Chapter six, 2017, friends from far: 8

Late afternoon saw Nakagawa Akio, former principal of Himekaizen academy, walk along the beach a bit away from where his former students were still playing along with their foreign guests.

Less than half an hour earlier he'd had a thoroughly disgusting conversation with two of their fathers. At least talking with Uchida-san had been awful. Hasegawa-san was a decent person if Nakagawa could trust his ability to assess people.

So now, as much to feel clean again as to finish the first stage of planning, he headed for the seaside pub to grab a beer together with Sano-san.

Now Sano-san wasn't the kind of person you wanted your children to associate with. At least not until you got to know him better, and while Nakagawa didn't really know him all that well, he still remembered the boy from high school who never wavered in his loyalty to his two best friends.

'And now your kids are in high school, and both of them dragged into this insanity.'

That was a sobering thought. A quarter of a century since the old man in a boy's body helped the Wakayama's… no she had been Masuda back then, to play merry hell with school regulations. But they had been their twin kids inverted. Masuda Natsumi the tomboy with absolutely no regard for authority and Wakayama Tadao who followed his girlfriend in whatever she came up with.

'You were both good kids.' Then Nakagawa saw Sano-san waving from a table. 'All three of you were.' Strange as it was Nakagawa still regarded the subjectively older man as the former student he had once been. It didn't matter that he had been seventy when he arrived. Nakagawa had only seen the teenager, and Sano-san never behaved like an old man in a young body during his years at Himekaizen.

As Nakagawa came closer to the table Sano-san rose from his chair.

"Sensei," he said and bowed.

'Yeah, I guess it's that bad.' Sano-san was only polite when trouble was brewing.

Nakagawa bowed in return and went to buy a beer. When he returned to the table Sano-san sat in his chair gazing at the kids on the beach.

"Irishima High, almost all of them," Nakagawa said and sat down.

"I made a call."

"Who?"

Sano-san lifted his glass to his mouth and drank. Wiping foam from his lips with the back of his hand he turned to face Nakagawa. "I called their principal."

Nakagawa nodded. He'd just wait for Sano-san to continue.

"Summer break. I'll do the dirty preparations before then, but as soon as the kids leave for the break I'll have a nice mine-field ready for the bastard."

"I doubt we can have Kareyoshi kicked out. I'm gathering dirt on him, but it's not enough yet."

"You know," Sano-san started, "back in Sweden the dirt you have would have been more than enough."

Nakagawa grimaced. "No such thing as a 'back in Sweden' for my part. I've never been there."

"You should visit."

"Some day," Nakagawa agreed. "What's your goal," he said to steer Sano-san back on topic.

There was another drawn out moment of silence as Sano-san emptied his beer. "I'm pretty certain I can have the expulsions voided. I doubt all that many of the students will want to transfer back though."

"How so?" Nakagawa knew the answer, but he still needed to hear it.

"You old goat," Sano-san said and grinned. "I'll surprise you yet." The grin became predatory. "Objectively Irishima High is a better school than Himekaizen. There's little reason to downgrade."

'Didn't think of that aspect. Fine, you surprised me.' "Go on."

"We don't want the Swedish embassy involved with this. Neither faction wants that, because that means the Swedish section becomes directly involved with the arrivals on this side."

Which was the answer Nakagawa had been waiting for.

"So you expect the other faction to start kicking around their own people just because you ask them to?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. Or rather..." Sano-san hesitated for a moment. Then his eyes shifted into something that had Nakagawa back away a little. "Or rather because we will ask them."

"We?"

"Yes, we. Not as in you and me, but the other we?"

"Stop being cryptic!"

For once Sano-san reacted like the student he once had been, and he immediately wiped off that frightening smile from his face. "We, as in us arrivals. There are quite a few of us, and together we wield considerable power."

Nakagawa gasped. "You couldn't possibly organise..."

"Sensei, you forget that all of us have a past in Sweden. We've learned to be very good at silently organising ourselves. We just don't parade down the streets."

A sudden suspicion flared through Nakagawa's mind. "For how long?"

The smile he got in return was anything but comforting. "It was all in place when I arrived here. I suspect it has always been in place."

"A third faction. I should have known!"

"Sensei, you really believed us arrivals wouldn't contact each other as soon as we had an opportunity?"

Nakagawa shook his head. "Contact, yes, but you make it sound like a club or something."

"No, not a club. That's Ulf's thing. He's the first who got a lot of non-arrivals involved. Anyway, rather think of it as a corporation. Really do, since in ways it is one."

"What kind of pressure could you apply to the goons behind Kareyoshi?"

"Really, I thought you had guessed. If they don't get their shit in order we'll emigrate. There won't be a need for factions, because there will be no arrivals in Japan."

Three dozen arrivals moving to Sweden. Three dozen people who shared the ability to change their surroundings. The Swedish side would accept them gleefully.

"Do you really think you can pull it off?" Nakagawa wondered.

"I don't have to," Sano-san said. "I just need to make the other faction believe I can."