Ryu carried another cardboard box into the inner room. With the help of his mother moving things from their club room at school had gone a lot faster.
The last time he fetched some books and white board markers he saw Yukio and Kyoko study for the coming finals, and as they were in more need to prepare themselves than he was he decided against asking for their help.
He put the box on the table and went for a toolbox that hid in a corner. Principal Nakagawa had made good on his promise to reimburse them for the whiteboards they had to abandon at school, but any assembly had to be done by the club members.
With the help of Kichirou-kun and Jirou-sempai he quickly fastened two large whiteboards to the walls where Urufu wanted them. Setting up the beamer took a little longer, but the audio system got installed a lot quicker than he had hoped. During the work James entered from time to time with coffee or help. He seemed to have a surprisingly extensive experience from this type of equipment.
Ryu gobbled down the last of his coffee and turned to Jirou-sempai before he rushed away to his girlfriend.
"Know when Urufu's expected?"
"Sorry. I'll check with Sango," Jirou-sempai said and referred to the first year club member he dated. "I think he was here earlier."
The backside of a blazer left the room and Ryu grimaced before he shot Kichirou-kun a glance. A repeat of the question didn't yield an answer that was any more useful.
'Guess I'll have to call you then. Mail first though, if you answer it. You suck at that.' Because Urufu did. He positively hated email on the phone and went on about how he didn't really like the Swedish messaging system all that much neither. All in all it was the feelings of an old person. They even had to force him to activate Line. 'Antique, calling you old is too nice.'
Now, however, getting in touch with him was a necessity. One of his old customers had been in contact with Ryu. With his father initially, but a phone call later Ryu took ownership of the contact. It seemed there was a need for some kind of validation and what the contact referred to as process re-factoring. Ryu wasn't entirely clear about what that meant, but then neither was the contact.
From the café proper Ryu suddenly heard a roar, and he left the inner room in a hurry to find out what the commotion was all about. When he squeezed himself out between counter and narrow door he saw a group of club members wielding smart-phones like weapons, and by another table three Irishima High students had turned to better listen in on those waving their phones.
"He did it?"
'Who did what?'
"Look, it says here he left in the morning, and there's even a photo."
Ryu threw a cursory glance at the boy. Imai Seiichi, one of the last to join the club before Himekaizen got an entire new freshman class. He should have joined them at about the same time as Nao-sempai did.
"Who left in the morning?" Ryu asked.
"Look Ryu-kun! Says Urufu-kun spent the night with Kuritina-chan."
'Crap!' Ryu forced a smile to his lips. 'Well that explains why those two have behaved so strangely the last days.' A part of him cursed Urufu and another wished him good luck. Both groaned at the knowledge that Urufu and Kuri had made the news in the worst way possible.
"They've been a couple since May. Why the newsflash now?" Ryu said in what he suspected was a doomed attempt at downplaying the news value of the incident. 'You should have been more careful. This is going to be bad!'
"But Kuritina-chan is like super famous now." Sho-kun said and waved his own phone around over his head.
"Who's Kuritina-chan?" one of the Irishima High students asked.
'Aw, shit!'
"Kuritina-chan? Ah, the model Ageruman Kuritina," Sho-kun helpfully explained.
"You know Ageruman-san?"
"Yeah, she's the club president."
"Ageruman Kuritina is your club president?" a voice from across the room asked.
'Hell no!' Ryu groaned when a red blazer over green trousers rose from his seat.
"Yes, isn't it cool?"
"And she's in an improper relationship with the boy on this photo?"
"What the hell? They've been going out since before summer. Nothing improper about them."
'Thank you Sango-chan!'
With the mood rapidly deteriorating James made a very visible show of taking orders at the tables together with the college student who worked part time here.
With final exams looming closer both Kyoko and Noriko had dropped out from their working schedule. Ryu suspected his sister would take up her work again during winter break.
"Guys, could you please keep your voices down about this?" Ryu said to the group who had started the uproar. "You wouldn't want to make more problems for Kuri-chan, would you?"
Seiichi-kun glared at the Red Rose student and nodded. "Sorry about that."
Ryu smirked. Seiichi-kun was about as sorry as Sho-kun was, which was to say not sorry at all, but none of the boys really wanted Kuri-chan to get into trouble. Ryu wasn't so sure about what they thought about Urufu though. Urufu didn't have the halo of stardom, so his reputation depended more on what he had done recently, and spending time at a hospital garnered pity rather than glory. The cultural festival was already a long time in the past.
'But if you knew what kind of job he does you'd be awestruck.' Ryu shook his head. That wasn't true. Most of the club members simply wouldn't be able to grasp what Urufu was doing for a living. There were manga stories with a high school corporate magnate as the main lead. None of those stories said anything about the hard work and time needed to coach a stubborn company to change its way of doing things.
