by Amanda Sun
I drew my knees up tightly, wrapping my arms around my legs. I hadn’t thought Jun was capable of this. I still didn’t believe it. And yet, a small piece of me, a tiny butterfly in the corner of my heart, fluttered with a dark thought. Good. I’m glad Hanchi’s dead.
I didn’t want to think like that. I didn’t want to be glad this had happened.
But he would never hurt us again.
Hanchi got what he deserved, the voice whispered.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Life is precious, I said to myself. Just like losing Mom. Hanchi was someone’s son. He had family who loved him, right?
Even though he kidnapped you and Tomo? He was willing to kill you both. He had to be stopped.
Yes, but not like this.
How, then? He’s been stopped.
That’s...that’s true. He hurt so many people.
Who’s the monster now? In the end, there is only death.
The butterfly had grown too large, its wings enveloping my every thought. My mind grew dark and tinged with shadow. I could hear the whispers as if they were real. I shook my head to try and empty it, to escape.
“Katie.” Tomo’s voice snapped me back, and I blinked at the brightness of the room. His hand was on my cheek; the warmth of the pads of his fingers pressed against my skin.
I whispered, “What happened?”
“Your eyes,” he said. His face was ghostly pale. “Your eyes changed. Just for a moment.”
My heart was pounding like I’d just sprinted all the way to Shizuoka Station. It was the Kami blood that had awakened. It had enveloped me, just for a moment. I had lost myself.
“Daijoubu?” Tomo asked. Are you okay? I nodded. The darkness felt far away now. There was nothing but light and his warmth around me.
The reporter droned on about Hanchi, and the chill of her voice frosted around the edges of us. Tomo clicked the TV off and wrapped his arms around me.
“Let’s get you home,” he said. “You don’t have to be afraid. If it was Jun, he won’t hurt you. I know it.”
But he might hurt you. And even without Jun, Tomo was still in danger if the ink took control. Ikeda had said Tsukiyomi was a kami more deadly than Susanou. Didn’t that mean Tomo was more dangerous than Jun?
I closed my eyes and breathed in the warm smell of Tomo, let the tickle of his copper hair against my neck sweep away the fear. I’d always known the world of the Kami was dangerous. But with Tomo, I still felt safe. We would be all right if we clung to each other. I had to believe that, no matter what.
* * *
Seeing the Yakuza boss who once kidnapped you lying dead on the streets of Ginza takes the fear out of a reprimand from the school headmaster. Yet here we were, Tomo and me, Diane and Tomo’s dad, sitting in four tiny chairs squished into Yoshinoma’s office. I folded my hands in my lap, squeezing my own fingers as I looked down at the floor. Tomo and I sat in the center, surrounded by the parentals, surrounded by adults who were disappointed in us. I wished Tomo would reach out and take my hand, but I knew he would try to distance himself to protect me from any fallout.
Tomo’s dad rose to his feet; the edges of his suit were so crisp you could probably slice kamaboko loaf with them. He looked agitated and kept checking his watch; I wondered what meeting he was missing for this. If Tomo’s mom was alive, his dad wouldn’t even have to be here. Was he thinking that, too?
He bowed deeply to Yoshinoma. “Moushi wake gozaimasen,” he apologized. “I can’t believe my son would do such a thing. School has always been his top priority.”
“Please, Yuu-san, sit down,” Yoshinoma said, motioning with his hand until Tomo’s dad complied. “We were surprised, as well. He’s mostly been a reliable student, an example in his studies. He’s still maintaining his grades, and he’s advanced further than ever before in his kendo tournaments. But we cannot accept this disrespectful prank on our school.” The headmaster leaned back in his chair. It creaked as he pressed the back of it toward the wall. “I can only imagine that he must have become distracted.”
Tomo’s hand squeezed into a fist. “Kouchou, Katie had nothing to do with this,” he said, his voice tense. This was wrong. He had to stay calm, or we’d be in more trouble. Surely he knew that.
