
stronger sense when she knew what she was looking for.
Her jog slowed to a mere stroll and then to a stop as she came to rest near the side of
the enormous oak tree. "It's coming...from here?" she asked, her voice soft as she stared up into
the leafless branches with wide eyes. Then, she frowned and shook her head. "That's silly!" she
commented, rolling her eyes. Her walkman snapped off, the tape exhausted, and it caused her to
jump slightly. "It's just that... The tree is very regal, and..." She frowned, taking a shaky
step forward, toward the tree. "You don't think - "
Reaching out, Li grabbed her by her arm and pulled her away from the tree, her steps
silent even as she stumbled through the creek. "Don't!" he commanded, the urgency in his voice
causing her to blink up at him. "You don't have the Key of Clow with you, and it would be
really dumb to encourage a card THIS powerful to show itself when you don't have the power to
seal it."
As much as she didn't want to admit he was right - it was, after all, just another strike
to add to the list - she sighed and slumped her shoulders. "FINE," she shot at him, the annoyance
of the day's troubles resurfacing as she realized that she was still angry with her father, in the
woods, and standing beside her worst enemy with his hand still on her upper arm. She tugged her
arm away and glared at him. "I'll meet you here. Tonight at, I don't know, midnight. And we'll
seal this thing."
Shao-Lang ran a hand through his hair, frowning at the sudden gruffness in her usually
upbeat voice. "That's fine," he replied, wetting his lips. He turned away from her, back to the
rest of the path, facing they way they had come. "I'll see you tonight."
Sakura's mouth opened to apologize, but no words came out. She watched him retreat,
back to the refreshing fall wind, and she sighed, shaking her head.
So much for a relaxing jog.
===
Tomoyo still wasn't home when Sakura returned from her run, and neither was anyone else on
the floor. In the space where she'd rubbed out Tomoyo's note was a note from Chiharu, saying that
they were all going down for an early dinner and where was she, and could she come, too? She erased
that note with the butt of her hand and darted in the room only long enough to grab a towel before
getting into the shower.
The rest of the evening went slowly, as though she was wading through a vat of molasses
and couldn't escape. Her roommate came and then left with Rika and Chiharu to go watch the hypnotist
that was visiting campus, and her excuse was validated by Naoko coming in only seconds before the
trio left to remind her assistant that she would just be down at the quad if she really needed
help. The brunette nodded, content to lay down in her bed with a good book and just forget about
all the trouble that she'd been having.
Forgetfulness was hard in coming, and she found herself to be very restless. The book
wasn't as funny as she remembered, and - with her homework for the weekend totally done (excepting
only an essay that she had to write for Terada's class, due Wednesday) - she had absolutely nothing
to do. Checking e-mail resulted in an empty mailbox; checking voice mail resulted in her brother's
voice, questioning what she "did" to their father that afternoon and if there was a reason she
was being nothing more than a moody little child. She deleted the message before it had fully
replayed itself and slammed the phone back down on the base, muttering.
As much as Naoko had warned her friend about the dangers of Freshman Festival weekend, the
hall was completely dead. If her life had been a bad western, tumbleweed would have rolled down the
tile-floored corridor and into the empty floor lounge. Behind some doors she could hear a little
sound - music, perhaps, or a few friends watching television - but no where was there the clatter
of bottles and cans or the noise of a party, the things she was expected to hear and trained to
quell. She slunk back into her room after a single trek down the hall and back and shut the door
behind her, the heavy noise of wood settling into cinderblock both empty and reassuring.
The room's unerring, unwavering silence was too much for the bored, restless young woman,
and it wasn't very long before her mind, sick of trying to count the number of paint chips on the
ceiling, began to wander all across creation. She imagined her mother, long, dark curls flying,
running with Tomoyo's mother as children, their footfalls pounding through the grass as they played.
But they were torn apart by a man, later. No, not a man. Her FATHER. The bringer of her mother's
death. But how could he have brought her mother's death? He loved her more than anything in the
world, and he still did. And sure, they had married young, but not as young as Tomoyo's story
had suggested....
Sakura growled at her own thoughts as they tripped over themselves in her mind and hopped
out of bed, bound and determined to get her mind off of...everything. Green eyes glanced toward
the digital clock on the microwave once - it was only 8:12 - and she decided it was time to take
matters into her own hands and capture the card that she and Li had stumbled upon that afternoon.
