The day I own Card Captors is also the day I get 100 in a course. Not impossible, but very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, unlikely.
Chapter 14: Bonds.
"Himitsu-san?" you could barely hear someone softly asking you. "Himitsu-san?"
You wanted to groan to let the person know that you were awake but nothing could rumble out of your throat. You tried shifting...that did not work either. You were acutely aware of every sound in the room. The humming of the frigidly cold air-conditioner, the soft deep breaths you were taking, the noise outside of the room of people discussing something, and then fading away...
Softly, a calloused hand clasped your right hand while you felt soft lips gently caressed your knuckles while a disgusted snort sounded from somewhere above your head. You heard the hum of the air conditioner and the noisy Japanese traffic from the ground floor before the familiar voice of Wong Xiao Mei flatly saying, "Just because I'm grateful that you called me; does not give you the right to fondle her while she's asleep."
Since you could not laugh in your state, you inhaled sharply while the corners of your mouth tilted upwards a bit. For some reason you could not explain, you felt the air around you tense a bit before the sound of a chair scarping across the floor cut through the air along with hushed whispers and the sound of Mei-Mei-san trying to convince someone to stay. You heard a slight scuffle at what you guessed was the doorway, before the sound of a heavy sigh and a chair being scraped towards your bed while a person plopped down on it. Next you heard a soft tenor groan while you yourself struggled to open your eyes. You were unreasonably tired...
Forcing your eyes open, the first thing you saw was Mei-Mei-san sitting beside you with her head in her hands looking much like a child pouting after they had been issued a time-out. She looked over towards your direction out of the corner of her eye, and then did a double-take before her face lit up like a roman candle. Eyes bright with unshed tears a stream of unintelligible nonsense issued from her mouth, some of it Japanese, while most of it was what you assumed to be Chinese. All of a sudden she pounced on you, muttering and babbling uncontrollably while in the bed beside you lay a recently-awake and heavily bandaged Yamaguchi-san. Eyes widening you tried to rush over to his side, but all that had happened was a slight hiss of pain when you tried to get up; it felt as though you were slammed by a two-ton truck.
"Whoa, whoa, easy there O-nay-jiang," Mei-Mei-san shushed while she slowly helped you get up to walk over to the chair placed beside your bed. You eased into it, sighing deeply. "What's wrong with you anyway O-nay-jiang? The doctors said that they couldn't find anything wrong with you physically, but you were experiencing symptoms of something like a person who had just gotten hypothermia when you came in."
"Water please," you rasped while Mei-Mei-san hurriedly went to the kitchen to fetch you some bottled water from the vending machine. You guzzled down the tasteless liquid in large greedy gulps while you felt your body sigh and yearn for more. "Arigatou."
"Eeyea kuloski o-nay-jiang," she replied with a small smile. "Now spill."
"But there's nothing to spill..."
"Not in the bottle! What happened?"
At this point Yamaguchi-san grunted loudly beside you while he struggled to get up into an adequate sitting position (he failed) in order to tell you and Mei-Mei-san what happened.
"We were probably attacked by thugs," at this you raised your eyebrow, but did not interrupt. "I don't remember much of what happened but I must have gotten into a fight with them, because when I came in, the doctors said that I had fractured my arms and ribs, though they suspect that they broke because of something or other that I don't understand."
You looked over at Wong Xiao Mei, and she had a rather confused and exasperated look on her face that both of you shared. Neither of you doubted that he was telling what he could remember, but there were just too many holes in the story. First of all, thugs? In the nice side of Japan in broad daylight? Second of all, where were you and what were you doing at this time? Thirdly, how did Yamaguchi-san's arms break in the first place? You certainly did not remember at all.
"Do you remember anything else?" Mei-Mei-san asked heatedly. You looked over at her from the corner of your eye. Her expression was one of calm fury, as though she was furious with whoever attacked the two of you. You personally doubted that it was thugs.
"They had silver eyes, the leader," he said drowsily. "So warm, yet so cold…"
"That's it? You don't remember anything else?"
"Iei Wong-san. Sumimasen."
"I'll rip their throats out. The little fuckers who thought it would be okay to mess with my tomodachi and get away with it."
