Disclaimer: All characters belong to CLAMP.

Author's Note: Written for Tsukimine Shrine's "Music" challenge.

Memories

Often on the painted stair,

As I passed abstractedly,

Velvet footsteps, two and three,

Padded gravely after me.

- There was nothing, nothing there,

Nothing there to see.

Victoria Sackville-West, Leopards at Knole

He has always wanted a cat.

He doesn't know why; he just thinks it would be nice to have a companion like that, stroke its soft fur, watch it curl up under the warm sun. There is always something that makes it impossible. First he must work very hard, then he has a young wife, then there are children to feed. He can't afford a pet. But still, he feels a cat should be important. Perhaps he used to have one, when he was very little.

Memory is capricious, he thinks. He knows nothing of the first years of his life; he knows nothing about how he learned many things. He has no answer for Nadeshiko when she asks him where did he get a certain recipe, or who taught him how to play chess. Yet he has no trouble remembering the names and faces of his many students, the lessons he prepares, which book has the particular fact he's looking for.

And, sometimes, he has memories of things he shouldn't remember at all.

There is a house, right there in Tomoeda, that has been empty for many years. When he looks at it, he sees a garden; a very big, colourful garden with a sakura tree. He almost wants to sneak into it to see if it's true. But he doesn't dare to risk being wrong- or, even worse, being right. He never walks down that street anymore.

Some things can't be ignored so easily. Nadeshiko loves music, and he loves to hear her play. He loves to see her fingers move swiftly over the piano keys, her expression when she forgets about everything else in the world. Even when she is simply listening to one of her records, the look on her face is of pure joy.

She has a lot of records, which she brought with herself when they got married. Most are classical pieces, and he is glad to have them. Sometimes he finds himself humming to a piece he has never heard before, just as if he knew it. Music is like mathematics, he has heard once; if you pay enough attention you can predict where it's going. Or perhaps there is an even easier explanation. These are classical pieces, after all; he must have heard them somewhere.

Even so, there is something about Bach. His music brings him images, far more detailed and vivid than any other pieces do.

He listens to the organ, and he sees inside of a stone building. The ceiling is high, very high, and there are ornaments in the walls that he can't quite make out. It's a very large room, but it is full of people.

It was cold that day, he thinks, and he wonders how he knows that.

He tries to shake the thought away, as always, and blames it on something he read. Something he saw in a movie, perhaps, to explain the details. But he doesn't quite convince himself, in the end, and stays with the feeling that he simply remembers things. He just isn't sure if he remembers too little or too much.

It has always been like this, and he has learned to live with it, just one of his many oddities. He doesn't know why it doesn't bother him too much. He doesn't know why he believes Nadeshiko so easily when she tells him about her other sense, or where he learned to make all those different desserts, or why the first toy he makes for Sakura must have wings.

He doesn't even know why he wants a cat.