Oddities in Oak Trees

-One-

There were quite a lot of things that Li Syaoran chose to notice. The ants crawling along the beige-coloured walls of the café, the chipped red nail polish of the twenty-something lady seated at the table on his right side, and the way the girl before him let out a small smile whenever she took small sips from her drink. What Syaoran didn't like to take notice of, however, were the more important things such as the uncharacteristic way that he had put fifteen teaspoons of sugar in his coffee and the fact that the young woman seated across him was talking to him.

It wasn't until she cleared her throat that he looked up to her face finally.

She grinned at him, all the while caressing her coffee-filled cup with her thumbs as she held it. "Is sugar a hit now?" She was referring to the amount of sugar he was pouring into his latte.

And it was at that jest-slash-query that he found himself actually listening to what she had to say without being distracted by even the smallest detail. Well, at least partly listening.

Hit… "Hit, huh?" He beamed at her. "…Hit me baby one more time", he mumbled, chuckling to himself. It wasn't even funny, but he was Li Syaoran, and he was a strange boy.

Sakura blinked a few times. "Uh…huh…" There was a momentary pause of awkward silence. Now people might think that Li Syaoran wouldn't be embarrassed with his random statement, what, being put into far more ridiculous situations. Yet, he was terribly humiliated as he just realized that he had uttered a phrase that was far from the topic of discussion that Sakura Kinomoto had tried to make.

He would have stuttered for a good seven minutes were it not for the sudden ringing of his phone. But as it was a habit of his to wait for it to ring six times, he let himself stutter for the mean time before finally excusing himself to answer the call.

The auburn-haired lass blinked a few times. Her former companion was, indeed, peculiar. And yet, as she shyly stole glances at the lanky boy as he made his way out of the café, she had an equally peculiar desire to get to know the young lad more. And as she sipped the last few drops of her strawberry-flavored ice coffee, she grasped the obvious fact that she still didn't know his name.

"What to call you, then…?"

Everyone and everything is quite odd in their own way. Hello Kitty is odd for being able to talk without a mouth, Dogs are odd for licking their privates in public, most teachers are odd for the mere reality that they don't get asthmas with all the chalk dust that they inhale every single day, purses are odd since basic necessities such as cellular phones can barely fit in them (and yet many women still fancy them), and oak trees are odd for being used to tan leather through its bark.

Sakura Kinomoto was odd in such a way that she gave names to people whom she didn't know. She called 'Barney' 'Marianne' when she didn't know the purple dinosaur's name, and she once called her best friend 'Linda' instead of 'Tomoyo' when she first met her. For Li Syaoran, well… she still didn't have a name for him.

But she did consider 'Bob'.

He nodded, causing the fine strands of his hair to dance along with his movement. Almost everything was a blur to him: his statuesque mom who was currently wagging her finger at him, the stern look held upon her face. "You skipped your therapy session today." Her ebon-colored hair was held up high in a tight bun while the outrageously traditional red Chinese silk attire she wore gleamed under the bright chandelier light s of the room.

The extravagant place that Syaoran's mother fancied to be her 'We Need to Talk Room' had large golden-draped windows that overlooked the not-so-splendid view of the hustle and bustle of the Tokyo crowd, massive intricately carved double doors to serve as its entrance and exit, splendid furniture from the most expensive porcelain shops in Madrid and wooden tables, chairs, and such from Italy, and a fireplace that was never used ever since it was installed in the confinement.

In the usual way that Li Syaoran's mother showed her disappointment towards something, she folded her arms against her chest and paced back and forth, pausing to face the disinterested lad every now and then whenever she emphasized a point. "Why would you do such a thing? You know that these sessions are there to help you!"

Her very frustrated statement was met by his silence. Apparently, he was too transfixed with the crystal chandelier above him to notice just how irritated his mother was to him. And there was good reason for him to be so entranced by the decorative light fixture for every beautiful glass was, in his mind, fashioned to look like the attractive girl whom he had gawked at earlier in the café. Since he couldn't help himself from sighing dreamily, he did so. Unfortunately, his mom saw it in a different way.