“Neither did Tomohiro-senpai,” I said. I figured now was a good time to put my slightly more formal Japanese into practice. “He didn’t do this.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Miss Greene,” said Yoshinoma. “It’s true that we don’t have proof that Tomo painted those offensive kanji on the chalkboards, but he was visibly upset about them, and he does have a background in calligraphy. Not just anyone could have written those in the style they appeared. Furthermore, the change room...well, it was full of ink, and students saw him go in. We’re sure he went there to wash up.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, my voice rising. “It wasn’t him. He arrived at school the same time I did that morning. It wasn’t him!”
Diane rested a gentle but urgent hand on my arm, and I hesitated. Was the way I was talking back to the headmaster not okay in Japan? I was probably out of line, but so was Yoshinoma. Tomo hadn’t done any of it—well, it had sort of been him, but it was the ink, the kami blood in his veins. He hadn’t meant for it to happen. He didn’t deserve to suffer for Tsukiyomi’s sake.
Diane’s voice was calm and reasonable as she spoke. I’d never heard her sound so collected before. “Yoshinoma-sensei, these two are good kids. Katie’s working so hard on her kanji to stay at Suntaba and catch up to the other students. The last thing these two would do is jeopardize their future.”
“I agree,” the headmaster said, leaning forward and resting his folded hands on his desk. “But part of growing up is learning there are consequences to your actions.”
Tomo’s dad nodded like he approved, but he kept sneaking peeks at his watch.
Yoshinoma let out a slow, whistling breath between his teeth. “To be honest, some of the teachers have called for expulsion.”
A small gasp escaped Tomo’s lips, his eyes round and horrified.
Tomo’s father wasn’t checking his watch anymore. “Yoshinoma-sensei!”
Yoshinoma’s voice was grave and monotone. “This isn’t the first time he’s caused trouble. He’s been in many fights since his first year.”
Tomo’s father blurted out, “Because his mother passed away, and...”
“That was seven years ago, Yuu-san. And there have been rumors that he fathered a child with a girl from Kibohan Senior High. Is that the kind of student we want to represent our school?”
So, the Shiori rumor had reached the teachers, too. Tomo clenched his hands into tighter fists as his father’s face went white. “That’s not true,” he said, looking down until his chin pressed against the knot of his uniform tie.
I could remember it now, when that knot had been loosened around his neck, his top button undone. Tomo looking up at the wagtail birds as he spread out on the warm field of Toro Iseki, when I’d first stumbled on his secret drawing place. I wanted to take his hand in mine, to pull him to his feet and run back there where we were safe, where no one could reach us. Where we could fly.
Yoshinoma sighed. “Even so, your friend Ishikawa Satoshi was shot this summer, Tomohiro. Yuu-san, do you know what kind of life your boy is up to?”
I looked away from Tomo’s dad, frightened of the emotions he tried to rein back on his face. His voice came out shakily. “Kouchou, I assure you, Tomo is not involved in the way Ishikawa is derailing his life.”
“However,” the headmaster continued, “Yuu scored the highest out of the Third Year boys in the first term exams. And he’s earning quite the spotlight for himself in kendo. It’s good for our school to gain such national recognition.” He cleared his throat. “So I am going to override the teachers and ask Tomohiro to s
tay at Suntaba.”
The relief washed through me, and I let out a breath I hadn’t even known I was holding. Tomo’s dad bowed his head to the headmaster.
“He will have to be suspended, of course. You understand this cannot go without punishment.”
“Of course,” Tomo’s dad mumbled.
“One month, Tomohiro,” Yoshinoma said, and I flinched. A month?
“But his entrance exams,” Tomo’s dad protested.
“He will have to spend the effort at home if he hopes to pass them when he returns. This was a serious offence to this school, Yuu-san. And a month will give him time to refocus on his work and forget any distractions.”
Oh. They wanted to separate us, thinking that time apart would make us grow apart. I took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. It wouldn’t work. They couldn’t stop us. We were something greater together than they could ever understand.
