Chapter Three
False Information
"Sakura-chan… Do you know that this house is said to be haunted?"
"HOE?"
"Naoko-chan! That's not nice! You know how Sakura-chan feels about that kind of stuff."
"But if this was my house, I'd want to know all about it! It has a fascinating history. A wealthy family from Hong Kong built it in 1950, but they moved away after only living here for four years and left the house abandoned. Rumor has it that their youngest son died of a sudden fever and then his mother went mad with grief. Ever since then they say that the soul of a young boy can be seen gazing out the windows and sitting on top of the roof during the full moon."
By this time, Sakura had pulled her covers completely over her head and lay shaking beneath them.
"Naoko-chan, look what you've done to poor Sakura-chan!" Chiharu exclaimed.
"It's just a story Sakura-chan," Tomoyo said soothingly, rubbing the huddled lump under the blankets.
"There are a ton of other stories in this town just like it," Rika said. "Aren't there, Naoko-chan?"
"Oh yeah! The school clock tower in is said to be haunted by the soul of a giant three-toed sloth and the strip-mall on Main Street was supposedly built by aliens," Naoko said eagerly. "And, of course, there's the huge mansion up on Cherry Hill that's said to be the home of a famous sorcerer–"
"And just where did you get your information for all this, Naoko-chan?" Chiharu asked suspiciously.
"From Yamazaki-kun, of course," Naoko said matter-of-factly. "He knows nearly every urban legend of this town."
"You mean that he's made-up nearly every urban legend of this town," Chiharu said dully. She balled her hand into a fist and raised it in front of her face, fire sparking in her eyes. "I'm going to kill that idiot."
"Huh?" Naoko said, looking crestfallen. "You mean he was lying about all that stuff?"
"Of course he was!" Chiharu exclaimed. "Every word out of that moron's mouth is a lie!"
"See Sakura-chan?" Rika said, leaning toward the blankets. "There's nothing to be scared about."
"R-really?" A few strands of auburn hair poked out from under the covers. "There are no ghosts?"
Naoko looked like she was about to say something, but Chiharu quickly tackled her and clamped a hand over her mouth.
"Nope! No ghosts," Chiharu said, a struggling Naoko under her iron grip.
"You can come out now, Sakura-chan," Tomoyo coaxed.
"I'm so glad!" Sakura said, finally emerging the safety of her cocoon. "Uh… Chiharu-chan… Naoko-chan is turning blue."
"Oops! Sorry!"
Yue appeared beside Syaoran at his spot near the window.
"Are you disappointed that the story wasn't true?" he asked over the drone of the girls' constant giggles.
"Not really," Syaoran said. He knew he should have been interested in what the girl was saying about his history, but he just couldn't bring himself to care. His past life was just that: the past. He had as much interest in it as Living had for the person they are in a passing dream. "I am what I am now. What happened before now doesn't matter."
"That's refreshing," Yue commented. "Many spirits are so attached to their past lives that they become vengeful and angry. Their hatred and resentment of the living are what bind them to this world. They crave what they cannot have and eventually become so obsessed with the Living that they forget they are dead. They want so badly to live again that they make almost make it happen. For brief periods of time they can pierce the veil between our world and the world of the Living."
"Really?" Syaoran said, looking up at Yue. "Why would someone want to do that?"
"I'm so glad you asked that, Syaoran," Yue said, a kind of grim satisfaction in his voice. Then he disappeared, leaving Syaoran feeling as if he had missed half the conversation.
"EEEK! IT'S THE GHOST!"
Shrill, girlish screams erupted in the room, sending blankets flying through the air. Syaoran's aura began pulsing rapidly like a panicked heartbeat. How had he pierced the veil when he didn't even mean to! Yue had warned him about this! He had to hide somewhere or he was going to become angry and vengeful! He might hurt someone!
"WHERE IS IT!" one of the girls screamed.
"THE DOOR! It's opening by itself!"
The door? Syaoran froze. He was nowhere near the door…
"Onii-chan!" Sakura yelled exasperatedly, her voice still breathy with fresh panic. She ran up to the door and violently pulled it open, revealing the brother standing there with a stern, suspicious look on his face. "What are you doing here! You scared us all half to death!"
The brother took a step inside the dark room, looking around with his eyes narrowed and his lips pursed disparagingly.
"I heard voices…" he said, his voice grave and dangerous. "Male voices."
"Hoe?" Sakura said, looking around. "But Onii-chan… there's no one in here but us."
