408 Chapter six, 2017, Christmas carols: 7 (1/2)

And with that Kareyoshi was gone. With the same vigour as media had been suppressed just a few months earlier they were invited, or rather forced to arrive en masse when police escorted him out of the school on the last day before winter break. He didn't even get to make his speech. Not even the circus around Kuri when she rose to fame had attracted this much attention.

Yukio grinned and growled at the same time; with the face of a predator Kuri had told him with a grim smile on her face.

For him it was almost unreal. Just like it would have been unreal for him if anyone had said that he'd get used to living under a yoke.

He walked with Kyoko by his side, and this time they just passed the Haven. A train was what he had in mind.

”Happy now?” Kyoko asked.

He wasn't, so he shook his head. ”I don't want to talk about it. Right now I just want to spend Christmas with my girlfriend.”

She said nothing. Her hand hugging his was enough.

He could feel how she accepted his need to leave it all behind him. A later day would come when he needed to talk about it, and Yukio somehow understood a day would also come when Kyoko cried in his arms. Somewhere, hidden in a recess of his mind he harboured a suspicion that day also carried the first real test of their relationship.

But not today. Today they'd walk hand in hand listening to Christmas carols in a city that didn't really celebrate Christmas in the first place. That was enough for him. A dating event suited him perfectly.

As they placed foot ahead of foot in the almost winter that was Tokyo he turned his head from time to time. They weren't there. No car, no body guards, no one staring after them from the shadows to make certain they were safe.

'Ten years, and you chose to repeat it all. I wonder what's going on in your head.' He shook away any more worries about Kuri. She was a grown up.

”Asakusa?”

”For Christmas?” Kyoko threw him a glance that told him she wasn't entirely convinced.

”Urufu said there's some kind of European market near the Cloudspear.”

”Doubt we can afford the entrance.”

Yukio smiled. ”I'm no good with that kind of heights. Wasn't planning to go up in that tower.”

”All the six hundred metres up,” Kyoko teased.

He was having none of it. ”I doubt the observatory is much more than four hundred metres up.”

”Oh, that's nothing.”

Yukio grinned. ”Market's on the ground. Ground is good.”

She looked at him and smiled. Then her face turned thoughtful. ”That day, ages ago, when we visited the theme-park?”