And with that Kareyoshi was gone. With the same vigour as media had been suppressed just a few months earlier they were invited, or rather forced to arrive en masse when police escorted him out of the school on the last day before winter break. He didn’t even get to make his speech. Not even the circus around Kuri when she rose to fame had attracted this much attention.

Yukio grinned and growled at the same time. The face of a predator Kuri had told him with a grim smile on her face.

For him it was almost unreal. Just like it would have been unreal for him if anyone had said that he’d get used to living under a yoke.

He walked with Kyoko by his side, and this time they just passed the Haven. A train was what he had in mind.

“Happy now?” Kyoko asked.

He wasn’t, so he shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. Right now I just want to spend Christmas with my girlfriend.”

She said nothing. Her hand hugging his was enough.

He could feel how she accepted his need to leave it all behind him. A later day would come when he needed to talk about it, and Yukio somehow understood a day would also come when Kyoko cried in his arms. Somewhere, hidden in a recess of his mind he harboured a suspicion that day also carried the first real test of their relationship.

But not today. Today they’d walk hand in hand listening to Christmas carols in a city that didn’t really celebrate Christmas in the first place. That was enough for him. A dating event suited him perfectly.

As they placed foot ahead of foot in the almost winter that was Tokyo he turned his head from time to time. They weren’t there. No car, no body guards, no one staring after them from the shadows to make certain they were safe.

Ten years, and you chose to repeat it all. I wonder what’s going on in your head. He shook away any more worries about Kuri. She was a grown up.

“Asakusa?”

“For Christmas?” Kyoko threw him a glance that told him she wasn’t entirely convinced.

“Urufu said there’s some kind of European market near the Cloudspear.”

“Doubt we can afford the entrance.”

Yukio smiled. “I’m no good with that kind of heights. Wasn’t planning to go up in that tower.”

“All the six hundred metres up,” Kyoko teased.

He was having none of it. “I doubt the observatory is much more than four hundred meters up.”

“Oh, that’s nothing.”

Yukio grinned. “Market’s on the ground. Ground is good.”

She looked at him and smiled. Then her face turned thoughtful. “That day, ages ago, when we visited the theme-park?”

He had to search his mind a little before he recalled the madness when they were still freshmen. When Kyoko’s unsaid question became clear he blushed a little. “Yeah. I wanted to look cool for the girl I liked. If you didn’t notice anything I guess I managed.”

She shook her head. “I love you, but sometimes you’re just stupid. Well, it’s not like I’m longing for ferris wheel rides.” She yanked his hand. “Yukio, promise me you tell me next time you feel uncomfortable! There are two of us. Don’t make yourself feel bad just to make me happy!”

How could I possibly not have fallen in love with you? “I promise.”

Shoulder length hair catching the wind from time to time, facial bones a little more distinct now than half a year earlier, but still with her generous forms where it counted despite having lost a little weight. Looking at her gorgeous eyes Yukio wondered if she had ever been as beautiful as now.

“I must have been a very good boy during my last incarnation,” Yukio said and laughed.

“Huh?”

“To deserve you in this one.”

She didn’t answer. On the pavement, with people busy around them she just stopped and threw her arms around him.

Bliss! Yukio allowed himself to be immersed in pure bliss for the first time in months. There were no worries, no tomorrow; just the two of them behaving very improperly and people looking at them when they passed on either side.

It wasn’t until a cold tendril of wind caressed his neck that Yukio reminded himself that standing still outdoors might not be the best of ideas.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Station?” he asked.

She nodded.

He led her to the train station they very seldom used. There was one closer to where they lived, but today they walked to the one closest to school.

Old housing quickly gave way to more modern buildings clustering the station, and they were inside. After they flashed their passes a few stairs brought them outdoors again, but it was only a five minute wait before they could board a train headed for a city core.

“Circle line?” Yukio wondered as they sat down.

He grinned. “We’ll have to take the subway at Ueno anyway.”

Kyoko pretended to growl and gave him a knock on his head. “For an entire station. Not the same thing.”

“We could take the bus.”

That earned him another knock. Urufu would have won that race by bike. Going by bus through Tokyo was tedious at best, and Yukio wasn’t even certain how to do it in the first place. Rails didn’t move, so trains couldn’t exactly change routes from one day to the next.

***

Asakusa was just as busy as it had been when she passed through on her way to the water taxi earlier this autumn or that fantastic day she spent with Kuri-chan here a year and a half ago.

