"Sakura-chan! I'm so happy you're awake!" Kero flew over to where Yukito placed his sweet cakes. He grabbed one for Sakura and another for himself.
She looked up and reached her hands out to Kero to hug him. She had finally gotten used to seeing Yue out of nowhere from time to time.
"The nurses will come in..." were her first words.
"I will be able to sense them before they do..." Yue replied as he sat back on the seat beside the bed.
She remembered that she was hungry. She wanted noodles but all there was were baked pastries with ham-and-potato fillings and sweet cakes.
Yukito bought her sweet cakes every now and then. In the mornings, while she hurried to school, she would find a small box with two or three cakes on her study table. Sometimes, she would find leftover crumbs - Kero ate some while she slept. At one time, midway in her sophomore year, she planned to bake some cookies in return for the cakes. While she was choosing among a set of metal pastry shapes, she suddenly realized that the gesture was only out of politeness, even habit, and that she was not happy going about making her gift. However, she had not thought about all this while she was mixing the batter. She decided to give the cookies to Tomoyo instead.
In her dream (because she dreamt often when she was in bad health), she and Yukito had become intimate. He would walk her to class every morning, and just before she entered the gates, they would trade lunches they made for each other. Sakura prepared every kind of dish imaginable. Yukito prepared only sweet cakes.
After his third cake, Kero forgot everything else and fell contentedly asleep while he murmured something about a blissful confectionary land of gigantic chocolates, mint, cream-coated strawberries, and such.
It was not an unusual dream for her. In another version, she and Yukito were happily married. However, every time her husband came home, he would remove his shoes and throw them at her. It was not at all his fault. She was as small as an ant and so he did not know that he was hurting her. To console her, he always brought home some sweet cakes.
These childish dreams bothered her occasionally during her high school days. Needless to say, time had not erased her feelings for her brother's friend. The "hanyan" for him was long gone though; it was now regret, anxiety, and some infrequent loneliness. Her father noticed it clearly.
"Why were you calling me?" Yue asked.
"I was having a dream...and Yukito-san was there..." Her eyes started to familiarize itself with the room. "...why am I having this fever now? Classes will start soon..."
While Yue looked at her, he realized a few years had already gone by. He did not notice time through his body - he was unchanged in body and demeanor. On the contrary, his mistress had changed. She had traded her whimsical youth for a more graceful, reserved maturity. He was not used to seeing her so serious. He also noticed that she was, for some time now, not in her best self. He had figured out correctly that she had not yet properly dealt with her feelings with his disguised self. The past always catches up to you and wastes the hours of your days.
He observed her mistress mostly while Yukito was conscious and had chance meetings with Sakura.
The cards had been caught and bore the writing of her name. No longer was Tomoeda visited by its supernatural powers by surprise. She used it more to bring excitement to other's lives rather than to catch other cards. Much like the time she produced a rainbow for Grandpa Amamiya using Watery.
Yue and Kerberos appeared in their true forms occasionally, even though Sakura had enough strength to support their existence in their true forms for as long as she lived. It was awkward, however, for Sakura to have them with their wings all around the small Kinomoto residence. They agreed to live as before - Kerberos lived in her room and Yue lived inside Yukito.
"Was I really calling out for you? Maybe I was having trouble in my dream...Kero-chan used to hear the voices in my dream, too." She did not want to worry him that much.
Though Yukito and Yue are one in the same person, she had managed, in her mind, to separate the two identities. It came to a point, sometime beginning her first year in Seijou High, that she decided that it was necessary to do this. However, it still passed her mind that she was talking to Yukito whenever Yue came to where she was.
"Yue-san...I want to say something..." She reached out her left arm towards him.
He moved closer, his face next to her cheek. While he waited, he did not hear words, only her heavy breathing. She fell back asleep.
He could not help but see her as the child he protected in times of danger, yet his own life depended so much on her. She was, all along, saving her guardians from nonexistence.
He wished that she would become happier or at least that he would understand her confusion.
He wondered if he could lightly kiss her on her forehead without startling her. The coldness from the moon might even bring down her fever.