by Amanda Sun
“Give me the brush!” he shouted. I dropped to my hands and knees and searched for it in the grass.
A movement blurred where the horse had been, and I looked up. A thick coil of giant snake, wider than the belly of the stallion, wrapped around itself over and over, so that the mound was taller than Tomohiro. The jagged outlines of the snake soaked into long tendrils of ink toward the center of its crackly skin, and as it wound around, it looked like it slithered in two directions at once. It raised its huge head, antlers rising from the top of its silver snout.
The dragon Tomohiro had drawn.
At first I couldn’t hear anything but my own scream. The beast stared at me with vacant eyes, its whiskers drooping low below its lips and hanging limp in the drenching rain. Swirls of ink lifted from its whole body, like steam off a horse in a morning mist.
“Katie, the brush!” Tomohiro shouted, but I stood paralyzed as the dragon stared at me.
Tomohiro moved his left hand desperately through the wet grasses. The handkerchiefs he’d let go of dropped to the ground without the pressure of his hand to hold them there, and the blood streaked down his wrist and along his slender fingers.
The dragon lifted up like a boa ready to strike. Huge claws appeared from the mass of its coiled body, and it pressed them into the earth, bending its long legs. Ink-colored bristles spiked down its spine and twisted into sinewy wings, which it flapped back and forth as it got ready to pounce.
“Tomo!” I shrieked as his fingers closed around the paintbrush.
The dragon leaped up, uncoiling into the air. Tomohiro dove toward the scraps of the page and drew ugly lines through any he could find. High above, the dragon screeched and its leg fell off, dropping in the clearing with an ugly thud and a cloud of ink dust. Tomohiro found another soaked scrap and sliced through it; one of the bristled wings crumbled and the dragon veered sideways in the sky.
Tomohiro flipped over two more pieces before he found the neck. He carved through it in one quick stroke.
The dragon plummeted from the sky. The coils shook the ground as they hit, the tongue lolling out of its mouth before it turned to shimmering dust.
Tomohiro reached into his bag and grabbed his kendo headband, pressing it into the gash as he raced over to me. I fell to my knees in the mud and sobbed while he flung his arms around me.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he cried over and over into the soaked tangle of my hair. “Gomen, gomen, gomen!”
The rain poured down from the sky, washing over the shimmering dust, soaking the paper and the notebook until the ink blurred beyond recognition. We clung to each other as our drenched clothes clung to our own skin, and as terrified as I was to let go, I was just as scared to hold on.
Chapter 11
The blood finally stopped, Tomohiro’s kendo headband stained so dark I could barely read the black kanji painted on it. The Twofold Path of the Pen and Sword, it said. Only, to Tomo hiro the pen and sword might as well be the same thing.
It was a deep gash in his wrist and probably needed stitches, but that would mean explaining to his dad and the doctors, so I knew he wouldn’t go to the hospital.
We didn’t speak for a while, sitting under the trees for shelter as the rain poured. There wasn’t a question I could think of that encompassed everything I wanted to ask. Tomohiro sat beside me, rubbing the headband into his wrist and slicking his dripping bangs behind his ears. I was exhausted and just wanted to go home, but I didn’t know what to tell Diane, and so I stayed, trapped in the hell that had once been our paradise.
“What now?” I said, when the silence became too much to bear.
“Let’s hope the storm gave us cover,” he said. “That and not too many people live around here. They’ll say the dragon was a trick of the light. A flash of lightning against the clouds, that kind of thing.”
“Really?”
“I hope so. It didn’t lift too high up in the clouds.”
“Tomo.”
“Hmm?”
“I told you to stop drawing, but you didn’t listen.”
Tomohiro’s head slumped forward. “It was strange,” he said. “You were right beside me, but your voice sounded a mile away. I couldn’t hear what you were saying. It all sounded…fuzzy to me.”
“You have to stop drawing.”
He said nothing.
“Don’t you get it? This was almost Koji all over again. Is this really worth your life?”
