by Amanda Sun
I didn’t want to, not yet.
“We live near the lake,” he said. “You’d love it. Do you like swimming and fishing? Camping? We go camping every year and Alison...”
I stumbled over the name. “Alison?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute, which was answer enough.
I slid my hands out of his. “You ditched us and found some other girl?”
He shook his head. “It’s been almost seventeen years. Did you want me to exile myself to a life of grief and loneliness?”
Yes. Kind of. “That’s not the point,” I said. “You’re off having this happy camping fishing life while Mom and I were struggling. You think her journalism gigs paid that much?” I rose to my feet, shoving my hands into my pockets. “You know what? It was a mistake to come.”
“Kate, I tried to find you again, I swear. Your mom...she didn’t want to see me. She wouldn’t answer my calls.”
I snorted. “I wonder why.”
“It’s not like that. I waited ten years until I moved on. Did you want me to be unhappy forever?”
“It’s Katie,” I snapped. “And I really don’t care about your happiness because you sure as hell didn’t care about ours.”
“Listen, I’m sorry. I... This is all wrong. Let me make it up to you, okay?”
I was shaking, my heart beating in my ears. I knew I was being harsh, but so what? Someone had to stand up for us. But seeing his face crumple like that...he looked like he meant it. And I started to feel a little mean. “I’m... I need time, okay? It’s too fast.”
“Sure,” he said, nodding. “Sure. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bring all this trouble into your life. I just wanted you to know that I want to try again. On your terms.”
“Okay,” I said. “On my terms.”
My phone buzzed again.
“You have somewhere you need to be?” he asked, and I nodded. He let out a slow sigh, rising to his feet and combing what was left of his hair back. “I hope I haven’t screwed this up too badly. I really am so glad to see you. I am.”
“It’s fine,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
“If anyone knows about that boy and his fiancée...if anyone bothers you, I’ll get you a ticket to the States right away, okay? You tell me, and I’ll make it happen. I’m serious.”
“Okay,” I said, and turned to go. I didn’t want to hug him, but I might never see him again. The two feelings clashed in me. What was the right thing to do? What was the right thing for me?
“You’re a beautiful young woman,” he said. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life showing you how sorry I am, okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, but I was thinking, We’ll see. He reached out a hand, and it looked so feeble, so pathetic, that I took it. I couldn’t feel through my mitten, but I imagined it was cold from the weather, cold and worn.
“Bye for now, kiddo,” he said.
My hand slipped from his, and I left him behind in the dying greenery of Yoyogi Park.
Tomo was waiting by the entrance to Otemachi, the subway stop just outside the redbrick European-looking hub of Tokyo Station. I’d never seen it from the outside before. The whole neighborhood looked like it could be straight from New York City, with its gleaming skyscrapers of glass and metal and the busy traffic, except the cars drove on the left, the roads painted with white kanji and the traffic lights turned on their sides, hanging horizontally. You’d never guess an ancient palace stood only a couple blocks away.
It was easy to spot Tomo as he hunched against the wall of the subway entrance. He was staring at the screen of his old-style flip phone, squinting at the small display. The way he hated using his dad’s money for anything, the way he distanced himself from him—I kind of understood the feeling now.
I ran toward him and threw my arms around him, holding him tightly. He tensed under my grip, his eyes wide.
“Oi,” he said, trying to push my arm away, but I still clung to him, anyway. He stopped struggling, and then, his voice gentle and deep, asked, “How did it go?”
I let my arms fall from him, and wrapped them around myself. “Fine, I guess. I don’t know. He was an okay guy, but... I kind of hate him.”
Tomo grinned, and reached a hand up to ruffle my hair. “Of course,” he said. “He abandoned you. It’s not going to be all rainbows and puppies.”
I butted him with my shoulder as we started walking. “I want it to be all rainbows and puppies, though.”
