by Amanda Sun
The chemistry teacher looked crestfallen.
“Sou ka…” he mused. Then he shook his head. “Well, never mind. Come in and watch for a bit, ne? ” I couldn’t think of a way to refuse, so I shuffled into the gym, slumping down against the wall where the students waited for their turn to duel.
“Okay, next pair!” the other teacher shouted. The chemistry teacher nodded at me with a smile and started across the floor. Throaty shouts echoed through the gym as the pair came at each other. They pressed their swords against each other’s, circling at arm’s length. With lightning speed, one approached and smacked his sword on the other’s helmet.
“Point!” the chemistry teacher yelled. I stared wide-eyed.
It had happened so fast it was almost a blur. The skirts of the fencers swayed as they moved back and forth, coming at each other and drawing back.
Another pair was called forward, and another. I watched in amazement until I’d lost track of time.
“See you next week!” the teacher called, and I stared down at my watch. Really?
The students untied their helmets and wiped the sweat off their foreheads with their arms. There were a few girls, but mostly guys. I scanned the group as they walked toward the change rooms.
And then Bleached Hair strode past me, followed by Tomohiro.
So. This was why he could take care of that fight. Next to this, the fight with three thirteen-year-old morons was probably nothing to him.
“What did you think?” came an English voice beside me.
I looked over, startled, into the glowing face of the chemistry teacher.
“Oh,” I stuttered. “It was, um, great.” The other teacher had walked over now, another senior-level sensei that I didn’t know.
“This is the foreign student at Suntaba,” said the chemistry teacher. Thanks, real subtle. The man arched his eyebrows.
“You going to join our club?” he asked. I began to protest, unsure how to word it. I looked over at Bleached Hair and Tomohiro rubbing their faces with towels and chugging water bottles. Tomohiro had a white-and-navy sports bag strapped over his shoulder and he grinned as he chatted with his friend. He glanced over, and I couldn’t tell if he was smirking or actually smiling.
“Well? What do you think?” said the teacher. “Give it a try?”
I stared at Tomohiro. I wanted to figure out why he’d ditched calligraphy for kendo and what that glimpse of him in the park had meant. And anyway, the way he stared at me felt like a challenge. Like I had to prove that I could do it, too.
“Sure,” I said, glancing at Tomohiro. “I want to try.” The teachers smiled, sputtering about how wonderful it was, while the grin slipped from Tomohiro’s face. He looked away, turning toward the end of the empty gym.
“I joined the Kendo Club at school,” I said to Diane over dinner. She went bug-eyed and just about dropped the shrimp straddled between her chopsticks.
“You what?”
“I joined the Kendo Club.”
“I thought you hated contact sports.”
I shoved in a forkful of salad. “I do.”
“Kendo does not translate to ‘ballet,’ Katie.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know. I sat in on a practice today. And anyway? Ballet isn’t easy, either, thanks very much.”
“It’s dangerous. You could get hurt,” Diane said, but I shrugged.
“You could get hurt crossing the street.”
“Katie, I’m serious. Are you really sure you want to do kendo? Did the teacher talk you into it?”
“No, I want to do it.” I poured my cup of green tea over my rice and mashed it in.
Diane sighed. “I don’t know about this. What would your mom say if I let you try it? And don’t pour your tea in your rice, Katie. You’ll ruin it.”
“Tanaka said it tastes better this way,” I said. “And don’t worry. Mom would say, ‘Good for you, Katie! Japan needs more girls taking kendo!’”
I could almost hear her voice when I said it. Mom had always been like that, making sure I knew girls could take on anything. If Mom couldn’t be here to say it, then I would say it for her. I swallowed the sadness back, biting my lip. I could keep her alive, just a little bit. I wouldn’t have to let go. Not entirely.
Before the tears could start, I rose to my feet and started clearing up my empty dishes. Diane stared down at her pile of shrimp tails and I knew I’d won when her shoulders sagged.
I knew she was thinking about Mom, too, about what she would want for me.
