Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Kantei ❯ Sakura Days ( Chapter 2 )

Sakura Days

Being a semi-retired super-spy from the Cold War reborn into the cheerfully oblivious spy-haven of Japan… post Cold war… it is really relaxing. I miss Anya and Yor, of course. Anya for her wonderfully supportive assistance in protecting my cover, even after I learned she’d been reading my mind since the moment I found her at the orphanage in Berlin. I missed Yor’s incredibly creative flexibility as our cover became a real marriage. For a woman who so easily blushed, once she had the bit between her teeth our alone time was almost an endurance test. Of course I had been trained to bend the mind of a woman with pleasure by the best experts, but Yor was trained to resist pain, and pleasure, to accomplish her assassination missions for the underworld where she was referred to as the Thorn Princess. I learned that much later, though by then she was nearly ready to deliver our first child together. Good times! Sometime after I confessed to that callous child Orimoto Kaori, I recovered enough of my prior life during meditation, along with some nonsense about a fantasy world with swords and magic and some jerk named Kazuma… it was during this meditation that I learned I’d been a spy.

I suppose that my memories of my life as Loid Forger has a lot to do with why I find the earnest efforts of high school girls so refreshing. The upper class Lady Yukino and her cold negging, compared to the devotion of Miss Yuigahama, with hearts in her eyes. I recognized her from the accident. It was her dog I’d saved.

Getting injured in the line of duty is reflexive for me, and I’m genuinely relieved that my darling sister had the sense not to make a big deal out of it, and I’m touched that she fixed up my bike. I have a lot of skills, but I don’t have the patience for gadgets that don’t work the first time.

Lady Yukino is sharp tongued, and reminds me of my old boss in Berlin. Unwilling to expose any emotion to an asset for fear of revealing a weakness of her own, of getting involved, of showing any gaps in her armor. She attacks fiercely, without more reason than simple territorial reflex. For a pretty girl, she holds a great deal of exploitable pride. It is a weakness that can be used to manipulate her. Telling her would spoil it, so I tease her in subtle ways. Adults would get the joke. She does remind me of Yor at times, which is weird because their personalities are completely opposite.

Classes are unchallenging with so many recovered memories. I can do the math. I have to learn the history, though. And Japanese language classes are complicated, which is good because that is my best subject. Komachi keeps giving me looks when I mutter, and I’ve caught myself speaking German. This is really weird. Of course, she’s been doing it to. Almost like my prior lives were anime from Germany. I do miss Anya chan, but its decades later. If she’s even in this world, she’d be 73 years old. She’s probably been married, had kids and grandkids by now. She always tried so hard to help me despite being so very small and almost helpless.

After class it was club. The service club room is on the second floor, where summer breeze wafted through the opened windows. For some reason, there are sakura petals that blow in, no matter what time of year it is, even though the tree outside only blooms the usual five days. It was a mystery. And one I firmly refuse to investigate. Especially since I recognized Iroha’s father, a spy from France. Yes, you can joke about France being a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys, but they’ve managed to avoid further wars on their home country by causing wars in other people’s countries, to wit: Vietnam, Algeria, and several others. Iroha’s father moved like a man who hasn’t figured out how to retire yet. Investigation on him found there’d been some incident with a billion yen and a Yakuza boss, and some deaths during a bank robbery and an arcade. All to keep little Iroha safe so she can neg her crushes. One of them being me. I opted to ignore her, which drives her up the wall. My dance card is already busy, sweetcheeks.

Of course Yukino was there already, having the key. I’d taken the liberty of making a copy for emergencies, but did not want to reveal that so soon. Yuigahama bumbled in behind me moments later, crashing with sound and cheerfulness. Yui is a genki girl. She’d tried gyaru and given it up before losing her purity, and straddled the line between the outcasts and the normies in the back corner. I have noticed that in every single anime and manga, the protagonist sits in the back left corner of the classroom, so they can stare outside and dream of a better and more exciting life. Like that one song by Modern English. I’ve been listening to all the music I’d missed between my death in the mid 1960’s and now. The 1980’s were particularly interesting, being the introduction of synthesizers, but musicianship was still very high. Bands knew what a harmony was, and how to use it. Try that with modern groups since the Millenium? Few and far between.

“Dream of better life, the kind which never hates… trapped in a state of imaginary grace… I made a pilgrimage to save this human race… never comprehending the race had long gone by…” I sang under my breath.

“Hikki? You’re singing again,” complained Yuigahama. Yukino was also staring at me.

“Was I off key?” I asked her.

“No. Its just, I don’t know that song. It was English,” she complained.

“Modern English, actually. That’s the name of the band. I’ve been listening to music from the 1980’s. It helps me keep my mind of the pain in my bones,” I explained.

“Does your leg still hurt?” Yuigahama asked, looking ashamed.

“Yes. But that’s why I sing,” I said.

“I like to sing. Do you sing karaoke?” she asked, looking excited now.

“I do at home. Sometimes with my sister,” I lied. I mostly sang alone. For whatever reason, Komachi did not like to sing. Thinking of her reminded me I needed to go with her to the hardware store to buy a new toilet seat.

“I can’t today though,” I added. “Maybe some day the Service Club can do it as an activity?” I suggested. Yukino nodded approval of this idea.

“I’ll file the paperwork,” she promised.