Celestial Senshi

Volume 1 -
The Reawakening of the Legends

Chapter VI

Two weeks went by since the flower-viewing picnic, gosips and romors seemed to be everywhere, yet they were all mainly focused on a few different groups of people in the school. First of all, being Sakura and the gang; then another group from the first grade, Shinji Kamizaki (神崎　慎冶) and his group; also this other group, with the name Celeste being mentioned very often; then there are another two groups from the third grade, which the seemingly ‘leaders’ were known to be really cute, Reii Kumotsuki (雲月　霊威) and Tsurugi Shinogawa (凌川　剣), they seemed to be best friends.
          The city seemed to also have its own characters-in-costumes. The three groups seemed to be talked about very offen in school, for there are no hotter hunks to be found anywhere. They are known as the Celestial Seiryuu,  Celestial Byakko and Celestial Genbu.
          One Wednesday after school, Sakura went to her locker to take out her notebooks for studying, for she was not planning on going to school the next day due to her high tempertures. The locker room is located directly in between the Clock Arch and the Starlight Fountain which is in the center of the school (it is in the same building as the assembly hall – just directly under the hall – block A building. If the person was to enter the school to go to the classrooms, the first place they would pass is the block A building, so it would be easy access for the students to organize their books first thing in the morning).
          As she opened her locker door, a note fell out; after she read it, she walked out through the side door to the left and ran straight toward the direction of the science labs which is situated to the west of the fountain. Without realizing, the piece of paper slipped out and fell to the floor. All the while, she was been watched by a person standing in the shadows, whose drawn to her due to the strong powers that emitted from her.
          On the paper it wrote:–
          ‘Come to the grape vineyard behind the science labs after school, I’ll be waiting for you. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, its just that I have your precious little diary, even though there’s a lock, it won’t take me long to open. See ya then~
                                                                                                                    Celeste ’

