"Why here?""Because I love winter," Kuri said.
Ryu shook his head. Going to Odori Park was excessive just to celebrate Christmas. Or rather flying from Tokyo to Sapporo was. To top it off it was freezing cold, literally so. The snow he had expected, though, was absent.
"This is winter?" he had to ask.
At his side Kuri shook her head. She grimaced a little. "Well, it"s not too uncommon you"ll have to wait until January for the snow back home."
"Home" wasn"t Tokyo. Ryu knew that. At least not right now. For him snow was something you visited, but the way her eyes dimmed when they landed in a bare landscape told him she must have grown up with white winters.
"Back then," he began, "how did you spend Christmas?"
She smiled and gave him a peck of a kiss on his cheek. "Thanks for asking." She brightened and he could see the child she had once been. "Before modelling, with my family. Just like everyone else." Then something sad covered her eyes. "After my nomadic life began, well anywhere I guess. I tried to get home whenever possible though."
Taking a few steps more in silence Ryu watched the madness around him. Kuri certainly had picked a place as sickly illuminated as any of the more well known Christmas dating spots in Tokyo. He guessed girls liked it. With the possible exception of his sister of course, but then she hadn"t really begun behaving like a girl until last year.
"She was with Nao then. And that turned out just splendidly, didn"t it?" Ryu swore silently and looked ahead. He"d promised himself he"d leave his sister alone as much as possible lest Kuri walked away from him. Yukio"s and Kyoko"s mad gamble had paid off. Hats off for them. After his anger subsided Ryu admitted he admired their bravery.
"You don"t really celebrate Christmas that way here, do you?" Kuri sad, but her voice held a quality to it that revealed she was still in that other world.
Ryu looked up and glanced at her. "No," he admitted. "It"s mostly a dating event for couples, well and small kids receive presents."
"Did you get any?" she replied at once, and the teasing giggle that followed made him smile. She was back once again.
"Prince of Himekaizen here. Princes don"t get to act like kids." His own words rang false. He had, behaved like a kid that was, and deep inside he knew he still was. The only difference from earlier was he wasn"t entirely certain why he disliked Noriko"s and Urufu"s relationship so much.
She turned down Yukio three times during their last year at middle school, but Ryu was certain he wouldn"t have reacted this way had Noriko chosen otherwise.
The part about her boyfriend being a foreigner was something Ryu had already rejected; he didn"t care about it when it came to Kuri after all. In fact he no longer noticed anything but how much he cared for her. The same went for the age difference, or at least mostly so, because Ryu suspected Urufu saw something in Noriko he himself couldn"t see, and maybe the resentment lay there.
"It"s a lot more gaudy than what I remember from home," Kuri said. She was still giggling, but she became serious again. "There"s a lot that"s different from home."
If she was back in this reality then that reality included the h.e.l.l they had been through the last year. "I wonder what the next one will be like," Ryu said and pretended to be interested in the knick-knacks sold in one stall.
Kuri hugged his arm closer to herself and made a show of taking a more active interest in tackiness on display. "The next princ.i.p.al?" she asked between a poorly painted earthenware mug and a gla.s.s that failed utterly at looking like crystal. "We"ll have this one," she added to his horror and chose a pair of the mugs.
Unbidden an image of the mugs being used in her luxury flat came to his mind, and he shuddered. He was part of that picture.
Ryu stared at the woman by his side, because she very much was a woman. This time he did notice her foreignness. The kind of clothing she wore, almost white, including a fluffy something covering her golden hair, would have looked awful on anyone born here. Kuri, however, looked like a princess supervising this illusion as if it was only natural for her.
"Yes," he said. "The next princ.i.p.al."
The princess smirked and shrugged. "I don"t know. Normal I hope."
"Normal? Yes, I can see why you"d want normal." Ryu let go of her arm so she could sign something a fan put under her nose. From the start since they entered the park she had been bugged by fans, and only the discreet intervention of her body guards allowed them a semblance of a date for two.
Ryu didn"t mind, but he felt a little sorry for Kuri. He might be the Prince of Himekaizen, but with the madman Kareyoshi at the helm there had been precious little time to be a prince of anything. He still had the chance to vanish into the shadows whenever the need became pressing. As for Kuri, the only shadows she ever saw were those she cast herself.
"Is it worth it? Or is this the only life you know?"
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With one fan a happier person and an autograph richer Ryu took the chance to move closer to his girlfriend. They managed to walk another two stalls before the next group of fans were allowed near them.
One of the girls hunting for Kuri"s signature shot Ryu a shy smile, and he reflexively returned it with a trademarked one of his own. From the corner of his eye he saw how Kuri lit up in a thoroughly professional smile.
Christmas carols from different speakers mixed and competed for attention, Kuri handed out Christmas presents in the form of autographs, and the two of them pretended to enjoy a date for two with preying cameras noticing everything they did.
Tomorrow some of those cameras would make someone famous for an entire day. Tomorrow Ryu would help Kuri look like a high school girl living out her winter break. Tomorrow Kuri"s normal life would continue with cameras, fans and body guards.