Prologue, 1993

And she had done it again. Wakayama Tadao stared at the love of his life with eyes and chest full of admiration. Then he met the eyes of the teacher in pursuit of Natsumi.

“You little… stop her!”

Fat chance. Tadao grinned at them both.

Natsumi high fived him when she passed at full speed in the school corridor, and Tadao had just as much reason to get caught as his girlfriend. Second floor wasn’t worth the effort of stairs, so barely looking down he vaulted out the window, somersaulted once and rolled on the ground below.

Above him the teacher’s head popped out through the window Tadao had just left. A balding head. A head that bellowed things Tadao was certain a teacher wasn’t supposed to utter.

“Moron!”

That wasn’t the teacher. That was Mitsuo shouting his displeasure with Tadao’s gymnastic abilities.

Good thing he made it out of the classroom ahead of us, Tadao thought and laughed.

“You want to get us grounded?”

Of course they’d get grounded. That was part of the game after all, and sneaking out of course. Nothing that didn’t include bars could keep Tadao inside if he wanted out, but he had to admit that Mitsuo lacked a little in that department.

Natsumi didn’t. She didn’t lack in any department. The difference in physical strength she more than made up for with one insanely daring plan after another, and it wasn’t just for show. He felt how she lived her life to the fullest whenever they shared a bed.

“Mitsuo, we’re out of here!”

“We’ll get caught, you idiot!”

“Get your bike! Natsumi’s fetching a ladder.”

Tadao ran for the bike stands, and poor Mitsuo couldn’t do much more than follow in his steps.

“Ladder?” Mitsuo asked breathlessly when they arrived.

“Just get your bike! You’ll find out,” Tadao said and grabbed both his and Natsumi’s bikes. They probably had less than half a minute.

They sprinted across the gravel in the direction of the gates. Behind him Mitsuo gasped for breath. Good thing you’re tired, or you’d understand. Damn, he’s going to hate me for this, Tadao thought and grinned.

“No way in hell! You didn’t!” Mitsuo wheezed.

Ah, he found out. Can’t be helped. Tadao rushed up the ladder Natsumi had left like a ramp from the ground to atop the gate. He still carried a bike in each arm.

“Catch!”

Natsumi obediently caught first one bike and then the next.

“Mitsuo, your bike, quick!”

Behind them teachers came rushing out on the school yard. You’re too late!

Tadao had to help Mitsuo across the gate, but with Natsumi ready to catch both a third bike as well as their best friend things went as planned.

“Don’t you dare!”

Tadao didn’t pay the roaring teacher much attention.

“Now my heroes, history is best learned where it occurred. Today we’re going to Kamakura.” He straddled his bike, and waited for Natsumi and Mitsuo to do the same.

When a teacher finally got the gate open they were already half a block away. Another day turned into a field trip, another magic high school day and another day he spent with the woman he loved above anything else and the best friend anyone could ever hope for.

Life was wonderful, living was wonderful, and anything wonderful was worth exploring. What did it matter if they built a less than stellar reputation with the staff back at Himekaizen?

June 24, 2040, coffee and smoke

He belonged to a vanishing minority of smokers, which was a good thing, but right now this minority needed a cig.

Remembering Kareyoshi sure put a damper on the morning.

“They put him away. I believe he’s still in some prison somewhere,” Kyoko said and came up to stand beside him with both her hands on the railing.

“Just remembering is enough to...”

“Please Yukio!”

Yukio grimaced but held his peace. “You know,” he said when he had calmed down again, “didn’t it get strangely normal after that?”

Kyoko gazed out over the sea, but Yukio could see a smile playing on her lips. “Yes, strangely normal. Trust us to make normal a problem.”

He couldn’t remember. For Yukio his second year in high school was forever tainted by Kareyoshi, but the monster got removed just prior to Christmas. That left a full trimester of their junior year. “Were they good times?” Yukio asked while he furiously tried to remember what had happened back then.

