Hi! It's me again. This came out kinda fast didn't it? I'm writing more than I thought I would, so, yeah, here's Chapter 5 of I Promise. There's a note at the bottom from me, and I suggest you read it.
D/C: Although I wish I did, I own nothing. :-(
~*~**~*~
WEDNESDAY 1:34 PM
Tai rocked Sora gently in his arms as they stood near the secretay's desk. The police had arrived about an hour earlier and arrested Mr. Morimoto for sexual assault. Then they'd interrogated everyone there: Mr. Morimoto, Tai, Sora, Kyoko, and the secretary. Every question Sora was asked seemed to make her even more upset, until she was crying into Tai's shoulder.
Kyoko walked away from the police when they were done talking to her and went to see Sora. She put a hand on Sora's shoulder and Sora looked up at Kyoko's own tearstained face. "Sora..."
Sora said nothing and the two girls embraced, crying again. Tai leaned against the desk and watched Sora intently. One good had come of this incident: Sora had made a new friend. Eventually Sora broke away. "I wish this didn't happen," she sobbed.
"Me too," Kyoko sniffed. "They're not going to stop bugging us with questions, you know."
"Yeah," Sora said.
"But at least we stopped him," Kyoko said, trying to lighten the mood.
"Actually, I think Tai's more of a hero," Sora smiled.
"Me? Huh?" Tai stammered.
"Yeah. You got us out of there, and had the police called," Sora said. "I can't thank you enough."
"Me neither," Kyoko agreed.
"Um, well, you're welcome," Tai said.
The secretary came over to them. "I excused the three of you from your afternoon's classes. The police want you three to go home and they'll contact you. Plus, this." She handed a pamphlet to Sora and Kyoko. "There's the names of several support groups in there, and other stuff that's useful. Trust me."
"You seem to know a lot about this," Sora said. "Why?"
She sighed. "Because it happened to me, when I was your age. A family friend. Unfortunately for me, nobody belived me when I finally told someone," their secretary told the girls. "You get some rest now."
"Bye," Sora called as she and Tai left the office. Kyoko stayed behind to call her parents.
In the foyer at the front of the school, Sora broke down and began crying all over again. "Tai... I don't want to tell my mom."
"Oh, Sora, you have to," Tai said, taking her in his arms again. "The police will call to follow up, and she has to know why they're calling."
"Okay..." Sora trailed off. "Let's go home."
THURSDAY 2:45 PM
"Sora!"
"Mom!"
Sora embraced her mother as she got off the plane. There were no why-aren't-you-at-school lectures from Ms. Takenouchi, just hugs and welcome back's. Tai had convinced Sora to call her mother and tell her everything, and Sora agreed with her mom when she suggested coming home right away. The Thursday flight was the closest she could get to teleporting back home.
Tai hung back as the Takenouchi's reunited. He'd stayed home all day with Sora, and now to see Sora's smile as she hugged her mom was wonderful. Sora had been under a dark raincloud ever since the previous day, and it made Tai happy to see her like this.
"All right, enough mushy stuff, let's go," Tai prompted. Airports gave him a creepy feeling under his skin.
3:30 PM
"Sora, I want you to tell me everything from the beginning," Ms. Takenouchi said when they'd gotten back. She, Sora, and Tai were in the living room and Tai held Sora's hand reassuringly.
Sora closed her eyes and breathed deeply. "Shortly after you left, there was a school dance that Tai and I went to together. Everything was great, until around eight o'clock. After that, I can't remember much."
"Sora started acting rather strange," Tai continued, responding to the look Sora's mom gave him. "She seemed really sick and kept stumbling and slurring her words, as if she was drunk. Then she passed out.
"I took Sora home then, and just in case she woke up, I stayed over. Then I spent most of the weekend here because she was still sick. She threw up a lot. I finally convinced her to let me take her to the doctor, who suspected a type of date rape drug," Tai said. "A few tests confirmed it. Then she suspected me of doing it, which I didn't. We figure now that Mr. Morimoto was the culprit."
