A few days earlier Kyoko turned on her heals when she saw Nao walk in on his girlfriend chatting with Ryu and Ai-chan. Or rather Kyoko turned because he walked in on the two girls chatting with each other while Ryu pretended to laze around.
She hadn't been far away enough to entirely avoid catching up on the topic which was the real reason she decided not to join. Besides Noriko wanted some time alone with Nao-sempai, and five of them would be even worse than four.
Now Kyoko turned on her heals when she walked in on Urufu and Kuri-chan quarrelling. It wasn't the first time the pair were involved in verbal fencing, but something in Urufu's voice betrayed an anger stronger than Kyoko had experienced before. Even though both of them spoke in Swedish it was clear to Kyoko that whatever they disagreed about had turned vitriolic some time ago.
She almost made it down the stairs before the heated discussion degenerated into fully fledged shouting, and Kyoko ran the last steps down before she was seen by any teacher arriving to defuse a possible fistfight.
With a heavy lump in her stomach Kyoko tapped her phone alive and stared at the photo delivered to her by an unknown sender. It showed Kuri-chan in a revealing dress outside what had to be some kind of nightclub. Even though the photo was shot in a cityscape and didn't reveal what time of year it was taken Kyoko knew enough to realise it had been shot last spring. Last spring when Kuri-chan still worked as a hostess.
Kyoko flipped away the photo and dialled Yukio. Right now she needed someone to share her worries with. Someone she could trust fully to stay by her side.
They met at Stockholm Haven café and when Kyoko entered Yukio already sat by a table in a corner. From the inner room she heard voices telling her a number of club-members had gathered after one of the spontaneous walking talking sessions that had become more and more common during Urufu's hospitalisation.
The main café was filled with the usual crowd of Himekaizen students generously sprinkled by Irishima high uniforms, but today for the first time Kyoko saw the red blazers signalling Red Rose Academy there as well.
The red and green of Red Rose stood out against the old fashioned black gakuran and navy blue sailor uniforms from Irishima high. In contrast the muted, almost yellow, beige blazer over on black trousers from Himekaizen looked drab. Still, it was their café. Urufu had found it for them long before it became a popular hangout among the students.
Kyoko waved to Yukio, slipped inside the counter and into the narrow kitchen area. There she quickly changed into her work clothes before re-entering the café.
Working part time here didn't pay as well as Urufu's stunts, but she got a lot more hours here. Sometimes Noriko did hours here as well. Not because of any need but to get the experience she said. Yukio and Ryu helped out as well during evenings that were especially busy.
Kyoko high fived the waitress, a university students who worked full hours Saturdays and Sundays, on her way out and started taking orders. James did all the work on the inside of the counter while Kyoko delivered orders to the tables and kept them clean of dishes.
She saw Yukio catching up on some of the items for tomorrow's full scale walking talking session while at the same time running a low voiced conversation over Skype with someone from their sister club in Sweden.
There was barely time to sneak over to his table from time to time to share a brief moment of hands touching or to playfully caress his hair when she hoped no-one saw. Well, James did from his position behind the counter, but he didn't seem to care as long as she kept up with her work. He smirked and rolled his eyes dramatically, but Kyoko knew it was all for show.
A couple of hours after she arrived the café entered an evening lull and Kyoko got James' permission to share Yukio's table for a short time. She showed him the photo and explained the circumstances.
Yukio put his tablets aside and gave the photo a cursory look before he stared at her. Seeing Kuri-chan in scant clothing wasn't anything new for any of them. They had even been invited to a studio shoot earlier this autumn.
“Why do you have it?” Yukio asked.
“Someone sent it to me. I've never seen the email address.”
Yukio palmed his face and sighed. “Wrong question, sorry. Why do you have it? Why wasn't it sent to Kuri?”
Maybe it was, but Kyoko didn't know. The moment she decided not to intrude on Kuri-chan's and Urufu's fight was also the moment when she lost her chance to ask exactly that question.
“I don't know,” Kyoko admitted. She swallowed a mouthful of lukewarm tea while the thought about Yukio's question. Why had anyone bothered with sending her that photo? A warning? A threat? It didn't make any sense.
“OK, the important thing right now is that someone has a photo of Kuri that could be bad for her.”
“Bad? She could be expelled,” Kyoko said.
“Unless they can prove it was her job I don't think so. Besides Principal Nakagawa is on our side.”
“What do you think will happen if this blows up?”
Yukio screwed his face tight until it was wrinkled like an overripe fruit. Then he sucked in some air and sighed again. “Don't know. Suspension for breaking curfew maybe. I honestly don't know.”
“Think we should tell them to stop spreading the rumours?”
Even though Kyoko was the one asking that question she suspected she knew part of the answer. Kuri-chan was her most important friend, but that also made her more aware of Kuri-chan's shortcomings, fifty years old or sixteen didn't matter when it came to those. Kuri-chan suffered from an overblown self-confidence, and since she started modelling again Kyoko had seen shadows of a personality she didn't care all that much for. There was something vengeful about Kuri-chan, an ugly resentfulness that made her keep jabbing at an opponent until she got a killing blow in.
