by Amanda Sun
And is that what Jun thought? Make them pay, no matter who got hurt in the process?
“Yuu and I would make good princes,” Jun said after a minute. “And you would rule with us, Katie.”
I stared at him—was he for real? His lip curled up into a smile, and I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not.
“Are you joking?”
His eyes gleamed. “Maybe. I guess I have to make it through entrance exams first, huh?”
I couldn’t get a straight answer out of him. How much did the thoughts consume him—justice, corruption, revenge? Is that what he thought about as he lay awake at night?
We sat in silence for a bit, sprawled out on the police-station steps. The sun dipped low in the sky and the world turned golden, then shadowy. I wrapped my arms around myself and pulled my legs close.
“Sa-me zo,” Jun said, the tough-guy way of saying It’s cold.
“Un,” I mumbled, a casual Japanese yes. Sometimes it felt easier to fit in than others. But thinking of myself as a Kami...as one of them...I couldn’t picture it.
“I’d give you my jacket, but I’m not wearing one,” he grinned. “Wait there.” He ran around the side of the building, where I could hear the faint hum of a vending machine. When he came back, he placed a hot can of café au lait in my hands. I breathed in the sweet steam, burning my tongue with the first sip. The heat raced all the way down my throat, warming me from the inside.
“Thanks,” I said. “You know, you really don’t have to stay.”
“I know,” he smiled. “But I want to be here with you, even if it’s because you’re waiting for him.” He motioned at the doorway with his coffee.
“Jun,” I said.
“I know. I’m pathetic.”
“Not at all. I—”
A car pulled into the parking lot and startled both of us into silence. A man opened the passenger’s side and got out, and at first I wondered who must be driving. A flash from my old life, before I remembered that the right was the driver’s side in Japan. Life in reverse, nothing the way I thought it would be.
It was Tomo’s father, looking like a somber version of his son. He wore a tight-fitting suit with a dark tie, his black hair slicked down neatly and his face hiding any trace of emotion. He walked up the steps with grace and pride, like he was going to some really important meeting, not at all like he was going to pick up his son from the police station. I almost felt sorry for him, except I knew none of it had been Tomo’s fault. His dad must have known that, too. He knew what kind of person Tomo was.
He walked straight past us, not recognizing me in the dark, and through the glass doors. I rose to my feet, hurrying toward the closing door. It was made of glass and we could see through it easily.
His dad stopped at the desk and spoke to the person taking the important-looking notes. Then he waited. They must be getting Tomohiro. Relief pulsed through me. He could go home.
Tomo appeared from the side, escorted in handcuffs by the woman constable I’d seen earlier. Handcuffs—my heart raced at the sight of it. She undid the cuffs and he swung his arms forward, rubbing his wrists with his fingers. The back of his shirt was stained with dried ink in the shape of sprouting wings. I hoped to god it had stopped there. It could just look like blood, right? From here the tiny wings looked kind of like handprints. Maybe.
Tomohiro’s dad stepped forward toward his son. At first I thought he was going to hug him, but I was wrong. He swung his hand back and slapped Tomohiro so hard across the face that I heard the sound of it from outside the glass door. Tomo’s face twisted from the blow, his head falling limp as he stared at the tiled floor. I gasped a breath of cold air; the café au lait burned at my fingertips.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” shouted his dad. “Humiliating me like this! Causing trouble for others. What the hell is wrong with you, Hiro?”
I thought the police would stop him or something. You couldn’t just slap your own child in a police station, could you? But they weren’t doing anything. Tomo’s dad bent over in a deep bow, his face as red as if he’d been the one slapped. “Moushi wake gozaimasen,” he shouted, which I knew was a super-formal apology. After a moment he yanked Tomohiro’s arm and pulled him into an awkward bow. Tomo didn’t say anything at first, so his dad smacked him across the back of his head.
I winced at the impact, and Tomo raised his hand instinctively to rub the spot, but he didn’t say a word, not even that it hurt.