Sora took over. "I talked to another girl who had been sick that weekend. She had the same symptoms as me, and sure enough, the same stuff was in her system. At first, we suspected a student, we talked to Mr. Morimoto about it, and set a date for us to present a plan to talk to everyone about it. That date was yesterday. The presentation went off without a hitch, and he said he'd think about it. When we went to leave, the door was locked. That's when..." Tears came to Sora's eyes again. "That's when he tried to... both of us..." Sora couldn't bring herself to say the word, and she started crying again. Tai put his arm around Sora's shoulder to console her.
"And where do you come into this, Tai?" Ms. Takenouchi asked.
"I was getting worried when lunch was almost over and Sora still hadn't come back, so I went to check in on her. When I noticed the door was locked, I had a funny feeling," Tai said. "I heard Sora's voice on the other side of the door, and she called to me to open the door. Since it was locked I couldn't, but I had an idea. I sent the secretary to get a chisel from the shop and I knocked the hinges out."
"Very smart idea," Ms. Takenouchi mused.
"We watched Ever After the night before," Sora added. Silence. "I don't want to tell this part Tai. Can you?"
(A/N: This part is really hard for me to write. I don't really want to, but I have to. It's not that bad, I know, but it's difficult for me to describe the image I have in my head, so don't bug me.)
"I'll try." Tai bit his lower lip. "I managed to break into the office, and what I saw was Mr. Morimoto... well, he was pretty much feeling up Kyoko, and it looked as thought Sora had been through that too. There were obvious signs of a struggle, and well..." Tai closed his eyes for a second. "He had their skirts off... and... I told the secretary to call the police. They arrested Mr. Morimoto and interrogated all of us, and then we were sent home. I'm sure Mr. Morimoto spent last night in jail."
"So what did you and Sora do?" Ms. Takenouchi asked.
"She called you first. Since she was sick, she'd been staying at my apartment with me and my family," Tai said, "but she wanted to be home, so I stayed with here last night. She banished me to the kitchen and locked herself in her room almost all night. Later she came out, I made dinner and we talked about anything but the day's events. Then she went back to her room again, and I didn't see her until five in the morning when she decided she wanted to talk and woke me up."
"I didn't sleep at all last night," Sora admitted. "I must have slept about an hour, the rest of the time I stared at the ceiling. Tai wasn't annoyed at all when I woke him up at five, and we talked until sunrise."
"It sounds as though you took care of Sora for the past week," Ms. Takenouchi said to Tai.
"Well, yeah, I did," Tai answered. "I had to."
"And why would that be?"
"I promised Sora I'd take care of her," Tai said matter-of-factly.
"And he did a very good job too," Sora murmured, leaning her head on Tai's shoulder.
6:40 PM
Tai stayed for dinner, at Sora and Ms. Takenouchi's request. Then a touchy subject was brought up.
"Are you going to school tomorrow Sora?" Ms. Takenouchi asked.
Sora's foot dropped back to the floor as she ceased playing footsie with Tai. "I... I don't know."
"I'm gonna have to," Tai said. "Mom won't let me skip that much school unless I'm deathly ill."
Sora poked at her food absent-mindedly. "I know I'm gonna have to go back... but I'd rather it not be until Monday, at the least," she said.
"That's okay Sora," her mother told her. "You don't have to go back until you're ready."
"I'll keep you updated with school stuff," Tai offered.
Sora smiled weakly. "Thanks... Mom, I'm not very hungry anymore." Sora quickly got up from the table and bolted to her room.
"Sora," Ms. Takenouchi called after her daughter, standing up to follow Sora. Tai stopped her.
"I'll go," he said. "Don't worry, nothing'll happen."
Tai gently knocked on Sora's door. A muffled "Go Away" came from within.
"It's Tai," he said.
A pause, then a "Come In," was heard. Tai slowly entered Sora's room and closed the door behind him.
Sora was sitting cross-legged on her bed with a thick, bumpy scrapbook open on her lap. A box was next to her, along with scissors, glue, and tape. Tai went over and sat across from her.
"I suppose you'd see this sooner or later," Sora said. "It's my Book."
"What kind of book?" Tai inquired.
"My Book. Book with a capital 'B,' and until now, nobody's seen it except me," Sora told Tai.
"This is what you've been working on?"
"Yup."
"Can I see?"
