Chapter one (segment two), 2016, August, Ulf

“Thank you Amaya!” Sometimes his legal guardian was just the best. Right now was one of those times.

Sunday. Today is the day for Christina's mad stunt. Thinking of her made his stomach contract. Christina Agerman. If anyone in Tokyo could pull it off it would be her, but still. If I'm this nervous how mustn't she feel right now?

Through the windows he saw the congested traffic, and normally he would have preferred taking his bike into central Tokyo but Amaya didn't even have a bike. At least her car was equipped with a good AC.

She drove expertly and knew almost all short-cuts from her job. They didn't talk much and Ulf was beginning to enjoy the silence when she turned to him with a question.

“Urufu, this girl of yours. Do you love her?”

Ulf looked at Amaya. I think too much before I answer a question, and she's just about the only one who knows I'm not preparing a lie while I'm thinking. “I love her. It scares the hell out of me but I really love her.”

“Much?”

Ulf laughed. It was a hollow laugh, mirthless. Christina, my heart hurts the first time I see you in a day. I feel like my lungs will explode when I first hear your voice. It's like my body isn't large enough to make room for what I feel, and I'm drowning in you. When we part at evenings I just want to hold on to you so you don't disappear. The days we don't meet I'm lost.

“Urufu?”

“Yeah,” Ulf answered. He could hear how hoarse his voice was. “Yes, very much.”

Amaya frowned and took a corner. “For your sake I hope she loves you back. You're a difficult one to live with.”

“I'm sorry. I'm grateful you took me in despite the way I behaved when we met,” Ulf said. I hurt you, and you still cared for me even before you believed I was who I am.

“Urufu!”

“Yes Amaya?”

She wheeled the car to a revolver style parking house and hit the brakes. “One day you need to give voice to your feelings.” Amaya opened her door, left the car and waited for him to show his head over the roof. “You talk a lot about rational things but you never talk enough about emotions. You have to or you'll lose everything,” she said after he popped up his head.

The car slid inside its box and was winched inside the belly of the parking house. Ulf watched it vanish. “I don't like to talk about my feelings. Words can't be unsaid and I feel vulnerable,” he admitted. Amaya was probably the only one he could talk about everything with. I am really grateful to you. You made me a home in this world.

She studied him with one of those intense stares of hers.

Bloody mind-reader, but that's why I trust you so much. You've never abused your ability to read me. “Yes Amaya?”

“It's mother dear,” she said.

What did I do wrong this time? OK only abused a little bit. “What is it mother dear?” By now Ulf knew better than to push her when she got into one of those moods.

The walked the first street towards Shibuya in silence. Traffic was bad and the heat murderous. The air stank of almost melting asphalt.

“You're still hurt Urufu. You told me how much you lost when your daughter died, and I can only understand parts of it.” Amaya sighed and drew a new breath before she continued. “When sis died I was devastated, and I cried a lot and the world was a black place.” Amaya stopped in her tracks and faced Ulf. “But,” she said and pointed her index finger at him,” and this is an important but. My parents had it worse. So I guess you had it worse.”

Ulf took a step backwards. Amaya ripping into his memories like this opened up old wounds.

“Urufu please tell her what you feel. You're closing in on yourself and you never let anyone inside. It would have been bad enough if it was just a teenage fling, but it isn't, is it?”

And you are way, way, way too perceptive! When did you find out? “Amaya?”

“Mother dear, I told you!”

“Yes mother dear.”

“I hear when you talk about her. There is something off. You two share just too many memories for having met in May, April?”

Ulf nodded and they continued walking. Amaya needs to know. I think she's already guessed anyway. “Christina's my age. As in she's fifty like me and sixteen like me.”

Beside him Amaya smiled and hooked his arm into hers. “If I had any doubts they vanished when you asked me for this favour. Your girlfriend is crashing a fashion shot and wants an adult to back her up when she's offered a job?” Amaya shook her head. “That's not how a sixteen year old thinks.”

She was right. Ulf knew that. Any teenager with that kind of guts would simply never think in terms of a backup. Especially not in terms of 'member of the police force for added credibility' kind of backup.

“You know that I love you, mother dear?”

