Chapter 1
The Morning After

Sunshine filtered in through the curtains and touched Sakura's cheek, warming it up. She lay completely still on her bed with a faint smile on her lips that suggested she was probably dreaming something nice in her deep sleep and wasn't going to wake up any time soon unless she really had to.

Unfortunately, she kind of had to, as proven by the sound of her alarm clock ringing cheerfully a few seconds later. Even though her dream was cut short, when she opened her eyes, she quickly sat up and a look that was a mix of nervous anticipation and excitement crossed her face.

Kero flew out of his sleeping place inside her desk drawer and grinned at her. "Morning, Sakura! New term starts today, right?"

"Yeah," Sakura replied as she swung her feet to the floor and headed toward the bathroom. "I can't wait to get back and see everyone again."

"So long as you're sure all your homework's done this time. I'm so not helping you finish them at the last minute again," Kero yawned and went to the corner where he kept his secret stash of biscuits and snacks Sakura had smuggled into the room for him. "Not without some serious bribe, at least," he amended as he realized that his snack supply was running low already. He couldn't help it, he was just so hungry all the time.

"Don't worry, I've got everything covered this time!" Sakura answered cheerfully before she disappeared into the bathroom. Kero wasn't sure if he should feel relieved that he wouldn't have to try to solve tons of sixth grade Math problems in a matter of minutes or disappointed that he wasn't getting another supply of food in the near future. Oh well, he just hoped he could sneak into the kitchen and find something later when everyone had left.

A few minutes later Sakura had marched down the stairs all dressed in her school uniform and entered the kitchen. As usual, her father was already up and breakfast was already prepared. Her brother Touya was also already seated on his usual place, with an unexpected guest beside him.

"Yukito-san!" Sakura exclaimed in surprise. She brightened at once and took a seat on the dining table.

"Morning, Sakura. Touya invited me for breakfast today. He's worried I might not get enough nutrition to start the new term," Yukito said, smiling wide.

"Good morning. That's very nice of him," Sakura said, smiling back. She always felt better when Yukito was around. After all, he was one of her favorite people in the world. Even now.

"I think you should start eating your breakfast, little monster, you don't want to be late on your first day back to school," Touya said in his usual blasé way, still concentrating on his own food.

Sakura balled her fists and looked at him in annoyance. "When will you stop calling me monster!" she said grudgingly, especially hating it if Touya made fun of her in front of Yukito.

"Hey, you look different today, Sakura," Yukito interjected, distracting Sakura from her unsuccessful attempt to stomp at Touya's feet (as usual). She turned to look at him in surprise, a question mark hovering above her head. "You look… like you're glowing."

Sakura blushed. Glowing?

"And a lot more mature than when I last saw you. I guess Touya is going to have to stop calling you 'little'. You're going to be a junior high student soon. Don't you think she looks more mature, Touya?" Yukito looked at his best friend, who was still munching on his breakfast with an uninterested expression on his face. He had barely looked up to look at Sakura properly since she entered. Now he glanced at her, raised an eyebrow, and shrugged.

"Looks pretty much the same to me. Once a monster, always a monster," he said casually.

"Ugh! I'm NOT a monster!" Sakura exclaimed while trying to kick Touya again, except he moved his leg out of the way expertly. Yukito laughed as he watched the two siblings fight in their usual routine, cheering up the breakfast table.

As Sakura headed for the front door after finishing her breakfast and saying goodbye to her father, she watched Yukito and Touya walking ahead of her. She realized she was always going to like Yukito and that he was always going to have a special place in her heart, although he was no longer the one person she liked the most.

It was strange to see him in a new light—a new position, sort of. There were still some lingering feelings she had for him—feelings that she suspected would always be there, because she would always care about him. But when she saw Touya and Yukito together, talking to one another and looking very happy, she couldn't help but to smile to herself. There were no two people better matched for each other. With her big brother by his side, she knew she could trust that Yukito was not only going to be happy but also be well taken care of.

Then her gaze fell to their front gate, and her heart stopped for a beat or two. Speaking of people that could make each other happy, Li Syaoran was standing nervously right in front of her house, presumably waiting for her. Sakura's face turned red instantly and she watched as her big brother gave Syaoran the evil—or rather, suspicious—eye as usual as he passed him, then glanced at her once before he walked away reluctantly, leaving them alone behind. When Yukito and Touya were well out of sight, Shaoran lifted his gaze toward the house and caught Sakura's eyes. He blushed slightly in much the same manner she had and Sakura quickly approached him.

"Good morning," she greeted him once she was standing right before him, an uncertain smile forming on her lips.

