by Amanda Sun
It took her a minute to get it, but when she did, the smile curled along her lips.
“Katie,” she said. “Don’t be afraid to go. It won’t make Japan any less important in your life. You can give living with Nan and Gramps four or five months, too.”
“I know,” I said. I slouched back on the couch, deep in thought.
“Katie?”
“Yeah?”
“Does this have to do with Tanaka?”
“Tanaka?” Oh. “Ew, no.”
“Are you sure this isn’t about a guy? Because staying for a guy is—”
“I know,” I said quickly. “It isn’t about a guy.”
“Take the night to think about it,” she said. “Nan is waiting to book the ticket, but give it a day, okay?”
I nodded and trudged to my room. Had she heard a word I’d said?
I wasn’t staying for a guy. But who was going to look out for him if I wasn’t here? And what about the life that had taken root here? I’d given it the time, and the plant was only starting to bud. Why should I hack it out of the ground before it had time to bloom?
And as dumb as it seemed, like a moth to a flame, I needed to know. Was the ink really trying to kill me? What if it was something else? What if I was part of something important, something that could stop the other Kami for good?
What would Mom do? God, I missed her. I could do anything, she’d told me over and over. But I needed to hear her say it again, that she believed in me.
I stared into the void in my heart, searching for her. I hugged my pillow to my chest and stared at the ceiling, but I couldn’t stop wondering if Tomohiro was safe, if the Kami
would come back to get us.
I need to know you’re safe, he’d said.
Shit. I was staying for a guy. And he wanted me to leave, because if I didn’t, terrible things were lurking around every corner.
My keitai went off in the middle of the night. I jolted awake, fear twisting up and down my spine.
“Moshi mosh?” I said, shocked to find myself speaking Japanese even half-asleep.
“Katie,” said Tomohiro’s smooth voice. I fell back onto my pillow with relief.
“God, I thought you were Jun calling to threaten me or something.”
“Sorry,” he said. He sounded pretty sheepish. “I know it’s late. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Fine,” I said. “Except I can’t sleep.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I said. “This jerk called my keitai in the middle of the night.”
I heard him snort.
“I’ll go beat him up,” he said.
“Good.”
“Wait, why does Jun have your keitai number?”
“Never mind,” I said. “It was when he was trying to protect me from Ishikawa. It’s nothing.”
“You sure?”
“Well, maybe I’m not sure, ’cause evil Kami are so hot.”
“Hidoi na,” Tomohiro whined. “Don’t break my heart now.”
“Let me sketch him. He might be pregnant.”
“Oi, ” he said, but I could just about hear the grin on his face. “Did you talk to Diane yet?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“I told her I want to stay in Japan.”
“Shit, Katie.” He sounded all irritated, the way he talked at school.
“Look, it’s my life, okay? I get to make the decisions.”
“I know,” he said. “But being with me is a bad one. Look, my dad found out about the Kami contacting me. He’s talking about moving.”
“What?” I sat upright, turning up my air conditioner so Diane wouldn’t hear us. “How did that happen?”
“They came to my door tonight.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Katie,” he said, and his voice turned all soft. “I lost my mom. I can’t lose you, too.”
The same reason I wanted to stay in Japan, thrown back at me. And suddenly my choice felt selfish.
“Where are you going to go?”
“He’s trying to pull strings and get transferred to Takat-suki, but I’m trying to convince him to stay. It’s not like there won’t be Kami in Osaka, too. And I can’t switch schools in the middle of studying for entrance exams. I’d fail for sure.”
“What if you came with me?”
“To Canada?”
“Yeah.”
“And what about my dad? I know I’m endangering him by existing, but if I’m not here, how do I know they won’t go after him? I’m all he has left.”
The tears streamed down my face and I grabbed a tissue off my night table, trying not to sound like I was crying.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, but we both knew he was lying.
“I want to stay with you,” I said. “Even if it means…even if…”
He was silent for a minute, because we both knew what I was going to say. When he spoke again, his voice was so small I could barely hear him.
“Katie, I know it’s your life. But please…live it. Please live.”
I listened to the sound of our breath whispering against the receivers, and then we both hung up, and the silence of the night pushed in around me.
If I left Japan, we’d both be safe. His drawings would be under control, and the ink in me would probably go back to being dormant.
I loved him. And I knew what I had to do.
“Okay,” I whispered into the darkness. “Okay.”
Chapter 19
Nan sent the ticket express mail, and by Friday it was poking out of our mailbox in the lobby, the printed address of the travel agency in glaring black English letters. There was a little picture of a plane circling a globe in the corner.
Tomohiro left for a second kendo training camp the Saturday morning, and even though I begged him not to attend, freaked out that the Kami would surround him, Jun never showed up at the retreat. Guess he couldn’t do much with a broken wrist.
I spent the weekend sorting through my things, while Diane made phone calls to both schools to make sure my en-rollment and withdrawal were under control. Tricky, considering neither school was well staffed in early August.
The sweat of the Japanese summer clung to my skin as I packed up my purikura album with photos of Yuki and Tanaka, and my headband from my kendo uniform. The Twofold Path of the Pen and Sword, it read, the motto of our club. I folded it neatly, the kanji collapsing in on themselves, smaller and smaller.
Mostly I left my room the way it was, because neither Diane nor I could bear to see it pared down to the spare room it had been before I arrived. Not that we were going to admit it to each other.
Not that it needed to be said anyway. It was obvious.
Tomohiro sent me a couple of texts from the training camp, mostly passing on messages he got from Ishikawa that the Yakuza were going to rethink their plan of dealing with Tomohiro. I guess an artist who draws a gun that fires on him isn’t the most useful to have around. The Kami were too quiet, though, and I found myself peering out my window at night, wondering if they were watching us, waiting to make a move.
