Kyoko waved to the student council president before she recalled that the third year had stepped down by now. Since a week or so a second year boy from 7:2, which made him a classmate to Nao-sempai, had taken up that role. The election campaign had been a non-event where the only question among the first years was why Urufu didn't run for president.

Blinking away her thoughts Kyoko made for the club room to meet up with Yukio. They hadn't been able to meet since that strange evening in the Stockholm Haven café.

A few days earlier she participated in one of the most surrealistic conversations in her life. How to dismantle a school without ever inviting the target to participate in the planning. Kyoko hadn't understood all of it, only that the stakes had risen now when the headships of both Himekaizen and Irishima high were active participants in the war.

The door to their clubroom slid open under her hands as she entered, and when she came inside she saw Yukio chatting with the Wakayama twins. Urufu and Kuri-chan still hadn't arrived.

In the lounge area Nao-sempai sat half asleep in the sofa, and seated beside him Hiroyuki-kun and Kichirou-kun ran a low voiced conversation where they tried their best not to wake the junior up.

From time to time Midori-chan offered a word or two, enough to make Kyoko understand she was part of the conversation as well. Midori-chan still had a mess of a hairdo, but it no longer was the horror show that had been her trademark.

Ryu looked up when Kyoko stepped further inside the room and beckoned her to the table. During the short pause in their talking Yukio made place for a flying kiss that made Noriko frown grinningly and Kyoko blush a little. She still felt awkward with Yukio's public displays of affection despite having been an item with him since August.

As she took a place around the desks turned conference table Kyoko heard the door slide open behind her.

“Perfect, seems we're all gathered,” Urufu's voice announced.

“Just grabbing a drink,” Kuri-chan said, and from the corner of her eye Kyoko saw her friend beelining for the fridge still stocked with the last of the drinks they had bought off the cultural festival surplus. “Anyone want one?”

The sound of the fridge door opening accompanied Nao-sempai's snoring, and Kyoko heard Kuri-chan run one round of orders to the group in and around the sofa. A sudden yell told her Kuri-chan deliberately voided the other club members' attempt not to disturb Nao-sempai.

“What the hell?”

“Pocari Sweat,” came Kuri-chan's answer before the sound of her steps receded towards the fridge for a second round of drinks.

A bottle of cold drink inside his shirt, Kyoko thought and smiled. It was an outrageous act she would never have dared herself.

By her side Yukio laughed open mouthed and Noriko grinned as well. She deserted her place beside Yukio and walked around the table to take a seat beside her brother. The small gesture filled Kyoko with warmth, and when Noriko sat down facing her Kyoko shot the small girl a grateful smile.

“Need any help?” Urufu shouted, but he sat down and opened up his laptop as if he knew beforehand that Kuri-chan would decline.

“Two hands is enough for six drinks,” Kuri-chan shouted back and confirmed Kyoko's impression.

When she returned with an armful of bottles the aimless chatter subsided and everyone looked at Urufu.

“Want me to explain?” he said and looked at them over the screen.

“You'd better,” Ryu growled. “I was planning to introduce Ai-chan to my parents when we suddenly got marched away to the principal's office in another school.”

Kyoko shared a small sense of the discomfort he must have felt when he and his sister got dragged inside Irishima high. Ryu attracted attention on any normal day, but walking around in the Himekaizen uniform must have made him stand out even more.

“Sorry about that,” Urufu said. I didn't know they'd pull that stunt. To be honest I don't even know why they guessed you waited for her by her school gates.”

“Well that's Ai-chan's fault,” Ryu answered and snorted. “Apparently she told her club advisor why she wanted to leave earlier, and he in turn reported that to their principal.”

Urufu shrugged. “Still means they had it all planned for our vice principal to show up there on short notice. Anyway, they pretty much took us by surprise at the café as well.”

“So, what's going on?” Noriko shot in to keep the conversation from derailing.

“Kyoko, mind turning the whiteboard?” Urufu asked.

Kyoko rose and faced the whiteboard towards them. While she was up she turned on the water boiler and prepared some green tea.

The table turned silent and Urufu used the break to set up his beamer.

“Well,” he said after Kyoko had returned, “this is what's happening.”

Kyoko looked at the whiteboard where two cutaways were displayed.

“This is Himekaizen, and this is Irishima high. These,” Urufu said and marked a few highlighted areas with a pen laser, “are available classrooms.”

Kyoko looked at three areas in the cutaway of Irishima high and five of them for Himekaizen.

“Starting the coming year Irishima high will open up an extra class for freshmen and Himekaizen two.”

By now a large number of club members had gathered by the table as those who entered the room came directly for the display and those who sat in the lounge area rose and joined them.

“Why a total of eight classrooms?” Ryu asked.

“It's nine actually. 9:1 already occupies one. All three freshman classes will be pilfered from Red Rose junior high.”

“Uhum?”

