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Chapter two, 2017, ends and beginnings, segment seven

The hell? They’d been riding in the car for five minutes or so, but Yukio still couldn’t drop the sight of how Urufu went under the sack and moved it onto his shoulder in one smooth, snakelike movement. The overbalancing was for show. Yukio knew Urufu well enough to know when he downplayed himself. In truth his best friend never even lost an ounce of control when swinging around half his own weight as if it had been a bag of toilet paper.

All four of them were in the car. Urufu had insisted. Urufu’s aunt, who wasn’t his aunt in this world, drove. For once Noriko didn’t take the middle seat. Rather she sat to the left, right behind Urufu, and Yukio himself took the uncomfortable place in the middle. To his right Kyoko had her face glued to the window drinking impressions of a Japan she probably very seldom saw.

As from a distance Yukio heard Urufu and his aunt merrily chatting about nothing. Short laughs were replaced by guffaws, and then all of a sudden Urufu went quiet mid sentence.

“We’re here!” he shouted, and Yukio gave up any pretence of keeping anything a secret from the old woman.

She had already hit the brakes, and the car rumbled onto a gravel parking place with nothing but a lonely vending machine there.

Urufu jumped out and was busy opening the rear compartment when Yukio followed Kyoko and threw the white metal construction a closer look. A coin slot alright, but where were you supposed to pick your choice?

“Here we go,” Urufu laughed. He carried the sack to the machine, and like making a judo throw he sat down on one knee and rolled it from shoulder to the ground. It hardly moved any dust as it settled down. “120. More expensive than I remember.” He turned and faced his aunt. “70. I like 70.”

“You’re doing the heavy work. You decide.”

Urufu rolled open the sack. “Yukio, a hand please.”

Yukio walked to Urufu’s side.

Rice? But it was all a sandy brown. “What the?”

“You city boy you!” Urufu was all toothy grin and looked more like a happy elementary school boy than a high schooler. “You’ve never had a bowl of decent rice in your life.”

“What are we doing?” Yukio felt he needed to calm Urufu down before he went hyper.

“Up here,” Urufu said and motioned for Yukio to help him lift the sack. “And in it goes.” The sack overturned and Yukio listened to the sound of lots and lots of rice being swallowed by the machine. By now he began to have a grasp of what it was all about.

“And now?” Yukio asked. More for allowing Urufu to have his fun than anything else.

“It’s this year’s rice. And I’m getting to give it a seventy percent polish. The best. It tastes the best!” He laughed and moved the now empty sack to fill it with policed rice. “Wow! This time I can read the instructions!” Then three coins went into the machine, Urufu punched in his preferences and it whined into life. Then a deafening sound somehow reminding Yukio of a brutal downpour that once caught him when he waited in a bus stop.

He’d seen it on TV. Everyone had, but this was the first time Yukio experienced rice polishing so close. City boy. Urufu was right about that. Everyone bought white rice and ate it.

“But why?” he wanted to know over the thundering noise.

“Just wait until aunt boils it. You’ve never tasted anything like it.” Urufu gave Noriko a long stare. “You might,” he admitted.

Huh? Oh, it’s because she’s rich. It it really that expensive?

“Maybe,” Noriko said. “A few times only. We’re not really all that into fancy sushi restaurants.”

More than a few times, if my guess is right, Yukio thought. Over a year’s worth of working with Urufu gave him a pretty clear picture of what kind of people walked the Wakayama parents’ circles. But she wants him to have his moment of glory. Yukio saw how her eyes softened when they met Urufu’s.

“Kyoko, this was the right thing to do,” Yukio said into his girlfriend’s ear.

She grabbed his hand and nodded.

Maybe not the burning love you shared with Kuri, maybe not even enough to make you forget about her. Yukio looked at Noriko. But I think Noriko might just be the better one for you after all. It was strange. Half a year earlier he’d told Urufu Kuri was the best part of him. So what had changed? Urufu. You changed. Kuri had as well, but her change started earlier. You broke, both of you. Two broken people couldn’t heal each other. Don’t you dare break Noriko as well! But that was for her to decide. She chased Urufu down and cornered him.

