by Amanda Sun
The corner of the sketch was curling up, the way the real bill did. The pheasants starting flicking their heads around, pecking at the ground.
“Tomo, stop,” I whispered. I looked at his eyes. They were flooding with black, his pupils growing too large. “You have to stop.”
I reached over and pinched the back of his leg as hard as I could.
He dropped the pen and it rolled in a slow circle across the page.
“Let’s see,” said Hanchi, reaching over to pick the paper up.
As he lifted the pad, the sketch fell right off the page and fluttered to the table.
Hanchi reached over and picked up the bill.
“Su-ge,” he said in a low voice. Everyone watched in stunned silence.
The sketch looked just like the bill. There was still a drawing on the paper, but it looked blurry and made my head ache when I stared at it.
“One problem, though,” Hanchi said as he flipped it back and forth in his hands. He held the note right in front of Tomo hiro’s eyes. “It’s black-and-white.”
“It’s a pen sketch,” I said. “What did you expect?”
“I can’t use this,” Hanchi said. “Are you messing around with me?”
Tomohiro shook his head, breathing heavily. A trail of ink trickled from his shirtsleeve down to his wrist, where it dripped onto the paper.
Splotch, splotch.
“All my drawings are black-and-white,” Tomohiro said.
“I only do calligraphy and ink wash.”
“This is no good,” Hanchi said. “Draw something else.
Get him a sumi and an inkstone.”
“No!” I said, then clamped my hand over my mouth. Hanchi raised an eyebrow.
“Ah, I think we’ve hit on something here,” he said with a smile. “Your…abilities only work with raw ink.”
“Look,” Tomohiro snapped. “I’m not interested in working for the Yakuza, and I don’t know what Satoshi told you, but I can’t make dragons appear in the sky. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”
“You just sketched counterfeit money, Yuu.”
“And you saw how pathetic it was. I’m no good at this, okay? Let us go.”
Hanchi sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Let’s try again, hmm?”
Sunglasses came in, and the sight of him sent prickles up my spine. He put down an inkstone, a sumi ink stick and a sumi brush for Tomohiro, while the Korean guy brought a small dish of water. They backed into the group of Yakuza watching curiously.
“So you can’t draw money. There are other things we need.
Drugs, guns, your basic underworld stereotypes. In fact, as long as the other gangs know we have a member who can create monsters—that alone is all the power we need to run things properly.
“So,” said Hanchi, reaching behind his back and pulling out a gun, “let’s try again.” He pulled out the clip and reset it with a loud click. Then he tossed the gun onto the table.
I watched as it spun around on the glossy surface, slowing until the end pointed at Tomohiro. “And there’s no point in trying anything,” Hanchi added. “Gun’s empty. So draw.”
Tomohiro picked up the sumi brush, gliding his fingers over the length of it, plying the bristles back and forth.
“Horsehair,” he said without looking up.
“Ganbare,” said Hanchi. Do your best.
Tomohiro placed the brush back on the table. He gripped the sumi ink stick tightly and moved it to the suzuri inkstone.
His hands shook just a little, but no one seemed to notice but me. He took a little water and poured it on the suzuri, then started grinding the sumi. The ink bled into the water, making it thick and dark. His hand twisted and twisted around the inkstone, the scraping filling the silent room. His bangs slipped from behind his ear and fanned downward, hiding his eyes from me.
I felt so powerless it was driving me crazy.
As Tomohiro ground the ink, the Yakuza began to crowd the table, curiosity overtaking them. Even Ishikawa rose, creeping forward on socked feet to peer over our shoulders.
I wished I could sock him one, but I guessed it wouldn’t be the best move. I’d have to punch him later.
If there was a later.
The ink thickened and pooled in the suzuri stone. A faint sheen swirled through the ink, the edges of the liquid floating in ways they shouldn’t. At first my brain tried to ignore it, and no one else seemed to notice except Ishikawa, whose face crumpled in confusion. But I’d watched Tomohiro draw before, and I knew when the ink stopped being ink and started being…well, something else.