“Apologize properly!” his dad shouted, and Tomo bent over, his face a map of black and blue from the fight, a new pink bruise forming on his cheek and a lump on his head. I saw his lips move, but I couldn’t hear him from out here. He was apologizing, though. I knew.
“It’s late,” one of the police said. “Get him home and get some rest.”
His dad bowed his head sharply and then turned toward the door. Jun and I backed up as he came through, his face flushed pink.
Tomohiro followed. I could smell the sweat and dried blood, the stale air from the police station. I knew his skin would be warm from being indoors, and I longed to reach out and touch the bruises on his face. I wanted to run my fingers over them, to wish them away. Tomohiro looked at me for a moment, and then his eyes flicked away, down to the ground.
“Tomo,” I said, but he walked right past Jun and me, following his dad down the steps. He got in the driver’s side—no, the passenger’s side here—and the car rumbled to life, its headlights as bright as the ghost-white koi Tomo had drawn.
Jun curled his fingers around my elbows, but I was glad, because I felt like I was going to collapse.
I felt like I’d lost something, like everything had come undone.
Across from us in Sunpu Park, a maple leaf broke from the tree and drifted into the murky, cold moat, spinning lightly as it swirled on the surface.
I called Tomo when I got home, but his keitai was off. I phoned his home number once but hung up when I got scared his dad would answer.
I couldn’t get the image out of my mind, the way his dad had slapped him—the sound of it, the veins protruding in his dad’s neck as he screamed at him.
And the way Tomo didn’t fight back at all. The way he just stared at the floor, like nothing mattered anymore. Like he was as lost as I felt.
When had it all started to fall apart like this? I thought I’d come back to fix things, but I felt like it was all turning to sand in my hands, slipping through my fingers.
I slumped down at my desk and pulled out my notebook for kanji practice. I might be falling apart, but I couldn’t afford to let my studying drop. There was no way I was going to an international school, and there was no way I was leaving Japan. I copied the kanji until my wrist ached.
Then I found myself doodling names, checking characters in my dictionary when I got stuck.
Watabe Yuki. Tanaka Ichirou.
Ishikawa Satoshi. I smirked. The kanji for his first name really was “wisdom.”
Yuu Tomohiro.
I stared at that one for a while. I wrote it a few more times.
Then I wrote my name beside it. Katie Greene—unlike the others, written only in phonetic kana. No elegant kanji. No deeper meaning to the characters.
I dropped my pencil and flopped onto my bed, staring at the ceiling.
What had the police asked Tomo? He’d looked so defeated. Were things okay? Had they asked about the ink on his back or more about that night with the Yakuza?
I clicked my light off and lay in the darkness. The weather had turned too cold to turn on my air conditioner, and the room felt unsettling in its silence. I drifted in and out of sleep, imagining all kinds of nightmares that might materialize before me.
None of them did. Weird dreams, sure, things that didn’t make sense. Sparring in a kendo match with Yuki and baking a strawber
ry shortcake with Tanaka. I jolted awake, and I swore I could still smell the berries, feel them crushed against my fingertips in bright red stains. I fell back to sleep and dreamed of Ishikawa at Tokugawa’s shrine on top of Mount Kuno, the painted inugami snarling as Ishikawa poured water from a bamboo ladle over his bleached hair. He flung a ladle of water at me and I leaped out of the way as it splashed against the stone beneath us. I woke when my body slammed against the tatami on my floor.
Grumbling, I pulled myself back into bed. I hadn’t slept this badly since Mom died. Was Tomo okay? I almost called him right then and there, at four in the morning. But I was awake enough to know it was a bad idea, and I tossed my phone back onto my mini study table, falling back to sleep.
I dreamed of Jun, leaning against the tree at Nihondaira, lazy fireflies flitting through the sky. These ones didn’t bite; they just hummed in the air like live sparks from a fire, deep red and orange in color. Jun wrapped his arms around me tightly and I leaned against him, smelling the sweetness of cherry blossoms, the sharp pine of the rosin on his cello bow, the fresh lemon of his oiled shinai blade.