She didn't need his help, not in the least. After all, the Flower and Float cards had both
appeared in the middle of the week, and she had caught both of them with little or no help from her
arch-rival. Who needed him for this one?
She slipped out of her lounge pants and tossed open the door to her closet, flipping
through the hangers to find for herself a clean pair of jeans or khakis to wear. She found nothing,
and a glance at her hamper brought a feeling of dread into the very pit of her soul. In all the
rush to do homework and get ready for the Festival, she had completely forgotten to do laundry,
and now her blue-and-green checkered lounge pants - the pants she wore to bed - were the only
"clean" clothes she had in her possession.
The brunette attempted to find something suitable in her roommate's closet, but it was
a fruitless effort. Whereas they could usually share tops, Tomoyo had wider hips and a slightly
bigger waist. Together, those two simple measurements worked against the duo, and Sakura was unable
to steal her roommate's pants. Never a problem, of course...until now. Now, it was a curse in and
of itself, and she found herself more than tempted to slip on a pair of too-big jeans and just hope
they stayed on.
Then, she saw the garment bag hanging in the back of the closet, and curiosity sparked
in the back of her mind. Once a week - and sometimes more often - Tomoyo would show up with a
garment bag, and it would end up holding one of her "battle costumes," specially fitted for and
only for her brown-haired, card-catching roommate.
As much as she usually dreaded the costumes she was left, Sakura had to smile at the
weight of the bag as she pulled it down from its peg. Maybe things wouldn't be so bad, after all.
===
"Never again," she muttered, the flashlight she had grabbed off her dresser top casting
very little light against the forest floor as she trudged through freshly-fallen leaves. The
wind tossed the cape that was attached to her shirt behind her and ruffled her Elizabethan
collar. "NEVER again."
The costume, she had been disgusted to know, was labeled "Sakura de Bergerac," based off of
the play "Cyrano de Bergerac" they had read in English 101 the year before. She didn't understand
what puffy shorts, white nylons, and a tank top with a cape attached really had to do with the
book anyway, and she had almost been tempted to leave it at home all together and wear her lounge
pants. But her lounge pants WERE the only clean clothes she had, and damned if she was going to
wear her "de Bergerac" outfit around the dorms.
At least the color of the cape went well with her tennis shoes.
If the woods had been quiet that afternoon, they were even quieter now, her footfalls
even softer when she was walking alone. Her flashlight was unnecessarily dim, and the light it
cast tempted far too many shadows for her taste. She felt her hands start to shake as her steps
began to make ABSOLUTELY no sound, and she felt her mouth go dry when the wind stopped whistling
but the leaves still danced. Li had been right, and the feeling that pulsated through her blood
was even stronger, this time. There was a card around, and it WAS powerful. Perhaps even more
powerful than she was.
"Oh, key that hides the power of the dark," she whispered, afraid to raise her voice into the
crescendo that usually accompanied the words of summon. The ground did not crackle with energy as
it usually did, though, and she could not feel the magic of the Clow embracing her, encouraging her
forth. It was as though the power was reluctant, with the great oak tree hardly ten feet away.
As though it was afraid of what might happened, were the Staff of Sealing fully summoned.
She pressed on, trying to find comfort in the fact that there was SOME amount of power
running around, and that the key WAS changing. "By the contract, reveal thy true form to me. This,
Sakura co - !"
Something happened just then, and she wasn't sure what. The Key of Clow stopped spinning
in the air and dropped to the ground, and blackness - strong, pure, dark - enveloped her body. She
tried to scream out, but she couldn't. Her voice caught, failed, and choked on itself, leaving
her coughing, gasping for breath. It was almost like she was drowning in the darkness, unable
to find the surface or the light, unable to escape the power around her.
Then, like a tunnel's end, a glimmer of light appeared in the midst of the darkness, a
light that grew slightly brighter with every passing second. She reached for the light, running
toward it even though she, somehow, knew that running did her no good. Her fingers reached out,
grasping at it, feeling for the warmth...
A park. She blinked at it, her brow furrowing, realizing that she was not looking around
the park as though she was on the grass in it, but rather, that she was looking DOWN on it.
