Sometimes it's
not between right and wrong. James knew that. He bought the run down
coffee house five years earlier and turned it into Stockholm Haven
Café. Arguably just as run down as earlier. Because he needed to.
Halfway to a
bachelor's degree he realised he didn't want a BA for the second time
in his life. True, the first time it had led to an MA and doctorate
studies in Sweden – and nothing.
A Ph. D. in
history wasn't exactly what corporate business looked for, and he
took up cross country hiking and a lot of odd jobs. And he was on his
way to thirty when he vanished one day only to end up naked and half
his age in this Japan.
So James
needed a new life, and owning a café with just enough customers to
keep him alive was new. And so was meeting the first two new arrivals
in ten years.
But Ulf didn't
need new. The fifty year old boy needed something very old. A good
old senseless binge drinking night when he could blow off all the
steam that almost had him bursting.
James had seen
how Ulf built up more and more pressure the last month, and when it
finally blew up he made sure Ulf spent it all in a drunken stupor in
the café rather than doing something really stupid elsewhere.
Of course he
had to stop Ulf from hitting the bottle again come morning. He
watched Ulf sleeping the hangover off in the inner room, and shortly
after Ulf crawled to the toilet to puke for the second time James
heard the bell chiming followed by an angry roar. It was the golden
girl, and she was coming to get herself a pound of flesh. Or at least
enough of his hide to make a pretty carpet.
James heard
the Wakayama twins take the first brunt of the attack, which was kind
of unfair considering they had played almost no part in it at all.
Then the door to the inner room was forced open and Christina stormed
in.
While James
realised he looked like twenty five and was in fact forty he also
knew when he was beaten. The battle tank forcing its way inside the
room showed a face James had never seen before.
“Where is
he? What have you done to him?” she screeched. “You!” She
stabbed a finger at him. Then she saw Ulf.
Bakemono!
James had never seen anyone transform so fast from a vengeance demon
to a lover sick with worry. She's not from this world. Kitsune?
Because she's not merely an arrival like him and me.
“Ulf, Ulf
please forgive me!” Christina rushed to where Ulf lay on the
pillows James had scrounged for earlier the same morning.
Maybe she's
really fifty, but right now she looks like a hurt kid. Damn I should
have made sure she knew the hell he's been through. Suddenly
James felt very ashamed of himself. Old Nakagawa would most likely
help Christina to a part of his hide.
Ulf groaned
from his corner, and then he was covered by golden hair and long arms
hidden under baggy clothes.
“Stupid boy!
Why didn't you tell me?”
James winced
when he saw her crawling all over her boyfriend. That had to
hurt even if the worst of the hangover had abated. “He's not a boy,
not really,” James tried, but he had little hope Christina would
listen to anything he said. “I'm afraid that principal of yours set
him on a job he wasn't prepared to do.”
Christina
looked up from where she was cradling Ulf. “Nakagawa did? He got
Ulf involved in the death of another?” Suddenly the vengeance demon
was back.
James took a
step back. He didn't know if she was about to get violent or not.
When she showed no signs of leaving Ulf he calmed down a bit.
“You really
have to talk with Nakagawa about that. I don't know what happened
more than that it hurt him a lot.” James finished the sentence
nodding at Ulf. “I don't think Ulf did anything more than find a
person he was looking for. Well, and calling the police.” That
explanation wouldn't be enough, but it had to suffice for now.
Christina
seemed to understand. She settled down with Ulf's head in her lap,
slowly stroking his head and looked like a hurt child again.
“Red Rose,”
she said. “His middle school. He called it Red Rose Hell.”
“Sorry,
haven't heard of it,” James muttered in agreement. “Sounds bad.”
Christina
nodded slowly. During their last exchange her eyes never left Ulf.
“Something bad happened there,” she said after a while. “I was
attacked in school, and I believe there was a connection with what
happened to him at Red Rose. Ulf doesn't want to talk about it.”
James made a
mental promise to himself that he'd pressure Nakagawa for
information. The old principal kept his secrets far too close to
himself, but James was an arrival himself. He could use that. If
nothing else he could threaten Nakagawa with involving his government
handler directly.
I'm ten
years younger than those two subjectively, but I'm still twenty five
in this world. Has to count for something. “I'll help you,”
he said. He was taking sides. For ten years he had avoided doing so,
but somewhere down the line he knew he had to make a stand. The two
new arrivals had only speeded that process up.
On the floor
Ulf was slowly waking up for the third time that day. James saw him
groan. Then Ulf looked up at Christina's face hovering above his own.
The second groan was filled with shame and self-loathing.
This is
where I pick the side I really knew I would pick from
the beginning. I'm grateful to you both, James thought. Open
Japan or closed Japan. Such a simple choice. Seems I didn't spend
those years in Sweden in vain after all. We have to change. “If
you want my help you have it. Start with changing Himekaizen. It's my
old school as well, and Nakagawa is on your side even if it doesn't
always look that way.”
Christina
lifted her head for the first time in a while and looked at him with
blank eyes.
“It's
what he needs.” James pointed at the awakening body in her lap. “If
he can't create change he'll destroy himself.”
She
still didn't look like she understood.
“He's
not like you and me. We change ourselves and sometimes that changes
people around us.” James knew he was out on a thin limb, but he was
also certain he had guessed correctly. “That boy of yours is
unchanging. He only changes the world around him.”
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