“Me you can tell, and I know. It's not I who need to hear those words. I'll bet you a week's salary you haven't told her you love her properly!”

Ulf declined to take her up on the bet. I thought this game of love would become easier with age but the only thing that happens is that the stakes increase. He blew out air in a half whistle. I'm together with a girl most men would want as a trophy. But would they love her? Why did I have to fall in love? If it had just been desire I wouldn't be this vulnerable.

If it had just been desire he could have slept with her by now. There had been opportunities. But I want to hold you, and talk with you. I want to listen to you when you breathe and when you talk. I want to watch that laugh and I want to be there to see how you wipe that golden hair of yours from your face with your fingers. He closed his eyes and let himself be led by Amaya for a few steps.

The sound of cars and the smell of asphalt built a background for his thoughts. He could feel Amaya steady his steps when she noticed he was no longer watching where he walked.

Christina, I want you by my side. Always. Christina, the day I tell you those needs will never come, because if I tell you how dependent of you I have become then what we share turns into a cage for you. I love you so much, but I can never tell.

He opened his eyes again. They were almost at the great Shibuya intersection.

Chapter one (segment three), 2016, August, Noriko

Noriko waited outside the station. “Park side,” she had said.

One Yakobuson Anderusu would arrive together with his girlfriend from Sweden. Anders Jakobsson the name read in her email with the names flipped in the western style. Nesrin Kaplan was the other name other name in her mail. Kapulan Nesurin? Noriko thought. Apparently it wasn't Swedish in origin, but she was his Swedish girlfriend who wasn't Swedish. Noriko didn't understand the naming antics of the people from the wild north.

In reality they wouldn't arrive from Sweden at all. When they learned of the Himekaizen final exams they had simply rearranged their itinerary and spent their first two weeks travelling Kyushu and the Kansai area.

Japan Rail Pass. So much cheaper for foreign tourists, and yet we have so few of them visiting. From exchanged emails Noriko had learned that a similar system existed in Europe where you could go train-hopping from country to country. Apparently it was popular among young people.

You are strange. Boyfriend and girlfriend, and she hadn't even graduated high school, but still their parents must have agreed to them spending a month together alone in Japan.

Noriko shook her head. Different places, different rules.

She waited alone, because her idiot brother was gone for Hokkaido with their mother for a week and wouldn't be back until after the Obon festival. Noriko and her father stayed in Tokyo for the same reason, as they had done two years before. Last year Noriko had gone north with her mother.

Half past one, Saturday the sixth of August. Kuri wouldn't come. She had to plan for tomorrow, and if she didn't show, then Urufu would be absent as well. Probably biking around Tokyo in this heat like the moron he is. Kyoko leaves south the day after tomorrow. She's busy packing. That left Yukio, who had just come back home from the west coast.

So, where are you? Half an hour late, and they'll be here any moment now.

And there they were. “You won't be able to miss us,” he wrote in the last email. What are you wearing? Gods!

Not only did the waving apparition dwarf Urufu, but he had a neon green top-hat on his head. The girl at his side was a dark beauty looking nothing like what Noriko had expected from Sweden. My Swedish girlfriend who's not Swedish. So that's what he meant!

He was pointing at the sign Noriko had in her hands and lumbered in her direction with a huge backpack. The girl, Kapulan-san, carried an equally enormous backpack, but otherwise she wore nothing as horribly out of place as the ridiculous hat Yakobuson-san had.

“Good day, I'm Wakayama Noriko,” Noriko said when the pair came close enough for her to greet them without shouting. Yukio, you little… You'd better teleport here or do whatever people do to flash into existence in the manga you read.

She smiled at her foreign visitors. The club's. They're not mine. They're visiting the club. Gods you're a tall one!

“Anders Jakobsson.” A huge hand shot out and down. It enveloped her small one.

“Nesrin Kaplan, pleased to meet you.” That hand was smaller and came from a more normal height. She was a girl after all. Noriko took the offered hand after Yakobuson-san had released hers.

“You wrote that you'd wait for us here with a friend,” Yakobuson-san said.

Noriko nodded. Being around Urufu and Kuri had done wonders to her English, but the Swedes still spoke too fast in their sing song accent.