"Yeah, come here," Sora said, moving the box and supplies to her night table so Tai could come sit next to her. They leaned against her pillows as Sora went back to the beginning of her Book. The cover said, in simple letters written in silver pen, "Sora," with her birthdate and a dash afterwards. "It's me, in a nutshell... or rather, in photographs, souvenirs, and stories. This is the first picture of me ever taken." A picture of a sleeping baby in a yellow knitted hospital hat was in the middle of the page. "Then there's a copy of my birth announcement. Everything else on here is a first for me: a lock of hair from my first haircut ever, a footprint from one of my first steps, and me with my first soccer ball..." Sora smiled. "Mom kept all this stuff and gave it to me about a month ago, and I didn't know what to do with it until now."
She turned the page. "That's me and my dad," she whispered, pointing to a picure of a tall man with the same colour hair as Sora holding a baby in his arms. He had a warm smile and laughing eyes. "I don't remember him very well. He died when I was so little... I think I was five. This is one of the few pictures I have of him. And here's a cassette of my song... something Dad wrote when I was a few months old. He sang it, mom recorded it, and I remember her listening to it after he died and looking very sad." She pulled the tape out of the book, stuck it in the tape deck near her bed and hit play. A man's voice and the sound of a guitar filled the room as a very pretty song.
"It's beautiful," Tai murmured.
"Yeah..." Sora pointed to a scrap of soft yellow fabric stuck to the side of a page. "From my receiving blanket, which I carried around with me for so long I had to say bye-bye to it about three years ago. I kept this corner of it... no particular reason, I just liked it."
Another page. "Hey, that's me!" Tai exclaimed, pointing to a picture of a little brown-haired boy with Sora at a park in the summer.
"Yup. At my seventh birthday party," Sora smiled. "Mom told me how mad I was when you tried to give me a kiss as my birthday present. And this is a poem I wrote in first grade." A faded page was taped into the book, and in a child's script, a short poem about soccer was scrawled. Among the items on the page was a paper napkin with soccer balls on it, also from that birthday, and a report card -- Sora's first ever. The kindergarten teacher had commended her on her painting and her athletic abilities, yet had not-so-positive comments on Sora's behavior. "I was a bad, bad girl. I kept beating up the boys."
"Much like now," Tai said offhandedly, and Sora punched him in the arm. "See what I mean?!"
Next page. "I don't know why I put this stuff after the birthday party... it happened before that. It's all about my dad." Tai examined the page carefully. It had newspaper articles, headlines reading "Prominent Teacher Succombs to Illness," "Odaiba High School Teacher Remembered For 'fun classes and a bright smile,'" and others commending Sora's dad.
"He was a teacher? At our school?" Tai asked.
"Yeah. He taught Science and sometimes Phys. Ed.," Sora answered. "He was the one who gave me my first soccer ball. I always think about him..." Sora blinked back a few tears.
More pictures of Sora followed: years and years of soccer photos, in each one Sora wore a big grin, one thing that remained constant as she grew up. A certificte saying her team had won the championship was on another page, a team photo from that game alongside it. "You were on that team too, Tai." The ten-year-old kid with unruly brown hair stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of the kids.
Tai watched Sora grow up all over again as she turned the pages of the book. From happy-go-lucky kid to mature, yet fun-loving teenager, Tai remembered why he adored her so much. Sora was about to flip another page, when he stopped her. "Hold up, what's this from?" Tai asked, fingering a tiny blue paper umbrella one would have in their drink.
"Our first date," Sora smiled. They both remembered it vividly: Both of them were thirteen, and they'd gone down to a cozy beachfront cafe and had sodas and fries on the patio while they watched the sun go down. It was great.
"Ahhh, those were the days," Tai sighed. He leaned his head on Sora's shoulder as she showed him more of the book.
Pictures from graduation were next up, another thing Sora had attended with Tai. Their faces shone in the pictures, happy to be moving on to high school after so long.
Tai's eyes went wide at one shot. "Who took that?"
Sora laughed. "Matt," she said.
Tai grumbled something, but he didn't take his eyes off the picture. Sora and Tai kissing during the dance. A follow-up shot taken later had them dancing, Sora's head on Tai's shoulder and his arms protectively around her waist. "Was Matt the resident photographer that night?" Tai asked.
