STANDARD DISCLAIMERS: I do not claim Card Captor Sakura to be my own creation. Go figure.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: School vacation is boring me comatose. So, what am I to do? I have to switch into a fanfic-making mood, that's what. In case you forgot, this is a Yamazaki-Chiharu fic. I have been wanting to create something for this characters, but my overworked mind, would simply not let me [or maybe, I am just too lazy]. I know I am boring you too, but you would be so carefully reminded that to read this fic, you would have to have high-tolerance for mush. May luck be with you.
Clarifications of who's who and what's what can be found below, in case you are curious.
Entire fic is done in the POV of... Naoko. Hmmm... quite unique isn't it?
Yamazaki, et. al.
Carelle
No one was surprised when Yamazaki-kun became an actor--he's always been a ham. Put a butter knife in his hand and her turns into Cyrano de Bergerac, introduce him to a girl named Maria, and he immediately drops down to his knees, and bursts into a song. Dining with him is a constant struggle to keep him from dancing on the table. He grabs the tablecloth to make a cape for Count Dracula, and does the climactic scene from Oedipus Rex with a pair of toothpicks. He cannot resist the urge to do love scenes with broomsticks and electric fans (much to Sakura-chan and Li-kun's discomfort), or pass a second-story window without sighing for Juliet. And most often than not, his efforts are rewarded by a loud smack from a wooden mallet yielded by the sadist (next to Tomoyo-chan, of course), Chiharu-chan.
Hmm, add to that his hobby of telling stories (Chiharu-chan would like to call these, lies, of course), and what would that make up?
Which is not to say that Yamazaki-kun is frivolous, or a silly show-off. Sure, he does a lot of loony things, like playing Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene in the middle of dissecting a frog in Zoology class, which merited him as always, a good head pounding. Honestly, that mallet is very deadly. But he does these things for a reason. He does it because the world is a crazy place, and you have to be crazy to be sane.
Right.
Right after college, Yamazaki-kun got a job with a repertory company. The pay was lousy, but he loved it. He started out doing fourth-banana parts, but he soon graduated to lead roles because he was such a good actor.
Bah, wait till they see how a good raconteur he was. Cue in lots of winking.
Oh, and did I tell you that Chiharu-chan made it also in the repertory company? Yamazaki does not know whether to be thankful or not.
Maybe "actor" isn't the right word; the one that comes to mind is "chameleon." Yamazaki-kun didn't play the character--he became the character. I know I sound like I'm putting you on, but why would I do that when I do not even know you? You can even ask the others. Sometimes, we meet at Saturdays in this nearby cafe, and every time, we weren't sure who was dropping by for a few frappucinoes. Who Yamazaki-kun was coming as, I mean. Could be anyone from a South American revolutionary to a Japanese emperor. It was uncanny. We never knew what to expect. Or whom.
Yamazaki got his first major role at the same time I got my first regular job interviewing famous people for a weekly magazine. "Famous people" as in movie stars, pop stars etc. It wasn't exactly the kind of writing I wanted to do, but it was more attractive than starvation. Okay, so I am rationalizing. The best thing about the job was that I got invited everywhere, which was fine because at celebrity parties, you meet all sorts of people who'd look great on paper.
Anyway, I had this BRILLIANT idea. Why not bring Yamazaki-kun and Chiharu-chan to one of those parties and introduce them to some movie producers? They might impress some bigshot into putting them under contract. I have this habit, see, of looking after my friends, even if they don't need looking after.
The party was held at this big movie producer's mansion. I got my good dress out of my mothball-infested cabinet and phoned them--we agreed to meet at the party after rehearsals. I thought Yamazaki-kun's voice sounded a bit strange, but I let it go. It wasn't until he arrived, with a furious Chiharu on tow, that I realized my mistake: I hadn't asked him what part he was playing.
Yamazaki-kun's character was a hippie. And as Chiharu-chan wanted to melt in shame, I wanted to keel over right on the spot. I think I owe you a most detailed description.
He wore long hair, a PINK undershirt, bell-bottomed jeans, leather sandals, and a flower behind one ear.
Oh my goodness.
I tried to salvage as much of the evening as I could. I introduced Yamazaki-kun and Chiharu-chan to a famous movie actress whom they admired. He looked at her with this glazed expression and said, "Kaoru who?" The famous movie actress gave him a polite, frozen smile and began to move off, but he followed her, yelling "KAORU WHO?!", with a very dangerously looking Chiharu latched on his collar, trying to maintain her composure.