Kyoko guffawed and kissed him full on his mouth. “Good times indeed. Great times for lovers of chaos.”

Standing in the morning sun memories finally surfaced in Yukio’s mind. Yeah, those were great times for anyone feeling that falling down a cliff was too sedate. But… there were just three months between Christmas and school’s end. They couldn’t possibly have…

“I know what you’re thinking.”

Yukio pulled the brakes on his train of thoughts and turned to face his wife. “Enlighten me!”

“You really don’t remember?”

He shook his head. “Not a thing,” he lied, and he knew she knew he lied. It didn’t matter. Right now he was about to enjoy her version of what happened.

“Gods! And the only sane thing for us back then would have been to study, do well on our finals and enter our third year, but no, no we just had to… gods!”

Yukio waited for Kyoko to pick up the thread where she had left it off. He waited and enjoyed how the sun played in her hair.

“Yukio, really! Hatsumode, and the field trip. And...” she threw her hands to her face, “valentines! Now that was a mess best forgotten.”

Now when she mentioned it Yukio remembered. Yeah, best forgotten. “White day wasn’t much better, or the finals,” Yukio filled in.

“Or spring break for that matter. Gods what a disaster that was!”

With a grin Yukio allowed himself to be flooded by memories. Disasters all of them, but fun disasters.

Prologue, 2014

Christina tugged her coat tighter around her. Last week in June and an already miserable attempt at summer surprised her by reaching an atrocious low.

The invitation to spend a weekend at a resort had been a welcome break in days filled with work, and as Chag’s Swedish main office ground to a halt after the Midsummer’s celebrations, just like most business in Sweden did, she decided she could afford herself a little luxury.

Afford referring to time. She had all the money she could ever wish for and none of the pleasures she once dreamt came with it.

I’m growing old.

Their last collection was a failure. She knew that. Only murderous marketing kept the numbers up, but she would have refused to wear most of it as a teenager herself.

And yet I gave the green light. Damn! Her fault. The collections were her responsibility. Billion Dollar Empress and corporate management be damned. Chag did fashion. Christina bloody Princess of Scandinavia Agerman did fashion. If she didn’t, who else would?

For once she had kept the axe hanging despite demands that heads rolled. At least this time she wouldn’t place the blame for her own mistakes on anyone else.

She was so lost in thought that she almost missed that trees had given way to grass. With trunks no longer protecting her wind caught in her clothes and she had to grab her coat with both hands.

A bit further ahead a cabin hugged the mountainside. It almost looked like it had been dug into the very bedrock.

Then a freak gust of wind tore at her hair and Christina let out a surprised shriek.

Of course we’ll have a Summer’s storm on top of all! This June’s breaking every bloody low score yet. She grinned and grimaced. Somehow the abysmal weather made her laugh, but as the wind grew stronger she decided it wasn’t the time for mirth.

Woods or cabin? Cabin!

Just as she made her mind up the wind caught strength with a sickening roar, and for the first time she felt fear running through her. Out here she was totally unprotected.

She dropped to her knees and started crawling towards he mountain side. Out of nowhere windy weather had turned into a hurricane and she couldn’t see anything at all.

Her world turned white.

One moment gusts of wind tried to rip her coat to shreds, the next her coat was gone.

So were the rest of her clothes, and any remnant of wind as well.

Christina stared at bony fingers. Then she stared again.

She vaguely remembered that hand. It was hers, but not hers any longer.

Standing up she felt earth welling up between her toes, and she looked down.

What the hell?

Naked wasn’t anything special to her. She spent fifteen years of her life without any privacy. Ten of them without any privacy even away from cameras.

Naked and young, very, very young, however, was.

The ugly me? I had forgotten! What’s going on?

Then the sound of engines grew closer and she stood staring in the direction from where they came. From the sound she guessed she’d see the vehicle in a few seconds.

She was surround by mountains seen nowhere in Sweden.