Yukio rose from his chair and went for the counter. “Why don't you ask her?” he said and waved at the door through which Kuri-chan and Urufu entered.
***
It wasn't that he disliked being part of a dirty game, but he definitely disliked being partially kept unaware of what was happening.
At least that was what he had thought.
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Half an hour after Urufu arrived together with Kuri Principal Nakagawa joined them accompanied by a man in his sixties Yukio had never seen before. They more or less forced the club members to end their meeting in the inner room and after that the six of them sat down around the large table.
“This is for you,” Principal Nakagawa said and placed four documents on the table.
Yukio looked at the one given to him. It was a written permit signed by the principal to stay here far beyond any reasonable curfew. He looked up at the principal asking a silent question.
“I need you here, or let me rephrase that, we need you here,” Nakagawa said and nodded at his companion.
“My name is Noguchi Satoru, and I'm the vice principal of Irishima high. At this moment our principal and the vice principal of Himekaizen have a similar meeting with Hasegawa Ai, Takado Nao and the Wakayama twins from your school.”
Yukio nodded numbly at the unexpected information. What's going on? he wondered.
“Hamarugen-san, do you recall a conversation we had here this spring?” Principal Nakagawa asked.
Urufu blinked at the surprisingly polite words, and Yukio threw Vice Principal Noguchi a look to find out how he would react. There was none.
Flipping open a laptop Urufu grimaced and looked back at their principal. “What part of it?”
Principal Nakagawa responded with a surprisingly youthful grin. “Good boy.” Then he turned all serious again. “The part about a population deficiency of epic proportions,” he continued.
Yukio shook his head. He had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, and across the table he could see Kuri frown as well. At the moment he wished Kyoko was here, but she still had close to half an hour's worth of work to do, but looking at the fourth permit Yukio understood that she would be called here as well when she was done.
“Please go on, I'm listening,” Urufu said.
“Mind if I smoke?” Noguchi-sensei broke in.
Glancing at the ashtray on the table Yukio knew it was a rhetorical question, but it was the kind of polite courtesy an adult extended to another adult. Which meant Irishima high's vice principal knew something very few people did.
“Not at all,” Urufu answered, and Yukio could feel a thin string of tension stretching across the room.
“Would you like one?”
Principal Nakagawa frowned disapprovingly at the offer and stared at his Irishima high counterpart.
“I think I'll decline,” Urufu said. “It's illegal now both in Sweden and here. I mean for a minor like me.” He glared at Noguchi-sensei. “Besides I needed extraordinary measures to break an almost forty year old bad habit, so I think it would be a pity to take it up again. Wouldn't you agree?”
Yukio could hear his own sharp intake of breath. It didn't matter that he already suspected that Noguchi-sensei was in he know. Hearing it stated so clearly still surprised him.
“Noguchi-san, don't you think this is enough?” Principal Nakagawa asked when the silence threatened to become oppressive.
“I just had to know. Or rather I've known for some time, but I still didn't believe it.”
“Gentlemen, population deficiency it was, not my smoking,” Urufu said, and Yukio sent him a grateful thought for bringing the conversation back on topic.
“Mister Hamarugen,” Noguchi-sensei started in a strange, jilted western way, “there is a fast way to expand when the market is shrinking.”
Urufu looked back over his laptop screen. “Market! If you think your students are your customers you're sadly mistaken.”
“What else would they be,” Noguchi-sensei said, and for the first time he looked surprised when he stared at Urufu.
With the usual clattering Urufu hammered down something on his keyboard before answering.
“Products, we're your products. If you're unable to make that distinction you shouldn't dabble in education.”
“Look young mister, Irishima high has a good...”
“Irishima high is secondary education. I'm not young and I ran tertiary education for a living. Don't give me that crap!”
“Tertiary? Nakagawa-san, didn't you say he was some kind of IT-management?”
Principal Nakagawa smirked, and then he smiled. “I did. His own business, and it seems it branched out.” With a twist of his head Nakagawa-sensei looked at Urufu. “Tertiary education?”
“Think of it as a private junior college. It wasn't really, but it's the simplest way to describe it. Nothing big. Say some five hundred students all in all.”
A surprisingly throaty laughter welled up from Nakagawa-sensei. “So when you said you had some ideas for your club you were basing them on experience.”
Urufu nodded. “Not all, but most of it. The club is my class.”
“Should have known. It showed during the midterms by the way.”
“Good for us. Population deficiency!” Kuri shot in from her chair when the conversation meandered away yet again.
This time it was Nakagawa-sensei who opened up a laptop. Yukio could see how he was unused to it, or rather handled it the way Yukio once took for granted before he met Urufu and Kuri. Now he, just like most club-members, were more proficient with this kind of electronic devices than they would have dreamed possible half a year earlier.
“If we help you tear down Red Rose Academy's financial foundation there are still a few hundred students who would need a school.”
Urufu nodded. “What about their middle school?”
“There is sufficient capacity within walking distance from Red Rose Academy. Among other your middle school,” Noguchi-sensei said and motioned a hand in Kuri's direction. “As for us we're only interested in the high school students.”
Urufu grinned. “Fine, let's talk business,” he said, and Yukio noted how he shared a hungry expression with Kuri, almost like two vultures waiting for a feast.