Gearing up had cost him almost nothing . Almost two years' worth of shopping had him equipped with most of what he needed . Sure, he had to compensate for growing a bit, but from what he recalled from being a teenager the first time he'd only add a couple of centimetres more .

Ulf checked his bags one last time, and then he did the same with his climbing sack, the one he preferred for long biking hikes . Nothing forgotten, and with a deep sigh he straddled his bike and started west .

'f.u.c.k, they'll wonder what happened, but I really need a break now . '

Back in their shared data repository lay everything needed for the sessions his customers had already ordered . He'd only accepted facilitation, because he wasn't going to break his friends' belief in themselves . The work wouldn't earn the company all that much money, but it would give the four of them all the pocket money they could possibly need .

When he waited by a red light, a few pedestrians and the driver in the car at his side gave him strange looks . Probably gave his clothes strange looks . j.a.pan might be number one in the world when it came to manufacturing super light weight gear, but very few people wore them . For some reason they seemed to prefer hideously expensive European and American gear of lower quality .

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'Their loss . I get the best for a discount . '

He'd left just about everything he usually carried along at home . His phone he carried in his backpack, but it was shut down . As in had its battery removed and placed in a separate plastic bag . Ulf didn't trust the software shut-down to guarantee he didn't leak some kind of signal .

This was his personal break, and he didn't intend to be found before he was done, no matter how long that might take .

'f.u.c.k it . I hurt you really bad . ' Half a truth . 'I hurt us both . I'm sorry Christina, but I can't take your life away from you, but neither can I live without you . ' He needed this break . He needed to find a way not to betray them both after the damage he had already done .

With wind flying in his face his thoughts were easier to collect . He'd get lost from time to time, but he'd also lived long enough to learn to read a map and a compa.s.s from a time before GPS was available to everyone . 'So I can find my way in j.a.pan, but I can't find my way in my own life . Funny that . '

A nagging suspicion that he had forced the solution on Christina crept around in his mind . There was a feeling he had neither given her the respect she deserved nor the right to make her own decisions about her future and their relations.h.i.+p . That suspicion was what finally drove Ulf to flee from everything . If he had done wrong . If he had, then he had cost himself the chance of a lifetime, and going by what he read in her eyes, Christina as well .

He sped up and used an uphill run to punish his legs as much as possible . 'Don't dwell on it . Don't think about it . Just get out of Tokyo and as far as possible . '

The way he was right now he'd refuse to employ himself . Mentally unstable people weren't the kind best suited to guide others .

Ulf understood he had another problem as well . Some kind of s.h.i.+t scary acquaintance of the Wakayamas was on a killing spree, and only Urufu's asking Amaya to abuse her indecent powers put a stop to it . Now, offline for the first time since the early nineties he had no way to make sure the body-count didn't rise again .

It didn't help that the s.h.i.+t scary man was Christina's grandfather . 'But I can see where you came from . Did you ever realise that hard part of you was one of the reasons I fell in love with you?'

Thinking of her hurt . Had hurt for over a month now . Ulf wiped tears from his face when traffic allowed, and then he wheeled under one of the highways feeding the west Kanto region .

'Been a while since I last hiked like this . Last time was on foot, but d.a.m.n that sucks!' He grinned, and for a short moment there was only the glory of his silent wheels, the wind in his face and the feeling of being in control of his destiny . 'But am I really?'

So much time spent on preparing to change the world around him to the better . The way he had always lived his life, even when it turned out he was wrong . And again that nagging suspicion this was one of those times came eating on his mind .

He skidded to a halt, left his bike and fed a machine some coins . Despite being Mars with optimal temperatures for a hike like this, he'd still consume huge amounts of water . He recalled those vending machines being just about everywhere in j.a.pan, but he didn't want to chance it, so he bought a litre of sports drink . It should suffice for the next two or three hours or so .

The afternoon saw him leaving the parts of Tokyo he knew behind him, and as darkness fell he had made it firmly into the outskirts .

While Ulf didn't have anything against cycling in the dark he decided to call it a day and spend the night at a hotel . A love hotel more precisely . They happily accepted cash and asked no questions . Besides they were surprisingly good value, seldom asking much more than five thousand yen for a night .

Ulf locked his bike and went inside .

It took him a while to decipher what went for a reception, but then he realised the display of rooms worked pretty much like the restaurants where you bought a food ticket and gave it to the waiter .

There was no waiter here, just a tiny hole by the counter that allowed him to pay, receive his keys and leave without neither him nor the receptionist ever seeing each other's faces .

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'Shoddy living for a shoddy person . Let's see how long I can keep this up . '