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“So, how’s university been going?” Yukito asks.
“Pretty good,” Syaoran responds.
“You’re both graduating soon, right?”
“Yup! We’re both graduating next semester,” Sakura confirms. Then, gesturing to Syaoran, she whispers loudly, “And, he’s been thinking about proposing.”
Her boyfriend immediately reddens. “S-Sakura! Th-that’s supposed to be a secret!”
“From me or from everyone else?” she asks, feigning innocence.
“Well—both!” he splutters.
“Oh, Syao, you know you wear your heart on your sleeve,” she tells him. “Don’t worry, I think it’s cute. And, for your information, my answer is going to be yes.” She pats him on the shoulder reassuringly and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek.
He sighs in defeat, but it’s clear he isn’t actually all that disappointed by what she’s said, all things considered.
Yukito can’t help but laugh. They really are adorable together. Even his own husband can begrudgingly admit it now, after all his years of being in fierce denial about it.
“I’m really glad that you and my brother were able to come with us to Hong Kong,” Sakura says. “We’ve been busy with school, so we haven’t been able to visit you as much as we’ve wanted to.”
“Well, you know, since Toya and I are married now, wouldn’t that make Syaoran-kun’s family my future in-laws too?” Yukito laughs.
The younger boy reddens again, but this time Sakura does as well.
“Okay, okay, I’ll stop teasing you two now,” he laughs. “But seriously, I’d never pass up this opportunity. You’re both important to me too, you know.”
They continue walking, arriving at the front door of the Li family home. Since they were on break, Syaoran’s mom had invited them to come stay with her during their vacation. When asked, she said that Touya and Yukito were allowed to come as well, since she wanted to get to know them better too. Sakura had no doubt that Syaoran's sisters, who were also set to arrive soon, would be more than excited to see all of them.
“Your sisters are going to be here too, right?” Yukito asks.
“Unfortunately,” Syaoran groans. “I apologize in advance for their behavior. I know I’m not looking forward to all the attention. At least they won’t be here for another day or two…”
“I’m sure it won’t be that bad. They seem nice.”
“Oh, it will be. Trust me.” He turns the corner and opens a door. “This is the guest room.”
Yukito nods, enters the room, and puts down the suitcase that he’s carrying.
“Speaking of that, Yukito-san, do you know where my brother went?”
“He said Syaoran-kun’s mother wanted to speak with him. So he should be somewhere around here.”
“I guess we can go get the rest of our stuff while we wait for him then?” she suggests. The other two agree that that’s a good plan. First, they go to Syaoran’s room to put down the luggage that he and Sakura are carrying. Then they start walking back to the front door of the house, but they stop when they hear noise coming from a nearby room.
“That must be where they went,” Yukito says.
“I wonder what they’re talking about,” Sakura wonders. Syaoran hums in agreement. She stops walking to stand by the closed door and eavesdrop, but he keeps walking for a few steps before noticing she stopped, then walks back to her side. Yukito stops as well. He figures that there’s probably no harm in listening in on the conversation.
–
“So, you knew the two would end up together, correct?” Yelan asks.
“I did.”
“ So, ” she continues, staring at him intensely, “If you knew they were going to end up together, why did you spend so much time being hostile towards my son? You knew it would be pointless, did you not?”
Touya can understand now why the brat seems to be so intimidated by his mother. She certainly has an… imposing aura about her. However, he isn’t going to fold to her. He isn’t just going to sit there and let her criticize his actions when he has just as many questions about her own.
“Forgive me for being bothered that they were being involved in all this magic bullshit at such a young age,” he responds, staring right back at her.
Outside the door, Syaoran and Sakura glance at each other worriedly. “Should we stop them? I don’t want them to get into an argument,” Sakura whispers.
“Don’t,” Yukito whispers back. “If it actually turns into an argument, then maybe. But I know that this has been bothering him for a long time. I think it might be best for now to let them talk about it.”
“Then why hasn’t he said anything about it before?” Syaoran asks, concerned.
“He said it was because he thought you might take it as him just wanting to insult your mother because he hates you, or something along those lines,” Yukito answers. He glances at the door again.
Yelan raises an eyebrow at him. “‘Magic bullshit,’ you say?” she repeats back, her tone calm and measured.
He doubles down. “Yes. I think it’s ridiculous they had to be involved in this at all, fate or not. They were literal children. They were too young for this. And your son was far too young to be sent to live by himself in a foreign country. You’re able to foretell the future, so you knew Sakura was going to get the cards, didn’t you? Why did you send your son to a foreign country alone on a mission you knew he was destined to fail?”
“I knew he was going to grow close to Sakura and want to protect her from the imminent danger.”
“So why didn’t you send him over instead with the mission to, say, help her get the cards instead? Didn’t you stop to think about how he might feel when he inevitably failed?”
“The rest of the clan wouldn’t have understood. Besides, he can be stubborn. He wouldn’t have wanted to go live somewhere else to help someone he didn’t know if I didn’t appeal to his competitive side.”
The kid does have a competitive side, and he can certainly be stubborn, that much Touya can agree with for sure. But he can’t agree with her methods, even if she meant well. “Surely there could have been a better way of doing things.”