An uncomfortable silence followed soon after, before Yamaguchi-san cleared his throat and muttered a sleepy, "Yare, Yare," followed by a yawn. "It's a good thing it is summer. Oh wait...it isn't is it?"
"Nope, we gotta endure a bit more school in order for that to happen," Wong replied easily. "Though I have to admit, you chose a rather good time to fuck yourselves over. The day just before the exams."
"IYAAAAA!" you screamed impulsively. "I haven't studied yet!"
Yamaguchi-san burst out into laughter at your reaction before your indignant reply of, "It's not funny!" could be spoken, Yamaguchi-san swallowed his laughter before saying, "Well I believe it would be best if you crammed a bit before you went to school tomorrow, ne? Besides, at least you can hold your pen, what am I supposed to do?"
Getting his point you bit the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from talking too much, while thinking of a way the both of you could get out of this. You barely registered Mei-Mei-san's ecstatic reply of having to endure one more semester of high school before graduation. While she rambled off the things she would like to do and have happen to, you heard the door slide open and shut while a chilling aura filled the innards of your soul before permeating your brain into recognition.
"Konnichiwa," Yukito-san greeted with a smile of a thousand suns. "I brought everyone some buns. I ate half of them on the way..."
You eyed the bag almost overfilling with the delicious smell wafting over to you and immediately your mouth watered. You were unaware that you were that hungry while your stomach whined in protest. Your cheeks turned a faint rosy-pink, while you outstretched your arm waiting for him to place a bun on there. Staring at your hand you could see the confusion in his eyes before acknowledging what the gesture was for. He plopped an egg with mayonnaise and butter bun into your awaiting hand before you thanked him kindly with a small smile. You were voracious, and tore into the simple gift with gusto; while Yukito-san stood beside you with another bun in his hands while he ate it with you.
"Oi, pass two here, I'll feed Yamaguchi-san."
You blushed in embarrassment at having been a non-supporting girlfriend. You instantly felt guilty about it but Wong-san flatly said, "O-nay-jiang. You've been in a fucking coma for a week; I would be a little bit hungry too. Yamaguchi-san here has been awake for that week intermittently. He isn't nearly as hungry as you are."
The four of you ate in relative silence while you struck up a discussion about tomorrow's exam that unsurprisingly, neither you nor Yamaguchi-san was prepared for.
You wanted to tear your hair out.
Luckily for your boyfriend the school was willing to make an exception for him and he got to write his exam in a different room with twice the length of your peers to factor in the fact that he's writing with two casts. Or from what you've been hearing, his teeth. Shaking him out of your mind you concentrated on the problems before you and wished with your heart that it was like the first year of high school when you were learning just calculus. With that last thought, you threw all of your efforts into the problem before you, and continued to chew on your pencil while you tried to remember from your cramming how to answer that particular type of question. You were thinking so hard that your eyes blurred the words and numbers in front of you before you felt light-headed.
"No! Not now!" you thought desperately before you saw the white creep around the fringes of your eyesight and blacked out.
(Kinomoto Touya-san's P.O.V)
Touya-san was done with his paper had checked over his answers while waiting for the last ten minutes to be up. Looking over his classmates he saw Wong-san and Yuki-kun in a relative state of ease, probably likely to ace the test once again and be ranked first in the school in Yuki-kun's case, he thought bitterly. Looking over to his last friend, Hanayaru-chan, he saw her head waver a bit before her head fell onto the table with a loud bang that startled over half of the students within the gymnasium. Touya-san's body tensed, prepared to draw attention to her state of being before he saw an ethereal being zoom by from the front of the classroom into Hanayaru-chan possessing her. With wide eyes, he stared at Hanayaru-chan while she rose in a way that reminded Touya-san of a marionette being controlled by a master, there was a pause and a shuffling of papers as though she were looking the questions over again. Suddenly, her hand snatched the pencil in a decisive manner and then she furiously scribbled away at the questions non-stop for the remainder of the time. By the end, he estimated that she had about one minute of spare time which she wisely used to check over every question and their respective answers.