Sakura is very concerned about that diary, for it holds a secret that she don’t want anyone to know, or to see; as she rushed out, the young man came out of the shadows and picked up the paper. He also took a glance at it and walked toward the direction that Sakura was heading.
          It was Shinji; that day was one of those rare times that he was alone. It was late; the sun was setting, as he slowly walked towards the science labs, he stood with his back leaning on one of the two side walls of the science labs and listened quietly.
          “Where’s my diary,” was the first thing that Sakura demanded to know. She seemed very out of breath.
          “You’re a very nice person to get to know,” the girl said sarcastically. It was the same tangerine-haired girl who was clinging onto the weirdo, the other day in the park.
          “Well, where is it,” she panted.
          Celeste threw over the diary, “It was very attempting with the lock on,” she said, “you arrived about half a second before I was going to open it.”
          “How did you get hold of it?” Sakura asked.
          “Haven’t you heard about me yet? I’m pretty famous around the campus, and the name’s Celeste, Celeste Adela. You’d better not forget it, ’cause you need the info,” she said, “I can get anything I want without breaking a sweat.” She paused for a while, as she walked slowly around Sakura, studying her, “I heard you are studying the art of self defense in this school.”
          “That’s right, Martial Arts,” answered Sakura, totally lost – just like her, always being lost.
          “I just wanted to tell you that if you were to fight against me this instant, you wouldn’t stand a chance, why don’t you just be as smart as everyone says you are and waste your time on something else.”
          “Are you scared of fighting me so badly that you need to eliminate your competition before you get to them?” Sakura raised an eyebrow, finally got her breathing back to normal.
          “Don’t push your luck,” Celeste warned. “Besides, with your body condition, can you even last five minutes with the training and the practices?”
          Sakura laughed, “Because I’m not good at it, that’s why I want to learn, isn’t school built for learning? Besides, results are not the important part, the effort you put in to get there are the fun part and the results are just rewards of what you did. We are old enough not to live our lives based on rewards, but on hard work and exploring ourselves, even work ourselves to the limit, are we not?”
          Celeste was silenced for a while, but when she spoke again; she was vicious, “That’s it, I didn’t call you out here to give me a lecture, I am here to warn you so that you won’t end up being sent to the hospital, but I guess I have to show you this the hard way.”
          As soon as she finished her final word, Celeste launched her attack. She ran toward Sakura and readied her fist for a blow. Sakura also readied her steps so that she could jump out of the way and avoid the attack, but suddenly a shadowed figure jumped in front of Sakura and attempted to kick the fist away. Celeste saw it coming, jumped and flipped to one side to avoid the attack.
          Her face was full of anger until she saw who it was, “Shinji-kun, what are you doing here?” she asked in an innocent and sweet voice – which is totally different to what her tone was a few seconds ago.
          “I found this note near my locker, I found it interesting, so I just thought to come here and check out what’s going on,” he said jokingly.
          Celeste recognized the note immediately and scowled at Sakura, but soon returned her focus back on Shinji, “Oh that note, yes, I found this girl’s diary,” she laughed nervously, “I just thought that I should return it to her, and… um…”
          He smiled then turned to face Sakura, and played dumb, “Hey, you’re the girl I saw last time in the park, are you two friends? C’mon, Celeste, introduce us properly.”
          “Well, the thing is, I don’t really know her that well,” said Celeste, with a huge sweat drop on her head.
          Since now the fight was over, Sakura didn’t like being around Celeste, especially when currently the topic had changed its focus from Celeste to her, and of course, the presence of Shinji made her really uncomfortable. “I just remembered that I had something to do, I’d better go now and leave you two alone,” said Sakura, and she walked away, as she felt some strange vibes from both Shinji and Celeste.
          Shinji looked over at Celeste and smiled, “Well, see ya,” he said, then turned and decided to chase after Sakura, but after he turned the first corner, he saw that she had already disappeared without a trace. He was a little confused, but didn’t give it much of a thought as he walked away.
          When he passed the Clock Arch, he saw a figure leaning on the main gates, exhausted. Shinji took a look at the giant clock above his head – it was just a little past 6 o’clock. He thought it was a little too early to go home (is this guy normal? 6 o’clock isn’t very early at all, it’ll be dark soon…) and wanted to wander around for a bit, before he goes to get some dinner, so he decided to go up to the figure and offer to take that person home, and maybe even flirt with her if the person was a girl.
          As he went closer to it, he realized that the figure was Sakura. “Hey, you’re the girl from before; are you alright? You don’t look too good,” he said suddenly as he approached her from behind.
          Sakura jumped, and stared at him, then looked down and said in a soft voice, “I’m fine.” Leave me alone; go away, she thought to herself.
          “Can you walk home on your own?”
          “Yeah, I’ll be fine in a minute.” Actually, she’s not fine at all, because of Celeste’s prank, her temperature had risen to 41°C and she was so dizzy that it seemed hard for her to tell the difference between up and down, now.
          “C’mon, let’s go,” he said as he looked around, and grabbed her hand.
          Sakura quickly shook him off, and blushed as he stared at her. She was so weak that excess movements seemed impossible. She was actually planning on that after a short rest, she should be able to walk home.
