Transition and Restart Chapter 363

They stayed the night . Yukio and Kyoko shared one room, and she and Urufu another . They didn't sleep with each other, not even the way they had at the hotel . That was one of Urufu's conditions . At least he didn't demand that they separate their futons, and when morning came Noriko woke hugging Urufu through the linens .

Breakfast was a sombre affair with questions hanging in the air . Urufu spent most of it in silent conversation with his aunt who wasn't his aunt, so Noriko didn't get the time she wanted with him .

There would be other days . A lot of other days if she was to decide, and so she let him have the time he needed . She had promised him after all, even if they were a couple now . She intended to keep that promise . Reeling him in and caging him were two different things . He'd always need his own time, or she'd lose him forever .

Yukio and Kyoko were immersed in their own world of hopes and plans, and Noriko left them to it . Instead she looked out the windows at a landscape as alien to her as Urufu's old world . Tokyo was Tokyo, a world of its own, and most of Japan was nothing like it . In ways, she suspected, that faraway city where Urufu grew up would be less alien . At least it had to be a cityscape, even if on a much smaller scale .

'I wonder what Himekaizen is like now . It scares me to go back . '

Not all of them would . Far from . The four of them, she knew . For most of those admitted to Irishima High there was little reason to return to the school that had abandoned them though . To the madman .

AdvertisementShe had her own reason – he spoke with his aunt, and her brother very much a similar one . Kyoko and Yukio were bound by ties of friendship, and they had each other . And Sato-sensei . 'Urufu's guardian scares me, but she's on our side . ' Not everything scary was bad . But her other friends? The other club members? Why when Irishima High was a much better school?

Noriko admitted she was an idiot, but she didn't care . As long as she had Urufu she'd make do, and he needed her . He was still broken . Healing, but broken . That probably meant Kuri was broken as well . Part of her, Noriko suspected, never left that locked classroom where a sixteen year old girl lay shuddering in tears she had brought on herself .

'I moved on, or so I thought . Kuri, why?' Suddenly Noriko couldn't breathe . 'Urufu, where did you leave part of your soul?' Because somewhere a sixteen year old boy lay whimpering in pain as well . Somewhere, but Noriko couldn't even begin to guess where .

Accepting that he wasn't her perfect hero had taken some time, but accepting just how deeply flawed he was would take some more . Older didn't automatically mean better .

Somehow Noriko was happy she'd been left to her own devices . A bit of silence, a slice of strangeness and an ounce of pure joy around her was exactly what she needed to make any sense of the tumultuous last week . Sure, she'd been pushing hard for months, but everything fell in place the very last days, and despite planning for it she couldn't cope in the end .

Not everything had gone as she planned . Definitely not the part where Kuri and Urufu shared their bodies with each other .

But .

In the end .
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He was hers .

A tinge of heat reached Noriko's cheeks . 'Does that make me his?' Because she had heard Kuri and him that night, and if Noriko was his, then one night . . . Noriko slammed a mental door on that line of thought . She refused to connect what she had heard with her fantasies about her own first time .

A few steps brought her to a strange outdoors that was still indoors .

'Most girls my age have already done it . ' And another mental door had to be closed . She could worry about that later .

Noriko admired her surroundings . Originally designed to keep the cold out . Here it kept the heat out . A little wood, and a whole lot of glass . And sun shades . Just like at Himekaizen . Whoever once built this wanted a space that defied any definition of what was indoors and what was outdoors .

'Construction? He can't have been in construction . This is the work of an architect . '

Her grandfather on her mother's side had been one as well . Cheating winter wasn't all new to her, but she'd never seen anything on this scale in a home .

There was some kind of commotion behind her, and Noriko left the room to find out what it was all about .

"It's too heavy for you . If you give us a ride I'll take care of it . "

'Take care of what?' Noriko looked at Urufu, and then at the huge sack at his feet . 'What's that?'

"You sure . You look like a city boy . "

"Look, aunt, I've done this before, OK?"

'Urufu!' For being so bright he was surprisingly stupid sometimes .

"I guess you have, after all," their old host said . There was something awestruck in her eyes, and also something sad . "Fine, take it to the car and I'll drive . "

"Yeah," Urufu said and hoisted the sack onto his shoulder .

'Urufu!'

Stringy muscles on his arm, neck and back hardened and relaxed in a show of gorgeous efficiency . For a moment he struggled under the weight, far more than half her own, but then he slid one foot to the side and made for the door .

"It's heavier than I remembered," he said and turned his head over his free shoulder . "And I'm a bit skinnier now . " His entire body followed after his head . "But I'll manage," Urufu added and shot her a grin void of any sorrow, hesitation or regret . For the first time in half a year he was just a mischievous boy playing a friendly prank on her . "Thank you, Noriko," he added, and her heart jumped .

Chapter end