Chapter 7

3 MONTHS

-ERIOL-

Nobody said a word about Touya's soulmate. Not going to lie, we all were surprised when we saw a boy, but to be honest, homosexual relationships in this world are something we see every day. After all, if the counter said your soulmate is someone from your same sex, no one would think that's weird, and would simply accept it. Maybe it was just that Touya Kinomoto had always been popular among females, and we also hadn't seen him be particularly interested in men. To be honest, he hadn't seem interested in any of both genders. For years, I even thought he didn't have a counter to begin with.

During that weekend, a side of me couldn't stop thinking that, maybe if I became gay, my counter would reset and a new countdown would start… But, to be honest, imagining myself with a boy was just not me, so I soon ditched that idea.

"I got us a double date." Tomoyo said to me that morning.

I had just arrived at school. I was yet to open my locker, when she, already done with changing her shoes, stood next to me, and smiling at me, said those words.

I looked at her, visibly surprised.

"Friday, at Penguin Park." She continued. "Three o'clock. Please, don't be late."

I couldn't say no. First of all, I couldn't even process what she just had told me, when she had already walked away, towards our classroom. Seconds, because even when I managed to sit behind her, only six minutes later, and I could just get close and whisper I didn't want to join (and she couldn't fight back, other way the teacher could see her, and scold her), I didn't know how to say no. A side of me knew whoever was this date, had already said yes, and me saying no would make me look like a jerk, and that would also make this unknown girl spend an uncomfortable time as a third wheel of Tomoyo and her date. And third, to be honest I also wanted to know who was this guy that had make Daidouji Tomoyo agree to have a date.

During middle school, Tomoyo had had lots of secret admirers. At that age, all of them just wrote anonymous letters and placed them at her locker. But now, being a little bit more mature, it was obvious the admirers would stop being so anonymous, and start asking for actual dates. Seems like someone had already done just that.

So, repeating myself I had just accepted that double date, in order to not jilt that unknow girl Tomoyo had convinced to date me, I told my mom, that Friday afternoon, I was going out.

It wasn't a lie, right? After all, I had lived that exact same situation. When Sakura had met Syaoran, I had been so shocked, I ran away. Would I let a poor girl have the same experience as me, looking at Tomoyo and that boy having a wonderful time, as she didn't have someone to spent the afternoon with? Would I make that girl go back home crying, because someone had just jilted her? Even if I had no idea who she was, she totally didn't deserve that treatment from me.

And then, I met her.

"I'm going out." I said to Nakuru.

"Say hi to Tomoyo, from me!"

"How do you know…?"

"Lately, you have spent so much time with her." My mom replied. "To be honest, you barely mention Sakura now. Is it because you're on different classrooms?"

I heard her giggle, and couldn't help but growl.

How do you tell your mom, yes you're going out with your friend, but you're not going out together? She smiled at me, in such a sassy way, that I understood she had already made her own story in her mind, and changing her perspective would take too long, and since I was already late, explaining everything to her at that moment would be impossible.

So I decided to just let it go for now.

As always, I was the last one to arrive. At the bridge that was located right in the middle of Penguin Park, and helped cross the river, Tomoyo and that man who had introduced himself as Touya's boyfriend's brother, were already there. What was his name? God, I always suck at this. I hurried myself, trying to remember any detail occured at the Kinomoto household that afternoon. Yue, right? It better be Yue or we were about to have an uncomfortable time, all thanks to me.

Next to Tomoyo, there was a girl. Bright bonze skin, long black hair, reddish eyes. Don't know how, but I immediately knew that was set to doom.

"Eriol, let me introduce you to Li Meilin."

"Nice to meet you, my name is Li Meilin. I'm from Hong Kong!" She said in such a happy blast, that for a moment it stunned me.

"She's Li Syaoran's cousin."

I gave Tomoyo a death stare, but she ignored me, and just giving me a couple of seconds to introduce myself to Li's cousin, we started walking along that orange brick road, as I did my best to reply to all the questions Li Meiling was dropping on me, although she actually seemed not interested in my answers.

Have I already said this date was a mess? Because I think it was even worse than that. After five minutes walking, as I heard her do a not so short resume of her life (she had lived in China almost all her life, but she had moved to Tokyo eight months ago, and she used to come to Tomoeda during the weekends to visit his favorite cousin, that until Syaoran had managed to get a girlfriend and now she had to get new friends to spent her time with…) we finally decided to stop for a coffee.

