Chapter five, 2017, leverage, segment two

Yukio saw Kyoko together with Urufu and Noriko across the street and waved. To his chagrin she didn’t even notice his arrival, but when his body guard left for the car and got inside she must have seen something moving, because her hand went up and Yukio saw her looking straight at him.

Something happened? he thought when he saw how dark her face was.

Traffic was heavy, so Yukio impatiently trod his own feet waiting for a chance to cross. It came just as Urufu turned and looked for whom Kyoko was waving at, and halfway across the street Yukio was met by both Urufu’s and Noriko’s hands as well.

“What’s up?” Yukio said as soon he was safely on the pavement on the other side.

Above them daylight had long since given way to night; had done so earlier now when November crept towards December. A sudden bite in the air announced the approach of winter, even though neither Urufu nor Kuri ever accepted that Tokyo had anything resembling winter in the first place.

“Nothing’s up,” Urufu said, and those words had Yukio realise the answer had been late in coming.

“You look a lot morose for nothing to have happened. Spill!”

Urufu’s eyes avoided his, but Yukio saw him glance at Kyoko and Noriko both.

“The grown-ups are playing dirty little games of power inside,” Noriko said instead.

“Who’s winning?” Yukio didn’t feel like waiting for the trio to slowly spit out the story in bits and pieces. Urufu once taught him how to cut to the chase, and by now Yukio felt confident he was better at it than Urufu.

“Winning?” Urufu said.

“The dirty games,” Yukio clarified.

“Eh, I guess we are.”

“But it’s taking too long?” Yukio guessed.

Angry nods from Kyoko and Noriko confirmed his suspicion. Kareyoshi’s actions finally made someone willing to bring the axe down on him, or rather several someones, but right now they were probably jockeying for power rather than swinging that blade.

“Urufu, can you promise the end result will be disgustingly awful for Kareyoshi?”

“I can’t promise anything.”

“Then,” Yukio began and looked at Kyoko, “we can’t wait.” He stepped past the trio and opened the door to the café.

“Yukio, wait! What do you think you’re doing?”

Yukio grinned, but he didn’t turn. He did however wait for the bell to jingle to add some extra effect to his next statement. “If you can’t, then I’ll find someone inside who can give us that promise.”

“Yukio, you really shouldn’t...”

“My man! He’s all my man,” Kyoko’s voice interrupted Urufu’s attempt at stopping him.

Still grinning Yukio went inside. They’d been a couple for close to a year and a half now, but Kyoko still knew how to say exactly the things that made his heart go bump in his chest. Behind him he heard the door close to the sound of the bell, and he imagined how Urufu stood staring at it mouth agape.

Now the question was where those playing a dirty game were. The café proper was its usual jumble of odd furniture and students in their gakuran and sailor uniforms from Irishima High mingling with the few Himekaizen uniforms who still dared to go here.

By now anyone here still sporting a Himekaizen sports jacket had attained an almost mythical status, and Yukio received a much warmer welcome than had been the case a year earlier.

Yukio nodded at James, who stood at his usual place behind the counter, and then he turned to face eyes meeting his. “Where are the really old people?” Yukio said. Some of Urufu’s rudeness had rubbed off in a good way.

“Inner room,” a female voice answered.

Yukio searched for the owner and found Ai. She had dyed her hair again, and once again to a darker brown tone. It was as if she slowly wanted to look as unobtrusive as possible after her crashed relationship with Ryu, and Yukio felt sorry for her. Just sorry though. He wasn’t about to help her, because with Ryu and Kuri dating, and Urufu getting accustomed to being with Noriko, their respective worlds finally stopped being full of thorns.

“Thank you,” Yukio said and made his way behind the counter.

An opened door later he was inside, facing old men who should have scared him a lot more than they did.

“This room is booked for the evening,” a man who had to be Ai’s father said.

They did scare him. He was just a sixteen year old boy after all. Still, he had all but promised Kyoko an end to Kareyoshi’s atrocities. On shaking legs Yukio pretended he hadn’t heard and walked to the grand table and pulled out a chair.

“It’s booked,” another man said.

A very, very scary man Yukio admitted to himself when he met cold, calculating eyes. He forced himself to sit down and plastered a false smile to his face.

