But none of them were worried. Syaoran could certainly kick some serious ass.
"What do we do now?" Tomoyo asked.
She was sitting on one of the many and expensive couches on one of their living rooms and flipping through the pages of some fashion magazine, trying to find an inspiration amongst the hordes of clothes on it. She was in a really big designer's block.
"We should plan out how the book should be presented, of course. Plans make the work easier!" Eriol said. "I wonder where my CLD is..."
He was reading Astrology for Dummies and also inwardly laughing. He'd gotten a new hobby overnight. Pointing out stupidity and mistakes on various pieces of literature or, well, basically anything he could get his hands on. It was really fun. He had to thank Nakuru for introducing that to him. Suppi, being the book fanatic that he (or she, then again, they didn't have genders) was, was very surprised and a wee bit angry when the revered Eriol Hiiragizawa, the reincarnation of the crazy Clow Reed, started that hobby.
Clow used to do that hobby, too. Poor Suppi had been beginning to think if all of the people in his life were all either book-haters or people who made fun of books. It was getting on his nerves. If he was Cerberus, he would've roared and rampaged. But he wasn't at all like that impulsive and ill-mannered Sun guardian, unless he was drunk on sugar.
"CLD, what's that?" Sakura asked.
CLD sounded much like something that would have something to do with computers or cellphones. It also sounded like a drug. Sakura's eyes widened at that thought. Eriol was taking drugs?!
"Cute Little Descendant of course! And I can call him Little Wolf or LW too... or I can call him Xiao Lang or Sieu Long or Syaoran..." Eriol said, going on and on with the names he had in mind for Syaoran.
Sakura let out a sigh of relief. Eriol wasn't taking drugs. The world was saved! There was no apocalypse. Oh, if only she knew that Clow Reed was a chain smoker and that there was a possibility that Eriol, too, might become like that. Poor, poor Sakura. Well, she didn't know anyway, so that didn't matter.
Then Syaoran burst inside the room. He also burst Sakura's bubble.
"Eh... sorry I'm late," he said.
Behind him, which his hand was holding, was a wagon (oddly alike to the wagon in Rugrats) filled with books, and his other hand was holding a bag. He sat beside Eriol and got out a laptop from the bag. Then he maniacally laughed, something he had gotten from Eriol.
"I've managed to make links to all of my ancestors, and I also have books about our clan..." Syaoran said. "Now what are we going to do today?"
Obviously, someone hadn't gotten a wink last night and had drugged himself with extremely high amounts of caffeine.
"Planning our books! The chapters, how this or that should look, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera," Eriol said.
Syaoran was regretting that he'd made Eriol watch the King and I musical. If he knew that his descendant-but-not-really-since-Eriol's-just-the-reincarnation-of-Clow-so-ha! would act like that, he wouldn't have made him watch it. Syaoran had this intense loathing of repeating things for no reason at all.
But what was done was done. The usage of past tense should make that obvious enough, shouldn't it?
"Can we include pictures in our books?" Tomoyo asked.
"The teacher didn't say no nor did he say yes," Eriol said.
"Now the question is, is he really a he or a she or neither?" Syaoran asked.
The three of them laughed, leaving Sakura confused.
"Hoe? What's so funny?" she asked.
Her innocence was a part of her charm. A lot of people were drawn into it. Although because she was innocent, she didn't know that. Which sort of made her all the more endearing. People wanted her to know that they really did love her. They would've done one of the hardest things to do if they managed to get her to see their intense love for her. Of course, direct confessions weren't included because that would be spelling out things for her.
"Nothing, nothing," Eriol said while laughing.
The three stopped laughing after a few more minutes. Sakura was still clueless. She was wondering if what Syaoran said was some sort of inside joke between the three of them. They were being unfair. The four of them were the best of friends. They should share the joke, too. But Sakura was a very kind person and respected their wish of leaving her out of the joke. It's probably for my good anyway, she thought.
"You know, we should have done the plotting yesterday..." Tomoyo said.
"Drawings are hard to think about, so we did it yesterday, remember?" Syaoran said.
"Don't you mean that the reason is because the drawing part is actually the easiest one so we decided to do that first?" Eriol asked.
Syaoran glared at him. He merely donned that Cheshire cat smile of his.
"How do we plot this report?" Sakura asked.
"Decide on whether handwritten or typewritten," Eriol said.
"Handwritten."
"Typewritten," Tomoyo, Eriol, and Syaoran said.
"Okay, now step two, what will be the title of your book," Eriol said.
"Erm... Kinomoto Family..." Sakura said.
Her father had said for an awfully many number of times, to the point of it being innumerable, that simplest was always best. And Sakura was a good daughter so she made a point to remember all of her father's teachings. Oh if only every other child on the planet was like that. Perhaps there'd be more peace. Yeah, and a brighter future. Then again, it would be sort of hard to imagine a world that was filled with naïve people.
If that happened, more than just a few of the world's greatest professions wouldn't have been created. There would be no lawyers or people on the media or politicians. How would you know if someone was really good if there wasn't anyone outwardly evil to base your opinions on?
Now, going back on Sakura. Imagine if she had both of her parents. Yes, meaning what would life be if Nadeshiko was still alive. She wouldn't be as good as that because her mother was still alive, therefore meaning that she would have two people to pay attention to. The logic of parenthood had never always been that easy to understand... especially if you weren't a parent yourself.
