In the end Kuri left them to their own devices with another promise to make up with her boyfriend. Noriko felt happy for her brother. Idiot as he might be he still truly cared for Kuri, and as far as Noriko was concerned the two of them made a good couple. That Urufu didn’t get dragged into something dangerous was an added bonus.

Yeah, dangerous, right! You’re just jealous of Kuri. But to be honest Noriko didn’t fear Kuri all that much any longer. Sure sometimes, just like at that café earlier, the tall model made her feel supremely uncomfortable, but those moments never lasted for long.

That was hours earlier. Right now she was panting by Urufu’s side as they climbed Fushimi Inari-taisha, or rather one of the endless gated paths up the mountain. Earlier this day her world had been a green fantasy land of bamboo. Now it was red or orange and made of toris. It was as if the gates stood upon each other.

It was all very beautiful and all that, but unlike Urufu Noriko didn’t have the stamina to climb mountains at a pace like this. Sure, the clubs walking talking sessions did wonders, but Urufu and endless walking was an entirely different beast. He was also clumsy with the small things that Ryu never was.

“Too fast,” she panted. “Wait for me!”

He turned. “Sorry.” Then after just a few more steps he was ahead of her again.

“I said wait.”

“Ah, sorry, you’re slow.”

Really! “You’re an arse.” She loved him, but right now he was a twat.

“Sorry.”

He did slow down his steps, and with her hand in his, pulling just a little to show him it was hard work climbing the hill, they made it up the next crest. There was kind of a view, but for all the work getting up here Noriko felt a little disappointed.

“I’d like to continue a little more,” Urufu said.

Noriko looked around her. The gates thinned out considerably from here on, and the prospect of climbing even further didn’t appeal all that much to her.

“Not going back?” she wondered.

Urufu still gazed at what view was offered. “If that’s what you want,” he said just to prove that he wasn’t oblivious to her presence. There was something forlorn in his voice that had Noriko swallow the affirmative words that already lay in her mouth.

“What I want? Shouldn’t it be what we want?” He had suggested they trudge on. She gave him another look. Always straightforward he still wasn’t always honest with what he wanted for himself. Could I hope? “Something you know about the mountain?” she asked and gave the hill a little more credit than it deserved.

He smiled, just a thin line, but it reached all the way to his eyes. “There are less people there,” he said, and her heart jumped at his words.

This is where I’m very careful with what I say. She walked to his side and grabbed his hand again. Pretending to share the view with him she thought about the right words. “I’d very much like somewhere less crowded with you,” she decided upon.

“It’s an extra hour,” Urufu said as if he waited for her to change her mind.

She felt wind running through he hair and turned her face to meet him. How he could possibly believe an extra hour spent in relative solitude with him wasn’t worth the effort was beyond her. “My pleasure,” she said and pretended she hadn’t noticed that while her mind was full of him her legs still believed further walking was a supremely stupid idea. Note to self: don’t get angry at him just because you’re tired. She made that note into a promise.

“Thank you!”

Thank you? Noriko grabbed both his hands. “You don’t have to thank your girlfriend for wanting to spend time with you,” she said and surprised herself with her boldness. It was of a different kind than when she made her attempts at getting him into bed with her. This was a more important kind of boldness, one of hearts rather than of body.

He just grinned. Finally one of the wolfish grins that had both her and a few too many other girls turn in his direction. This time, however, it was for her alone. “Then this boyfriend would very much want to spend the rest of the day just with his girlfriend,” he said.

For the first time in a very long time she gave him a look where she studied him as if they hadn’t known each other for a while. At the end of his teens he grew a roughness to his face that maybe not everyone found attractive, but those who did couldn’t forget. Sturdier than the sexless definition of male beauty that went these days, but the combination of brilliance and strength was fatal for her. His was not just the beauty of someone who knew how to weather out a storm, but of one who knew how to do it with less effort despite being able to brute force it.

“You’re unfair,” she said.

“Unfair, how so?” he said, let go of one hand and led her further up the hill with the other firmly in his hand.

Noriko waited a few minutes, just enough to appreciate how he finally matched his steps with her. “You know that I really love you, don’t you?”

He faltered a little. “I do,” he said. “I don’t really understand what I’ve done to deserve it, but I do.”

She snuggled up closer to him. This part of him she definitely liked. “Because you’re you. Because you care and because I feel that you love me back,” she said. It wasn’t even close to describing everything he had done to make her fall for him, but right now it was enough.

He stopped in his tracks, and finally he bent down and kissed her. She grabbed his head with both her hands and kissed him back. Japanese sensibilities be damned. She had longed for this the entire trip.

