There was, Yukio decided for himself, a certain perverted satisfaction in watching Himekaizen descending to hell while he was doing the watching from the outside.

He never told Kyoko. Even lovers held secrets from each other. Total honesty hurt more than it provided. In her case doubly so since her best friend, and his, both were stuck in that hellhole. She’d be angry with him for being so callous about what Kuri had to live through, and she’d be aghast he held the same attitude towards Urufu’s fate.

Thing was, Yukio couldn’t care any longer. No matter what atrocities the madman playing at being principal threw after their best friends, it didn’t even come close to what they inflicted on each other.

This was the reversal of his and Kyoko’s drawn out shyness from last summer, one that bordered on idiocy. One that kept then from becoming a couple for a full two months during which they each knew their feelings were mutual, and still none of them made a move.

In Urufu’s and Kuri’s case it was a shared love they both decided to destroy, and in doing so they kept hurting each other and those closest to them. In the end Yukio grew sick of watching the horror show.

He’d been on the verge of cutting contact with his best friend when suddenly the lunatic five from Sweden arrived and made everything interesting again. Ai’s big brother Jun who chased after skirt a continent away, and the love chain trio. The chased after skirt was here as well, and despite being a bubbly ball of never ending happy energy Jenny-sempai was by a wide margin the most sane of the bunch.

Secretly Yukio doubted if the honorific ‘sempai’ should be applied to the insane, but they were fun to watch, and something in how they talked and reacted made Yukio suspect that each of them would easily have made it into a prestigious university had they been Tokyoites.

The cut-off was four point three for my year, Urufu had once told him. A high school where the weakest admitted student averaged above four on a scale from one to five was scary. With perfect grades when he graduated, Urufu had merely been one of almost half a dozen in his class, and classes were apparently smaller in Sweden than in Japan.

Scariest of all, while Yukio could accept that Urufu’s English was better than Jeniferu-chan’s, despite her being from the US, that both Jenny-sempai and Alexanderu-sempai matched her was beyond the pale. English was still a foreign language in Sweden, just as it was in Japan.

At the moment he tested his own English out.

“Surprisingly good for a Japanese,” Rika-sempai commented, as she had done several times before. Not only to him, but to just about every junior I the club.

“I had a good teacher,” Yukio said and turned to Alexanderu-sempai to continue the conversation Rika-sempai had just interrupted.

“It was fun, and very cool,” Alexanderu-sempai said, but Yukio felt the graduate had his attention fixed on the girl he was infatuated with.

Why don’t you just move on. She rejected you. But Yukio suspected it wasn’t all that easy.

They stood waiting for the water bus to arrive and take most of the club and the lunatic five to the beach out in the Tokyo bay. With finals looming closer this was probably the last chance they had to spend time together for two weeks.

“So,” Yukio started, “hot springs in this weather made sense after all?”

Alexanderu-sempai nodded, and from the corner of his eye Yukio saw Rika-sempai do the same.

Most of the other students hung around the ice cream parlour a bit away; hardly surprising as it was Kuri’s treat. For once she made them company, which meant the entire place was packed with body guards and Vogue employees.

They’d have a shoot at the beach, and for that reason Vogue paid for everyone’s fares. Kuri must have forced the issue one way or another.

“Sorry?” Yukio said when he realised he hadn’t listened to Rika-sempai’s question.

“Those two, who are they?”

Yukio looked at Kuri and Ryu holding hands surrounded by people from Vogue, but he knew the question wasn’t about Ryu. “Kuri and Nao. They’re models and students at Himekaizen,” Yukio said.

“I think I’ve seen them before.”

They’re plastered to the walls all over Tokyo. Of course you’ve seen them. “They’re kind of famous here,” he said instead. At least that was true for Kuri. She was the foreign teenage femme fatale, which made her a lot more interesting than the well behaved Takado Nao. Cute was the last thing Kuri tried to be.

“Funny,” Alexanderu-sempai said, “she’s got a professional make up. I could have sworn they didn’t know how to do Europeans here.”

We can’t. She had to teach them if what she told me last year is true.

“And she actually looks good in that school uniform. That tall she really should look like a scare crow,” Rika-sempai unhelpfully added.

Yukio looked at Kuri again. He didn’t know fashion at all, but in his eyes Kuri had always looked a little like a scarecrow. He set his eyes on Kyoko from the very start after all.

He let his eyes wander across the pier. By the rails Jun-sempai and Jenny-sempai looked very much like the cute couple they were. Almost by their side, but not close enough to be a disturbance, Ai-chan kept her distance from Ryu while keeping an eye on her older brother.

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An occasional gust of wind mitigated the oppressive heat, and Yukio followed a small piece of paper as it danced all the way to where Emma-sempai stood with her ice-cream in her hand and for once seemed to have forgotten all about Alexanderu-sempai. A second year club member from Irishima High made an insincere attempt to hit on her, but she just laughed him away in a way that told Yukio she didn’t mind being friends with the younger student.

You lunatic five, you’re just another side of Urufu. Have you come here to change us a little, to make us more like Urufu himself? Yukio didn’t know from where the question came, but he committed it to memory anyway. It could come in handy later.