I dragged them to a corner and we, Chiharu-chan and I, left him propped against a wall. Then, we went to the buffet table and heaped three plates with chow. When we returned to the corner he was clutching at his throat, eyes wide with terror.
"I can't breathe!" he whispered hoarsely. He really was turning blue
Chiharu-chan immediately put the plates of food down and went over him.
"Relax," she told him calmly, even if she was frantic. "Inhale--exhale--inhale--exhale--" Fortunately he resumed breathing. He slumped against the wall and clasped his hands together. I had begun emptying my plate when Yamazaki-kun shrieked and shoved his clasped hands under my nose.
"My hands! I can't get them loose!"
A loud smack! from Chiharu-chan, and he instantly behaved.
After that, I made it a point to know what part Yamazaki-kun was playing. I dread the day when he gets to play an ax murderer, or a politician.
It was late in June of that same year, Rika-chan's wedding, to be exact, that Yamazaki-kun broke the news to us, on a particularly gloomy night. The wedding had long been done, and we were just thawing our mangled nerves in the same old cafe still clad in our formal attires. Same company. Sakura-chan, Li-kun, Tomoyo-chan, Hiiragizawa-kun, Chiharu-chan, and Yamazaki-kun. Sakura-chan is planning on establishing her own cafe, after finishing a degree on Restaurant Management. How she survived a Math-ruled course, when it is her worst fear, subject-wise, is beyond me. Maybe it is just her love for food and cooking. Her accomplice in this business, Li-kun. I wouldn't be surprised. Tomoyo-chan is preparing to take the role in the Daidouji Co. from her mother. Hiiragizawa-kun... I do not even want to think why he preferred to get a job to suffice his basic needs. I mean, the man lives in a MANSION already! Since he came back from England a year ago, he's already had a job secured for him. Why he came back here and HOW did he get a job so easily is one mystery I would not like to delve into. Yamazaki-kun and Chiharu-chan, well, you know about them.
So, they are all pretty happy about the way their careers are going. I just had to be the exception from the rule. I was working on a novel in my spare time, but I got writer's block from thinking up of new concepts about toilet paper. What else can you do with toilet paper, anyway? You roll it, you squeeze it, you take it to the ballgame to throw at the referee...
So all of us are in a mangled, tired mood, with weather outside to match, and if you put seven tired people together and fill them up with caffeine, you're bound to have lots of fun. Yamazaki-kun was unusually quiet that night--he looked a little pale, as I recall--but we didn't pay much attention to him. We figured he was playing a quiet person-- a monk or something. We were having a heated argument over whether the third Lord of the Rings movie measured up to the first two when Yamazaki-kun started to tell us, but we were too busy bickering to hear him. After five minutes of attempting to break into the conversation, Yamazaki-kun started to do something concrete. He stood up picked up his espresso-filled mug and dumped its contents over his head.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," he started gravely, his hair dripping with taupe espresso, "I'm in love."
We literally gaped.
When Yamazaki-kun fell in love, he did not merely fall. He plummeted. He was the worst kind of lovesick person, the kind who can't eat, who can't sleep, and went around feeling tragic. He went into raptures every time she spoke to him, even if it was only to ask for change for the payphone. He acted as if no one had ever felt the way he did. He was really, totally, cataclysmically in love. He was a goner.
"Pull yourself together," Hiiragizawa-kun told him. "Show a little dignity."
Yamazaki-kun slowly sat down. "Where she's concerned I have no dignity. I am as nothing. I am as less than a worm."
Chiharu-chan winced. "I'm going to be sick." She said bitterly.
"It's love," Yamazaki-kun said. "Love makes you corny. Love turns you into a sentimental idiot."
"You, for instance," I said. "Why don't you tell her?"
"Tell her what?"
"That you're nuts about her," Sakura-chan answered.
He sighed melodramatically, then shook his head. Slowly. "I can't. I don't deserve her. I don't deserve to know her. I'm not fit to inhabit the same planet she's in," he finished, looking sideways at Chiharu-chan, looking all messed up.
Li-kun muttered something in Chinese which made Sakura-chan frown and Hiiragizawa-kun cough. It must be something that we all do not want to hear at these kinds of situations.
"She'll despise me," Yamazaki-kun continued. "She'll laugh in my face, and I won't blame her."
"Why don't you kill yourself and spare us this romantic crap?" Li-kun suggested.
"Yes," said Yamazaki-kun. "I'll eat razor blades."
"Too messy," Tomoyo-chan said.
"Then I'll hang myself."
"Your eyes will pop out, your tongue will hang out, and you'll look generally disgusting," explained Hiiragizawa-kun.
