And that's
the real beauty of it, Ulf thought as he waited for Christina to
finish her explanation.
How to expand
your market shares in a shrinking market. Just force a competitor out
of that market. It was brilliant. Irishima high and Himekaizen aimed
at stealing some 350 students from Red Rose. That was effectively the
same as shutting the school down. Especially as a few middle schools
stood waiting in the shadows ready to gobble up students from grade
seven through nine, among them Christina's old school.
Christina and
Kyoko's, Ulf reminded himself. She's the most
important person in the world for Yukio.
Ulf took a deep
breath before he continued. He still got winded quickly and it would
take until the beginning of next year before he could start
rebuilding the stamina he had always taken pride in.
“Anyway,” Ulf
said. “as you can see one of the classrooms is this very room, so
come April we'll be without a clubroom.”
There were quite
a few shouts of outrage, and Ulf waited for them to quiet down.
“In return,”
he continued when the room was silent enough for him to be heard
again, “we've been given special dispensation to use the inner room
at the café as our clubroom. It's cleared with the management there
as well.” Which means James was behind the entire idea from the
beginning, but I can't tell them why, Ulf thought. It made sense
though. This way James got into closer contact with both arrivals as
well as the Himekaizen part of whatever shadowy organisation that
took care of the arrivals over the years.
Ulf shot
Christina a worried look before he continued. Nakagawa's words from
just after their evening meeting at the café played in his thoughts.
Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to refuse running for the
student council after all. Without Nakagawa to cover their backs
they'd be forced to gamble on how the new principal would play his
cards, because here in Japan it was bound to be a 'he'.
“Given these
circumstances I've decided that the theme for our walking talking
sessions will be corporate competition.”
“Corporate
competition?” Sakura asked and reminded Ulf that she wasn't
anywhere nearly as silent and withdrawn as she had been in the
beginning. “What about our school subjects?”
“It's the
theme,” Ulf said. “Apart from classic Japanese we'll use the
theme as the core for all subjects. For example we'll use examples
from economic calculus for math, discuss real cases in English and
Japanese and look at older cases from modern Japanese history.”
When he received
blank stares in return Ulf palmed his face. This is going to take
a while to explain.
He was saved by
Noriko. “It's an interdisciplinary approach,” she said. “We're
merging knowledge from separate knowledge domains to, eh, to increase
our understanding of each domain,” she said, but her voice fell
strangely silent at the end.
Ulf stared at
her. That's almost correct, and shows way more understanding than
any sixteen year old girl has any right to have. “Noriko got
the gist of it,” he said. “It also helps us see how different
domains are connected to each other,” he added, more for her
benefit than for the others. They wouldn't understand the application
of synthesis. Most of his old colleagues from his previous life
hadn't, but Ulf suspected Noriko was already very, very close to do
so.
He watched
Christina distribute the compendia they had prepared. He had done
most of the research, but she forced him to do a full rewrite of all
sections concerning large conglomerates. He was too cute and naive
she had laughed, and when it came to global business Ulf saw no
reason to distrust anything she said. After all she was the billion
dollar empress.
Kid's, you're
getting a crash course my old Swedish customers would have paid
millions of yen for. With you as a lecturer I doubt yen would
suffice, Ulf thought and looked at her. You saved me. Without
you I doubt I would have kept my sanity. I owe you so much more than
I could ever give you.
She must have
felt his gaze, because she suddenly stopped handing out compendia and
stood staring back at him. He felt his cheeks heat up, and it was
impossible not to meet her eyes.
No matter what
you're stunningly beautiful, but that's not what keeps me by your
side. Slowly her face faded from his vision and he only saw
Christina's intensely blue eyes meeting his. I love your strength,
and I love the caring you that you always try to hide. I love knowing
that side of you. I wish I could stay with you forever!
And then even her
eyes left his view and Ulf found himself locked in memories and the
very love he felt for her. Right here and right now there were only
the two of them, and in his mind he felt her embrace as real and soft
as if they had really been alone together.
I've missed
that feeling of being together. Since that day I've missed you even
when you were with me. This was the real feeling he had longed
for, this, the feeling of being together which for him was more real
than seeing her face from his hospital bed.
His chest
constricted and a pleasant warmness spread through his body from his
stomach.
“Wow!” a
voice in the background said. “Hey! You two, you're making us
embarrassed.”
Ulf vaguely
registered Nori's voice, and for once he probably wouldn't be accused
of being the motor mouth, because most of the murmurs seemed to agree
with him.
“Man, get a
room before you look at her that way,” Yukio said, and the indecent
suggestion brought a guffaw to most of the members. The awkward
feeling dissolved, but not before Christina snorted in a failed
attempt to pretend she hadn't been caught up in the tension.
That was
intense! Ulf thought, and once again he recalled the reason he
had fallen helplessly in love with her.
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