Tomo’s face was blank, unreadable. “What about kendo practices?”
“You’ll be back in time for the serious training for the tournament, Tomo. But in the meantime, Watanabe-sensei and Nishimura-sensei have recommended you do your exercises at home. They don’t want you to be out of shape when you return.”
“And for Katie?” Diane said. Her hand was still on my arm, and she squeezed it to reassure me. I was glad she was there with me. Even if she lectured me later, I knew she loved me. Did Tomo feel that way about his dad? They seemed so distant as they sat side by side, as if they were worlds apart, as if they couldn’t really see each other at all.
“Katie hasn’t given the school any other trouble,” Yoshinoma said, “and we believe she was likely dragged into this. She—I apologize, but—she lacks the skill to have written those kanji on the chalkboards.”
My own illiteracy had saved me. I guess I should’ve felt relieved, but mostly I just felt annoyed.
“We just think it best that she be...separated from Tomohiro for a while, so they can both refocus on their futures.”
There it was again, that patronizing we-know-what’s-best jab. You’re just kids. You don’t know what love is. You’re blind. You’re wrecking your own futures.
We bowed to Yoshinoma-sensei and parted in the hallway. I tried to catch Tomo’s eye, but he didn’t look up. He just stiffly followed his father out of the school. It didn’t matter, though. I could feel his thoughts as if they were my own.
They didn’t know us, not at all. They didn’t understand what we had. We belonged together. What I felt was real, and I felt it with every fiber of my being.
They couldn’t break us. Nothing could.
The dream began with a soft sigh, a whispering sound in the distance like the swell of the ocean. I’d seen glimpses of the edge of the sea that lapped against Japan, once in Miyajima with Yuki, and once looking over Suruga Bay with Tomo. But long ago, Mom and I had visited the shore of the Atlantic when we’d traveled to see friends in Maine. The sun had beamed down on the water, glistening so brightly that I’d had to squeeze my eyes shut, to make the scene almost vanish completely in order to see it at all.
“Look at that, Katie,” she’d said with a smile. “Stretching on like it has no end. Sparkling and full of life.” It had looked limitless and inspiring, warm and vibrant and blue.
This ocean was nothing like that one. It was dull and opaque, gray-tinged as the shore came into view. It looked as if it bordered on nothing—limitless—but the idea was frightening, like the whole world had drowned. There was nothing left but this earthy coast I stood upon, the sand gritty and sharp against my bare feet.
I was dreaming, I realized. The vague feeling that something wasn’t quite right overwhelmed me, like I was squinting to see the whole picture.
Everything was pallor and faded. The shore behind me seemed to stretch on for miles, but I knew it was the last refuge of earth—the seas were empty and void. The land was gone.
I began to walk along the shore. The sighs carried across the waves toward me, whispering in discord, some voices carrying so that I could almost make out the sound of them. Almost, but never quite.
Wreckage lay along the shore, pieces of bent wood that once curved around the bow of a ship, nails stuck into them that no longer attached to anything but air. A cracked turtle shell, belly-up, with kanji carved into it. The waves lapped through it like a tunnel, spilling through the other side like a fountain. Pieces from a distant storm, scraps that had lost meaning.
A bright orange torii appeared from the shadow, the Shinto gateway towering above as though the grayness had just lifted away and left color in its place. The sighs were louder now, except they sounded mournful, like wailing.
I wasn’t alone in this strange place. Someone was crying.
I fought the urge to run. Fear prickled down my spine; I didn’t want to disturb whoever it was. I didn’t want to be involved.
I turned my head to look back at the shore I’d walked along.
A beast stood in the shadows, his angular ears pressed tightly against his head. His eyes gleamed with a ghostly green.
A wolf. No, an inugami, the vengeful wolf demons that hunted Tomo, that had mauled his friend Koji and nearly cost him his eye. The inugami crouched, watching me, a challenge in his eyes.
I couldn’t go back, so I turned once again to the bright orange torii. The grains of sand stuck to my soles as I walked, miniature daggers that pricked me with their warnings.
