Welcome to Gaia! ::

Being with Ei was as easy as breathing for Sakura. Whenever she was with her, everything felt lighter and she felt like despite facing impending doom that somehow it would all be okay as long as she was by her side. It was no wonder that she had fallen so deeply, so quickly, and Sakura could only hope that her partner felt the same.

Putting the finishing touches on her hair and makeup, Sakura looked herself over in the mirror one more time before nodding in approval at her reflection. Despite her usual preference for pants, she wore a lovely deep red dress that went halfway down her calves and sported a ruffled slit up the side, black heels, and even went as far as getting her nails done, truly wanting to dress up for this date. She wanted tonight to be perfect and to leave a lasting impression.

Taking a deep breath, Sakura grabbed her bag and her keys before heading to her car and making her way over to Ei's to pick her up. She practically vibrated with anxiety in the best way possible as she most definitely drove above the speed limit the entire way over. Parking and getting out, she made her way to the door and knocked before stepping back, rocking back slightly on her heels and taking another deep breath while she waited.

Sakura's breath was taken away as Ei opened the door, her mouth open slightly. It took her a moment to be able to remember how to speak, and when she finally did, all she could manage was one word. "Wow....."

Gazing at her with a positively lovestruck smile, Sakura let out a soft laugh as she came back to her senses. "You look positively breathtaking, Ei." While she could easily wax poetic about how truly ravishing she found her, now was not the time. Especially not with a dinner reservation awaiting them. Instead, she held her hand out to her. "Shall we?"

Sakura led the way down to her waiting car, opening the passenger door for her before going around to slide behind the wheel. She gave Ei a positively giddy grin and reached over to take her hand while she drove. "I've been really looking forward to this. I wanted to make everything perfect for you..." Truthfully, she had spent entirely far too long trying to find the perfect place to take Ei, though she wasn't about to admit to that. She didn't need to know yet just how anxious Sakura had been over wanting to get everything just right. "You deserve a perfect night, Ei." She squeezed her hand and looked over at her, smiling softly.

The giddy feeling Sakura got from Ei's smile was indescribable, and she squeezed her hand again. "You always seem to have a way of knowing exactly what to say."

It didn't take long before they pulled up to a lovely looking restaurant. Sakura had spent painstaking hours consulting Aloy and Liam, and checking countless reviews before finally settling on the location, and she hoped it would live up to every bit of the glowing praise it had gotten.

Getting out, Sakura came around to open the passenger door and held her hand out to Ei with a warm smile. "Aloy and Liam helped me find this place. If it's even half as lovely as they said, I think we're on for a treat." Lacing their fingers together, Sakura led the way inside, giving her name for the reservation before following the host to a beautifuly set table. She pulled Ei's chair out for her and kissed her cheek before coming to sit in her own chair.

Sakura shook her head, gesturing at the menu. "Everything sounds like a solid choice, I think." Sakura wasn't overly picky herself, but with good company such as this, anything would taste decadent.

After a few moments of browsing the menu, Sakura couldn't help but steal glances and smiles at Ei. If what she read in the journal was truthful, this was something that she had never done before, never felt or experienced. She had never flirted or taken someone on a date before, according to the pages of the journal, and certainly has never been on a date with a woman before. Even so, this felt right. It felt easy, as if it fit perfectly somehow.

Reaching across the table, she slid her hand over Ei's and smiled. "I really am glad to be here with you. I.... I'm always happiest when I'm with you."

"Funny, neither did I." She smiled softly and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "But I'm grateful for having met you, especially when I did. You make everything so much lighter, Ei." Since meeting her, Sakura had felt as if it was easier to breathe, and that her heart was no longer heavy. And for that? She would be eternally grateful.

When the waiter finally came, Sakura gestured for Ei to order first before giving her own and returning her attention back to the stunning woman across from her. "Tell me something I don't know about you. It can be anything, I just want to know more about you."

"Fate is funny sometimes, isn't it?" Sakura smiled warmly at her. "So many things had to happen just right for us to have met the way we did, when we did, and I will forever be grateful for it." Even for the dull, aching void that she remembered feeling, even for that she would be thankful, or else she never would be sitting here across from Ei. If it weren't for that pain, she never would have taken Chalcanthite's offer, after all, and the two women would have been enemies.

At the mention of karate, Sakura's eyes lit up. "That makes sense. It's about having control over ones body, right? And there's a meditative aspect to it as well yes? I've never tried it myself, but it always looked like it would be worthwhile." She took a sip of her water and admired Ei, seeming thoughtful. "It definitely adds to how badass you are, I'll say that much." Her eyes sparkled with delight and she gestured at her again. "Tell me something else? And likewise, if there's anything you want to know about me, all you have to do is ask."

Sakura was thoughtful for a moment, trying to think of anything worth mentioning. Finally landing on something, she grinned over at Ei. "I make clothes. I actually made the dress I'm wearing. I think... I think I wanted to be a fashion designer. Yknow, before. I have quite the stockpile of fashion magazines from Japan, an intense hoard of fabric, and a decent size collection of clothes I made." There was a spark to her as she spoke about designing clothing, and it was clearly something that made her excited.

"Hmm what else... Oh! I took up learning aerial hoop for a workout. I'm not great at it yet, but it's fun and I feel invincible while doing it." There had been something truly exciting about learning aerial hoop for Sakura, and it made her somehow feel incredibly feminine and sexy while doing it.

Sakura lit up at the praise, nodding in affirmation. "Mhm! It was one of the first things I made when I found all the materials in my storage unit and moved them into the townhouse. I'm glad you like it. I... might have had you in mind while making it, if I'm honest." She gave Ei a coy smile, proud of her work earning such a good reaction. At the mention of a potential career, she nodded. "I think that's what I... what i might have wanted to do. Zakuro, the person I used to be, I mean. There's a journal I found in all of the things left behind. A few of the passages talk about aspirations, but the further into it I got, the less it was mentioned. It was... sad. A lot of it was sad. So I'd be glad to maybe bring that dream to life, I think." The journal, though it had been informative, contained plenty of sorrow. Reading it made Sakura see just how trapped she had felt as Zakuro, how she had lost herself little by little and allowed herself to be washed away in preference of making a man happy. It was truly a heartbreaking thing to read, but even so, Sakura found it necessary. To fail to understand the past is to be doomed to repeat it, and she refused to feel such pain ever again.

She grinned over at Ei though, refusing to be lost in sad thoughts on such a lovely date. "I would love to have you there at practice. I thought about aerial silks for a while but... ultimately decided it would be too much of a chance of me getting tangled in them. So I went with this, which is similar but a lot less fabric." She laughed softly as she admitted to her reasoning. While she was graceful as Ako, she had no doubt that somehow, some way she would end up unbelievably tangled should she attempt silks.

"Hmmm... let's see. What else..." She tapped her lip in thought, trying to see if there was anything else she could think of that would be interesting. "From what I could learn from the journal and other papers and stuff left behind, I was born and raised in Tokyo japan, but spent a lot of time in Kyoto where my fathers parents had a prominent shrine. My mother was from here, I think, and I spent vacations here often." All of this, of course, was conjecture based off the things she had left herself. Photos, papers, and entries in the journal were all she had to go off. But somehow, she didn't feel sad, didn't feel a gap there or that anything was missing. Instead, it was like reading a biography about someone.