Above her were branches, branches of a giant oak much like the one she had just been standing
under, branches full of budding leaves, the first leaves of spring. Children's voices echoed
across the grass as boys played pick-up baseball and others went down slides and crossed monkey
bars. Across the street was a school, nestled in a grove of trees. Sakura frowned, swinging her
legs idly from the branch she was perched on. Why did that school look so -
"Will you come down, already?" whined a voice, and the misplaced college student glanced
down to see a teenaged girl, dressed in a navy skirt with a white blouse, staring up at her. She
swallowed, hard, and started to move, but the navy-purple eyes darted around her, toward somewhere
else entirely. "You know what your father has been saying!"
Someone sighed and a branch above her shook. Sakura leaned back and glanced up to see,
at least ten feet above her, another girl. She was perhaps fourteen, maybe a year older, with
long, dark curls and bright green eyes. She wore the same outfit as the other girl - Sakura
realized after a moment that it was a private school uniform - and was climbing steadily through
the branches, like a monkey in its element. "Yeah, I know what father says, Sonomi," she responded,
making a face down at the other girl. She swung under one branch and then over another, her
balance precarious as she made her way higher. "He says that I'm not in good shape, and that I have
heart problems, and all that other stuff. But I don't want to play his games." She laughed,
shaking her head, and plopped down on a thick branch, leaning against the trunk. "Did you see the
new history teacher? He's SO cute!"
Sonomi rolled her dark eyes up at the girl in the tree and sighed. "No, I didn't," she
admitted after a moment's silence. "What's so cute about him, anyway?"
"EVERYTHING!" The dark-haired girl laughed again, her voice high and sweet. "He's smart
and funny, and even after only an hour of class, I was in love!" Clambering to her feet, she
pulled herself up onto yet another higher branch, giggling like only a teenager with a crush
could. "We're going to get married," she decided, moving to stand on this new branch. "We'll have
two kids - or more, it's okay if we do - and we'll name them cute things. Touya... And Sakura!"
As Sakura tried NOT to fall out of the tree, Sonomi tsk-tsked with her tongue and shook
her head again. "'Peach blossom' and 'cherry blossom,'" she snorted, indignant. "Your parents
should have NEVER let you take Japanese in junior high, Nadeshiko. You're starting to think you
speak the language!"
Nadeshiko - her MOTHER, Sakura realized, her stomach turning over itself - shrugged her
shoulders and kept on climbing. "We'll travel all around the world," she pressed on, constructing
for herself the life she wanted. "I'll be an artist or a pianist or SOMETHING and he'll still be a
teacher, but that's alright! We'll go to Europe and Africa and Asia and we'll see everything in the
world there is to see! I'll get out of Albany and get a better life than this one, and it will
be WONDERFUL!" She sighed, leaning heavily on a smaller, thinner branch, putting all her weight on
it until she was dangling, her feet about three stories from the grass below. "And then, I'll
come visit you in your little, NORMAL house and - "
There was a crackling right then, like the sound that sappy wood makes when thrown into
a fire, and Nadeshiko's legs flailed beneath her. "SONOMI!" she shrieked, her elbows slipping.
She grabbed onto the half-broken limb of the tree, holding on for dear life, but it was no use.
The cracking continued, deafening, and then the branch broke away.
Sakura saw Sonomi squeeze shut her eyes and scream, and she closed her eyes, too. The fact
that she was watching her mother - her mother as a GIRL, no less - fall from a giant oak tree didn't
cross her mind as she waited for the thump that never sounded, and the doom that never came.
"Are you alright?" A man's voice. Deep, masculine, and almost disturbingly familiar, it
caused Sakura to snake open one eye and then another. At the same time, Nadeshiko did the same,
only to find herself staring up into brown eyes. The young man, no older than twenty-two or
twenty-three - smiled and set her down on the ground. It was now evident how young she really was;
her form was gangly and not yet filled out, and she looked tiny between the tall man and the more
mature-looking Sonomi. After she nodded, the man - no doubt a young Fujitaka Kinomoto - smiled
and moved to ruffle her hair. "That's good to hear. But you be more careful next time, Miss
Amamiya. Had your friend here not screamed, I might not have gotten over here in time."
Smiling graciously, Nadeshiko reached over and pushed her friend forward. "This is my
cousin, Sonomi Amamiya," she introduced, once AGAIN causing the young woman who she would someday
give birth to almost fall out of the tree. "Sonomi, this is my new history teacher, Mr. Kinomoto.
