by Amanda Sun
The metal gate was closed.
“Yes?” came a tinny voice across the intercom, and a thought fired through my brain.
Tomohiro.
But a moment later I realized it wasn’t Tomohiro but an older, rougher version of his voice. His dad.
“I’m looking for Yuu Tomohiro,” I said.
“He’s out” came the reply.
“I really need to talk to him,” I said, because really, what else could I say?
“Sorry.” The voice vibrated through the speaker. “I don’t know where he is. You could try his keitai. ”
Because that had worked so well over the past week.
“Thank you,” I said and turned down the street, wondering where to go next.
Toro Iseki, obviously, but as soon as I started sprinting down the street, I slowed down. There’s no way he’d be there, not this late. Would he?
I imagined his drawings fluttering through the darkness, as white as ghosts.
I flipped open my keitai, staring at his phone number on the bright screen. My finger circled the send button, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it again. It started to dawn on me, the only things I knew for sure: Yuu Tomohiro was not kidnapped by the Yakuza (yes, I had been worried about this).
Yuu Tomohiro’s wrist was seriously injured, more than he’d let on. And Ishikawa had seen it.
Yuu Tomohiro was avoiding me.
My heart felt like it had collapsed in on itself. Was that last one really true? Was it all in my head? There was this nagging unsettled feeling, like the balance of the world was tipping.
I twisted through the streets, not sure where to go. Toro Iseki was a long way to go if I was wrong, and I felt like I was. With his wrist that damaged, could he really draw anything? And would he want to draw anymore, after what had happened?
It’s worth my life, but it isn’t worth yours.
Was my life for sure at risk?
I had to find him. I stared down the street, the lights of Shizuoka blurring as I spun my head around. He was somewhere. I just had to figure it out.
I walked back to Shizuoka Station; it wasn’t like I had a better idea, and the station was the central nerve of the city.
On a board in the station, tourist flyers splayed out of little cubbyholes. Most of them had majestic views of Fuji or Shizuoka tea fields sprawled across them, but one was for Toro Iseki. I flipped the brochure open and saw the open hours.
Definitely closed by now, but that wouldn’t stop Tomohiro anyway. I debated about the twenty-minute bus ride, the long walk back if I was wrong. And if I was wrong, I sure didn’t want to break into Toro Iseki at dark. I shuddered, imagining my hand touching the wet snakeskin of the dragon, though of course his body was long gone by now.
Some places in the city didn’t close when the sun set.
Ramen-noodle-house signs gleamed in the darkness. Conbini stores glowed with their shiny mopped floors. I snuck a peek at the café where we’d had dinner together, but no luck.
What else might be open?
And what was Tomohiro thinking anyway, running off to places at night where I couldn’t find him? Didn’t he have entrance exams to worry about? And didn’t he need every spare moment of study time in between all those practices for the kendo tournament?
I stopped dead in the whirlwind of travelers that pulsed around the station.
Kendo.
I ran through Sunpu Park under the dim lamplight and the bare sakura branches, past lovers and friends strolling through, salarymen stumbling home from nights of drinking with coworkers. I ran until my lungs burned, until the roof of Sunpu Castle gleamed in the distant moonlight, and then I crossed the northern bridge toward Suntaba School.
I had to make sure Tomohiro was okay. Had Ishikawa backed off? No more swarming with creepy Yakuza members? After talking to Jun, I had to know. I had to know if everything was all right.
Most of the lights in the school had blinked out and it looked deserted, empty, like the shell of a distant memory.
Deserted except for the bright f luorescent lights that gleamed from the gym doorway.
I ran toward the door, my lungs about to burst and my legs about to give way. The warm light from the gym spread across the shadows of the rear courtyard, lighting up the tennis-court lines in a ghostly shade of yellow.
I stopped as I reached the open door, pressing myself against the frame as I peered in.