“I'll call him,” she said and dug up her phone from her handbag.

“That won't be needed,” she heard a voice from behind her.

Yukio?

“Sorry I'm late.” He switched to English. “I'm Yukio Matsumoto, pleased to meet you both.” Yukio looked up at Yakobuson-san. “Man, how tall are you really? We don't get many like you over here.”

“He's 196, and he's got muscles as well,” Kapulan-san said and snuggled up closer to her boyfriend.

He did. It was like looking at a blond door. You didn't pick that T-shirt by accident. There's something with you that I don't like.

“That's a lot,” Yukio said and turned to the girl. “You two are staying in my father's place. Mom's here with a car to get your luggage.” He took a look at the gigantic backpacks and smiled at Noriko. “Looks like I have to make the trip to the apartment as well. Noriko, they're waiting for us in the park. Could you take them there?”

Noriko looked at the backpacks. It made sense, and she nodded. “Follow me,” she offered to Kapulan-san. “Yukio will be back after he's dumped your luggage. Anything you need from it right now?”

“Not me. I have my sunglasses and wallet. Anders?”

The tall Swede shook his head. “Maybe I should get rid of this one though,” he said and took off his hat.

Thanks for small gifts. “Maybe you should. It's hot today,” Noriko said. This is going to be interesting. They talk so fast, and my English really isn't all that good.

Chapter one (segment two), 2016, August, Kyoko

“I heard there's a shot this Sunday.”

“Shot?”

“Shibuya,” Kuri-chan said, as if that answer carried all the information she needed.

Kyoko looked at her friend. As an afterthought she gave Kuri-chan a hard glare to slap her back to the domain where friends shared a common language. “Please translate that into something us mere mortals can understand.” Sometimes Kuri-chan could be surprisingly dense, or rather, it was as if she moved into a world where she was surrounded by people who could read her mind.

Kuri-chan took a few steps more while she looked like she was trying to solve a difficult problem. Then she seemed to have arrived at a solution. “It's a magazine, or some other commercial shot. Fashion, and models.” It all came out bits and pieces. A strange mix of English and Japanese, but by now Kyoko was getting used to Kuri-chan's mixing up the two languages without a second thought whenever she got really excited. Besides, her Japanese was getting better by the week. Which helped. A lot.

“So you want to watch the event?”

Kuri-chan tried a few extra steps. It looked like she was trying out a new outfit. In a way she is. Fifty, that girl is fifty years old! Sure doesn't look like it. Kuri-chan bounced down the street, very much behaving like the sixteen year old teenager she was in this world. Carefree, she's totally carefree.

Kuri-chan had turned and was walking backwards. A happy laughter bubbled out of her. Then she met Kyoko's gaze. “No. I want to crash the party.” A gust of wind caught Kuri-chan's hair, caressed it and spread it into the sunlight.

She's planning to make gold out of that gold, Kyoko realized. “You want to get scouted?”

“I was 'The Princess of Scandinavia'. Top ten in the world, for ten years. I can be again.”

“Top ten?”

“I used to be a super model. In that other world there isn't a catwalk on this planet that hasn't begged for my feet to walk it.”

Used to be. Suddenly those fifty years showed in Kuri-chan's eyes. She's looks like sixteen but she's planning a come-back. She looks like a goddess, but I wonder if there's a boy in this school who's as much of a man as she is. Kyoko blushed. Depends on how you define 'man', I guess.

“Thinking of Yukio much?”

Kyoko's blush burned deeper.

Kuri-chan bounced down the pavement dancing backwards. “Ko-chan, this is important to me. I don't like my current job much, and I think Ulf would disapprove.”

How can you move around like that in this heat? “Can you afford not to?” Kyoko knew how hard Kuri-chan worked to ensure her independence.

“For a while. School paid me to keep quiet about you know what.” Kuri-chan's voice became subdued and small.

The 'I know what'. That was disgusting what they did to you. It had better be worth it.

“They paid me a lot. Like, I won't have to work for a year, lot. But I don't want to live through all that money and do nothing.” Kuri-chan grinned and danced around the corner to the Asakusa tourist trap. At least they'd leave the heavy traffic behind them.

