Ink

by Amanda Sun

  The first time I told Nan I was going to live in a mansion, she’d flipped with excitement. But Japanese mansions are just newer buildings divided into tiny apartments—no caviar or butlers included.

  I entered the automatic doors of our mansion, the bright golden lights of the lobby a stark contrast to the city streets outside. I hoisted the bike into the elevator, and when I fumbled with the lock on our door, Diane’s footsteps thundered to the other side and she yanked it open.

  “Katie,” she said, pulling me inside. “I was worried out of my mind! I almost called the police, you know. I thought you’d been in an accident.”

  “I do know how to ride a bike,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you call? Do you know what time it is?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know it got so late.”

  Diane sighed and rubbed her forehead. She stopped suddenly and felt around with her fingertips.

  “I think you’re officially giving me wrinkles,” she said and walked toward the bathroom mirror.

  “You’re just being dramatic,” I said as she poked and prodded the skin.

  “So where on earth did you go? Even with cleaning duty, it wouldn’t make you this late.”

  “Um.” The moment in Toro Iseki felt precious suddenly, and I was unwilling to share it. “Just out. With a friend.”

  “Yuki? Doesn’t she have Sewing Club on Wednesdays?”

  Shit.

  “A different friend.” I could feel my cheeks blazing.

  “Katie, is something going on that you don’t want to tell me?”

  The hairs on the back of my neck started to rise. I did not want a conversation like that.

  “Like what, host clubs filled with beer and pretty boys?

  Pachinko? Drugs? Nothing like that, Diane. You know I’m not into any shit.”

  “I know, I’m just scared that someone will influence you.

  And watch it, by the way.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Just tell me the truth, Katie. Where did you go?”

  I stood there, frozen. Telling her I broke into Toro was not a good idea. Telling her drawings were looking at me was not a good idea. Telling her I went for dinner with a senior boy who put his friend in the hospital was not a good idea, even if it was just as friends, or rivals, or whatever exactly we were. I broke under the pressure.

  “I went for a bike ride and dinner with Tanaka,” I said.

  Diane’s expression changed in an almost comically slow way.

  It was like she finally got it, and I felt a little guilty that she was so off the mark.

  “Katie, why didn’t you just tell me? I would’ve understood.”

  I was trapped in my own lies, and I wished I could just hightail it out of there.

  “It’s kind of stuff I want to keep to myself, you know?” I said. My arms and neck felt itchy.

  “Well, but if you want to talk… I want you to be smart about things, Katie. I’m not as…traditional as your mom, and I’m not going to assume that you’ll be fine without any advice.”

  “Ew.” It popped out; I couldn’t help it. “Diane, it was just dinner and a bike ride. It wasn’t sex.” Diane’s face turned bright red and I wondered who this conversation was really the most awkward for.

  “I know, but these things have a way of speeding up,” she stuttered.

  “Okay, more than I want to know or think. Please spare me.”

  “Fine, but we also need to put some sort of system in place.

  I can’t be wondering where you are all the time.” Great. So now she was going to limit my freedom. Bring on the lock-down.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re inflicting Japanese-style curfews,” I said. Yuki had told me horror stories about hers.

  Diane smirked. “I’d like to put enough trust in you that you don’t need a curfew,” she said. “I know your mom always hated those. It’s not how much time you’re out there.

  It’s what you’re spending that time on and who you’re spending that time with.”

  “So the deal is…?”

  “The deal is we’ll get you a keitai, and I want you to let me know when you go places and where you are.”

  I couldn’t really see a downside to that, so I just shrugged.

  “Sounds fine,” I said.

  “Good. I just worry, Katie, you know? I’m just not used to this whole being a—” She stopped just short of saying it.

  A mom.

  “I know,” I said, my throat dry.

  “Your mom’s counting on me.”

  I saw the sadness then in her eyes, the way her brows knit together the way Mom’s always did. The same creases on her face, the small bridge of her nose, the thin lips that curved into a worried frown. She was like her somehow, an older vision of the same spirit.