We were mid-January, so it was still cold. In order to avoid getting our face and hands frozen, we walked into a coffee shop, that was located just a block away from Penguin Park, and sat at a table located in the corner. We were sitting face to face to our dates, so Tomoyo was sitting at my left, and I had no one sitting at my right. A waitress came to take our order, and as Tomoyo did her best to start a conversation with us (Meilin being the most interested, while Yue and me replied with just "yes" or "no"), after five minutes, our drinks finally came.

Meilin's voice was… Just too much. She had a high pitch, she laughed out loud. Don't missunderstand me, I got nothing against her being so expresive and be such a free spirit, but compared to how dead me and Yue looked that afternoon, it seemed the only one who was having a blast was her, and the rest of us just wanted to leave already.

Obviously that wasn't going to happen until each one of us shared something about ourselves with the rest of the class. Since Meilin had already shared everything about herself, it was now Yue's turn. And, obviously, the most important topic in this world was: the counter.

"You're the only one here who has already hit zero." Said Meiling, as I did my best to not move nervously, and pretend my ribbon was the most normal thing to wear. "You must have a really good reason to be here with Tomoyo, instead of being with your soulmate."

I eyed Tomoyo. I had no idea if Meilin had said something extra rude, or was just me overthinking, but either way Tomoyo just smiled and said no word.

"My counter hit zero last year." Yue explained, as he carefully placed his cup of coffee on the table, as if he was really worried of not spilling a single drop, even when he was almost finished with it. "It was a girl who came from Korea, student exchange at my university. If you ask me, it was the most cliché thing that could've happened. We hit each other, at the library. We both dropped our books, and kneel down to pick them up, and as our fingers touched, our counter said one second, and then we looked at each other… I don't need to say anything else, right?

We all nodded.

"At that moment, my counter had said to me she was the one. And I really worked hard to make things work. But… her Japanese was at a very basic level, and I didn't speak a single word of Korean. Communication between each other wasn't the only issue; she was having a hard time to get used to live here, and it didn't matter how much I tried to make things easier for her, it seemed she just didn't like how things are done in Japan, compared to her country. So, six months later, when her student exchange was done, and she told me she was going back to Korea… We came to a mutual agreement this was no use.

We remained silent. All thinking in what he had just said. I think it took us a whole minute before we came back to our senses, until Meilin asked:

"So, you're no longer in touch with each other?"

"We didn't exchange phone numbers, or addresses to write each other, or e-mails, or nothing. We just let it come to an end."

"Maybe your counter hit zero because life just wanted you to meet each other, although that wasn't the right moment." Said Tomoyo, in her usual dreamy voice I had listened from time to time. I discreetly kicked her under the table, and I could see her side eye me.

"But then, why would it hit zero?" Meilin asked, unaware of how Tomoyo and I were looking at each other. "Wouldn't it be better for you to bump that time at the library, but let the counters keep running, for, I don't know, another five, ten years, until you both were mature enough and maybe then things would work out?"

Yue didn't have an answer for that, so he just shrugged his shoulders.

"If you ask me, that's bullshit." Nobody had asked her, but yet Meilin hurried to explain herself. "It's like life had told you, you have to belong to that person. Maybe you'll meet each other again, but you have to wait for them. Wait?" She asked herself, and hurried to show us her counter, which said "16 years". "I'm going to be over thirty when this shit finally hits zero. And I'm not planning on sitting and wait for this special someone. I mean, yes I trust I'll meet him and we'll be happily ever after together, but he's not going to be my first time at a relationship, a kiss, or a fuck."

I choked on my coffee. I wasn't planning to fuck her that afternoon, if that's the reason she agreed to this date.

"What about you two?" Asked Yue, looking at me and Tomoyo.

Tomoyo looked at her counter. "7 years" said hi to her, as every day since three years ago. And then, to my surprise, she lied. "I still have time to get ready for my special moment. Make some mistakes… Get to know more options."

She shyly smiled to Yue, which left me in such a shock that Meilin had to tap my hand a couple of times.

"What about you?" She asked me when I finally looked her. "I see you're hiding yours."

