Yoru No Uta

 Chapter 1

 

 By: somnambulated

 thefreeair@aol.com

 

 I saw your face

 Elegant and tired

 Cut up from the chase

 Still I so admired

 Bloodshot your smile

 Delicate and wild.

 Simply put, I saw your love stream flow.

 

 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 She smelled like strawberries most days. This started last year in the ninth grade, when she and Syaoran orbited towards a “different direction”—as Sakura called it. Tomoyo of course knew what this really meant.

 

 At the lunch table, for instance, the two were locked in separate conversations. On the surface looking different ways, almost ignoring each other completely. Under the table they were always holding hands. His thumb traced the apex of hers, and she squeezed in response every time. 

 

 They loved each other, though it was—for them—a very quiet love. 

 

 They smiled typical greetings in the morning walk to school, and they traveled with comfortable space between their shoulders. His apartment came first on the walk home, and then Sakura would take his hands, their palms pressed clumsily together between their chests. Andy woy would create a goodbye kiss so brief that anyone who blinked would have missed it.

 

 Tomoyo seldom received her clues (as least as given by the two.) Most were educated guesses, though she had more advantage than most; they knew her, trusted her. Sometimes she was absorbed in traces of their finite affection. The three of them gathered in study-clusters in the library,on son someone’s bedroom floor. And she would see firsthand how easily Sakura settled on his shoulder, how unaware he was of the way he twirled the fringe of her hair on his knuckles.

 

 They were nonchalant and casual, modest in public. Like something from the pages of a romance novel, Tomoyo once saw them kiss. Gray silhouettes on the other side of a pale green curtain—the bedroom window of his apartment. It was entrancing, and they circled each other, hands on cheeks and shoulders before the thing happened. And with each second that passed, their bodied pressed closer and closer, until there was no space between them and they had to break away. He pushed the hair from her face, she broke away to grab her backpack and maybe they exchanged some kind of secret smile as she tumbled out of the apartment in her hurry home. Sorry I made you wait, she’d said to her best friend, so unlike the girl she’d been in the window.

 

 It all came with high school, Tomoyoposeposed. Thoughts tainted with intimate curiosity. Stolen kisses, fingertips touching under a crowded table. Barely sixteen and flooded with the open doors of the adult world—the world no parent was comfortable to discuss. In the case of Tomoyo’s mother, they simply weren’t discussed. She wasn’t a secretive woman, but for years her daughter had been master of the few secrets she did keep. In scraps and fragments, she’d learned what green eyes in a picture frame meant, learned of her father’s similarities to such things. He wasn’t—Tomoyo suspected—the one her mother had ever truly loved. But rather a replica, a reminder. It was a separate love entirely, or fear, or guilt, that made the woman act the way she did at mention of his name. Slow sips of tea and a thoughtful half-nod to nothing. Tomoyo remembered too little of him to experiment with conversation. And now that so many years had passed, he was never spoken of. Like dust. She was the only proof he’d ever been there at all.

 

 Because of this, thoughts of Sakura were always a breath of new air. This was the second generation of a story that still had yet to be written. She wasn’t entirely unlike her mother. She had her eyes, bright and almost wildly innocent, and her smile—gentler than warm skies.

 

 But where her mother had been elegant, she was sweet. Casual, modern. Not eloquent, but bright. She was the less-Victorian grace, comically clumsy and clueless in her own right. Whether or not she was aware of it, she had been w int into a plan as of yet unknown. Tomoyo sometimes suspected that Sakura’s mother had known more than even she did at present. Knew just how amazing her little girl would grow to become long after her death. Knew of the things she’d see, the things she’d possessed since her months spent tangled in the intrinsic womb, oblivious but sage as all unborn things were thought to be. 

 

 And still, there she was, a world of phantasm, an incredible and unspoken story. She was almost too amazing to belong to such a dnantnant and harmful world. And she was so fiercely d, cd, commonly adored. Her mother, the life that lived and ended before her own had grown, was still swirling in her eyes like the aftermath of ocean waves. 

 

 But that was still her, leaning on Syaoran’s shoulder while staring boredly into the pages of someone else’s history. Giggling from her desk at someone’s joke before class, the prettiest smile in existence.

 

 “It looks scary,” Sakura said. Tomoyo blinked back into reality.

 

 “I bet it is,” Chiharu said anxiously. “The Scarlet Letter—it sounds like a twisted love story, doesn’t it?” She was standing over Sakura’s desk, both of them looking at the same paperback black book. “And scarlet, like blood, you know?” 

 

 Sakura slumped, barely stifling a whimper of disapproval. 