"It doesn't matter," Yamazaki-kun sighed. "She won't come to my funeral anyway."
We didn't think much of it at first. Yamazaki-kun always fell in love with his leading ladies--their characters, rather--it was a necessary element in his metamorphoses. It didn't matter if the leading lady had to bury her wrinkles under pancake make-up or hitch her corset strings to a team of horses so she could fit into her costume; in his eyes she was transfigured. His adoration lasted exactly four weeks--the regular run of the play--after which it was discarded along with wads of tissue paper he used to wipe his make-up off. He went back to being Yamazaki-kun, and the actress in question would go back to being, "Oh, her? She's in the company. A fine actress." His first few partners took it badly; it was as if he'd ditched them, when there was nothing going on in the first place. But they got used to it eventually, and Yamazaki-kun was spared the hysterics and the "How-could-you-do-this-to-me's."
Chiharu-chan looked distractedly at her watch. "It is getting late, I think I need to go," she slowly stood up.
"Oh, okay. Be careful," Sakura-chan nodded.
"You too. All of you," Chiharu-chan half-smiled.
It was then that Yamazaki-kun looked up, looking very, very somber. "Go and rest, dear Chiharu-chan."
"Um... yes, I will."
Chiharu-chan quickly made an exit, walking to the glass door of the cafe, the chimes tingling softly as she opened and closed the door behind her.
"Ne, Yamazaki-kun, who is the lucky," I started asking but heard Li-kun's discreet snort and all together stopped while I gave him a glare that would make Chiharu-chan proud. "As I was saying, who is the FORTUNATE girl anyway?"
All of us looked expectantly, half-expecting him to say, "It... it is Cleopatra." Or something like, "Chiharu-chan captured my heart..." and so on.
Yamazaki-kun sighed for the nth time this evening. "I didn't know how it happened. It just did. One day, while rehearsing our lines for Camelot, I just realized that I love her... It hit me. Hard. Now knowing that I've loved her for the longest time without me knowing it," he stopped, staring outside the palane window mirror.
"Yamazaki-kun, you haven't exactly answered my question," I cleared my throat.
"And Camelot is finished SIX weeks ago, Yamazaki. It is past your play run," Li-kun pointed out.
He looked at me first then dragged his gaze to each one of us.
"It is Chiharu-chan," he replied softly, a small smile lingering his lips.
We literally gaped. For the second time.
Why, I should've known...
"WHO?!" Li-kun yelled.
Sakura-chan scowled. "Must you be so loud Syaoran-kun?"
"But... but..."
"But what, Li-kun?" Tomoyo-chan smiled. "I think you've heard him quite perfectly. He said it is Chiharu-chan."
"That is assuming that you haven't gone deaf from all the espresso you're drinking," Hiiragizawa-kun looked at the cup Li-kun is holding. That, apparently, is his third cup for the night.
"Hoe? Can caffeine cause deafness?" Sakura-chan asked.
"Of course not, Sakura-chan," Tomoyo-chan explained, her look obviously shows she was enjoying her friend's naivety.
"Oh."
"You are so lucky that she already left or else you would be so dead," Li-kun emphasized.
"Li-kun..."
"I do not care," came Yamazaki-kun's quiet response.
So... apparently, Chiharu-chan was the only exception to Yamazaki-kun's short-lived affection for his leading ladies. That explains why six weeks after Camelot closed, he was still singing "If Ever I Would Leave You". Obviously, Yamazaki-kun was now stricken. For all the things happening to him now weren't in his script.
Three months have passed and he still hasn't told Chiharu-chan anything yet. They went on like before. Yamazaki-kun playing his dramatics and spurting out occasional lies with Chiharu-chan mercilessly beating him to a pulp. We thought that perhaps, this was Yamazaki-kun's way of feeling tragic. Being beaten to a pulp.
Chiharu-chan didn't seem to notice anything though.
Perhaps, that was because Yamazaki-kun's such a good actor. He could've fooled anyone but himself.
In that same month of November I got a promotion, and I blew the corresponding salary raise on a celebration. I had several people to my place--an old storeroom euphemistically termed "studio apartment"--and we sat around drinking California wine and discussing dreams. Black and white and colored dreams, to be specific. Li-kun who dream in color was about to throttle a very smug looking Hiiragizawa-kun, who dreamed in black and white, when the bell rang. It was Yamazaki-kun, together with Chiharu-chan. I quickly let them in as a cold winter breeze ran past making Chiharu-chan shiver in the cold.
Once we're inside and I had them comfortably seated, Yamazaki-kun looked at us, his smile literally bisecting his face.