"Yes," Sora said. "I'm dead serious."
"You kept the corsage!" Tai exclaimed. Sora nodded as she touched the dried flowers pressed into the book, along with the ribbon.
"Here's the pictures from summer vacations," Sora said. A camping trip, soccer and tennis games, hanging out at the park.
"So what are you putting in now?" Tai asked.
"Recent stuff, like the concert and some more soccer games," Sora said.
"Can I help?"
"Sure." Sora grabbed the box, the scissors and glue, and she and Tai proceeded to work more on the Book.
8:30 PM
"... Yep... I'll tell him... okay... bye." Ms. Takenouchi hung up the phone. Mrs. Kamiya had called asking why Tai wasn't home yet. She knocked on the door to her daughter's bedroom, from which neither Sora nor Tai had left. There was no answer.
Ms. Takenouchi pushed open the door to Sora's room and smiled at the sight. Tai and Sora were cuddled next to each other on the bed, the Book at their feet, the now empty box on the floor. Sora was snuggled into Tai's arms as they both slept peacefully. She didn't want to wake the teenagers, so she looked around the room. Her eyes fell on the open scrapbook on the end of the bed. A new picture was in there, a Polaroid that was just developing. The most recent picture of Sora and Tai, together as they worked on the Book. Ms. Takenouchi picked up the Polaroid camera and took a picture of the slumbering couple, then left it for them to find. She didn't worry about anything happening then. She trusted Tai to watch over Sora.
After all, he'd promised.
~*~**~*~
Here's my little note. Sorry to burst your bubbles, but this is the end of I Promise. *everyone cries* BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! And I need the help of you loyal reviewers for it.
Firstly tell me this: Do You Want A Sequel?
Secondly, I don't know what the heck should happen if I write one. Therefore, I want all your ideas! Mwah haha! I'll nit-pick them and give you wonderful people credit at the beginning of the story. That is, if you leave your name! I get so many no-name reviews, so put in a name if you have an idea! Merci beaucoup.
Thirdly, Thank You Very Much for following this story! I appreciate all your reviews.
Fourthly (is that a word?), review this one!
Au Revoir mes amis,
~KK~
D/C: Although I wish I did, I own nothing. :-(
~*~**~*~
WEDNESDAY 1:34 PM
Tai rocked Sora gently in his arms as they stood near the secretay's desk. The police had arrived about an hour earlier and arrested Mr. Morimoto for sexual assault. Then they'd interrogated everyone there: Mr. Morimoto, Tai, Sora, Kyoko, and the secretary. Every question Sora was asked seemed to make her even more upset, until she was crying into Tai's shoulder.
Kyoko walked away from the police when they were done talking to her and went to see Sora. She put a hand on Sora's shoulder and Sora looked up at Kyoko's own tearstained face. "Sora..."
Sora said nothing and the two girls embraced, crying again. Tai leaned against the desk and watched Sora intently. One good had come of this incident: Sora had made a new friend. Eventually Sora broke away. "I wish this didn't happen," she sobbed.
"Me too," Kyoko sniffed. "They're not going to stop bugging us with questions, you know."
"Yeah," Sora said.
"But at least we stopped him," Kyoko said, trying to lighten the mood.
"Actually, I think Tai's more of a hero," Sora smiled.
"Me? Huh?" Tai stammered.
"Yeah. You got us out of there, and had the police called," Sora said. "I can't thank you enough."
"Me neither," Kyoko agreed.
"Um, well, you're welcome," Tai said.
The secretary came over to them. "I excused the three of you from your afternoon's classes. The police want you three to go home and they'll contact you. Plus, this." She handed a pamphlet to Sora and Kyoko. "There's the names of several support groups in there, and other stuff that's useful. Trust me."
"You seem to know a lot about this," Sora said. "Why?"
She sighed. "Because it happened to me, when I was your age. A family friend. Unfortunately for me, nobody belived me when I finally told someone," their secretary told the girls. "You get some rest now."
"Bye," Sora called as she and Tai left the office. Kyoko stayed behind to call her parents.
In the foyer at the front of the school, Sora broke down and began crying all over again. "Tai... I don't want to tell my mom."
