Valkyrie85: Thank you for your reviews/alerts/follows/favourites! The turnout was amazing! Please enjoy the second chapter and tell me your thoughts in a review :)
~One O'Clock~
"Are you interested in volunteering with us?" Kinomoto Sakura-or known to a rare few as Inoue Sakura-asked the man standing before her booth with a friendly smile. Standing at 5'7, with shoulder-length auburn hair and large, emerald eyes, she would be quite an attention-grabber if it weren't for her introverted personality and her somewhat cold exterior.
She hated social events and she hated the very act of socializing, but she forced herself to join her current club, A.C.T., in the first year of her undergrad because she wanted to become a better wife to her husband, Inoue Kou. At first, she joined for the sole purpose of improving herself. After the first year in the club though, she realized that she had found her true place of belonging, where she was able to bring smiles to people's faces after volunteering with them. She ended up applying for an exec position and stayed with A.C.T. during the second year, and now in the third year as well.
Today was the first day of the winter semester at the University of Tokyo. Student groups and clubs from all across campus set up their booths in the varsity dome to welcome and recruit new members to their respective groups. For Sakura's club, her fellow club colleagues came in the morning to set up and had just left. Now, it was her shift to sign up new members.
The male at whom she was just directing her question was standing a few feet away with his hands in his coat pockets, quietly reading through A.C.T.'s banner. Like many, Sakura knew that he needed a little push in order for him to come closer to her table to sign up.
Sakura stood up from her chair and put a big smile on her face. "Are you interested in volunteering with us?" she asked again, in a louder and more energetic voice, in case the student didn't hear her the first time.
Upon hearing her voice, the student looked at her and smiled nervously.
"I could tell you a bit about our club, if you have some time," Sakura said, still smiling.
"S-sure," the student replied quietly. He started walking towards Sakura's table and stopped at a relatively farther distance than other students would.
Sakura had no doubt in her mind that the boy was the shy type like what she had been back in first year. Learning that fact ultimately gave her an even greater push to get the student to join her club.
"Which year are you in?" she asked.
"I'm in fourth year," the student replied. Sakura was quite surprised. She thought that the person she was dealing with a first year all along. With a pair of large, old-fashioned spectacles covering half of his face and strands of unkempt, dark-brown hair falling over his forehead, she assumed that the boy had just left home for the first time in his life and didn't know how to take care of himself without the helping hands of his mother.
"Oh, I see. Nice to meet you, I'm Kinomoto Sakura, a third year student majoring in finance." Sakura offered her hand to the student, who hesitated at first but eventually shook it.
"I am Li Xiao Lang. I am a business exchange student from Hong Kong. Today is only my second day in Japan."
Now, Sakura understood the reason behind the slight accent that she was hearing.
"Li-kun, welcome to Japan!" Sakura exclaimed. "It must be nerve-wrecking and scary to be in a new country all by yourself!"
The student, by the name of Li Xiao Lang, smiled nervously. "It is. But, I don't want to waste my time being nervous. That's why I came to the club fair today."
"Good for you! You should definitely join our club then. We are a volunteering organization with several programs under our name. If you want to get to know the city more, the best thing to do is to volunteer, right?"
Xiao Lang nodded his head. "What kinds of programs are there?"
"Well," Sakura swallowed before beginning the spiel that she usually gave to those club fair goers. "We have a program which organizes a group of musicians to play at the local senior home. Another program is our Blood Clinic, where we are partnered with the Japanese Blood Society to recruit donors for the clinic. A third program is the Soup Kitchen, where volunteers go to a church to cook and serve meals to the homeless. Finally, we have another program where volunteers help out at the Edo Orphanage every Sunday. When they are at the orphanage, their main goal is to play with the children and help them with their homework."
Xiao Lang nodded his head several times attentively as she was speaking. Sakura liked that he seemed genuinely interested in the programs, unlike many others who would listen and sign up without really being interested. She usually got nervous while reciting the information because public speaking was not her forte, but she felt at ease when presenting the information to him.
"Thank you," Xiao Lang said after she was finished. "I am very interested in all the programs. Do I have to decide on one of them now?"
Sakura shook her head. "No, no. You can write down your information here. Once this club fair is over, we will send out a general message with more information about our programs. At that time, you can then choose the programs that you want to help out with. Of course, you may do all of them if you have the time."
Sakura handed Xiao Lang the pen and watched as he wrote down his name, school year, student number, and email address in a style of writing so neat that it could compete against that of her husband's.
"Thank you." They both said at the same time and smiled.
"Here is my email address. If you ever need a tour guide around Tokyo, feel free to message me," Sakura told him.
"T-thank you," Xiao Lang said in a quiet, shy voice. He looked down and walked away.
Sakura was looking at his retreating back before another group of interested volunteers approached her table and pulled her attention back to her club business.
Dressed in some last-decade, hand-me-down type of clothes, Syaoran wanted to portray himself as a shy, introverted, and geeky guy from a poor family. Added to his "costume" was the pair of circle-lensed spectacles he had found at the flea market yesterday while shopping for his new case.
