293 Chapter two, 2017, schism: 5 (1/2)

Noriko's sudden departure the day before hardly came as a surprise. Yukio telling him he was the superhero among morons, however, did.

Ulf wasn't certain when his best friend grew that kind of backbone, but he noticed how Yukio had matured since they met.

'I behaved like an arse back then.' Well, it couldn't be helped. At the time, when he realised how clumsily his words came out, Ulf decided to make it worse. Anything to get Noriko's mind back on track again. He'd spent two weeks on a bike because his didn't in time. Part of it never would he suspected. 'Idiot, you're an idiot.'

Ulf felt the gravel crunch under his loafers. He'd spent club hours at school together with his new English teacher. She was good enough to understand the difference between syntactic and semantic precision, and running an academic level conversation with her was a pleasure.

He helped her create education material that went far beyond the poor joke that served as a substitute for anything useful. The material at school made it clear to him the students weren't supposed to learn English in the first place – they were supposed to take exams without ever understanding the language.

His teacher in turn pointed out the worst of his mistakes in his attempts at learning Japanese efficiently.

Two linguists, which made two more than the moron who held the principal's office now.

He had part of that co-produced material in his school bag. It should come in handy during the upcoming session. One of the companies that bought his services had adapted far enough to start grasping the real meaning behind proactive responsive processes. Which meant he needed Yukio and Kyoko.

'Cause you just don't have a clue about how good you've become.' Especially Yukio was a marvel.

A truth.

Kyoko probably was pretty good as well.

A half truth.

Ulf's competences didn't include visual user design, which meant he wasn't qualified to say whether she was good or not. He just knew his customers loved her representations of his models, which probably meant she was good after all.

Halfway across the school yard he almost, just almost, admitted he'd chosen this specific job because Ryu's natural leadership wasn't needed, and hence Ulf didn't have to spend time around Christina's new boyfriend.

'Damn, am I a kid, or what?' But jealousy wasn't rational, and he was very much jealous. Seeing them together made him want to puke.

When Ulf reached the bike stands he remembered that he left his bike outside the old mall. With him avoiding club hours as much as possible he'd taken up habits of old, and those included walking to school from the mall. 'Habits from before I met her.'

That was a quarter of an hour on foot. Yukio and Kyoko would be waiting for him in the café.

He left school, walked beneath the sakura and followed the road. Soon he came to the stretch that led to Irishima High, and sure enough he met the occasional students from there on their way home.

This year they didn't give him strange looks and giggles, but then this year he didn't pretend to be a member of geek squad. Returning to that persona was alluring, but it wouldn't work now. Too many knew him.