“All right,” she said eventually. “It’s okay with me, but take it slowly and be careful. If you get hurt, I’m pulling you out.”
“Diane, come on,” I said. “What’s a contact sport without contact?” Okay, so I was egging her on, but I couldn’t help it. A sport where I was expected, even encouraged, to smack Tomo
hiro. What could be better? I placed my dishes in the sink with a clank and raced to my room before she could say anything.
I sank into the quilt of my bed, the comfort of a Friday night where I didn’t have to slave away at homework. Diane shouted that our favorite drama was on, but by then I was half-asleep, dreaming of the clatter of bamboo swords.
Oh god. What had I signed up for?
Chapter 4
On Monday, I slipped out the front door of Suntaba just as Tomohiro pedaled away on his white bike.
Where’s he sneaking off to all the time anyway?
I watched with frustration as he cycled out of sight. If he was trying to keep me at a distance, it couldn’t be good. I knew better than to spy on a boy who put his best friend in the hospital. I did. But I couldn’t get him out of my mind.
And it’s not like I wanted my drawings to come at me again with pointy teeth, ever. Maybe I needed to preempt the next weird ink encounter.
“Diane,” I said, when she finally got in from a late night of drinking beer and slurping noodles with her coworkers—
a required social thing.
“Hmm?” she said, slipping off her high heels and rubbing her feet. Her face looked worn and tired.
“Can I get a bike?”
“You want a bike?”
“It is a long way to school,” I said. “Most of the kids bike anyway. Tanaka does.” Diane arched her eyebrows, like she’d understood something.
“Oh,” she said, “you want to go biking with Tanaka.”
“Ew. Please don’t start that again.”
“All right, all right,” she said, but she looked unconvinced and suspicious. “You can take my bike on Wednesday, and I’ll see about getting you your own if you decide you like biking so much.”
“What about you?”
“Wednesdays I have a prep period first. They finally hired another English teacher, so it’s not a problem. And you may find you prefer walking, in which case I can get my bike back.”
There was no way I preferred walking. That Wednesday I hoisted Diane’s thin white bike from our balcony and shoved it into the elevator with me. I almost knocked out our neighbor with the wheel when I got to the lobby, but once I was on the streets, it was a breeze to maneuver through the traffic. The tires spewed up gravel in the park, so I had to slow down to avoid spraying passersby. With the slow speed, I almost collapsed on my side, but once I’d found the right rhythm, it was perfect to cycle under the shower of pink petals, which would be hopelessly tangled in my hair by the time I reached Suntaba.
The breeze whipped my hair behind me and closed my ears to the noise of hanami-goers in the park. All I could hear was air, birds, the odd traffic signal beeping across the moats from the city, all buzzing together in a blurred combination.
I pumped the pedals hard as I crossed the northern bridge, falling back into the city on the other side and through the gate of our school.
Class passed by slowly, and I kept staring out the windows, where I could see the pink snow of sakura from the tree in the courtyard. Yuki said the blossoms only lasted a couple weeks. Pretty soon I would wake u
p and discover the branches all bare.
Tanaka offered to help Yuki with the bathrooms because I’d mopped the floors for him the day before, so I managed to leave school earlier than usual, just in time to see Tomohiro straddling his bike.
I fumbled with my lock as he sped out of sight. Although I guess I didn’t have to hurry that much—I knew he’d end up at the station because he’d turned left first, which meant he was trying to throw everyone off his trail.
Always with the tricks. What was so important no one else could see?
I pulled the rusty lock off and scrunched it into my book bag, slipping the leather straps over the handlebars and yanking the tire out of the rack. I sped through the gate, nearly knocking out two second-year boys, and headed south.
I stopped for a breather at Shizuoka Station. I had a few minutes at least before he’d finish his wild-goose-chase route, and when he showed up, I’d be ready.
“Guzen da!”
I may have jumped clear out of my skin. I whipped around, but it wasn’t Tomohiro. For one thing, this guy had floppy black hair and blond highlights tucked behind his pierced ear.