  I felt the hot tears well up in my eyes and I blinked them back.

  “You’re doing great,” I said, squeezing her arm. I breathed slowly as I passed her, walking toward my bedroom and sliding the door shut.

  I turned off the light and lay on my bed. I let my breath escape, and then I let the tears come, the ones I’d been holding in since Toro Iseki. I could be angry if I wanted. I could be changed. I could be myself.

  What would Mom have said about him? I felt like the real Tomohiro was tangled in this other personality that wasn’t his. How could he be gentle, understanding, beautiful like that, and still treat Myu with such cruelty? I was sure now that the cold badass at school wasn’t who he really was. But why all the lies? What was he hiding?

  I grabbed another tissue, trying to cry quietly. I didn’t want Diane to hear, even though I bet she knew and was giving me space. She was doing her best. I knew it. But this just wasn’t home, and she’d never be my mom.

  There would always be a void. And my shoulders shook with relief that I didn’t have to fill it.

  Friday morning the clouds gathered over Shizuoka, and by the time I reached the school, the rain had drenched the city in the way that only a spring rain can.

  I could barely focus on the equations Suzuki-sensei scribbled onto the board in last class. When the bell chimed and students began gathering up their books, I got to my feet and packed up my book bag, then stuffed it into my desk. I wiped off the blackboards and mopped the classroom floor while Tanaka lifted the chairs and flipped them upside down onto the desks, pushing the units against the walls.

  By the time we’d scrubbed the classroom spotless, sweat was dripping down my forehead.

  “We’re going for okonomiyaki, ” Yuki said. “Can you come?”

  I shook my head. “I have kendo,” I said.

  Yuki nearly dropped her mop. “Kendo?”

  “Naaa, Katie-chan.” Tanaka sighed.

  “What?” But I knew what.

  “Tan-kun, is she—?”

  “It’s true,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Guys, can you not talk about me like I’m not here?”

  “You like Yuu Tomohiro.” Yuki sighed.

  “That’s not true,” I lied. I mean, I didn’t want it to be true, but…

  “Katie, if you like him, then go for it,” Tanaka said.

  “What?”

  “What?” Yuki echoed.

  “That’s not what you said last time.”

  “Last time?” Yuki said.

  Tanaka grinned. “You’re not going to listen to us anyway, right? And I know he’s become a little lost—”

  “A little!” Yuki said, but Tanaka glared at her.

  “—but I’ve known Tomo-kun a long time. He’s nice. He didn’t even make us call him senpai, even though he’s older.

  He treated us equally. Just be careful, that’s all. He’s mixed up in stuff.”

  “I know,” I said, and Yuki and Tanaka exchanged a glance.

  “You don’t know,” Yuki said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tanaka said. “If you want this, go for it with your whole heart,
okay?”

  “When did you become so inspirational?” I laughed, leaning my mop against the wall, and Tanaka shrugged.

  “I read a lot of manga,” he admitted with a goofy grin.

  “Life doesn’t work like that!” Yuki sighed, smacking Tanaka on the arm.

  Tanaka laughed and shook his fist in the air. “Faito, ne?”

  Like Yuki had said to me when I went into the genkan to get my shoes. Fight. I nodded at him and went into the hallway, and the minute I was out, Yuki started whispering harshly at him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he kept telling her. What doesn’t matter? The girlfriend? The fights he gets into?

  I wove through the hallways and entered the gym, where the Kendo Club members— kendouka—circled the floor with cloths, cleaning up the gym before practice. Other students buckled armor around themselves, slipping out of the change rooms in their gray hakama skirts and fitting the dou plates on their chests. I scanned the group for Tomohiro and Bleached Hair, but no luck. They were probably still in the change room putting on their hakama.

  Watanabe-sensei looked way too pleased that I’d actually shown up, and sent some of the senior girls to help me put on the armor.

  When we slipped out of the change room, the class was already forming into lines, so I hurried into place. Nakamura-sensei shouted out something and all the students knelt, placing their bamboo shinai swords on their left sides.