"Well?" he said as I poured out drinks.
"Great. Try not to drool on her furniture. She paid for it through the wonders of toilet paper," said Hiiragizawa-kun.
I smiled in assent while nodding my head to emphasize my message. Destroy anything and you may kiss your life goodbye.
He seemed to behave well enough, I didn't have the time to observe. Things began to get hilarious around midnight: Hiiragizawa-kun and Li-kun started an insult-fest, with Hiiragizawa-kun emerging as the victor of course, and Li-kun ending up trying to juggle empty wine bottles as a consequence of his loss, and Tomoyo-chan, much to someone's delight did a professional-looking striptease.
"Why, you don't look so well, Eriol-kun," Tomoyo-chan noticed, still clad in her um... remaining clothing.
Hiiragizawa-kun gulped. "I'm surprised my eyes didn't fall out."
It was 3 a.m. when the party broke up. At 4:30 I was sleeping on the sofa where I'd passed out, when the doorbell rang. I ignored it. It rang again, this time for a full minute. I got off the sofa and staggered to the door, picking up my hair ribbon from the floor so I could strangle my visitor with it.
It was Yamazaki-kun. He looked stricken. His face was green and mottled. His shoulders drooped.
"Go away," I whined. He came in anyway.
"She turned me down," he said in a monotone.
"Well, ask her again next week. Next month. Tomorrow."
"I won't be alive then."
I was drunk, tired, and sleepy. I was not in the mood for partial revelations.
"If you commit suicide I'll kill you," I muttered.
"No... you can't do that. You can't un-kill me then kill me again," he sulked.
"I know. So, what happened?"
I gathered from his barely coherent monologue that he'd driven her home. Her parents were asleep; she invited him in for tea. When she was pouring the tea, he'd blurted it out.
"I love you." No preliminaries. Very crude.
She put the teapot down, very slowly.
"I love you," he repeated, in case she hadn't heard.
She didn't say anything, just stared at him, a small smile gracing her lips.
"This is completely new to me," he'd babbled on. "I've never been so... in love with anybody."
There was a long queasy silence.
"I... like you a lot," she began. His guts shriveled. This was not how his script was written. She was supposed to swoon and fall into his arms, then they'd get married and have kids. Many kids. "But I don't understand you," she'd said. "You're so different. I don't know if you're you or just a part you're playing."
"Oh, this is me," he assured her.
"If I fall in love," she said, "I'd like to know who I'm in love with."
"What'll I do?" Yamazaki-kun wailed. I could hear him, vaguely, but I was too sleepy to tell him I had no idea.
Yamazaki-kun didn't hurl himself off a cliff or plug his wet nose into a socket, but for a couple of weeks he looked as if Godzilla had slugged him. Fortunately, rehearsals for his next play began, and it was not a love story.
We still go to the cafe quite often, but now the attendance was irregular. Sometimes we were all there (just imagine the tension); more often we were two or three. We all had things to do or rehearsals to attend or persons to take to dinner, as was Hiiragizawa-kun and Tomoyo-chan, or in my case, a novel to write. I once waited and none of them showed up. I had a Mochaccino and a Coffee Crumble Cake, then I went home. We were gradually... disbanding--it was a sign of age. Pretty soon there'd be weddings, then diapers, then nursery school. Time passes so quickly. One minute we were at high school and then college worrying about The Future, and now we were up to our ears in it.
This story should be finished by now, except that something else happened and it's integral to the plot. In May, the following year the company put on Private Lives by Noel Coward. Private Lives, in case you haven't seen it, is a comedy about this divorced couple who get back together, which is really very nice except that it happens while they're on their respective honeymoons. With other people. Tsk. tsk. The couple's names are Elyot and Amanda. Yamazaki-kun played Elyot, which is to say that for four weeks he was an English gentleman. I won't tell you who was playing Amanda, but you should get it on your first try.
The company doesn't charge too much for these tickets, but if you were obliged to watch every play, like if one of the actors or actresses or maybe both are your old, old friends, it adds up to quite a sum. However you could attend dress rehearsals for nothing. Dress rehearsals are exactly like regular performances, except that the director occasionally leaps onstage and heaps verbal abuse on the cast and crew.
The night before Private Lives opened, Sakura-chan, Tomoyo-chan, Rika-chan, Li-kun, Hiiragizawa-kun, Terada-sensei (Aren't they quite a mouthful to say?), and I were sitting in the third row, armed with bags of potato chips and wrapped in sweaters because the company believed in keeping Broadway conditions, including temperatures.
