Christina was discharged from the hospital the same evening as the attack, but Ryu had to stay two nights.

Ulf wondered where things had gone wrong, and now, a full week later with finals looming on the horizon he felt the need to be at several places at once.

Kareyoshi had to go. This time Ulf hadn’t even pretended to be as meek as he usually was when Amaya turned grumpy. He even skipped the ‘mother dear’ part when he demanded to know what happened to the men who attacked Christina.

Amaya sulked since three days, but Ulf got a full feed of news. Assaulting an arrival was apparently a no-go, and this was the third time Kareyoshi had been involved.

Ulf found himself rushing between meetings. Nakagawa, the Wakayama parents, Sano, the creepy duo representing Swedish interests, the Swedish university students, the club, and somewhere in all that he tried to squeeze in time for Noriko and himself to be alone as well as time for studying and training.

Right now he sat beneath the windows in his classroom with Noriko snuggled up using him as her backrest.

Yukio would have been proud. An unseasonal spell of relative warmth allowed them to keep the windows ajar, and the curtains bulged around them like slowly moving clouds indoors. Yukio would have been extremely proud. Even Ulf knew enough manga to understand that the scene deserved a full page.

He was dead tired and dug his nose into her hair. For the first time since forever he just relaxed and enjoyed doing nothing together with the person he needed closest to him.

She healed him, or maybe, as Noriko surprisingly had suggested, Christina did the healing, and Noriko herself enjoyed the rewards. Ulf didn’t agree. He could feel how Noriko made him whole again in a way he hadn’t been since his daughter died. Maybe Christina had started that process, but Ulf knew the day when he was fully healed still lay ahead of him.

It scared him. Not that he had broken at the death of his child, but that he hadn’t noticed how broken he became. His pride lay in knowing himself, and he hadn’t.

“Sleeping?”

Ulf hugged Noriko closer. He could feel her breasts under his arms but pretended he didn’t notice. “No, just enjoying what you’re giving me.”

She didn’t move away, so Ulf guessed she pretended as well. Her face turned upwards and her hair caressed him. It was longer now than last summer. Then she turned her head and Ulf felt small hands grabbing his neck. Hungry lips sought his.

“What we’re sharing,” she said after the kiss. “Not giving or taking. You said so yourself.”

Somehow she managed to turn around in their embrace, and now she sat straddling one of his legs. There was nothing sexual about it, or at least mostly nothing. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t notice what pressed against his thigh, but there was no intention.

Ulf hugged her closer and rested his face on her shoulder. “I’m happy you never gave up on me. Thank you!”

“Worth waiting for,” she answered, and he could hear how hoarse her voice had become despite her whispering. “Worth waiting for,” she repeated. She started shaking in his arms. “Worth waiting for.”

He let her cry against him. Too much tension during the autumn, and now when the two of them finally found a moment to relax it all ran off her. He felt no sorrow in her tears. Relief, happiness and a lot of love all mixed together reached him through her sobs.

He just held her and kept his silence.

A moment of shared solitude. A moment of bliss. A moment to call their own. A moment, he hoped, that would stay with him for long years to come.

They fell asleep in each others arms. When Ulf woke dusk was rapidly cloaking the room in ever fading light and he shook Noriko awake as well.

“Time to go,” he said.

She blinked back at him through unruly hair and shook her head. “Just a little more.” Her arms wrapped around him again.

They sat on the floor until all daylight had vanished and temperature dropped.

With a little regret Ulf loosened himself from her embrace, rose and began closing the windows. He took her hand and together they made their way down to the shoe lockers. A bit guiltily he helped Noriko climb the closed gates to the school before he pushed at the rails with both hands and rolled over to the other side.

“Wow!”

It had been deliberate, and Ulf greedily drank Noriko’s admiration. I used to like showing off like this back in the days as well. It had worked to a degree. He wasn’t a real athlete in any of his lives, and Noriko grew up with Ryu who definitely was.

“Wow what?” Ulf said, trying his best to sound nonchalant.

“You really are as strong as you’re clumsy.”

So much for impressing your girl. He smirked. “I made it, didn’t I?”

“Idiot bro would have...”

“Yeah, I realised myself,” Ulf interrupted her. “Just felt like it,” he added and took her hand. “Eight o’clock, at Waseda,” her reminded her.

They had a rather well paid two hours of work ahead of them. A hundred thousand, and he needed those jobs since studying and running between meetings cut into the time he had available for customers. With a bit of luck it would lead to more short stunts like this one.

They walked under trees dressed for the coming winter, along more and more heavily trafficked streets until they arrived at the station. For once they took the same train, and Ulf thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to spend a little more time with her. It didn’t matter that the train was crammed. Right now it was easy to pretend that it was just the two of them going somewhere, anywhere.

***

Noriko wanted the luxury of a long evening with Urufu to never end. Working with him was fine, as long as it meant being together.

She watched her own face mirrored in the windows of a late train, sleepily noticed how it faded in and out of view as they passed between brightly lit parts of the city scape.