But it wasn’t the same.

Her happiness with Yukio came at a price for the others, Kyoko thought, but then she changed her mind. That her friends paid a hefty price was correct, but so had she and Yukio as well. In the end Kyoko decided the difference was that the two of them dared to grasp happiness no matter how bleak things were.

With that thought she clung closer to Yukio as they passed below the huge lantern that served as the area trademark. Getting crushed by the crowd in the tourist trap was part of the experience coming here, and together with Yukio she enjoyed it without any feelings of discomfort.

In ways it was like visiting a perpetual festival, well minus the yukatas, greasy food and fireworks.

Two long rows of stalls flanked the pedestrian road all the way to the temple, and after they had been properly mashed, crushed and squeezed she followed Yukio’s tug to the right, and they ended up in a small park a little to the side of the temple entrance.

A line of vending machines offered their services, and on their way out Yukio fed them with a few coins and got some cans in return.

Kyoko reached out with her hands and received one. It was warm against her palm, and when she opened it the dull click was followed by a cloud of heat before she took a first sip of hot and sweet coffee.

Love you. She took another gulp and enjoyed how the hot drink warmed her up from the inside. The way you’re always considerate. I love you.

Where the park ended low rise Tokyo took over, and ahead of them the whiteness of Cloudspear stabbed into the skies.

She wouldn’t, Kyoko promised herself, force Yukio up there. The view, she was told, was fantastic, but if he cared for her so much then it was only right she care for him as well. In her world he was the bravest of the brave, and a little fear of heights didn’t detract from that the slightest.

“How far?” she asked a block or two into the city proper.

Yukio shook his head. “I don’t know, but if it’s called Cloudspear market I guess twenty minutes or so.”

And that was another reason to love him. He didn’t just answer her question; he answered the question she really had meant to ask.

“I’ll find us another can of coffee on the way,” he added.

Yes, definitely answering the questions I really wanted to ask. Would she be cold before they arrived, or tired, or suffer from hurting feet?

He matched her steps as they walked, hand in hand, through narrow streets with little traffic. From time to time they had to cross livelier streets, and whenever they did he made sure to avoid any puddles passing cars could have splashed over them.

“Another date day after tomorrow?” Yukio asked just as Kyoko saw a gathering of stalls a bit further away.

“If we keep it cheap, what about a date tomorrow as well?” she answered.

The smile she got in return lit up her heart. Winter break, we’ve deserved this. And they had. She knew that. While none of them made the list both still managed to get into the top one hundred with Kyoko taking the lead by some ten positions.

Just as her feet protested Yukio stopped by a vending machine, fed it two hundred yen coins followed by a few copper ones. In exchange the dull sound of cans hitting the bottom told Kyoko the promised coffee was on it’s way.

She looked at him bending down, how, for a second, he sat hunched down when he fished out the cans and how his back turned as he prepared to give her her share of the bounty.

Accompanied by a sweet smile his hands stretched out and she received her can of coffee.

Kyoko closed her fingers over his hand, coffee can still halfway inside it, and pulled him close. Yukio was taller than her, but not by much.

“I love you. I love you so much it sometimes hurts,” she mumbled into his ear after she had secured him in an embrace. She could feel how stunned he felt in her arms.

“I love you as well, but why now all of a sudden?”

Kyoko giggled and hugged Yukio closer to her. “It was a very special can of coffee,” she said.

“Huh?”

She dug her nose into his jacket and laughed silently. The best. I got the best of them all!

“Kyoko?”

She just grinned and turned her face up to meet his eyes. Doing so she saw how someone stared at them over his shoulder. She glared back. I’m not doing proper any longer.

“What about that market?” she asked when the offending stranger had turned away.

“Just ahead of us,” Yukio said, and Kyoko heard in his voice how he pretended they hadn’t both seen the stalls some time earlier. “I just thought you wanted to rest for a while first.”

Her grin reverted back into a smile and Kyoko let go of her hug. With a little regret she let go of his hand as well and opened her can.

Sweet and a little bitter, but most importantly warm. She never had her coffee black, and Yukio usually didn’t neither. Sometimes, almost always in the company of Urufu, he did. It was cute, and a little stupid, but Kyoko forgave him the lingering hero worship.

A little later they discarded their empty cans and continued on their way to the market. People started crowding around them as they came closer, and soon they were caught up in a festive chaos with couples and families laughing, talking and giggling whenever something caught their fancies.