He JUST graduated from the university this winter and replaced old Mrs. Granger."
"It's nice to meet you, sir." Sonomi shook the man's hand, but there was ice in her voice
and a stoniness to her gaze that somehow gave the impression that maybe she wasn't so pleased to
meet him, after all. "Thank you for saving Nadeshiko. She's a little bit more childish than she
cares to admit."
"SONOMI!" The skinny girl moved to bop her cousin, but she was laughing. They both were.
Spring turned to summer turned to fall, or at least that was the impression Sakura got as
she watched time seem to shift and move fast, passing her more swiftly than it should have. Winter
came and went, and the cycle repeated another time, and then it was spring again. Sonomi and
Nadeshiko sat beneath the oak tree, discussing something in hushed tones. Then, suddenly, the
short-haired teen hopped to her feet. "You can NOT be serious!" she raged, glaring down at her
cousin with anger in her dark eyes. "You're kidding, right? RIGHT, Nadeshiko?"
Nadeshiko stood up, too, but she looked guilty more than anything. Years had definitely
passed, and her form showed it. She was still thin, but she wasn't gangly, and her curves made her
look older than sixteen or seventeen years old. Her long, dark hair was bound with a rubber band
in the middle of her back, but the ponytail still reached past her bottom. She sighed and shook
her head, but she was smiling. Somewhat, at least. "I like him, and he likes me, too," she
responded to her friend's ravings, her face turning somewhat red. "We've been trying to keep it
under wraps, but it's hard to do, and... I thought I would tell you."
"You act like it's no big DEAL, Nadeshiko!" shot back her friend, hands on her curvaceous
hips, and the only thought in Sakura's head for a moment was how similar Tomoyo and Sonomi looked
in terms of body shape. "You are DATING our history teacher! That IS a big deal, and I'm the
president of the junior class! Hell if I'm not taking this to the - "
"You can't." Her voice was a whisper, but it was loud enough, and it stopped Sonomi in her
tracks. Tears welled up in green eyes and then tumbled down pale cheeks, and Nadeshiko swallowed,
hard, before wiping them away with her blouse sleeve. "Sonomi, you know that I wouldn't tell you
to bend the rules any other time, but this is important to me. I... I've dated a lot of boys,
Sonomi. A lot of them. And I have never, ever felt this way about any of them. Fujitaka makes
me feel like I can actually be a pianist, be a writer, see the world. Not even my parents support
me like that, and... I think I love him, Sonomi."
Her cousin snorted and tossed her short hair. "My God, Nadeshiko, you are sixteen years old!
SIXTEEN! You can't actually believe that this...this little GAME of yours...is love!" Green eyes
stared at her, teary, and she sighed, her shoulders drooping slightly. She pursed her lips and
glanced over her shoulder, at the high school in the background, and she chuckled slightly to
herself. "Dammit, Nadeshiko, if this gets me in trouble, I'm going to kill you."
Nadeshiko shrieked in delight and pounced on her cousin, hugging her tightly around the
neck. "Thank you SOOO much!" she laughed, hopping up and down in excitement as she pulled away
from the embrace. "I absolutely PROMISE you that I won't make you regret this, Sonomi. I PROMISE."
Time passed, again, and it was a summer, a year later. A young man, in his twenties,
stood underneath the thick branches of the oak tree, caught up in a passionate kiss with a younger
woman. Her long curls of dark hair were ruffled by the wind, as was her white graduation gown.
After a moment, she pulled away, her fingers lingering in his brown hair before she stepped fully
away from him.
"I have to go, Fujitaka," she whispered, casting her green eyes on the ground beneath her
feet. "I told my parents that I was running to catch up with a friend I wanted to congratulate,
and I'm sure they miss me."
Fujitaka Kinomoto smiled, moving to brush her bangs from her face gently. "I want to meet
them, Nadeshiko," he breathed, landing a butterfly kiss on her forehead. "You talk so much about
your parents. I want to see what they're like."
She blushed, pursing her lips, a smile stealing across her face. But the smile turned sad,
and she shook her head slightly. "I can't let you do that," she responded softly. "They would
think it odd, me introducing my history teacher from the freshman year to them! And Sonomi would
kill me for doing it."