A flash of a thought begged her to do something about her nakedness, but years of experience firmly shoved that thought down into the nothingness it deserved. She was naked. She had no clothes around her. There was nothing to do about it.

When the military looking car popped over a crest a little later she decided to cover her private parts with one hand and her breasts with the other. There was something called modesty after all.

Feeling her breasts under her hand she discarded that idea. There weren’t much to feel anyway.

Whoever drove the car cut the engine, and in the distance she heard another vehicle driving somewhere unseen to her.

The doors opened and two men emerged.

“Excuse me, but could you please tell me where I am?” she said to the one closest. English. English would do almost anywhere.

“You have arrived in Japan. We will take you in,” he answered and offered her a blanket he had been carrying. “There are clothes back there as well,” he added.

Christina wrapped the blanket around her. The flimsy cloth partially covering her body strangely enough made her feel more naked than before and she averted her eyes from his.

“What’s going on?”

“Sorry, mz. We’ll drive you to a facility where you can get some privacy and change into better clothes than those we have here.”

That didn’t answer her questions at all.

“We’ll answer your questions there as well.

That had to suffice.

Prologue, 1991

“Sano Mitsuo, at your service.”

Masuda Natsumi stared at the boy who had been assigned as her desk neighbour. He talks like an old man!

There was something strange about his way of speaking as well. As if he had relearned Japanese after living abroad.

At her other side she had the silent Wakayama Tadao. A shy boy who just didn't understand how gorgeous he looked. Thankfully he was shy enough not to take much notice of the looks the other girls gave him.

I'll reel him in good. Bright, honest to a fault and with a little devil grinning in his eyes whenever he smiled. What else was there to want? Nothing, not since she had laid her eyes on him when her parents moved from Sapporo to Tokyo last year and she transferred into his ninth grade class.

He never rejected her advances, but neither did he agree to date her. Well, at least he knew she had a crush on him, and he still wanted to be friends with her. You can't leave an opening like that, you know. I'll have you mine!

What Natsumi wanted she got. Luckily for her parents she wasn't a greedy girl, but whenever she set her mind to something she got the results she wanted in the end. It didn't always come easy, and it didn't always take only a short time, but in the end.

“Excuse me, but could you please help out an old man here?”

The strange kid again. And he called himself an old man! “Sure, if you tell me how old you are.”

“Let's see. That would be seventy one this year,” he answered without batting an eye.

If you plan to play it like that. “Sure grandpa.”

“And here I was so worried about youth today. Seems my worries were unfounded.” He grinned. A predatory grin, and suddenly Natsumi didn't like the joke any longer. Her instincts screamed: Danger!

“Was there anything you needed help with?” That was Tadao-kun's voice. Secretly just 'Tadao' in her mind.

Natsumi gratefully threw him a glance when he came to her help. Whenever things threatened to get ugly he simply forgot to be shy and acted on his own sense of honour.

“Another polite kid. I'm so fortunate today.”

“Kid? I'm oldest in the class.”

“I'm afraid you might just be mistaken. By fifty five years or so, if I may add.”

“You may not,” Tadao-kun said, and his voice grew something steely into it.

How could I not fall for you? Tadao, you dummy. Just give up and be my boyfriend, will you?

“You're perfectly right. Age isn't a right. It just is,” Sano-san said and met Tadao-kun's eyes.

Why does he keep up that creepy joke? It isn't funny any longer.

Sano-san and Tadao-kun locked themselves in a staring match. In the end Tadao-kun lost and gave Natsumi an embarrassed look.

He tried. He tried for me. Now or never. “Tadao, I love you.” She had told him she was interested before, implied she wanted a relationship with him, but she had never confessed outright like this.

Surprised shouts from the desks around them told her her confession hadn't gone undetected.

“Then please be my girlfriend,” he said.

“My my,” Sano-san commented.

Natsumi didn't care. Her chest swelled with joy. Finally! I'll even forgive you for being creepy, Sano-san.

