A DIFFERENT KIND.

[do you really think it's your prince on a white horse, coming to pick you up?]

There's a usual phrasing at the end of the line – "and they lived happily ever after", but has anyone dared question what it means? Have you ever heard of a fairytale with mass murderers and genetic experiments?

`It seems like all I do these days is having conversations in benches,´ Tenma says.

And he smiles.

With his hair short again – Nina doesn't so much remember that as she remembers the newspaper portraits in sepia, black and white and thin paper – Nina thinks he looks so much younger.

She is not sure she likes this Tenma better.

***

She gets better at hiding her happiness, visit after visit.

No, not happiness, that's not the word she is after. But she gets better at hiding it, the peculiar state of excitement that precedes Tenma's visits. She no longer runs towards wherever he is but has taught herself to walk steadily. Her voice doesn't go up when Dieter tells her about it on the phone. She practices a neutral, stone-quiet face in front of the mirror.

Sometimes she stops in front of the mirror and sees-

She, too, looks younger as well. Younger than when he met her, younger than she's been in years. Even with no memory of it Nina had always felt like only half the story of her own face. Later, pieces of Johan in the lines around her mouth and eyes. They start fading now – not because she is forgetting (she doesn't want to forget) but because she knows how to live with them now. She has her brother's face. It's okay now.

`What are you going to do now that you've graduated?´ Tenma asks.

`I've been offered an internship in a law firm in Munich.´

`Munich, eh?´ Tenma muses on the name of the city, as if pondering if it's a safe place for her to go to. Nina guesses they both have to learn how to live in a quiet world, a world without the pressing need for caution, not the old world, not a world that puts on hold everything else in your life and makes you focus on surviving.

She often wonders if they spent too much time in that old world to ever truly come back.

`I want to do some post-graduate course,´ she adds. `I don't think I'm done studying, not yet.´

He keeps quiet for a long moment. Nina believes she is boring him. Then he turns to her and smiles politely.

`I wish you the best of luck in Munich,´ he tells her.

That's not enough, Nina thinks. Feels that she should be grateful but knows that's not it. It's like she keeps getting wonderful birthday presents but never the one she wants.

`Is there something wrong?´ Tenma asks, noticing the little wrinkles on her forehead, a frown.

Nina shakes her head with a bit too much effort, like a stubborn child. She looks down at her hand and realizes she the tight knots of muscles, the fingers coiled into a fist, slightly trembling. She should not worry Tenma like this. She is okay, she is really okay. She is happy. She is a silly little girl.

`Will... will you visit me in Munich?´ she asks with a thin, almost inaudible voice.

Tenma takes his time answering, he studies Nina's expression from the corner of his eyes. He looks confused. A woman passing the street in front of them drops something from her grocery bag and picks it up.

He tells Nina, `If you want me to.´

***

She has become so aware of any physical contact between them.

She tries very hard to avoid it, she is sure it would only help betray what she is thinking. It feels weird because they were so close, so quickly, when Tenma came to save her that time and from then all, their story together (the story they were such vital part of, but that wasn't a story about them), Tenma had carried her in his arms and comforted her and they had been pressed to each other in the back of a car and they had jumped in a river together and they had kept very close to each other, shoulder to shoulder, under the rain.

It had felt natural to touch, once upon a time.

Since then Nina has grown overly careful. A casual brushing of hands as they reach for the bill in a café would be a catastrophe. A goodbye hug or a kiss on the cheek is strictly forbidden.

He hasn't changed in that sense. He doesn't seem to notice – why would he? He often helps her put on her coat with a smile. Nina often envies him, his indifference. Does he think she is being cold to him? Does he believe she's suddenly turned into a shy person?

Nina remembers falling into the cold river, falling for what it seemed a long time, a lifetime, Tenma never letting go of her.

***

They sit together in parks in benches, a French movie scenario. She puts a lunch box between them – steamed rice and Thuringian sausages with black, Swarzbrot bread and a couple of slices of Black Forest cake. She enjoys these little things, packing it all neatly, cutting the cake with a blunt knife in the morning, wrapping the bread in a soft cloth napkin with little wildflowers knitted in the corners. These are the times she feels happier, or closer to happiness, in a way, in the quite moments, the hopeful moments.