 

 “Actually!” Another voice interjected from somewhere behind them. “It’s about a woman who commits a serious sin, and is forced to…” 

 

 “Here it comes…” Syaoran was murmuring as he dropped into his seat behind them. Tomoyo—from her desk at the side—was flipping through the pages of her own copy for scrof tof truth. 

 

 “…And so for years she has to wear this scarlet letter on her chest to mark what she’s done.” 

 

 “Uh-huh,” Chiharu regarded him with sagely narrow eyes. “And that was what exactly?” 

 

 He pointed anxiously at nothing to emphasize his knowledge (as he called it.) “She started a war. The face that sunk a thousand ships, they called her.” 

 

 Sakura blinked perplexedly. “But wasn’t that Helen of Troy?” 

 

 “It’s just a spin-off of that story. See, back in the days that books like these were written, there was something called a ‘pre-renaissance.’ Peasants would hold contests to see who could recapture history most accurately. They would sit at desks for hours, not allowed to leave their place. And judges would wear these big white wigs—” 

 

 “Y’know, we’re gonna find out just how hard you’re lying when we read this,” Chiharu said. 

 

 Sakura blinked twice. “Wait—you mean none of that was true just now?” 

 

 Yamazaki shrugged precariously and Chiharu nudged him out of focus with her elbow. “Haven’t you learned by now that you’re his favorite target?” 

 

 “But, but…” 

 

 Their voices faded away as Tomoyo watched Etsuya slip soundlessly though the door. He dropped his backpack onto his desk—across the room—and she looked quickly at the book when he caught her staring at him. Thoughts of rain thundered into her mind and she swallowed an imperishable mound in her throat. Piano keys flowed through her like the lingering phantasms of someone else’s memories. Sometimes it didn’t feel that it was happening to her at all, and she couldn’t decide whether or not she wanted to sink into that illusion. 

 

 She pretended to read, and in turn found fragments of the actual story. Hester Prynne and a child she called Pearl. Lust in the earlier years of a sacrilegious century, punishable by public exposure. These were Hawthorne’s ideas on sin she concluded, as she wondered numbly about her own. 

 

 She knew this: His hair felt like feathers, and his hands were always soft in correspondence. But in the late hours of the night, his breath was rough. And for him, she was different than she seemed now: Neair air pulled back, cordial and composed—which she’d learned as a child watching her mother. She was daylight. In love with what she’d never attain, musing at those clueless expressions, filled with thoughts of her: daylight. 

 

 “Morning,” he said to her. When had he gotten so close? His shadow brushed her hair and her blood went fluttering like butterflies. “Good morning,” she sweetly replied, forcing eye-contact. He was so different in these lights, the color of his skin obvious and beige opposed to what she knew best as gray beneath the unblinking moon. But his eyes were the same, and the black-brown way he looked at her: the same.

 

 When he turned away, she was almost relieved, though left with less to admire. Sakura was turning ambitiously though the pages as he greeted the other two girls. Sakura’s response: “So… is it a scary story after all?”

 

 Chiharu said, “Let it go already.” 

 

 

 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 “I think there should be more snowflakes higher up,” Sakura said, gesturing to the empty wall over her head. The auditorium was filled with students, beginning with the high school kids who were mostly standing on ladders and hanging banners from the ceiling, or else painting the designs on banners; then the junior-high kids who were lingering along the edges of the walls, painting the words on the banners to soon be dried and then placed with the others. The elementary school had scattered everywhere, some of them tagging along to the older kids and seeking menial tasks, some of them walking the sidewalks to hang flyers on trees and poles. A few teachers from either grade could be seen, guiding the younger students and keeping them busy mostly. The entire school district had decided to hold this year’s festival in one place, and the noise from the crowd was throwing Syaoran into an irritated daze.

 

 Sakura—unaffected—shifted her weight, squinting at the empty space before her like an artist with a vision. There was a smear of pink paon hon her cheek—three more on her arm, and she was holding a stack of barely-dried paper snowflakes. Most of them had been painted blue, as a look around the room would have confirmed, but she trekked against tradition for what she called a “festive change.”

 

 “Just put them on the wall as high as you can reach.” Syaoran said. The snowflakes he held were pale blue. “There aren’t any ladders free.”

 

 She tucked her bottom lip under her teeth and made a clicking noise with her tongue.

 

 “Pick me up.” She said.

 

 “Huh?”

 

 “You’re taller than me. I can reach higher if you pick me up.”

 

 He shot her a strange look, and she glittered with hope as his eyes narrowed.

 

 “No. You’re clumsy, you’ll make us both fall.”

 

 “Am not,” she interjected. “Have you ever heard of a clumsy cheerleader?”

 

 He flicked her forehead in a gesture of hidden affection. “Dropping a baton on your head five times a week is grace?”