"Sakura, what are you doing with that brat?!" A voice boomed behind us.
"Onii-chan! What are you doing here?" Sakura-chan frowned.
"Ensuring your safety. I had doubts, ok? Now, get up here and stay away from that gaki!"
"Touya... stop. The rehearsals are about to start." Tsukishiro-san patted his friend's back. "Excuse him, he's been this... volatile ever since the day started."
"Yuki!"
"Let us just watch, ok?" Tsukishiro-san smiled a saccharine smile. Too sweet, it's almost scary.
It looks like Kinomoto-san got the message though. He clamped his mouth shut and plopped down his seat.
"I don't get it," said Hiiragizawa-kun, halfway through Act One.
"What?" Tomoyo-chan asked, eyes fixed on the stage.
"It's against the laws of probability. Why do they remarry simultaneously, then meet on their honeymoon, then stay at the same hotel, in adjacent suites?"
"Because," Tomoyo-chan said through gritted teeth, "if they didn't, there wouldn't be a play. Now, be a dear and shut up and watch."
"Of course, Daidouji-san."
"Wait, you have a point there, Hiiragizawa, but--" said Li-kun.
My eyebrows twitched.
"Don't be an ass," Kinomoto-san hissed from the row above us.
"I resent that."
"Will you both shut up!" Sakura-chan huffed.
A collective gasp.
However, Li-kun and Kinomoto-san glared at each other, then leaned back in their seats just as Elyot/Yamazaki-kun and Amanda/you-know-who started bickering.
Elyot: You've upset everything as usual.
Amanda: I've upset everything! What about you!
Elyot: Ever since the first moment I was unlucky enough to set eyes on you my life has been insupportable.
Amanda: Oh, do shut up, there's no sense in going on like this.
Elyot: Nothing's any use. There's no escape ever.
And then... something happened. For the first time in his career, Yamazaki-kun stopped being his character and became... himself.
Yamazaki-kun: For months I've been trying to get you out of my system but nothing works! You think it's easy for me to working in the same company? To be in the same room with you? You have no idea what a great actor I am! I pretend you're just another girl, when the truth is you're my personal curse!
Hiiragizawa-kun choked on a potato chip. Li-kun fell off his seat, and the rest? Our jaws hit the floor. Onstage Chiharu-chan stood transfixed while Yamazaki-kun continued his tirade, embellishing his speech with wild gestures. The director caught on that this was not part of the play and she leapt onstage, screaming, and then the stage manager started screaming, then the prompter shot out of the pit, then the crew went berserk, then the audience started booing the director, then pandemonium erupted in the theater.
"I love you!" Yamazaki-kun roared, pulling Chiharu-chan into his arms and kissing her, then the audience was on its feet, cheering, and we were yelling so loud the room shook.
We don't see each other much these days. Too busy. Not that we're not buddies anymore; it's just that we've learned we don't have to see each other often to know that we're comrades, allies, friends.
Yamazaki-kun is playing Romeo this season. He doesn't even have to play someone crazed in love, he is crazed with love. Chiharu-chan decided to go to law school, and is doing very well, I hear, although it must be disconcerting to have a boyfriend who greets you in public with "But love! What light from yonder window breaks!" instead of a "Hi."
I've quit the toilet paper account, the agency, and all forms of hack work. I'm actually finishing my novel. It's about this guy who makes stained glass windows, then finding one of his creations, a girl, spring with life (What would you expect from me anyway?), much like Pygmalion and Galatea. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a chapter to write.
Exeunt narrator. Curtain, please.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Did you enjoy that? I was hoping you did. Anyways, on to the clarifications of who's who and what's what in the fic:
Cyrano de Bergerac = French soldier, satirist, and dramatist, whose life has been the basis of many romantic but unhistorical legends.
Oedipus Rex = Also termed as Oedipus the King. A play by the Greek playwright (also handsome, as our English book so carefully emphasized), Sophocles.
Private Lives by Noel Coward = You basically know the outline of Private Lives. Now for he author: English actor, dramatist, & songwriter; wrote witty plays "Hay Fever" 1925, "Private Lives" 1930, "Blithe Spirit" 1941, autobiographies "Present Indicative" 1937, "Future Indefinite" 1954
Pygmalion and Galatea = Greek mythology. Pygmalion, a sculptor. Galatea, his sculpture. Galatea sprung to life. Go figure.
Questions, suggestions, fanfic ideas (I incline on the ExT side or any other alternate pairings, Kaho not included in the offer), constructive criticisms, death threats, and the like can be sent on the email address provided on the user info file.
'Tis the season for you to review.