Chapter six, 2017, Christmas carols, segment four

“I’m scared.”

Yukio’s hand held hers in a firmer grip. Kyoko sent him a grateful thought for his concern.

“We’ll be known as the school perverts after this,” Kyoko said. “My parents are going to be so angry.”

“Then let them!” Yukio stopped her midway through the corridor connecting both wings. “I’m with you.”

Kyoko listened to the silence around them. Through the windows her eyes followed the great sails and the wires stringing them to the walls. From the second floor she saw the structure in the canvas, how torn they had become and where rust ate the wiring.

“Yukio, I’m trying to live my own life now, but it’s hard.”

He didn’t say anything, but from the tapping of his indoor shoes against the floor Kyoko guessed he was thinking furiously.

You always care for me, and whenever I feel bad you always try to turn it into a fault of yours. “Yukio, it’s my parents, not you. Besides, we agreed to do this together. They’re our friends.”

He shuddered. “I’m scared as well, you know.” A slight tug from his hand told her he wanted to be in time for next class, and Kyoko decided that the rest of the conversation had to wait until after school hours.

This was, she thought as they walked through the empty corridor bathed in a grey winter’s daylight, not the smartest way. But it was, probably she hoped, the fastest. Make Ryu angry enough to scare him. Shake him around until he understands that something has gone awfully wrong.

She hoped they got through to him before it was too late. Else their establishing the rumour as them being the school’s pervert pair would all be for naught.

They passed the stairwell and after that they headed for their classrooms. Kyoko waved at Yukio before she entered hers.

A lesson filled with classic Japanese went by in a flash and after that they had the last long home room session for the year. As usual what was foremost in the teacher’s mind concerned studies. It was as if breaks were something evil that disturbed the schooling of students.

She left school in a state of confusion. Yukio stood waiting for her by the gates. Any other day and they would have shared the stairs down to the shoe lockers, but after their amazingly public display the gates felt better. Fewer people would get to ask them questions that way.

In the car home she held his hand, and none of their body guards said anything. Kyoko guessed they felt a change in the air; how she and Yukio both were more subdued. She guessed they didn’t understand the reason, but adults were usually better at letting things go without the need to understand everything, and she was grateful for the silence.

This happened once before, Kyoko thought. Noriko that time, in a failed attempt to save at least something from the mess that had been Kuri-chan and Urufu. So much has happened since then.

They left the car, and Yukio followed her into her home. Her parents had accepted them being a couple, and if anything they pitied Yukio. She couldn’t bear any children to carry his name, as if continuing a name was the very reason to live.

“Do you think it’s enough?” he asked when they were alone in her room.

Kyoko looked at him. Her Yukio. How anyone could think he was plain was beyond her. His face, perhaps a little rounder than the ideal male beauty, soft eyes without the eyelashes to make other girls turn and look after him and thin lips that were prone to turn up in an honest smile whenever their eyes met. Her Yukio, her solid rock in the world.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “We did what we could. I hope he’s shaken enough to reflect a little.”

Yukio nodded, and then the smile she loved to see spread all the way from his lips to his eyes. “I’d like some tea,” he said when she began to feel embarrassed. “Should we go down and make some?”

Kyoko nodded and rose to open the door. Her mother would have wanted to prepare the snacks. It was a part of living her life as a proper wife, but Kyoko no longer wanted that kind of artificial proper.

Yukio’s presence followed her down the stairs and into the kitchen. Kyoko didn’t have to look behind her to know he was there.

An opened cupboard and a kettle on the stove later hot water was ready to be turned into tea. She preferred it this way. A water boiler was faster, but it just wasn’t the same thing, especially when she shared the moments with Yukio. She also liked the taste of water that had never been brought to boiling poured over the leaves.

Yukio kept himself busy preparing a few sandwiches and a small assortment of pickles to go with them. A touch of fresh sour and salty to break the taste of bread. He knows his way around this kitchen. Kyoko quickly finished the teapot and returned to watching Yukio. Small details, small proof we belong with each other.

He’d stay the night. They didn’t need to be intimate now, or at least not in that way. On a whim she carried the tea to the living room. Just to fell what it would be like to live together.

Yukio followed her mutely with a tray in his hands.

I’m playing house with him in my second year of high school. Shouldn’t I feel more embarrassed? There was no answer to that question. Listening to her mother washing clothes in a rather transparent attempt to make herself reminded a thought suddenly struck Kyoko. Do you ever stop playing house?

Her entire life Kyoko had gotten used to the great game of living a proper life, but now she wondered it a game wasn’t all it was. Did mom have dreams of her own? Did she fulfil them? And that question was, perhaps, the reason Kyoko finally calmed down, sitting in the sofa, drinking tea with Yukio.

Whatever the answer was, Ryu had no right to take Noriko’s dreams away from her.