That was way too close.

With a sigh Ulf finished explaining the last problem and looked at the club members present. It seemed they hadn't caught up on his mistake. He guessed that as long as they believed the discrepancy between his real knowledge and his graded knowledge was a result of moving from Sweden to Japan, he was safe.

They wouldn't understand anyway. Damn, most people involved in tertiary education won't for that matter.

Content before methods, and methods before context, or else the student would inevitably fail to create new contexts in which to try analysis. That was why he had forced the walking talking sessions onto the club.

And it had bloody better not be either the one or the other, Ulf thought as he walked over to a third whiteboard.

The Japanese education system excelled at content and pretty much nothing else. The Swedish counterpart lay at the opposite end on a scale of criminal incompetence, with a stubborn focus on methods without any content to apply them on.

Even an idealised aggregate of the two lacked a systematic application of context, even though Ulf was bound to think Sweden was slightly better off. Those who gained understanding despite twelve years of sabotaged learning tended to have an easier time to apply knowledge and re-evaluate that very application. At least compared to what he had experienced from cooperation with Japanese software developers.

“What are you thinking?” Noriko asked from nowhere, and Ulf became aware he had been caught up in a world of his own.

“I'm thinking I'll make you the best of the best,” he answered.

“Best of the best? In what sense?” Noriko wondered.

Ulf looked at his short friend, who had just taken a break from running through some essential data on Japanese history. Essential for the upcoming exams that was. As far as he was concerned it was worse than a monkey see monkey do approach. There wasn't even any doing involved. The exam would test their ability to mimic high performance parrots.

“Knowledge, competence and experience,” Ulf said to give Noriko an answer. He knew he sounded cryptic, but the kids in the club needed to learn how to apply methods to their knowledge before anything else. Some of them already had, and come spring term he'd start giving them case studies to apply those methods on.

With a bit of luck the brightest of them would accuse him of being a first class moron when their second year started.

“You always have those easy three step solutions to everything,” Noriko said.

They're models. Verbalised abstractions, but you wouldn't understand. Not yet at least, but I count on you to call me moron soon.

From the whiteboard he had left he heard conversations in broken English, a broken English that was a vast improvement over the atrocity they had displayed half a year earlier.

I'll give you your results old goat, Ulf thought. Two percent overall for the midterms and I think we'll get closer to five after the finals.

Because he had promised Nakagawa improved test results that day, when he was scolded for the locker room incident over half a year earlier. While a five percent improvement wasn't much the club members only had half a year to adapt to his alien views on learning.

I was never this absorbed in work before. Why is it so important now? Then Ulf admitted to himself that he was running from his impending doom, or at least the threat to him and Christina.

I love you, and but for all the crap happening to us I'd tell you in an instant. Still, she'd give up on her career if he told her, and he just couldn't do that to her.

Ulf threw a glance in her direction, filled his mind with her strength and beauty and turned his attention to Noriko again.

“In order to grow you need to know what you don't know,” he said.

Before she answered he looked at Christina again. I'm an idiot. At first I didn't tell you because of Maria, and now when my feelings finally are sorted out I still can't tell you.

Noriko looked as if she was about to voice her answer, but when she followed his eyes she closed her mouth again. Ulf could see how she looked at Christina, then at him and then at Christina again. In the end an expression of determination spread over Noriko's face, and she tilted her head and stared directly into his eyes.

“Really? Are you two idiots, or what? She should have dragged those words out of you by now.”

Meeting her eyes Ulf just shook his head. “Don't tell her that!” he begged.

Noriko screwed her mouth into a frustrated smirk. “You are two of the most important people in my life. If you believe I'll allow the both of you to hurt each other like this, then you're sadly mistaken.”

Damn, this is Noriko here. She'll do whatever she thinks needs doing. Ulf still remembered her confession when she dragged her brother into the scene, not to speak about the spectacle at the amusement park shortly after.

“We need to talk,” he said and grabbed her hand. “Now!”

Dragging her through the door only took moments, but it still wasn't fast enough to prevent someone from shouting.

“Wrong girl, man!” the voice called out, but he was already outside, and he continued through the main entrance to make certain they were outdoors before he said anything more.

Outside lamplights blinked miserably in a rain that never seemed to stop these days. It was just as bad as an especially awful December week in the Gothenburg he remembered from his former life. For a moment Ulf regretted that he hadn't brought an umbrella, but now it was too late for details like that.

I have to make her understand how adults think. And what great adults we are Christina. What an awful mess!

“Noriko,” he said and let go of her hand. “You really mustn't tell her. If Christina requests I say how much I love her I will, and if I do I'll destroy everything.”

Noriko stared back at him with incomprehension in her eyes.

“Look, if she quits her career for me, she'll regret it for the rest of her life.” Noriko, I hate telling you how life works. You should stay a child for a little longer. But Christina was more important to him, and in the end he decided to force his friend to grow up a little in advance. “There's no way in hell the two of us will survive that in the long run. Please, please, please don't tell her!”