Tomohiro was inside, alone and decked out in kendo armor, swinging his shinai through the air. He turned, moving through the katas and kiri-kaeshis like a dancer in slow motion, silently at first, then with shouts of determination.
Even from here I could see how unsatisfied he was with the movements. He’d swipe through the air, curse as he walked back into place, then strike again. The shinai shook in his hands; he lost his grip and the sword fell an inch—not at lot, but enough to distinguish a point from a miss.
It wasn’t like him to struggle with the easier movements.
It took me five seconds to realize it was his wrist, because although the strength in a shinai swing comes from the left hand, it’s the right that guides the hit. And Tomohiro’s was going all over the place.
He swore and got back into place, shaking his head, clearing his thoughts. He thrust again, swung for a hit. He got it, but then the shinai fell again; better than I could do, but not like him at all.
I watched him struggle. I wasn’t sure what to do, whether I should let him know I was there. But why did I go all the way to Suntaba if I wasn’t even going to talk to him?
I stepped into the splash of artificial lights and walked toward him. He noticed me after a moment, lowering the shinai and pulling the men off his shoulders. I tried not to notice the way he stared at me, surprised and silent. I tried to stay focused on the fact that he was possibly avoiding me, and not to let on that I knew. Or to come off all mad at him. Something like that.
“You’re back,” he said, advancing toward me across the gym floor.
I squeezed the grain of annoyance in my mind as it struggled to get away.
“We got back this morning,” I said.
“Okaeri.” His voice was too gentle, passive almost. The whole thing felt off.
“Thanks. How about you? You’re hard at work, I see.”
“Yeah, well…” And he looked away. Was he avoiding me because he was embarrassed about his wrist? Or maybe the kissing in his living room? Now that I thought about it, it was kind of awkward.
“Um…so how was the training retreat?” I said. I’m connected to the Kami, I wanted to blurt out, but everything about him felt weird. He started to unbuckle the armor and reached for his water bottle on the bench nearby.
“Fine,” he said. “I might have learned enough of Takahashi’s moves to beat him next time.”
“Great,” I said. “And Ishikawa?”
“Ishikawa’s fast,” he said, chugging down the water. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm and screwed the lid back onto the bottle. “But there’s a good chance we won’t be paired in the tournament. Usually they don’t pit team members against each other.”
“Oh.” Pause. “So, um, how is your wrist doing?”
He hesitated and stopped pulling off his glove so it sat there half on, half off, the laces dangling down.
“I mean because of before,” I said. His eyes were glaring, like I’d hit a sore spot. But he didn’t know Jun had told me about it, right? I could just be innocently asking.
“It’s fine,” he said, grabbing the fingers of the glove and yanking it off, dropping his arm down before I could see.
Jeez, touchy much?
“That’s great,” I said. “So Ishikawa…?”
Another pause. “We’re getting along fine.”
I felt like I was standing in the middle of a quiet street, just waiting to get run over. Why was his voice so cold?
Then, as he looked into my eyes, his voice softened. He untied the tare around his waist and placed it with
the rest of the armor. I noticed the new headband in his hair, not a bloodstain on it. He pulled it backward off his head, and his copper hair flopped down around his ears.
“Did you have fun in Miyajima?”
“Yeah, it was okay.” I might be a Kami. I couldn’t say it. It felt wrong, like I was intruding on the pain he suffered. But Niichan’s alternative, keeping my distance from Tomohiro—it scared me more. “I…I went to a Shinto shrine. I think maybe I learned why the ink moves.”
“What?”
I swallowed. “What if I’m a Kami, Tomo?”
He stared at me for a moment.
“You can’t be,” he said.
“What if there’s some other way, though? What if I’m connected somehow?”
“Do you have nightmares?” he said. “Like the ones I told you about?”
“What? No.”
“Then you’re not. All Kami have nightmares.” I thought of the painting of Taira no Kiyomori, the demons and shadows encircling him. “Not all Kami’s drawings move, right?