***

Ulf stared up the mountain in consternation. After half an hour and five failed tries to reach her phone he was on the verge of giving up on finding Noriko by himself.

One moment they spent their time in blissful solitude, the kind that made a truth of the joke that love is egoism for two, the next she was gone. Well, there had been the part of him scrounging up a vending machine with a little something for the two of them to drink. Noriko was panting heavily and Ulf decided that him spending maybe quarter of an hour in search of the drinks was the perfect excuse for her to get some well needed rest.

An hour earlier he returned with two bottles and two cans, but Noriko was nowhere to be seen. A line message told him something had come up and that she would be away for a short while. After that short while grew into half an hour Ulf tried to text her, then call her on line and in the end on her real number, but all to no avail.

Now he stood at the base of the hill and wondered what to do next. If worst came to worst he could just return to their hotel, pout a little about their date together going into the bin and wait for her to eventually show up. The thing was he really didn’t care for their date going to waste. It was a little selfish, perhaps even childish, but between work, training and school they found preciously little time to spend alone with each other.

Seems she hooked me up good in the end. He surprised himself with how much he had fallen in love with his own little bundle of cheerful happiness. Now, almost two years after he got to know her she was a very different person from back then. On the outside you were a lot more grown up. Ulf grinned at the memories, crossed the street and went for the closest place where he could sit down and gobble up Noriko’s share of the drinks he bought earlier. Well, and find a toilet as well. His own share made itself reminded by now.

An empty bladder later his thoughts were very different, and Ulf silently swore at himself for not having them earlier. Noriko was missing and he never even once wondered if something bad had happened to her. Instead he’d abandoned her somewhere up that hill, because only a moron-sama like himself believed one hour of silence counted as a short time.

Retracing his steps took another quarter of an hour. And just as Ulf was about to start a random search for Noriko his phone vibrated in his pocket and let out a short squeak.

Noriko? He frantically dug form it and flipped open the case. Noriko!

“Yell at Kuri! It’s her fault,” the short message said.

It didn’t matter that the words hardly counted as an explanation. The message in itself and a pointer at Kuri meant that she was safe. Safe and angry was still safe, and Ulf let out a long sigh of relief.

“Where are you?” he texted.

There was a long pause. Enough for him to feel wind in his hair and look up shortly from the screen and take in the city scape of Kyoto.

“Not telling,” came the reply.

Not telling? What’s going on? He smirked and stabbed in a few choice words before sending them her way.

This time there was no reply at all. Irritation grew in him as he gave up and made his way down the hill again. For whatever reason the date had gone south and he walked alone to the city centre. With Noriko by his side he’d picked a local train, but a few kilometres didn’t even count as a distance when he was on his own.

In the beginning he threw down his feet with a little more strength than was needed, but as the brisk walk got his body moving angry thoughts quickly gave way for the exhilaration he always felt during physical activity. This was his drug now, and he needed it since he never picked up the habit of smoking in this life.

Wherever Noriko was she was safe together with Kuri. Come evening they’d meet again and any interrogation could wait until then. Sure, there had better be a good reason for sabotaging their time alone.

He grinned and started taking note of his surroundings. Sightseeing wasn’t his goal, but rather his teenage body came with an appetite that subsided as he grew older and got used to handling a computer all day long. Right now he was ravenously hungry, and if he was to eat alone he could as well go for some food he suspected Noriko was less than keen to share with him. Something with big slabs of meat came to his mind which meant a western style steak house unless those were hysterically overpriced.

In the end they were, and he didn’t. At the central station he found a compromise that had to make do. There was meat, albeit not any big slabs, and there was more rice to go with it than he really wanted. Still, hunger was the best seasoning of them all, and Ulf wolfed down his meal together with a soft drink that was anything but traditionally Japanese.

After the meal he gave his message queue a cursory look. It was as lacking in updates as when he gave up on finding Noriko. With nothing better to do Ulf sauntered down-town for some lonesome sight seeing. He could at least relive some memories from days long gone when his parents brought him here in a world that was lost to him in more ways than one.

He walked straight street after straight street, and every time he stopped to give something a closer look he felt a pang of regret for not having Noriko beside him. He missed her voice and witty remarks. He missed the touch of her hand in his, and that very lack filled him with another realisation. He longed for Noriko and he hadn’t even given Christina as much as a thought. That in itself made missing his girl worth it, and Ulf felt a little less of an arse knowing how his feelings finally rooted themselves where they belonged.