by Amanda Sun
“Katie!” Tanaka said. “You okay?” Tomo couldn’t take his eyes off the board.
I steadied myself against Tanaka. He was strong for someone so lean and willowy. He helped me stand as Yuki twisted between the rows of desks to reach us. “I know,” Tanaka said. “It’s bad. But don’t get too upset, okay? It’s just a stupid prank.”
I wish.
Yuki rested her hand on my shoulder. “Who would do something like this?”
Suzuki-sensei entered our classroom, stopping abruptly as he stared at the giant kanji.
There was silence for a moment while he was as stunned as the rest of us.
Tomohiro looked deathly pale. I could see his hands shaking from here.
Suzuki’s face turned bright red. “Who is responsible?” he said, his voice boiling over like a rice cooker.
No one answered. I chanced another look at Tomohiro. He needed to get out of here before people noticed him. He didn’t belong in our classroom; what if they accused him of writing the kanji? Tanaka had told me before that Tomo’s calligraphy style was really easy to pick out. Was this it? And was this his fault? Like the fireworks, this was ink that had spun out of control. It had to be him—it couldn’t be anyone else.
“Who is responsible?” shrieked Suzuki, and the sound jolted the class to movement.
“We don’t know, sir,” Tanaka said. “It’s in every classroom.”
“Tanaka, get the headmaster.”
Tanaka nodded, then looked at me with concern. “Will you be okay?”
Yuki reached for my arm. “I’ll help her,” she said. “Go.” I looked at her gratefully. I probably wouldn’t collapse again, but I was glad to have her beside me.
“Yuu Tomohiro,” barked Suzuki. “Get to your own classroom. Now.”
Tomo didn’t move. He stared at the board, transfixed.
“Who did this?” Tomo said, his voice wavering.
I stared at him. What did he mean? He knew it was the ink, didn’t he?
His voice shook with anger. “Who the hell thought this was funny?” He looked around the room, his eyes narrowed and fiery. My stomach flipped with fear. Don’t lose control, I pleaded in my head. You’ll only make it worse.
“Yuu,” Suzuki snapped. “Out.”
“Maybe you did it,” said a voice at the back of the classroom. Everything turned to ice as I stared at the student who’d spoken up. “We heard what happened at the prefecture tournament,” he said. “The ink that splattered on the ground when you knocked that boy over. You could write kanji like these. Didn’t you used to be in Calligraphy Club with Ichirou?”
So someone else had seen it, and now everything was unraveling.
Another student chimed in, “I saw the police take you away after. I heard you bashed in Takahashi’s hand so you’d win.”
“That’s a lie,” I said before I could stop myself.
“I heard he had to transfer schools because he almost killed a kid,” said another classmate.
“Enough,” ordered Suzuki. “Yuu, to your classroom. The rest of you, keep it to yourselves until the headmaster gets here. We don’t know who’s responsible, and pointing the finger at each other won’t help.”
Tomohiro shook, heaving in deep breaths. He stared at the last boy who’d spoken. “You don’t know anything,” he said. “I didn’t do any of this. I would never hurt anyone.” His eyes flashed to me. “Never.”
“You did,” the boy said. “You almost killed him.”
“It wasn’t me!” Tomo shouted. “This isn’t me!” He stormed to the front of the classroom, knocking over the desks in his way. They crashed to the ground on their sides. I cringed against Yuki at the sound of it.
“Yuu-san,” Yuki called out, but he didn’t listen.
He reached for the huge kanji that said , “death.” He pressed his palms against the chalkboard and smeared the ink around, blurring the strokes of the kanji together until it said nothing at all.
“Yamenasai!” ordered Suzuki, but Tomo didn’t stop. He moved on to the next, his hands stained black as he crossed out the kanji. It splattered around like a modern-art project, dripping down his arms onto his white school shirt and the cuffs of his blazer, dripping onto his bare skin where the top buttons had been left unbuttoned.
“Yuu, yamenasai!”