There was the rustling of cloth against grass as the dark-haired man knelt down on a
single knee and reached forward, catching her hand in one of his. He kissed it gently, not noticing
even as the young woman's eyes blossomed. Then, he reached into his blazer pocket and drew out a
black box. Inside was a tiny diamond ring, the single stone set in a band of gold, the metal
gleaming under the sunlight.
"Don't introduce me as your teacher, then," he responded, slipping the ring onto her finger.
He smiled up at her, eyes bright, and she smiled back at him, though tears coursed down her
face. "Introduce me as your fiancé."
More time passed by, and Sakura watched as her father and mother said their wedding vows
in the middle of the park, and then walked hand and hand through it years later, Nadeshiko's belly
sticking out in front of her, bloated from carrying her yet-unborn son. And then, again, she
and Sonomi were under the tree, each of them with a baby stroller, a little boy playing nearby
as they argued about something.
"You're sick, Nadeshiko," Sonomi lashed out, her dark eyes piercing, cold, her voice
bitter and harsh. "You don't want to admit it and you don't want to tell your family, and I can
only guess why, and his name starts with an F. And that's fine, I'm USED to that, now. But my
God, you could die!"
Nadeshiko was more pale now than after, her face gaunt, her cheeks completely without
the ruddy tones they had held years before. She was perhaps twenty-five, perhaps older; it was
hard to tell, thanks to the lines that had set into her face earlier than they did to most. "I
know, Sonomi," she responded softly, hardly able to annunciate the words as well as she used to.
"My heart is really weak, and they think it's because of Sakura. But I think I should be alright.
I mean, I had Touya when I was nineteen, and I was doing quite fine." She pursed her thin lips
and glanced into the stroller, chuckling at the sleeping infant bundled within. "Besides, would
you run around announcing you were sick to the entire world, even if you WERE?"
Her cousin said nothing and turned away, and the slender woman - once beautiful, now
simply sickly - smirked slightly. "I thought so." She turned toward the nearby slide and cupped her
hands around her mouth, and for a brief moment, her face regained some of the determination of
a woman who knew and understood her inner strength. "C'mon, Touya!" she called out to the six-year-
old at the bottom of the slide. "We're going home, now!"
The movement of time all around, pushing in and out of her, causing her stomach to flip-flop
and her hands to shake. Another year, then two, and then it stopped again. This time, it was her
father underneath the oak tree, his brown eyes sad, and Sonomi right up in his face...just like she
had been that morning.
"You killed her, even if you don't want to admit it!" spat the businesswoman, her eyes
dark, slivers of purple against a pale face. "You married her two young, you made her have your
babies, and NOW look! She's gone, Fujitaka! Totally gone!"
"I know," he nodded. His voice was course, sandpaper rough, and he couldn't bring himself
to meet her gaze. "I know she's gone. But I would rather not look at this as a blame game,
Sonomi. I think - "
"It's always about what you think and want, Fujitaka." Her tone was like ice. "You wanted
a sixteen-year-old girl, and you got her. You wanted a wife, and you got that. And you wanted
children. Oh, look. You have them, too. You have EVERYTHING, Fujitaka. But Nadeshiko never got that
chance."
For a moment, the young man looked like he was going to cry, but then he laughed and
shook his head slowly, as if he just remembered a joke from years ago. "I heard you two, twelve
years ago, when Nadeshiko was climbing the tree," he told the dark-haired woman softly, her
face registering shock as he spoke. "I didn't mean to listen in, but her voice carried across the
whole park. I heard about her dreams, about getting out of Albany, about living her dream. And I
told her that the other day, right before..." He trailed off, his gaze snapping up to meet Sonomi's.
"You know what she said? She said that her dreams - her REAL dreams - came true in the life she
had, and that traveling and being a writer or an artist, it never meant as much as being with
Touya, Sakura, and I. And I believe her."
Sonomi opened her mouth as though she was about to say something, but time froze at that
moment, and the world slowly began to turn around from within, shadowing and fading until it was
darkness again. She choked on the darkness, feeling it pull her deep, unwilling to let her go.
It was as though she was sinking into the dark, unable to kick her way away from it, unable to
move.
And then, the light broke through the darkness and she was in the midst of leaves and
sticks, gasping for breath, her head hanging between her arms. Since when had she been here, on
hands and knees, and so -
"SAKURA!" Tomoyo's voice was loud and clear, and it rang in her ears like the campus bells
rang every morning. "You HAVE to seal the card! NOW!"