  Crap. I didn’t have one.

  A shadow draped over my head, blotting out the gym lights that beamed down on us from the ceiling. I looked up, straight into the face of Yuu Tomohiro, and the sudden closeness of him shuddered through me like a shock. He was in my space again, his face way too close to mine. He knelt and the bright lights beamed over his shoulders. He placed a shinai at my side, lining the hilt up carefully with my knees.

  “Thanks,” I whispered, while Watanabe-sensei shouted and all the other students bowed, hands down on the floor.

  Tomohiro nodded and strode slowly to a break in the line where I saw Bleached Hair waiting for him. He eyed me suspiciously, looking from me to Tomohiro, and then he stared with outright hatred. I looked away, my pulse buzzing in my ears.

  We did twenty-five push-ups to warm up, and as I stared at my little square of varnished gym floor, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bleached Hair’s glare. He’d stared at me like I’d destroyed something, invaded where I shouldn’t have. And maybe that was the truth, because I didn’t belong in the world of someone like Yuu Tomohiro, and he didn’t belong in mine.

  After the exercises, the students fell into a drill, and Watanabe-sensei helped me hold my shinai properly while he taught me the basic stances.

  There was a lot of yelling involved in kendo. Sometimes the kiai shrieks broke through my concentration and I looked up to watch two students advancing on each other in more and more complex drills. They slipped the men helmets into place, the metal bars caging their faces in shadow, and swung at each other, the crack of the shinai rattling through my thoughts.

  I practiced with the junior kendouka, learning to control the shinai with my right hand but power my hits from the left. It took more concentration than I had expected, and after fifteen minutes my shoulder throbbed. It was a relief when Watanabe-sensei ordered us to take a break and observe the senior students, and we knelt in a line, shinai placed neatly by our sides, to watch.

  Tomohiro rose to his feet, and Bleached Hair was called on to spar with him. Tomohiro swung his men in his hand as he approached the lines of kendouka. He hoisted the mask over his face, jostling it until it fell snug on his shoulders. The straps flared out and bounced as he walked into place, bowing to Bleached Hair, who slipped behind his own mask. They looked like two mysterious samurai now as they crouched down, their hakama skirts draped across the floor.

  As they lifted, they drew their shinai, and a kiai erupted from Tomohiro, a terrifying sound in the silence of the gym.

  The wildness of it drove fear into my heart, as if I didn’t really know him at all—and maybe I didn’t. The kindness of bringing the shinai to my side and lining it up carefully was lost with the ferocious shriek as he moved forward and cracked his shinai against Bleached Hair’s, as he swung again and again.

  Maybe Yuki and Tanaka were right. Maybe Tomohiro was more dangerous than I realized.

  Bleached Hair growled back, and the sound of them fighting was like wild animals. No lie. They struck over and over, keeping each other at sword’s length. Bleached Hair slammed his foot down as he swung at Tomohiro’s dou—a hit, a point.

  Some of the older students murmured to each other, studying their form. All I could do was watch, the shouts echoing in my ears. Tomohiro whacked Bleached Hair on the right side of the men near his neck, their shinai looking as if they would splinter as they cracked together.

  As they fought, I noticed a splash of color on Bleached Hair’s arm. At first it moved like a blur, but from his kote glove to the sleeve of the keigoki, I was certain I’d seen the broad outlines of a tattoo.

  I watched the rest of the match with my mind occupied.

  Tattoos weren’t as big a deal in New York—rebellious, maybe, and sometimes beautiful. But in Japan, tattoos were linked to gangsters and the Yakuza. I stared at Bleached Hair in a new way. Impossible, I thought. He’s only in high school like us. But the more I tried to convince myself, the more the suspicions loomed over me. Was this what Yuki and Tanaka had meant when they said Tomohiro was mixed up in things?

  The match finished and Nakamura-sensei dismissed us.

  Tomohiro and Bleached Hair swung their masks off, sweat dripping down their faces. Bleached Hair jabbed Tomohiro in the arm and they laughed, walking past like they didn’t even see me. I stared at them as they disappeared into the change room. Did Tomohiro really keep such dangerous company?