“Maybe, but someone had to give him a push, and that was the only way I could think of at the time. If no one had interfered or pushed them, they might have never gotten together.”
“That much is true,” Touya snickers. “If no one had ever interfered when he was first in Japan, they probably would have still become friends eventually, but I highly doubt they would have ever done anything about their feelings, realized their feelings in the first place, or even fully accepted that they weren’t rivals anymore. They can both be incredibly dense—”
“I am not dense!” comes a shout from outside the room. Then the door bursts open, revealing a flustered Syaoran, with Sakura and Yukito trying to hold in their laughter behind him.
Touya, however, is not holding back his laughter. “Not only have you been dense the entire time I’ve known you, you’ve also always been incredibly easy to rile up. Never change.”
Yelan is not laughing. “Did I raise you to listen in on other people’s business?”
Syaoran takes a moment to calm himself down. “It’s my business too if you’re talking about me,” he says, frowning. “I don’t really appreciate being talked about as if—as if Sakura and I are just dolls for you to play with. We’re people with feelings too.”
“I know you aren’t—” his mother starts in a stern voice, but stops herself before finishing her sentence, deciding to consider her son’s feelings on the matter, since it did, after all, concern him. “In retrospect, I probably could have handled it better. I’m sorry.”
“You probably could’ve handled it better,” he agrees, “but honestly, I don’t really care about all of that anymore. It’s all in the past now. All that matters to me in the end is that Sakura and I are happy together now.”
“Yeah. We have each other now and that’s what’s important, so please don’t agonize over what could have been done better,” Sakura chimes in. She takes Syaoran’s hand and squeezes it reassuringly. Turning to her brother with a pointed glare, she continues, “And stop picking fights. I need you to get along with my future mother-in-law—”
Gasping, she realizes what she’s said and covers her mouth.
At this, both Touya and Yelan sharply pivot their attention to Syaoran, whose face has started burning again, and who is now desperately searching for some kind of escape or distraction.
“Xiao Lang, you proposed and didn’t even tell me?”
“Oi, brat, I told you to ask me before proposing to her or I wouldn’t give you my blessings!”
“No—no wait—I haven’t done anything yet! I swear! I’m just—apparently really bad at keeping secrets!”
Yukito tries to quietly sneak into a corner to observe from afar. No one seems to have noticed he was also eavesdropping, and he doesn’t want to get involved with it now. Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t work. Touya looks at him as if to say, ‘I can’t believe my own husband was also eavesdropping on my conversation.’ Yukito shoots him back an apologetic glance, and Touya rolls his eyes but seems to forgive him, no longer looking as betrayed.
To everyone’s surprise, the matriarch of the Li clan actually lets out a laugh. “You do tend to wear your heart on your sleeve.”
Syaoran groans defeatedly and covers his face with his free hand.
–
Syaoran is sorting through his clothes when he feels a force fall into him from behind. He knows immediately from the familiar scent that it’s his girlfriend. She wraps her arms around him and he finally turns to look at her and give her the attention she wants.
“Sakura?”
“’M sorry, Syao. I didn’t mean to tell everyone you were gonna propose. I know you said it was supposed to be a secret…” she says, burying her face in his shoulder.
He chuckles and puts a hand on her head, ruffling her hair a little. “It’s fine, they would have figured it out soon enough anyway. I really have always been bad at hiding my true emotions, even when I was purposefully trying to. I mean, a few weeks ago, I ran into your brother at the store. He immediately pulled me over as soon as he saw me, and told me that I had to tell him when I was going to propose, so he could be ready to give me his blessings, and if I didn’t, then he wasn’t going to. I thought at the time that he was just trying to be intimidating, but in retrospect, he definitely already knew something was up.”
“That sounds like something he’d do,” she laughs.
“Just make sure you don’t mention it to my sisters when they get here, or they really won’t leave us alone the entire time. I can imagine it now.” He shudders.
“I’ll try my best, but forgive me if it slips out by accident. I just get really excited when I think about it…”
She tightens her arms around him. He smiles at her and rests his head on top of hers.
–
“Yuki, how long were you listening in on the conversation?”
“A while,” he admits. “They actually wanted to step in sooner, but I told them to hold off on it because I know you’ve been mulling over this stuff for a while, and I didn’t want to interrupt you when you finally had the opportunity to air out your frustrations. I was planning on intervening if an actual argument broke out, though.”
Touya puts his hand on top of his husband’s head and ruffles his hair, sufficiently making a mess of it. “You’re too kind. You could do with being a little mean sometimes, you know,” he teases. Despite his tone, he looks at his husband with nothing but love and adoration afterwards.
“And you could do with being a little nicer to Syaoran-kun,” Yukito responds, smirking. “I know it’s fun for you to rile him up, but you should probably tone it down a little.”
“Hey, that’s not fair. I didn’t even try to do it thist time! I didn’t know he was there. It’s not my fault he’s so easy to rile up.”
“That may be true, but think about it like this. If you do it too much, then Sakura-chan will probably not be happy with you, and I know you wouldn’t want that. Not to mention, he is your future brother-in-law. I’ve known for a long time that you already think of him as family anyway.”
Touya huffs. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”