One meeting. One that defined their lives. On such circumstances are friends for life made.

Midsummer's day, 2040, second dinner

Urufu fired up the grills with Kyoko watching and Yukio helping. Talking about having children made her remember the reason she and Yukio would transit in a few days.

Unfortunately she also recalled the events that followed. Urufu and Kuri-chan breaking up, the chaos between Ai-chan, Ryu and Kuri-chan during and after spring break. Her own fears when they had a gorilla in a costume tagging along whenever they left school.

Noriko, how Noriko alone had tried to keep it all together, and how she eventually failed in the end. Urufu's absence and return, and over everything else, the shadow of a man whom she only knew of as Yukio's English teacher until everything changed.

Second year in high school was supposed to be the spring of youth. Sure, a stereotype, but still.

Second year in high school had started like anything but.

Kyoko squirmed uncomfortably when the memories took her back. Only by anchoring her sight on Yukio's back did she regain the feeling of trust and safety he always gave her.

Her Yukio.

Her lovely Yukio.

Prologue, 2000

“Do you love her?”

“Yes, yes I do, but it's not like when I met Kerstin.”

“Kerusutina?”

Mitsuo cringed when Natsumi mauled the name of his first wife.

“Please, I was born and raised here in Japan just like you, but I made an effort to get her name right,” he said and turned to Tadao. “Could you please ask your girlfriend not to do that again? She's doing it on purpose.”

Tadao just grinned. “Wife, she's my wife now. Wakayama Natsumi. What do you like the sound of that?”

“What? Since when did you get married?”

The grin grew wider. “Since we found out just how special Valentine was.”

Mitsuo watched as Natsumi hid her face in her hands.

“Wakayama Tadao, you're a pig!”

His best friend since ten years ducked the backhand fist that flew in his direction and promptly hid behind Mitsuo's back. “Sorry my love. Just gloating.”

What the? Oh. Oh! “Congratulations! When?”

Two things registered in Mitsuo's mind. First how all the conversations around the tables closest to them died abruptly, and then how perfect strangers near them grew knowing smiles in an instant.

“He's a pig and you're an idiot. What did I do to deserve the two most important men in my life to develop this way?”

Just to make sure she wasn't angry for real Mitsuo studied Natsumi's face. Wakayama Natsumi, not Masuda Natsumi any longer. What he saw behind those eyes was gleeful joy hidden behind a show of aggravation.

“When?” he repeated.

Natsumi smirked before she answered. “November. Twins, we'll have twins.”

“You're worth it,” was all Mitsuo could say. He knew how much Natsumi had longed for a child. Already during their last year in high school she started talking of getting married and raising children. That Tadao filled the position as father was a given, not that Tadao had been asked or really had any say in the matter.

“And don't you try squiggle out of my question! Do you love her?”

Mitsuo grimaced. “As I said. I do. We'll marry next year or the year after that. I know you treasure your childhood friend, but she's my girlfriend now. Quite frankly it's none of your business.”

For the second time during their dinner Natsumi flew her hands to her face, but this time in mock surprise. “Fine, I can respect that.”

“You understand we'll move, do you? I just can't stand this version of Tokyo any more. I'm too old.”

Natsumi nodded in response. “Where, and what do you plan to do?”

“I've found a run down onsen near Ise. I think I could develop an impressively accurate taste for what retired couples want from an overnight stay. Especially given my youth.”

Beside him Tadao groaned at the joke having grown stale long ago. “Given your youth, yeah. You're what, eighty now?”

“Yeah. That's why we're moving south. I remember whom we sided with during the last great recession. I can see what's happening here now, and I don't like it.”

“What do you mean?” Tadao asked. Suddenly there was no trace of his usual inane jokes in his voice.

