Yoru No Uta

 Chapter 5

 

 By: somnambulated

 thefreeair@aol.com

 

 

 The real mystery is why I just won't accept the truth That I've been resenting red for not being blue Like I’ve been resenting him for not being you 

 

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 Hester Prynne spent three hours of her life on a scaffold wearing the scarlet A, and the rest of her life in her own chains. The only person in the world who didn’t convict her was the child she carried. A black-eyed creature that she named Pearl for her priceless worth. Her pearl.

 The text was thick and wordy, and the Japanese translation made each lengthy paragraph of a sentence just that much harder to follow. It was a simple story, Tomoyo thought, with too many descriptions and interruptions. It was only a woman who’d given birth to the child of an unknown father.

 Etsuya said it was hypocritical to judge someone in the name of a God who also said not to judge, and suggested that religion was bullshit. 

 “Most things we can’t understand seem that way,” Sakura retaliated from across the table in the library, “I think, anyway.”

 He pointed at her with his pen. “I like how you think.”

 Syaoran in the meantime was highlighting things religiously in bright yellow. Trademarks of an avid student. As usual, the kanji frustrated him. “No,” he said, not looking up. “Sakura, it’s bullshit.”

 She ignored him, though not before nudging his arm and creating an awkward streak of bright yellow on his page. He stared; she grinned and turned her head towards her best friend. “Tomoyo?”

 She raised her eyes from her reading, blinking. Her high ponytail barely swished in its yellow ribbon. “Hm?”

 “What about you? What do you think?”

 From her distracted expression it could be gathered that Tomoyo’s mind had been somewhere else throughout the impromptu discussion. But she said, “I think it’s about fear.”

 “Where do you see that?” Syaoran turned pages absently.

 “I don’t,” she said. “I mean.” She paused, staring at her open book as though to collect her thoughts. “I mean that these people haven’t ever experienced a life without following guidelines. They don’t have laws—all they have are their Bibles. She’s done something to compromise everything that they’ve ever known, and there’s nothing in the Bible about it, except to say that it’s wrong.” She nodded to nothing, proud of her presentation. “They’re afraid.”

 Sakura blinked, intimidated and blank-faced for a moment before she twirled her pink pencil between her knuckles—a motion she’d been going on about unconsciously for most of the afternoon. “That… makes sense, actually.”

 Etsuya said, “Afraid of what?”

 “The unknown…”

 Her voice trailed and she subtly exited the conversation. Across the room, one of the elementary school teachers was sitting at a table with a girl from her class. They were leaning over the same stack of festival flyers, sorting the pink pages from the white in respective piles. A black backpack by the girl’s chair was decorated with a keychain of a teddy bear. She was crossing and uncrossing her ankles uneasily. He didn’t seem to notice.

 “I think there’s a dictionary with better translations by the index wheel.” Etsuya said.

 “Even for these run-ons?”

 “Yes. Here, I’ll show you.”

 When Tomoyo looked back to her own table, both boys were gone, and Sakura was looking over her shoulder at them with a sympathetic twist in her mouth.

 “Poor Syaoran,” she said, turning back, “he really has a hard time with lengthy translations.”

 Tomoyo was half-reading, semi-contemplating the thesis for an upcoming paper, and barely listening. Every thought she’d had for days had been distracted. Though if she closed her eyes, she could feel it all so clearly—

 “Hey…” Sakura’s voice was softer than the snowflakes dropping outside of the window. She reached across the table and tapped the edge of Tomoyo’s notebook with the winged eraser of her pen. “Are you okay?”

 Suddenly, Tomoyo couldn’t stop staring at Rika’s backpack from across the room. Just how long had that teddy bear keychain been there? Years.

 Finally, Tomoyo said, “You still have that bear Li-kun gave you, don’t you?”

 “Um.” Sakura recoiled her pen and sat more upright. “From fifth grade? Yeah, I think it’s on the shelf over my bed.” She opened her mouth to say more, but in the same moment Tomoyo looked at her and smiled. “Sorry,” she half-sang, half-spoke. “Yes; I’m alright.”

 Sakura, unsure what to make of the entire day, followed Tomoyo’s expired gaze across the school library for clues. But she saw nothing worth noticing.

 

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 “It’s so cold!” Sakura jumped behind Syaoran when he opened the door, as though he could barricade the swirling snowflakes from her skin. She squeaked at a gust of bitter wind. Everything was layered in frosty fluffy white beyond the school’s front steps. The sky was gray, tinged wine-yellow and dull blue behind bare black treetops. 

