Yoru No Uta

 Chapter 7

 

 By: somnambulated

 thefreeair@aol.com

 

 

 I’ll just make you braver than you are

 I will paint your eyes a prettier green

 I will watch you fall

 violently

 for me…

 

 

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 The prettiest notes she sang were sad. And in the palest light, her eyes could not have been brighter. She was tracing the edge of the piano with her fingertips in absence as she stood there, and the smooth black surface duplicated her reflection. For a moment it looked like her soul was trapped in the body of the piano and she was making contact. 

 

 The music had stopped by then, and she was watching the half-moon through the giant window on the wall. Etsuya was sitting on the black bench over the keys, turning the square pages of notes. He tapped a high key and the sound made Tomoyo raise her shoulders and draw a quick breath, startled. 

 

 “Sorry.” He said, but she was already lost again, somewhere beyond the snowy treetops. “I think a few notes are out-of-tune.” 

 

 “Oh…” Her voice was white as her skin; it flittered through him like a ghost. “I think there’s a tuner in the closet.” She nodded her head at the closed wooden door a few feet behind them. 

 

 She took a step to move, but stopped. Etsuya blinked. 

 

 “What’s wrong—”

 

 “Shh.” She put her index finger over her lips and raised her head. “I heard something,” she whispered. 

 

 “Probably a janitor.” 

 

 “This late?” 

 

 It was almost eleven, as the clock over the door said. The rest of the school had been gone for at least two hours; costumes were shoved back into trunks or onto racks, the wires were left neatly coiled on the floor, and all of the lights were off. 

 

 Without really thinking, she walked for the door. By the time she’d put her hand on the knob, Etsuya heard it too. It dragged like a chair across the tiled floor. 

 

 “Well, wait,” he said, and was standing so close that she could smell his uniform; festival paint went through her senses like a wind-chime. 

 

 They took slow steps down the hallway, but they didn’t need to go very far. The noise came again. It was a chair being dragged against the floor, Etsuya concluded. “I think it’s—”

 

 Before he could finish the thought, Tomoyo grabbed his arm and tugged him to a kneel. He barely caught himself with his hand on the wall. Inches from his face, her eyes were bright and anxious. “Quiet,” she hushed, her words a breath. As she slowly rose, she motioned with her hand for him to follow. 

 

 They stopped short at the glass window on a classroom door, no more than two pairs of curious eyes blinking from the bottom of focus. 

 

 The classroom was dark, but far from empty. One of the girls from their class was sitting on the teacher’s desk with her back against the podium and her socked feet inches above the ground. Tomoyo recognized her instantly as Rika; her messenger bag was slung on the ground not far from her feet, teddy-bear keychain and all. Her cheeks were deep red in the weak darkness, and she was smiling at the man standing before her. He was an elementary school teacher—an elementary school teacher that Tomoyo remembered from fourth grade, most recently to be found drifting around festival preparations or folding flyers in the library. 

 

 Now he was dark and serious, unlike she’d ever seen him. And at first he was only touching; it was a suggestion. Palms and fingertips rubbed imaginary veins up her thighs and his hand disappeared beneath her skirt like a wanderer into the great beyond. As he moved in there, a feathery white mound of panties slid down her knees, a puddle on the classroom floor. She soon lay beside it, no more to her watchers than a skinny, windy body with a skirt that kept bunching higher and higher towards her stomach. The white buttons of her gray vest came undone; the black tie slid from her neck like a serpent. 

 

 “Isn’t that Terada-sempai?” Etsuya drew a shaky breath. “Isn’t she in our—” Tomoyo put her hand over his mouth, then moved it shakily to her own. “…Shh.” 

 

 “We shouldn’t be watching.” he whispered. 

 

 “No.” she agreed. 

 

 But neither drew their eyes away. 

 

 Terada was crawling over her, and they were kissing like crazy. Fast, rough, almost violent in its right. The way their eyes met—melting in the secret starlight and staring—made Tomoyo certain that there was more to this than merely lust. Professional brown khakis lay in a pile beside the small white lump of cotton. Etsuya went pallid, Tomoyo held her breath. 