Waseda was an intense memory of elderly men and a few women giving them amused stares when they set up the workshop. Those stares had become progressively less amused as it proceeded.

In two years they could be my teachers. She blinked. Or are they called professors at university? She blinked again. Doesn’t matter, does it? With that she leaned into Urufu’s shoulder and resumed watching their reflections in the windows.

The next station offered a surprise when Hitomi unexpectedly entered and took a seat beside Noriko.

“Evening.”

“Evening,” Noriko answered. You know I’d like some more time alone with Urufu. Noriko wished she could have said that aloud rather than just thinking it, but she felt a little guilty about what happened to Hitomi after the chaos in 109.

“You know I’m not angry of you,” Hitomi said. “I know you’re a tight group of friends.”

Noriko twisted uncomfortably in her seat. OK, she has something to say. Guess I’ll listen. “But?” she said and sat upright. She felt the absence of Urufu’s warmth as soon as the space between them widened.

“No but.”

The train rattled on with Noriko waiting for Hitomi to continue.

“Father’s been digging up some dirt on Kareyoshi,” Hitomi said when the silence told its clear message that she was the one supposed to do the talking. “Is he daft or something? I mean shouldn’t he at least pretend to hide his actions?”

That did bring a smile to Noriko’s lips. She nodded. “Yep, he’s daft. Urufu’s positive he needs to close his mouth before standing up not to overload his brain.”

“How come he’s not in prison yet?”

“Security by obscurity.”

“What?”

Noriko grinned. “Another of Urufu’s expressions. Kareyoshi gives moronic an entirely new dimension, he says.”

“I don’t get you.”

Noriko tapped Hitomi’s shoulder when the train stopped and passengers got off and on. There was no need of people overhearing them.

Privacy returned and Noriko raised her voice again. “He’s so incredibly stupid it’s hard to even believe he’s doing what he’s doing. The main problem is making people believe he’s involved.”

“Better believe it,” Hitomi murmured. She stretched her legs, very beautiful legs a small demon of envy in Noriko’s head observed, and gave her shoes a thorough look. “Father says someone in the diet is pulling the strings,” she continued after she was done admiring her feet.

That information leaked as well? “For real?” Noriko hoped her acting was good enough for Hitomi not to notice that was old news. Still, where had Hitomi’s father dug it up? The link between Kareyoshi and the politician was supposed to be a closely kept secret for the simple reason Kareyoshi didn’t know about it himself. “What did you say your father worked with?”

Hitomi smiled. “I probably never did. Business,” she added.

It was as clear a warning as any that Hitomi had seen through her and knew that Noriko had just attempted to interrogate her. There was no longer a reason to be subtle about it.

“What kind of business?”

“The kind where you get to blackmail a lot of people.”

“What?”

“Nothing illegal, just very dirty. There’s a reason I spent my freshman year as an airheaded beautiful doll.”

And Noriko thought she had been cynical when she started high school.

“But you aren’t, not any longer.” That came out wrong. “You’re not pretending to be one I mean,” Noriko added and snuggled up against Urufu again. She liked gloating a little and showing off what she had gained after so long. Childish? Probably, but she didn’t care.

Hitomi stretched her legs out once more and smirked. “You know, the first week was perfect for someone like me. Always visible but never really noticed.”

“Huh?” Noriko gave Hitomi a careful look. No, she had never been an airhead to begin with. Which mean she represented competition, and Noriko wasn’t about to let anyone wiggle between herself and Urufu.

“Don’t worry, I’m not really interested in him that way. You at the other hand...”

“Huh?”

The smirk turned into a grin. “I’m actually not that interested at all, but if I am I believe I swing both ways.”

That was unexpected. “Why did you tell me?” Noriko said and edged closer to Urufu.

“I’ll tell you later, but I need to explain what happened first. You see, that first week really was perfect. Me and that other girl in our wing and Ryu and the Watabes in the other. Well, I guess Nori as well before people knew he was a motor mouth.”

Noriko listened in awe. That was so calculated. But it did make sense. The two beauties in one wing and the popular boys in the other. “And then Kuri happened?”

Hitomi nodded. “Yes, but it wasn’t all bad. Not everyone from our wing bothered with 3:1, so the two of us had our admirers who never cared to look more than skin deep.”

Noriko could see where this was going. “So you pretended to be the beautiful airhead for the first trimester?”

“Uhum. Urufu was a problem after he got together with Kuri, because then she started coming to our wing, but still not that bad.”

“Oh! And then the club with us getting the new club room in your wing?”

The way Hitomi shook her head told volumes, but at least she smiled. “The entire circus moved right into my turf. Suddenly I was invisible.”

It all made sense. Early the second trimester Hitomi mostly dropped her pretence. “I think I like this you better.”

“I was getting there. I want in, as really in. I want friends.”

“Aren’t we friends already?”

“I mean close ones, which is why I told you all this.”

I don’t understand. “What you just told me could hurt you a lot if it got out.”

“I know. Good friends need that kind of leverage on each other.”

Are you for real?