Tokyo dressed for Christmas and Himekaizen for finals. Clubs shut down for the year with the very much unofficial Himekaizen Cultural Exchange Club as a glaring exception.

And glaring was also what Kareyoshi did most of these days.

Ryu didn’t like it, but letting one of the rapists off the hook did result in Kareyoshi losing the support of men in power.

“It’s politics,” Urufu had said with distaste in his voice, and while their relationship had gone sour ever since Noriko became an item with him, in this case they agreed.

Ryu even asked his father for an opinion, but he fidgeted, and Ryu could see how uncomfortable he was with the idea of making exceptions to principles. His mother’s reaction was very different though.

“Can you win?” she wanted to know, and when Ryu said they might she just told him to win. By now Ryu started to understand that in many ways she was far more ruthless than his father.

In the end they decided to win, and as Christmas decorations went up all over the city so did Kareyoshi’s stocks go down. The problem was that he proved to be too stupid to understand how precarious his situation had become. So he kept glaring, and the members of the club kept goading him.

All in all, Ryu thought, it was the worst case of a lose lose situation he had ever lived through.

Right now he sat in the inner room of the Haven café and did what he should have done for a week – he studied. Even Kuri had gotten the week free from work. Final exams were final exams after all, and for once he shared his time with her doing school things and wearing school clothes. There had been preciously little of that during the autumn that was about to end.

The room was crowded as usual. Gakuran, sailor uniforms and blazers mixed freely, with the blazers in a clear minority. Students walked between café and inner room, and Ryu observed how the Irishima High students had become used to the informal atmosphere during the second term.

As always the Irishima High vice principal took his chair at one end of the large table.

Urufu occupied one whiteboard and Noriko another. In difference from more ordinary weeks they didn’t walk between whiteboards but stayed by one, and therefore stayed focussed on one subject.

All in all the café seemed more subdued with most students silently cramming for all they were worth. Only the occasional question to Urufu or Noriko broke the silence.

It pained Ryu a little to admit it, but with Urufu by her side Noriko’s academic capacity rushed ahead in leaps so great Ryu had trouble understanding what was happening.

Two more days, a short weekend, and then finals were upon them. He intended to do the most of those two days.

With a guilty look across the table Ryu dove back into his books. He shook off the discomfort of seeing Ai’s expression whenever Kuri’s hand caressed him. By now it was a different kind of discomfort. His love for Kuri was stable, but he still hoped Ai would find her own happiness soon.

Subject by subject he kept cramming, and as the evening grew later the world around called for his attention. It began as occasional voices, but when it became a steady stream of conversations Ryu realised most of those present had given up studying for the day.

He stretched, threw Kuri a quick hug and received one in return. For once she had been as busy studying as he.

“You OK?” he asked and looked at her books.

Kuri nodded and smiled. “Yes. I’m able to read the books by myself now.”

Her achievement filled him with pride, or at least happiness for her sake. And it was an achievement. It meant her Japanese was better than his English even when it came to reading.

“And?” Ryu asked.

“And what?”

“The finals,” he said, “what do you think?”

She leaned her head to the side, a very Japanese expression she had learned as a model. “Top hundred, but I won’t make the list.”

Top hundred was a lot better than he had expected. Somewhere, deep in his mind, an ugly thought lurked. That Kuri was all beauty and no brains. Ryu slammed down on it whenever he became aware of his prejudices, but it kept popping up, rearing its ugly head and reminded him of how he could eventually be wrong about his refusal to accept Urufu and Noriko being a pair.

“And you?” Kuri asked in return.

Ryu grabbed her hand and rather than squeeze he allowed his fingers to embrace hers. “The list,” he said. “High thirty I suppose. My best result yet.”

It felt strange being able to make these kind of educated guesses, but as much a he might dislike Urufu, Ryu still admitted that the man in a boy’s body pushed them all to reach higher, achieve more and succeed better than what was humanly possible.

The secret, Ryu sullenly accepted, was that Urufu was trapped in the body of a teenager, or else none of the students here would have listened to him the way they did.

He threw a worried glance in Kuri’s direction.

“Thinking of Ulf much?” she asked.

Ryu blushed.

“You know,” Kuri teased, “thinking of my ex as your rival is fine, but thinking of him as mine isn’t.”

Did he really admire Urufu that much, despite feelings of dislike? Maybe, Urufu had changed his life after all.

Ryu wrenched those thoughts aside and faced Kuri. “I love you, and only you.” He gave what he had just said a moment’s thought, and then he took her hands in a firm grip. “I’ve never felt this way before. It’s not a crush any longer. I love how you make me feel loved, and I love how you make me trust you.”