“Christmas,” Yukio said. “We’re just kids, and we can’t do much,” he added.

“Christmas?” Nakagawa-sensei asked, and for the first time since entering the room Yukio felt at least a little warmth from one of the men inside.

“We know adults who will help us if we ask,” Yukio explained.

He only got a questioning gaze from his former principal in return.

“After Christmas, if Kareyoshi’s not gone, well ask,” Yukio added.

There was a moment of silence, just a moment, but it was enough for Yukio to realise he had successfully thrown the dice in this dirty gamble of adults.

“Do you really believe you can threaten us,” the really scary man said. “Do you have any idea of what kind of power we represent?”

Yukio did. If he hadn’t he wouldn’t have dared doing this. “Kareyoshi had Kuri assaulted last year. He put Kyoko, Urufu and me in hospital. Now two girls were raped because of him,” he said, still ashamed he couldn’t recall the name of the Korean girl. “With all that power of yours, what have you planned on doing to us to make us more afraid than we really are?”

This time the silence settled into the room. He had gained what Urufu called leverage. What an ugly word!

Chapter five, 2017, leverage, segment one

Accusations of Urufu cheating died down, even though they left a dirty memory behind. Jeniferu’s expulsion, however, went through.

Silently Kyoko wondered how Kareyoshi dared, because foreign journalists still clung to both Himekaizen and Irishima High making the scandal fester, and Kyoko agreed with them. It was a disgusting scandal.

She stood, phone in hand and looked at it. Among other news it seemed Jeniferu had made new friends at Irishima High.

And a press conference.

Right now Jeniferu was one of the most hated girls in Tokyo ever since she disclosed details, not only of the gang rape but also about the atrocities the police had made her go through while at the same time dissuading her from filing a report.

The reason Kyoko stared at her phone was the latest news that an opportunistic China had used the incident to warn their citizens off travels to Japan since security for females couldn’t be guaranteed. South Korea was bound to follow suit within a day or two, which, just as Ambassador Cooper had threatened, would make it all blow up into a huge international scandal.

Rightfully so.

The police report, at least the parts someone managed to dig up, indicated the rape was Jeniferu’s fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong moment. Which meant being exactly where Kareyoshi’s goons had ordered her to be at the time they wanted her to be there.

Isn’t the police supposed to be protecting us?

So in the end Jeniferu got kicked out of school for indecent behaviour. And the online communities went up in flame where ‘foreign whore’ was among the politest epithets attached to her.

Does it mean it was my fault I was attacked? Twice?

In a bad way Kyoko suspected not everyone believed so, because the Stockholm Haven café had two new customers at the moment. Two scary men who had once moved from Japan to Sweden, or at least one scary man. The other was Ai’s father, and he just made Kyoko feel awkward since he somehow was involved in Ryu and Ai breaking up last spring.

One of the men, however, was definitely scary. The father to one of the five Swedish guests they had entertained last summer. Rika, if Kyoko recalled correctly. The former student council president of their sister high school, or at least something very close to a student council president.

She could ask, Kyoko noted. Both Rika and Ai’s older brother Jun were present as well together with Jun’s girlfriend. Three of those five students attended universities in Tokyo, and as far a Kyoko understood, none of them planned to spend all four years here.

The scary man sat talking with the not so scary one, former Principal Nakagawa and Kuri-chan’s grandfather, who by all rights was a scary man himself if Urufu could be believed. From time to time Urufu’s guardian and James joined their conversation, but most of the time they shared their own table with Kuri-chan’s photographer and a very old woman Kyoko had never seen before.

As for Kyoko she stood behind the counter taking orders and serving them. She did so together with Noriko and that university student part timer James had hired for late evenings.

Urufu was in the inner room together with the three Swedish students, of whom two were really Japanese. It wasn’t club activities, because the café proper was filled with club members ever since Urufu booted everyone out from their club room.

Kyoko forced down a very unfeminine growl when she saw Jeniferu in her sailor uniform talking with another Irishima High freshman and Tomasu. Jeniferu should never have had to wear that uniform, or even better, should have worn it from the beginning.

Then Kyoko’s eyes sought out the adults again.