“And we’re done.”

Yukio stared at Urufu rolling the sack closed again and wrench it over his shoulder before he walked back to the car with his bounty.

Noriko, you’re in for some competition when school starts. Maybe not really competition. This autumn a different kind of girls would flock to Urufu’s side. And more than a couple of sports clubs as well, Yukio guessed.

Noriko just looked at Urufu. Sure, Yukio saw a fair share of admiration in her eyes, but she’d grown up with her brother after all. Physical prowess maybe wasn’t all that new to her.

“Who wants the best bowl of rice ever?”

Yukio smiled. Urufu had already promised that.

“Aunt, do you have any really good tea at home?”

She smiled as well. “This is Mie.”

“I’ll make the tea,” Urufu beamed. “I’ve trained… I’ve trained for a really long time now.”

“If you say so,” she said and patted his head just as he offloaded the rice into the car.

Chapter two, 2017, ends and beginnings, segment six

They stayed the night. Yukio and Kyoko shared one room, and she and Urufu another. They didn’t sleep with each other, not even the way they had at the hotel. That was one of Urufu’s conditions. At least he didn’t demand that they separate their futons, and when morning came Noriko woke hugging Urufu through the linens.

Breakfast was a sombre affair with questions hanging in the air. Urufu spent most of it in silent conversation with his aunt who wasn’t his aunt, so Noriko didn’t get the time she wanted with him.

There would be other days. A lot of other days if she was to decide, and so she let him have the time he needed. She had promised him after all, even if they were a couple now. She intended to keep that promise. Reeling him in and caging him were two different things. He’d always need his own time, or she’d lose him forever.

Yukio and Kyoko were immersed in their own world of hopes and plans, and Noriko left them to it. Instead she looked out the windows at a landscape as alien to her as Urufu’s old world. Tokyo was Tokyo, a world of its own, and most of Japan was nothing like it. In ways, she suspected, that faraway city where Urufu grew up would be less alien. At least it had to be a cityscape, even if on a much smaller scale.

I wonder what Himekaizen is like now. It scares me to go back.

Not all of them would. Far from. The four of them, she knew. For most of those admitted to Irishima High there was little reason to return to the school that had abandoned them though. To the madman.

She had her own reason – he spoke with his aunt, and her brother very much a similar one. Kyoko and Yukio were bound by ties of friendship, and they had each other. And Sato-sensei. Urufu’s guardian scares me, but she’s on our side. Not everything scary was bad. But her other friends? The other club members? Why when Irishima High was a much better school?

Noriko admitted she was an idiot, but she didn’t care. As long as she had Urufu she’d make do, and he needed her. He was still broken. Healing, but broken. That probably meant Kuri was broken as well. Part of her, Noriko suspected, never left that locked classroom where a sixteen year old girl lay shuddering in tears she had brought on herself.

I moved on, or so I thought. Kuri, why? Suddenly Noriko couldn’t breathe. Urufu, where did you leave part of your soul? Because somewhere a sixteen year old boy lay whimpering in pain as well. Somewhere, but Noriko couldn’t even begin to guess where.

Accepting that he wasn’t her perfect hero had taken some time, but accepting just how deeply flawed he was would take some more. Older didn’t automatically mean better.

Somehow Noriko was happy she’d been left to her own devices. A bit of silence, a slice of strangeness and an ounce of pure joy around her was exactly what she needed to make any sense of the tumultuous last week. Sure, she’d been pushing hard for months, but everything fell in place the very last days, and despite planning for it she couldn’t cope in the end.

Not everything had gone as she planned. Definitely not the part where Kuri and Urufu shared their bodies with each other.

But.

In the end.

He was hers.

A tinge of heat reached Noriko’s cheeks. Does that make me his? Because she had heard Kuri and him that night, and if Noriko was his, then one night... Noriko slammed a mental door on that line of thought. She refused to connect what she had heard with her fantasies about her own first time.

A few steps brought her to a strange outdoors that was still indoors.