 “Tomoyo’s crazy for saying she’ll walk home.” Sakura decided as she climbed into the passenger side of his black car, breathing clouds of misty white and rubbing her gloves together for warmth. “I’m sure Takahashi will give her a ride.” He said, twisting the key in the ignition. A wonderful spray of warm air came shooting through the dashboard vents and Sakura took a breath of relief. “Etsuya-kun?” She was brushing the snow from her hair. “Do you think they spend a lot of time together?” 

 He shifted gears and two thin black arms shoved a layer of fresh snow from the windshield. “I think it’s none of my business.” 

 She raised her shoulders and looked at her hands. “That isn’t what I mean.” A few flecks of white still clung to the red fibers of her gloves, and she brushed at them idly. “Never mind,” she muttered. Her voice was almost lost in the shushing of the warm vents. “I can’t explain it.” 

 Still, it was strange that she was always capable of getting a ride, but she so often said she’d walk. 

 Sometime past the first stoplight, the heat flowed under her skin and she closed her eyes. “It’s still early,” her voice was almost a whisper, “You can stay over until the snow settles.” 

 “And risk your brother not being there again?” He was more aware of her fatigue than she was, and he kept his voice down. “Thanks, but no.” 

 She sighed her faded disappointment, blurting a delirious something about her brother doing things for the sole purpose of her annoyance. 

 The car ride was made all the longer by the sight-impairing snow, and Sakura spent most of it drifting through loose dreams. Images without color. Thoughts without justification. Scarlet A’s and a crowded library. All of them ended with something unidentifiable in Tomoyo’s expression that afternoon. Maybe it wasn’t her business, but… 

 “…Sakura…” 

 Her eyes fluttered open, and her ears were flooded with the consonant rhythm of the heat, perfect and wonderful on her cheeks. The car appeared like a jigsaw puzzle coming together. Her confusion was dispelled by the familiar smell of leather and warmth and cotton. Syaoran was holding the steering wheel with one hand, and brushing the frame of her face with the other. His gloves tickled her nerves, and she caught herself swooning. 

 “You’re home,” he said. 

 “No~” she closed her eyes, burying her tired smirk. “Five more minutes.” 

 The wind whistled, literally, and she forced herself into coherency. “It’s getting bad out,” she said, and looked at him with worry-darkened eyes. “I don’t want you driving in this.” 

 “It’s fine,” he said, “I’m less than five minutes away.” 

 “No,” her voice was flat and anxious. She took his hand in both of hers and leaned so close to him that their foreheads almost touched. “Please. I have a bad feeling.” 

 This had stopped becoming an attempt to spite her brother long ago. After their years in the footsteps of Clow’s magic, any sentence containing ‘I have a feeling’ had become a thing not to be used or taken lightly. He frowned past her shoulder, through the angry white storm, at her doorstep. But there was no arguing now. 

 

 She rushed her key in the door, and they were both met with a dark and empty house. “What time is it?” She had already kicked off her shoes and was taking the stairs ahead of him by the time he glanced at his watch. “After seven.” 

 “Maybe he’s—” she checked the window at the top of the stairs; she hadn’t noticed his car in the driveway yesterday, maybe she’d made the same mistake today. “…not here.” His bedroom door was open, moving boxes arranged in a way that Sakura could only call ‘freakishly neat.’ Organization was a recessive gene that she hadn’t inherited. But when she heard stories of her mother’s clumsy disorganized charm, she was strangely grateful about the whole thing. 

 “Probably called it a day.” Syaoran was standing beside her suddenly, and his voice made her jump. She drew a steadying breath and closed her eyes in a long blink. 

 “…But his door’s wide open.” 

 The nagging premonition, earlier rooted in her stomach, was gone. But she watched the exposed space over her shoulder as she turned for the staircase again. And she couldn’t deny the ghosts of its nature, telling her that something was sorely out of place. 

 

 She found Kero sleeping on the kitchen table, next to an empty bowl that was easily the size of his entire body. He was contentedly hugging a spoon and murmuring about ice cream. So much for asking him. 

 Anyway, her brother had scribbled the number to the apartment on the back of an index card and stuck it to the fridge. He would answer, she told herself as she leaned against the kitchen wall and dialed, and everything would be fine. 

 He did. 

 “Don’t go anywhere tonight,” he said. “It’s supposed to get worse; you probably won’t have school tomorrow.” 

 She didn’t tell him about Syaoran. If it had been snowing balls of lava, her brother still would have insisted that he leave, and probably would have risked his life to go over there and be sure he did. But just the same, she hoped that having to lie wouldn’t become a pattern. 