He lifted his head slowly, staring at the trampled grass where the dragon’s corpse was disintegrating.
“It’s worth my life,” he said. “But it isn’t worth yours.”
“How can you say that? It’s not worth yours, either.”
He shook his head. “Even if I stopped drawing, this…power, curse, whatever the hell it is. It won’t go away. I’m a Kami, Katie. This is what I am. My nightmares are so real I could die in my sleep. The kanji I write on my entrance exams could cut open someone’s wrist. A lot of the characters have the radical for sword in them, you know. The ink is everywhere I go, and sometimes I…sometimes I lose myself, like when I couldn’t hear you. I’m marked for this darkness. This is who I am.”
He lowered his head. “My only hope is to learn to control it.”
“Then maybe I—maybe I need to go.”
“What?”
“Because I’m making things worse. I’m some sort of catalyst. And I don’t know why.”
“It—it might be more dangerous if you leave.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“The way I feel about you, Katie,” he said, his brown eyes searching mine. “What if it’s reacting to my emotions or something? If you left, I might— I mean, the Kami power might overtake me. What if I completely lose it, if the nightmares finally get me? But as long as you’re safe. It’s for the best if the ink destroys me anyway. If I don’t wake up, then I can’t hurt you.”
I stared at him. Did I mean that much to him?
“Too dramatic?” he said with a laugh, shaking his head.
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s not supposed to be. It’s lonely being a monster.”
“You’re not a monster.”
He held up his blood-soaked wrist like it was proof. “I am.
But it’s not damn fair.” The rain clung to spikes of his hair, dripping off the tips of it into the grass. “It’s not just the ink hunting you, Katie. I’m hunting you. I want you like I’ve never wanted anything.”
Every part of me caught fire. Every nerve pulsed.
“I was trying to push you away, messing with you in the courtyard. I almost couldn’t go through with it. You’ll think I’m such an asshole, but when I saw you—god. I couldn’t get you out of my head. And then you climbed that tree and shouted my name. You weren’t afraid of me. You didn’t back down. I felt like you could see me, the real me. Myu was a reminder that I was too dangerous to be anything but alone and half-dead. You made me alive again, Katie. If I have to burn for that, then I’ll light the damn match myself.”
“Tomo,” I said. My mind whirled with everything he’d said.
“I know. I’m sorry. I should keep my mouth shut.”
“No, I—”
My keitai chimed then, its happy metal tune so out of place in the soaked clearing. Tomohiro pressed his back into the rough trunk of a tree while I reached for my phone.
The ID flashed Diane. There was no way I could answer it. I sat there frozen, unable to answer, unable to put the phone away.
“What will you do?” Tomohiro asked softly.
“I can’t go home like this,” I said. The phone stopped ringing. A few seconds later, it started again. “What am I supposed to say?” I was soaked, covered in dirt and ink and blood. My uniform was probably ruined, and I had no clue how to explain this. Even Diane, who didn’t believe in curfews, was definitely going to ground me. And I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be going to Miyajima with Yuki.
Yuki.
“Wait,” I sa
id. “What if I stayed at Yuki’s?” But Tomohiro’s expression was a few seconds ahead of mine.
“Can you explain the ink and blood to her?” he asked. He bit his lip, then leaned his head back against the tree trunk.
“Come to my house,” he said.
“What?”
“My father’s in Tokyo for work. You can wash your uniform.”
“And Diane?”
“Tell her you were caught in the rain. It’s the truth after all.”
“And tell her I’m staying over at a senior boy’s house.”
He blinked. “She doesn’t know who I am?”
My cheeks turned red.
“She thinks I’m with Tanaka,” I said.
He grinned as I felt my face flood with heat. “With Ichirou?” he mused. “I had no idea you thought he was hot.”
“Shut up,” I said, but I couldn’t bring myself to smack him.
“I don’t.”
“Well, you can’t go home, that’s for certain. So there really is no choice but to let me help you.” He grinned slyly.
“Unless you want to stay over at Ichirou’s.”