Most girls my age have already done it. And another mental door had to be closed. She could worry about that later.

Noriko admired her surroundings. Originally designed to keep the cold out. Here it kept the heat out. A little wood, and a whole lot of glass. And sun shades. Just like at Himekaizen. Whoever once built this wanted a space that defied any definition of what was indoors and what was outdoors.

Construction? He can’t have been in construction. This is the work of an architect.

Her grandfather on her mother’s side had been one as well. Cheating winter wasn’t all new to her, but she’d never seen anything on this scale in a home.

There was some kind of commotion behind her, and Noriko left the room to find out what it was all about.

“It’s too heavy for you. If you give us a ride I’ll take care of it.”

Take care of what? Noriko looked at Urufu, and then at the huge sack at his feet. What’s that?

“You sure. You look like a city boy.”

“Look, aunt, I’ve done this before, OK?”

Urufu! For being so bright he was surprisingly stupid sometimes.

“I guess you have, after all,” their old host said. There was something awestruck in her eyes, and also something sad. “Fine, take it to the car and I’ll drive.”

“Yeah,” Urufu said and hoisted the sack onto his shoulder.

Urufu!

Stringy muscles on his arm, neck and back hardened and relaxed in a show of gorgeous efficiency. For a moment he struggled under the weight, far more than half her own, but then he slid one foot to the side and made for the door.

“It’s heavier than I remembered,” he said and turned his head over his free shoulder. “And I’m a bit skinnier now.” His entire body followed after his head. “But I’ll manage,” Urufu added and shot her a grin void of any sorrow, hesitation or regret. For the first time in half a year he was just a mischievous boy playing a friendly prank on her. “Thank you, Noriko,” he added, and her heart jumped.

Chapter two, 2017, ends and beginnings, segment five

Despite shame competing with a whole lot of self disdain Ulf looked at the girl he had just confessed his love to. It was real. He felt it in his very bones. He’d always admired honest persistence, and somewhere down the road that admiration had grown into affection and later into what he had to admit was love. When that happened he didn’t know. During the summer that was about to end soon probably.

He saw Noriko take a seat with Kyoko, and the girls spoke softly with each other. On his shoulder he felt Yukio’s hand and on his head one unfamiliar yet so well known.

“You’re Akane’s boy. I don’t know how, but I know.”

Yukio’s hand tightened its grip. “Man, we need to talk.”

“Aunt, it seems my friends need me for a while.”

The hand in his hair stiffened.

Bloody hell! I forgot where I am.

“Akane’s boy,” she said and left the room. “Kanto! What horrid luck. When the kid learns Japanese he speaks Kanto dialect.” A receding giggle accompanied her foot steps.

And how the bleeding hell am I supposed to explain this? Ulf shook the thought away. “OK, you’ve got my attention.”

Yukio grabbed a chair and sat down. This close Ulf began to get a grasp of what the man his best friend would soon grow into would look like.

“Urufu, we need to go to Sweden.”

“Huh?”

“I know you don’t have a passport, but some day.”

Ulf blinked away his confusion. “Sure, I’ll be happy to bring you back home for a visit.”

“Yeah, that as well. Man, I’d love to, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Across the table the girls had stopped talking.

What’s going on?

“When I get older I hope to marry Kyoko.”

If the room had been silent when he held hands with Noriko that was still a deafening cacophony compared to the absolute stillness that hung over them now.

“If you want to,” Yukio added in a voice that surprised Ulf by its utter lack of hesitation.

The man he’s already begun to grow into, Ulf accepted. Damn you’re so cool!

“If you want to,” Kyoko responded. “I can’t have children, remember?”

An indrawn breath told Ulf Noriko hadn’t wanted that to be spoken out aloud.

“Not in this world you can’t,” Yukio said, and Ulf’s head swam from the shock of listening to those words. “Urufu’s got scars from his high school years, or rather, he no longer has them.”

What on earth are you talking about?

“Oh. Oh! Yes, I’d very much love to marry you. Twice if that’s needed.”