The brother's gaze eventually fell on the spot where Syoaran sat by the window. For the first time ever, Syaoran looked directly into the eyes of a Living. Syaoran scowled while the brother's eyes widened in surprise.
"Leave me alone," Syaoran whispered, shifting over so his back was to the brother. It felt strange to address someone other than Yue directly, but he knew the brother could hear him, so he might as well voice what he thought about it.
Syaoran heard the click of the door closing and felt it safe to turn back around.
As soon as the door had shut, the girls lapsed into a fit of giggles once again.
"Your brother is so weird," Chiharu said through her mirth.
"Chiharu! Rika scolded, trying to sound serious despite her giggles. "That's not very polite."
Touya shut the door to Sakura's room, not exactly sure what to make of the thing he had just seen. He had suspected there was something odd about the house since they had moved in, but hadn't been completely sure until that moment.
"Leave me alone."
Touya shook his head firmly as if to filter through all the thoughts in his head. It wasn't the first time he had witnessed an event like that, but each experience was completely different and left him feeling slightly dazed. Besides, he had never actually lived with one before. This was going to take some adjusting.
He wasn't exactly thrilled about it occupying his sister's room, though. If she somehow found out…
"Touya-kun, are you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Touya couldn't help but let out a grunt of laughter. He looked up to see slightly worried, but playful golden-grey eyes under a tousled mop of silver hair.
"I did," Touya replied simply.
"Huh?"
"Never mind Yukito-kun," Touya said dismissively, leading the way back to his room down the hall. "We better get back to work. That project for chemistry is due Monday and I have soccer practice all day tomorrow."
Yukito smiled softly behind Touya's back.
"You are too cool, Touya."
The girl and her friends had finally fallen asleep in a group on the floor around midnight, giving Syaoran a chance for some peace and quiet at last. He sat by the window reading and trying to ignore the girls' annoyingly loud breathing as they slept. Sakura's, in particular, was the most distracting.
"Why does she have to mumble like that?" Syaoran asked himself as the girl gave an especially violent toss in her sleeping bag and uttered some incomprehensible words.
Unable to ignore all the noises any longer, Syaoran got up and attempted to pass over the girls on his way out of the room. He could've easily just slipped through the floor and avoided them, but he felt somehow that going through the walls would be easier. Thinking back on it, Syaoran considered that seemingly insignificant decision to be the major turning point in his existence.
As he entered into the area of the girls, his surroundings completely changed. The room melted away, revealing a jumble of twisted worlds joined together with ill-defined borders. One moment he was standing in a small classroom with a kind-looking teacher, and the next he was in a vast field with all sorts of odd creatures running back and forth. He quickly slipped between a desert island populated with a thousand identical girls all wearing different outfits and a strange house of nothing but oddly-shaped circus mirrors and a young boy sticking his tongue out.
"Dreams," Syaoran whispered to himself, passing the mirrors. "Somehow I've gotten into their dreams…"
Syaoran felt extremely embarrassed about invading the girls' privacy in such an intimate way. Dreams were not supposed to be seen by anyone - ever. Thanks to the night's events, Syaoran knew all too well how it felt to have his privacy violated…
He figured if he kept walking he'd eventually emerge back into the house, but a considerable amount of time passed as he wandered between worlds. It was like walking on the platform of a large split-section merry-go-round in which he went around and around, but never actually got anywhere.
Thankfully, just as in the waking world, the girls he encountered didn't seem to notice he was there. Even if he walked right in their line of sight, he was completely ignored. He passed through the dream worlds of Rika, Naoko, Tomoyo, and Chiharu without incident.
Chiharu's "mirror world" abruptly ended and Syaoran found himself closed in on three sides by infinitely tall neon-green walls. He went to walk through the walls, but, to his complete surprise, found that they were impassable. This was an unfamiliar sensation to Syaoran, as walls had never been able to keep him enclosed before.
Confused, Syaoran walked down the hall in the only direction that wasn't closed off. He walked like that for quite awhile, passing endless walls of green and taking whatever direction was available at the time. Through the pressing silence, Syaoran could hear the soft sobs of someone in great distress getting louder and closer. He wanted to avoid whoever it was, but the walls forced him to keep going in only one direction. Eventually, Syaoran spotted a girl leaning against the wall, tears glistening off her cheeks in the dim, ominous lighting. There was something strangely familiar about that tousled, auburn hair…
As Syaoran approached, the girl's head snapped up and looked directly at him with large emerald eyes. It was the second time in one night that he had looked into the eyes of a Living, only this time it made Syaoran's aura shudder violently.