The tears blurred in my eyes as I watched him. He stalked out of the room and to the class across the hall, swiping his hands through the ink on their wall, the blackness of it dripping in his hair and onto his gold buttons.
“Chigau!” he yelled. It’s different, it meant. It’s not true. It’s not who I am. Every meaning of defiance held in that single word. “Chigau! Chigau!”
“Tomo,” I cried, staggering across the hallway. “Stop.”
He looked at me, and the pain in his eyes hurt so much that I felt it. I could feel the pain in my heart, as if it were my own.
His body heaved with his breath, and then he took off running down the hallway. I followed; I couldn’t lose him, not now.
“Tomo!” I shouted, but he didn’t slow down. I could hear his cries of anguish as he raced through the hall, leaving a trail of ink behind him.
He entered the boys’ change room by the gym, where he always prepared for Kendo Club. I pushed the door in behind him. I thought for a minute and locked the door behind me. If he was going to be taken over by the ink, then I needed to salvage what was left of his secret.
Along the white tiled wall ran a row of faucets, all sharing the same deep troughlike sink. Tomo fumbled with the tap, his slippery ink-covered hands shaking too much to turn it on. The tears streaked down his face, carving lines through the splatters on his face, trailing along the edges of the bruises.
The tap finally turned, and he reached his hands under the flow to wash the ink away.
But there was no water.
Ink poured from the faucet, spraying against the bottom of the trough and coating Tomohiro’s hands black.
He wailed and turned on the next faucet, and more ink poured out.
“Tomo,” I said, reaching for the faucet near me. We turned them all, and the ink flowed in. I twisted the handles shut but they kept pouring, the trough filling up with blackness, ink spilling over the sides and dripping onto the floor.
Tomo let out a scream and hit the side of the trough with his palms. He turned and slammed a bathroom stall door as hard as he could. It swung inward and crashed against the wall, the sound echoing around the change room. Tomo dropped down by the trough, his feet flat and his arms wrapped around his knees. He let out a strangled sob. “I’m not evil. I’m not.”
I bent down beside him and wrapped my arms around him, the ink warm and slippery against my blazer sleeves.
“I know,” I said. “I know.” But I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure. The more I saw, the more I thought it might be true after all, as horrible as it was to admit.
“I didn’t choose this,” he said, his voice frantic. “I never chose this. Why am I being punished when I didn’t have a choice?”
Someone pushed against the locked change-room door, and we looked up, eyes wide.
“Yuu-san!” Headmaster Yoshinoma banged against the door, his voice gruff and serious. “Open this door.”
“I can’t let them see me like this,” he whispered, his inky fingers linking with mine. “What am I going to do?”
I looked at the door on the other wall of the change room that led to the tennis courts. “Run,” I said. “Go somewhere safe.”
“Where do I have that’s safe?”
More banging on the door. “Yuu!”
“Go,” I whispered harshly. “Home.”
“I can’t. My dad’s home until lunch and he’ll kill me if I show up during school hours. And I can’t go to Toro Iseki.�
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“Nihondaira, then.”
“How the hell am I going to get so far?”
“It’s quiet up there, isn’t it? It’s safe.”
He nodded.
“Go ahead, and I’ll meet you there later.”
His eyes widened. “You can’t. What if it gets worse? You have to stay away, Katie. Promise you’ll stay away.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Please.” He was using puppy-dog eyes. It wasn’t fair. “You can’t follow. I’ll text you, okay?”
“Yuu, if you don’t let us in right now—”
“Run,” he said. “Get out of here so you don’t get in trouble.”
“Too late for that,” I said. “They saw me chase after you. I’ll stay here and smooth it over. Just go!”
“I’m sorry.” His fingers squeezed mine, the ink warm as it squelched between us. Like we were in kindergarten playing in the mud, about to get in trouble for wrecking our uniforms. I wished that was all it was.