Tomohiro stopped, pouring a little of the ink into a bowl and adding some water for a lighter gray shade. I pinched the back of his leg. This isn’t art class, idiot. Why put in the effort?
But as the Yakuza leaned in, I did, too, and when I saw his eyes, the pupils were huge. And growing.
Shit. Those alien eyes. I’d lost him now.
“Tomo, stop,” I said, pinching him harder.
He said nothing, staring down at the paper with those vast, vacant eyes. He blotted the brush and dipped it into the black ink. He lifted it in a slow arc to the hanshi paper.
He drew a stroke downward, then one sideways.
Each stroke was delicate, determined. The whole room watched in silence.
He blotted the brush, shaded the handle of the gun with the gray ink. The gun was more artistic and less realistic than the ten-thousand-yen note. I hoped the design was part of some plan he had, but the look in his eyes terrified me. The Kami blood in him had taken over.
Now his eyes were gleaming, his hand moving faster and faster.
I’d lost him, just like I’d lost him when he sketched the dragon. If bottled ink had been too much for him then, how the hell could he handle hand-ground sumi ink?
The answer rang out in my head.
He couldn’t.
Damn it.
The gun started spinning on the page slowly, his hand following it around, painting it as it moved.
“Tomo,” I said louder. “Stop.” I grabbed his arm with my hands, and his whole body shuddered. He jolted his arm back with so much force that I fell backward; he barely missed a stroke.
Ink spread from my fingertips down my arms, coating my skin with a black sheen.
“Katie!” Ishikawa’s bleached hair loomed over me, his face twisted with concern. His hands reached out to pull me up.
“Don’t touch me!” I yelled. When I looked at my arms again, the ink was gone.
The Yakuza didn’t notice. They were staring at Tomohiro and getting nervous. The gun was spinning slowly again, pointing at each Yakuza as it went past and stopping for a brief moment. They leaned back, eyes wide.
“Yuuto, what happened to your eyes?” said Ishikawa.
“Hanchi!” said the Korean guy, but Hanchi waved it away.
“Wait,” he said.
Tomohiro kept drawing, filling in the sketch, adding depth. Ishikawa looked at my arms with their lack of ink.
He stared at Tomohiro’s alien eyes and at the drawing.
The ink was dripping sideways off the paper. It was reaching slowly, drop by drop, toward me.
“Yuuto,” Ishikawa whispered, like he finally got it. Like he finally realized how much danger we were in. “Yuuto, listen to Katie and stop.”
I wanted to tell him to piss off, but even more I wanted Tomohiro to listen.
“Yuuto,” Ishikawa said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
Tomohiro thrust his arm back and Ishikawa tumbled into a group of Yakuza. They collapsed into the table behind them, and two of its legs shattered under the weight.
“Hanchi!” the Korean said again. This time Hanchi looked worried.
“Yuu, that’s enough,” he said, but Tomohiro’s hand whirred between the ink bowls and the hanshi paper. “Mou ii!” he said again. Nothing.
Hanchi’s eyes narrowed. He reached forward, grabbed the Korean’s gun and pointed it at Tomohiro.
“Yamero!” he shouted. Stop!
And suddenly the gun stopped spinning. The sketch rotated upright, so that the gun barrel pointed directly at Tomohiro.
And I screamed as I saw the trigger pulling back.
“Yuuto!” shouted Ishikawa and leaped forward.
Bang.
I screamed.
Tomohiro and Ishikawa collapsed to the floor.
Blood streamed up Ishikawa’s shoulder, trickling through his bleached-white hair and pooling in his ear.
Another loud bang shook the building.
“What the hell was that?” shouted Hanchi.
“Hanchi!” yelled Sunglasses, pointing at the doorway.
At least twenty snakes made of ink wriggled under the rice-paper door.
Only, Tomohiro hadn’t drawn them.
“Sato,” Tomohiro groaned, and I slumped Ishikawa off him.
“Tomo,” I said as I clawed at his chest and arms searching for wounds. But we could both see Ishikawa sprawled unconscious on the floor, the blood soaking through his shirt.