          Shinji went to touch her forehead, but before he reached her, he could feel the heat from inches away, and took his hand back, then asked, “Where do you live? I’ll take you home.”
          “Huh?” Sakura stared at him in confusion, by the sudden question.
          “Tell me where you live,” he repeated again, “you’re burning up, I’ll take you home,” he said, “carry you home if I have to.”
          “We’ve just met and you want to take me home?” she said, “Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to go with strangers?” she tried to walk off.
          Because her head was a mess, and she didn’t watch where she was going, not to mention her legs felt like jelly, Sakura tripped and fell. Luckily Shinji was nearby and grabbed her.
          He didn’t put her down, though, instead, he carried her up and said, “Since you wouldn’t tell me where you live, and gave me a bunch of weird excuses; guess I’ll have to take you to my place, so you can take some medicine and get a good rest as soon as possible. Guess really you are burning up, since you aren’t even talking normally,” he mumbled.
          She tried to struggle, “I am talking normally; you’re the weirdo…” she complained, “Let me down…” but found that she was way too weak to do anything in Shinji’s strong arms. He was warm and comfortable, Sakura soon fell asleep.
          When she woke up, she found that she was on the ground floor of her apartment building. The sky is now completely dark, and the moon and the stars had come out. She kept silent as Shinji took her up to the top floor on the elevator. When they got out, they stopped at the door right opposite of Sakura’s place (note: each floor only has two apartment suits).
          On the top floor of Sakura’s apartment building, there’s an elevator on one end of the corridor and a set of stair cases on the other, and two doors toward the elevator side. Sakura had always wondered who had been her neighbor; she had no idea until that moment.
          Shinji saw that she had woken up, so he set her down, leaning against the corridor wall. Sakura tried to tell him that her place was just right opposite of his, and that she can go home and take a rest herself, but as she opened her mouth, she found that her throat was very swollen as well as being very sore, and that she had also lost her voice completely.
          The door opened and Shinji took her in. They passed through the entrance hall which ended with a path to the right to go to the living room; they turned left and went upstairs. On the upper floor, the first place they came across was the common room to the right, but they went straight to the last room on the left, which was Shinji’s bedroom. Shinji laid her down in his huge king sized bed and went to get her some medicine.
          He gave her a weird looking tablet that tastes even weirder – a little sweet and a little sour. Sakura chewed it down and soon fell asleep; she didn’t wake up even once during the whole night, yet Shinji did try his best to feed her food and water with a tiny little spoon and a straw.
          He was exhausted after finishing off all the paper works he had got here and there, and spent his night on the common room couch (note: unlike Sakura, he didn’t have a guest room since he didn’t think he would have guests sleeping over and he needed a room for training the art of fighting – martial arts).
          The next morning when Shinji woke up again, he went to his room to check up on Sakura, but to his surprise, she was gone. So he took a shower and went downstairs to see if there’s anything in his fridge that he can eat; but again, to his astonishment, he found that all the breakfast had already been prepared on the small eating table in the kitchen.
          “I made us pancakes for breakfast this morning,” she smiled, as she finished laying out the forks and the knives, “hope you like them.”
          “You are the girl I found yesterday, aren’t you?” he asked, thinking, what a difference she was comparing to yesterday! Sakura didn’t answer back, just smiled.
          They sat down and ate their meal. It was when Sakura was cleaning the table that Shinji realized that something wasn’t right.
          “I had eggs in my fridge?” he asked suddenly, “And flour in the cupboard?”
          “Nope, apart from all the different drinks you’ve got in your fridge, some rotten apple which I threw away, some carrots and some tomatoes, it is totally – empty,” Sakura answered. “I wonder how you ate,” she mumbled.
          “Do shops open this early in the mornings?” he continued asking.
          “I don’t know, it should, though, why do you ask?”
          “Then where did you get the eggs and the flour from, since you said you made them,” he took a drink of his coffee.
          Sakura smiled and said, “Actually, you know, we are neighbors, so I made it at my place – the door opposite from you.”
          Shinji was so stunned that he choked on his coffee, and spilled the rest of it. Sakura laughed as he coughed. “WHAAAAAAAT?!” he finally yelled when he could breathe properly again.

After the mess was cleaned, Shinji looked at his clock. It was already 7, so they packed their bags and went down stairs.
          Before they set off, Sakura remembered her manners, even though he’s a weirdo, he still helped her, since if it wasn’t for him, she might’ve spent the night outside the school gate. She said, “Sorry to have caused you so much trouble last night, you even had to sleep on the couch, so…”
          “Oh it was no trouble at all, in fact, you are welcome to stay here forever if you want,” he went closer to her, “if you don’t want me to sleep on the couch, I wouldn’t mind sleeping on the bed, next to you,” he said mockingly.
          Sakura pushed him away and walked out, “Hentai!” (hentai 変態 literally means a big time weirdo, but some people like to translate it as pervert) she yelled at him as she went through the door. Shinji chuckled to himself and then went to chase after her.

End of Chapter Six
To be continued...