"You think waiting sixteen years is hard?" I said sarcastically, and just as Tomoyo, I got no idea why, but I lied too. "I'll meet my special someone when I'm already in my fifties. I have high doubts I'll still be able to fuck during those days."

Meilin laughed hysterically, which this time made me happy. My joke had been well received, everybody was satisfied with the excuse of why I was in that date that afternoon, and as all the coffees were finished, it didn't take long for that disastrous date to come to an end.

"So?" Tomoyo asked me the next Monday, as she sat at my side during class. "Ready for our next date."

"You're joking." I hurried to reply. "Why did you even…?"

"I thought it would be a good oportunity for you to meet someone. Leave Sakura behind, heal your wounds…"

"And your best call was Li's cousin?"

"Okay, I didn't have that many options, you know?" She hurried to defend herself, as she was busy taking out her books and pencil case. "You got any idea how hard is to find someone who's willing to date…?"

"Me?"

"Date someone who's not their soulmate. I swear to God, Eriol…" And she sighed, tired of it. Tired of me. "Stop thinking there's something wrong with you. You're not broken. We're not broken."

I'd love to have a reply for that, but at that exact moment the teacher walked in, so we had to pay attention to class.

But I knew I just couldn't leave that conversation like that.

I opened my notebook by the last page, and wrote a note there.

"I will find someone to love. But I don't need you to set me in blind dates."

I ripped the piece of paper, and discretely placed it on her desk. Tomoyo saw it, and hurried to take it, and read it.

She smiled at me. A smile I couldn't decipher. Then, she took her pen, and wrote a reply. The paper landed on my desk, and I eyed the professor to make sure he hadn't notice, before taking it and reading it.

"I didn't want you to feel you were staying behind. I don't want you to think, since I'm dating Yue, I'm not supporting you too."

I crumpled the paper, and dropped it in my backpack. I turned to Tomoyo, and smiled at her. Without saying a word, I signaled her everything was okay, and she didn't need to worry about me.

She worried too much about what I thought or what I felt. And there was no need. I had no need for the both of us to start dating at the same time, neither did I mind if our counters didn't start moving once again, at synch. If she walked faster towards her happiness, and I somehow stood behind, I had no problem at all. I would support her, since that's what friends do, right?

The only thing I wanted was for her to be happy, just as Sakura.

Still, a tiny part of me, the voice that one can hear at night, when you're all by yourself, kept on asking me if Yue was the right man for her.

The double dates weren't mentioned again, and not even once Tomoyo suggested she had any other friends to introduce me to. Still, lunch hour was once again an awkward moment: as we sat together with Sakura and Syaoran, seeing them both cuddle wasn't the only problem. It seemed like now the only thing they wanted to talk about, was Yue.

I kept on repeating myself Tomoyo knew what she was doing. If a guy like him was interested in my friend, and she was also into him, then I had to be a supportive friend, just as I had been with Sakura and Syaoran. But listening to his name every day was slowly driving me crazy. I didn't know exactly why was that, but it did. There was something about him I just couldn't seem to like.

I didn't know if it was since he seemed perfect: best student of his class, third semester of medicine school, but already taking fourth semester seminars, he knew how to drive, he had already the legal age to drink alcohol…

If he was so perfect, why had he broke up with his soulmate, without any regrets?

I totally get they broke up on a mutual agreement, and by his short story I could also tell his counter had fucked him up because, how can you make a relationship work when the person lives on another country? With a language barrier, different approaches, and lots of cultural differences that don't meet a common ground? If that girl decided she didn't like Japan at all, who could assure she would comeback, in some years, just because she wast told she must love Yue? Or was Yue supposed to drop everything here and meet her in Korea?

Still, I couldn't help but feel angry to the fact that he had spent six months with his soulmate, and in the end, he didn't have the guts to keep on trying, and just gave up on them. And please don't even compare him with my situation with Sakura, since Sakura already has Syaoran. I had to let her go since she wasn't my destiny. I wasn't hers. Yue just gave up since he didn't want it to make it work.

Somehow, I was sure that exact same thing would happen with Tomoyo. I don't know why, but I had the feeling sooner or later, Yue would figure out he also didn't have any common ground with Tomoyo, mostly because of the age difference, and would end up breaking up with her.

That also made me so angry. To know he would break her heart one day.

Because, if it was me, I would never do that to her.

Happy weekend :)

Ribo~