6 Chapter one, 2016, school start: 2 (1/2)

A week flew by with students settling into early groups of what promised to be friendship later. Noriko was as usual drawn into a larger cluster of boys and girls. They came from several classes rather than just their own. It was all Ryu's fault. Normal people got normal friends – she got a premium seat to the spectacle that was Ryu's personal fan-club.

The boys were the usual mix of people, who either admired Ryu too much to stay far from him or were too wary of a superior rival to chance staying away. The girls, well, the girls.

Girls usually came in three types. Those who had yet to confess to Ryu, those who had already been turned down but found his easy-going friendship attractive enough to stay around anyway and those who really should have been born boys, and thus followed Ryu for the usual reasons of admiration or rivalry.

That had always been true, and it stayed true for one week.

Then Ageruman Kuritina happened.

She happened the usual way. Teacher kept the door open, mumbled something watered out about a new student who had been sick since school began, and asked the new student to introduce herself.

Enter Ageruman-san.

Silence.

Exit any 'usual way'.

”I'm Christina Agerman.”

Silence.

”I'm from Sweden but have lived in Japan for a year.”

Silence.

”If you find my Japanese poor I'm grateful for help.”

Nuclear detonation.

Ageruman-san was, what a foreign businessman would have said, well proportioned. And blond, a rich, golden blond falling over her shoulders and behind most of her back, with strands so fine they almost rode the non-existent wind in the classroom. And tall, as tall as Ryu.

To complete the archetype of a stunning northern beauty she had eyes so blue you could drown in them. If you were a boy. Noriko corrected herself: if you were a human being or possibly anything even remotely related to the primates.