Hours before meeting him she would place her best clothes on her bed and walk a couple of steps back and consider the clothes from an angle, she opens and closes the window and considers the clothes in sunlight and in wind. Then she chooses – jeans and a shirt one day, casual, a light blue dress the other, innocent and childish, tank top and a leather coat, eternal student. This is not an exercise in being coquettish, no. That would mean Nina hopes the outcome of their meetings could change if only she would put on that jacket or apply that lipstick.

No.

Nina does not hope.

One day – Tenma is holding a Krapfen in his hand, like a doughnut without a hole, the sugar icing sticking to the tips of his fingers – of no special importance, the bench was a bit damp from last night's summer rain and they dried it with their handkerchief before sitting.

One day Tenma says,

`That's a beautiful dress.´

***

Life seems to stop, vanishes altogether in the days, weeks, months in between. Life seems to rest and only take flight again when he comes visit, when he phones. Nina doesn't know how to tell him to visit more often, to call her more. She doesn't know which right she has to ask that, even if it's just a plea. Tenma is her savior, for want to a better more accurate word, but that doesn't mean he owes her anything.

One day he sees her cry when he gets up to leave.

`Nina, what is wrong?´

`Nothing.´

Nothing, she says, but the seed is planted there. There the tree starts to grow.

***

He doesn't talk about his job much – he seems content to listen to Nina's stories about her starting the internship, about her bosses, about her classes, about sharing a flat with three other graduates, the way Simone Schmidt keeps eating Nina's yogurt by mistake, all that.

When he talks about his work around the world it seems as if he is talking about some distant planet, or maybe telling her Marco Polo-stories of faraway lands. He never talks about how hard the job is, about how many people suffer and die, about how difficult it is to bring help to some countries. He just tells a couple of amusing anecdotes – the boys who knocked Tenma down playing with a spare tire in Sudan, that time he mistook a fat man for a pregnant woman in Vavuniya – and always says how happy and proud he is with what he is doing.

Nina doesn't mind that he is private about his life, she likes imagining him out there, saving the world one patient at the time and she doesn't need many details for that. She is not a little girl and she should have those fantasies but she can't help it. She was too little when she met Tenma for the first time and she doesn't quite remember how he was before all that but although he's changed since those dark days, although he gives the impression of a man who's broken a curse, Tenma still keeps some restlessness. Something that's not quite fixed yet.

At least Nina sees that when she looks in his eyes.

***

When they met in Heidelberg they often sat outside the main University library, looking at the red sandstone walls.

She bought a bicycle when she moved to Munich. It is almost compulsory here, in this student-infested city. The pavements are soft as ancient sea-stone. Nina cycles through parks, into beer gardens, in the sun. She studies the handwritten ads pinned to the announcement boards in copier shops, is there any cheap Aikido teacher in Munich? Nina holds bits and pieces of paper with phone numbers between her fingers but she never calls – she doesn't have the time, anyway – and it makes her feel ordinary in the best possible way. Like walking through the park and always blushing when walking by the nude area. Like the way she can't get used to wearing shoes at work (code dress for her internship; band-aid on her heel and sore skin).

On her days off she goes to read to the south cemetery – there's nothing creepy about it, plenty of people in Munich do just that, some days it's even hard to find a bench. She feels lucky to spot one empty today.

She cut her hair two days ago and now it's all crisp ends and a style, with a slight fringe, she hasn't quite worn before in her life.

Tenma takes a dozen of seconds to recognize her when they meet on the western path of the graveyard. His mouth askew, questioning, he tilts his head to one side, wondering if he's got the right person. It's been a while since they last met. It's always been a while. It's okay for him to not recognize her for a moment. It means Tenma's life travels at different speed than hers. Nina is sure he never thinks about her outside his visits, his sparse phone calls.

`Is this okay?´ She asks, glancing around, the graves seemingly content and lighthearted in the spring sunlight, with wild weed growing from the edges, lovingly.

He nods. Nina feels like an idiot – Doctor Tenma deals with matters of life and dead every day, why would be bothered by being in a cemetery. Don't be nonsensical, Nina, that's what she is thinking.

They sit and soon slip into one of their usual silences – they are not comfortable, but they are familiar.

`You cut your hair.´

`Yes. Don't you like it?´

`No, it's not that,´ Tenma makes a gesture with his hands, as if trying to explain but then he seems to give up.

I've offended him somehow, Nina thinks. By her side on the bench a couple of her college books, the files she has to take home from work, a recycled-paper bag with two sandwiches. (sometimes she is aware of the silliness of constructing a whole relationship on such feeble foundations; on such fleeting, unique moments, so much death and blood and grief, on the way he kept calling her Anna for a long time, all those times it rained on them, the sandwiches she made and the note that said it's not your fault - no, adults should not mistake things like love with statements of the sort "you saved me from a monster"; Nina is aware of how ridiculous she is)

Her thoughts (the usual self-reproach) broke by the sound of Tenma chuckling, very low.