 

 “They’ll see us…” he whispered. 

 

 But neither moved, overcome with the same blunt perversion and twisted curiosity. They were the first ones to come upon this, Tomoyo concluded; or else he would have no career and she no amiable reputation. Their kisses were splashing in the meantime, their legs moving like ropes and pulleys. Their bodies rocked like a boat on their own waves. They were looking right at each other’s eyes. 

 

 They’re in love…

 

 The words would never leave Tomoyo’s mouth. Her breath, like all things, had stopped. Her heart was pummeling like mad. 

 

 There was nothing else in the world to do but watch. Morbidly fascinated, watch. 

 

 Without sound, the two connected. Raw and open for their unknown onlookers to see. This was the edge of reality, the brink of moments in which things would be forever changed. These were things that surfaced in romance novels and midnight fantasies—not in actual classrooms, not in Tomoeda. 

 

 Rika’s short, dark hair fanned in a wavy circle around her head, a dusty crown. 

 

 It became so hypnotically fast after that. Tomoyo felt her balance tipping; she was rubbing her hands against her skirt to rid them of sweat; her mouth was open and dry. She watched. 

 

 On the classroom floor, the girl rose like a snake to its charmer and cried something that couldn’t be heard through the door. He held her face in his hand, pressing the cold tiles with the other. They settled. He propped himself on top of her, and they kissed for a while. 

 

 Etsuya let go of a breath he’d been holding until his knuckles had gone white. Tomoyo was breathing strawberries. 

 

 The spell was broken. 

 

 “She always seemed so shy.” Etsuya whispered. “She has such an innocent face.” 

 

 Tomoyo closed her eyes in a long blink, considering. So did Sakura, she thought; were her nights like this, too? Did her bright eyes fill with gray steam; did she look so impossibly adult in his arms? 

 

 Though she was her best friend, and though Sakura softly volunteered her own blushy confessions with twisting hands, Tomoyo would never know. She would never see her in moments like these, never hear that sighing breath. She would always be wiser than those who only knew Sakura as daylight energy, but she would always also be miles from the truth that Syaoran knew. 

 

 Etsuya touched her wrist, and her thoughts shattered like glass. “They’ll see us,” he repeated from before, “come on.” 

 

 They fluttered away like birds, silent as the darkness. 

 

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

 

 She could have stayed like this forever. He was semi-dozing, touching the edges of dreams that were floating half-alive in Sakura’s bedroom. 

 

 Outside, the snow had settled, crystallized at the edges and reflecting stars and streetlights in orange freckles. In seven hours, the distant tick, tick, tick of the clock would scream and wake them. 

 

 But for now the house was placid, and the atmosphere was just a sheet of gray. It was perfect with his arm around her back and her stomach pressed against his ribs. She could hear each breath he drew, loud like thunder but faint as the rustle of sheets when she moved her legs. He was warm, and his presence swirled in her like honey in tea to ease her worrying premonitions. They nagged relentlessly, but they had nothing on the way she felt when he put his fingers through her hair. 

 

 She closed her eyes and tightened her arm around his stomach. It was the perfect match, not even a pinprick crevice between her arm and his body. He slept in thick cotton shirts that itched on her face. They were a comfort to her now, filling her lungs with his dry, clean, organized essence. Always strong, always in order, always doing things so perfectly that she felt like a child in comparison. He was hers. She took a deep breath to confirm. 

 

 “Syaoran?” 

 

 He drew an awkward breath; the dream in his head came undone. He murmured something incoherent. 

 

 “I love you,” she whispered into the dark collar of his shirt, “even though you aren’t paying attention.” 

 

 Absently, he trailed his hand from the axis of her spine to her hair, and her nerves rushed like fireflies. She rolled out a dizzy breath, for a moment weightless. 

 

 “I hear you,” he murmured, “and I’m ignoring you because I’m sleeping.” 

 

 “But I’m awake.” 

 

 “Shh.” 

 

 She looked at him lopsidedly, but his eyes were closed. It wasn’t until she twisted from his arm and uprighted herself that he murmured any kind of protest. His eyebrows drew near and he murmured something she couldn’t make out. 