"Don't you dare brush off my frustrations just like that, Li Syaoran; I did not raise you to be such a disrespectful child."

His eyes widened slightly as if he remembered something important that he could possibly die due to suffocation if he had not recalled it. "…Strawberry!"

"I beg your pardon?"

A startled expression crossed his attractive features upon realizing that he was being scolded by his mother without him being aware of it. Yes, strawberry. It had occurred to him that this was what Sakura Kinomoto had preferred to have as her drink. Arches of bushy brown eye brows furrowed together as he let out another sigh, albeit the more recent one was in a defeated manner. What was his impression towards her? He sincerely hoped that she would still consider him as someone normal even if the standard school uniform he wore had paint stains all over it (he had art classes that day).

He glanced at his outfit, hands stiffly placed at his sides. The golden school seal which was designed to look like a shield with the silhouette of an archer and the kana characters for the campus was splattered with green paint, his black blazer and black slacks had patches of various colors in random places, and oddly enough, his shoes were left clean. A subtle frown made two lines appear at each corner of his mouth. He really should stop himself from being such a sloppy painter.

"… And Miss Chan! Go up to your room right now, young man!"

He did as he was told.

Now normally, he wouldn't miss his therapy sessions since he understood that it would upset his mother immensely if he did so. But he was craving for coffee and his psychologist's office smelled like a beer-chugging man's burp with deodorant. It wasn't the first time he had missed a session, but it was surely a first when it came to consciously avoiding it.

He added an extra bounce to his stride as he reached the last three steps towards the floor of his room. Uncharacteristically, he skipped a few times until he reached the familiar white door of his bedroom. The comforting scent of oranges met him as he opened the entrance of his 'Spaceship', as he fondly refers to it in his mind. The whole place was far from a humble area, but it looked rather bare. The walls were the color of apple green lined with white, his carpeted floor was also green but darker in shade, the study desk at the far right side of his room was made out of rosewood and so was the bookshelf beside it and the lone coffee table near his aquarium by the opening of his room. Basic necessities for adolescent boys were also present: black plasma television in front of his white bed at the middle of the room, silver laptop placed on the desk of his study table, and pretty much every conceivable new gadget he could get his hands on.

The last few rays of the sun as it began to set flooded its way through the circular shape of his windowpanes (he wanted it that way so that it would look more like a spaceship) as he let himself land on his bed with a loud thud.

"Sakura Kinomoto…" It was more of a whisper to his self than anything else.

He repeated the name over and over again, sometimes in mumbles, sometimes at the top of his lungs. He loved the feel of the words as he savored every syllable, every letter of her name. And then he made his way to his study desk, grabbing a red crayon to draw strawberries in various sizes. Most of them didn't have faces, but he did draw large round eyes on some of the strawberries.

Strange boys have strange ways of showing attraction.

The distinct sound of the school bell resounded throughout the vast halls of the campus. It signaled dismissal for students. While most of them had the privilege to go home right away, Li Syaoran wasn't one of those. Despite his constant oddities, he was quite the ideal student; academic-wise, that is. His routine of grumbling his way towards his club meetings were marginally lessened today, though. In fact, he found himself humming cheerfully as he waited for his school hours to end.

For this day was, undoubtedly, the day after yesterday.

All statements of obviousness aside, the Chinese lad was strangely filled with unspoken joy because that day marked a chance for him to see her once again. He discreetly patted the red paper bag he held with great care in his right hand. He had bought cookies on his way to school that morning. And as if fate truly had planned things for him, the pastry shop had a special limited edition of strawberry-shaped chocolate chip cookies. He evidently bought a box filled with the saccharine delight, all the while whistling a happy little tune to himself. He didn't realize that he had been whistling the eternally catchy beat of the theme song for Sesame Street.