"Time's up!" Hiro-sensei remarked snappily with her hair in obvious disarray. Touya-san had unwillingly overheard rumours of Hiro-sensei going out for a bar-night in the Tokyo district before going back to her home. Standing up, she circled around the room collecting the papers of each student (well...yanking them out of their hands would have probably been the more correct term for it). Stealing a glance at Hanayaru-chan out of the corner of his eye, he saw an ethereal white hooded figure emerge from her body. Hanayaru-chan's body followed the movement for a bit before the ethereal being left her body, like a shadow her body mimicked the slight and subtle movements the ethereal figure used to emerge from her body, before softly collapsing onto her desk in a sleeping position.
Tensing, Touya-san prepared to face the white-figure before it promptly left the room in hurried quick strides. Beside him, he sensed Yue-san stir from within Yuki-kun who was blissfully handing his exam to Hiro-sensei.
Pulling the exam from out under Hanayaru-chan, Hiro-sensei remarked to the startled girl, "Well here's a person that everyone knows they did better than." Chuckles erupted here and there while Hanayaru-chan turned a bright red in humiliation, the colour of her face greatly resembling a tomato. When Hiro-sensei was finished collecting the papers, everyone was dismissed and Hanayaru-chan bolted out of the gym and zoomed down the hallway without looking back. Touya-san went to catch up to her, she was practically running down the hallway with her eyes glued to the floor, determined not to make eye contact with anyone.
"Hanayaru-jiang!" Wong-san shouted over the din, making everyone turn to look at Wong-san, before turning their gaze towards Hanayaru-chan, as if sensing the eyes on her, she full out ran out of the school building.
"Wong-san, why did you do that?" Touya-san angrily whispered to her.
"I didn't mean for her to run off bahga!" she shouted back. "I only meant for her to stop!"
"Well you didn't help did you?" he replied before he dashed off to find her.
"Oi-Orewa-"
"Let it go Wong-san," he barely heard Yuki-kun. "Let's go to Nine Tales."
Smiling to himself he chuckled under his breath while running to catch up with Hanayaru-chan who was walking half-way across the school grounds with her head tilted towards the ground. Proving why he was on the football* team, he ran across the field and placed a tentative hand on Hanayaru-chan's shoulder, forcing her to turn around to face him.
"Ano...daijobu-ka?" he asked hesitantly.
Her head whipped up, and he could see her currently blue eyes were oddly bright with unshed tears, yet there was something behind them, something that burned intensely with the might of an erupting volcano. Right now, it looked as though flames could jump out of her eyes, and it did not help that she was wearing those blue contacts; it made her gaze have an artificially chilling look.
"I will ace the next exams," she stated lowly mostly to herself before her head dipped down again. "I refuse to be ridiculed like that again."
"Look at me," Touya-san demanded. "And stop slouching like that. If you're going to say something like that at least look like you mean it."
She stopped going on her tirade before looking over towards Touya-san incredulously whilst confusion swam in the depths of those eyes behind the thin false film of the contact. Once again he found himself being drawn into the depths of those eyes. The confusion he saw was starting to fade and her eyes widened a bit in realization before shrinking back to their normal size. Anger, pure raw unrestrained anger bubbled up from the depths of her eyes before she stomped up to his face and hissed, "Don't tell me what to do Touya-kun." He was drowning in her eyes now; he could barely register the suffix that was attached to his name at this moment. He felt like a bedraggled moth unable to tell which way was up anymore, all he knew was that she was glowing like a blazing fire to him right now, and he was being drawn to it. He had to touch her, he could feel her body heat from this arm's distance, she smelled of peaches and sunshine, he looked down towards those soft pink lips, just a little taste...
She spun herself around in annoyance before stomping off angrily in the direction of her house with her hand on her hip and books in her arm. He noted with pride the posture of her back, the strength of her strides away from him, and the way she was holding her head high, even though he could tell it was forced and she was righteously pissed off at him. Smiling to himself cynically he wondered if she avoided him on purpose after he...approached? Interrogated her?
"By Kami-sama she's got me wound up so tight that I can't even think straight anymore," he thought with a chuckle. "I'd better go meet Yuki-kun and see how he's doing .Crap."