I jolted awake, and for a moment I couldn’t move, paralyzed by the guilt at such a thought.
“They’re just stupid dreams,” I whispered into the darkness, but it wouldn’t take away the pink from my cheeks. It wouldn’t slow the heartbeat I could hear in my ears.
I checked the clock—five-thirty.
Was Tomo awake? Was he lost in the nightmares of the Kami? He couldn’t possibly be sleeping worse than I was.
Well, maybe. At least I wasn’t getting chased by inugami in my dreams.
I tossed and turned until the sun rose. I heard the roar of the shower as Diane got ready for the day, but I didn’t budge. Life seemed better today if I didn’t get up.
After a while she knocked on my door and slid it open. My room was the traditional room of the apartment, which meant a sliding door and tatami floors. I even had a little alcove with a fake plant and a scroll in it.
“Katie?” she smiled. “Sleeping in?”
“A rare occasion here,” I mumbled. We usually had to go to school on Saturdays, too, for club activities.
“I’m going out with some teacher friends. I promised we’d meet up today—do you need anything before I head out? Breakfast or anything?”
“I’m fine,” I said, rubbing at my eyes.
“Did you sleep okay?”
“Not so much.” No point in denying it—I probably looked like crap.
“Listen, why don’t you call up Yuki or something? Get your mind off this boy.”
Yeah, right. My problems were way past mere boy troubles.
“Sure,” I said. “That’s a good idea.”
She smiled. “Positive you don’t need anything?”
“I’ll be fine. Have fun.”
Diane nodded and slid my door shut. I listen to the clunk of her shoes, the door clicking shut, the keys jingling in the lock.
I rolled around in self-pity for another couple minutes and then stumbled out of my room, searching the kitchen for food. I put a slice of thick toast in the toaster oven, watching the machine brighten with white-hot light as it seared the bread. When it dinged, I burned my fingers sliding the toast onto a plate and drowned the white crust in glistening honey. I gulped it down with a cold glass of black-bean tea.
Then I heard a thump against the front door. It wasn’t so much a knock as the sound of a body colliding with the wooden frame.
I froze, every part of me tingling with adrenaline. After a minute I tiptoed to the door, peering through the peephole. I could see Tomo’s copper spikes—matted and unbrushed—scrunched against the door, the rest of his body folded under him.
“Tomo,” I gasped, pulling the door inward. He slumped onto the genkan floor in a mound, breathing heavily. I knelt beside him, resting my arms on his shoulders. He lifted his head like it weighed a hundred pounds.
“Hey,” he panted.
“‘Hey’?” I repeated. “You collapse at my door and you say ‘hey’?”
His face was a map of bruises from the fight with the Yakuza, his nose a little puffy around the edges, his cheek swollen. I could finally do what I’d wanted at the police station. I traced my fingers along the bruises, but he winced.
Then I saw the cuts on his arms. Little jagged lines formed a star near his elbow and dried ink crusted around them like blood. It looked like a...a dog bite.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Close the door first,” he said, pointing at our pale green entryway. His jeans and sneakers stretched into the hallway where he’d collapsed. I hooked my arms under his and heaved. He pushed against the floor and I pulled him backward. By the time I made it to the raised floor, I was wheezing and sweaty.
“Okay, explain,” I said, clicking shut the front door. “This isn’t just from the Yakuza fight. I’m pretty sure they didn’t bite you.”
He pressed his elbows against the floor, rocking himself sideways until his upper body was upright. “I’ll be fine. I just need a minute.”
“Tomo,” I said, running my fingers over the bite marks. “What happened?”
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” he said. “Every time I drifted off, the nightmares shocked me awake. I dreamed of them again, Katie. The inugami. They were coming for me. I raced along the shore of Suruga Bay, by the strawberry farms. Up the thousand steps to Mount Kuno.”