And so, he waited… and waited… and waited for the final minute of the seemingly never-ending school day, but impatience makes time drag on endlessly, so what was originally six minutes of waiting felt like eighteen hours of his rear end being stuck to his seat.

He would have crushed the paper bag he was gripping and in the process, the strawberry-structured pastries as well if it were not for the bespectacled president of his poetry club finally letting out the three magical words: See you tomorrow.

In all of his disinterest towards life and the more important details concerning it, that moment when he entered the vehicle (which was just his bicycle) that would take him to what he believed to be his destined setting, he found himself actually looking forward to something.

It was quite a new mixture of emotions, what he was experiencing now. He felt strangely thrilled yet nervous and restless but excited and worried and concerned.

He passed by the popular bookstore and the small ice cream shop that marked his being near his destination.

Today would mark the day when Li Syaoran would finally be able to say the five coveted words that he never thought he would be able to utter out in a lifetime: I like you very much.

He didn't care if Sakura Kinomoto would see him as odd. After all, what fun is it if normalcy seeped into every pore of the human person?

Boredom, really.

It was precisely fifty-two minutes past four when Li Syaoran had entered the familiar comfy atmosphere of the café where he had encountered the girl with the identification card that spelled out Sakura Kinomoto. He would have been able to memorize her student number if he only had better eye sight, but he had poor vision and he refused to wear glasses. His very unreasonable answer as to why he would vehemently shrug off the act of having spectacles was because it didn't make him 'look cool.'

While most teenagers would probably say the same thing, though, Syaoran believed that he was the only conceivable human who looked like a "vomiting frog" whenever he would try on eyeglasses. Eloquence was not quite his forte when it came to describing things. Not that that fact bothered him much; his words were more abstract and vague when it came to illustrating things through words. Perhaps this was the reason why he was part of the highly regarded Poetry Guild which was, as indicated evidently by the name itself, an organization wherein poems were discussed and written on a weekly basis.

He looked at the round red wall clock that greatly contrasted with the beige wallpaper of the café. By coincidence, the only seat that was left unoccupied was the one where he had placed himself the day before. It was three minutes to five now. His fingers dug into the paper bag filled with cookies.

He wasn't exactly sure if she was going to come on that day. He usually didn't go to the popular coffee place since he wasn't a fan of crowds, so he had no inkling if she came there regularly. By the moment that twenty more minutes had passed by, he decided to entertain himself by mixing fifteen packs of cream, fifteen teaspoons of white and brown sugar, fifteen squeezes of ketchup, and fifteen dashes of pepper in his latte. It was rather obvious that he was fond of the number fifteen. He wasn't aware of it, that is, if he was ever aware of it, he chose to ignore it. The fact of the matter was: he grew to become fascinated with that digit due to a simple reason.

On his fifteenth birthday, his mother, in her usual orthodox ways, threw him a rose-themed party. All the shades of roses were present in the place as Syaoran made his grand entrance into the Li manor's dining hall. Being a guy and a conventionally straight one at that, he tried with great difficulty to avoid the femininely designed festivity but to no avail. However, as much as that day proved to be his worst, it also proved to be as one of his best ones.

Although many people chose profound, once-in-a-lifetime moments such as Catholic weddings or prom nights as their best days, Li Syaoran proved to be quite different for that date was the time when he had gotten his very first… drunken night.

He wasn't a fan of alcoholic beverages, but he was depressed and depression can make people do unnecessary things. That day was, he grinned to himself upon the memory, the day when he proved himself to be a 'true man'. Again, other people would say that being a true man would mean commitment towards marriage or maybe bravely wearing pink. But Syaoran believed that having an overdose of alcohol in his system made him a man because it showed that he could be a rebel. His mother absolutely abhorred people who got drunk since she supposed that it was the first step into becoming a criminal.

So when he sub-consciously threw up on the bouquet of red roses that was placed by the entrance of the dining hall, his mother gave him a long sermon about murder and pedophilia. Syaoran couldn't comprehend why she started to go into that topic, partly because he was drunk and mostly because he didn't care. It was the first time he had been grounded but he really didn't mind. He considered himself manly… a rock star, even.