Kyoko dragged her feet a little. Her clothes were clammy and she felt very unladylike. “So you want to be a model again?”

Kuri-chan nodded. “I was rather popular here in Japan, back home, in the other world, you know.” She must have heard how strange that sounded, because she stopped dead in her tracks and gave Kyoko an apologetic smile. “Even if it sounds strange I'm really a bit too short for modelling,” she said in an attempt to make her earlier ramblings make sense.

“Short?” Kyoko pretended she hadn't heard how flustered Kuri-chan got. I guess living two lives gets confusing.

“Yeah, sounds funny, doesn't it? It wasn't as bad back then. People were a little shorter.” She swept some hair from her face. “I'm still tall in Japan, and in another year I'll have grown into the body I knew.”

“So wait a year,” Kyoko suggested.

Kuri-chan shook her head. “Can't. If I'm to have a running start I have to gain some fame before that. I was lucky last time, and I don't dare to count on being lucky twice.”

“That's not all, is it?”

Kuri-chan looked down. She shook her head. “No. My guardian, the landlady, you know. She wants more money, or… I have to find a way to stay free for another two years, until I'm eighteen.”

“Four years,” Kyoko said. “Twenty here in Japan.”

“Two years, four, whatever. I'll bribe her for another two if it is what it takes to keep my independence. It's important to me.”

You've already lost that independence. You lost it when you met Urufu. Kyoko decided that wasn't a topic she wanted to drag to the surface. The photo shot next Sunday was safer to talk about. “And you want me to come with you?” she asked. More for verification than because she really felt a need to ask the question.

Kuri-chan nodded. “Please!”

Kyoko bowed her head. If it was important for Kuri-chan, then she would be there. Together they headed for the stalls and the open galleria. There was a place serving really good katsudon that Kyoko wanted to share with Kuri-chan.

Chapter one (segment one), 2016, August, Ulf

They sat in her room. Christina's futon lay rolled up against a wall and Ulf used it as a backrest. His seat was the tatami mats, and she sat between his legs with him as her backrest.

Her hair smelled fantastic even in the sweltering August heat, and he could stay here forever feeling her fingers caressing the backside of his hands as he hugged her.

The talk, however, had taken a turn for the worse.

“I have family. It's problematic.” He hugged her closer.

“How so? And you never told me.”

They were sharing memories again. In Swedish, but no longer distant memories from Sweden.

“Well, my daughter...”

“Daughter!” Christina turned and pushed herself away from him. Stunned rage played in her face. “You got a kid here?”

Ulf blushed. “N, no, it's n, not that way...” he stuttered. I'm an idiot! 

“She's my guardian.”

“She?”

Careful now Ulf. Tread lightly or she'll never forgive you. “I was assigned a legal guardian as part of my background story in this world.”

Christina's jealousy abated. A little. Very little.

“You never told me.”

“You never asked.” And that was a supremely stupid thing to say.

Once again Christina looked like she was going to explode. A moment later he received a hard slap. I deserved that.

It took him the better part of half an hour to calm her down, and he had to run after her into the streets before she agreed to listen to him. By the end of it it was all out in the open.

“How old is she?”

They were standing beneath some trees and Ulf's clothes were soaked with sweat. No cosy hugging on her floor.

“Thirty. Works as a beat cop, or however the system works here in Japan. Uniformed anyway.”

“Your legal guardian is a police officer, and she's your daughter?”

“She's thirty,” Ulf said glumly. He knew it didn't really make sense.

He had sweated all through his casuals and was drenched from the inside out. Now hugging was out of the question, and even though he had a hard time letting go of Christina, the heat outside proved that her asthmatic air conditioner made some difference. Hugging her he'd soak her clothes as well.

“But why?” she asked, and Ulf could see that Christina was fishing for a reason.

“Amaya, my guardian… She kind of resembles...” How do you manage to stay fresh in this heat?

“Oh, oh. Sorry. I didn't know you had kids that early.”

“I didn't. Ten years ago, well, eleven now.” Ulf went silent for a moment. It was still hard to talk about, but Christina had demanded to know. “She was eight.”