Twice? Ulf could take it no longer. “Guys what the hell are you two going on about?”

“Yukio,” Kyoko began, “is pretty certain people are, eh what should I call it… transiting from this world as well. To a downstream world he calls it.”

Yukio nodded, and before Ulf had a chance to edge a word in he added to Kyoko’s words. “Urufu, you had a restart in this world. I believe we can as well.”

“I never asked for it,” Ulf said as if by reflex. He’d been torn away from a perfectly good life. One, he glumly admitted, that more and more became part of his memories rather than reality.

“You didn’t, but Kyoko and I might have to one day.”

Slowly what Yukio and Kyoko had said started to form a pattern in Ulf’s head. Lemme see, if what they…

“So just like Urufu arrived here from his old world you’re saying you can transit and arrive in another?” Noriko broke in.

And she’s so much brighter than I am. Did I fall in love with her or her brains? Both, Ulf decided and settled for listening to her making sense of the insanity.

“And since both Kuri and Urufu were fourteen when they arrived you expect to be fourteen as well?”

Yukio nodded.

What?

“In bodies where Kyoko was never stabbed?”

Kyoko clung to Noriko and nodded as well.

Oh!

“That would explain the people who dragged Ryu off to that interview he mentioned,” Noriko continued.

Ulf had heard about it, but he never reflected on its potential meaning.

“And you want to be seen as important, or unlucky enough to be sent, what did you say, downstream?”

“Not today, or anytime soon, but one day, yes,” Yukio said. “At least as long as I have Kyoko. Without her I don’t care.”

“Yukio! I love you!”

That reaction from Kyoko told Ulf everything he wanted to know about the bond they shared. Some people just get it right from the beginning. I’m happy for you, and a little envious.

“I think you might be right,” Noriko said. She seemed deep in thought. “I think they forced Kareyoshi to rescind the expulsions. Yeah, you’re right.”

Expulsions or no expulsions didn’t really have anything to do with this, or did they?

“I am, am I not,” Yukio said and laughed. “How else could people from Sweden force anything at all to happen here?”

Neither of the men Ryu spoke with that day were Swedish. Ulf knew as much, but Ryu was adamant they came from Sweden, or represented Sweden in one way or another. Pieces in a jigsaw puzzle slowly fell in place, and he stared at Yukio with open admiration. A string of worlds connected like links in a chain.

“Can I go back?” he heard his own voice say.

The look Noriko gave him cut deep into his heart.

“I don’t want to. Not any longer,” he added, both for her sake as much as for his own. That life was gone. Even if he could go back it was a life once lived. He’d never be able to go on with it and pretend the life he lived now was just a short episode he could discard. This was his life now.

Memories from a day in Odaiba rushed to him. Sano-san, I understand. I finally understand.

With that Ulf accepted his old life had ended, and that a new one had begun, that where there was a transition there was also a restart. He’d become Hamarugen Urufu, who called himself Ulf Hammargren. He was both the man who had once been as well as the teenager with the memories of that man. He was both less and more than he had once been, and more importantly, he just was.

Chapter two, 2017, ends and beginnings, segment four

Noriko felt tired. More tired than she had ever done since she accepted she had fallen in love with Urufu again.

He didn’t protest when Yukio suggested he was her boyfriend, but then he didn’t acknowledge that she was neither. That kind of left her in limbo, and now she had to push the issue.

They were seated by a huge wooden table in the house that was indeed strangely Japanese inside. Very traditionally Japanese at that, except for a couple of rooms one of which she sat in right now.

Wooden flooring. She could see the ground beneath her through gaps she believed were deliberate. The room had to be abysmally cold in winter.

Most of the house, the parts that didn’t face the street, could just as well have been from some peculiar Edo era movie. With utility details that must have been modern half a century ago skillfully hidden to preserve the look of an old Japanese rural home.

She drank the impressions. Even if Urufu hadn’t been born into this world, this was still part of what had formed him. Every detail counted now when she was on the verge of finally hauling him in.

The aunt, the old lady of the house, had given her a searching stare and then looked at Urufu. Then, during a fleeting moment when they changed rooms, she grabbed Noriko’s arm.