He stared at the glass door of the café which served to be its entrance and its exit. Was she coming? Or did she already drop by and then decided to leave?

Every now and then, the gentle tinkling of the bell placed above the door would signal a person entering, but every tinkle wasn't the sign for Sakura's entrance. He was about to sip what was left of his latte but upon remembering the ghastly mixture he had concocted in his drink, he chose to play with the end of his school uniform's necktie instead.

"Umm… sir…" he looked up to see the same waitress who served him the day before. "If you're not going to use the menu anymore, could I borrow it for the other customers who haven't ordered yet?" Syaoran nodded in return, all the while gawking at the star-shaped clip of the girl. A story about a young farmer boy who sacrificed his beloved pet pig for the freedom of his lover from the clutches of the evil emperor of the Star Empire began to form in Li Syaoran's highly imaginative mind. The emperor abducted the princess because he was apparently craving for pork but his kingdom had no pigs left in them since he had devoured all of them already except for the farmer's pet pig.

But as Li Syaoran was about to hum the theme song for the short little tale that he had conjured in his mind earlier, he noticed a figure looming over him.

"Hey, dude!"

It was his best friend, Takashi Yamazaki.

"What are you doing here?" Syaoran asked.

Takashi Yamazaki hated coffee. It made him itch terribly whenever he attempted to consume anything that tasted like it, so it was strange to see him in the café, iced coffee in hand.

"I am retracing my steps."

Li Syaoran frowned at what his buddy said. "What?"

"I came across a black cat so I have to retrace my steps," he said matter-of-factly. Yamazaki was tremendously superstitious. In fact, that was the reason why he and Syaoran became friends ever since the second grade of elementary. Apparently, Li Syaoran had a lucky spirit since he never broke anything in his entire life. Even when he accidentally threw a golf ball into the lavatory's mirror, it didn't have a single mark on it afterwards. When Takashi learned about this extraordinary detail about Syaoran, the slant-eyed boy began to tag along with him as much as possible in the hopes of having even the smallest amount of luck rubbed off from him. In the process of doing so, they began to develop a friendship.

"And that…?" The brown-haired lad gestured towards the coffee Yamazaki was carrying.

"I'm giving it to the black cat to make her get constipation."

"That's animal cruelty." Although Syaoran didn't speak to other people that much, Takashi was an exemption, simply because he found the navy blue-haired boy interesting. "And how would you know the cat's sex?"

"I assumed that the cat was a girl since she's temperamental."

"Huh?"

"Well, I tried to shoo her away since I didn't want to have to go back and retrace my steps because my ankles hurt. And then she goes all Jackie Chan on me and starts to claw out my shoes," he pointed at his feet to prove his point. Faint scratch marks could be seen.

And though the lines that Takashi Yamazaki utters out are akin to the script of a bad sitcom, Syaoran still found it amusing to hear the dark-haired boy talk. It made him feel like he wasn't the strangest kid after all. Not that he cared that he was odd… most of the time.

"So… what are you doing here? I never knew that you went here. Do you come at this café often? I don't, obviously, but I just…" Yamazaki paused before placing the coffee he bought on the table in front of Syaoran. "…Dude!"

Syaoran followed the direction of his closest pal's stare. The object which had caught Yamazaki's attention was a white bowling ball fashioned to look like a grinning stout puppy. "Dude," Takashi repeated with more excitement, "I won't have to torture that cat after all! That dog had just nullified the badness of that cat's luck!"

"Takashi, it isn't a real dog. The bad luck that the black cat brought upon you is still there." Syaoran took a sip from his drink, only realizing that he shouldn't have done that. "Oh! That's gross." He spat out the coffee he had played with a while ago then wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his school blazer.