Maybe it was some kind of female instinct. Maybe they had just grown close enough for her to understand, but she flinched and reached for his lips with her fingers. “No! Don't say anything!”

“If she had grown up. I've always wondered what she would look like. And, and, with black hair instead of blond, just maybe...” Shit, I shouldn't have said anything! I got angry and now I hurt you.

“Ulf, please! Don't say anything, please!”

I'm a moron. Christina, please forgive me!

And so he stayed silent, but they both knew, and a small wedge crept between them. Somehow the loss of a child is worse for those who never had one, and this loss was something they couldn't share.

Midsummer's eve, after dinner

Walking up the hill they were greeted by a crimson sky and a tapestry of shredded clouds clad in gold and black. The setting sun painted them from below with a divine beauty.

Then they reached the crest, and below them the western archipelago opened up, red sunbeams playing along waves and islet after countless islet, making each a precious gem.

“No way!”

“Yes way,” Christina laughed.

“It looks like the land of gods.”

She turned and flashed him a smile taking twenty years off her. “It looks like home.” I'm happy here. I'm happy in this world. I'm happy that it gave me a transition and restart.

Prologue, 2004

The kidnapping attempt was a disaster. No matter who you were, or in what way you were involved, it was an unmitigated horror.

The idea was to extort knowledge rather than money. Because knowledge was money, at least when it came to knowing how to jack right into Chag's transaction system.

William never planned to siphon money that way. Way too dangerous, and probably impossible. What he did plan was to always be the first who saw the shopping patterns for Chag on-line.

For that he had hired thugs to grab Sophia Hansson, star programmer in TAP with a speciality in data-layer manipulation. Thugs usually came with a lot of muscle and a certain deficiency in the brain department. These were no exceptions.

They mistook the barely thirty year old, damned cute, and rather short programmer for TAP's forty year old CEO. He wasn't cute. He wasn't short, and he sure as hell wasn't without bodyguards. Chag's bodyguards. He probably didn't even know he was watched over.

One thug had an unfortunate date with an SUV and one of the trams Gothenburg was so famous for. All forty tons of it. He would make the evening news, but his sudden lack of legs and associated intestinal damage made certain he never made the morning.

The other thug didn't even make the evening news. As in he was made to disappear. Chag was a roaring dragon. A fashion monster, and make no mistake, monster was the key word here. In just a bit over ten years it had grown from nothing to an empire spanning the globe. Its empress gladly let control of her company slip slowly through her fingers as long as Chag grew sufficiently fast as a result.

TAP wasn't important. TAP delivering what could best be called a fuck-up was. And Chag had decided that no one was about to grab their corporate management when they had decided to make good on their mistakes.

But the car only held their CEO, and his three children.

William swore when he thought of his bad luck. What idiot CEO takes the day off just because his brats have taken ill?

William swore once more. How was he to know that the system TAP delivered was so riddled with security holes that he could actually have planted a trojan inside it and diverted money wherever he wanted?

How could he have known that the missing thug had brought a handgun.

The news said that a daughter of the Hammargren family was badly hurt. Life-threatening even. And that the CEO, Ulf Hammargren, was unconscious, but otherwise in no danger.

How could he have known? He couldn't. He could just as well have guessed that vengeance had found him.

“Good morning William.”

“What?”

“This is the gun your hired muscle used.”

A 9 mm parabellum bullet made morning into night in an instant.

Midsummer's eve, leaving the garden

Most of them stayed in the garden, but she didn't blame them. Even Swedes got badly drunk during this kind of dinner parties, and most of the guests were from Japan.

Garden. Yes, that was an apt description. But she had held these kind of parties in her previous life, so she knew exactly what to look for this time. A place to create a dream of Sweden. An illusion.

Luckily enough one of their shared acquaintances preferred spending summers in France rather than Sweden, and her home was the perfect match for a midsummer's party with a lot of guests. Christina spent a full day preparing the garden so that it looked more like a rustic paradise than the multimillionaire mingle party area that it really was.


Christina remembered the parties of her first life. More people, and more boring. She wondered what Ulf remembered from his first. Did he even think of that upstream world any longer?