"Good morning," he replied. "I… thought we could maybe walk to school together," he said, looking down at his shoes.

"You're going back to our school?" Sakura asked, realizing for the first time that Syaoran was also wearing the Tomoeda school uniform.

"Yeah, I…" Syaoran looked embarrassed. "Sort of asked my mother to let me finish school here at least, but I'm hoping to talk her into staying permanently."

"Is that possible?" Sakura's face brightened. "Because that would be so great! This is great news!" For a moment she looked as if she was going to hug him, but then changed her mind at the last minute, quickly averting her gaze.

"I think so too," Syaoran replied, shuffling his feet nervously. "Shall we go…?"

"Yes," Sakura nodded and they began to walk—well, she glided on her roller blade—but she made sure to go slow enough so he could easily keep up with her. The whole way to school neither of them said anything, and the silence felt uncomfortable.

A strange feeling enveloped Sakura. Suddenly she could not think of a single thing to talk about with Syaoran. She loved that he had waited for her in front of her house and walked with her, but she just… didn't know what to do next. This was a completely new situation for the both of them, and suddenly a memory flashed in her mind without her specifically trying to recall it.

"Wait until the stairs return!" Syaoran had told her in a panicked expression once he realized what she was going to do.

Throwing all caution out the window, Sakura grinned and ran forward as fast as she could, then jumped with all her might over the gap straight into his arms. "No way! I love you!" she exclaimed happily, shouting her deepest and most important feeling for the world to hear it. And landed in his safe embrace, feeling like the happiest girl in the whole world.

Heat crept up her face as she saw this scene replay itself in her mind. How come it was so easy for her to do something that was possibly dangerous (but certainly was the last thing she was concerned about at the time) back then? How could she just fly into his arms like it was something she did every day? And yet a few minutes earlier, she had hesitated to hug him, something she used to just spontaneously do with no problem whatsoever. She knew she had done it that time because she sincerely believed he would catch her. That he would not let anything happen to her, much like she would not let anything happen to him. But what had changed since then that made her feel unsure about how to be that girl she was that day anymore?

***

Break time. Sakura and Tomoyo were sitting on a bench at the school quad, eating their lunch.

"Where's Li?" Tomoyo asked, looking around. "Is he not meeting us here or anything?"

"Er… I don't know," Sakura admitted. When the break time bell had rung, she had pretty much dashed out of the classroom as quickly as possible without looking at Syaoran's face. She felt kind of bad—okay, really bad about it—but she was just seriously confused.

"You didn't invite him?" Tomoyo looked surprised. "But why?"

"I… don't know, Tomoyo," Sakura repeated. "I guess I just forgot." She looked at her best friend with an oh-duh-I'm-so-forgetful awkward smile, and Tomoyo just stared at her with a knowing look.

"Are you two going on any date any time soon?" she asked nonchalantly, causing Sakura to choke on her lunch.

"What?" she managed to say at last, after coughing for like a full minute.

"A date!" Tomoyo said brightly. "When is your first one?"

"I… am really not sure. We're kind of taking things slow?" Sakura scratched her not-so-itchy head.

"Well, if you're worried about me, don't be. I'll be sure to get out of your way. Before Meilin got back to Hong Kong, she told me to make sure you two get to have your own good time and that I should know when to leave you alone. You know you can tell me if you want to be alone with him, right? You don't have to feel obligated to ask me along too just because I'm your best friend. I mean… things are different now." She looked a bit sad. "I'm going to miss hanging out with you all the time, but I guess I have to learn to share. He is after all someone that makes you happy. So long as you still allow me to film you in your various cute battle costumes! You'll have to promise to let me film you more often now that I won't get to see you as much, so I could just look at the awesome movies whenever you're not around with me!" Tomoyo added with her trademark super-happy smile and glossed over eyes she always had whenever she was talking about capturing Sakura on film.

Sakura just grinned at her in that uncertain oh-what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you-and-your-obsessed-filmmaking look on her face, letting Tomoyo launch into a monologue about her plans for Sakura's next action movie.

Tomoyo had said things were different now. Sakura just didn't realize how different it would be.

***

"Sakura," a familiar hand touched Sakura's shoulder when she was collecting her stuff to prepare to go home after the final bell finally rang. It was Syaoran, waiting by his desk, which was right behind hers in class.

"Yes?" Sakura asked, turning to look at him.

"Can we… can we talk?" he asked uncertainly.

"Sure," she replied, shouldering her bag. "Let's walk home together." She glanced at Tomoyo, who usually walked home with her, who also had noticed this scene and gave her the thumbs up before joining Rika, Naoko, and the others. She would be walking home with them today.