More and more snakes streamed in, and something was crashing through the hallway toward us. The Yakuza scattered, firing at the snakes, screaming as the papery serpents wrapped around their ankles and sank in their inky teeth.
“We have to go!” I said. I grabbed Tomohiro’s arm and pulled him up with me, but he crouched back down again.
“We can’t leave him!” We stared at Ishikawa and how pathetic he looked, how the blood was retracing the lines back down to his shoulder now that Tomohiro was pulling him upright, the stark red threading through his white hair.
Tomohiro ducked under Ishikawa’s injured arm and I pulled on the other. Together we adjusted him over Tomohiro’s shoulders.
Ishikawa groaned.
“Sato,” said Tomohiro. “Come on, man, help me here.”
Ishikawa wrapped one arm tighter around Tomohiro. He tried to wrap the other and yelled out when he couldn’t.
“It’s burning,” he rasped. “I-te, i-te!”
“It’s okay,” Tomohiro said. “Let’s go.”
The crashing sound got louder, and suddenly the whole shouji door collapsed into the room, a serpent as tall as me hissing at the shrieking Yakuza.
Ink dripped off his fangs and pooled on the floor.
And behind him, a man dressed in black, blond highlights tucked behind his pierced ear.
What the hell?
Takahashi Jun.
Chapter 16
“Katie!” Jun yelled. He ran toward me, grabbing me by the shoulders; and even though ink-sketched snakes were swarming the room, even though a giant serpent slithered toward the shrieking Sunglasses, all I could feel was the heat of his palms through the cotton of my shirt.
“Daijoubu ka?”
“I’m fine,” I said, “but what—? How—?”
“Yuu,” he said, and at first I thought he meant you, but then he let go of my shoulders and walked toward Tomohiro, taking Ishikawa’s other arm and draping it over his back.
“Takahashi,” Tomohiro said, staring at the giant snake cornering Sunglasses on the other side of the room. “You…
made these?”
“We need to go. Now,” said Jun, and just like that he and Tomohiro started dragging Ishikawa to the collapsed rice-paper door.
I hurried after them, leaving behind the shrieks of the Yakuza and hisses of snakes that buzzed in my ears.
We wound through the building, moving as quickly as we could. Ishikawa groaned as the other two shouldered him through the narrow hallways.
My mind buzzed with the same thoughts over and over.
Because I knew Tomohiro didn’t draw any snakes.
We came out in the same garage; there was the truck. But the garage door was in pieces on the ground, puddles of thick ink oozing across the floor.
“Come on,” Jun said, leading us through the gaping hole of the garage. The humid summer air hit as I stepped out into the smell of night flowers and the hum of vending machines. In the dark, three motorbike engines revved to life and I blinked as the beams of light splayed onto the walls.
Three people dressed in dark clothes straddled the bikes, hands on the handles and helmets shining my reflection back at me. One of the riders carried a beat-up-looking navy duffel bag—I knew it instantly. Tomohiro’s kendo bag, which meant they’d started searching for us at Sunpu Park.
Tomohiro jumped back, but Jun slipped out from under Ishikawa’s arm and raised his hands.
“It’s okay,” he said. “They’re with me. Oi! ” he called to one of them. “We need to get Ishikawa to Kenritsu fast.”
“No,” Ishikawa gasped.
“Are you totally mental?” I snapped. “You’ve got a gun-shot wound, for god’s sake!”
“That’s the point,” Ishikawa said between breaths. “They’ll…
ask questions.”
“So, what, you’d rather die?”
“Satoshi, go to the hospital,” Tomohiro said.
“Yuuto—”
“Please, Sato.”
“I’ll take him,” said one of the riders. She lifted the helmet off her head and held it under her arm. “I’ll cover the questions.”
How is she going to do that? I wondered. But the girl reached out her arm and helped Tomohiro hoist Ishikawa onto the back of the bike.
“Can you hang on?” she asked.
Ishikawa didn’t answer, but the weight of his body pressed against her back. She revved the engine and zoomed into the darkness, Ishikawa slumped over as they went.
“Katie,” Jun said, gesturing to another of his companions,
“go with Ikeda. She’ll take you back to your aunt’s place.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I don’t think they’ll come after you. Ikeda will stay with you if you’re worried.”
