A/N: rawr. Sorry. It's not the last chapter. It was so long I had to chop it in pieces.
Disclaimer: CLAMP owns CCS. I'm not a CLAMP artist. Therefore, I don't own CCS.
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ChronicallyLate
SakuraSyaoran
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"Hoee!" Sakura Kinimoto panted, almost throwing open the door of Café Li. She literally hurled herself inside, and brushed herself off surreptitiously. She had just run the entire length of Calle Liana, the street on which Café Li stood, in her hurry to get to the restaurant in time.
A ruby-eyed, ebony-tressed woman stepped out from the private compartments at the back of the restaurant and eyed her curiously. "Eh? Kinimoto-san?"
Sakura bowed to her immediately, taking in the rather intricately embroidered royal blue cheongsam she wore. Meiling Li always wore a cheongsam whenever she made an appearance in her restaurant. She had figured it out because she and Syaoran Li had always chosen this place as meeting ground--
ack!
"Meiling-chan!" she burst out, panicked, gathering stares from the other patrons. "I--I was supposed to meet Syaoran h-here--"
Meiling blinked, and then sighed resignedly, fanning herself with a french-tipped hand. "Oh, I'm sorry, Kinimoto-san, but Syaoran had just left and sped off with that infernal car of his--I told him to get a new one already. I think he has classes at two. You can catch up with him later, though, and..."
But Sakura's shoulders had already slumped down, and she felt like collapsing on the ground right then and there. The gilded clock in front of the counter read two-thirty. She was late. Again. For something like the zillionth time in the five years that she and Syaoran had officially been a couple. Well, it counted her being late for restaurants, for dates, for class projects, for festivals...she felt a migraine coming on.
"...mmkay, Meiling-chan," she said dejectedly, brushing her auburn bangs out of her eyes.
The ebony-haired (put up into a bun and secured by porcelain chopsticks today) woman tilted her head thoughtfully. "Don't get depressed. He'll get over it sooner or later."
"...mmkay." That was all that she could manage to say as she heaved her leather messenger bag higher up her shoulder. She slowly turned around and walked towards the french doors of Café Li, dreading the inevitable sermon later. If Syaoran bothered to see her, that was.
"And Kinimoto-san?" Meiling called.
Sakura looked over her shoulder.
"Try to get here on time the next time, okay?"
Sakura tried, and miserably failed, to smile.
- - - - -
Syaoran Li was never a pretty sight when he was fuming.
That's why he hated getting angry; it brought out the rawr-I-am-a-Li-and-I'll-kill-you inside him. Well, according to Sakura anyway.
God, that girl drove him crazy.
He shifted his weight on his feet, and recrossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe of Sakura's apartment. He had been waiting for the blessed moment when she would get home, and he will get through her head that being chronically late was something he didn't really like in a girl. Syaoran was always and forever will be an always-on-time guy, and it seemed that the jade-green eyed girl would always and forever be a late girl.
It was one of the things they would always fight about. What? Nobody liked a latecomer, anyway.
Especially when he missed a crucial presentation in university. He had spent an extra thirty minutes waiting for Sakura in Café Li earlier, and it cost him that, and she still hadn't come on time. He had raced to Tokyo University in an attempt to catch up, but the audio-visual room was already empty. Well, Eriol might've been able to pull it off, but still! It was Syaoran's grade point average we're talking about!
He started wondering whether he could get a good job if he flunked his masterals in business administration.
"...huh?"
He looked up, and snapped his head sharply to the side. There stood Sakura Kinimoto, looking like a deer caught in a steamroller's headlights. She was wearing her favorite white sleeveless top and grey jeans that hugged her figure. Her auburn hair certainly looked windswept, and her emerald eyes had gone as wide as they could go. In her pale fingers was clutched a set of keys.
"Finally, she decides to get home," he muttered sarcastically, taking a glance at his platinum-faced watch. "Oh, look. It something like eleven in the evening. Even in getting home she's late."
She bit her lip and went up to her door, inserting and turning the key in the lock. "I have classes, Syaoran. You're not the only one who's taking his masteral degree."