But all Kami have the nightmares.”
“Oh.” Niichan hadn’t said that.
“There’s some other reason you’re moving the ink. I’m not sure why. But don’t worry about it, okay? You’re not a monster, not like me. Ii ka? ”
“O-okay.”
“Good.” He stooped down and packed his shinai, gloves and hakama into his navy sports bag, carrying the rest to the storage room at the back of the gym. “So…want to go for some ramen?”
Not really. Why was it so awkward?
“Sure.”
When I got home, the phone was ringing. I hurried over to pick it up, but when I heard the voice on the other end, my mistake occurred to me.
“How’d you know I’d be here?” I said, scrambling for an excuse. Diane did half a laugh on the phone.
“I’d be more surprised if you weren’t,” she said. “C’mon, what teenager doesn’t want the house to herself for a week?”
“Diane, I promise, I’ll be really careful and take good care of myself.”
“I know,” she said. “If I thought you’d throw a house party, I’d have confiscated your key.”
“Does that mean—?”
“Yes, yes.” She sighed. “You can stay. But if anything happens, you call Yuki’s mom, okay?”
“I will,” I promised.
“So how was Miyajima?”
“Really nice.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I brought some manju home. You know, those cakes with custard in them.”
“Oh, that’s even better. Try and save some until I get home.”
“I will.”
“What did you have for dinner tonight?”
I stared at the unagi bentou, still in the bag. I wondered if it was ruined by now.
“Unagi,” I said. She didn’t say anything for a minute. “Diane?”
“I’m here,” she said. “It’s just, you’re sounding…well, not so much like a gaijin anymore.” Diane laughed, and even though I felt like I should be annoyed, I felt kind of proud. “Just like Nan,” she said. “You could be planted anywhere and bloom.”
“Comes with the genes,” I said. “Well, I mean, for you and me.” Mom had only wanted to bloom in familiar ter-ritory. I don’t think she would have gone for shrimp chips and seaweed.
“I’m in Osaka for a few more days and then I’ll be back, okay? Call me if you need anything.”
“I will.”
“Love you,” Diane said, and before I could answer, she hung up.
“Love you, too,” I said to the dial tone.
I put the unagi in the fridge and went into my room to pull on my pajamas. I sprawled out on my bed, staring at the ceiling.
I thought about how dim Tomohiro’s eyes had been, not lit up the way they were when he was happy or even when he was delighting in being a jerk. Was he really so upset about his wrist?
I rolled onto my side and curled up. It made sense when I thought about it. He’d had to quit calligraphy, the one thing he loved, because of this dark ability. And now the other passion in his life, kendo, was tainted, too. He couldn’t get away from this power, a dark inkblot on his life that controlled him unless he could find a way to control it.
So far, the ink was winning.
Chapter 14
The sound of my keitai beeping woke me the next morning.
I rubbed my eyes until they turned red.
“What time is it?” I mumbled, fingers splayed out as they searched the table beside me for the phone. I flipped the keitai open and looked at the text message from Tomohiro.
Meet me at 1pm, Shizuoka Station. —Yuu I stared at the name he’d written. Yuu felt distant and strange, but maybe he’d just made a mistake. He did seem a little off since the kendo retreat.
I stayed too long in the shower, until my skin turned pink and taut under all the steam. I put on my pretty pink shirt and a cream skirt, and even tried to do my hair up, which didn’t really work that well, but hey, points for effort, right?
I waited outside the bus loop until I saw him stride over, his eyes cold and distant. He had the same look from school, the way he’d look staring at me from across the courtyard.
“Come on,” he said, looping his fingers around my wrist.
“Hey,” I said, following behind him. I pulled my hand out of his grip as I followed him. “What’s up with you today?”
“Sorry,” he said, looking down at the ground. “It’s my wrist. It’s really bugging me.” He pulled up the black wristband he wore to cover it and I gasped. The stitches were still visible, and the gash looked way bigger than I remembered.