“Go!” I hissed. The headmaster pushed against the door, and then Tomo was gone, out to the tennis courts and around the side of the school. He’d make for the bike racks, and then? Wouldn’t everyone notice him stained with ink? I hoped it would dry, lift off him like sparks or golden fireflies the way it sometimes did.
“Yuu Tomohiro!” barked Suzuki-sensei’s voice from the other side of the door. I went along the row of taps, twisting them off as I approached the door. It was easy now that Tomohiro had left. The last two ran clear trails of water through the ink as I turned them off. I pulled the dead bolt back on the door and swung it open. Headmaster Yoshinoma was there with Suzuki-sensei beside him, followed by Watanabe and Nakamura. They all peered at me, awaiting an explanation.
“He’s not well,” I said. It’s the first thing I could think of. “He left. He feels sick.”
“I bet he does,” Suzuki-sensei said, “pulling something like this.”
“Chigaimasu,” I said, using the polite form of the word Tomo had shouted over and over. It’s not true. It’s different. “It’s not what you think. This is a prank, but he didn’t do it.”
“Then why did he run?”
The headmaster peered past me into the change room, his eyes bulging. “And what happened in here?”
I looked carefully at the teachers. I needed a good explanation.
“He was washing the ink off, but they ran it through the pipes somehow,” I said. “Look, there was an incident in elementary school, but it wasn’t Tomo—Yuu’s fault. A dog attacked his friend, but he always blamed himself. This is bullying, Headmaster. It’s a bullying prank. Yuu wouldn’t do something like this.”
I paused, hoping they’d believe me.
“Katie, back to class,” Suzuki-sensei said at last. “This doesn’t concern you.”
Like hell it didn’t.
“Suspend him, I think, and possible expulsion,” muttered one of the teachers, and another nodded in agreement.
“But—”
“Back to class now,” Suzuki-sensei said, and I knew I had lost. I nodded, walking toward my classroom.
But as soon as I was around the corner, I dashed for the genkan. I pulled my shoes on quickly, waiting to be discovered, but with the chaos no one seemed to notice. I snuck a peek at Tomo’s cubby—empty, his notebook and shoes gone, his slippers scattered on the floor by a trail of black ink. They must have fallen out in the hurry. I shoved my uniform loafers on and raced into the courtyard, tucking my hair over my shoulder to try to conceal it.
Sneaking out of school sucked when you were the only blonde girl.
The ink trail stopped at the gate of the school. I thought about hiding in Sunpu Park until Tomo was ready for me to join him in Nihondaira. He would text me eventually to meet up, wouldn’t he? Was it really too dangerous to be near Tomo? No—it scared me more to think that he was up there on the mountain alone. What if he fell apart? What if he lost himself?
But it was more than I understood, more than I could handle. I needed help. Whether Tomo liked it or not, we couldn’t do this alone.
I turned sharply down the street and ran toward Katakou School.
I raced through the courtyard, the crowds sparse with all the students in class. I could phone Jun’s keitai, but that would get him in serious trouble with his teacher—if he even heard it ring.
I stopped at the entrance to their genkan. How would I find Jun? I didn’t even know his classroom.
I could hear voices from the side of the school, girls chatting and laughing. I walked around the side of the school to look—maybe they could help me. I started preparing myself for the mortifying questions I’d ask. What if I got in a lot of trouble for being on school grounds during classes?
But this was big. I thought of Tomo cycling toward Nihondaira—panicked, not sure what was real, what was a dream. Not sure what was going to happen to him, or to me.
I reached the school tennis court. Girls in white shirts and green shorts, the school PE uniform, bounced tennis balls on their rackets, up and down, never going anywhere, always the same, hoping they wouldn’t drop them.
Please don’t let my world drop.
And then I recognized one of them, the girl I’d met a few times in the courtyard of the school. She caught sight of me, too, as I shyly pulled away from the side of the building.
“Hana,” I said, but my voice was too quiet for her to hear me. She made some excuse to her friend and jogged over, her hair pulled back by a white terry-cloth headband that was too tight for her head.