Mitsuo gave his reply a thorough thought before he spoke again. Both his friends were much too young to understand, and they only knew Japan as an economic juggernaut. If the current recession didn't break soon the optimistic and open-minded Japan Mitsuo had grown to love could very well revert back to something much uglier, something he had spent most of his life trying to atone for.

“I'm afraid we'll see the section handling arrivals split in two. I'm afraid the arrivals will land in the middle of a power struggle. Basically I'm just afraid.” He looked at his friends, and waited for them to say something, but none did. “I'm not like you two. I taught you how to fight, but I don't have the strength to do so myself again. I'll sit this one out by the side-lines.”

Midsummer's day, 2040, morning glory

“It's not very warm,” Yukio complained.

Ulf pushed up his sunglasses and looked at his friend. “Yeah, you're right about that. We get a lot of sun this time of the year, but it's not as hot as in Japan.” He laughed at the comparison and recalled the bleak winters from his previous life. “We don't get as much sun during winter, so it evens out.”

“You mean light's out during winter?”

That question came just a bit too close to the memories Ulf had played along with before Yukio joined him in the morning sun.

“Yeah, and we don't even get much snow to mitigate the darkness.”

Yukio must have noticed something, because he coughed, lit a cigarette and looked into the sky. “But right now the sun's getting warmer, the air is crisp and we're enjoying the outdoors in its full glory,” he said after letting out a lungful of smoke.

Where did you get that string of melodramatic drivel from? It mattered little. Ulf was grateful his friend had changed the topic. His two first winters in Japan had really been mental light's out.

Prologue, 2015

“I'm Ageruman Kuritina and I have transferred here from Sweden. I hope you will be friends with me.”

The rest of the class stared at the foreign girl with mouths open, just like Kyoko did herself.

That was about the worst Japanese she had ever heard, but the skinny girl had hair so blond it was almost white, so nobody expected her to speak proper Japanese in the first place. Apart from skinny she was tall as well.

Kyoko couldn't help but giggle. Two opposites. She was round like a ball and the foreigner looked like a flagpole. They were by a wide margin the two ugliest girls in their class, and that was enough for Kyoko to decide to try to make a friend of the new girl. They could share the misery at least.

During lunch break she approached her and was greeted with a wide, toothy grin.

“Friends? Sure, why not? Haven't had one for ages.”

That came out in an odd mix of Japanese and English, but Kyoko thought she understood most of it. Especially the part of not having a friend. With looks like theirs friends didn't come easy.

“What do you want me to call you?” Kyoko asked.

“Chri-chan,” Ageruman-san said.

“Kuri-chan?” Kyoko said, tasting the alien sounding nickname.

“Kuri-chan is fine. And you?”

“I'm Kyoko.” It wasn't more than fair to offer her first name.

“Then you'll be Ko-chan. I knew a Kyoko a long time ago, and I don't want to mix you two up.”

Maybe her last year in middle school wouldn't be so bad after all. “Friends, Kuri-chan?”

“Friends, Ko-chan.”

“Want to do anything after school?”

Kuri-chan lit up in a spectacular grin that for a moment hid how ugly she was. “Yeah, we'll go swimming.”

“Swimming?”

They did.

As the months passed by they went swimming several times a week. It was as if Kuri-chan knew something in advance, because she had an air of confidence belying her looks. She behaved as if she was the most beautiful girl in the world, and after a while some of that ridiculous confidence stuck to Kyoko as well.

And they kept swimming. Eventually they swam several hundred metres every time. Kuri-chan added slender muscles to her skinny body and Kyoko slowly lost weight as most of her fat was replaced by muscles of her own. She stayed a bit rounder, but when autumn grew cold neither of them could honestly say they were the ugliest girls in class.

When Kyoko eventually had to drop their swimming sessions Kuri-chan kept going. There were stupid rumours about how she spent hour after hour in the water when Kyoko no longer went to the pool with her, but their friendship survived that as well.

It lasted through midterms, finals and entrance exams. It lasted through her parents peculiar view of foreigners, accepted as well as refused valentines chocolate and confessions or the lack thereof.

