Disclaimer-craziness wheeeeeee! NO OWN CCS, but the story is mine...ehe...maybe I don't want to claim ownership for it though...~_~
Extended Visit Only For You: Chapter Three
"You've got the style, you've got the grace...darling you've got a lover's face so wonderful to see..." her voice was the epitome of a romantic, strong yet with a breathy quality to it that made her seem wistful.
He wondered if she wrote her own songs as he watched her play.
He was not the only one watching; many passerby smiled and waved to her and she would smile back genuinely, not breaking in her artful song. The creamy tapered fingers that danced across the keys entranced him; the melody was so beautifully lulling he hadn't noticed how fast her fingers had to move to create that lull. When a random bellboy tapped him on the shoulder and asked him if he was all right though, he surmised that he'd stared long enough. Instead he took a seat at one of the many tables around the piano, where the guests were able to sit and listen to the music provided and order caffeine-inclusive beverages or hot-chocolate.
"I've waited so long, for all the time that this has gone on, darling you're like a sweetly late dawn, all sunshine to me..."
Her voice lilted like magic and he found himself taking the small book he carried around with him, blackish leather tied and bound. As she sang he wrote semi-coherent notes down, notes...notes on an angel. 'The Servitude of Song...a plot in the making...' Surely he could make a story out of this; his editor had been on him about this for a while so he needed something; but what could he make of it exactly? The song was more piano than words but that just made the few words used ever the sweeter.
"You're mine, in this there is no denying, oh darling you're like the best kind...darling you're the best kind of love so sweet."
There was clapping, as he would learn to be accustomed to and even then found himself joining in.
Discreetly he placed his book away in the inside of his coat and approached her as she smiled and spoke to one of the many admiring guests. And as that guest left, she turned to him, as though she knew he was coming all along, and smiled a smile he would also learn to be accustomed to, a lovely, genuine smile.
"Hello," she greeted in a chipper fashion that suggested she was very, very happy. Somehow he wasn't surprised. This Kinomoto didn't exactly come off as a sad person after all.
"Good evening," he graced her with one of his most dashing smiles, or so he thought.
So equally when she turned politely away from him after a moment and began playing again, he was slightly dumbfounded.
"Er, excuse me Kinomoto-san," he tried but she smiled only apologetically at him and with one hand as the other worked its incandescent sorcery of song gestured that he'd have to wait please. So he simply smiled through gritted teeth she could not see and retreated back to his table. He had never been quite so tactfully snubbed before, especially not by a woman. And it is perhaps because of this that he had an impulsive urge to make her fall for him, to make this gorgeous and talented [hopefully unsuspecting] female fall for him, Li Syaoran, a man who got anything and anyone he wanted eventually.
Or so the eight ball told him.
Kinomoto Sakura, he pondered lightly. The light bulb went off in his head about this moment; this was his story. Sure it would be true...somewhat. But what better than a first-hand experience and play-by-play of his courting of the untouchable Cherry Blossom?
This was his story.
His thoughts sated for the moment, he found himself more content than he would have been before to reclaim his previous sitting chair and listen to the flower of the song.
"It's been a while since I saw him...you'd think I had let go...but no, no, no..." her voice was tinged this time with a sadness otherwise simple but instead given inflection that made it deep and sensuous. People of course, stopped often to listen, a crowd gathering only after the first line.
"It's just that once you're gone you start to see those things...those things about him that I miss...his voice, his scent, his kiss...Even those habits he had like looking away...not there always...those I miss the same..." she sounded partially amused.
"You may wonder, you may wonder, why it is I can't let go, might you?...it's just that I've become accustomed...accustomed...to loving him like I do...like I do," her smile was soft and laced with buried pain that the amber eyed wolf made curious mental note of. It seemed she really had been hurt...no one could write and sing so soulfully without knowing. Surely.