It was Sakura, but she looked like a horrible mess. Her eyes were puffy from crying too much and she looked like she hadn't rested in days. Her school uniform was windswept and untidy – very much uncharacteristic of her.
"Are… are you Shaora?" she asked timidly, her hopeful, watery eyes fixed on Syaoran.
Syaoran replied to her with only stunned silence and took a nervous step back. A thousand thoughts were flying around in his mind, bumping into each other and sparking violently where they collided. She could see him! Why could she see him? The others hadn't…
When Syaoran didn't answer, the girl shook her head wildly and went on anyway. "Please, you have to help me. I've been wandering around this maze forever and I can't find the way out. Naoko-chan said something about how to find the exit, but I can't remember and I'm scared…"
Feeling trapped, confused, and panicked, Syaoran did the only thing he could think of – he ran away as fast as he could. No one but Yue had ever spoken directly to him before, and the shock of being openly addressed by a crying, frightened girl begging for his help was more than he could take.
"Wait!" the girl called, breaking into fresh sobs and taking off after him. "Don't go!"
Syaoran just ran faster. The walls became a green blur as he passed them blindly. He took whatever opening he came by, not caring which direction it took him. But no matter how fast he ran, the girl was able to keep up.
Syaoran hadn't been running long when the walls suddenly ended. He found himself standing at the start of a huge grassy plane that seemed to stretch forever in all directions. It was a wonderful sight, especially when compared to the claustrophobic constraints of the maze.
He turned around just in time to see Sakura emerge from the maze in the distance. She looked just as surprised as he felt to have found the exit. When she spotted Syaoran she waved wildly.
"Thank you!" she yelled.
Completely and totally confused, Syaoran ran from her, feeling mortified and awkward. He was never happier when he emerged from Sakura's dream world and back into his familiar room. He immediately slipped through the floor and into the living room below, desperate to put as much distance between him and Sakura as possible.
Syaoran climbed wearily into the seat by the living room's bay window.
"A little too much excitement for one night, huh?" Yue asked, sitting beside Syaoran.
Syaoran nodded. "What… what was all that?"
"You figured it out already," Yue said. "You were inside their dreams. I'm just surprised it didn't happen sooner."
"But she saw me," Syaoran said, his aura shuddering with the memory. He was still finding it difficult to speak in complete sentences. "She talked to me. Why?"
Yue shrugged. "Some people are a bit more in tune with the presence of the spirit world, especially in a psychically receptive state such as when they are sleeping. This family seems to be more receptive than normal anyway, so it makes sense that the girl would become aware of your presence should you happen to stumble into her dreams. However, I bet you were still very indistinct in her eyes. She probably didn't get a very good look at you at all."
"But why did she say 'thank you' to me at the end?" Syaoran asked. "I didn't do anything."
"I thought that would be obvious," Yue said, his serious expression never wavering. "You lead her out of the maze."
Syaoran narrowed his gaze at the floor. "But I wasn't trying to find the way out. I was just trying to get away from her."
"She doesn't know that, though," Yue said. "To her, it looked as you guided her to the exit. And she was very grateful for that."
Syaoran's aura flared with unease and he vowed never to go anywhere near Sakura's dreams ever again.
A few months passed and Syaoran began to adjust completely to the family's presence. At first he felt ill at ease around the brother and avoided him as much as possible. Syaoran didn't like the idea of being noticed, so he did whatever he could to avoid such an opportunity. However, he soon realized that he was very rarely seen or heard except during the few days surrounding a full moon. Yue's presence also drew more attention from the brother, which was probably why he had stopped showing up randomly. In fact, Syaoran would sometimes go days without even so much as a word from his only friend in the world. Syaoran couldn't say he didn't mind, but the family kept him entertained enough as to where he missed Yue's presence a lot less than he should have.
The summer months passed quickly, giving away to cooler weather. Syaoran couldn't feel the dip in temperature the way a Living could, but he did recognize the change in air pressure and constriction. The "tighter" the air got, the colder it was. The cooler temperature also seemed to make Syaoran's soul stick closer together, which made him feel more solid than in the summer months where it sometimes seemed as if pieces of himself would float off in a thousand different directions at once.
Syaoran had perfected his "ghost object" technique over the months as well. He was now able to turn something as large as an entire bed into a ghost object with minimal effort. Of course, using that much energy made the brother suspicious, so Syaoran chose to keep the ability to a minimum when the family was home.
