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 Kareyos.h.i.+ 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 .