“If you can heal him, then I approve. If you can’t, then break up!”

As demands went that one was unfair, but Noriko didn’t care. If she merely had to move a mountain or two then that was fine. She had smiled at his aunt and met her eyes in what was probably a very rude way.

“I don’t need your approval, but I need him whole,” she had answered.

That bought her a wolfish grin and a huge surprise. She never expected Urufu to get that part from his mother’s side.

Right now it was make or break. They were alone. Urufu sat facing her across the table.

“I need to know,” Noriko said. “Are we going out?”

If only she could close her ears. Her eyes were already shut as she waited for his answer.

“Please, Noriko! Look at me if you want me to answer that question.”

She opened her eyes.

“Noriko, there are a number of constraints...”

“Yes or no,” she demanded.

He was silent for a moment. “If you want to, yes, but...”

Yes! He said yes! “I understand.” He finally said yes! “You can tell me all about the buts later, but you’re my boyfriend now? I’m your girlfriend?”

“I give,” Urufu grinned. “You want this arse of a man you can have him. Yes, you’re my girlfriend, or I your boyfriend, or whatever you prefer.”

Then a sudden second of fear. “But you don’t really love me, or at least won’t tell me if you do?”

Urufu’s eyes went soft and his grin thinned into a smile. Two hands reached out over the table. “That’s the thing. I think I’ve been in love with you for a while now. I… I just never noticed.”

And she needed to make once thing absolutely crystal clear. More for herself than for anyone else. “But you still love Kuri?”

Urufu nodded. “A part of me always will I’m afraid. Do you still want me as your boyfriend knowing that?”

And she needed an edge. A something that was hers alone. “Did you ever tell her you loved her?”

He shook his head. “Never so she heard. I was too scared.”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes, I love you Noriko.”

It had to suffice. She had something Kuri never got. She had a confession. “I love you Urufu.”

He didn’t spoil the moment by stating the obvious, that he already knew. He just squeezed the hands she had placed in his.

In a way she surprised herself. She’d seen Urufu and Kuri, and she’d seen the awful courtship of Yukio’s and Kyoko’s. Both couples had been madly in love when their mutual feelings were confirmed. Even for Kuri’s part. There was no way the tall beauty hadn’t known all along. For her own part Noriko mostly felt relief. Maybe the burning feelings would come later. Or maybe they had already passed. After all this was the third time she fell in love with him.

But she did feel love. A deep and profound love. So she squeezed back.

It was a perfect moment of shared silence for them. Too perfect.

“You can come out now,” Noriko said.

Two, no three faces popped around the door post. All grinning wildly. Then Kyoko dashed to her side.

“I’m happy for you!” There was a moment’s hesitation. “For you as well,” she added to Urufu, and Noriko knew her friend hadn’t forgiven him yet. At that moment Noriko understood how she in ways was older than her friends. Kuri and Urufu excepted obviously. And she also understood something equally important. Kuri was her friend. Noriko hadn’t forgiven her for sleeping with Urufu, and maybe she never would, but Kuri was still a friend.

That thought was the final one in a long chain of thoughts and fears. Tears welled up in Noriko’s eyes, but she didn’t try to blink them away. Instead she let go of Urufu’s hands and rose to hug Kyoko.

“I’m happy. I’m so happy,” Noriko mumbled into Kyoko’s shoulder. “If that had to happen to end what was already broken, then I can live with it. Maybe they needed an end for us to have a beginning.” There was no maybe, and it wasn’t the end, but it was an end, and it definitely was the beginning for her and Urufu.

If worst came to worst a day would come when she would have to let him go, but even if such a day eventually came, what was the alternative? To never have him at all? A life where she never got to share her love with him? That was no alternative at all.

“Are you certain about this?” Kyoko whispered.

“Yes,” Noriko answered. And neither her voice nor her mind held any lies. “I love him so very much.”

