by Amanda Sun
“Tomo?” I said quietly, lifting my laptop to my table and snicking its lid shut.
“Katie,” he said. “How long was I asleep?”
“Not that long.” I lifted myself onto the comforter beside him. “Are you feeling better?”
“Yeah,” he said. “A lot.”
“Good.” I’d been worried that being near him would make his nightmares worse.
He scrambled upright, leaning his back against the wall. “Did I...? I collapsed in your genkan, didn’t I? Oh god. I’m such an idiot.”
I scrunched up my face in confusion. “Yeah,” I said, “how dare you fall over bleeding in my doorway? What are you talking about?”
“Scaring you. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’m not scared,” I lied. “I’m used to this by now.”
“That’s not a good thing, you know.”
“I’m fine with it.”
Tomohiro lifted his hand and traced his fingertips down my cheek. I leaned in and pressed my lips again his. The world was sweetness; why did everything feel right when we were like this?
He pulled back just a little, his words floating across my lips. “So this is your room, huh? Where’s the giant poster of me?”
“I’m getting it laminated.”
He grinned and laced his fingers through my hair, the feel of it sending buzzing happy pinpricks shooting through me.
I stared at the trail of scars up his arm.
“What happened with the police?” I said quietly.
He sighed, shaking out his bangs and leaning back against my wall. “That feels like years ago. Tousan was so pissed.”
“I gathered that,” I said. I couldn’t get the image of him slapping Tomohiro out of my mind. It was so horrible, so cold. What bothered me most was the truth it revealed—Tomo’s dad was more worried about his pride than his son.
“You saw,” he said, his voice hollow, his eyes tired and red.
I shook my head. “I just saw the way he stormed to his car.” At least I could save him some embarrassment. “I called you last night, but you didn’t pick up.”
“He took my keitai. Scared I was going to call my goons and come up with more evil plots.” He laughed, but the sound was hollow and filled with scorn.
“How much trouble are you in, Tomo?”
“I have bigger problems than the police,” he said, lifting his arm to inspect the dog bite by his elbow. “Sato was in way more trouble than me. They said I was a first-time offender and I didn’t use a weapon. Plus when they found out who my dad was, they figured I’d just made a bad choice of friends. They wanted to know why Takahashi was hanging around the police station waiting for me, whether we’re both involved in gangs. But at least they figure there’s no deeper meaning to my injuries, like gambling on the tournament, so for the moment the pressure’s off.”
I bit my lip, feeling awkward. “I told him to leave.”
“It’s not my business.”
The guilt pulsed through me and I felt like I would be sick. Somehow him not caring was worse than him getting upset. “Tomo, there’s nothing more to it.”
“You’ve become close, though.”
“Chigau,” I said, shaking my head firmly.
He snorted, trailing his finger down my cheek and onto my lips. “Usotsuki,” he accused me, and he was right. I was a liar.
“I wanted to find out more,” I blurted. Maybe now was the right time to tell him everything. He was falling apart anyway. Maybe we needed some new info to get the ink in check. “He told me I might be an artificial Kami, that my mom might have ingested the ink. He was right, Tomo.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“About the Samurai and Imperial Kami.”
Tomo smirked. “He’d like that kind of hierarchy. I suppose he’s an Imperial type. An emperor or a prince or some shit.”
Wow. He’d hit it on the head. But I didn’t like the snarky way he’d said it.
“Actually, he thought you were both Imperial Kami.” Why was I defending him? “But I have my own theory.”
“Which is?” He tilted his head to one side and his bangs slanted across the tip of his ear. I reached out and tucked them behind it, unable to stop myself.
This was the moment. And it was hard.
“I’ve been thinking that maybe not all Kami are descended from Amaterasu.”
Silence. He didn’t understand yet what I was saying.
“There are other kami, right? Why should Amaterasu be the only one with children?”
“Of course the others had children,” Tomo said. “But not human children. Hell, not even all of Amaterasu’s Kami manifest the ink. Why look to other ancestors?” But he sounded uncertain. I could see him processing the idea as he spoke.
“Okay, but she’s the kami of the sun, right? And your drawings have nothing to do with sunshine, Tomo. Storms, yes. Rain, yes. Earthquakes. Lightning. Dragons and demons.”
He laughed once, like he couldn’t believe me. “Because that’s what I draw, Katie! You want me to doodle a sun with a pair of sunglasses on? What about the wagtails and the butterflies? The horse? What about the koi?”
I took a deep breath. “Koi can turn into dragons, too. And one time Amaterasu’s brother threw a dead horse at her to frighten her.”
His eyes went dark then, not alien and vacant like when the ink took over, but like they’d been extinguished. He was staring at me, but I felt like he couldn’t really see me. They were cold, like Jun’s.
“Her brother,” he said, his voice flat. “You think I’m descended from Susanou. The gatekeeper of Yomi.”
“I don’t know.” I reached my arms out wide as I shrugged. “It would make a lot of sense, wouldn’t it? Why the ink is so destructive to you, why everything that happens to us relates back to things associated with Susanou.”