According to his client, Inoue Kou, his wife was not easily approachable because she had a habit of putting on the cold facade in front of strangers, in order to cover up for her anxiety and dislike for social events. Inoue Kou was surprisingly observant of his wife for a man who wanted a divorce. Syaoran had to give him that.
Syaoran was told that if he were to seem more vulnerable and pitiful, the wife would be friendlier to him. If he were to also pretend to be someone from Hong Kong—which he was—then she would even be interested in getting to know him on a personal basis because Hong Kong, the city of her wedding, held a special place in her heart.
Today was the club fair of the university, of his university. Although the case he took on this time was more difficult than all of the other ones he'd had, he couldn't bring himself to detest it. Why? There were two reasons. The first: he never had a chance to experience the university life because he ran away from home soon after his high school graduation. Now that he had to pretend to be a student at a university-a prestigious one, no less-he got to see new things. He was quite impressed by the extravagance and professionalism of the club fair, for example. The second reason was because the reward of this case, if successful, was a very, very generous sum of money. It was so big a reward that if he were to receive the money, he won't even have to worry about finding a new case for another two years!
He had been walking around the dome for quite some time and had passed by the wife's booth about 5 times. Every time he did, she was still not there.
On his 6th turn, he halted in his steps, standing a few feet away from the table where the wife had seated herself. Pretending to be reading the club's banner, he quickly examined the wife from where he was.
"Not bad," he said to himself.
The pictures that his client had sent him of the wife did not do her justice. She was much fairer and beautiful in person. The cool exterior she had in place made her seem unapproachable but at the same time, mysterious and elegant. She was definitely considered an attractive woman, but she was not attractive to him because he believed that beneath all of those seemingly appealing traits, there were also a handful of deceits and secrets waiting to be exposed.
Also, in his bible of business rules, he was never to fall for his preys/victims/targets. Automatically, he put her in his "no" list.
"Are you interested in volunteering with us?" He heard her say from the table. Having a feeling that this wasn't the first time she spoke to him, he feigned a nervous smile and looked at her.
"I could tell you a bit about our club, if you have some time," she said to him with a friendly smile on her face.
"S-sure," Syaoran said, continuing to fake his nervousness. He wondered if he did it correctly. All his life, he had been a carefree, extroverted individual who enjoyed being the center of attention. There weren't many times when he had the time or the opportunity to think about what the reactions of the quieter people were while he took center stage.
He walked up to the table, but made sure to maintain a bit of distance from the wife. From the document he was given, he learned that the wife disliked being physically too close to people she knew. So, obviously, she would dislike it even more if it was between her and a stranger.
"Which year are you in?" she asked.
"I'm in fourth year," Syaoran replied.
"Oh, I see. Nice to meet you, I'm Kinomoto Sakura, a third year student majoring in finance." The wife stretched out her hand to shake his.
There was a mental list of things that he was going to accomplish each time he met the wife, and at the top of the very list for today was to break down her barriers. Her offering of the hand was a symbol of that. He gave himself a mental pat on the back.
He hesitated.
Then, he shook her hand.
"I am Li Xiao Lang. I am a business exchange student from Hong Kong. Today is only my second day in Japan." Although he came to Japan about 4 years ago and should have an accent, he did not. He spoke like a Japanese native because he started learning Japanese at a young age back in Hong Kong. To follow through with his new character, he watched a few video clips online last night and tried to imitate a Chinese person trying to speak Japanese with an accent.
"Li-kun, welcome to Japan!" the wife exclaimed. "It must be nerve-wrecking and scary to be in a new country all by yourself!" Beneath all that cheeriness, he wondered how much of it was fake.
"It is. But, I don't want to waste my time being nervous. That's why I came to the club fair today," he replied.
"Good for you! You should definitely join our club then. We are a volunteering organization with several programs under our name. If you want to get to know the city more, the best thing to do is to volunteer, right?"
He asked both out of curiosity and to let the film roll. "What kinds of programs are there?"
The wife went on to explain the programs in her club. She seemed to like what she was doing in the club, alright, but she could not fool him with those eyes of hers—eyes which were filled with so many lies, secrets and deceits. Thinking about her mysteries made Syaoran nod his head to whatever she was saying absentmindedly.
Without much recollection, a few exchanges of conversation occurred between him and her.
Finally, he was brought back to the present when the wife handed him a piece of paper.
"Here is my email address. If you ever need a tour guide around Tokyo, feel free to message me," she said to him with an innocent grin on her face.
How he wished to expose her ugliest side sooner so that the big reward became all his!
"T-thank you," Syaoran said and walked away slowly.
When he reached the exiting door on the other side of the dome, he smirked devilishly and folded the piece of paper in his hands. Check. He marked off another thing in his mental list for getting her to befriend him first.
He turned around and looked in her direction again from far away. She was busy convincing another group of students to join her club with her innocent antics.
"Inoue Sakura, be prepared to fall hard for me," he said in a soft voice.
Valkyrie85: Syaoran is shown to be quite dynamic. Sakura, in contrast, is shown to be a cheery character, but is she really? I decided to change up the style in this story by showing the perspectives of the two main characters :D Tell me your thoughts on the plot, characters, writing, etc. Thanks!