“Jun!”
“You remembered.” He smiled. “Are you waiting for someone?”
“Oh, no, no,” I stammered. I could feel my face turning red. It was a million kinds of obvious that I was.
Jun grinned. “A guy, maybe? The one you saw on the train?”
Was I that transparent?
“What are you talking about?” I stuttered.
“Sorry,” he said. “None of my business, right? You just have that same flustered look again.” He reached for the heavy bag on his shoulder and pulled on the strap. “I’m on my way to practice, but I saw you and thought I’d say hi.”
“Practice?”
“Just a sport I’m into,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, trying to peer around him without looking like I was peering around him.
He leaned in a little, and whispered, “Who are we spying on?”
“Okay, fine, it is the guy from the other day,” I said. “Jeez, what are you, some kind of detective or something?”
“I watch a lot of police dramas.” He grinned. He lifted his left palm and pretended to take notes on it, his fingers poised around an imaginary pencil. “So is he giving you trouble or something?”
“He’s not— Well, I mean. Kind of?”
Jun frowned. “Kind of?”
“He’s just up to something, that’s all.” I thought of the inky eyes staring at me—they still made my heart flip over when I thought of them. “He draws these sketches that creep me out. It’s almost like they’re alive or something.”
“Creepy sketches? That’s definitely criminal activity,” he said, madly tracing kanji onto his palm.
My cheeks blazed red. “Forget it. It’s stupid,” I said, and he dropped his hands to his sides as he shook his head.
“It’s not stupid if he’s bothering you,” he said.
“He’s not bothering me. I mean, he is, but—” The words tangled as much as my thoughts. What exactly was he doing?
“Sometimes it’s like he’s picking on me. And then other times, he looks like he’s scared of me, or like I’m in on some kind of secret.”
“Ah,” said Jun. “Now that, I understand.”
“So?”
“He likes you.”
I snorted. “You’re way off base, keiji-san. He even has a girlfriend.”
“I guess I’m losing my touch.” He laughed. “That just seemed like the obvious answer.”
Then he stared at me intensely and started to lean in.
“What are you doing?” I said, my pulse racing. How was this happening? His eyes were soft and dazed, like he was looking at me while half-asleep. The blond highlight tucked behind his ear escaped and fanned over his cheek, the longest strands brushing the corner of his lips. He reached his hand out toward my hair. I flinched and tried to back up, but I was on my bike and huddled against a wall. There wasn’t anywhere to go.
I felt the soft brush of his fingers through my hair, and then he leaned back.
“Cherry blossom,” he said, the pink petal pressed between his fingers. He let it flutter to the ground as we watched, and then he looked up at me. “So beautiful,” he whispered.
My heart might possibly have stopped for a second.
And then Tomohiro whizzed past with his unmistakable hair slicked to the sides of his head. Jun must have seen the urgency on my face because he turned to watch him go by.
“Ah,” he said, and I wondered if I imagined the hurt in his voice. “He’s here, the boy who draws things. You’re flustered again.”
“I’m not flustered! I’m just—”
“I know, I know. But I’m late for practice, so I’ll catch you later, okay?”
Yeah, right. He smiled as he walked away, limping a little under the weight of the sports bag. I watched him go, wondering if I imagined it. So beautiful. He meant the cherry petal—right?
No time to think about it. Tomohiro veered toward the walkways and I was on his tail, coasting down the hill and looping around pedestrians. This was my chance to finally figure it all out. What he was hiding, why he was pushing me away. Sure, there was the I’m-a-jerk component, but after the fight in the park, there was more than that. There had to be.
The city thinned as we moved forward, and then I really got nervous. Maybe he was onto me. Maybe he was messing with me again, because I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary here. I half expected him to stop his bike and look back at me with a smug grin and a slow clap.
But then a tipsy Roman bus snorted along the street, and relief washed through me. He was just following the bus route.