“Not everything relates back.”
“And the shrines you keep dreaming about. Itsukushima Shrine, the one Taira rebuilt—it’s dedicated to daughters of Susanou. And Kunozan, where the inugami attacked you. It was built by Tokugawa, right? And Tokugawa restored the Sengen Shrine for another of Susanou’s daughters.”
Tomohiro sighed loudly, burying his head in his hands. “That’s messed up,” he said, his voice muffled through his fingers. “So I really am a demon, is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m not,” I said. “I—I just—”
He looked up slowly, his eyes cold and angry.
“You’re telling me I’m the heir to the ruler of Yomi, Katie. The World of Darkness. Hell. What does that make me?”
My body buzzed with the adrenaline of telling him the truth, the horror of it. I wanted to be sick. I wanted to run and never come back.
“I didn’t say that,” I said.
“You’re scared of me,” he said. “Look at you.”
“I’m not.” My voice practically squeaked like a mouse.
“Then that’s it,” he said. “If you’re right about this, I’m beyond redemption.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be horrible. I know it’s coming out that way. I just want to figure this out so I can help.”
“I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense,” Tomo said. He lay back and rested his arms on the back of his head, his elbows jutting out to either side of my pillow. “But it means we’re right back where we started.”
I lay down beside him, and he draped an arm over me without speaking. He didn’t hate me, then. “Back where we started. Meaning...?”
He looked at me, and his eyes were deep and beautiful. I wanted to kiss his eyelids, to turn my back on this nightmare and lie beside him forever.
“Meaning,” he said, “that you need to run like hell from me.”
The
tears brimmed in my eyes as I nestled into his warmth. Our legs and stomachs were little explosions of heat where we touched. The spikes of his hair tickled the tip of my ear.
“I don’t want to,” I whispered.
He kissed the top of my head.
“You have to, and you can’t look back.”
“I’m sorry.” I hadn’t meant to break us. I thought there would be hope in figuring it out. But Tomo was right. How could there be hope or exile from what he was? He was falling apart before our eyes.
“Gomen,” he said into my hair. “I’m so sorry. I should never have dragged you into this. God, I was so selfish.”
“No,” I said. “I wanted this. I still want this.”
“Gomen,” he said again.
And then it was over.
I could barely drag myself up for school the next day. How could I face math and biology and chemistry when my world was crumbling? I considered being sick for the day, telling Diane I had a fever and staying under the covers and pretending the world had stopped spinning. But I couldn’t hide from this forever. If I stayed home, it would look bad to Suzuki-sensei, and it would be yet another red circle on my list of reasons to go to an international school. I couldn’t lose the rest of my life, and so I pulled out my school uniform and tied my red handkerchief around my neck, desperate to hang on to the fragments I had left.
Besides, at least I could see Tomo at school.
Running the other way was not going to be easy.
I walked to school slowly, my blazer buttoned against the fall chill and my kneesocks pulled as high as I could stretch them.
I thought maybe Tomo would have early-morning kendo practice for the seniors, but of course he had the day off, since the prefecture tournament was finished. So when I walked past the Suntaba School Gate, he was there at the bike racks, leaning against the wall and talking to Ishikawa. Their bruised faces matched like a sad pair of twins. Tomo had his blazer completely buttoned, too, and his sleeve cuffs turned down. He’d have to with all those bruises and bite marks.
I watched the two of them together for a minute. A girl stopped to talk to them, her black hair curling around her shoulders. It was like an electric shock pulsed through my whole body. She moved on with a friendly wave, the talk completely innocent.
Oh god. What would it be like when Tomo got a new girlfriend? My heart twisted and felt like it dropped into my stomach.
But he wouldn’t, I told myself. It was too risky, so I didn’t have to imagine it. He’d be alone...but that was a horrible thought, too.
His eyes caught mine across the courtyard and I felt frozen, thinking of the first time I saw him at the gate that day, the way he’d slouched like he was doing now. He stepped toward me like he had that time. He shoes made the same click-click-click on the courtyard concrete. The breeze picked up the scent of his vanilla hair gel and the miso still on his lips from breakfast.
I wanted to kiss it off, but instead I stood and tried to breathe. I watched the momiji leaves swirl lazily from their branches and down to the roof over the hundreds of bikes parked in the racks.
“Ohayo,” Tomo said, his voice velvet and honey and mirin syrupy sweet. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to collapse into his arms.
Instead, I breathed in. And then I breathed out. And my heart beat in my ears and clawed at my sides like a caged dragon.
“Morning,” I said. It felt like a flock of wagtails pecking at my arms and legs.
“Doing okay?”
“Yeah.” The sour sound of furin chiming in my head.
“I brought you something.” He reached into his blazer pocket and pulled his hand out in a fist so I couldn’t see what he was holding.
“A breakup present?” I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it was hard enough talking to him right now. Why was he giving me a gift? I thought he’d wanted me to run the other way.
