193 Chapter five, 2016, days of waiting: 10 (1/2)
They left Urufu by the station with an evening date as a poor excuse not to take a train themselves. In a way it was a truth as well. The Wakayamas would be sixteen in less than a week, and Yukio wanted to buy each of them a present.
”I doubt we can match Nao-sempai or that Irishima High girl I've seen around Ryu lately,” Yukio said for the third time.
”Ai-chan,” Kyoko reminded him, also for the third time.
”Think they're dating?”
”Uhum. I think so.”
”Strange,” Yukio said, ”Ryu rejected everyone confessing to him for half a year, and now he's hooking up with a girl from another school.”
”You don't get to decide whom you like,” Kyoko said and tugged Yukio's arm closer. She pulled her scarf tighter around her neck.
'I'll get you a new one,' Yukio thought. He'd visited her a few times and unless she kept a supply of scarves hidden in her closet he was certain the flimsy thing she wore was the warmest she had.
”Changing topic here. Did you finish those invoices?”
Kyoko nodded. ”Ryu's father mailed them a few days ago.” She grinned at him. ”Urufu's going to have a heart attack later.”
He probably wouldn't, but he'd definitely ask how come his company made another three hundred and fifty thousand yen during his hospital stay. Not that there would be much left for him after all expenses were paid.
It was all Ryu's brainchild, with the blessing of his father attached to it. Keep customer contacts alive no matter what he had said, and so they did for a nominal fee compared to what Urufu usually charged.
”Think he'll be angry?” Yukio said as they rounded a corner and entered a shopping district.
Kyoko held on to his arm and smirked. ”Maybe, maybe not. We're just a bunch of teenagers. I think we were in over our heads when we tried to copy those summer activities.”
Repackaged and standardised, Ryu's father had said. Yukio nodded and pulled Kyoko inside a shop.
”You sure about this?” she asked and changed the topic.
Yukio looked at the smart-phone skin Kyoko held up. It was an atrocity in mint green, which was to say just the kind of over the top accessories Noriko used to satirise any kind of teenage girl cuteness weakness.
”Well, she got her new phone recently. I haven't seen her using anything for it yet,” Yukio said. ”It's just the right kind of horrible as well.”
”Don't you think it's cute,” Kyoko said and pouted.
Yukio stared at the thing that couldn't decide between the colour of radioactive puke and a gross misunderstanding of modern art. ”No, cute has nothing to do with it,” he decided.
”Good!”
They left the shop a couple of thousand yen poorer and a gift-wrapped awfulness in a small paper bag richer, if richer really was the right term for it.
”What did you have in mind for Ryu,” Kyoko asked when they had failed to find anything suitable half an hour later.