Chapter four, 2018, white Valentine, segment three

Just like last year the school was eerily empty. Unlike last year Kyoko had no problem finding a place for herself and Yukio in the cafeteria. They were second years after all.

Exams, White day and end of school, graduation for their seniors and after that the short spring break. A month; even less depending on how you looked at it. The seniors had three weeks until life as they knew it ended. For Kyoko the two weeks between her junior year and her senior one signalled both a transition and restart. Third year was in preparation for a new world, but it wasn’t yet that new world.

“Yukio, over here!” She waved at him from her table.

Yukio paid and walked over to her with a tray in his hands.

“About our birthdays,” he said as he sat down and put his tray down with a thump that had everything on it dance around.

“Yes?”

“We might have to share them with the others.”

Dancing food in combination with the tone of his voice made Kyoko look at him a bit closer. “You make it sound like a bad thing,” she tried.

He mumbled in response and shovelled food into his mouth.

OK, bad thing. But why? “Yukio, my mind reading failed badly. Can’t we just give them some time early evening and celebrate alone after that?”

“I wish!”

It wasn’t like him not to think about a solution even before finding out how bad a problem was. “Look, if I talk with Kuri-chan and ask her…”

“You can’t.”

That was new. Yukio never told her what she could or couldn’t do. Kyoko copied him and filled her mouth with something to chew on lest he became the target of her chewing. If he behaved like an insensitive moron there had to be a reason for it.

“Explain,” she said when her irritation cooled down a little.

Yukio met her eyes. He looked gentler now. Somehow he’d pushed down whatever ate him. “Tomasu and Jeniferu,” he said. “It’s pretty bad. They need some talking or they’ll break up the bad way, as in worse than Urufu and Kuri bad way.”

You didn’t do worse that that. Kyoko’s best friend spent half a year failing miserably at breaking up with the man she loved and who loved her back. In the end they hurt each other and everyone around them.

Kyoko smiled. “I like the selfish you,” she said.

“Huh?”

She turned and looked around to make sure no one listened. “You want our birthdays to be for us alone. That makes me happy.”

Yukio gave her a sullen stare and took another bite of his lunch. “Of course. You’re my girlfriend.”

She really did like him for that. “We’re also the wingmen of the school heroes.”

“So what?”

“That makes us heroes as well. I’ll ask Kuri-chan. You go to Urufu and find out what he needs, OK?”

Yukio nodded and finished his lunch. Kyoko wondered if the reason he was so sour to begin with was exactly because he knew from the start that this would be what they both decided upon.

Kyoko finished her food as well, and together they carried their trays and disposed of them. They left the cafeteria and between shoe lockers Yukio gave her a short peck of a kiss before they parted ways.

She spent the rest of the day paying proper attention to lessons and shortly after Kyoko found herself by Kuri-chan’s lockers waiting for her friend. A few classmates waved when they grabbed their shoes and left school. Bored with nothing to Kyoko stared through the entrance to what had become her world for almost two years. Across the school yard a line of sakura shrugged naked branches in the wind as if it was still winter, but every time the doors opened a whiff carried promises of spring to come.

“Ko-chan?”

Kyoko looked over her shoulder. They hadn’t made an agreement to see each other after school, and she was certain Kuri-chan was in a hurry for one modelling job or another.

She had, just as she said she would an eternity ago when they were still middle school students busy with becoming friends, grown into a stunningly beautiful woman. Blond hair and blue eyes aside, everything about her woke the desire in anything male. Kyoko guessed the same went for jealousy when it came to women.

I don’t think I’d like knowing I’d grow into that. It must be scary.

“My birthday, or Yukio’s, I want one of them alone with him,” Kyoko said.

“Why are you telling me?”

“You’re getting dragged into Tomasu’s and Jeniferu’s problems, and that means the two of us get dragged into it as well.”

Kuri-chan nodded. “A selfish Kyoko. How improper,” she said and grinned.

Kyoko recalled a life lived according to rules. She returned the grin. “You taught me.”

“Seems I was a good teacher.”

“Very.”

“You want me to make sure we’re off your back?”

Kyoko’s grin thinned into a smile. “Yes, I’d like that. We’ll give you white day.”

There was a glimmer of surprise in Kuri-chan’s eyes.

“That’s when, as Urufu so elegantly would say, the shit hits the fan.”

“Both observant and improper,” Kuri-chan quipped.

“I know. It’s called acquiring new skills.”

“That’s my girl!”

“Yukio’s.”

There was a moment’s silence. “You win.” A wide smile spread over Kuri-chan’s face.

Things got strained between the two of them when Kuri-chan hurt Urufu and in doing so hurt Yukio. With a sigh of relief Kyoko realised that while their friendship would never again be as innocent as it had once been, it was still there. For better or worse Kuri-chan remained her best friend.

“Love you too,” Kyoko said.

“Never got any chocolate from you last week,” Kuri-chan retorted and pretended to sulk.

Kyoko rolled her eyes. “I only make one set of honmei chocolate, you know.”

“Yes?”

“Giving you giri chocolate would still be wrong.”

“So I get none at all?”

Kyoko felt her own grin spread all the way to her eyes. “I see that you’re both beautiful and bright.”

“Ouch!”

“You deserved it.”

The last of bad feeling from the afternoon left her and Kyoko tackled her friend. They were both giggling when they left Himekaizen.