 

 He didn’t feel it. There was a sudden energy glittering through her head and body like pins-and-needles. How could he sleep, when these feelings existed? How could he sleep, while the snow was falling and the house was empty and there was so much energy inside of her? How could he sleep, when she loved him so much? 

 

 “I’m not tired.” She broke the whispers they’d been speaking in, and slid her knees around his waist. She put her hands on the mattress around his shoulders and leaned so close to his face that he could feel her bright-eyed stare and he opened his eyes. Despite himself—half sleeping and disarrayed and maybe just a little bit annoyed—he had to smile at her. She was childish and wild and painfully innocent all at the same time. She was his. He took a deep breath to confirm. 

 

 She touched the side of his neck. Her fingertips were cool and soft against his skin; she smelled like strawberries and the soap in the bathroom. He could make out little of her face in the dark; smooth beige-white. Her eyes were gray-green-glowing. She was grinning, and just before she kissed him he predicted that she would. 

 

 Something about her mouth tasted different in the middle of the night. He could never understand why, but she flooded him with copper and skin, free from the lingering aloe of her Very Cherry lip-gloss. 

 

 He liked her better this way, unsweetened, sugarless. She looked the same, and only he could know. As they pulled away, he murmured, “You’ll be hell to wake up in the morning.” 

 

 She giggled. The sound faded away like wind chimes, and she sat up. She was the moonlight, sitting on his hips. Everything of her movements was traced in silver white, while the inlay was all black and gray. 

 

 She hugged her sleeves for a half-second before pulling her nightgown over her head. It bunched and slid up her arms, over her neck, fluttered to the ground. He could see her smile at him. Time slowed; it was unreal to look at her, a gradient of skin and midnight. Endless curls, muscles, slides and slopes. She was smooth, shaded-in by the snowy window. 

 

 She came down to him again, and he found he’d been hurting for it. He moved his hands up her hips, across her back like satin sheets. He could feel her expanding and retracting as she breathed, could see the slight muscles of her back pulling beneath her skin. Her lips were warm and slow on the side of his neck. “You’ll be hell in the morning…” He murmured. 

 

 “Quiet.” But he could feel her laugh on his skin. There was no hiding anything like this. He was both wide awake and deliriously light-headed now. She weighed nothing on him, and his hands meant nothing other than to take away his clothes. 

 

 Sakura planned for these moments, with anticipation, in her top desk drawer. That was where she kept the oval-shaped plastic shell of blue and white and pale green pills that she said looked like a mosaic—right before she swallowed them with a glass of water each morning. 

 

 She was his autumn in a heavy black coat. She was summer in a red miniskirt, green pom-poms in her hands. She was spring, pale pink, flying from the treetops and in circles around his feet. She was his winter, cool to the touch, kissing him until he could not breathe. He hesitated to tell her that he loved her; the words were so small that they almost seemed an insult. But they had nothing else to speak. 

 

 “Sakura…”

 

 He could feel her stomach brushing his like feathers. She kissed his forehead and pushed all the hair from the sides of his face. The blankets hung from her hips like dark water. He took her thighs in his hands, and moved his fingers between them. 

 

 She spat out a breath, shoulders high, and dropped her head like a peasant before some Greek god or goddess. She was listening to his movement, and he could feel her getting damp. He knew inside her, understood the open skin and the little piece of her that rose to his touch like a flower bud. He circled it, and her breaths were rough on his chest. Like the pink petals that fell each spring, and like the wind that carried them, he moved quickly, then sharply—like the cold air outside—until the crown of her head looked like a halo in the starlight, and she choked out a hard breath, and came in his hand. 

 

 He nudged her chin with his knuckle so that he could see her eyes, glossy like the surface of the snow. She smiled at him when he pushed the hair from her face. Sometimes she looked so much like the child of herself that it made him forget who they were, how far they’d come. And then, on the same whim, reminded him. And he loved her so much that it hurt. 