What are you thinking? Half a dozen arrivals in the café. You stand out like a sore thumb. And they did. It was still early enough for the students to be here, and the only adult expected except for James was the vice principal of Irishima High.

Sure enough students glanced at the older people from time to time, and Kyoko sighed with relief when Urufu finally left the inner room together with their former guests and let the grown-ups inside.

“Kyoko, Noriko, could you tell me when you have your next break?”

Kyoko shot their older colleague a glance, and when she nodded approval Kyoko met Urufu’s eyes again. “Now is fine.”

“Outside.”

She followed him through the door, and the short delay until the bell rang again behind her was proof that Noriko had joined them as well.

“What is it?” Noriko asked when the door closed.

Urufu turned and faced them both. Behind his back Kyoko saw cars passing by in a steady stream and on the other side of the street her body guard sat in a car waiting as he always did whenever she visited the Haven café. Just one body guard, because Yukio and Ryu were away running errands for the club.

“The old people are planning something dirty. I think it has do do with Kareyoshi.”

“Why can’t they just have him put in jail?”

Urufu grimaced. “They could. To be honest I believe even we could by now.”

“So why not?” Kyoko just wanted the madman gone.

“Because they’re adults. Because they need to know he isn’t replaced by someone equally bad.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Because adults don’t do the right thing or the wrong thing,” Noriko said.

Kyoko turned and looked at her, and in doing so she saw how Urufu drew a deep breath.

“I’m pretty certain they need to negotiate with whoever put him there in the first place,” he said.

“Negotiate?” The word felt strange in Kyoko’s mouth. “He’s involved in the assault of four girls!” The word made her sick. “Negotiate? What’s there to negotiate?”

“It’s not that...” Urufu began. The he stopped mid sentence and bowed. “I apologise. Adults to disgusting things and call it being pragmatic. I apologise for even thinking like that. You’re right. There’s nothing to be negotiated.”

June 24, 2040, breakfast thoughts

Kyoko looked down the slope to where her two best friends sat chatting by the water line.

Took you long enough.

It wasn’t as if they hadn’t spoken before, but they hadn’t spoken about those things. Still, as far as Kyoko could recall they had stayed friends despite all. Friends with things unspoken between them, but friends still.

She left her friends by the water, climbed the hillside and crossed the veranda to the kitchen.

With the kids still sleeping and all the local guests gone both house and garden seemed larger than before. It was, Kyoko decided, that a place needed people milling around to seem small.

She quickly made tea and gathered some of yesterday’s leftovers for an impromptu breakfast. Or rather an impromptu first breakfast. Yukio might be first in her heart, but sometimes she wanted to be alone. She’d wake him up in time for a second morning meal, and he’d know it was her second, and he’d pretend he didn’t know; and she’d love him all the more for that.

I became an adult believing you were all so strong, but maybe the strong ones were the two of us. Kyoko grimaced a little. That wasn’t entirely honest. Maybe because we were allowed to be the teenagers we were. Urufu and Kuri-chan hadn’t been, and as for Ryu and Noriko, well they got dragged into the world of adults in a way Kyoko and Yukio avoided. It hurt us and it gave us gifts, but I guess we could step aside and watch it from the outside.

Suddenly grateful for everything Kyoko sat down in a chair and enjoyed some time by herself. This time as an adult by choice.

Chapter four, 2017, petty revenge, segment ten

Just minutes earlier Noriko stood staring in disbelief at the billboard with the juniors’ mid term results. Urufu putting real effort into it should bring him clearly into the top fifty.

Now only friends cared about what happened outside the top ten, and she had searched for him to make an unprecedented jump from nowhere into the top twenty.

She couldn’t find him, so Noriko threw a quick glance at the very top to look for her own spot before searching for his name again.

Third. As in Urufu had claimed the third place with her as second.

There was a difference between astonishing and absurd. She’d pushed herself this time, and that made her beat him by a mere three points. As for the top student he still nailed his first place position with close to perfect scores.

But third. That was tantamount to a joke. Urufu didn’t attend a cram school. Sure, neither did she, but she was a first rate student born and raised here.

And this was the reason she barged into his classroom accompanied by students from both wings.