“Machinasai,” a voice said, ordering me to wait. I stopped.
I heard the sound of fabric scraping over sand, and looked to my right. She wore a kimono of gold embroidered with elaborate phoenixes, an obi red as blood wrapped tightly around her waist.
Amaterasu, the kami of the sun. She looked like she had in the clearing with Tomo and Jun, but different somehow. Larger, more real. She exuded power about her. She smiled, and yet somehow it was terrifying.
Her headdress of beads jingled as she tilted her head, speaking in a haunting voice that seemed to echo in the vast and empty space. It sounded like Japanese, but I couldn’t make sense of it. Her speech was too formal, too ancient.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t understand.”
“I have tried to speak to you for so long,” she said, “that my voice is dry from effort.” She was speaking modern Japanese now, graciously but with a subtle distaste, like someone who pretends to be glad to accept a gift they already have.
“Who’s crying?” I asked, looking toward the gateway.
“The kami have need of tears,” she said. “We have cried so long that we have drowned the world.”
I tried to grasp the questions I’d had when I was awake. It was my chance to ask, but my head was hazy from sleep, barely able to remember the real world or the fact that I was dreaming.
“Tsukiyomi,” I managed. Was that it? It didn’t sound quite right asleep. “How can I stop him?”
“Tomohiro is the heir of calamity.”
“What can I do?”
“There is no hope for you,” she said, like she had said over and over to him. “There is nothing to be done.”
I looked over toward the torii, toward the back of a figure on her knees in the sand. She wore a kimono of white, the black obi draped in an elaborate bow across her back, and her body shook with the quiet sobs.
I hesitated, watching for a moment.
“But Tsukiyomi,” I said. “Tsukiyomi is trying to take control of Tomo.”
Amaterasu tilted her head to the side, her eyes deep pools of blackness. “Tsukiyomi is dead. Long ago he left this world.”
I saw another figure beside the crying girl—a boy on the ground in front of her, slumped with a leg bent strangely to the side.
“The mirror has seen it,” Amaterasu said. “It cannot be undone.”
I stepped toward the girl and the
boy, walking slowly as my bare feet slipped in the sharp sand.
The girl wore a furisode kimono, with long sleeves that draped over the body of the boy and into the sand, the ends of the soft white fabric stained with ink. The girl had tucked her arm under the boy’s neck, and his head lolled back unnaturally, his copper spikes speckled with sand.
My stomach twisted as I looked down at the familiar face.
“Tomo,” I breathed, falling to my knees in the sand. Trails of ink carved down his face and across the elaborate silver robes he wore, collecting in the fabric like pools of dark blood. His eyes were closed, his face expressionless as he rested in her arms.
The girl looked down as she wept. Her long black hair had come out of the coils she’d tied them in at the base of her neck, and they tumbled in a tangle over her face. She looked up to take a breath and I realized she, too, was Amaterasu. There were two of them. I looked past her to see the Amaterasu in gold, and she stood there, watching, as she clasped her hands on the rim of a huge bronze mirror that stretched from her hips to her feet. I’d seen that mirror before, the one she’d held up to Jun in the clearing to show him the truth of who he really was.
The girl let out another sob, and black tears ran down her cheeks. Tears made of ink. I reached a hand toward her.
“Katie!” a voice shouted. I jumped, frightened to be recognized in this strange world. I wanted to wake up. I pinched my arm, twisting the skin back and forth. I didn’t want to know any more. “Katie,” the voice said again, and the shadowy fog pulled back.
It was Jun, hunched over on one knee and adorned in broken armor, his face streaked with ink. He wore a helmet on his head with golden horns, but one had broken off in a jagged cut and lay in the sand and tangle of brush grass at his feet.
No, that wasn’t the horn in the sand. It was the wrong shape, too...too sharp.
It was a sword, stained dark on the blade.
My blood turned to ice. My world turned black.
“Katie,” Jun said quietly. “Gomen.” I’m sorry.