`Sorry, it's silly,´ he says brightly. `I just liked the idea of coming back to Germany and seeing you haven't changed. Like, no matter how crazy work gets, when I see you it's like nothing's changed, something is constant. That's why I looked so annoyed that you cut your hair!´

He is still chuckling and Nina feels warmth spreading through her stomach, her bloodstream. She likes that he thinks like that. It's nothing more, she doesn't kid herself, but she likes the idea of Tenma thinking about her, even in passing, sometimes. The fact that he counts on her. That she makes some difference in his life. She feels oddly proud.

She grins with him, a bright moment, feeling they are closer than they've been in months.

She reaches to him and puts her hand on the back of his neck, fingers playing with his hair.

`I liked it better when yours was long too,´ she teases.

Tenma's body stiffens at the touch, the muscles of his back suddenly tense. Nina realizes what she is doing and immediately stops, putting her hand away from him as fast as she can.

The moment is gone.

***

When she talks to him on the phone – and there's often a clash of time zones so they pass each other by, or it's too late or too early and her thoughts are never as clear as she wants – Nina imagines that the voice echoing through the line towards Tenma, this her voice electric, it's not hers, it's the other Ninas'.

She imagines the other Ninas, possibilities that were never realized. Sometimes her name stays Anna. Sometimes in a world where she doesn't meet Tenma she kills her brother and everybody lives. Sometimes in a world without Tenma she is dead because he wasn't there to save her and Johan kills them all. Fairytales gone wrong. Alternative versions of the same story. She imagines the other Ninas looking from above her, looking down on her, judging her as she speaks on the phone with Tenma.

Her old shrink would say she was being morbid.

They've only been on the phone for fifteen minutes and once more the silence settles over them.

`Really, Nina,´ he complains in joke. `Young girls are often known for spending hours on the phone and you have nothing to tell me? I should have called Dieter, he rambles on and on.´

It's the way he says "young girls". Half-patronizing, half genuinely protective. Something that puts more distance between them.

Nina feels the urge to hang up but is too polite for that, so she quietly tells him about next week mid-term examns.

***

The next time she sees Tenma – walking off the railway station, coming towards her and waving his hand slightly – something shifts in Nina. Like the sound of a rope snapping somewhere far but audible to her, and her alone.

`I can't do this,´ she tells him.

`What?´

`I don't want you to come visit me anymore,´ she says, crying quietly, her head down. She doesn't want him to see her face.

He doesn't say anything at first but his breathing seems to stop at that, something in him goes very still.

`I won't, if that's what you want,´ he says in a blunt-edged tone. `I am sorry if I caused you-´

`You come and then you leave,´ Nina interrupts him, still not looking up. `And I never know if you are really going to come back again, or if you want to. I can't stand that. Not knowing...´

The small, falling sounds she is making, little sobs. She doesn't want to cause a scene in front of so many passer-bys. They stay like that for a bit. Nina can hear the blood pumping into her head, she feels dizzy with heartbreak. But it's better this way, she tells herself.

Then Tenma's arms come around her shoulders and he pulls her into an embrace. The shock cuts through her crying and she stays very still, rigid, with his arms around her, his body pressed against hers. She can feel the fabric of his coat against her cheek and the heart thumping underneath. He draws a long, heavy breath and for a moment it seems as if he is content to stay like that forever.

`I'm sorry,´ he mutters into her hair, his lips brushing against the top of her head. `I didn't think-´

He grabs her arms and pushes her gently a bit away from him, as if he wanted to take a better look at her, and their eyes finally meet.

`I'm sorry, Nina. I didn't know.´

She wipes her eyes with her sleeve, like a kindergarten child, oddly stubborn.

`You weren't supposed to know,´ she tells her.

Nina guesses this is it. His apology and then end of it. He can never return her feelings. He is sensitive enough to feel guilty of it somehow. And he is such a good person that he will leave her alone, never come back, to spare her further distress. This is it, Nina thinks, devastated but in peace somehow.

When he finally loosens his grip on her, Tenma takes Nina's face in his hands, stroking one cheek with his fingertips. Nina freezes. She doesn't understand.