***

With their five guests boarding the water taxi Noriko made a decision. If she wanted to truly get closer to Urufu she had to be a little more like him without ever losing sight of herself.

So, how to change without changing, or rather, how to change while still staying true to herself.

By now she knew Urufu somehow accepted, and even condoned, a certain amount of falsehood, but he utterly despised people who didn’t dare to see themselves for who they were, which probably was the main reason for him breaking down at the very end of their first high school year – he had betrayed himself.

Noriko waited for the photographers to load their equipment before the followed them. Normally she’d prefer to sit indoors, but joining him at the aft wasn’t really something she had to force herself to do.

He made her feel safe. He made her feel giddy. He made her feel strong, but foremost of all he made her feel the full joy of youth.

That he wasn’t hers to have didn’t change any of that, and for that reason alone she’d give this opportunity her all, now when both he and Kuri agreed on taking the worst of all paths for themselves. Noriko suspected she might not get to keep him forever, but whatever time she managed to squeeze out of him was better than no time at all.

A slap in the small of her back brought her out of her daydreaming and Noriko turned to face her very own idiot bro, who for once wasn’t clinging to Kuri.

“How’s love?” she asked and continued on her way to the door leading out to the planking. An answer wasn’t really needed.

“Just fine, and you?” it came anyway.

Noriko didn’t even turn to answer. She just waved with her hand above her shoulder. Hers was just fine, thank you very much. It was just Urufu who didn’t cooperate when it came to being reeled in.

Right now she didn’t want to talk with Ryu. Rika, or even Jun, were her targets. Oh, I forgot the honorifics! And there it was. A small detail that would make her a little bit more like Urufu. Dropping honorifics when they weren’t really needed. A stupid thing that he was certain to notice even if he never showed it.

Noriko felt a smile spread as she entered the sun. While the sea certainly lowered the temperature a bit it was still oppressively hot, but all five visitors preferred being outdoors whenever the sun shone, much like Kuri and Urufu. A Swedish thing, Urufu had said.

For once Kuri wasn’t, but Noriko saw Urufu’s back where he sat and explained something to Jenny and Alexanderu in Swedish.

Turning right Noriko joined Rika and Jun. She looked after Emma and saw her seated in conversation with Tomasu and Jeniferu. The sight made Noriko smirk a little. Jeniferu definitely had better luck reeling Tomasu in than she herself had with Urufu.

“Excuse me,” Noriko said.

“Yes?” Rika said.

Jun nodded assent as well.

“I have a question about relationships,” Noriko continued.

“Ask him,” Rika answered. “I’ve never been in one.” The last sentence came out so harshly that Noriko wondered if the older girl carried some bad memories as luggage.

Jun gave Rika a long stare as well but said nothing.

“But maybe you know how things work over there,” Noriko tried. She had to tread carefully around Rika. She was all too much like herself, or rather what Noriko recalled of herself before her friendship with the people had changed her during their first high school year. Rika reminded her a little of Hitomi, but without the graceful self assurance that was a natural part of the beautiful girl.

“I guess you mean Sweden?” Jun said when Rika threw Noriko an angry glare.

Noriko waited for the sound of engines to die down a little as they slowly left the pier. Behind Rika’s and Jun’s head the scenery changed to a background of silvery sky scrapers.

She nodded. “Yes, Sweden.”

Jun glanced in the direction where Urufu sat. “Because of him?”

Noriko knew she was fidgeting, but she disliked feeling so transparent. Rather than answering she offered Jun a short nod.

Jun tilted his head in thought. “You know,” he said after a while. “People are people wherever they are. It’s not like everyone is the same just because they come from Sweden.”

Noriko understood that. She stared across the water while she ransacked her brain for a better question.

“Urufu says the sky’s clearer there,” she said, remembering something from last summer. “So there are aspects which are common for a place.” She could just as well accept that they knew she was crushing on Urufu. “He even comes from the city where you live, so if I narrow it down like that?”

“He’s from Göteborg? Then I guess he’s rather direct.”

Noriko grinned. “Yeah, yes he is. Very direct that is.”

“So tell him how you feel.”

That turned her grin into a grimace. “Already did. Several times.”

Jun gave her a thoughtful stare. “If he’s not interested then I don’t see how it could work out.”

“He doesn’t avoid me,” Noriko said. “We’ve even been out together, just the two of us.”

The stare grew angrier. “He didn’t strike me as a player. I suggest you be careful around him then.”

“No. No he isn’t a player.” Noriko thought about what to say. “It’s complicated, but I know he’d never deliberately hurt me.”

“Are you really sure about that?” The words were Rika’s, and the edge to them made Noriko certain Rika had experienced something bad and burned herself.

“Absolutely certain.” Because she was. Worst case she’d be hurt, but that would be her hurting herself because she refused to give up on Urufu.

“Boys always do as soon as they get a chance.”

“Rika! Have you ever seen me hurt Jenny?”

Noriko sighed. The conversation was veering into a strange direction, and she decided to just listen as they made their way out into the bay.