They spent their nights together whenever her schedule allowed, and he knew her in ways he had never known anyone else. Still, the way she blushed and averted her eyes took him by surprise.

***

That evening, over a week earlier, in the Stockholm Haven Café still filled Christina with embarrassed happiness.

Ryu had long since ceased to just be a beautiful boy she didn’t mind taking to her bed. That he had become a man she could envision spending years with still surprised her.

While Ulf would never entirely leave her mind, finding a man who wasn’t merely second best was more than she deserved. She knew that, and she was grateful.

Still, the man she had come to love was just a seventeen year old kid. A seventeen year old boy who was thoroughly irritated at the moment.

The results of their final exams were plastered over the billboard, and Ryu had found himself at place 35. That wasn’t, Christina knew, what he was irritated about.

Ulf they found at third place, something that entrenched his status as a miracle man, but this also wasn’t what fuelled Ryu’s ire.

Christina gazed at his almost perfect profile looking slightly upwards. Perfect according to Japanese standards of male beauty. He even had the hairdo that announced a young man both of the world as well the world of books. Now rather than a year earlier he fully filled the shoes of the Prince of Himekaizen.

She could have spent their entire lunch break looking at him but for the irritation seething from his every pore.

At the very top of the list Noriko had finally toppled the former ace from his throne. The impossible student was relegated to second place, and this was why Ryu pouted, smirked and pouted again.

“She deserved it,” Christina said in an attempt to placate Ryu. She refrained from putting a hand on his shoulder or he would have blown up in her face.

Christina once said Ulf was the brightest man she ever met in her life. That was, she admitted to herself, both correct and sexist. Ulf wasn’t the brightest person she had ever met in her life. Noriko probably was.

This also wasn’t the reason for Ryu’s sulkiness. He was proud of his sister, and rightly so.

“Well, it’s sis after all. She always had it in her,” he said, “but...” he continued and suddenly his voice took one a whining quality.

“But what?” Christina interrupted him. “Noriko produced those results. She did it herself.”

And this was the reason Ryu was so angry. Because they both knew the lie in those words. They both knew Ryu had no hand in Noriko’s achievement, but they also understood how Ulf’s stubborn refusal to abandon his theories about learning finally paid off.

They knew, because now, half a year later, the Irishima High club members caused an uproar in their school, and the rumours carried all the way to Himekaizen. Or rather, the vice principal of Irishima High gleefully spread them to anyone willing to listen.

A ten percent average jump in results in just about six months made more than a few willing to do just that.

Ulf had become a hero in both schools, and Kareyoshi looked like an ass. Ulf had become the person who knew better than the headship what produced results. Ulf was the power behind the throne who suddenly made universities a full tier above what had seemed possible suddenly fall into the reach of three dozen students.

Each and every one of them a member of the club Kareyoshi forcefully disbanded.

Ryu took Christina’s hand in his and pulled.

You need to let go. “Can’t you see it’s good for her?” Christina said as she was led inside the cafeteria.

He muttered something she couldn’t hear, but Christina was certain it didn’t belong in a civilised conversation.

“Look, Ryu,” she began and stopped him before they entered the line of students waiting to be served what passed for food in the cafeteria. “She’s your sister. Your first priority should be what’s good for her, not what’s good for you.”

“But she could at least think about our family’s reputation,” he protested.

Christina ripped her hand from his. “Do you want me to break up with you?”

“What?”

“I’ll never, ever, hear that kind of disgusting crap leave your mouth again. Never!”

“But...”

“Do you want me to call your mother? I have her number you know.”

His eyes widened, and Christina knew exactly what he was thinking. “What does my mother...”

“I’m extremely interested in listening to her opinion about that family honour you just mentioned.” This idiocy ends here. It didn’t matter how much she loved Ryu. This was a deal breaker. He either changed or she would have to leave his side.

Watching how his features darkened Christina kept her silence. This wasn’t something she could talk him into. Him knowing he had done something wrong was enough. What it was, and what he needed to do was something he had to find out for himself.

In silence they bought their food, in silence they walked the stairs to their corridor and in silence they parted ways and entered their respective classrooms.

I know I’m inflexible, Christina thought as she slowly ate her tasteless lunch. There were parts of Sweden she didn’t care all that much for, but there were also parts that were so ingrained in her she refused to budge at all.

She finished the last of her food and looked out the windows. Clouds, grey and cold, covered the skies, but somehow they made her calm down. In the end her ultimatum was the right one. She’d never be able to look herself in a mirror if she accepted the kind of different rules for boys and girls Ryu had suggested. If she did, what had she fought so hard for in her previous life?