“Himekaizen and Irishima high will target the parents of the Red Rose ninth graders directly.”

“I don't get it.”

“Jeez,” Kuri-chan interrupted. “Ryu, we're running a smear campaign here. Our schools will target the first and second years as well in an attempt to save the poor students from a school going belly up,” she said with a predatory grin that made Kyoko wince.

***

And that's the real beauty of it, Ulf thought as he waited for Christina to finish her explanation.

How to expand your market shares in a shrinking market. Just force a competitor out of that market. It was brilliant. Irishima high and Himekaizen aimed at stealing some 350 students from Red Rose. That was effectively the same as shutting the school down. Especially as a few middle schools stood waiting in the shadows ready to gobble up students from grade seven through nine, among them Christina's old school.

Christina and Kyoko's, Ulf reminded himself. She's the most important person in the world for Yukio.

Ulf took a deep breath before he continued. He still got winded quickly and it would take until the beginning of December before he could start rebuilding the stamina he had always taken pride in.

“Anyway,” Ulf said. “as you can see one of the classrooms is this very room, so come April we'll be without a clubroom.”

There were quite a few shouts of outrage, and Ulf waited for them to quiet down.

“In return,” he continued when the room was silent enough for him to be heard again, “we've been given special dispensation to use the inner room at the café as our clubroom. It's cleared with the management there as well.” Which means James was behind the entire idea from the beginning, but I can't tell them why, Ulf thought. It made sense though. This way James got into closer contact with both arrivals as well as the Himekaizen part of whatever shadowy organisation it was that took care of the arrivals over the years.

Ulf shot Christina a worried look before he continued. Nakagawa's words from just after their evening meeting at the café played in his thoughts. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to refuse running for the student council after all. Without Nakagawa to cover their backs they'd be forced to gamble on how the new principal would play his cards, because here in Japan it was bound to be a 'he'.

“Given these circumstances I've decided that the theme for our walking talking sessions will be corporate competition.”

“Corporate competition?” Sakura asked and reminded Ulf that she wasn't anywhere nearly as silent and withdrawn as she had been in the beginning. “What about our school subjects?”

“It's the theme,” Ulf said. “Apart from classic Japanese we'll use the theme as the core for all subjects. For example we'll use examples from economic calculus for math, discuss real cases in English and Japanese and look at older cases from modern Japanese history.”

When he received blank stares in return Ulf palmed his face. This is going to take a while to explain.

He was saved by Noriko. “It's an interdisciplinary approach,” she said. “We're merging knowledge from separate knowledge domains to, eh, to increase our understanding of each domain,” she said, but her voice fell strangely silent at the end.

Ulf stared at her. That's almost correct, and shows way more understanding than any sixteen year old girl has any right to have. “Noriko got the gist of it,” he said. “It also helps us see how different domains are connected to each other,” he added, more for her benefit than for the others. They wouldn't understand the application of synthesis. Most of his old colleagues from his previous life hadn't, but Ulf suspected Noriko was already very, very close to do so.

He watched Christina distribute the compendia they had prepared. He had done most of the research, but she forced him to do a full rewrite of all sections concerning large conglomerates. He was too cute and naive she had laughed, and when it came to global business Ulf saw no reason to distrust anything she said. After all she was the billion dollar empress.

Kid's, you're getting a crash course my old Swedish customers would have paid millions of yen for. With you as a lecturer, Christina, I doubt yen would suffice, Ulf thought and looked at her. You saved me. Without you I doubt I would have kept my sanity. I owe you so much more than I could ever give you.

She must have felt his gaze, because she suddenly stopped handing out compendia and stood staring back at him. He felt his cheeks heat up, and it was impossible not to meet her eyes.

No matter what you're stunningly beautiful, but that's not what keeps me by your side. Slowly her face faded from his vision and he only saw Christina's intensely blue eyes meeting his. I love your strength, and I love the caring you that you always try to hide. I love knowing that side of you. I wish I could stay with you forever!

And then even her eyes left his view and Ulf found himself locked in memories and the very love he felt for her. Right here and right now there were only the two of them, and in his mind he felt her embrace as real and soft as if they had really been alone together.

I've missed that feeling of being together. Since that day I've missed you even when you were with me. This was the real feeling he had longed for, this, the feeling of being together which for him was more real than seeing her face from his hospital bed.

His chest constricted and a pleasant warmness spread through his body from his stomach.

“Wow!” a voice in the background said. “Hey! You two, you're making us embarrassed.”

Ulf vaguely registered Nori's voice, and for once he probably wouldn't be accused of being the motor mouth, because most of the murmurs seemed to agree with him.

“Man, get a room before you look at her that way,” Yukio said, and the indecent suggestion brought a guffaw to most of the members. The awkward feeling dissolved, but not before Christina snorted in a failed attempt to pretend she hadn't been caught up in the tension.

That was intense! Ulf thought, and once again he recalled the reason he had fallen helplessly in love with her.