We’d taken the ropeway to Kunozan Toshogu Shrine, but there was another way up, by climbing the steps up the steep mountainside by the water.
Tomo inched away and rested his back against the raised floor of the hallway. He lifted his palms, twisting them back and forth as he remembered. “There was blood on my hands,” he said. “I think I’d...”
I was glad he didn’t finish the thought. I didn’t want to know. “Real or dream?”
“I don’t know. Dream, I think. There’s nothing on them now. I’ve had sick nightmares before, Katie, and they’ve always been horrible but...this one was so vivid. I reached the roumon gate, the one that knocked me out last time. But this time it crumbled around me. I broke it.”
“You were stronger than the security system,” I said, and he nodded. He ran a hand through his copper hair, and the golden dust of ink sprinkled onto the floor.
“And then the inugami, the one you saw growling. It was alive, Katie. It came at me with a mouthful of teeth.” He raised the bite marks toward me.
The chill raced through me, everything feeling like pinpricks.
I whispered, “It was a dream, right?”
His voice was quiet, gentle. “Then how the hell did it bite me, Katie?”
My voice shook. “I don’t know.”
He curled his legs slowly under himself, resting his bitten arm against the edge of the raised floor. I reached out to support him, walking him down the hallway toward my room. The couch was too small and he looked like a mess. He needed to lie down.
I slid my door open, wishing I’d tidied things up a bit. I nearly tripped over my phone on the tatami. I helped him onto my pink comforter and he grunted as he swung his legs over.
“Just a minute,” I said and raced into our shower room, grabbing a fresh washcloth and wringing it out in the sink. I sat down beside him in my pajamas, dabbing the crusted ink away from the bite marks. The wounds were pink, and he winced as I mopped at them.
“Domo,” Tomohiro said through gritted teeth.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “You look like an ink painting yourself, Tomo. You’re bruised black-and-blue, and you’re so pale.” I felt stupid after I’d said it.
“Oi,” he said, but his voice was faint. He was only giving me the reaction I wanted.
“Sorry,” I said. I wiped up the last of the ink on his arm and lowere
d it back down.
He reached for my hand, curling his fingers around mine.
“I haven’t told you everything.”
My mind buzzed with possibility. My skin felt cold as ice where his fingers touched mine.
He looked at me carefully, his bangs spread across the tips of his eyelashes. “When I woke up...Katie, I woke up at Kunozan.”
“What?”
“I was there. The gate wasn’t damaged, but I was on the other side of it, just inside the trees at the back of the shrine.”
My throat was dry. I wanted to go into the kitchen and get my black-bean tea, to pretend none of this had happened. “You were sleepwalking?”
He sounded frustrated. “I don’t know.” Had he blacked out and gone the whole way to Nihondaira? Maybe it had felt like a dream because he wasn’t in control—maybe the Kami side of him had taken over again.
His fingers pulled away from mine and ran through his bangs, pushing them back to his ears as he lay back. “How much was a dream?” His voice got louder, agitated. “I don’t even fucking know what’s real anymore, Katie. What the hell is happening to me?”
“Hey,” I said, my voice shaking. “It’s okay. Just lie down for a bit. We’ll figure it out.”
He grabbed at me, his arms wrapping around and pulling me close. He smelled of warm spice mixed with the sourness of dried ink. My head pressed against his heart, listening to it beat in my ear as his breath tickled against my forehead.
“I’m scared,” he whispered, and he was so vulnerable in that moment that he was almost someone else, that I almost couldn’t recognize him.
He clung to me until he fell asleep, his chest rising and falling slowly on my soft pink comforter.
* * *
It was an hour before he woke up, his eyes opening first and looking around, trying to figure out where he was.
I sat up from the zabuton cushion where I’d been hunched over my laptop, searching the internet for any help I could find. Sleepwalking, inugami, Susanou, Yomi—none of them had yielded any help. Apparently no one had ever been bitten by a dream before, or whatever it was that had happened.