"Oh, Sora, you have to," Tai said, taking her in his arms again. "The police will call to follow up, and she has to know why they're calling."
"Okay..." Sora trailed off. "Let's go home."
THURSDAY 2:45 PM
"Sora!"
"Mom!"
Sora embraced her mother as she got off the plane. There were no why-aren't-you-at-school lectures from Ms. Takenouchi, just hugs and welcome back's. Tai had convinced Sora to call her mother and tell her everything, and Sora agreed with her mom when she suggested coming home right away. The Thursday flight was the closest she could get to teleporting back home.
Tai hung back as the Takenouchi's reunited. He'd stayed home all day with Sora, and now to see Sora's smile as she hugged her mom was wonderful. Sora had been under a dark raincloud ever since the previous day, and it made Tai happy to see her like this.
"All right, enough mushy stuff, let's go," Tai prompted. Airports gave him a creepy feeling under his skin.
3:30 PM
"Sora, I want you to tell me everything from the beginning," Ms. Takenouchi said when they'd gotten back. She, Sora, and Tai were in the living room and Tai held Sora's hand reassuringly.
Sora closed her eyes and breathed deeply. "Shortly after you left, there was a school dance that Tai and I went to together. Everything was great, until around eight o'clock. After that, I can't remember much."
"Sora started acting rather strange," Tai continued, responding to the look Sora's mom gave him. "She seemed really sick and kept stumbling and slurring her words, as if she was drunk. Then she passed out.
"I took Sora home then, and just in case she woke up, I stayed over. Then I spent most of the weekend here because she was still sick. She threw up a lot. I finally convinced her to let me take her to the doctor, who suspected a type of date rape drug," Tai said. "A few tests confirmed it. Then she suspected me of doing it, which I didn't. We figure now that Mr. Morimoto was the culprit."
Sora took over. "I talked to another girl who had been sick that weekend. She had the same symptoms as me, and sure enough, the same stuff was in her system. At first, we suspected a student, we talked to Mr. Morimoto about it, and set a date for us to present a plan to talk to everyone about it. That date was yesterday. The presentation went off without a hitch, and he said he'd think about it. When we went to leave, the door was locked. That's when..." Tears came to Sora's eyes again. "That's when he tried to... both of us..." Sora couldn't bring herself to say the word, and she started crying again. Tai put his arm around Sora's shoulder to console her.
"And where do you come into this, Tai?" Ms. Takenouchi asked.
"I was getting worried when lunch was almost over and Sora still hadn't come back, so I went to check in on her. When I noticed the door was locked, I had a funny feeling," Tai said. "I heard Sora's voice on the other side of the door, and she called to me to open the door. Since it was locked I couldn't, but I had an idea. I sent the secretary to get a chisel from the shop and I knocked the hinges out."
"Very smart idea," Ms. Takenouchi mused.
"We watched Ever After the night before," Sora added. Silence. "I don't want to tell this part Tai. Can you?"
(A/N: This part is really hard for me to write. I don't really want to, but I have to. It's not that bad, I know, but it's difficult for me to describe the image I have in my head, so don't bug me.)
"I'll try." Tai bit his lower lip. "I managed to break into the office, and what I saw was Mr. Morimoto... well, he was pretty much feeling up Kyoko, and it looked as thought Sora had been through that too. There were obvious signs of a struggle, and well..." Tai closed his eyes for a second. "He had their skirts off... and... I told the secretary to call the police. They arrested Mr. Morimoto and interrogated all of us, and then we were sent home. I'm sure Mr. Morimoto spent last night in jail."
"So what did you and Sora do?" Ms. Takenouchi asked.
"She called you first. Since she was sick, she'd been staying at my apartment with me and my family," Tai said, "but she wanted to be home, so I stayed with here last night. She banished me to the kitchen and locked herself in her room almost all night. Later she came out, I made dinner and we talked about anything but the day's events. Then she went back to her room again, and I didn't see her until five in the morning when she decided she wanted to talk and woke me up."
"I didn't sleep at all last night," Sora admitted. "I must have slept about an hour, the rest of the time I stared at the ceiling. Tai wasn't annoyed at all when I woke him up at five, and we talked until sunrise."