***

Wet sounds under her feet accompanied her walk from the train-station. Her brother, her very much not an idiot brother at the moment, walked a bit ahead of them leaving midget sister and tall model an opportunity to talk undisturbed.

These were the rainy days of Tokyo, and more so these were the rainy days of her heart. While she had all but buried her feelings for Urufu, Kuri had become an important friend, and watching the two of them breaking apart hurt more than Noriko had thought possible.

I don't understand you. I don't understand you. I don't understand you! How two people so obviously in deep love with each other could let what they shared slip through their fingers was beyond her.

“I can't say anything more. I gave Urufu a promise,” Noriko said and looked up at her friend.

“Coming to Japan this way, to a new life in a new world. I don't regret it. I never will,” Kuri said.

Are you really talking with me, or are you just thinking aloud?

“You see, there was never any promises. It's a transition and restart, but there's no guarantee I'll always be happy with it.”

“But...” Noriko began.

“Ulf is an adult,” Kuri interrupted. She made a pause to jump across a suspiciously dark pool of rainwater. “In many more ways than I am he's an adult who lived an adult life.”

“Go on,” Noriko said. Kuri would anyway, so there was no point in pretending this was a conversation. When Kuri was done emptying her soul she'd say so.

“I chased dreams in that other life, and I reached my goals one after another, but I never really grew up.” Kuri smiled and Noriko saw a perfect line of white teeth glimmering in the street lights. They looked just as alone as the rest of Kuri's face.

“What do you mean?”

“I never had to stop behaving like a spoiled teenager. Apart from marriage I got everything I pointed at. Sure I worked hard for it, but I never failed. Not once.”

The billion dollar empress. Yeah I can see how you became a force of nature, like Alexander the great.

“You didn't die,” Noriko said.

“Huh?”

“Sorry, I was thinking of something else.”

Kuri tugged her coat tighter around herself and burst out in laughter. “You're a morbid one. No I didn't die.”

Noriko felt a little ashamed that she had forced an end to Kuri's monologue, but she didn't really understand what the beautiful woman turned girl spoke about. Friend, you're my friend despite being older than my parents. That was the most important. Friend. Noriko's life hadn't been filled with those.

They turned left at a red light and followed Ryu along narrow streets leading to her home. Kuri would spend the night with them. Noriko's mother had already agreed, and it wasn't exactly like Kuri had anyone to ask permission from.

Thinking of homemade the next question come natural. “What about your new place?”

By her side Kuri flinched, and Noriko guessed whatever came next would be a watered out lie.

“It's the kind of luxury I grew tired of many years ago.”

“Closer to school?” Noriko wondered and immediately regretted the inane question.

“I guess so. Not that it matters. I'll get a driver.”

I'm so sorry. Kuri, I'm so sorry for you!

“It's the kind of high security living only the very rich can afford.” Kuri's voice died a little with every word in that sentence.

Watching her friend so lifeless stabbed at something inside Noriko, and she understood just a little better what it meant to care for a friend. So they made sure Urufu will never get inside. I'm so sorry!

“They even offered a transfer to a private school for that kind of people.” Then Kuri's face lit up in a beautifully malicious grin. “That didn't fly though. It seems us arrivals attending Himekaizen isn't optional.”

No, you're no longer an empress. You gave that up for a chance at living, didn't you? Somehow Noriko grasped that such thoughts weren't for a child of sixteen, and somehow she grasped she had just lost a little bit of innocence.

“And I don't have to pay anything for it. They even quadrupled my salary.”

Didn't have to pay anything? You had to pay everything you idiot!

“I've never been paid so well for being betrayed. There's this magazine, Vogue, and they set me up for life.”

With that sentence Noriko knew Kuri had just put words to the lie.

“Is it worth it?” Noriko had to know. In a way it was a little like the kind of life expected of a daughter to her parents.

“No,” Kuri said, and for the first time since they left Stockholm Haven café her face radiated real happiness tinged with a large dose of love and pride. “No, I'd throw it away in a heartbeat. I already lived this life once, but I never had Ulf before. I'd even become a good Japanese wife and stay home if I could just keep him by my side.”

“Then why don't you?” Despite asking something that went against everything she believed in Noriko just couldn't let go. Frustration mounted in her, and just as she was about to continue Kuri sighed and voiced her answer.

“Because Ulf would throw me away in an instant. He'd never agree to me betraying myself. That's what I admire most about him.” Large eyes, blue even in the poor light of the night met Noriko's. “That's what makes me love him more than life itself. If he was anything less I'd love him less.”

“But you'd get to keep him.”

“And live a life of lies? No, I couldn't do that to him. I'll never play house with him. I'll have all of him or nothing at all.”