  Is that why he’d wanted me to stay away?

  And if they were both in the Yakuza, then I’d already delved too deep into that dangerous world.

  But it was just a tattoo. It didn’t have to mean that. And why would Bleached Hair be so careless to get one where it would be seen?

  Did Tomohiro have one, too?

  The senior girls helped me unbuckle my armor. The rain outside was so heavy it pounded against the roof of the gym, echoing with the sour sound of aluminum.

  When I came out of the change room, Tomohiro and Bleached Hair had already left, and there was nothing for me to do but head home.

  I walked slowly to the genkan, dreading the drenching ride home. I’d brought Diane’s bike again today, in some feeble hope that Tomohiro might head for Toro Iseki again.

  When I slid open the door to the torrent of rain, Tomohiro’s bike wasn’t in the racks with the abandoned ones, slick with rain.

  I couldn’t leave the bike at school; Diane needed it for Monday. Taking a breath and lifting my book bag over my head, I stepped out into the coolness of the spring rain, soaking in the thick raindrops that pelted from the gray sky.

  I reached the bike, but it took me a moment to realize it was mine.

  Someone had hooked a clear plastic umbrella to the handlebars.

  The rain slicked down the sides as I lowered my book bag.

  I stood there a long time, staring at the umbrella in the rain.

  On Wednesday I went to school with the umbrella under my arm. The rain lasted all weekend and knocked what was left of the cherry petals out of the trees into soggy piles all over the city. The beauty of hanami now lay as a shriveled ugliness on the ground. The trees still towered above in bright late-spring greens, and the heavy rains sprouted lots of new flower stalks from the dank earth. I sneezed the whole way to school.

  It smelled of spring—or would’ve, if my nose wasn’t plugged from allergies—even if there were no petals to catch in my hair, no shower of blossoms on my walk to and from Suntaba.

  When I saw Tomohiro’s bike in the racks, I hooked the umbrella over the handlebars. Then I hurried into the genkan, slid on my scho
ol slippers and raced down the hallway to homeroom.

  At the end of the day, he was waiting for me at the bike racks, straddling his seat with his foot on the pedal. He checked his watch as I approached and narrowed his eyes.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  We never talked about the umbrella.

  Tomohiro headed out first, twisting north out of the Suntaba gate to throw everyone off. “I don’t need any more stalkers,” he said. “One’s enough.” I rolled my eyes, until he added,

  “At least she’s a cute one.” He grinned and set off.

  Oh, jeez. I was definitely in trouble.

  We met up near Shizuoka Station and twisted past the underground walkways. We took turns leading the way through the crowds, but Tomohiro was much more at ease with the task. He cut razor-sharp lines through the traffic, so following him was terrifying and thrilling at the same time.

  We laid our bikes down in the curtain of forest and sat down by a Yayoi-period hut. Tomohiro had said the houses were almost two thousand years old, and I stared at them, terrified to touch them in case they crumbled to dust or something. The rain had let up the day before, but the grass was still a little soggy. Tomohiro didn’t seem to care. He leaned back into the hut and let the tall grasses soak into the back of his school blazer.

  I spread my blazer on the ground and sat down in the middle of it. That should help keep me at least a little dry from the dewy grass. I took out the book I’d brought with me and some strawberry-cream sandwiches I’d saved from lunch, my favorite of the ones Diane made. I hesitated, then passed one to him.

  He eyed it suspiciously.

  “What?”

  “Is it poisoned?”

  “Hey, you’re the creepy one, not me,” I said.

  He grinned and took a bite, crumbs dropping onto his sketch of a horse.

  “You’re good at the anatomy,” I said.

  “The proportions are all off,” he said. “I’ve never seen a real horse.”

  I stopped eating.

  “Never?”

  “There aren’t many horses in Shizuoka, Greene.”

  “Well, haven’t you traveled around Japan or outside the country?”

  “My father took us on a business trip once to Paris, in the days when he was happier.”