“Urufu?” she asked. “What happened?”

There was no answer. Urufu just stared at the floor and refused to meet her gaze.

“How did you get that result of yours?”

“Japanese,” he said and kept looking at his feet.

“Japanese?”

“Yeah, 85 happened.”

“85?” Noriko stared at Urufu. “How did you manage to score 85?”

Urufu’s gaze never left the floor.

“He scored 85?” That was Ryu, as he came in through the door. Kyoko, Kuri and Yukio followed in his wake with equally stunned expressions on their faces.

The sound of voices from the corridor filtered into the classroom as the rumour spread like wildfire.

“Did you see the list?” a voice from outside shouted.

“You got 85 in Japanese?” Yukio said.

“Yes, I did,” Urufu admitted. He blushed shamefacedly, and continued staring at his feet. “That's what you get for an overblown self-confidence.”

“Huh?”

“Japanese wasn't just a matter of brainless memorisation. In the end it was impossible for me to get it right.”

“Wait, wait...”

“You're ashamed you scored 85?” Noriko interrupted Yukio.

Finally Urufu raised his head and looked at her. “Yes, I'm sorry. I left you alone for almost an entire month, and I still failed to get an aggregate above 490.”

“Failed?”

“Yes. I think I got 480. Once again I apologize.” His eyes were downcast. “I tried, for you,” he added.

He's truly ashamed. I don't believe him! Noriko walked over to where he stood, his head still hanging, and hugged him close. “You make me proud. I love you,” she said.

There were sudden gasps. While there were a lot of people who knew about them their relationship was nominally still a secret.

Noriko looked around and dared anyone to comment her public confession.

Then Kuri broke the spell. “Ask him about his grades, his original grades,” she said softly.

Noriko looked into Urufu's eyes. “U-kun?”

“Five,” he answered.

“Five? Five what?”

Once again Kuri's voice reached her from behind. “Across the board, fourteen subjects, he averaged five point zero.”

Noriko turned, even though she never let go of her embrace. “What does that mean?” she asked, but she already knew the answer.

“He is, easily, the brightest man I've encountered in my entire life.” Kuri chuckled. “Seems you made a good catch there.”

Noriko felt her cheeks heating up. Then she glanced at the wide open door. The corridor was packed with students staring at them. Furiously blushing she hid her face in Urufu's embrace. “I knew that,” she said.

Then she remembered the promise she had given herself earlier. She grabbed Urufu’s face in her hands and bent closer. It took more courage than she had thought, and she had to block out thoughts about impropriety she shared with a younger version of Kyoko. With more than a little glee she felt his astonishment as he met her kiss, and then everything else was lost in a roaring dizziness of pleasure as she grabbed his head and tasted his closeness.

It lasted for longer than she had imagined, but probably for a lot shorter than she had believed. Slowly voices from around her filtered into her private world of joy.

“They’re going out?”

“No it’s just a hobby. Don’t you also french people just for fun?” That was Kuri’s voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Sis!”

Noriko disregarded the outburst. Urufu was hers, and her idiot bro could ditch his crappy attitude about it somewhere.

Then she felt Urufu’s hands grabbing her under her arms and her mouth left his. Suddenly her feet lost contact with the floor and moments later she sat on Urufu’s desk. After that his arms wrapped around her again.

“Thank you!” he whispered in her ear. “I love you."

“I thought Wakayama-san wouldn’t settle for anyone with poor grades,” some genius said from behind her back.

Noriko smiled.

“Moron! She didn’t.” That voice also came from behind.

She smiled some more. “U-kun, I love you.” Noriko dug her fingers into his hair and pulled him closer into the embrace. “And I don’t care about your grades,” she added.

He hugged her back.

Then more rational thoughts finally entered her mind. “Urufu,” she began, “other people might care though,” she said and allowed herself to leave his embrace.

Urufu grinned and laughed. He nodded at the classroom entrance and when Noriko looked there she saw how it was packed with students staring at them.

“I love how you’re quick on the uptake,” he said.

She glared at him.

“Why don’t we handle that problem when it arrives?” Suddenly she was pulled into his arms again. She felt his lips touching her ear. “Right now I’m more interested in an after school date,” he whispered.