He did find it useful, however, when he got bored during the day. He would often make his way into the girl's room while she was at school, make her bed, and pick up around the room. At first he did this simply because the girl wasn't the tidiest person in the world when it came to her own room and he hated sharing a space that was so messy, but he soon found himself doing it just to be nice. He enjoyed doing what he could, even if it was only something very small. He also came to look forward to the girl's smile when she entered the room and found her bed made.
"Thanks, Onii-chan," she would whisper as she flopped on the bed. It irked him to no end when the brother would take credit for all Syaoran's hard work around the house, but at the same time, he was grateful that the brother wouldn't divulge his secret. Sakura was simply terrified of ghosts and spirits, so naturally Syaoran didn't want her to know about him. He was perfectly happy being left alone and ignored.
One day Syaoran sat reading by the window as Sakura worked noisily on her math homework. Since the brother and father were out somewhere, Syaoran contemplated moving down to the bay window in the kitchen to escape the racket Sakura was making. However, his thoughts were interrupted when a flash of warm, golden energy suddenly flared in Sakura's direction.
Syaoran's first thought was that it felt like the complete opposite of Yue's cool, silvery aura. When he looked up, he saw a blob of gold light floating in the air beside Sakura's right shoulder. Eventually the light subsided, revealing a tiny, toy-sized creature with huge rounded ears, a golden lion-like body, and two white wings that seemed to be there only for the heck of it.
"Now, now, Sakura," the thing said in an exaggerated Osaka accent. "Don't get frustrated. It's only math."
Although the creature was clearly addressing Sakura, the girl didn't seem to notice the tiny thing hovering beside her at all. Syaoran came to the logical conclusion that it was not on the same physical plane as she was.
Suddenly, the creature whipped around as if sensing a foul presence. His tiny, beady eyes came to rest on Syaoran.
"Hey hey hey!" the creature yelled, floating over to Syaoran and crossing its stubby forearms, trying to look intimidating. "Just who are you? You're not sanctioned to be here!"
Syaoran narrowed his eyes and glared at the creature.
"I've always been here," Syaoran said tersely. "You're the one who's barging in unannounced."
The creature looked extremely offended. "Barge! I don't barge! Did you happen to miss that grand entrance? I ever so subtly faded into view. That was one of the best entrances ever witnessed by ghost or man."
Syaoran's practiced glare was put to good use in this situation. However, it turned out that the creature had a rather potent glare of its own. For a few tense moments, the two stared at each other in a battle of wits to see who would crack first. All that could be heard were Sakura's uninterrupted, frustrated grunts as she threatened her math homework.
"Just how long have you been around here, kid?" the creature asked.
"'Kid?' I'm no kid!" Syaoran yelled, feeling like it was his turn to be offended.
"Oh yeah? Well you sure look like one!" the creature said, a smirk breaking out on its face.
"And you look like a plush toy! What's your point?" Syaoran shot back.
"How dare you!" the thing said, a golden light flaring around its tiny body. "I am none other than the legendary Keroberos, Guardian Beast of the Soul!"
"Beast?" Syaoran repeated, staring in disbelief. "You're only five inches tall."
Keroberos's tiny brow wrinkled in frustration. "Obviously I can't reveal my true form here. If I did so, the overwhelming energy would attract undue attention. You'll just have to trust that I truly am a magnificent beast and I could easily crush you with one paw in such a form."
The creature floated back over to Sakura and hovered by her shoulder once again. Syaoran stayed were he was, pulling his arms over his chest and glaring at the thing.
"What are you doing?" Syaoran asked through grated teeth. At this rate, he wouldn't be able to get any reading done at all.
"Observing," the thing said absentmindedly.
"Observing what?" Syaoran asked, getting more annoyed by the second.
"I've been following her at school, but nothing seems to be out of the ordinary there," the creature said. "It must be something at home. At first I thought maybe it was you, but you're quite harmless. No, there is something much more sinister at work here…"
"So you're on guard duty?" Syaoran asked, trying to make sense out of the creature's enigmatic words. After years of having no one but Yue to talk to, he had gotten quite good at puzzling out riddles.
"Actually, the word 'guardian' in my title is a little misleading," the little plushie said, waving a stubby paw dismissively. "My job is to take this girl's soul when she dies. And from the look of things, that day isn't too far off now."
Syaoran froze.
"What?"
The creature turned to Syaoran. "I know. I couldn't believe it either when I heard. Usually things like this are planned way in advance, but this was very sudden. Fate's got in for this one, it seems."