“Will it…will it leave a scar?”
He hesitated for a second, then smirked and slipped the soft wristband back over the cut.
“I’ve got quite the collection,” he said, but the joke just made my stomach twist.
He led me through the winding, narrow streets of the Oguro neighborhood, until I’d completely lost track of where we were. He reached again for my arm and pulled incessantly, checking his watch again and again. So much for a nice date.
My pink-and-cream outfit looked completely out of place against the monotonous gray of the streets.
At last he led me toward a tall building. I couldn’t read the kanji, which wasn’t new. When he stopped abruptly, I almost crashed into his back.
“Close your eyes,” he said, turning his head to the side and not meeting my eyes.
“Tomo.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Trust me.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Trust you, Mr. Cheesy?”
He gave me an agitated sigh. “Ii kara!”
“Fine, fine.”
“Okay.” His voice was heavy, but I closed my eyes and let him lead me up the stairs and through some glass door.
The building inside smelled of dried flowers and musty carpet. We went up some more stairs and down a hallway, and I opened my eyes to peek. The hallway was lit with yellow lights glaring from above, an ugly carpet on the floor. Doors flanked both sides of the wall, like an apartment building.
Only, I was wrong.
Tomohiro stopped at one door and fiddled with a key in his pocket. He slid the lock open and led me in. The door clicked behind us, his hands on my shoulders. I stepped forward slowly, panic rising up my shoulders, buzzing in my ears.
I could barely get the words out. “What is this?” My throat felt like it had seized up.
“It’s a love hotel.” And there it was.
“What?” I couldn’t have heard him right.
“It’s popular in Japan,” he said, isolating me as he said it.
“It’s a place where we can be alone.” He turned around then, a sly smile on his face.
The room was huge, with a big soaker tub on the other side with marble steps leading up to it. And behind him, a neatly made bed. The whole thing looked like a very fancy hotel room, and I felt the lump in my throat growing.
He k
issed me then, but it wasn’t at all like the kisses in his living room. His arms wrapped around me, but they weren’t gentle.
My world no longer felt like it was slipping out of balance.
It had tilted right over and I was falling, tumbling into space, into the flames below.
Yeah, he was gorgeous, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about him a lot since that night at his house. But it was too fast, way too fast. There was no way I was ready for this.
His kisses trailed to my shoulder, and the panic burned through me. My ears hummed like I’d been surrounded by screaming tweens at an Arashi concert.
“Tomo,” I said. “I don’t— I think— I’m not really ready for this.” I tried to lift his hands off me, but they snaked away and landed on my arms, my back, my hips. I stepped away from his lips as he leaned in, but his hands pressed me into the wall and he kissed me so hard I swore my lips would bruise.
I grabbed his shoulders with my hands and shoved him away. “I said quit it!”
The look on his face was horrible, an ugly sneer that made me look ungrateful. It made me feel like garbage, like he thought I was utter garbage.
“Typical Western girl,” he snapped, and time stopped. Hot tears sprang to my eyes and my stomach churned. He leaned in to kiss me again, but I turned away. I darted for the door and stumbled into the hallway.
“Katie!” I heard him call after me, but I ran faster, throt-tled down the stairs as my heart pounded in my chest. The tears wouldn’t stop, tracing down my cheeks and blurring my vision as I ran. I didn’t know where to go, but when I stared down the first-floor hallway, I saw that one end led to an array of doors and the other a glass door to the street.
I burst onto the sidewalk, clacking down the stairs in the shoes I’d so carefully chosen to go with my outfit. It seemed ridiculous now; all the warning signs, and yet I’d never admitted to myself what kind of guy he really was.
I raced down the street, choking back sobs. I stumbled as a shape rose in front of me, a person I hadn’t seen through my blurry vision. I tried to stop before we crashed, but my shoe twisted underneath me and I collapsed. He caught me before I hit the cement.