I stared at Jun. I definitely appreciated the fact that he’d followed up on my call, busted us out of Yakuza hell and was now giving us an escape, but I had questions burning in my mind that wouldn’t go away.
Why didn’t he call the police?
How did he know where to find us?
Where the hell did those snakes come from?
“I’m not sending Katie home alone,” Tomohiro said.
Jun grabbed a fourth motorbike, shiny black and parked in the shadows of the Yakuza building. He swung his leg over and revved the engine to life.
“Yuu, you may still be in danger. If you stay near Katie, she is, too. Get it?”
Tomohiro balled his hands into fists and looked down at the pavement.
“You don’t get it,” I said. “I’m in danger whether he’s near me or not.”
“What do you mean?” Jun said.
“Nothing,” Tomohiro said.
“Look,” said Ikeda, “we can’t stick around here.”
“Yuu, come with me,” said Jun. “I know somewhere safe you can go for now.”
The anger and fear boiled inside me. I couldn’t take it anymore, all of them talking like I wasn’t there, like I wasn’t part of this. Wasn’t it me that snuck into Toro Iseki with Tomohiro, watched him sketch the dragon and the wagtail and the horse? I’d been through just as much as him. I’d seen the way he struggled between his passion and his curse.
What had Cigarette said? I was an ink magnet. I was making the ink do things. Niichan said I was connected to the Kami. I was definitely part of this, and there was no way I could just go home.
I walked up to Jun and sat behind him on the bike.
“Wherever you’re taking Tomohiro, I’m damn well going, too.”
Jun stiffened, the bike idling underneath us, kicking up smelly fumes that flooded my nose.
“Jun,” Ikeda urged. “We’ve gotta go.”
“Okay,” Jun said at last. “Hold on.”
I nodded and wrapped my arms around his waist. His skin was warm and hard through his shirt, and I knew Tomohiro was staring at me as he sat on the bike behind Ikeda. I kep
t looking forward, not letting him know I saw him watching.
What was I supposed to do, let go of Jun and fall off the bike?
Jun only had one helmet, and he plunked it down on my head before we took off. We lurched forward into Shizuoka traffic, zipping in and out of the lanes. I’d never ridden on a motorbike, and before I knew it, I was pressing myself against Jun, my knuckles white as I clutched at his shirt rippling in the humid breeze.
“Where are we?” I shouted over the roar of the engine.
“Yakuza meet-up place in Aoi Ward,” Jun said. The red light turned blue-green and we raced forward. “About an hour from Shizuoka Station.”
Only an hour north of Sunpu Park, then, an hour from home.
“How did you know where to find me?” I yelled. My hands felt like they were slipping, and for the hundredth time I readjusted them around his broad frame.
He tilted his head back, the blond highlights whipping around in the wind and the traffic lights sparkling in his silver earring.
“I’ve had a few run-ins with them before,” he said.
What was that supposed to mean? Like the knife incident with Sugi? I remembered what he’d said then. I don’t like gangsters. I looked back at the other two motorbikes and watched them zip after us. Ikeda and Tomohiro passed us, his arms wrapped tightly around her.
Well.
“Jun.” The wind whipped my words back at me. “Did you make those snakes appear?”
“What?” He sped up.
“The snakes!” I said.
He didn’t say anything, which was answer enough.
Which meant he was one of them, too. He was a Kami.
My mind reeled. The ink at the kendo match—he must have realized what it was. I thought back to how he’d pressed me in the convenience store, in the stations, on the way to school. How’s Tomohiro’s wrist? I always knew he’d done calligraphy. Would you get him to show me his drawings sometime?
Damn. It was all a trick, and I’d let it all pass over my head.
How long ago did he figure it out?
I tried to think of anything that gave Jun away. Was there ink on his hands? Did he have a notebook with him?
I craned my neck to look over his shoulder, but the bike wobbled underneath us. He wasn’t carrying anything with him, but that didn’t mean anything anymore, not after I’d seen what Tomohiro could do without drawing anything.