He shook his head, not meeting my eyes. “Oi,” he said. “It’s not like that. We don’t have a choice.” He moved his hand toward me and waited, so I held out my palm. He opened his hand, his fingers brushing against mine.
It was like living in one of the Basho haikus we’d learned in Japanese class. The beauty of the dying flower.
On dead branches
Crows remain perched
At autumn’s end.
The gift fell from his opened hand into my palm. It was a tiny pouch made of pale yellow fabric, with pink cherry blossoms weaving through the cloth. At the top of the pouch hung a little golden bell and then a braided pink-and-yellow strap for attaching it to a bag or phone. Pink kanji were embroidered on the front, reading from top to bottom.
“It’s an omamori,” Tomo said. “A charm from Sengen Jinja. I picked it up this morning.”
“You made it through the gate?” I said, but he shook his head.
“I went around.” He winked, like it was funny.
It wasn’t.
“It reminded me of the yukata you wore to Abekawa Hanabi. That moment when I knew we didn’t have to say goodbye.”
My throat was dry, my voice cracked. “We are saying goodbye, Tomo.”
“I know,” he said. “But I didn’t know that then. I just knew we had possibility. The possibility to choose.”
It seemed so long ago. I remembered the stall with the furin chimes. The sound of possibility, the vendor had said. The chance to choose how your life would go.
“Give me your keitai.”
I reached into my book bag and handed it over. He looped the charm strap through the top of my phone, the little bell jingling like a lost cat.
“What does it say?” I said, looking at the kanji.
Tomo’s lips were dry. He looked like he hadn’t slept all night.
“Yaku-yoke mamoru,” he said. “‘Protection from Evil.’”
The chill of it broke my heart. “You’re not evil.”
“I am,” he said. “I am.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to break into a million pieces. He put the phone back in my hand. The little bell jingled.
“May I walk you to class, Katie?” My name melted like sugar on his tongue.
“Okay,” I whispered.
We walked stiffly beside each other into the genkan. We changed our shoes in silence, on opposite sides of the room assigned to our school years. We joined up in front of the door to the school. He slid it open, and I stepped forward to walk through.
His fingers slid around my wrist and tugged me back gently.
I looked at him, the touch of his warm skin shocking me out of my defenses. I couldn’t handle this. We needed to just rip the bandage off, didn’t we? This was torture.
We were standing where I’d seen him for the first time, on the stairs where Myu had slapped him, where his drawings had rained down around me.
“Suki,” he whispered, his eyes gleaming. I love you.
“Suki,” I said.
And then his fingers slipped away from my wrist, like sand in the empty top of an hourglass. Our time was up.
“Sayonara,” he said. No one ever said that kind of goodbye except when things were final, when they were over.
“No,” I said in English. I refused to say it. I wouldn’t. I stepped up onto the school floor and turned toward my room. He followed me like a ghost.
I walked slowly, not wanting to reach the room. Then it would be over.
It was already over.
Everyone stared at us as we passed. I guess we both looked like a wreck. But they were staring way too intently—how would they know we broke up? I touched my hand to my face. Was something up?
Tomo noticed, too, and glanced at me with a confused look.
Maybe they’d heard about the kendo tournament? But no one was congratulating him on his incre
dible matches or perfect form. No one was saying anything loud enough that I could hear.
They were whispering.
“Something’s wrong,” I said, and we peeked in the next classroom.
A group of second years stood staring at the front of their homeroom, hands dropped to their sides or covering their mouths. None of them paid attention to us arriving.
I stepped into the room.
Giant kanji made of thick ink dripped on the front wall of the class, spanning the chalkboards from floor to ceiling. The ink oozed slowly down the characters like blood and pooled on the floor with an oily sheen.
Demon Son, it read. You cannot hide.
“Oh my god,” I whispered, my eyes wide. I’d never seen anything like this before.
Behind me I heard a crash, and I turned. Tomo was shaking, his book bag on the floor with its contents spilling out. His eyes were huge and horrified.
“Katie,” Tanaka sang from the hallway, walking over to us. “Tomo-kun.” He grinned. “Wrong classroom, dorks.”
“What the hell is this?” I said, pointing at the ominous kanji.
“Some kind of stupid prank,” Tanaka said. “It’s in all the classrooms.”
Tomo’s words wavered, his voice barely audible. “All of them?”
“Yeah.”
Tomohiro bolted across the hallway, and I followed. He raced in the doorway, where another group of students stood gawking at their ink-coated chalkboard.
There is no escape from betrayal. You will kill.
I lifted my hand to my mouth as I started to retch. This couldn’t be happening.
Tomo burst from the room and raced down the hall; I chased after him. He sped toward my classroom, 1-D. He slid the door open so hard it slammed into the wall.
I entered the room behind him.
There is only death. She must die.
It couldn’t mean me, could it? It couldn’t.
My legs collapsed under me.
Someone caught me as I went down. All I could think was how different his arms were from Tomohiro’s.