That time I did smack him in the shoulder. He was right, of course, even if he was being a smart-ass. It would be hard enough to make my way to his house without anyone staring at us. Hopefully the drenching rains would keep everyone indoors.
He stood up, grabbed his soaked book bag and wiped the raindrops off it with his palm.
“Let’s go,” he said, reaching out his left hand. I stared at it for a moment, the smoothness of his open palm. Then I nodded and put my hand in his. He pulled me up and led me to the outskirts of the forest, where his bike rested against a plum tree. He tried to wipe the seat off with his hand, but everything was so soaked it made no difference. He laughed then, and I heard my own voice echo it. I wasn’t sure how anything could be so funny when we’d almost been mauled by a dragon, but there we were, muddy, bloody and grinning.
We ducked under the fence, slamming it closed. Thunder still rumbled in the clouds above, and the streets were practically bare. Tomohiro got on the bike first and then patted the metal carrier above the rear wheel.
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“You don’t want to walk, do you? Anyway,” he added, “I wouldn’t let you fall.”
I sat down on the carrier and lifted my feet. I pressed my hands into the back of the seat, but Tomohiro snorted at me and wrapped my palms around his hips.
“Okay,” he said and pressed against the pedal. The bike wobbled and lurched forward, and I squeezed my hands into his stained blazer. He curved around for a bit until he got the hang of steering two people with only one good wrist, and soon we were speeding north, Shizuoka spreading before us. The rain was thick on the streets, but we didn’t mind the spray—we really couldn’t get much more soaked anyway.
Tomohiro cycled for what seemed like forever, the world around us a blur of gray skies and white umbrellas. The taller buildings shrank away, and we cycled down narrow alleyways behind houses, where cement retaining walls pulled away from us at sheer angles. At last he slowed down, in front of a two-story house with an arched gate in front.
Mounted on the gate above the bell and intercom was a silver nameplate that read The Yuu Family.
“You live here?” I gaped. It wasn’t a big house, not by American standards, but a detached home like this in over-crowded Shizuoka was a pretty big deal. Tomohiro shrugged and slouched against the gated entrance.
“My dad’s head of accounting at ShizuCha,” he said casually.
“ShizuCha?” I repeated. “The tea company?” But Tomohiro looked pretty embarrassed about the whole thing, so I dropped it. He pushed the gate open and motioned me through, following behind with his bike.
“We should probably leave our shoes outside,” he joked as we reached the front door. I peered down at our muddy, ink-coated shoes as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a key, turning the lock with a loud click.
“Tadaima,” he sang as he stepped in, out of habit since no one was home. The entrance tunneled into darkness. The humid, stale air trapped in the house smelled like a snuffed-out candle, thick against our faces but warm compared to the rain outside.
Tomo clunked his shoes against the raised floor to the ve-randa as I slipped mine off. I peeled off my soaked kneesocks, laying them on top of my shoes like strips of bandage.
He led me toward the bathroom, a sink with the bath and shower behind a separate door and a laundry machine across the hall.
“Here,” he said, opening the lid of the all-in-one washer-dryer. “You can put your seifuku in here.”
“Don’t these kinds of stains need to be scrubbed out?” I asked, but neither of us was really sure.
“Put the skirt in the wash, then,” he said. “Leave the shirt in the sink and we can try scrubbing or bleaching it. And go ahead and have a hot bath. I’ll find some clothes you can borrow and leave them outside the door.”
Embarrassment crept up my neck, but he looked as cool and collected as always. I hated him for it.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t get ill from the cold,” he said, and he reached his hand up to brush wet strands of hair off my face. He tucked them behind my ear, and I hoped he would leave before my knees buckled under me.
Once I heard his footsteps thumping up the stairs, I unbuttoned my shirt. I stared at it critically before leaning it over the sink. I ran some water and scrubbed the sides of the blouse together. There was no way I was going to get the ink out, even if I could get rid of the blood streaks. I sighed and let the shirt crumple into the sink. I threw my skirt into the machine, but left it for Tomohiro to turn on; I couldn’t quite make out all the kanji on the buttons. I wasn’t sure what to do with my underwear—it was soaked, but there was no way I was leaving it in the laundry room. In the end I brought it with me into the bathroom and laid it flat on the counter, hoping by some miracle it would dry.