“Hmm,” Tomo said, nodding his head and crooking his finger against his lip, making a big show of thinking it over. “So you’d choose puppies over me?”
He was trying to take my mind off it; I smiled. He understood me. “Well, how many puppies are we talking about?”
“A basketful.”
“It was nice knowing you.”
He grabbed at his heart, keeling over as he reached toward the sky. “So...cold...” he whispered. The people around us started to stare.
I giggled and grabbed his arm to pull him back up. It wasn’t easy; he went floppy and heavy. “Stop it!” I said between laughs.
He suddenly stopped fighting my pull and with all his strength lunged toward me, pinning me to the wall of the building beside us. He stared at me for a moment, his copper bangs nearly hiding his eyes from view, his hands on either side of my face. He was so close his breath trailed across my bottom lip, and then he pressed his mouth to mine. His lips were softness and butterflies and ice—how long had he waited outside for me at the station? I knew this kind of public scene wasn’t the thing to do in Japan, but I couldn’t bring myself to care just now. We were just two nobodies in Tokyo, the cold breeze swirling around us as the warmth of his body pressed against me.
The cold wind sent the ink snow globe in the restaurant whirling back into my thoughts. I tilted my chin down, away from the kiss. Tomo pressed his mouth against the edge of my jaw, and then my neck. It was hard to focus. “Tomo,” I said. “The note you gave me.”
I felt him smile against my skin. “You’re not alone,” he said, and the vibration of his words on my skin sent a shiver down my spine.
“It’s not that,” I said, and he heard the worry in my voice. He leaned back, his hands still pressed around me on the wall. “It cut me,” I said, lifting my finger to show him the paper cut. I’d received so many from his drawings before. “And it sent a gust of snow up in the restaurant.”
He stared at me, unbelieving. He narrowed his eyes, tilting his head to one side. “What?”
I reached up and laced my fingers in his bangs, tracing them to one side of his forehead so I could see his eyes clearly. “It came alive, Tomo.”
“No,” he said. “That’s impossible. I didn’t draw anything.” He pushed off from the wall and stared down the tunnel of the street toward the palace. I dug into my pocket and gave him the damp note. He opened it, a single snowflake springing from it and dancing on the breeze.
“Hitori ja nai yo,” he read out loud, scanning the note. “But I didn’t write anything about snow.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “How could the note make things happen that you didn’t draw? Is it like how the ink makes wings on your back? It just forms into whatever it wants now?”
“Not on the page,” Tomo said. He blinked, pulling the note away from his eyes. “Oh.”
“What?”
“Love,” he said, turning the note so I could see the kanji.
“Ai,” I repeated. “So?”
“So look at what the kanji’s made of,” he said. “This top part, that means claw or talon.” He traced it, and a cloud of golden dust swept off the page at his fingertip. “That’s probably what cut you. Then heart. And look at the last part. Look familiar?”
“It’s the start of the kanji for winter,” I said. It wa
s the radical at the bottom of the character. Of course. Kanji were pictures, too. They’d changed a lot through history, but they were still what all letters were—evolved drawings, trying to make sense of the world. “English is like that, too,” I said. “The letters we use all used to mean something. A came from a drawing of an ox head, I think. The long parts of the A are the horns or something.”
“So now my words are coming alive,” Tomo whispered. He crumpled the note, shoving it into his pocket. “How am I supposed to write the entrance exams?”
“Let’s do what we came here to do,” I said. “The answer’s in the Imperial Treasures. It has to be, or Amaterasu wouldn’t have given them to Emperor Jimmu.”
Tomo nodded, and we hurried down the street toward the palace. Was the Magatama really here among all these modern buildings and stores? But Japan was a place of opposites. Ancient temples beside gaming arcades, crumbling castles across from fast-food restaurants. You could never be sure what monument would rise in the distance.