She clambered to her feet before she could really process what was going on, bending over
only long enough to grab the Key of Clow from the ground. This time, the words of summoning
brought all the familiarity of the cards' magic flowing into her veins. She whirled around on one
heel, ready to fight the card, ready to do whatever she needed to.
And then, she froze.
There was nothing there. No monstrous bird-thing, or floating balloon, or anything. Just
Tomoyo, looking scared, her purple eyes waiting for her to move, and Li, kneeling, his sword
digging into the ground. No, she frowned, looking down at the tip of the sword. Something was
keeping the tip from touching the ground. A card.
The Time card.
"SAKURA!" This voice had an odd twang to it, and she turned her head to see Kero diving
toward the trio of college students, his face a mask of panic. "You gotta seal the card, an'
fast! Li ain't got much more power!"
"But..." She glanced at the trunk of the tree, which was just as it had always been. It
looked almost exactly like the tree she had been sitting in, the tree that her mother had fallen
out of, years before, the tree her parents had gotten engaged under, the tree that -
"The card is IN the tree!" screamed the orange plushie urgently. "Stop thinkin', Sakura,
and SEAL it!"
Shaking her head, Sakura flipped the staff into her hands and raised it over her, setting
herself into a resolved state of mind. The past was over, and she was here, now.
Tomoyo stared at her, as did the Guardian of the Clow. And despite the fact his eyes were
scrunched closed and that all his energies were focused on the Time card, she knew that Li was
depending on her, too.
"Return to your true form! CLOW CARD!"
Energy flowed around the tree, pulling from it what appeared to be a ball of black. The
blackness slowly took shape and form, turning from a sphere of nothingness and into a Clow card.
It wafted through the air on an unseen breeze before landing next to Li, who collapsed onto the
ground, exhausted.
"Li!" Sakura stumbled over herself as she dropped the Staff of Sealing and moved to help
the brown-haired young man sit up, his side leaning against the giant oak tree. His eyes were
bloodshot, as though he hadn't slept the entire night, and his chest rose and fell in long,
shuddering breaths. "Are you alright?"
Keroberos landed on the ground lightly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Kiddo here
decided he dun wanna wait for the Return card to go an' catch you up to real time," he explained,
smirking rather haughtily. "I told 'em that the Return ain't able to hold you in the past DAT
long, but he dun listen to the Guardian of the Clow."
The young man moved to smack the plushie, and Kero flew through the air and into a nearby
log. "She'd already been there for several hours," he shot, glowering weakly at the swirly-eyed
creature. "I wasn't going to trust the card..."
"What happened in there?" Suddenly Tomoyo was kneeling on the forest floor with her best
friend, concern in her purple eyes. Sakura couldn't help but see the family resemblance between
Tomoyo and Sonomi...and between Tomoyo and her second cousin, Nadeshiko. "When I got home at 9, you
and the costume were gone, and Li came by at midnight saying that there was a card in the oak
in the ravine, and..." She trailed off, brow furrowing. "What did you see?"
The brunette removed the ridiculously large hat from her head and hugged it to her chest,
glancing up at the sky. The sun was already coming up, and the serene bluish-purple hues that
were stealing across the heavens were beautiful, almost as beautiful as the bright green eyes
of her mother. But how could she explain all that to her roommate and her arch enemy?
Shrugging, Sakura climbed to her feet and offered a hand to Li, who excepted it - and
the aid of a shoulder to lean against as he walked - with a coy reluctance. "I saw the way things
were," she responded with a half-smile, her eyes alighting as they started down the path toward
the college campus. "And it was really nice, but... I'm glad to be here, now."
She paused, her grip around Li's waist tightening as she remembered the pure delight in her
mother's smiling eyes on that day when she had decided she would marry her history teacher and
live her dreams.
"I'm glad," she amended, her smile brightening, "that things are the way they are, now."
===
"You were Mom's teacher, weren't you?"
The little corner restaurant was bustling for the breakfast hour, but it was not silent
enough to drown out the sound of a fork smashing against a plate. The waitress who was refilling
Fujitaka's coffee cup shot him a rather disdainful look and then sighed, muttering something about
college towns as she stalked off toward the kitchen. Her patron coughed and picked up his utensil,
smiling charmingly as he speared a piece of pancake. "Why in the world would you say that, Sakura?"
he questioned, acting as though he was the most innocent person in the universe. "Have you been
listening to your brother's tall tales again?"