Worry and confusion filled Touya-kun's mind before any legitimate and rational thoughts could surface. In his mind, there were thoughts of him berating himself for being a backstabbing, cheating jackass to the wonderful and nearly perfect Yuki-kun and Yue-san. But on the other hand, Yue-san and Yuki-kun never set his senses on fire like that; their mere presence never affected him to the point where his brain was no longer able to piece together logical thoughts anymore. It was undeniable that the both of them felt a sense of belonging and security when they were around each other. But the security that they felt was the safety a child felt when being embraced by their father, and that no matter what everything was going to be fine because they were going to be by your side supporting you in every decision that was made. The belonging that they felt with each other was because Yuki-kun had known Touya-kun and the kaijuu for his whole life, and Touya-kun could not imagine life without Yuki-kun's company. But was it love?
Groaning, he closed his eyes in irritation and pinched the bridge of his nose. The image of Yuki-kun's smiling face flickered briefly in his head before it was instantly replaced with Hanayaru-chan's mask of fury. Once again he was drawn to the image of her anger, as deadly and as hypnotizing as the dance of a cobra before it strikes.
(Tsukishiro Yukito-san's P.O.V)
Wong-san looked absolutely furious, beside herself, and completely ruffled all at once. Yukito-san could tell that she wanted more than anything and everything in the world to go and comfort her "sister" but did not want to make things any worse.
"Let's go to Nine-Tales," he blurted out. Spinning around in delight yet confusion Wong-san said, "But weren't we banned? Specifically, wasn't I banned by Girly-Boy?"
"Let's see if he can let him make two exceptions for this case ne?" he asked while winking.
Wong-san stared at him with wide eyes and a gaping mouth before asking incredulously with her voice accidentally jumping two octaves, "Did you just wink at me?"
Bantering back and forth on the way to Nine-Tales, Yukito-san thanked the gods that Wong-san had an immeasurably short attention span that could keep her distracted long enough for To-ya-san to hopefully smooth things over with Hanayaru-chan, and to make her feel better about everything. Absently he wondered what might be happening between the two while Wong-san jabbered off on issues that Yukito-san could not fathom to guess exactly what they were. She was speaking more than a fifty metres per second, and her words were so heavily accented that Yukito-san could not understand anything apart from the odd, "Ano," in her speech when she paused slightly to gather her thoughts. Surprisingly, the one-sided conversation was highly enjoyable just from the intensity and excited tone of Wong-san's voice.
Stepping into Nine Tales with more confidence than he felt, Tsukishiro Yukito-san ordered a table for two while Wong-san was desperately trying in vain to hide behind him; painfully reminding him of a tactic used by children. He personally wondered why she would even attempt such a thing, she was chunkier than most Japanese females, and though she was not as tall as him she was taller than most of the girls in his class, her height was up to his chin.
"Wong, I can see you trying to hide, come on out," Manabe-san dryly remarked.
Yukito-san felt Wong-san freeze behind him before hesitantly poking her head out, as if she was afraid that Manabe-san might pounce on her and kick her out.
"Kgon-ni-chee-wa," she softly said before jumping out from behind him and embracing Manabe-san in a hug that a bear would have collapsed under. After letting him go for air, she babbled excitedly with the blue-haired chef and pelted him with questions about business. Still chatting on their way to their seat, he placed the menus in front of both of them before informing them, "Yeah, since it's rush hour right now, I'm going to be attending to the take-out customers before you two, I hope the two of you aren't that hungry yet."
"I want four hundred yen off the total price of both of us and we'll call it a deal," Wong-san bargained.
"Fine. But it doesn't matter much this time because you got that guy here," Manabe-san relented before rolling his red eyes toward Yukito-san; the bottomless wonder.
Giving him a mischievous smile, while Manabe-san returned one of his own, Wong-san thanked Manabe-san for letting her in, while Manabe-san walked away stating that that was long ago enough to be looked over. Opening her menu, Wong-san pondered over which entrees she wanted apart from their world-famous seafood tempura, seeing as she had it last time.
"Does Manabe-san get enough sleep every night Wong-san?" Yukito-san asked conversationally.
"Ano...Hai," she replied with her eyebrows furrowed. "Why do you ask?"
"His eyes are red; I was told that people without enough sleep would have red eyes."
"Ah. Eeyeah. That's not the case. He's albino."