When Kuri-chan grew into a stunning beauty and Kyoko was seen as the tag-along it was as if nobody remembered the ugly comedy pair from their early days, but their friendship lasted through that as well.

They played one last, naughty joke on their class. Rather than the prestigious Irishima High both of them chose the more obscure Himekaizen Academy. Kuri-chan with a letter of recommendation Kyoko was clueless how she could possibly have received, and she herself by means of accepting her place in the less expensive of the two schools. The more proper to her station as he parents would have had it, even though Kyoko never doubted that they would have paid for her attending Irishima High had she chosen to.

There never was a choice. Kuri-chan went to Himekaizen, and as Kyoko had learned to do the last year, she followed.

Prologue, 2004

The kidnapping attempt was a disaster. No matter who you were, or in what way you were involved, it was an unmitigated horror.

The idea was to extort knowledge rather than money. Because knowledge was money, at least when it came to knowing how to jack right into Chag's transaction system.

William never planned to siphon money that way. Way too dangerous, and probably impossible. What he did plan was to always be the first who saw the shopping patterns for Chag on-line.

For that he had hired thugs to grab Sophia Hansson, star programmer in TAP with a speciality in data-layer manipulation. Thugs usually came with a lot of muscle and a certain deficiency in the brain department. These were no exceptions.

They mistook the barely thirty year old, damned cute, and rather short programmer for TAP's forty year old CEO. He wasn't cute. He wasn't short, and he sure as hell wasn't without bodyguards. Chag's bodyguards. He probably didn't even know he was watched over.

One thug had an unfortunate date with an SUV and one of the trams Gothenburg was so famous for. All forty tons of it. He would make the evening news, but his sudden lack of legs and associated intestinal damage made certain he never made the morning.

The other thug didn't even make the evening news. As in he was made to disappear. Chag was a roaring dragon. A fashion monster, and make no mistake, monster was the key word here. In just a bit over ten years it had grown from nothing to an empire spanning the globe. Its empress gladly let control of her company slip slowly through her fingers as long as Chag grew sufficiently fast as a result.

TAP wasn't important. TAP delivering what could best be called a fuck-up was. And Chag had decided that no one was about to grab their corporate management when they had decided to make good on their mistakes.

But the car only held their CEO, and his three children.

William swore when he thought of his bad luck. What idiot CEO takes the day off just because his brats have taken ill?

William swore once more. How was he to know that the system TAP delivered was so riddled with security holes that he could actually have planted a trojan inside it and diverted money wherever he wanted?

How could he have known that the missing thug had brought a handgun.

The news said that a daughter of the Hammargren family was badly hurt. Life-threatening even. And that the CEO, Ulf Hammargren, was unconscious, but otherwise in no danger.

How could he have known? He couldn't. He could just as well have guessed that vengeance had found him.

“Good morning William.”

“What?”

“This is the gun your hired muscle used.”

A 9 mm parabellum bullet made morning into night in an instant.

Midsummer's eve, leaving the garden

Most of them stayed in the garden, but she didn't blame them. Even Swedes got badly drunk during this kind of dinner parties, and most of the guests were from Japan.

Garden. Yes, that was an apt description. But she had held these kind of parties in her previous life, so she knew exactly what to look for this time. A place to create a dream of Sweden. An illusion.

Luckily enough one of their shared acquaintances preferred spending summers in France rather than Sweden, and her home was the perfect match for a midsummer's party with a lot of guests. Christina spent a full day preparing the garden so that it looked more like a rustic paradise than the multimillionaire mingle party area that it really was.


Christina remembered the parties of her first life. More people, and more boring. She wondered what Ulf remembered from his first. Did he even think of that upstream world any longer?

Prelude

Nakagawa Akio sat outside the tent in his foldable chair. A man in his mid thirties he would normally not have been left in charge of handling arrivals from a transition, but early April 2040 wasn’t a normal transition event.