 “Do you need anything over there?” He said. “Will you be okay alone?” 

 “Sure. Kero’s here.” 

 “Forgive me if that doesn’t ease my mind.” 

 She wanted to argue, but that was about the same moment that her guardian flopped to his stomach in his sleep and murmured ‘oh no, I couldn’t eat another bite… strawberry frosting’ 

 She shrunk a little. “I’ll keep him out of trouble.” 

 After she hung up, a nagging darkness settled inside of her stronger than before. Her brother was alright. The open bedroom meant nothing, and now Syaoran wouldn’t have to leave. They’d all be safe tonight. 

 

 So what felt so wrong? 

 It followed her through the livingroom, up the stairs and past the threshold of her bedroom, where she belly-flopped onto her bed and coiled her arms around a pillow. “So tired,” she murmured. 

 Syaoran was standing by the window, looking out at the snow. “You were right,” he said. There was no seeing anything past the sheet of glass between her bedroom and the outside. His car was invisible in the white street. 

 “Oniichan said there probably won’t be school tomorrow.” Her voice was muffled. 

 He said nothing, but she felt his weight shift the edge of the mattress and she blindly moved towards him until her head was in his lap. “Maybe we should turn on the weather.” 

 But nothing happened, and she breathed in. Wooden tables and the lingering papery smell of the library were still fresh in the fibers of his uniform. She wrapped her arm around his hip and buried her forehead in his lowest stomach. “You’re so warm,” she mumbled, content and sleepy. 

 He was slowly tugging the pink elastics from her pigtails and brushing her hair back into place with the roots of his fingers. “You’re so strange.” His voice was like orange embers. 

 She yawned. “But you love me.” 

 In the lazy gray of her bedroom, with all of their skin patched like quilts by the yellow streetlights and lacey snowflakes, she drew a breath that echoed in his head. Sweet as her strawberry hair, slower than the white frozen-rain parade. He could see only half of her cheek peering out from a fold in his black shirt; her lower back rose and fell in deep lulling rhythms. 

 Asleep, she did not hear his whispered reply. 

 “Yes… I do.” 

 

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 Sometimes she felt that he was still composing. His hands, the same to play that strange and wonderful music, chose her as a home. It was like an Indie celebrity’s smile, or a dream of talking to an angel. 

 She was his lighthouse past the port without terra firma, a subtle place of return as he came from the east of the night. 

 Nobody else lingered over her bed so deep into the darkness. Nobody else murmured her name on that chord of desperation. Nobody else had ever been inside, though she often dreamed of it. 

 And he was so careful, rippling over her like a reflection in a puddle, not missing an inch of her arms in his cautious grace. His skin was of the moon beyond her window, freckled with the shadows of snowflakes. “Let your hair down?” He kissed the words behind her ear. And she, delirious but still logical, reached behind her head with bare arms and burning fingers to slide the yellow ribbon from her ponytail. 

 “I love you,” he said. He was pushing his hands through the endless waves, like black roadmaps in the pale room. 

 She saw her thigh rise against his hip, and for a second she couldn’t tell which skin was his and which was her own. 

 “No you don’t,” she murmured. A gasp tumbled from her mouth when she felt him slide into her. She braced, holding his forearms and pushing her eyebrows together as though in thought. 

 He said he loved her, she told him that he didn’t. And then she let him come inside of her, and everything was okay. 

 His kisses were thorns on her rosebush of a body. She was the unattainable, the beautiful. He was the undertaker, the risk. She put her arms up around his shoulders and pressed her hands into his skin until she was inside of him. As inside of him as he was her. 

 Their breathing clashed; they did not ever appear in sync. His fast, hers slow. Who knew where he was all those times, pushing into her like ripples on the surface of a quiet pond in the summer. There was a pond not far from her house without any fish in it. As a child, Sakura waved her festival fan over the surface and tried to teach them how to tell fortunes. Well, it didn’t work anymore if it ever had, because the girl was no more or less aware of how dramatically she was loved. Still loved. 

 He came first, with a panicked whisper of her name. There wasn’t a second for her to react. The fishless pond shook violently in her head, and she tried to find Sakura again but there wasn’t enough time there wasn’t enough time— 

 Her back curled off of the mattress and she exhaled, tremulous and light. Her hands relented and her thighs eased on his hips and slid down, numb. Her body glistened with festival water. The roots of her hair were dark and moist. 

