121 Chapter five, 2016, extended stay: 9 (1/2)
”Your plans for today?” Amaya wondered after breakfast.
”Club activities,” Ulf answered and slung his backpack onto his back. ”Culture festival early October, and it seems the clubs are supposed to take part in it.”
Amaya frowned. ”You couldn't participate last year.”
Ulf grimaced. He'd been busy getting locked inside an institution for juvenile delinquents instead of partaking in anything festive. ”No big deal,” he said to smooth Amaya's comment over. ”We're over twenty people in the club, and I guess we'll have to show off something supposedly Swedish and that's about it. See you!” And with that he was out of the door. He ran down the stairs five steps at a time and walked the last bit to the bike stand. Today would be a long ride, but he hadn't wanted to leave it by the station for the duration of the field trip. Lucky he didn't. Four days had turned into two weeks.
He played with the thought of biking to their old mall and leave it there, but with some luck Christina would show at the school, and if she did he had hopes for cycling around the city with her. So he ended up locking his bike to the confession stands outside their wing and walked the gravel to the entrance.
After a few moments of confusion he found his shoe lockers, dumped his sneakers in it and pulled his indoor shoes out of his back pack. Starting today he'd leave them in the locker when he went home. There were only a couple of days until school started anyway.
The corridor was empty, but he heard muted voices from the stairwell he was heading for. He looked through the windows to the closed cafeteria, passed the boys PE locker room and climbed the stairs. Whomever the voices belonged to had long since vanished when he left the stairs for the main corridor.
'What the hell?' The club room was empty. As in wiped clean. This is way too much for a burglary, so what happened?
”Urufu, you idiot! Moron-sama!”
'OK, that's Noriko for sure. Now what?' Ulf left their club room and stared in the direction her voice had come from. Sure enough she stood in the stairwell waving at him. 'Ah, not waving, beckoning for me. Damn palm down. I'll never get used to that.'
With a sigh he shut the door and sauntered in her direction. 'What's she doing in our wing?'
”What's with you today? Getting senile already?”
'No, I'm not. That doctor of Nakagawa's promised as much. Wonder what I forgot this time though? Probably just didn't pay attention to something.' ”Yeah, must be. Advanced age and all that.”