"It sounds as though you took care of Sora for the past week," Ms. Takenouchi said to Tai.
"Well, yeah, I did," Tai answered. "I had to."
"And why would that be?"
"I promised Sora I'd take care of her," Tai said matter-of-factly.
"And he did a very good job too," Sora murmured, leaning her head on Tai's shoulder.
6:40 PM
Tai stayed for dinner, at Sora and Ms. Takenouchi's request. Then a touchy subject was brought up.
"Are you going to school tomorrow Sora?" Ms. Takenouchi asked.
Sora's foot dropped back to the floor as she ceased playing footsie with Tai. "I... I don't know."
"I'm gonna have to," Tai said. "Mom won't let me skip that much school unless I'm deathly ill."
Sora poked at her food absent-mindedly. "I know I'm gonna have to go back... but I'd rather it not be until Monday, at the least," she said.
"That's okay Sora," her mother told her. "You don't have to go back until you're ready."
"I'll keep you updated with school stuff," Tai offered.
Sora smiled weakly. "Thanks... Mom, I'm not very hungry anymore." Sora quickly got up from the table and bolted to her room.
"Sora," Ms. Takenouchi called after her daughter, standing up to follow Sora. Tai stopped her.
"I'll go," he said. "Don't worry, nothing'll happen."
Tai gently knocked on Sora's door. A muffled "Go Away" came from within.
"It's Tai," he said.
A pause, then a "Come In," was heard. Tai slowly entered Sora's room and closed the door behind him.
Sora was sitting cross-legged on her bed with a thick, bumpy scrapbook open on her lap. A box was next to her, along with scissors, glue, and tape. Tai went over and sat across from her.
"I suppose you'd see this sooner or later," Sora said. "It's my Book."
"What kind of book?" Tai inquired.
"My Book. Book with a capital 'B,' and until now, nobody's seen it except me," Sora told Tai.
"This is what you've been working on?"
"Yup."
"Can I see?"
"Yeah, come here," Sora said, moving the box and supplies to her night table so Tai could come sit next to her. They leaned against her pillows as Sora went back to the beginning of her Book. The cover said, in simple letters written in silver pen, "Sora," with her birthdate and a dash afterwards. "It's me, in a nutshell... or rather, in photographs, souvenirs, and stories. This is the first picture of me ever taken." A picture of a sleeping baby in a yellow knitted hospital hat was in the middle of the page. "Then there's a copy of my birth announcement. Everything else on here is a first for me: a lock of hair from my first haircut ever, a footprint from one of my first steps, and me with my first soccer ball..." Sora smiled. "Mom kept all this stuff and gave it to me about a month ago, and I didn't know what to do with it until now."
She turned the page. "That's me and my dad," she whispered, pointing to a picure of a tall man with the same colour hair as Sora holding a baby in his arms. He had a warm smile and laughing eyes. "I don't remember him very well. He died when I was so little... I think I was five. This is one of the few pictures I have of him. And here's a cassette of my song... something Dad wrote when I was a few months old. He sang it, mom recorded it, and I remember her listening to it after he died and looking very sad." She pulled the tape out of the book, stuck it in the tape deck near her bed and hit play. A man's voice and the sound of a guitar filled the room as a very pretty song.
"It's beautiful," Tai murmured.
"Yeah..." Sora pointed to a scrap of soft yellow fabric stuck to the side of a page. "From my receiving blanket, which I carried around with me for so long I had to say bye-bye to it about three years ago. I kept this corner of it... no particular reason, I just liked it."
Another page. "Hey, that's me!" Tai exclaimed, pointing to a picture of a little brown-haired boy with Sora at a park in the summer.
"Yup. At my seventh birthday party," Sora smiled. "Mom told me how mad I was when you tried to give me a kiss as my birthday present. And this is a poem I wrote in first grade." A faded page was taped into the book, and in a child's script, a short poem about soccer was scrawled. Among the items on the page was a paper napkin with soccer balls on it, also from that birthday, and a report card -- Sora's first ever. The kindergarten teacher had commended her on her painting and her athletic abilities, yet had not-so-positive comments on Sora's behavior. "I was a bad, bad girl. I kept beating up the boys."