The shower spray was hot against my skin and I greedily breathed in the steam. My skin turned pink as I shook off the cold chill from the rainstorm. Blood and ink had crusted under my fingernails and I scrubbed until they came clean.
I rinsed off and lifted the bamboo cover off the tub of water on the other side of the tile floor.
I soaked, staring up at the azure ceiling in silence. It hit me then that I hadn’t called Diane back yet. I sat up, water sloshing over the side of the tub. I lifted myself out and opened the bath door, where I found a stack of fluffy towels beside the sink.
“Tomo?” I called tentatively by the hallway door. When there was no answer, I creaked it open a bit. Tomohiro had left a neat pile of gray sweatpants and a shirt on the floor.
My underwear hadn’t dried, obviously, so I shoved it into the pants pocket and gave a grateful sigh the pants were a little bulky. I scrambled into the clothes and called through the house until Tomohiro came downstairs, clean clothes folded in his arms, which he held far away from his chest.
He stopped walking halfway, his eyes wide. My skin felt itchy.
“Cute,” he said, and I wanted to hit him. Pins and needles scratched up my arms. “My turn,” he added. “My room’s upstairs. You’ll find it okay.”
I nodded, reached for my bag by the entrance and headed up the stairs. I heard the door of the laundry room slide shut.
There were only a couple of doors upstairs and only one was ajar, so I slipped inside. A simple bookshelf and desk sat on one side of his room, his bed across from them with a blue plaid duvet strewn across it at an angle. I felt guilty somehow, like I was trespassing in his room; the feeling thrilled me at the same time it filled me with embarrassment.
I sat on his bed, looking around the room. There were some cute trinkets—a miniature Eiffel Tower, a few plush animals that I wondered with sudden urgency if other girls had given to him. But what really caught my eye were the posters, almost twenty of them plastered on the walls. Rembrandt, Rubens, Monet, Michelangelo—all of them rep
resented. Most of the paintings featured angels trampling demons, judgment dealt out at the end of time. The rain pelted against the roof, and the raindrops running down the windows spread creepy gray blotches of light on the paintings.
I heard the spray of the shower downstairs.
There were other paintings, too, white and black and gray like Tomohiro’s sketches. Ghostly images of forests and landscapes, tossing oceans and cherry blossoms floating through the air. Ink-wash paintings, the traditional kind you saw in shrines or tatami rooms. The shadows that fell on them in the silence of his room made the landscapes seem so far away, distant worlds that almost came alive when I stared at them long enough. I wondered if they’d been drawn by Kami, too, but I realized I must be wrong. It would be too dangerous to display works like that.
Still, maybe all the creepy posters were the reason Tomohiro had nightmares. I’m not sure I could sleep with all these angels and demons ripping each other to pieces around me.
I took a deep breath and reached into my bag for my phone.
The ring echoed in my ear as I waited, still wondering what exactly I was going to say.
The phone clicked on the other end.
“Moshi moshi, Greene residence.”
“Diane—”
“Katie!” she burst out. “Thank god. Where are you? I called so many times.”
“I’m so sorry. I got caught in the rain. I didn’t hear the ring.”
“It’s a mess out there. It’s like typhoon season early or something. Where are you?”
“I’m at Yuki’s,” I lied. “We got totally soaked, so she let me come in and have a bath and put some clean clothes on.”
A sigh of relief. “Good thing you girls had common sense.
What about Tanaka?”
“Tanaka?”
“Don’t you spend every Wednesday together?”
“Oh. Today it was just Yuki and me. After Sewing Club, I mean.”
“I’ll borrow Morimoto’s car and pick you up.”
“No!” I shouted. “I mean, um, I was hoping I could stay over. My clothes are going through her laundry anyway, and she has pajamas I can borrow.”