"Oh wow. And I bet I'm not the only one who missed my thesis presentation..."
She paused, and slowly turned to face him. "What d'you mean, you missed your thesis--"
"Saku-chan," he said in a sickly sweet voice--'cause he's really pissed right now--"When I asked you to be my girlfriend, you weren't this dumb."
It gave him a sort of twisted satisfaction to see her squirm uncomfortably. In all probability she'd have some excuse about how her pipes broke or something close to that, and then she'd try to laugh it off, like all the other times she'd been late. However, this was not just some other time; he had lost his one-year thesis because she was late. "So...? Let's hear your excuse this time," he said acidly.
She bit her lip once again, lowering her eyes in shame.
"Oh, wow. It doesn't usually take you that much time to come up with--"
"Oh, God, Syaoran, stop it!" Her voice wavered dangerously.
"What? So you're going to cry now? Well, even an ocean of your tears won't be able to bring back time!" Syaoran pressed on, standing straight now, back rigid with anger. "I--"
"Stop it already!" she said brokenly, tears spilling over her porcelain-white cheeks now. "It's my fault, okay! It's my fault because I dawdled over lunch and decided traffic wouldn't be that bad! I procrastinated, I didn't keep track of time, I was late! It's all my fault so stop insulting me already!"
Syaoran couldn't resist. "Wow. That's a first," he muttered sardonically.
She paused again, raising her eyes. "I'm sorry, Syaoran. Maybe you should get another girlfriend after all."
Before he could reply, she gave him one frightened look that actually startled him, and she went inside her apartment and closed the door.
"Fine..." he muttered, not having the least inclination to pound on her door and beg for forgiveness. "I see how it is. Fine." He walked off in the general direction of the elevator, staring moodily at the bland tan carpet. He automatically pressed the down arrow and waited for the elevator to come down from the thirteenth floor to this floor, the seventh. The doors slid open, and out stepped two teenage boys, probably drunk.
Heck, he might just take this night off to get drunk, he thought as he stepped in the elevator and pressed the ground floor button.
breep breep breep breep
Syaoran ignored the vibration of his phone in its holder attached to his belt. Probably might be Wei, asking if he'd be going back to the Li mansion tonight. Or Eriol, calling to chew him out.
breep breep breep breep
He stepped out of the elevators to the spacious main lobby, ignoring the pointed stares of the late-night crowd. He didn't even spare the security guard who openly gasped at the sight of a real Li a glance. Groaning, he realized he still had to remember where he had parked his car.
breep breep breep breep
"God, shut up already," he told his cellphone, but it still continued on breep-ing happily. Whoever was calling sure was persistent. Sighing resignedly, he slid the piece of machinery out of its leather holder and flipped it open, not bothering to see who it was.
"Don't you ever pick up your phone?" Eriol's voice demanded.
"Speak of the devil," he muttered in reply.
"I heard that. What's up with you? It's like you swallowed a lemon or something--"
Syaoran rolled his eyes, but he couldn't stop the feeling of relief spreading in his chest. Maybe Eriol pulled the thesis off, after all. "Hey, about the thesis--"
"Yep, that's why I called. Can you drive over my place and drop off the softcopy of the feasibility study? Tomoyo spilled coffee all over the folder..."
He could hear the raven-haired girl yell indignantly in the background, and the sound of a pillow walloping his cousin on the head. Eriol then could be heard cursing softly under his breath as he presumably threw the pillow back--Tomoyo laughed loudly. Well, they were already engaged, but still, Syaoran couldn't help but wonder what they were doing...
huh?
"What do you need it for?"he said impatiently, shaking his head. "We're already finished with the presentation, right?"
Syaoran couldn't help but feel a spark of dread. Just a tiny one--
"Don't you check your e-mail, Syao? The professor's moved our schedule to next week; the panel's down with food poisoning or something like that. So anyway, about the study..."
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yay.
is that a cliffie?
...this fic just won't die, would it?
Read&review.