“Why here?”
“Because I love
winter,” Kuri said.
Ryu shook his
head. Going to Odori Park was excessive just to celebrate Christmas.
Or rather flying from Tokyo to Sapporo was. To top it off it was
freezing cold, literally so. The snow he had expected, though, was
absent.
“This is
winter?” he had to ask.
At his side Kuri
shook her head. She grimaced a little. “Well, it’s not too
uncommon you’ll have to wait until January for the snow back home.”
‘Home’ wasn’t
Tokyo. Ryu knew that. At least not right now. For him snow was
something you visited, but the way her eyes dimmed when they landed
in a bare landscape told him she must have grown up with white
winters.
“Back then,”
he began, “how did you spend Christmas?”
She smiled and
gave him a peck of a kiss on his cheek. “Thanks for asking.” She
brightened and he could see the child she had once been. “Before
modelling, with my family. Just like everyone else.” Then something
sad covered her eyes. “After my nomadic life began, well anywhere I
guess. I tried to get home whenever possible though.”
Taking a few
steps more in silence Ryu watched the madness around him. Kuri
certainly had picked a place as sickly illuminated as any of the more
well known Christmas dating spots in Tokyo. He guessed girls liked
it. With the possible exception of his sister of course, but then she
hadn’t really begun behaving like a girl until last year.
She was with
Nao then. And that turned out just splendidly, didn’t it? Ryu
swore silently and looked ahead. He’d promised himself he’d leave
his sister alone as much as possible lest Kuri walked away from him.
Yukio’s and Kyoko’s mad gamble had paid off. Hats off for them.
After his anger subsided Ryu admitted he admired their bravery.
“You don’t
really celebrate Christmas that way here, do you?” Kuri sad, but
her voice held a quality to it that revealed she was still in that
other world.
Ryu looked up and
glanced at her. “No,” he admitted. “It’s mostly a dating
event for couples, well and small kids receive presents.”
“Did you get
any?” she replied at once, and the teasing giggle that followed
made him smile. She was back once again.
“Prince of
Himekaizen here. Princes don’t get to act like kids.” His own
words rang false. He had, behaved like a kid that was, and deep
inside he knew he still was. The only difference from earlier was he
wasn’t entirely certain why he disliked Noriko’s and
Urufu’s relationship so much.
She turned down
Yukio three times during their last year at middle school, but Ryu
was certain he wouldn’t have reacted this way had Noriko chosen
otherwise.
The part about
her boyfriend being a foreigner was something Ryu had already
rejected; he didn’t care about it when it came to Kuri after all.
In fact he no longer noticed anything but how much he cared for her.
The same went for the age difference, or at least mostly so, because
Ryu suspected Urufu saw something in Noriko he himself couldn’t
see, and maybe the resentment lay there.
“It’s a lot
more gaudy than what I remember from home,” Kuri said. She was
still giggling, but she became serious again. “There’s a lot
that’s different from home.”
If she was back
in this reality then that reality included the hell they had been
through the last year. “I wonder what the next one will be like,”
Ryu said and pretended to be interested in the knick-knacks sold in
one stall.
Kuri hugged his
arm closer to herself and made a show of taking a more active
interest in tackiness on display. “The next principal?” she asked
between a poorly painted earthenware mug and a glass that failed
utterly at looking like crystal. “We’ll have this one,” she
added to his horror and chose a pair of the mugs.
Unbidden an image
of the mugs being used in her luxury flat came to his mind, and he
shuddered. He was part of that picture.
Ryu stared at the
woman by his side, because she very much was a woman. This time he
did notice her foreignness. The kind of clothing she wore, almost
white, including a fluffy something covering her golden hair, would
have looked awful on anyone born here. Kuri, however, looked like a
princess supervising this illusion as if it was only natural for her.
“Yes,” he
said. “The next principal.”
The princess
smirked and shrugged. “I don’t know. Normal I hope.”
Normal? Yes, I
can see why you’d want normal. Ryu let go of her arm so she
could sign something a fan put under her nose. From the start since
they entered the park she had been bugged by fans, and only the
discreet intervention of her body guards allowed them a semblance of
a date for two.
Ryu didn’t
mind, but he felt a little sorry for Kuri. He might be the Prince of
Himekaizen, but with the madman Kareyoshi at the helm there had been
precious little time to be a prince of anything. He still had the
chance to vanish into the shadows whenever the need became pressing.
As for Kuri, the only shadows she ever saw were those she cast
herself.
Is it worth
it? Or is this the only life you know?
With one fan a
happier person and an autograph richer Ryu took the chance to move
closer to his girlfriend. They managed to walk another two stalls
before the next group of fans were allowed near them.
One of the girls
hunting for Kuri’s signature shot Ryu a shy smile, and he
reflexively returned it with a trademarked one of his own. From the
corner of his eye he saw how Kuri lit up in a thoroughly professional
smile.
Christmas carols
from different speakers mixed and competed for attention, Kuri handed
out Christmas presents in the form of autographs, and the two of them
pretended to enjoy a date for two with preying cameras noticing
everything they did.
Tomorrow some of
those cameras would make someone famous for an entire day. Tomorrow
Ryu would help Kuri look like a high school girl living out her
winter break. Tomorrow Kuri’s normal life would continue with
cameras, fans and body guards.
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