Transition And Restart

Despite shame competing with a whole lot of self disdain Ulf looked at the girl he had just confessed his love to . It was real . He felt it in his very bones . He"d always admired honest persistence, and somewhere down the road that admiration had grown into affection and later into what he had to admit was love . When that happened he didn"t know . During the summer that was about to end soon probably .

He saw Noriko take a seat with Kyoko, and the girls spoke softly with each other . On his shoulder he felt Yukio"s hand and on his head one unfamiliar yet so well known .

"You"re Akane"s boy . I don"t know how, but I know . "

Yukio"s hand tightened its grip . "Man, we need to talk . "

"Aunt, it seems my friends need me for a while . "

The hand in his hair stiffened .

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l! I forgot where I am . "

"Akane"s boy," she said and left the room . "Kanto! What horrid luck . When the kid learns j.a.panese he speaks Kanto dialect . " A receding giggle accompanied her foot steps .

"And how the bleeding h.e.l.l am I supposed to explain this?" Ulf shook the thought away . "OK, you"ve got my attention . "

Yukio grabbed a chair and sat down . This close Ulf began to get a grasp of what the man his best friend would soon grow into would look like .

"Urufu, we need to go to Sweden . "
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"Huh?"

"I know you don"t have a pa.s.sport, but some day . "

Ulf blinked away his confusion . "Sure, I"ll be happy to bring you back home for a visit . "

"Yeah, that as well . Man, I"d love to, but that"s not what I"m talking about . "

Across the table the girls had stopped talking .
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"What"s going on?"

"When I get older I hope to marry Kyoko . "

If the room had been silent when he held hands with Noriko that was still a deafening cacophony compared to the absolute stillness that hung over them now .

"If you want to," Yukio added in a voice that surprised Ulf by its utter lack of hesitation .

"The man he"s already begun to grow into," Ulf accepted . "d.a.m.n you"re so cool!"

"If you want to," Kyoko responded . "I can"t have children, remember?"

An indrawn breath told Ulf Noriko hadn"t wanted that to be spoken out aloud .

"Not in this world you can"t," Yukio said, and Ulf"s head swam from the shock of listening to those words . "Urufu"s got scars from his high school years, or rather, he no longer has them . "

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"Oh . Oh! Yes, I"d very much love to marry you . Twice if that"s needed . "

"Twice?" Ulf could take it no longer . "Guys what the h.e.l.l are you two going on about?"

"Yukio," Kyoko began, "is pretty certain people are, eh what should I call it… transiting from this world as well . To a downstream world he calls it . "

Yukio nodded, and before Ulf had a chance to edge a word in he added to Kyoko"s words . "Urufu, you had a restart in this world . I believe we can as well . "

"I never asked for it," Ulf said as if by reflex . He"d been torn away from a perfectly good life . One, he glumly admitted, that more and more became part of his memories rather than reality .

"You didn"t, but Kyoko and I might have to one day . "

Slowly what Yukio and Kyoko had said started to form a pattern in Ulf"s head . "Lemme see, if what they…"

"So just like Urufu arrived here from his old world you"re saying you can transit and arrive in another?" Noriko broke in .

"And she"s so much brighter than I am . Did I fall in love with her or her brains? Both," Ulf decided and settled for listening to her making sense of the insanity .

"And since both Kuri and Urufu were fourteen when they arrived you expect to be fourteen as well?"

Yukio nodded .

"What?"

"In bodies where Kyoko was never stabbed?"

Kyoko clung to Noriko and nodded as well .

"Oh!"

"That would explain the people who dragged Ryu off to that interview he mentioned," Noriko continued .

Ulf had heard about it, but he never reflected on its potential meaning .

"And you want to be seen as important, or unlucky enough to be sent, what did you say, downstream?"

"Not today, or anytime soon, but one day, yes," Yukio said . "At least as long as I have Kyoko . Without her I don"t care . "

"Yukio! I love you!"

That reaction from Kyoko told Ulf everything he wanted to know about the bond they shared . "Some people just get it right from the beginning . I"m happy for you, and a little envious . "

"I think you might be right," Noriko said . She seemed deep in thought . "I think they forced Kareyoshi to rescind the expulsions . Yeah, you"re right . "

Expulsions or no expulsions didn"t really have anything to do with this, or did they?

"I am, am I not," Yukio said and laughed . "How else could people from Sweden force anything at all to happen here?"

Neither of the men Ryu spoke with that day were Swedish . Ulf knew as much, but Ryu was adamant they came from Sweden, or represented Sweden in one way or another . Pieces in a jigsaw puzzle slowly fell in place, and he stared at Yukio with open admiration . A string of worlds connected like links in a chain .

"Can I go back?" he heard his own voice say .

The look Noriko gave him cut deep into his heart .

"I don"t want to . Not any longer," he added, both for her sake as much as for his own . That life was gone . Even if he could go back it was a life once lived . He"d never be able to go on with it and pretend the life he lived now was just a short episode he could discard . This was his life now .

Memories from a day in Odaiba rushed to him . "Sano-san, I understand . I finally understand . "

With that Ulf accepted his old life had ended, and that a new one had begun, that where there was a transition there was also a restart . He"d become Hamarugen Urufu, who called himself Ulf Hammargren . He was both the man who had once been as well as the teenager with the memories of that man . He was both less and more than he had once been, and more importantly, he just was .