`I am so selfish,´ he says, like he's saying to no one in particular, certainly not to Nina.

There is still some distance between them so he takes one step forward and kisses her. Nina's lips start to form a silent What? but she doesn't have the time, he is too quick, his mouth is there first. At first Nina wonders if this is a joke, a cruel joke, but she knows Tenma, Doctor Tenma, her Tenma would never do something of the kind. Maybe this is a mistake then. Maybe he is just being too nice. His tongue darts past her teeth and gently brushes the roof of her mouth and Nina just knows.

A minute later they are sitting in one of the station green-metal benches, under the sign that informs of the next train to Salzburg, unable to leave this place for a moment, unable to get used to the surrounds of a world that completely new, completely different to the world they inhabited a couple of minutes ago. Nina's hand rest on her lap. Tenma tentatively wraps his hand around them, warm and big and reassuring. Last call for the 4.25 pm train. Life, every-day-life, real life rushes around them.

Their silence is an uncomfortable one, but for all the good reasons. They don't dare look at each other just yet, like there was a spell about to be broken. His eyes are fixed on the way her fingers entwine with his and he answers back stroking her palm absentmindedly. It's a silence full of possibilities. It's a silence they want to keep.

Tenma is the first one to break it.

`I could stay here tonight. I still have some days off.´

`I live in a dorm. It's only college girls and-´

Tenma's face turns slightly red.

`No, I meant- I'll take a hotel room. I can stay and we could. If you want, that is.´

This not how stories should go, Nina thinks, the conventional narrative forsaken, traded for something rushed, surprising. Nina blushes – one is supposed to go on dates and they haven't really declared. Not at all.

But, remembering how she met Tenma and the things they went through, she guesses it's just like them, to do even this the unorthodox way.

***

[are you the prince on a white horse?]

`I didn't believe in fairytales when I was growing up,´ Nina tells him, staring at the ceiling of the medium-range hotel, a faint damp stain draining the pale green out of the wallpaper and turning it into a kind of fish-grey. `Not like other girls. I used to joke with my friends, at high school and college, about princes and princesses, about happily ever after and such things, but I didn't really believe it.´

She pulls the sheets until they cover her mouth – she is afraid she'd start grinning thoughtlessly. The bed clothes have lost their new-ish, pine-scented disinfectant odour. She thinks it's hardly the same room they came into not one hours ago – Tenma's hand squeezing her in encouragement – and she likes the idea, that their presence has worn it somehow, left a mark in the secret life of the room. Nina likes this, feeling ordinary and embarrassed and happy.

`Should I say that you look like a princess to me now?´ Tenma asks, amused.

She can feel the sheets going up and down with his breathing; they are not touching right now but his shoulder is so close to her on the pillow that all Nina would have to do is just turn her head to the left a bit, barely so, just one tiny gesture – she likes this very much, the idea, the possibility, that she is allowed to touch him like this, if she wants to, that he is within reach.

Such a silly thing but she wonders if he wants her to call him by his first name now. It sounds wrong somehow, how idiotic, he is Tenma, not Kenzou. She tries to form the sound of it in her mind and it feels too odd for the moment, she will have to work on it in the future, something as simple as his name, ah, what a mess, she thinks.

From the corner of her eye she sees the pile with their clothes over the chair, she blushes.

`I'm sorry I was wearing such ugly underwear today,´ she apologizes. `I wasn't expecting-´

Tenma chuckles.

`Hey, don't laugh at me,´ she elbows him softly under the sheets.

`I'm not laughing at you,´ he says, but he is laughing harder now.

She frowns. Her nose wrinkles a bit. She wonder if he thinks she is cute. She wonder what he thinks about her at all. He just made love to her so Nina guesses he must think she is a little bit cute at least.

`If this is a fairytale, it's a very strange one,´ she says, looking at the ceiling again.

Tenma nods, reaching out to kiss her. She still doesn't believe it completely, whenever he kisses her. She kisses him back shyly. He hugs her, a bit awkwardly, naked on a strange bed and their limbs still out of sync, their skins bearing it patiently, like humming there will be time with each touch. Nina against his chest and now she can really feel each of his breaths.

She touches the tip of her fingers to the nape of his neck, where the hair curls, damp with sweat.

`I was thinking about letting it grow long again,´ Tenma says with a teasing smile. Then the features of his face relax into something else altogether. He tells her, `So each time I come visit you, it will be a little longer, and then a little longer next time...´

He trails off.

Nina thinks it sounds like a promise.