"Dude, I know my luck more than you ever will, even if you're a lucky person yourself." As much as Takashi would like to sound like a 'surfer dude' because he thought that he would get more 'chicks' that way, it didn't quite work out the way he wanted it to. All that resulted from his forced way of speaking was that he sounded like he was choking up on something whenever he talked. "Here, mate; you can have me bloody coffee." And often times, he mixed up his accent with an entirely different one.

"What are you, a surfer/British/pirate guy?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, dude." He gave off an exaggerated wave of his hand. "I fare thee well," Takashi bowed courteously as he walked towards the exit.

Just as the brown-haired boy was about to get the iced coffee his friend had given him, however, a loud bang made him steer his attention towards the glass door of the café.

In the usual routine of the highly predictable movies of the chick-flick type, it was expectedly the person who Li Syaoran had known to come.

…Well, not really.

Standing in the doorway without a care for the Takashi Yamazaki who was busying himself by rubbing the side of his head was none other than Yelan Li. Due to the fact that Yamazaki always had his eyes partially closed, he didn't notice that he was in the way of the older lady when he was about to leave the shop; hence the bumping of his head against the taller female's shoulder blade.

Syaoran never expected his mother to come barging into the café, especially since Yelan wasn't exactly a fan of places that weren't luxurious enough for her taste. The surprising bit was that the ebon-haired woman herself was startled to see her son sitting in one of the red plastic chairs of the place.

"Syaoran, what are you doing here?" Even though his mother didn't show any emotion other than the twitching of her left eye, he could tell that she was just as surprised as he was.

"Uh… drinking coffee?" He nodded his head towards the drink Takashi had left for him. Of course, this was not truly the reason, but Li Syaoran refused to tell his mother about his situation regarding Sakura Kinomoto. Probably because he feared that she might scare off his crush, or maybe it was because he didn't feel comfortable telling his mom about that since the elder did prod her way already into every aspect of his life. The last time they had an educational school tour in the local museum, she had hired four body guards to keep an eye on him in case he gets kidnapped or something. What Syaoran didn't know was that there were really five guards instead of the four he had spotted. His mother was awfully paranoid when it came to his leaving the house or the high school grounds.

She really had a good reason to be that way. After all, the Li Clan was very prominent in the business world since they owned practically a fourth of the jewelry and food industry in Tokyo alone.

"… Yes," she replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world that she was a little embarrassed to not being able to observe it. She gazed at the way Syaoran traced the rim of his iced coffee's glass confinement. It wasn't necessary to do so, but she explained her own reasons as to why she was in the place herself. "I'm here to negotiate with the owner of this shop. I'm planning to buy this… humble place since it seems to generate a rather large crowd." She discreetly glanced at her son before continuing, "I think that it would be better if I made this cafe bigger. There is an unoccupied area beside this, right?"

Apparently, Yelan wanted to check the audience that the coffee shop attracted on a regular day so she didn't bother to let the owner know that she was going to bless the place with her presence.

Syaoran let out a sigh of relief as his mother decided to not bother him anymore by going to the owner at the upper floor. He didn't notice that he had been holding his breath for an extended time.

"Oh!" The messy haired lad swiveled around upon hearing that high-pitched sound, only to gaze up into the green eyes of Sakura Kinomoto. "Bert!" She had officially decided to call him 'Bert' since she still didn't know his name. A wide grin placed itself on her face as she asked, "What are you doing here?"

Eyes the color of the rays of the sun as it sets at dusk frantically looked from Sakura to the pastry-filled paper bag to the coffee Takashi had given to him. "Uh…" He finally settled to rest his orbs upon the wooden table before him. "…Would you mind it if you… sat down with me again?"

Syaoran desperately wanted to bang his head against the wall, but he was too far from it so he couldn't. Where was the courage that he had oh-so confidently displayed just a while ago?

Ah, but Li Syaoran did not know that with his very query, he had established the beginning of a close relationship with Sakura Kinomoto.

The auburn-haired girl let her smile widen even more. "No, I wouldn't mind that at all."