“Sure they'll transit this year?” the woman to his left asked.

Nakagawa nodded. “Last year's arrivals said they planned to gather everyone originally involved for a midsummer's party in Sweden,” he replied.

He stared at the hillside ahead. A few more minutes and he would know if he had interpreted the planned party correctly.

“Seems awfully early to me. They'll be around forty years old. Wouldn't they have children to care for?”

There was that of course. Those who were parents couldn't blithely transit and leave their children behind in an upstream world. But as far as scientists knew the transition event only allowed for downstream transitions. “I wish I knew,” Nakagawa admitted. "Of all the arrivals since they broke the code I guess I'm the one closest to them.” He sighed. “But I can't really say I was that close. By the time I transited I was retired from active service.” He grinned and turned to look at her. “Seventy years old, you know and they were university students so there was a minor age gap.

She shuddered. “It's not natural. Well, I guess it is, but it doesn't feel natural.” She looked at him with a question in her eyes.

“Almost twenty years ago. I arrived here 2021,” he answered. “So I'm almost 90 subjective age. What about it? I feel like my 35 objective. You get used to it after a while.” Nakagawa smiled at her. “You know I was the principal of Himekaizen?”

She nodded. “Yeah, in the upstream world. You never existed in this one. Said it wasn't natural.” She was visibly sulking by now. “I know you're called Principal Nakagawa out of courtesy, but there's never been a Principal Nakagawa of the Himekaizen academy here.”

Nakagawa rose from his chair and enjoyed the spring breeze for a few moments before he sat down again. “I could apply for the job, you know. I know the school after all.” He reached for a cup of tea and sipped it a little while he waited for the event.

A bit below them a lone sakura bloomed its promise of a restart as befitted the occasion.

“Well, I arrived here close to twenty years ago. I wouldn't know which of them are parents now. They've lived those years upstream and the arrivals we've had since my transition didn't have any information about their family lives.” He rose again. It would happen any moment now. “I've staked my reputation on this. I refuse to believe they'll go to such lengths without a reason. The upstream world is almost identical to this one and you just don't move a lot of people from Japan to Sweden late June just so that you can have an obscure party a continent away.”

The voice of a government agent reached him from his right. “Sensei, we have incoming arrivals!”

Nakagawa grabbed his binoculars and scanned the hillside. One, two, no five bodies materialised on it.

“Incoming! I count five arrivals. Move vehicles and collect them!”

Yes, I was right! I know at least one of those faces. They look so young!

And they should. All of them fourteen years old objectively, no matter how old they were subjectively. Nakagawa knew that, but it still surprised him to see the kids pop into existence on that hillside even though he had spent the entire day waiting for it to happen.

“Agent Carlfeldt, I'll join the ride and welcome them personally. After that we split them into different middle schools and gather them together in Himekaizen next year.” Just like in the old days. In the upstream days.

The transition event had occurred. Now the arrivals had a restart waiting for them. Nakagawa and Hammargren had finally agreed on that, even if it took some head butting first. The age reset was just too great to allow a fourteen old child to take his or her place in society as an adult, no matter the subjective age.

A transition had to be followed by a slow reintroduction to society.

Ulf, you really coined a good expression for it. Transition and restart.

Prologue, twenty five years earlier, September, Ulf.

The summer heat had abated and given way to early autumn. Ulf Hammargren, or Urufu-kun as his closest classmates preferred to call him, hugged the gym wall, turned around the corner and made for the entrance to his junior high school. He gained a few steps towards the main courtyard and was just about to shoulder his suitcase when the muffled sound of a cry reached him.

What the? Someone's bullying a girl. It sounded like bullying anyway. He couldn't be certain as he didn't understand what the boys he heard was shouting. Boys? Aw shit, make that several someones. He started running just in case.

There was a park behind the gymnasium, a bit too unkempt and dark for being a safe shortcut to school. And of course the sounds of what definitely was a struggle had to come from there.