Chapter two, 2017, ends and beginnings, segment three

Yukio took Kyoko’s hand in his and grinned. He grinned at Noriko rushing ahead across the gravel as if she had forgotten all her pain. He grinned at how much Kyoko had grown the last year. He grinned at how much their love had grown, and at this very moment he grinned with relief when he understood that he still shared feelings of friendship with the idiot who just received a bundle of pure joy in his arms.

Urufu, make her happy! She deserves it. Then Yukio laughed silently. Noriko, make him happy! He deserves it.

Beside him Kyoko squeezed his hand, and when he glanced at her he saw tears forming in her eyes.

“Kuri-chan, you idiot!”

Her voice was soft and silent, but Yukio heard the words anyway.

“Maybe Ryu’s good for her,” Yukio tried.

“I hope so. I hope so for all four of them.”

The squeeze got firmer, and Yukio tightened his grip on her hand. “At least they helped us two find each other. Has to count for something.” His voice was a little more shaky than he had expected.

That made the tears leave her eyes. “Oh Yukio! It means the whole world for me! Of course it counts.”

And he knew why her tears mixed sadness with joy. Those who had given the two of them so much happiness broke their own apart.

“Man, you hold on to her this time, or I won’t forgive you,” Yukio shouted when he saw the usual signs of awkwardness in Urufu. “You made her cry. You comfort her.” He’d be damned if he let Urufu get a chance to wriggle out of it this time. If he had no feelings for Noriko, well too bad, but Yukio didn’t believe that was the case.

Noriko’s back expressed her gratitude for Yukio’s words. How she managed that while she clung to the man she’d hunted for months Yukio didn’t know, but she did.

“Urufu, we’ll leave the two of you alone for a while,” Kyoko said. Then she pulled at Yukio’s hand. “I can’t even begin to express how angry I am with you, but I’m not Noriko, so what I think doesn’t matter.” She pulled harder, and Yukio followed her down the street in the direction of what looked like a derelict school.

Just as he was about to sigh with relief a voice from behind called to them both.

“It doesn’t work that way. We’ll tag along. I have too much to apologise for, and not only to Noriko.”

Man, what a bother! Yukio played Urufu’s word in his head again. We, at least he said ‘we’. “Sure. Noriko you can bring your boyfriend.”

Kyoko’s body went rigid beside him. Yukio could feel it through her hand. Looking at her he saw how she held her breath just like he did.

There was no response.

There was none.

Just the sound of feet following them.

This time Yukio didn’t even dare to glance at Kyoko. He stubbornly stared straight ahead of him and hoped the street would lead somewhere reasonable.

A gust of wind carried a faint scent of fresh water.

Another the sound of some lonesome cicadas.

“They’re frogs,” Urufu’s voice said from behind his back. “When I was a kid I thought they were crickets.”

With that weeks of worries ran of Yukio’s shoulders.

He’ll give it a try. He’ll give her a chance!

“Tell me more,” came Noriko’s subdued voice.

Then the footsteps caught up with them, and a little later Yukio saw Urufu and Noriko pass him and Kyoko hand in hand.

They look like a couple.

“Yukio knows just about all of it, and I’ll just bore Kyoko.” A slight hesitation. “I’ll tell you as much as you want to listen to later.” Another moments hesitation. “When we’re alone.”

Yukio finally dared to let out the long sigh that had waited inside him. By his side Kyoko did the same.

“Now what?” he said.

They were under a canopy of bamboo before Urufu answered. “We’ll get something to drink by the old school.”

After that the four of them walked in silence until they had left a rice paddy behind them and crossed another narrow street. It was Noriko who eventually broke the silence just before a can of soda slammed into the bottom of the vending machine.

“Urufu. I’m curious, but did you have any siblings?”

Huh? What kind of question is that? Yukio looked down at Urufu who was busy picking up the can.

“Yeah. Two older sisters and one younger.”

“And your mother, or father? Whoever is from here?”

“Yeah. My aunt.”

Yukio watched a wide grin spread on Urufu’s face.

Oh! Man, that’s some quick thinking!

“And he or she moved to Sweden and got married in this world as well?”

“Yeah. Mom did, but I was never born here.”