The Imperial Palace rose then, like a dream shifting into reality. At first there was a busy road from left to right, and then a line of trees. And then the sheer stone wall surrounding the palace seemed to materialize out of nowhere, stretching the length of the roadway. A deep moat ran around the wall, like the moat around Sunpu Castle in Shizuoka.
We walked along the edge of the moat toward Kikyo-mon Gate, the entrance to the palace. I couldn’t help thinking how the moat and stones were meant to keep out danger—danger like other Kami. Danger like Tomohiro. In another time, we would have been a threat to come after the Magatama.
He’s still a threat, laughed a voice in my head. He’ll be a threat until you kill him.
I shook the thought from my head, and saw Tomo pressing his hand to his forehead, like he had a headache.
“I heard a voice,” I said. It would sound totally crazy, except he knew what I meant. He knew the voices were real, the ink crying out to us.
“Me, too,” he said. “What did yours say?”
“Stupid threats,” I said. “Nothing I believe.”
He nodded. “Good. Don’t listen to them.”
“What did yours say?” The moat curved under a wide bridge in front of Kikyo-mon Gate. A crowd of tourists, Japanese and foreign tourists, stood waiting for the tour to begin.
“It’s like someone shouting in my head,” he said, combing his hand through his copper spikes. “The Magatama. It’s like I need it to breathe.”
I rested my hand on his arm, and he reached up and squeezed his fingers in between mine. He was struggling being here, being so close to one of the treasures. Being so close to destiny.
The tour guide bowed and took our tickets, and we follow him into the imperial gardens with the rest of the crowd. He led us carefully down the stone paths as we curved around a set of buildings. The tour guide explained what they were, but in such rapid and faraway Japanese I couldn’t understand.
I leaned into Tomo as we walked. “What exactly is the plan? No one’s ever seen the Magatama jewel except the imperial family and their aides, right? How are we going to get near it?”
Tomo’s breath was labored, his eyes shining. “I don’t know. I looked up everything before we came, but it’s probably highly guarded.”
“You don’t know?” I said.
“Maybe just being near it will be enough,” Tomo said. “I don’t know how, but I need it, Katie. It’s calling out to me.” I listened, but I didn’t hear anything, didn’t feel anything.
The path curved around a group of trees and sprawled over a beautiful bridge that spanned the western side of the inner moat. Pink and white lilies floated upon the surface of the water, crowded by the thousands of green lily pads overtaking the moat. It almost looked like you could walk across them to the other side. The algae-covered stone wall pulled away from the water at a steep angle, toward what looked like a miniature version of Sunpu Castle. Its white-and-black stories built upon one another like a tiered cake.
“Fujimi-yagura,” the tour guide rattled off, and then, for the benefit of the foreign tourists, added in English, “Fuji-view Keep.”
Tomo pressed his shoulder against mine, his voice quiet and dark. “A tower won’t stop me from taking what’s mine.”
“We’re here to look at the Magatama, not steal it,” I hissed. “Do you want to get arrested?”
“It belongs to me,” he said, and I knew something was terribly wrong. I looked at his eyes...they were normal, not pools of vacant black like I’d expected. The voice was his, too. He hadn’t lost control, then. But then why was he talking like that?
“It belongs to the emperor, idiot. You’re not Tsukiyomi, remember?”
He looked at me, his eyes filled with hunger. “You don’t understand. It’s all starting to make sense. We were always meant to come here. This is the way to stop Takahashi, Katie. Tsukiyomi’s goal wasn’t to destroy the world. It was to destroy Susanou.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What? You don’t even make sense.”
The group began to cross the wooden bridge into the east gardens, but we hung back from the entourage. “It’s like the Magatama’s light is shining over everything, like it’s all becoming clear. This didn’t start with us. It’s like Ikeda said—we’re the newest warriors, but the war goes back to the dawn of time. We have a chance to settle it once and for all, to put the feud to rest.”
“The voices,” I said. “They lie, remember? Don’t listen to them.”
But he shook his head. “It’s different this time. I know it. This doesn’t feel wrong.”
