Cardcaptor Sakura: The New Trials (Wish-luv)

Chapter 53: Yesterday's Letter

Syaoran… Syaoran, can you hear me? Syaoran, I keep repeating your name when I lie awake in the middle of the night, thinking that maybe you will answer, maybe you can hear me, where ever you are.

Syaoran… Do you hear my voice? I am shouting your name in my mind, hoping that you will answer. Syaoran, I want to see you just one more time…

Just one last time.

So answer me, Syaoran…

******

It had been a week since Syaoran had gone missing. At first, Sakura had thought that maybe he had taken off on some trip to clear his head, or that he had fallen ill—or maybe he was just at home, avoiding her. Yet, it did not occur to her, not once, that he might be gone for good. The town was still recuperating from the shock of the plague epidemic, the most sudden and devastating spread of disease in a generation. It was the first time so many people had fallen ill simultaneously. It was also the first time she had feared for people’s lives. There were days that Sakura would take out the deck of Sakura Cards from her desk drawer and stare at the ugly rodent sprawled on the face of the newest Sakura Card, the dark force that had cost her so much to seal. 

Maybe too much.

 Only afterwards did Sakura come to realize how she had brushed nearer to death than she had ever before. Not when she was battling against any dark force, not when she almost fell of a cliff during the camping trip, not when she fell into an ice pond, not when she was fighting against the Phantom did she ever conceive that she was putting her life on the line. Maybe until now, she had not realized the consequences of being the Card Mistress, one of the greatest magicians of the new generation. That was why she was ready to cast away the title now. During this last battle, she had become aware of so many of her deficiencies as Card Mistress. Some how the days passed by since Subaru’s funeral—she thought she wouldn’t be able to go on, but time passed, and she was back to her normal cycle. That was minus her duties as Card Mistress—she had locked away the Sakura Cards in her desk drawer at home. Her body had long since recovered—she was on the whole a healthy girl and there were no physical remnants of her battle against the Plague, except the uneven skin on her palms from where the diamond stone had burnt her. The true scars were deeper, in places that could not be seen.

“It’s weird,” Chiharu remarked to Tomoyo, looking back at Syaoran’s empty seat. “Li-kun never misses this many days of school. Is he ill?”

Tomoyo shook her head to 

indicated

 that she didn’t know as she gazed at Sakura. Sakura might have seemed fine to most of her friends, but she could never hide her true state from her best friend. But Tomoyo felt it in the past days, that Sakura was physically there in the classroom, but her mind was elsewhere. For the first time since Tomoyo had learned of Sakura’s special abilities, she had entertained the possibility that she might truly lose Sakura. In a sense, she felt guilty because up till now, capturing the Clow Cards, battling against the Dark Ones had almost seemed like a game to her; but first with the Phantom and then with the Plague, Tomoyo was beginning to realize this was no child’s play. This was a matter of life and death, sanity and insanity. It had cost Syaoran all his powers and Sakura her laughter. It had been over a month since the battle against the Plague, and not once since then had Tomoyo heard Sakura laugh. And Tomoyo was disturbed to find that no one else noticed—maybe because there was so little humor or joy in anything these days. If Syaoran was here, he would notice. He would also notice that the black uniform blazer and blouse hung looser on Sakura’s frame, and she let her hair hang loosely around her face these days, instead of pulling it back into a pretty clip or ribbon as she usually did. It was as if to hide that her face had lost the joy and innocence in it behind her hair. But Syaoran wasn’t here. Sakura didn’t even realize that Tomoyo was watching her. Instead, she stared at her desk without any change of expression even when the classroom door was yanked open, and Naoko ran into the classroom, out of breath.