 

 “Hey! I haven’t done that since I was twelve.”

 

 “You did it yesterday.”

 

 She huffed. 

 

 “Fine.” He said, setting the stars on the ground and holding out his hands like a footstep. “But don’t fall.”

 

 Smirking, she wielded a roll of tape between her lips for easy storage and took his offer. She wobbled for the first second in his hold, and then steadied herself by leaning against the wall.

 

 

 “They’re cute.” Etsuya said over his paintbrush. He was sitting on the floor, creating an almost lifelike mural of angels glittering snow over the flawlessly-done festival logo. A hobby of his was collecting books on renaissance art. He was the class-proclaimed artist, though Tomoyo knew his only passion in the world was the piano, and that he would credit his mother for any artistic talent he possessed. 

 

 He must have seen the way Tomoyo was watching the two from across the room. The half-smile she wore surprised even her, and it popped like a soap bubble at his words.

 

 “How long has it been for them?”

 

 “Since fifth grade.” she said, and returned to her own work: painting the letters he drew around. She offered little else to the conversation, as her mind relayed the days where Sakura’s name inspired ten-minute sessions of chatter.

 

 “They’re very lucky.” He said, softly. “To be so in love.”

 

 “Yes.”

 

 If he knew the true story, he wouldn’t have called it luck so much as a well-deserved happiness. He’d traveled a long way, and she’d foughhundhundred battles. Etsuya didn’t know about the teddy bears, the twisting confusion, the long-distance letters and phone calls severed by tight budgets. The battles began for them years ago, while most of the people in the room were still too young to fathom such things, and days like these—full of smirks and pink snowflakes—were precisely what they fought for.

 

 

 

 Sakura lost her balance and fell with a short shriek, only to be caught by his all-too-expecting arms. She’d toppled backwards and he caught her against his chest, windswept. The remaining snowflakes in her hand dropped to the ground, but not before leavinstrestreak of bright pink down the sleeve of Syaoran’s uniform. She was giggling violently, and he stifled an I-told-you-so grunt.

 

 She twisted in his still-firm grasp so that their chests touched (hers fluctuating rapidly with the childish sound on her lips) and her laughter died. Her voice was so soft as she spoke that only he could have heard it, and suddenly he was brushing the hair from her face in slow sweeps.

 

 This was their language, soft and alien to the world around them. She hooked her arms over his shoulders, their foreheads together, and smiled until he returned the gesture.

 

 Two seconds later, they were picking up the snowflakes, and she obligingly placed them only as high as she could manage.

 

 Tomoyo and Etsuya had been watching, holding paintbrushes in winter shades. Her eyes were soft, lips mute. His eyes were stone and soundless, his mouth parted.

 

 “Tomoyo?”

 

 She flinched at the sound.

 

 “You’re jealous.” He said.

 

 “No.” She hummed, graceful as her brushstroke. “No, I’m happy for them.”

 

 This was the truth. Though she loved to watch, she had no desire to belong to what they had. Not exactly.

 

 She was suddenly very aware of Etsuya’s hand on her shoulder, sweeping away her hair. For the third time that minute, she said “No...” But it was a fleeting sound. His fingertips were as wings, jarring the fine hairs on the back of her neck to rise in a wave of cold. Then she closed her eyes in a deliriously long blink and felt the brush slip from her hands, ruining a small corner of their work. He eased his hand between her shoulder-blades like an alluring rhythm. The piper’s song, carrying her away.

 

 Her eyelids could not remove the image of her irises, hazy green when they got so close to his. Sakura would never look at her that way. But she was such a wonderful image, if anything had to haunt her so constantly. 

 

 Those simple gestures could make her do anything. She’d die just for a moment of her skin, to feel her body stretch and retract like hilltops of beige, to push the wispy autumn-leaf hair from her eyes. It was Tomoyo’s secret that she entertained such ideas, and in her own dark moments she pictured the girl beneath his body. He had no face, no presence as she would slide against the mattress, beyond that green bedroom curtain. The subtle parting of her lips, the small cry she must have made. And he would kiss it away from her mouth, cradled in her thighs. She’d surrender to him, desperate and dizzy-eyed. Slow as snowflakes descending to the cotton ground, she would come.

 

 “Tomoyo…”

 

 She nodded to Etsuya’s hopeful touch, barely. His breath was warm on her cheek. Aromatic strawberries shushed through her chest with every long breath she drew, she she was too numb to refuse. Like her mother’s expressions regarding her absent husband, Tomoyo did not know if she could call this guilt, or love.

 

 “Okay,” she whispered this time, soaking in a desire to which she had no rights. “Okay...”

 

 Nobody saw theip oip out of the crowded room.