"Honto?" Yukito-san asked with bewilderment, while Wong-san laughed in all honesty before the two of them struck up an amicable conversation about the company the two of them kept. Waiting for the food to arrive, the two of them decided to find out information about each other, Yukito-san often surprised about the answers Wong-san gave, and some of the questions that she asked. For instance:
"My turn right? Okay then. If you had a lame superpower, what would it be?"
Chatting, dining, and often laughing at the same time, Wong-san's eccentric mind was often jumping all over the place, and she almost always had a quip or a quick remark to what ever Yukito-san decided to tease her with. When the food arrived, the table wobbled under the weight of all the food Yukito-san and Wong Xiao Mei ordered.
"Wong-san, are you sure you are going to finish all that?" a familiar voice questioned from somewhere behind Yukito-san, turning around he realized it was...
"To-ya-kun?" Yukito-san asked in surprise. "I did not hear you talk about applying here!"
His lips curved into a smirk that would have made most ice-blocks melt he replied simply, "Must have slipped my mind. And besides Yuki-kun, you know the reason."
"May I be informed then?" Wong-san asked simply with a hint of a smile gracing her features.
Scowling, his brows furrowed before he simply said, "No," and walked away from a sputtering Wong-san, while Yukito-san wondered what was wrong with his partner, but was brought out of his musing when Wong-san scoffed and grumbled some unintelligible swears under her breath, in what appeared to be both Japanese and Chinese. As sure as Yukito-san was that To-ya-kun would not appreciate her comments, he did, because as wonderful as To-ya-kun was, he was not God or a magical being, unlike Clow Reed, as proven during Hiiragizawa's final assessment of Sakura-san. Essentially, Wong-san kept Yukito-san's wistful musings in check, making sure that he/Yue-san did not venerate or belittle others too much. Although Yukito-san could afford to throw caution to the wind about and find his true love, Yue-san could not. Although for Yukito-san he could spend this lifetime with To-ya-kun happily, Yue-san would spend endless generations in mourning. It was easier for his other half in the long run if he did not get too attached now. Also, since Yukito-san owed Yue-san his existence, Yukito-san felt as though he was indebted to Yue-san to ensure his happiness in the long run. It was the least he could do.
(Wong-san's P.O.V)
"I thought it was very fair to be honest," Yukito-san responded politely.
"Are you kidding me? She threw in crap about the graph with the dots and open circles that I knew nothing about, I had to guess what the hell to do, and math is one of my better subjects! I freaking hate her, she didn't even introduce that in class, and all the stuff that she said was going to be on the exam, wasn't!" Finishing with a huff, she crossed her arms and pouted while complimenting. "Besides, you're so brilliant that you probably aced the test and what-not and you're ranked number one in the school again. That's going to be so amazing for when you apply to universities. No university in their right mind will turn down a dude that's aced their exams."
"You're not so bad yourself, but I find that you..."
The two of them bickered back and forth, simultaneously complimenting and insulting each other through double entendres and witty lines. Afterwards they lulled into a silence, Yukito-san and Wong-san strolled along while Wong-san hummed a noisy unknown melody under her breath.
"Want to go check up on O-nay-jiang and make sure she's okay?" Wong-sang asked Yukito-san.
With a simple nod Yukito-san then boarded the bus along with her, and the two of them travelled in silence towards her beloved sister's house. Discreetly, Wong-san ran an appreciative eye over Yukito-san's figure. She had always appreciated Yukito-san more than his loud-mouthed, sarcastic, opinionated, and quite rude companion. It was doubtless that Touya-san was a gorgeous male specimen, but in her opinion, any average-looking male could look smoking hot if they actually put in the effort to. Yukito-san on the other hand...intrigued her, she personally thought that he was hiding something underneath that falsely cheerful and perfect façade, and she personally planned to break it. She hopped off the bus and without looking behind her she bounded up the street to Hanayaru-chan's house, rapping at her door and waiting for an answer.
(Hanayaru-chan's P.O.V)
Fluttering open your currently blue eyes, your eyes wandered towards the door while you prepared supper for yourself and your parents, even though the likelihood of them coming back home was very unlikely. Drying your hands quickly on the Monokuro Boo apron you had on, you bolted towards the front of the house trying to answer the incessant rapping of the door, and brightened when you saw that it was Wong Xiao Mei-san, apologizing deeply for "accidentally" embarrassing you in the middle of the hallway. At the moment for you, it did not matter. You were grateful to have some company over for it made your house seem less empty to you.