Grateful to have such a sensitive best friend, Sakura walked slowly out of the school with Syaoran by her side. They were still surrounded with that awkward silence, and she couldn't stand it. She wanted to get rid of it so badly. She realized now that was why she had been avoiding him. Things used to be so easy between them, but now after they finally told each other their feelings, it was like he became a different person to her and there was a wall between them. Sakura was beginning to doubt if this was such a good idea after all. Maybe she shouldn't have been so impulsive. Just before she was about to speak up because she couldn't stand it any longer, Syaoran cleared his throat.

"Sakura, I… what's going on with us?" he asked straight to the point, catching her off guard. She stopped in her tracks and looked at him, all kinds of feeling mixing into one in the pit of her stomach, until she wasn't even sure anymore what they were.

"What do you mean?" she asked at last.

"Well… I just feel like… you don't know how to be around me anymore," he said, gazing at the road far ahead. "It's like we've become strangers. Do you feel uncomfortable around me now? Do you… not like me anymore?"

She shook her head vigorously. "It's not that!" she exclaimed, because that was the question which answer she felt surest about. "I still like you. I just… I'm confused. I guess… I guess I don't know how to be more than your friend," she admitted.

"Well, then, keep being my friend," Syaoran replied gently, which made her look up at him in surprise. "Who says we have to be… a couple, or whatever? I mean, we know we care about each other more than friends, but we don't have to do things differently, you know? We're still very young. We don't have to do all that couple stuff if you don't want to. We can just hang out together and have fun like usual. That's what we're good at, right?"

Sakura blinked and stared into Syaoran's big brown eyes. She had never seen it that way before, but then again, he had always been the one that understood these things first anyway.

"Yeah. I love being your friend," she said uncertainly. "I know how to be your friend. I don't know what I'm supposed to do as your…" her sentence trailed off, the word eluding her tongue.

"Girlfriend?" Syaoran finished for her, making her blush. He had a faint shade of pink on his cheeks too. Sakura nodded silently. "Well, like I said, we don't need to change anything. It's not like you weren't already hugging me and stuff all the time when we were just friends, anyway."

Sakura blushed at this. It was strange to think back at those times when she could spontaneously embrace him simply because she was grateful for him being around, seeing him as nothing else but another very good friend. Now she knew better, and somehow it only made her feel embarrassed about doing those things even if that was what normal couples apparently do. And here she thought after she told him her feelings everything would be fine again. That they could finally return to what they used to be. But the fact was, they both had changed a lot since then and they were no longer those two kids competing to find all the Clow Cards and become their master anymore.

"You know I'm not the type that does all that couple things," Syaoran continued. "So I'm not going to start sending you romantic messages or anything," he seemed nervous and looked away from her. "It already took me forever just to give you that teddy bear, and I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't practically run after me and found me at the airport, and asked if you could have it. So you know… maybe we're both bad at this. And if those kinds of things make you uncomfortable, we don't have to do them. The important thing is; we know we love each other, right?" His gaze softened as he looked at her again. "We don't need to show it all the time. I will always know, and so will you."

Sakura didn't know what to say. All she knew was that Syaoran was telling her exactly the things she wanted to hear, and he was proving to understand her better than she herself.

"I… I like doing those things," she blurted out after a few seconds of trying to find her voice. "Don't get me wrong, I'm still a girl, and making chocolates and teddy bears and giving them to the person I like the most is something I do like doing. And I want to do it with you, too. Maybe not now, because I'm still… trying to find my new place when it comes to you, but I certainly want to start doing those things in the future."

Syaoran looked surprised, but then he smiled. "That's good. I'd like that too. But let's just allow it to happen on its own time. For now, however… what do you say we just go back to what we used to be good at?"

Sakura gave him a big smile. "I'd like that very much." And then, after hesitating for a moment, she bounced on her feet and hugged him tightly. "I'm so glad we talked about this! Thank you, Syaoran," she said sincerely. Syaoran's face turned as red as a cooked crab, but he hugged her back. A little awkwardly, he patted her shoulder.

"It's okay. Let's just take things slow."

She grinned, all her worries gone now and she was all happy and cheerful again in her typical way. Syaoran liked that about her; how her feelings always seemed so simple and honest. She grabbed his hand and held it tight. "Shall we go home now?"

He smiled and nodded, squeezing her hand gently. The sun was setting, and they walked toward the beautiful orange orb disappearing into the horizon, feeling like they were back to their familiar yet at the same time new places again. Where they knew what to do and who they were supposed to be, and most importantly; whom they loved.

And so the two of them walked hand in hand, their concerns settled, realizing that everything was going to be alright after all.