 When it was through, she was never caught basking. He would lie over the sheets like a puddle and watch her with glassy eyes. She was standing, gathering the gray and black pieces of her uniform from the floor and separating them from his. All this while wrapped in the lavender sheet from her bed. 

 She busied herself, brushing her hair, evening out the disheveled wrinkles and slinking into pajamas. She wouldn’t leave the room until she was certain that she had left no clues for her mother to find. This didn’t matter, though; she wasn’t home and wouldn’t be until maybe morning. 

 Nobody could ever know about this, while they were sitting in the school library reviewing for a quiz, while the snow was soft and cold on their skin. And while she had pins in her mouth, fitting all the girls for their costumes with red measuring tape. She would have no teddy-bears over her bed, no key-chains on her backpack. She would forever be the bearer of silent things. 

 As Tomoyo passed the moonbright window again, her gray silhouette revealed a single hair that hadn’t been tamed in her hurried attempt to hide it. Stealing a secret delight of his own, Etsuya smiled. 

 

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 Sakura woke in the middle of the night, frantically untangling herself from a violent ocean of a dream, the memory of which fading away as her pupils swelled. It was dark, and the clock ticking over her bed was the only proof that time still existed. 

 The fresh gray sheet of snow on her dark window reminded her of the day; she could remember little after hanging up with her brother and retreating to her room. Maybe she’d fallen asleep. 

 She was still in her uniform, which was suddenly unbearably thick on her skin. It caught the blankets when she moved, hindering her from the smooth freedom of limbs she was accustomed to. 

 Syaoran was next to her, which she didn’t realize until she tried to slip out of bed and instead bumped into him. She blinked, a secret confusion. Reality was seeping back in through her ears, forced to register through the throbbing silence. It was too dark to clearly see his face, but still she admired what she could. Even his sleep was marked with the certain care and masculine graces that made him what he was in the day. He looked—she thought—like he was the kind to highlight every other line, and to write with flawless penmanship. 

 Or maybe she just knew him too well. 

 Forgetting the itchy heat of her uniform against her dream-rashed and damp skin for a few seconds, she traced his jaw with her index finger. He was her secret like this; on his back with his cheek to his shoulder, breathing long rhythms through his chest, distant in dreaming. His most beautiful moment. 

 She swept her palm across his forehead and smiled in the dark before finally climbing over him and coming to a stand. 

 Even after she slid the heavy gray skirt from her legs and traded everything for a wispier ensemble, she still couldn’t bring herself to feel settled. Something still itched, beyond the turtleneck and knee-socks. 

 She paced her room for a while, using the mediocre gleam of the streetlight to fold her clothes and stack them on the chair at her desk. She was considerately quiet about everything, although for a while she thought of waking him. But he hadn’t done the same for her, though she must have fallen asleep just minutes after she returned to the room that evening. 

 How long had he watched? When did he settle beside her and fall asleep himself? She knew him never to be awake after midnight (unless there was a paper to be written or something similar) so the current time couldn’t have been before twelve. But it was too dark and blurry to see the clock without having to crawl over him again, and she no longer wanted to risk disturbing him. 

 An unexpected blast of yellow light spilled into her eyes when she opened the door. Kero, no doubt, had been here. Maybe he’d taken the closed door as some risqué sign of denied access and returned downstairs. Sakura didn’t know and had no intention of asking. She fumbled for the light switch until it was off again, only slightly irritated and blinking rapidly to readjust. 

 Nothing was happening anywhere. No glow from the television somewhere at the bottom of the stairs, no lingering kitchen lights or muffled conversations from her brother’s room—juxtaposed her own. Nothing. It was uncommon and comforting at the same time to know that she bore no true responsibility. No chores would be in any hurry to get themselves done in the morning. There would be no breakfast-table comments from her brother in the morning, no battle to kick at him in retaliation. 

 She took the stairs slowly, letting the pallid moonlight from the windows mark her path. Thanks to all the ghost stories her brother filled her head with as a child, her heart always pounded for the first few seconds of any dark entrance. But she wasn’t afraid anymore. Well… not as afraid. 

 She stopped at the window by the front door. The snow was still falling, though in flecks so distant and faint that she had to compare their flight to the streetlights to see them at all. The yellow blobs lining the street looked like snow-globes, while the space outside of their glow was black as a bruise. If she squinted she could see Syaoran’s car, its tires lost in the white mounds. The snow on the roof of it looked like a hat. 

 The same worry as earlier twisted in her stomach, borderline nauseating. She folded her arms over her stomach and raised her shoulders at an unstoppable chill. Then she found herself hoping that Tomoyo had made it home alright.