He quickly climbed the fence. The hole at the bottom most of the school kids used was already beginning to be too small for him to use. After landing on the other side he darted in the direction of frightened shrieks strangely muted.

What he saw made bile rise in him.

Ugly. Disgustingly ugly.

What the fuck! They're going to rape her! She was lacking a shoe and some of her clothes were already torn off her.

Ulf rushed in, grabbed her arms and tackled the boy who was covering her mouth to prevent her from screaming. Hugging her close Ulf rolled twice and got both of them up on their feet. No time! I don't have time. She'll hate me, but who cares. I'm just a foreigner anyway. He slapped her face and roared in English: “Run, you idiot!” Then he shoved her into the sand beside the swings and turned. Behind him he could hear her stand up and then the sound of running feet grew fainter.

Four of them. Older, but I'm still taller. OK not taller than that guy. He's dangerous. Damn to Japanese teens he's a bloody ogre! Gotta take him out first. Ulf walked a few steps, then he twisted and came up beside the smallest of the assailants. Dance with me you shit-head! Ulf locked one arm across the elbow and pushed hard. He didn't wait to see the boy falling into another but ran straight for the main target. They'll never expect a fifteen year old nidan karateka. A feint to the face, a quick kick to the balls and then he grabbed the neck and brought the face down on his knee.

Dropping the now limp body Ulf side stepped a punch. I left you standing for a purpose you moron! Coming at me one by one you're just making this too easy. Having side stepped the punch he let his body continue its movement and slid inside the guard of his target. An elbow and a follow-up backhand strike left Ulf's opponent staggered, and a brutal kick to the inside of one knee disabled him, possibly permanently.

Then there were problems. The two remaining boys had armed themselves with knives and were already spreading out.

“Help him!” someone shouted. Ulf backed away to avoid being stabbed and looked around. What the hell? Why's she back? There was a sound of something breaking, an ugly sound. She's not alone and that guy just cracked the head of one of them.

Ulf knew he didn't need the unexpected help, and now he had another problem to take care of. “Give me that jo! Now!” He ran to his rescuer and forced the staff out of his hands. “I'll finish this. You run! You were never here!” I hope they understand English.

There was a glimmer of adoration in her eyes, then one of disgust and last one of fear.

Shit how did I end up like this? Rapists! Who cares? Three strikes, two crushed knees one caved in rib cage and it was all finished. Behind him Ulf heard the girl throwing up. She'll hate me. But who cares? I'm just a foreigner anyway.

Midsummer's Eve, preparation of the traditional garden party

Ryu fastened the last line. “Like this?” he asked.

Kyoko flashed him a satisfied smile in return and nodded. “Perfect! Party tent done. Now we're only missing tables and chairs.”

Ten hours flight from Japan to spend a vacation that's not a vacation. Well, you got your Midsummer's party in the end. Only took you twenty years. Ryu grinned at the memory. That last attempt had been a horror.

“Should I go and get some help?” That was his sister Noriko asking.

Ryu looked at her. With the memory of a disastrous dinner party followed an older and darker one. “No,” he said. “I don't think you have go looking for help any longer.”

“What? Oh, you're thinking of that time again.”

So it showed in my face what I thought. You're too perceptive by far, sis.

“What time?” Kyoko asked.

“Before senior high,” Ryu said. “Last year of middle school. The first time we met.” Do I really want to talk about this?

“You never told me.”

With Kyoko delivering that line he felt caught in a trap. One that he had sprung on himself.

Ryu looked at Noriko, even though it was Kyoko who had spoken. “It's a bad memory,” he finally admitted. Guess we're telling her then. Should have told her a long time ago.

“I'm not certain who scared me the most. The gang, or that boy.” Noriko turned and looked at Kyoko. Then she nodded at her twin brother and shuddered. “But Ryu made his mind up from the start.”


“Urufu,” Ryu whispered.