'Reminds me I really need to call him. Two reasons why I have to now.'
Kyoko pulled Kuri-chan aside as soon as they left their classroom for lunch.
"What are you going to do about it?"
Kuri-chan didn't answer but for a shrug.
Waiting for their classmates to disappear down the stairs Kyoko held on to Kuri-chan's blazer. "Please! Our class knows you're going out with Urufu, but the rest of the school?"
With irritation clearly showing in her face Kuri-chan shrugged again. "Ko-chan, most of the school knows," she said.
That might be true. With Kuri-chan rising to national stardom the students at Himekaizen were bound to have heard that the photo model had her boyfriend in the other wing. Still, being caught by paparazzi when he left her apartment gave birth to all kinds of rumours, and what was worse, Kuri-chan didn't deny any of them. Rather she had a satisfied smile glued to her face mixed with an aura of absent-minded happiness whenever she spaced out.
"Let's have lunch," Kyoko said and led her friend to the stairwell. "Cafeteria mystery food?" The question originated from an occasion early summer when Urufu loudly wondered which specific species of rodent made up most of whatever served as meat. Luckily enough he had done so in English, or the entire gang of friends would have been called to a disciplinary meeting.
They walked down the stairs, indoor shoes slapping against concrete, until they made their way to the main corridor feeding cafeteria, shoe-lockers and vending machines. Sometime during their descent Kuri-chan agreed to the extra mysterious food, and they voided the cafeteria in favour of the vending machines.
Given the taste of what those machines spewed out Kyoko felt rather certain rodents were too high class to make it into the menu, but it was cheaper and quicker than the cafeteria. More so now when she had made certain they'd arrive last of all students.
She defiled a few coins and received something more suitable to use as replacement PE shoes than eating. To her it mattered little as her stomach had always been a good substitute for a recycling unit of hazardous material. Kuri-chan was no better. Despite a life spent with enough money to run a small city her feeding habits were atrocious enough to make Kyoko grimace.
"Classroom?"
Kuri-chan nodded and they returned the same way they had come.
"Look," Kuri-chan said, "I understand you're worried, but I'll fight for him some more."
'Some more?' Those two words birthed a chill in Kyoko she hadn't expected. Kuri-chan and Urufu were invincible. They didn't lose to anyone.
"If they really manage to find a way to destroy our lives if we don't part ways..." Suddenly Kuri-chan's voice was the only thing that disturbed the rhythmic tapping of their shoes on the stairs. "If that days comes I'll break up and break down."
'How can you be that cold?'
Kuri-chan must have noticed Kyoko's stiffness, because she stopped and pulled Kyoko around. "I'm prepared to live a very different life if I can share it with Ulf, but I can't drag him down with me. You understand that, don't you?"
What Kyoko saw in her friend's eyes was equal parts panic and desperation.
"Why, why would you give him up?"
A few seconds of silence followed when Kuri-chan's face shifted from love-sickness to wrath and back to love again. "Because he's the first I've loved more than myself." Then she smirked. "Don't misunderstand me. I'm always first in my life, but that doesn't mean I love myself more than him."
Kyoko felt incomprehension compete with anger in her. "I don't understand," she said and turned away. A few resolute steps brought her up another half a flight before she stopped and looked down at her friend. "I don't understand, and I don't want to."
Kuri-chan looked back before looking away. She rested her hands against the windowsill and leaned her forehead against the pane. Barely audible her voice came out, a hoarse whisper mixed with silent sobs. "Ulf gives meaning to my life. He fills it with colour. He's the best thing that has ever happened to me. When I wake up the first thing I think of is him and when I go to sleep I daydream about what we did together or what we could have done."
'How can you even think of letting someone like that go?'
"I'm losing him to my job, and I'd lose him if I quit, because he'd never allow himself to let me become less than I could be."
Something glittered on the sill and when Kyoko looked closer she saw droplets of tears spreading. Choking down her own tears she ran down the stairs to hug her friend.
"Kuri-chan, you're my best friend. Please let me help you in any way I can! I can't stand seeing you like this!"
Tall girl with golden hair never as much as moved, but Kyoko could feel her friend trying to hide the racking sobs that threatened to overtake her through their embrace. They stood like that for what felt like an eternity but probably was only a few seconds. Then Kuri-chan turned in Kyoko's arms and placed her hands on Kyoko's shoulders to push her away far enough for them to face each other.
"Then, as my best friend, please make me believe! Please help me pretend that I can keep Ulf by my side forever!"
'You ask of me so little and so much more than I can ever give you.' "Yes, of course I'll make Urufu stay with you forever," Kyoko lied. It hurt more than she had expected, and yet she felt numb. "Urufu loves you, and if you tried to break up he'd know how much you loved him. He'd never give up on you," she said. As the words left her mouth Kyoko realised it was the second lie she told in a row.
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