"It's been forever since I saw him...but I never want to forget...don't let me, don't let me...It's just that once I dreamed that he'd come home and now I'm waiting, yes I'm waiting...for the time he reappears by my side, to tell me I'm not alone this time...it's that kind of thing I dream tonight...and you know, that it's so, that I...have become...accustomed...accustomed...to loving...him...to loving him like...I do," her hands trailed the last notes of the high part of the piano prettily...an evanescent echo to beauty incarnate, her voice.
Applause...and he clapped loudest, he was certain.
Sakura inclined her head, sending appreciative glances to her rather extensive audience, a light and becoming blush gracing her delicately defined cheeks. Was it her or did the crowd seem larger this night than others? It was as she scanned this abnormally sized crowd that her line of sight caught the impenetrable stare of one, Li Syaoran. Again she found herself subconsciously astounded by the coloring of his eyes, and a dormant stirring of something more perhaps than fascination. She'd learned a long time ago...or so it seemed...how to push such possibilities down and out though.
He would be no different, she assured herself, even as he began to approach her for what she realized was the second time in her set that evening. And if his look was definitively appraising and his movements undeniably sensuous, a bit too intended to be so, she did not register it as such... or pretended not to notice.
"Li-san," she greeted in the cordial fashion a concierge and predominantly serving employee would be expected to have, the difference being laced in with her undoubted geniality.
"Good evening Kinomoto-san," he tried for the second time that night, internally praying she wasn't going to start playing again before he could at least familiarize himself with the woman.
"Are you finding things to your liking in the Hikari?" she made the small talk seem so effortless he could have sworn she might actually care what his answer was to be, unlike other workers in hotels aplenty he had stayed in prior to this one. Maybe it was in her smile or the way her hands absently folded themselves in a deceptively demure manner on her lap, as if napping before their next activity, their next masterpiece of song.
"Yes, that I am. Hiiragizawa certainly has made himself a fancy shindig here...successful to by the appearances of things," Syaoran replied, working his amiability to its fullest, exercising his "nice-guy" skills to their extent, careful not to overstep his unwritten boundaries.
"He's worked very hard," Sakura nodded, a depth to her statement that Syaoran did not give much weight at the time.
"How long have you been working here?" he asked while absently shifting his posture to become more comfortable.
"Not very long," the Cherry Blossom smiled ambiguously and inside, Syaoran let out an exclamation of spontaneous vexation. She would have to be general wouldn't she, he moaned inwardly. For a sex symbol and multi-million dollar writer, I'm certainly not getting very far, he noted wryly.
"What can I do for you?" she asked innocently and the amber eyed Adonis in front of her refrained from listing the answers to that also terribly wide-ranging proposition.
"Actually, it's been a while since I've been in Tokyo, and I don't know my way around as well as I'd like to. I could always take the limo, but there's no fun in that. Walking makes me feel less conspicuous," he admitted; this was perhaps one of the truest things he'd said to her in the entire conversation thus far. To this she laughed lightly and arched an eyebrow in challenge.
"Really? Surely a star such as yourself can be nothing like the sort when in public...?" she seemed to dispute with him from the get-go.
"You'd be surprised," one of his trademark smirks slipped and he met her cunning with his unflappable form of knowing.
"Would I? But I don't see your point Li-san. I don't drive the city taxis; I play the dinnertime concerto," she joked and he gave a short chuckle, closing his eyes briefly and shaking his head.
"Yes, I realize that Kinomoto, but I was thinking more along the lines of an informal tour-guide, like yourself perhaps?" this was bold and maybe he was going too fast but he was used to having any woman melting into a puddle of willingness for him at his well-polished shoes...like ten minutes ago at the least. It must have been fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes if he counted the songs that she had not only resisted what he considered to be his multiplicity of charms, but also shown no interest to begin with other than the parlay they had just shared.
And that was no more than a clever match of words and wits...he had to get to the point and if this didn't work, he'd try another option. Li Syaoran wasn't "The man" of all men for nothing; he had what seemed like an endless slew of manipulations and cajoling routines up his freshly pressed sleeves...it was just that he had never had to use any of them.
