“Your plans
for today?” Amaya wondered after breakfast.
“Club
activities,” Ulf answered and slung his backpack onto his back.
“Culture festival late September, and it seems the clubs are
supposed to take part in it.”
Amaya frowned.
“You couldn't participate last year.”
“No big
deal. We're over twenty people in the club, and I guess we'll have to
show off something supposedly Swedish and that's about it. See you!”
And with that he was out of the door. He ran down the stairs five
steps at a time and walked the last bit to the bike stand. Today
would be a long ride, but he hadn't wanted to leave it by the station
for the duration of the field trip. Lucky he didn't. Four days had
turned into two weeks.
He played with
the thought of biking to their old mall and leave it there, but with
some luck Christina would show at the school, and if she did he had
hopes for cycling around the city with her. So he ended up locking
his bike to the confession stands outside their wing and walked the
gravel to the entrance.
After a few
moments of confusion he found his shoe lockers, dumped his sneakers
in it and pulled his indoor slippers out of his back pack. Starting
today he'd leave them in the locker when he went home. There were
only a couple of days until school started anyway.
The corridor
was empty, but he heard muted voices from the stairwell he was
heading for. He looked through the windows to the closed cafeteria,
passed the boys PE locker room and climbed the stairs. Whomever the
voices belonged to had long since vanished when he left the stairs
for the main corridor.
What the
hell? The club room was empty. As in wiped clean. This is way
too much for a burglary, so what happened?
“Urufu, you
idiot! Moron-sama!”
OK, that's
Noriko for sure. Now what? Ulf left their club room and stared in
the direction her voice had come from. Sure enough she stood in the
stairwell waving at him. Ah, not waving, beckoning for me. Damn
palm down. I'll never get used to that.
With a sigh he
shut the door and sauntered in her direction. What's she doing in
our wing?
“What's with
you today? Getting senile already?”
No, I'm
not, That doctor of Nakagawa's promised as much. Wonder what I forgot
this time though? Probably just didn't pay attention to something.
“Yeah, must be. Advanced age and all that.”
When he closed
in on her she turned on her feet, climbed the stairs and headed into
the corridor to his classroom. That had him even more confused until
she walked past it.
Ah, that's
right. We were given a new room. Ulf started running after her
and caught up just as they passed 5:1. He wondered if they would be
able to see all of the pool from their new room.
They were.
Half a dozen
club members were busy adding the finishing touches to the former
classroom converted into club room. They must have spent a lot of
time since the field trip here, because the room had been carefully
redesigned for lounging, office work and even small conferences.
There was even a very small kitchenette in a corner. Bookshelves
lined two walls, and four shelves cut the room into two sections
separating the lounge area from the workspace.
“Whoa! You
guys rule!” Where did the money come from? I seeded quarter of a
million yen, but that's nothing compared to the
furniture they brought here?
“Like it,
Urufu-kun?” Midori asked proudly. Not waiting for an answer she
continued. “Found out a week ago both my parents and Hiroyuki-kun's
own furniture stores. Between us we had a lot of damaged goods we
could take.”
“I see,”
Ulf said just as he thought it. That made sense. Two dozen of us now.
We'll need this space. And I just love how they've planned the
place for workshops in small teams! Super kids! “It's
perfect. You've made us a new home here. Christina's going to step
dance all over the place when she sees it.” Thinking of her he
wondered where she was.
There was a
moment of uncomfortable silence. “She called in,” Midori said
after a while. Her hair grew if possible even more unruly as if it
wanted to share in her shame. “I'm sorry, but she won't come.”
Ulf forced a
smile to his face. “Girl, it's not your fault. Besides, she should
have called me instead. Thanks for letting me know,” he added to
underscore that he really thought that Midori had only shown
consideration.
But it was
still a bummer. It wasn't like she had promised him anything, but he
had hoped. During all of summer break they had spent less than a day
alone together. Ulf shrugged. At the other hand they had spent far
more days in each other's company than he had dared hope for to begin
with, even if they had shared that time with others. And he would be
a poor friend if he didn't give his friends the time they deserved.
And you're
rambling. Making excuses when you know that your need for her is
endless. He threw Midori and the others an ironic salute and
walked to the workspace. Some time on his own while he pretended to
work seemed like a good idea.
Noriko had
seen through his ruse. She always did, but with a bit of luck she'd
play along. He knew she had a crush on him, and he knew he was
abusing it a little right now, but he really needed to sit on his own
and think things over.
No comments:
Post a Comment