“And your father worked in construction?”

“How did you know?”

How could anyone not know?

Three of them burst out in laughter. Only Urufu stared back with a nonplussed expression in his face.

“That arrogance. You sure got it from your father,” Noriko said, and brought another round of laughter to the three of them.

“Huh?”

“Your aunt’s house. It should never have been built in Japan. Like never ever even in your dreams.”

“But...”

“That it still stands and looks like it does is testimony to your father’s skills. He must have been very good.”

Urufu fed a few more coins to the machine and Yukio watched how he picked up drinks for all of them.

“He was. He’s retired now, if he’s still alive.” Urufu stared back up in the direction of the alien house. “Archipelago construction. He always said it’d last longer than the neighbouring houses.”

“How old is it?” Noriko asked.

Urufu scratched his head. “I wasn’t born yet. Say a little over fifty years old.” He grinned sheepishly. “I always thought it looked strange inside. It’s very Japanese you know. Not the facade, but the inside. Dad said it had to be or it would start to rot.”

Yukio shook his head in wonder. Urufu’s words about change and adaption weren’t his own after all. He’d inherited them. From both sides of his family given how his Japanese side had decided to erect the visual insanity further up the hillside.

“Urufu,” Noriko said, “your sisters. They’re alive in this world as well?”

Urufu nodded. He bent his head backwards and gulped down half his soda. “That’s why this feels a little like home.” The can went to his mouth again. “My aunt thinks mom is my grandmother, or at least she pretends that’s what she believes.” He took two steps and discarded the can into the recycling bin.

“Urufu, we need to talk,” Yukio said.

“I know. Let’s get another bottle each and head back. Could as well introduce you.”

Chapter two, 2017, ends and beginnings, segment two

“There’s something that’s been bugging me,” Yukio said when they had changed trains once and hopped into a taxi.

Kyoko shifted a little to give room to Noriko who had fallen asleep again. The last day sure had taken its toll on her small frame.

“About the entire affair with the four of them?”

Yukio turned to face her. She could see how deep in thought he was. Right now he was thinking aloud rather than talking with her.

“No. It’s about the two different worlds thing.” Yukio fell silent again.

Kyoko waited for him to resume his train of thought. In the meanwhile she stared out the windows where small rice paddies were replaced by even smaller tea plantations. They were definitely heading into the mountains, and everything was smaller here. Well, apart from the mountains. Those might be ever present for most Japanese, but being a Tokyoite she had little reasons and even fewer occasions visiting them herself.

“The people who talked with Ryu,” she heard Yukio’s voice say. “It’s the thing with a Swedish organisation that keeps bugging me.”

But the arrivals all came from Sweden. Or at least the Sweden in that other world. Kyoko didn’t understand what her boyfriend was getting at.

“You see,” Yukio continued as if he’d been reading her mind, “they pop up here in Japan. People who have never existed in this world.”

“Yes?” Kyoko said.

He wasn’t. Wasn’t merely thinking aloud that was. She knew he wanted her to react to what he was saying from time to time.

“So there’s little reason for that Swedish section for whatever.”

“Why not?” Kyoko said. She could hear from his voice that he had reached the point where he was bouncing his thoughts with her.

“Urufu told me there had to be a Swedish organisation in that other world, because both he and Kuri got invites, so someone knew what was going to happen.”

That made sense. But a Swedish organisation in this world? Suddenly she felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with the AC in the taxi hammering them with a freezing draught.

“So you arrived there as well?” Yukio said. “If there is a Swedish organisation in this world I’m pretty sure there are people vanishing from this one and ending up in another.”

“But that means there aren’t just two worlds.”

Yukio nodded. “A chain of them I believe. I can’t explain, but I’d call them upstream and downstream worlds.” He frowned. “I don’t think it’s possible to go back to the world Urufu came from from this one, so upstream.” Then he grinned, an expression he’d had the help from Urufu to master, and one that still melted Kyoko’s heart. “That would make this one a downstream one.”

