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Part 4
Page 18
"Nice lecture."
"Oh. Huh. You stuck around for it?"
Shujuan had that resentful hand-caught-in-the-cookie-jar
look again. "Something wrong about that?"
Kougaiji hid the smile. "Not at all."
Crowds were thinning now, the less persistent of
academia drifting away from the lecture theatre in pursuit of some other
source to subtly insult their intellects or whatever it was they thought
the king did. Most of what remained were stuffed old professors, a small
cache of fangirls, and various media folk he couldn't seem to oust.
That one reporter lady was back. He wasn't looking
forward to handling her again, at least not in Shujuan's presence. Kougaiji
had already seen the rumors in the tabloids, anyway, and was ever so glad
Shu-rin didn't read them.
The youkai winced in self-reproach when Shujuan
stretched what were obviously badly aching arms. "I'm sorry," he told her.
"Was it a bit much to carry?"
"Harder to steer more'n anything else," the girl
answered, popping her shoulder. "But I dunno. A folder's one thing, but
your memory's finally goin' if you can forget a whole briefcase. With rocks
in it."
"Ancient fossilized samples of--"
"Yeah, yeah." She rubbed the back of her neck. "Just
say it, mister."
Kougaiji had hid the smile, but the frown he let
show.
"We're pulling out soon," he confessed to her. "So
there isn't much work left for you."
"I guessed." Pause. "So where you off to after Beijing?
Back home?"
"San Francisco. Berkeley. Los Angeles. It's a lecture
tour. A dedicated one, instead of the incidental lesson-stuff like here."
"Ah, okay."
They watched the lake a moment.
"You know," Kougaiji said, feeling stupid even as
he said it, but unable to help himself, "you could come with, if you wanted."
"Could you save the others?"
The king hovered on the question.
"Take," Shujuan self-corrected, embarrassed. "Could
you take the others?"
"It'd be a bit hard to manage," he admitted. His
brain went back over that slip-up. It didn't seem quite as Freudian as
just...
...Deja vu?
He peered at her. "Are you really all right?"
The teen tilted her head. "If this's about the other
day..."
"I have to apologize," he told her sadly. Downright
pathetically. "I think I've heaped too much on your shoulders. Don't you
think?"
"It was only a briefcase."
"Don't dodge. You're dodging."
Cookie jar look again. Gods, but Kougaiji shouldn't
have mental shorthand for that look already.
"Fine," he relented. "A better question would be:
what do you think of all this by now?"
She didn't meet his gaze for that one. Didn't even
glare at the lake. Just sort of fixed some distant point of space with
the hardest, foulest scowl she could command. "I don't," she answered simply.
"I'm just doin' it one day at a time, mister."
"Then everything we've been over..."
"Can take its fucking time in getting answered.
'Cause y'know, you're right, it's an awful lot of shit. But I've had an
awful lot of shit anyway. And just got more of it the other day." The scowl
turned into a sour over-broad smile. "And now you say you're skipping outta
town. Great."
"I said you could come wi--"
"I ain't leaving. You go do what you like. Even
if this place is the reason for all this stupid stuff, I'm not goin' anywhere."
She leaned on the railing of the bridge. Weathered,
ancient stone. The foundations of this university had been around for a
very long time.
Kougaiji leaned beside her and gave up. "All right.
I won't force you. Even if I don't understand the attachment." He sniffed
irritably at the air, and was immediately reminded again why he usually
didn't breathe in cities. "This is a disgusting place. Foul and profane
and completely beneath you. You really--"
"Shut up."
He looked over at her, faintly surprised.
"You've got no right to say anything," Shujuan said
angrily, still not meeting his eye. "What grounds d'you have for anything
here? This is my city. You're just visiting."
Kougaiji had to pause at the words.
This is my city. You're just visiting.
And it described so much more than that, really.
"You're right," he said. And if Shujuan had a cookie
jar look, then this was his shit-eating grin, he knew without even seeing
his reflection in the water. "Absolutely, inexorably right. However did
you let me go on for so long?"
And it'd be so nice if things could be resolved like
that,
too.
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