Then again, even some parents found the logic of parenthood a very, very troublesome thing. If they didn't find it troublesome, there would hardly be any nannies or day care centers right now. Or orphanages.
"The Daidouji Family Book," Tomoyo said.
"The Li Clan," Syaoran said.
Typical Syaoran, really. A typical Li guy. They would never think of putting anything after their family name other than clan.
"The Hiiragizawa Lineage," Eriol said. "Then you must put these titles on the cover of the book and on the title page... and oh, the cover of the book, you will draw once more into the title page, but in black and white or gray."
Who died and made him Danny?, Tomoyo and Syaoran thought.
"Okay, what's the next thing?" Sakura asked.
She didn't mind that Eriol was leading them. Personally, she thought that it was much easier. Less thinking and trouble for her. Besides, Eriol was a natural-born leader and a great thinker. She was sure that he knew what he was doing.
"What should be put in a chapter," Eriol continued.
That was where their friend, silence, came once again. Only the ticking of the grandfather clock could be heard. They were quieter even than they were in Sakura's house, and now, they were so quiet, you can bet that you can hear a pin drop even from miles away--
"What do you really think is our homeroom teacher's sexual preference, is he really a man or gay?" Syaoran suddenly asked.
"Why ask that now?" Tomoyo asked.
"I might forget that question later... soooo, what's the answer? Besides, it's a good silence breaker. We've had too much of those and I feel awkward without them."
True. It did seem rather odd now that he mentioned it. They had gotten used to someone or something breaking the silence after a minute or so.
"I think he's gay... you know, I caught him flirting with male ninth graders," Eriol said in a voice that suggested that he'd come up with answer after a great deal of thinking.
He was probably thinking if it was alright to say that in front of ever innocent Sakura. Then again, his thinking was probably wasted. She didn't seem to have a problem with that. Or she misunderstood or misheard him. Or she didn't know what he was talking about at all.
There was that glint in Tomoyo's eyes again. Eriol and Syaoran had a feeling that she was a shounen-ai and yaoi fanatic. Like most women.
Syaoran suddenly burst into laughter after he heard Eriol's answer. It seemed as if Mister Hamutaro, the aforementioned homeroom teacher, had a shota complex. Or, to be more exact, a thing for male ninth graders.
"And do you want to know why I asked his sexual preference?" Syaoran asked amidst peals of laughter.
Tomoyo and Eriol wondered if the boy had already gotten insane. Poor Syaoran. He must've gotten homework stress disorder or HSD which sounded oddly much like STD, but that didn't matter because HSD wasn't STD.
"Why?" Sakura asked.
Syaoran stopped laughing, although amusement was clearly in his eyes.
"I heard this from Tachibana of the ninth grade. That homeroom teacher had filled up for the absent health class teacher... and did you know that he made all of the girls of the health class go out and made the boys line up and told them to kiss him on the cheeks for an experiment... and he said that if they kissed him on the cheeks, he would give them an A... and so they did... they're going to love this when I tell them that!" he said.
Tomoyo's eyes sparkled and she began to almost drool at the imagery. Teacher x student stuff was kick-ass! Mister Hamutaro now had her complete and utter devotion. Eriol started laughing himself, while Sakura just stared.
"He's a complete homosexual," Eriol said, a grin befitting of insane Clow Reed on his face.
Not that he didn't like homosexuals. He was a very open-minded person. Any reincarnation of Clow Reed would be. That man had done nearly everything one could ever hope of doing. He'd done a bit of fooling around with both genders, tried almost every drug he could get his hands on, and been the greatest sorcerer of his time.
"Now what were we just doing before this?" Syaoran asked.
"Chapters," Eriol said.
Then complete silence dawned on them again. Everything looked so tranquil, so serene, so--
"Boring... I am bored... do you guys want to do something else?" Sakura asked.
"Wait! When are we going to your place, Eriol?" Tomoyo asked.
"At three in the afternoon," Eriol said. "You're going to have dinner there."
"Okay."
Then, once again, complete silence was over them once more...
Two hours had passed, and still, they were silent with the occasional scribbling of pencil on paper of course. Syaoran closed his laptop, he had finally finished the whole chapter-planning thing. Eriol smiled his Cheshire cat smile and looked at the neat paper with the neat writing, he too had finished his chapter-planning. Tomoyo examined her work which was on a notebook... she had also finished her chapter-planning. Sakura--
"I'm hungry." she said.
Was on a roll today. This had been her... second time in breaking the silence.
All of their stomachs rumbled, obviously signifying their agreement to her statement. She'd spoken for all of them without even knowing it. Typical Sakura. She did things right without even knowing it. Another one of her many charms that allured people to her.
"Then let's have lunch, shall we?" Tomoyo asked.
They stood up and went to the dining hall, where lunch was already placed. They sat down in chairs and started eating.
Posted another chapter with much difficulties... Please comment on this one and tell me if I did anything wrong (and I'm sure that I did do something wrong)! I'm already aware of the fact that the characterizations are rather terrible. Thank you for taking the time to read this!
By the way, I forgot to thank the two reviewers of the first chapter... Anou... thank you very much!