Under her arm Noriko shifted uncomfortably in her sleep, and Kyoko nudged a little away in her seat to make it a little more comfortable for her petite friend.

“And you think this one is an upstream one for another world?”

Yukio nodded. “I have to work on this idea with Urufu, but yeah, I believe so.”

“I wonder what it’s like,” Kyoko said as the taxi left what went for a main road up here and started climbing up streets so narrow meeting another car would have been impossible. Would I feel that creepy feeling of almost the same that Kuri-chan spoke about?

“What what is like?” Noriko asked sleepily and freed herself from where she had nestled under Kyoko’s arm.

“Hello sleepyhead,” Kyoko said. “We’re almost there.”

“What what is like?” Noriko repeated.

Kyoko glanced at Yukio.

“The thing with two worlds and all that,” he said.

“Urufu’s old world?”

“Uhum.” Kyoko wanted to have this conversation together with Urufu, just like Yukio, so she chose to give Noriko the simpler answer.

The taxi came to a stop, and Yukio paid the driver.

“We’re here?” Noriko said, and Kyoko smiled at how she turned her head in search of Urufu.

A short guffaw had them both look at Yukio.

“Almost,” he said. “I don’t know exactly where it is, but I have his mother’s maiden name, so I thought we’d ask in the shop here,” Yukio added and nodded at a small shop squeezed in between two houses.

Kyoko watched him go inside while she shouldered her backpack. Noriko did the same.

Looking around Kyoko noted how everything was small except the houses. Apparently, in a relative sense, there was more space here, but also more money. Where she lived houses like these would have cost a fortune, or rather the plot they stood on. Housing in Tokyo was brutally expensive according to her parents.

They were also surrounded by a less oppressive heat. It was still hot, but no longer the brutal heat at the resort. The valley the sides of which the village climbed funnelled a weak breeze that refreshed the air, and Kyoko stood admiring the greenery further up the mountainsides together with her friend until Yukio came back out from the shop.

“Straight ahead and just across a public parking place. She said we couldn’t miss it,” Yukio added and nodded at the shop he had just left. “Anyone wants a snack? I couldn’t just ask and not buy anything.”

“Which house?”

“Urufu once told me I’d know if I ever saw it, but that he didn’t understand himself. The lady in the shop basically said the same thing.”

“He didn’t understand it himself?” Noriko said.

Yukio shouldered his backpack and took the lead. “This was back before Himekaizen,” he said over his shoulders. His safe and wonderful shoulders. “There was a time when it was important for him to tell me memories of his.”

Kyoko wondered where this was going, but for now she was content with listening to Yukio’s voice. This was the voice of a boy who made best friends with Urufu. Not the disillusioned Yukio of recent. She preferred the Yukio who took pride in his friend. If for no other reason then because it reminded her of when she still took pride in Kuri-chan. I have to make up with her. Even if I can’t forgive, at least we have to make up.

They rounded a corner and suddenly a small gravel parking place spread out before them.

Oh gods!

Across it old style Japanese houses competed for space with more modern ones. All in what both Urufu and Kuri-chan had described as a faux European style. And then there was the exception. It shouted out it’s foreignness, blared how it didn’t belong here and in general made her wonder if the builders had taken leave of their brains.

It also spoke of a familiar world. One she had seen on pictures every days since Urufu filled their first club room with photos from Sweden.

Yeah, I see how we couldn’t possibly miss it.

Yellow, standing panel, white corners and tiles a burned orange red colour that basically never roofed a Japanese home. Urufu must have grown up around houses like this one. As alien as it was to her, as much a definition of normality for the child he once was.

“Didn’t you say his relatives were Japanese?”

Kyoko looked at Noriko. “Yes, they are.” Well, in as much as this family is related to him. He wasn’t born in this world.

“Then, why?” Noriko said and pointed at the abomination across the gravel.

“I guess influences work both ways. Why don’t you ask him?”

“Ask him? When...”

Kyoko grinned. On the street an open mouthed Urufu stood staring back at them. Even from this distance she could see how shame competed with joy in his eyes.

“Noriko, run to him! He’s all yours now.”