"Much like now," Tai said offhandedly, and Sora punched him in the arm. "See what I mean?!"
Next page. "I don't know why I put this stuff after the birthday party... it happened before that. It's all about my dad." Tai examined the page carefully. It had newspaper articles, headlines reading "Prominent Teacher Succombs to Illness," "Odaiba High School Teacher Remembered For 'fun classes and a bright smile,'" and others commending Sora's dad.
"He was a teacher? At our school?" Tai asked.
"Yeah. He taught Science and sometimes Phys. Ed.," Sora answered. "He was the one who gave me my first soccer ball. I always think about him..." Sora blinked back a few tears.
More pictures of Sora followed: years and years of soccer photos, in each one Sora wore a big grin, one thing that remained constant as she grew up. A certificte saying her team had won the championship was on another page, a team photo from that game alongside it. "You were on that team too, Tai." The ten-year-old kid with unruly brown hair stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of the kids.
Tai watched Sora grow up all over again as she turned the pages of the book. From happy-go-lucky kid to mature, yet fun-loving teenager, Tai remembered why he adored her so much. Sora was about to flip another page, when he stopped her. "Hold up, what's this from?" Tai asked, fingering a tiny blue paper umbrella one would have in their drink.
"Our first date," Sora smiled. They both remembered it vividly: Both of them were thirteen, and they'd gone down to a cozy beachfront cafe and had sodas and fries on the patio while they watched the sun go down. It was great.
"Ahhh, those were the days," Tai sighed. He leaned his head on Sora's shoulder as she showed him more of the book.
Pictures from graduation were next up, another thing Sora had attended with Tai. Their faces shone in the pictures, happy to be moving on to high school after so long.
Tai's eyes went wide at one shot. "Who took that?"
Sora laughed. "Matt," she said.
Tai grumbled something, but he didn't take his eyes off the picture. Sora and Tai kissing during the dance. A follow-up shot taken later had them dancing, Sora's head on Tai's shoulder and his arms protectively around her waist. "Was Matt the resident photographer that night?" Tai asked.
"Yes," Sora said. "I'm dead serious."
"You kept the corsage!" Tai exclaimed. Sora nodded as she touched the dried flowers pressed into the book, along with the ribbon.
"Here's the pictures from summer vacations," Sora said. A camping trip, soccer and tennis games, hanging out at the park.
"So what are you putting in now?" Tai asked.
"Recent stuff, like the concert and some more soccer games," Sora said.
"Can I help?"
"Sure." Sora grabbed the box, the scissors and glue, and she and Tai proceeded to work more on the Book.
8:30 PM
"... Yep... I'll tell him... okay... bye." Ms. Takenouchi hung up the phone. Mrs. Kamiya had called asking why Tai wasn't home yet. She knocked on the door to her daughter's bedroom, from which neither Sora nor Tai had left. There was no answer.
Ms. Takenouchi pushed open the door to Sora's room and smiled at the sight. Tai and Sora were cuddled next to each other on the bed, the Book at their feet, the now empty box on the floor. Sora was snuggled into Tai's arms as they both slept peacefully. She didn't want to wake the teenagers, so she looked around the room. Her eyes fell on the open scrapbook on the end of the bed. A new picture was in there, a Polaroid that was just developing. The most recent picture of Sora and Tai, together as they worked on the Book. Ms. Takenouchi picked up the Polaroid camera and took a picture of the slumbering couple, then left it for them to find. She didn't worry about anything happening then. She trusted Tai to watch over Sora.
After all, he'd promised.
~*~**~*~
Here's my little note. Sorry to burst your bubbles, but this is the end of I Promise. *everyone cries* BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! And I need the help of you loyal reviewers for it.
Firstly tell me this: Do You Want A Sequel?
Secondly, I don't know what the heck should happen if I write one. Therefore, I want all your ideas! Mwah haha! I'll nit-pick them and give you wonderful people credit at the beginning of the story. That is, if you leave your name! I get so many no-name reviews, so put in a name if you have an idea! Merci beaucoup.
Thirdly, Thank You Very Much for following this story! I appreciate all your reviews.
Fourthly (is that a word?), review this one!
Au Revoir mes amis,
~KK~