"I'm sorry Li-san, but you saw me before; surely you know my day job is full time concierge here at the hotel..." she insisted and he resisted the urge to hit his head on the large column behind him.
"And if I beseeched Hiiragizawa to have you for a while?" he asked casually and Sakura's eyes widened a bit.
"Excuse me?" she leaned her head to one side in minor confusion.
"If he'll allow you to take leave for a day, just one day, would you be so kind?" he phrased his words carefully here.
Kind? That was Sakura. This was his trump card for this round...her affable politeness and compassion should win out for him if he wasn't mistaken...
"...Well, I suppose, provided Eriol is completely certain he can do on without me for a day," Sakura almost sounded like she hoped he couldn't and Li bit back a small noise of slight insult. Maybe the other women he'd been around were such pushovers he hadn't been exposed to enough of this kind of treatment, but for whatever the reason, that had him sorely put out...on the inside anyway. On the outside...
"I guess I'll be seeing you tomorrow then Kinomoto," his smile reached his eyes in a way that was more provocative than she would ever admit but a way she also recognized on a higher level of comprehension. As his retreating form was lost to the masses of people coming to second dinner shift and leaving the first, she stifled the irregular beating of her heart.
Surely it was due to her lack of food...nothing else, she reasoned incorrigibly. A small part of her inner voice simply sighed and shook its head in surrender. What Sakura chose to understand was a direct result from her rather unpleasant past in dealings with the male species; she couldn't blame her. Still...the Cherry Blossom would have to square with that one day...sooner than perhaps she thought.
Blinking out of her less than cohesive thought, she drew her hands from her lap, flexing her soft fingers gently as they laid themselves knowingly across the correct keys for her next number...at least they knew what they were doing.
From across the room Yue's observant eyes had caught most everything and his acute hearing had picked up most of the other everything and neither of the two made him very happy, as was evident by the inarguable scowl on his otherwise beautiful features. I don't like this, he mumbled inwardly and made a note to himself to see Eriol before the amber-eyed wolf did. He didn't trust him. If apart of his unease was tinged with a shade of jealousy, he didn't concede it within himself for the time being.
After all there was nothing to be jealous of in the first place, he persuaded himself as he continued his duties throughout the evening. This was Sakura, his friend, his beautiful, kind, impossibly angelic friend. Nothing to be jealous of, his left-brain insisted and then his right flashed on the exchange between the Cherry Blossom and the infamous young author and that part of him suggested otherwise. He forced it to bury itself beneath his shallows, for now, convincing himself he simply wanted to keep her from getting hurt.
Maybe he was afraid of being hurt too...but that wasn't really important to him. What mattered was that Sakura be kept safe and if he knew one thing, he knew that Li Syaoran was anything but.
Of course, opposites attract...but who ever listened to those tired lines anyway, Yue finally decided stubbornly as the night reached an end and he found his way to his quarters, stopping as he always did outside of Sakura's room on his way.
He knocked lightly.
"Yue?" she knew.
"Good night Sakura-chan," he said to the door. He could feel her warmth, her smile just by being within her proximity.
"Sweet dreams Yue," she responded and then paused before clicking her bedside lamp off. This had become a nightly ritual.
"You too," it was a whisper, but he had a feeling she heard him anyway, even as he padded silently away to his own room for the night.
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So it's been a while. I'm running around trying to update all my beloved fics, hoping they're not quite dead yet. ~_~ I HATE SCHOOL. IT TAKES AWAY EVERYTHING. BAH.
Reviews please if you have the time; you know I have the shamelessness to STILL ask for them even after making you wait so long. Ahh the indecency of a candid author.
[only if you think I should continue this one though, otherwise I'll just let it go and try my hand again at a better plot; I know this one needs its tweaking but hopefully with time it'll evolve, ya know?]
-Kaji, the unabashedly late and stupid