 

 Her chest was still heaving—a flutter like hummingbird wings—and there were simple lucid drops sliding from her forehead. Her cheeks were red in the grainy gray, and she shook the hair from her face. 

 

 Of course, Sakura knew him just as easily as he knew her. She slid on his waist, raising herself just enough to help him glide inside of her. Smooth and warm. It was his turn to go dizzy and draw a long breath. They kissed, and he held her shoulders in his hands, still bristling with her liquid touch. It made a smear on her skin like paint, lucid in the nightglow. 

 

 He rose in her, and it sent a familiar distant burn of pain down her spread thighs. But she wanted to push towards it, feel him rock against the nerves that lay in her shadows. 

 

 They lingered for a while, slow and sliding and breathing—just being. When his motions got faster, and he could feel her blood moving like ripples on water, they looked to each other. She was watching his irises tumble like clouds across the moon, and the desperation in his breath made her tense and rugged about her own. He was so honest like this, she thought, so vulnerable and eager. She wanted to feel him, he could see it in her eyes; she was begging herself to. 

 

 Her expression was thought and interest, and she read each signal so well that she could summon the same moment for herself. He grabbed her hips, and she pressed her hands into the mattress until the sheets bunched between her fists. Her small breasts dragged over his chest for an instant before she arched herself over him. She rose like a flower in bloom, and he could see all of her, down until where she faded to black in the blankets at their pushing waists. 

 

 For one moment, all the stars beyond Sakura’s window blurred and spun and reflected in her eyes. He could see nothing but her green cordite irises, her lips getting tight and eager. All around them, the night was still. Their skin turned to sweat and their thighs to thick water. He was breathing like a train—her tiny breaths rattled soft chords in response—and he pushed so violently that he worried she would break in his arms. But she was shoving back, baring on her lower lip, drawing her eyebrows tight in humming anticipation. Quickly she threw forward—her shoulders arched—and stifled her cry in his shoulder. He let his go to the free air, a shushed murmur drifting away like a balloon over a carnival tent. 

 

 Her bare shoulders gleamed and then blurred like the northern horizon in his eyes. She left a dizzy teardrop of a kiss on the side of his neck. Her hands moved up the length of him, and then her arms wrapped between his shoulders and the mattress and she squeezed him closer. 

 

 Reverberations of a dying energy panged through her like chords on a guitar string, and she sighed deeply; for the first time in days, calm. He floated in her like driftwood, and her open thighs around his waist said she wanted to keep him for a while longer. 

 

 “Syaoran?” 

 

 “Hm?” His breath moved her hair like tall grass and evening breezes. 

 

 “Do you think that things are perfect? Like this.” 

 

 He closed his eyes and buried a yawn. “I don’t believe in perfect,” he said. “There’s always something, somewhere, that isn’t.” 

 

 She raised herself from his chest and looked at him, blinking. He was drifting the edges of sleep. “You said the same thing about religion. What do you believe in?” 

 

 He simply answered: “You.” 

 

 She was frozen in the response for a breathtaking moment, and then she melted to a smile and resettled her cheek to his chest. She could hear his heart in her ear. 

 

 “That’s because you don’t need two dictionaries at the library to understand me.” 

 

 He opened his eyes just to stare at the crown of her head. “No,” he said, “I need a lot more than that.” 

 

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

 

 She didn’t hear Tomoyo’s voice the first three times she said her name. The fourth got her attention, and Sakura raised her forehead from her desk, blinking. Her eyes were hollow green, she was barely aware of the classroom around her. 

 

 “Are you alright?” Tomoyo’s voice went right though her. “You look a little pale…” She touched her forehead, and Sakura closed her eyes. Skittering fragments of last night’s energy ran up her spine. 

 

 She didn’t see Syaoran’s frown from the desk behind her. He’d warned her that she would be tired, and he was right. He’d literally grabbed her hands and pulled her from the warmth and comfort of her blankets, while the alarm was screaming over her head. She tipped when she walked, leaning against the wall as she trudged the stairs; she slept in the car. 

 

 It didn’t usually last this long. 