Jumping at Wong-san's suggestion to have a group study session for the exam tomorrow, the three of you went straight to work after dinner, and after cleaning up the kitchen table the four of you tackled studying with as much gusto as the three of you could manage. Taking breaks as often as the three of you needed, it was a while before you heard a quiet but audible yawn from Yukito-san.
"Na, na Yukito-sang!" Wong-san exclaimed. "It's not even eight o'clock yet!"
"I'm sorry," Yukito-san apologized between yawns, "I've been...out of sorts lately."
Smiling shyly, you buried your nose back into your book and tried to concentrate on studying while hearing slight buzzing noises from Yukito-san and Mei-Mei-san. You overheard Mei-Mei-san whisper a quiet but flirtatious goodbye whilst Yukito-san spluttered indignantly. Giggling on her way back, you looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
"He blushes as red as a tomato. It's adorable," was Mei-Mei-san's response to your unspoken question.
Smiling and nodding in agreement for simplicity's sake. The two of you studied like madwomen so much so that it was well past the safe hours for Mei-Mei-san to go home in one piece. After some arguing and heckling with your best friend it was decided that she was staying over while you slept on the western style bed while Mei-Mei-san slept on the couch, along with the odd blankets and spare pillow you collected. Bidding each other goodnight, you wished on every constellation you could think of to hopefully do well on tomorrow's test.
You closed your eyes and meditated before breathing deeply. It was a few minutes before your exam and as much as you wanted to go over your notes, it was pointless to do so at this rate. If you didn't know it now, you probably won't know it anyways when you get into the exam. It did not help much that you got groped on the bus and subway by the same person, luckily Wong Xiao Mei saw this and while you scolded him angrily, Mei-Mei-san promptly drop-kicked him using taekwondo followed by a swift punch to the face.
"Himitsu Hanayaru," you chided yourself, "that is accessory information unnecessary to the exam. Breathe, relax, forget, breathe, relax, forget..."
You screamed when Mei-Mei-san came up from behind you and tickled your sides. Smacking her shoulder playfully, she saw the slight lines of worry on your face, and hugged you unabashedly while reassuring you that you will do fine. Even if you did not do "fine," ten years from now; you probably wouldn't regret failing this grade too much and might not even remember that you failed this grade twenty years from now. Smiling at the truth and wisdom in her words, you still breathed deeply to calm yourself, but somehow her words soothed the chaos that was in your mind, and allowed you to reach the garden of Zen within your mind. It was with this thought and state of mind that allowed you to enter the gymnasium confidently and write the test efficiently and accurately. Sighing with relief when you handed the exam for your most difficult subject to the teacher, you left the gym strangely empty-headed, as though you had emptied all of your knowledge onto the page.
Turning around when you heard your name being called by Mei-Mei-san, you felt a slight tug on your heartstrings when you saw Mei-Mei-san's figure framed by Yukito-san and Touya-san behind her. Smiling with joy on your face that you did very well on what you felt was your worst subject, you ran up to your friends and joined in on the conversation that was taking place, basking in the aforementioned company that only friendship can bring. Unbeknown to you, your friends felt the same tugs on their heartstrings between the four of you. The bonds between the four of you are strengthening, and as happy as I am to see that you have friends that you can count on, I am afraid of what that person has planned for the four of you.
And after a few years, I'M BACK! I don't know if ANYONE follows this anymore, but thank you for not deleting me off of your lists on , and I'm grateful for anybody who still follows this, and still reads this crap.
I had a lot more planned for Himitsu, Wong, and all my OCs and of course Touya and Yukito, but I'm sick of this damned ficcy taking so long. So unfortunately, for me and nobody else, I'm not making them go out on a Halloween excursion, or various festivals around the town...though the festival might still happen just for the sake of it.
Gah this is ridiculous. 14 chapters in 3 years. Like...fudge. This is pathetic. I must be the slowest writer ever. Behind Tolkien anyways. Actually scratch that, even Tolkien probably wrote faster than I did.