A mass of trees in fresh bud spread in front of us like an emerald beacon amid the city streets, and I realized where we were headed.
Yuki had told me about it—Toro Iseki, an excavated ar-chaeological site in the thick of Shizuoka City. A chain-link fence surrounded the area, and suspended from the barrier was a big orange sign with kanji I couldn’t quite read—but there was a big picture of a bowing, apologetic workman with a hard hat, so I got the idea.
Tomohiro coasted along the side of the fence, his fingers strumming the chain links as he went. He leaped off his bike and pushed in on the side of the fence. It lifted from the rail and he ducked under, pulling his bike through the gap. When he disappeared into the trees, I pedaled up to the loose fence.
There was a thin trail on the other side—not very notice-able, but I had spent every summer in the forests of Deep River, and clear as day I saw the stomped-down grass and broken branches.
A slip of ripped paper fluttered in the grass, with little torn holes like it was pulled from a notebook. Something had been scribbled on it. And I bet it was Tomohiro’s.
I peeked around me, my heart pounding. Even when friends egged me on, there were lines I never crossed. I couldn’t believe I was even considering breaking into a restricted area.
I stared at the tuft of forest, the trees bursting upward. I knew Tomohiro was there, and I had to know what he was doing.
I took a deep breath. Hot adrenaline raced into my fingertips and down my tired legs.
I pushed the chain-link fence in and ducked under.
The tension prickled down my neck and shoulders, but nothing happened. The park was silent except for the chirps of strange birds grating against each other.
I bent over and lifted the scrap of paper, rubbing the grainy notebook page between my fingers. With a deep breath, I flipped it over. Scribbled, panicky lines had somehow woven together into the end of a dragon’s tail, curved with shaded-in scales. Tufts of hair and ridges sprawled from the tail in sharp, ragged scrawls of ink.
I squinted as I stared at the paper. Something was off—
the proportion maybe, but part of the tail looked funny. One spike looked too long, but then it looked fine again, and then another patch of scales seemed out of place. I scrunched up my face
, trying to figure it out, as a gust of wind almost blew it out of my hand.
The tail flicked from one side of the paper to the other.
I dropped the scrap, my heart pounding.
I stood there, unsure what to do. Should I let Tomohiro know I was here and make him explain? I’d probably come off as a wacko. Not that spying on him from afar was any better, but it’s not like I’d planned this out well. I just wanted to know what the hell he was up to. I shivered as I thought of the pregnant girl’s eyes on me, the horrible moment that had started all this weirdness. I had to know the truth.
The forest wasn’t as dense as it had seemed, and a few me-ters ahead the trees thinned into the clearing of Toro Iseki.
My breath caught in my throat as I stepped forward.
Bathed in the pink of sakura, the white of late ume plum blossoms and the vibrant greens of fragrant spring leaves, walking into the silent ruins of Toro felt like walking into an ancient painting. The floating petals rained on the thatched rooftops of the old Yayoi houses and collected in the grasses around them.
Tomohiro sat beside one of the huts, his knees tucked up and a black notebook balanced on them like a canvas. His hand arced over the paper quickly, black spreading across the stark white page. Every now and then he had to stop to blow the cherry and plum petals off his work.
I hung beside the trees on the edge of the clearing, watching him.
Without lifting his head, he said into his drawing, “You might as well sit down instead of standing there gawking at me. It’s annoying.”
Heat coursed through my cheeks, and my ears burned with embarrassment.
When I didn’t reply, Tomohiro stopped drawing. Still not looking up, he moved his hand to a spot on the ground beside him and patted it. “Sit.”
I smirked. “What am I, a dog?”
He looked over and grinned, the breeze twisting his spiky hair in and out of his deep brown eyes. I almost melted on the spot.
“Wan, wan,” he barked, the Japanese version of a dog’s noise. I nearly jumped back at the sound of it, and his eyes gleamed with twisted delight. “I’m the animal around here, right?” he said with a smirk. “Don’t sit if you don’t want. I don’t care.” He turned back to the page.