Almost everyone was across the bridge now, and we followed. But as soon as we reached the other side, Tomo yanked on my arm and pulled me down the bank of the stone wall, so we were hidden by the base of the bridge. I slipped on the stones, but Tomo grabbed my arm tightly. The tips of my shoes dipped into the water, the ripples bobbing the lily pads up and down.
“Not a good time to go swimming,” he whispered.
“You’re crazy!” I hissed back. “They’re going to arrest us.”
But they didn’t seem to notice they’d lost us, not yet. They carried on down the path, and curved around the edge of the trees. When they’d vanished, Tomo grabbed the side of the bridge and pulled us back up. “You have nothing to worry about,” he said. “If they find you, speak only English. Cry if you have to. Tell them you lost the group. It’s me that has to worry about answering questions if we get caught.”
“Wow, thanks for reminding me I don’t fit in,” I said, and he frowned.
“It’s not like that,” he said. “Every samurai uses circumstances to his advantage, right? Don’t play by the rules. Use your foreigner status to cheat your way out of trouble.”
“One, we’re not samurai. Two, don’t samurai have an honor code or something?”
Tomo paused, scanning the buildings. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I was thinking about pirates.” He rushed for a tree-lined path that ran alongside the main route. I could do nothing but follow.
“How did you get pirates and samurai mixed up?”
“This isn’t the point,” he said. “Look, over there. The Imperial Palace guesthouse.”
It wasn’t anything like I’d thought a royal building would be. It looked like a very long teahouse, a rectangular building of white, gray and black. It didn’t look elaborate at all, but unassuming and, honestly, a little plain. The tour group was just ahead of us, snapping photos of the building as they walked on a strict pathway around it.
Tomo peered ahead. “We’ll need to get behind it, to the Three Palace Sanctuaries. We should be able to sneak past when they take the turn up Yamashita Dori. The trees are a little bare for cover, but we should manage.”
“You really researched all this, huh?” I said. “You meant to ditch the tour group from the beginning?�
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He shook his head. “I looked up where it is, that’s all. The rest is instinct.”
“Instinct won’t get you past security, Tomo.”
Tomo took my hand; his body was shaking from the deep breaths he was taking, and his face almost glowed with adrenaline. I’d only seen him look this way when he was in a kendo match, or when he had thrown himself into a drawing. “We need to find the Magatama,” he said. “At all costs.”
“And you think it’s in there?”
“You can’t see it?” he said. I stared, but saw nothing. “I don’t mean with your eyes,” he said, playfully tapping the back of my head. “It’s like a sun. It’s radiating heat.”
I squinted, trying to catch a pulse of flame or infrared light, but nothing. “How can you tell?”
“I can feel the heat, like a burning flame. And, you know, the internet says it’s in the Kashiko-Dokoro shrine to Amaterasu, so that helps.” I rolled my eyes.
We walked slowly toward the edge of the Imperial Palace guesthouse. It’s not like we were trying to break into the actual palace where the royal family lived, I thought, but I’m sure we weren’t the first to try and wander the grounds on our own. There would definitely be guards and surveillance cameras.
“We can’t do this,” I said.
“Turn back if you need to,” Tomo said. “The tour group is still there.”
“Tomo, you’re going to get in huge trouble.”
“Only if I get caught,” Tomo said. “And I’ve got a few good excuses ready.”
“Like? The police already have their eye on you from that fight with Ishikawa.”
“Like I got lost, like I blanked out and didn’t know I was here.”
“Oh, please, like they’ll believe that.”
“Then I’ll tell them I’m a Kami and that Takahashi is going to destroy the world. I don’t know! I’m just not going to get caught, that’s all.” He let out an exasperated breath, his glance racing across the grounds like we were wasting time. “Katie, this is the answer to everything. The world is changing, and we need the jewel to stop it. I promise we won’t take it, okay? I just need to see it.”