“Katie,” she said in English. “Everything okay?”
“Not really. Do you know what class Jun is in? I need to talk to him.”
She looked over her shoulder at the group of girls, who were pretending to play tennis while eavesdropping and whispering about me. “You could get in a lot of trouble for being here during class hours.”
“Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t important.”
She hesitated a minute. “I think he’s in Hasegawa’s class,” she said, “but I’m not sure. But you’re in luck—we’ve been given a free period this morning to work on our demos for the upcoming school festival.”
Right—the music he’d been practicing with Ikeda. It was hard to imagine he had a normal school life. It was hard to remember any of us having a normal life.
“You remember the music room?” she said, and I nodded. “Go one door farther, and you’ll find the auditorium. I bet they’re practicing in there.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Just try not to let anyone see you and your friend, okay? And don’t tell them I helped you.”
What friend, I wondered? She must mean Jun. “No problem,” I said and she smiled, raising her racket behind her head, her other hand gripped around the tennis ball.
“You could be really good for him, you know?” she said. “He just hasn’t been the same since his dad— Anyway. See you later.”
“Oh, we’re not—” I said, but she’d already turned back to her tennis practice. I turned and sidled along the building, trying to look as inconspicuous as a blonde gaijin in a different school uniform can look sneaking around a wall. How long ago had Jun’s dad died? Did everyone know what had happened except me? I thought about what Jun had said at the police station, how he was recognized wherever he went. Had journalists like my mom dug at his life story and published in the newspapers? I wished I’d thought to search him on the internet the way I’d searched Tomo. I wondered what I’d find.
I eased through the genkan and down the maze of hallways toward the music room. Whenever I came to a classroom, I ducked under the row of windows and crawled. I felt like a moron, but a stupid thrill ran through me anyway. I felt like I belonged in one of those police dramas Jun liked as my elbows
skimmed the cold vinyl floors of the school.
I thought of Tomo in the wide-open space of Nihondaira, the sky above him. It had looked dark on the way over from Suntaba, like it was going to rain. Was he sitting beneath the giant bonsai tree waiting for me? I crawled faster.
I reached the last classroom and hurried down the hallway to the music room. I went one past to the auditorium, which had multiple doors for entering. I approached the closest and pulled the cold metal handle.
The door opened to darkness and warm, musty air. It smelled stale and slightly metallic, like gum and spit, like old sweat on fabric and carpets that needed replacing. I walked soundlessly between the rows of seats. The floor sloped down to the stage in front of me, where three soft spotlights lit up the stage just past a glow. My eyes adjusted, and then I saw him.
Jun sat in a black chair in the middle of the glowing lights. He wore his white dress shirt and navy pants, his blazer crumpled over the side of the stage with his book bag leaning against it. There was a strip of black against his wrist where he wore the studded bracelet that covered some of his Kami scars. As he moved under the spotlights, the spikes around his wrist and the earring in his ear glinted like some sort of broken Morse code I didn’t understand.
He held his cello upright and the bow spanned the instrument, poised the way he held his shinai before a match started. I looked for Ikeda and a black piano to materialize in the shadows of the stage, but she wasn’t there. Jun and I were alone in the darkness, in the thick air heavy with silence.
He drew the bow across the cello.
The richness of the wood vibrated through the air, the sound so deep I could feel it in my heart. The panic I’d arrived in retreated to the back of my mind for a moment. His life was so composed and peaceful next to the one I was living. Jun was a calm lake; Tomo was a waterfall. And I was the water, swept every which way, unable to shape myself into what I wanted.
The tone of the cello lifted through the auditorium. The notes were quick, always returning to a deep constant sound in between the higher melody. The tone was mournful and joyful at the same time, bittersweet doom with a note of hope in it. Beethoven, maybe? No...I knew this piece. Mom had listened to it before when she was writing a piece on a local cello player who’d joined the New York Philharmonic.