Noriko just nodded. The last weeks had been lonely. Problems could wait. “Anywhere but Haven.”

Chapter four, 2017, petty revenge, segment nine

Ulf stared at the list.

Fuck!

He knew his goal had been nothing but petty revenge, but failing it still hurt.

Third. Noriko second and the same guy who’d made some kind of unholy reservation with the gods of the list first. Just as he’d been on every exam session since their first mid terms as freshmen.

That first spot had been his goal ever since he started to senselessly cram like the rest of the students. Sure, third would still create an uproar, but, well, it wasn’t the same thing.

Ulf growled silently. It wasn’t just that he failed to get the first place. Given his opinion about himself and his capacity at studying when he really made an effort, the result in Japanese came as an ugly surprise.

And the day had begun so well. Waking up to the sound of his phone calling and Noriko’s voice from it a few moments later. A Noriko who not once admonished him for giving in to Ryu’s request he’d spend his afternoon biking around with Christina last Sunday.

Which he did, and while doing so realised he’d become friends with the woman he still loved. And he’d listened and he’d talked, and he’d laughed with joy at realising how her feelings for Ryu had grown into something that carried weight for the future. The joy, though, vaporised when he heard how Jennifer’s brutal bantering in the corridors was nothing but a shell that hid her broken core.

Still, the day had begun so well. A broken Jennifer wasn’t anything he could mend, and Ulf made it a point not to put too much energy into something he couldn’t affect. Comments about him being a cold hearted bastard be damned – he couldn’t affect those neither.

Now his promise to Noriko to share an after school date tasted sour in his mouth. He’d planned to celebrate with her, and if he was honest with himself, to tease her a little, but with her grabbing second place hers were the rights of teasing. Not that that mattered much. Her mind went places he could barely grasp, and if he got stuck in her shadow he’d just feel that much more pride in her.

But 85. It wasn’t as if 85 was a poor result by any means, given that Japanese very much was a foreign language for him, but he’d poured in long hours. The difference between 85 and the 95 he aimed for was momentous. As in at least another year’s worth of serious studying.

Ulf growled again. Now he was stuck with handling the inevitable uproar for making such a visible spot on the list after never having made the top fifty at all before. And all for a performance that lay far behind what he had hoped for.

Bloody hell, it’s high school level! The result sullied his two academic degrees, especially as one of them was language studies, and English sharing a Germanic heritage with his Swedish be damned. Learning Japanese was merely more difficult and he was still supposed to be a linguist of sorts.

But we didn’t really learn English at university, did we? That part was over and done with after high school. And it was. University English was learning about the English language, and Himekaizen was very much a high school, albeit a Japanese one.

He fled up the stairs to his classroom. Soon he’d be mobbed by classmates who wondered how he popped up from nowhere to a top position among the second years in the science track.

Ulf tapped his fingers against his desk. He’d prepared himself for that part. Soon both Noriko and Ryu would bug him as well, and they had different reasons to wonder what he had done. Solid reasons, but Ulf didn’t care any longer, and for that reason he hadn’t prepared for the onslaught from his friends.

After a while his classroom slowly filled up, but there was still a lot of time left of their lunch break. Given the decent weather and all Ulf normally only expected to see those who ate their lunch in the classroom here by now, but there were almost a dozen more present.

He looked up and met questioning eyes. He couldn’t do much more than shrug in response, and that created even more questions since it wasn’t a gesture universally used here.

With a sigh he dug up a book from his bag and pretended to study, which was exceptionally stupid since they had just received their mid term results. Ulf shook his head at his own ineptitude at subterfuge, and admitting it brought an involuntary smile to his lips.

Well, 3:1 was last year’s rumours, and the club. This year I guess anything goes. And that was a bloody awful thought, because the part with anything goes included the atrocity the two girls had to live through.

Ulf wiped he smile off his lips and pretended to study again. Concentrating took an effort, because that result in Japanese still plagued his mind.

Then there was some commotion by the doors, and Ulf looked up.

Well known as the faces were the still didn’t belong in his classroom. Most of them not even to this wing. He met Noriko’s eyes and felt embarrassment crawling all around inside himself. There was little left to do but studying his own shoes.