 

 “Sakura…” Tomoyo’s voice popped her undulating dream and she forced herself to blink. “I’m okay.” She tried to make energy of her tone, but her voice was so dull that she couldn’t be sure it had left her mouth at all. Her legs hurt, her head was numb and full of sand. 

 

 

 

 “Open your books to page thirty-seven.” 

 

 

 

 The next voice to interrupt her was not as kind. Their teacher was tall and thick, and he had the kind of voice that caught the white in the walls. It made for an instant headache, and she straightened her back. Her book was upside down on the desk until Tomoyo deftly reached over to fix it for her. Sakura sunk in her chair, too exhausted to even blush. 

 

 She thought her eyes were open, but maybe she was wrong. Reality blurred at the edges and turned to an awkward dream. She was sinking into her bed again, ignoring the alarm while it read to her in a loud voice. Each shift in pitch played with her consciousness. 

 

 —and it has been theorized that Hester Prynne was a martyr for rebellion. 

 

 …she decorated her scarlet A with lace and trim; she did not believe it a punishment because she did not believe she had committed any sin—

 

 

 

 When the human mind feels guilt, it will punish itself. 

 

 

 

 Everything disappeared for a while after that. The melody of the bell returned as her alarm clock, and Sakura blinked at the clock with no recollection of her whereabouts for the past hour. Everyone around her was standing, loading their messenger bags, exiting. She was still on page thirty-seven. 

 

 “Maybe you should take her home,” she heard Etsuya say. Whatever the reply was, she didn’t hear it. 

 

 “No, I’m okay.” She stood, weightless for a moment in time. Three pairs of concerned eyes met her, standing like a circle around her desk. She smiled, embarrassed. “I just really need to get more sleep is all.” She was walking for the door. Tomoyo tucked back her lower lip and hesitated, looking back at Syaoran, who offered little more than a worried stare. Sakura would do what she wanted to do—they both knew it. 

 

 The girls had their next class together, and they were walking slowly through a dissipating crowd of gray and black uniforms. Tomoyo was busy staring at her best friend’s face, two shades paler than normal. Her eyes weren’t even as bright as they should have been, her footsteps dragged. 

 

 “Tomoyo?” Her voice was fading. “I’m sorry about yesterday.” They stopped walking mutually, and Sakura hugged her notebook to her chest and turned to face her. “It was horrible and stupid of me to accuse Etsuya-kun of anything, and to make you so uncomfortable.” 

 

 Tomoyo’s blood went cold, but she couldn’t decide why. The warm I love you was still tumbling around inside of her somewhere like the unborn. It would never be more than that, she feared, and she stepped closer to take one of Sakura’s hands in her own. They’d done this so frequently since their childhood that it seemed nothing but natural when it happened now. Her skin was cold, though, and this unsettled Tomoyo silently. 

 

 “Don’t be sorry,” she said, her voice bristles against kindness and gratitude. “I was happy.” 

 

 Sakura blinked. “Huh? Why?” 

 

 Tomoyo shook her head gently, amused. “It’s nothing,” she said. The hallway had emptied around them. “We’ll be late.” 

 

 Their eyes met accidentally. Sakura was dizzied by motion and illusion. Energy rushing through her mind and skin and blood, waking her from midnight dreams. Snowflakes. Blue paint on the gymnasium floor, angel wings. On the other side of the blue, there were music notes. Moonlight and a yawning endless window. Hard kisses on cold tiles, secret lust in whispers through the classroom. 

 

 Neither of them knew how it happened. They must have closed their eyes in the same moment, because Sakura didn’t feel her back slide against the wall, and Tomoyo didn’t see her own hand touching the wall past her shoulder. Leaning forward, leaning in. They kissed. 

 

 And it was long and confusing. The first time either of them could taste anything but the mouths they knew so well. It was a rainy warm splash of cherries and skin and the wintry cold air of the school hallway. The hands they were holding lasted and lingered, and their fingers played their own games amongst each other’s. 

 

 Sakura felt her shoe dragging up from the ground and raising like a spider on the wall behind her. And she could feel her heart pounding in her mouth as she kissed her, dizzy; and she kissed back, unafraid.