It had been six a.m. when they made it back to the dorms, and Sakura had hustled to shower
and dress (in a skirt, since she was out of clean pants) for her breakfast date with her father
that morning. Touya had called to apologize for his behavior some time in the wee hours before the
dawn, and she had smiled when his recorded voice promised up-and-down to tell her anything she
wanted to know from now on. She deleted the message and shook her head; she would now get the
chance to gloat that she didn't need his information. And he would tease her back, but that was
part of being siblings. Part of being a family.
Rolling her eyes, Sakura set down her coffee cup and sent her father a dubious look.
"Tomoyo told me a little story about her mother's cousin," she half-lied, trying her best not to
smile. She wanted this to be a serious discussion, even if it was a discussion she - and probably
only she - could smile about. "You see, this woman - Nadeshiko Amamiya - married her history
teacher and had two children. But her body was weak, and she had heart problems, and so she ended
up dying at 27. Sound kind of familiar?"
Her father smiled sadly and sighed, shaking his head in her direction. "When I saw the name
'Tomoyo Daidouji' on your roommate slip freshman year, I prayed that you would hear the story from
your brother. But Touya is... Touya." She laughed, and he nodded, his smile losing a bit of it's
more solemn quality. "He said he wouldn't tell you, and that it shouldn't be important. He doesn't
really like Sonomi any more than she likes me." He paused, taking a long sip of his drink. "And I
wanted to tell you, but how do you tell a story like that to your daughter, when she only remembers
bits and pieces of her mother's life? I didn't want you to think that she was some sort of
promiscuous girl, or that I was some sort of pervert. Your approval of me is important, Blossom,
and... I was kind of scared.
"Of course, the incident with Sonomi yesterday was...unexpected," he pressed on, taking a
bite of his breakfast as he spoke. "It brought out a rather ugly truth, and that is that I did
indirectly cause your mother's death. I won't stop loving her, or stop feeling regret for what
happened to her, but I will always feel guilt for stealing her life from her." He pursed his
lips, frowning. "Sonomi told me yesterday that I kept your mother from many things she wanted to
do with her life...and she's right. I kept your mother from her dreams, and I will never forgive
myself for that."
Sighing, Sakura reached across the table and took her father's hand in her own, squeezing
it tightly. Fujitaka looked surprised by this simple motion, but he reached to lay his other hand,
the one with his wedding band, over hers. "I think that Mom was happiest with us," she responded,
smiling brightly up at him. "And I think we made her dream come true, by loving her back as much
as she loved us."
Her father smiled, the laugh lines around his eyes crinkling pleasantly. "You know, Sakura,"
he commented, squeezing her hand back, "in some ways, you really are a lot like your mother."
She said nothing, but she did smile back.
===
"Hello?"
It was three in the afternoon, and Shao-Lang Li had planned on taking a run. He'd cleaned
the mud from the day previous from his shoes, pulled out his favorite pair of jogging shorts, and
even taken the time to burn a new "Running" CD. But then, just as he was ready to change, the
phone had rung.
The voice on the other end caused his brow to crease and a frown to play across his face.
"Yes, Mother, I'm doing well. How are you? Glad to hear it. And the girls? That's good to hear."
He tapped his toe impatiently on his carpeted dorm floor, a bad habit that came from years of
disliking the phone call. "Really? Well, I hope Sai-Lau finds her cat, then. Yes. No, Mother,
I'm doing FINE with the English language. And I'm eating well, too."
And then, the voice of his mother - a voice he had heard every day since he had been
born, a voice he had learned to tolerate and smile at and love - said something completely
unexpected, and it was all he could do to keep holding onto the handset of his cordless phone.
"She's WHAT?!" he gaped, trying his hardest to remain standing. "Why in the WORLD is she - Oh.
Okay. Yes, Mother. So long. You too. Bye."
The beep that sounded when he hung up the fell on deaf ears as he leaned against the
cinderblock wall of his dorm room and blinked into space.
His cousin...coming to THIS college?
Suddenly, he wanted to run a lot further than to the ravine.
===
End Chapter 6.