Yuki and Tanaka came over in the afternoon with little parting gifts. Yuki dabbed her eyes and said over and over again how she couldn’t believe I was leaving. I tried to comfort her, but how could I? I couldn’t believe it, either.
She gave me a cartoon teacup, to remember our time in Tea Ceremony Club, and Tanaka gave me a DVD set of Lost, his favorite American series, one we’d watched over and over again in English Club. His cheeks turned a deep red when I hugged him at the door, yet another casual mistake that showed I didn’t belong in Japan. I probably should’ve bowed or something.
I mailed off a parcel to Nan and Gramps, mostly omiyage souvenirs for them and for friends when I got there. I stuck in a few curry-rice mixes, not sure if I could buy them in Deep River, not sure if I could survive life without the comfort-ing smell of Japanese curry wafting from the steel pot in the kitchen. I studied Diane’s nikujaga an
d meat spaghetti, willing myself to remember all the details, eating thick toast for breakfast every morning slathered in honey. Buying purin puddings and green matcha cream horns from the conbini stores until my stomach felt satisfyingly ill. If I had to leave Japan, I’d go out with a five-pound bang.
While I was folding clothes for the suitcase, my keitai rang with an unknown number. I picked up, hands trembling.
“Hello?”
Nothing but the sound of breathing.
I started to panic, wondering how they got my number.
“Greene,” Ishikawa said quietly. “Ki wo tsukete na,” he managed before a rattling cough started up. Halfway through the coughing fit, he hung up. Take care. A peace offering, I guess.
Well. He wasn’t my best friend, so I could still be pissed at him. Even if he’d saved Tomohiro’s life.
The day before my flight, I was supposed to meet Tomo in front of Shizuoka Station, so I was completely shocked when he knocked on our front door. Diane answered it, a bizarre look on her face. I peeked around the corner from the bathroom, my heart drumming in my ears. Now I’d have to explain everything. As the door swung open, I imagined the worst: Tomohiro slouching in the doorway, hand pressed to the back of his head and his scars fully visible. Maybe a split lip from some fight he got into on the way over here. What if Diane somehow knew the rumors about his pregnant girlfriend? Oh god, my life would be over.
But he was standing normally when she opened the door, and he gave her a crisp, overeager bow, flooding the genkan with superpolite Japanese. I didn’t think I’d ever heard his sentences end in all those masus before. But Diane raised her eyebrows at his copper hair, the thick silver chain around his neck and the rips in his jeans. She probably thought he was a bit of a cleaned-up punk, which I guess he was.
She turned around and I ducked back into the bathroom, my face totally red and the heat rushing up the back of my neck.
“Katie,” she called out. “Um, Yuu Tomohiro is here to see you.”
“Thanks,” I said. She filled the frame of the doorway.
“He’s not Tanaka,” she said slowly.
“Um,” I said. “For the record, I always told you Tanaka and I are just friends.”
“You also never mentioned Tomohiro.”
“It slipped my mind?”
Diane gave me a stern look.
“Sorry,” I said. “I just didn’t want you to be worried.”
“Why would I be worried?”
“Because of his reputation?”
“Okay, now I’m worried.”
“He’s not really like that,” I said. “Trust me, Diane.” She frowned.
“Trust you because you’ve been lying all this time?”
“Touché.”
“If you were staying, we’d have a talk about this.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But I swear, he’s nice. And our planned activities are PG, I promise.”
“That doesn’t fill me with confidence.”
From the hallway, Tomohiro cleared his throat.
“Diane!” I whined.
“Home by nine,” she said. “Or I get a shotgun.” And then she couldn’t help herself and grinned.
Small victories, I guess. It wasn’t like she was going to pull the staying-for-a-boy line on me, because I wasn’t staying.
“We’re going for kakigori, ” I said. “Um. I have my keitai with me.”
“Okay,” Diane said, but she kept staring at me. “Have a good time. I’ll call you.” She emphasized that part.
“Um, okay,” I said and closed the door behind us. I tried to punch Tomohiro in the arm, but he sidestepped it, a bright grin breaking onto his face.
“What’s that for?” he said.
“Like you don’t know! Couldn’t you have dressed like a normal person?” I swung again. He jumped back, his arms up in the air and the smirk plastered on his face.
We walked to the food floor of the department store off Miyuki Road, debating which café had the most impressive spread of wax desserts in their f loor-to-ceiling windows.
We ducked under the cloth noren hanging from the doorway and sat down at a table. We ordered kakigori, shaved ice, mine melon and his strawberry with extra condensed milk.
“That’s disgusting,” I said, watching him drown the syr-upy ice with runny cream.
He shrugged. “I’m not sharing.”
“I wouldn’t want any. One bite and I’ll give my grandkids cavities.”
The nightmare of the Kami and the Yakuza hovered on the edge of our memories, and I found myself wondering if it had really happened or if it had all just been a bad dream.
“Ishikawa’s getting out of the hospital this week,” he said.
“Oh.” Back to reality.
“I’ll be careful,” he said.
I mashed the melting ice with my spoon. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He finished the last bite of his kakigori and then reached across the table for mine.
“Hey!” I said, but all I could think about was the softness of his wristband against my skin as he pulled the dessert toward him.
“Don’t complain,” he said, scooping a huge bite into his mouth. “I’m saving your grandkids hundreds in dental bills.
And do you know how many calories are in this?” He squirted more condensed milk on top.
“About a hundred more now?”
“I need to bulk up for the kendo tournament.”
“With kakigori. ”
“Never say I don’t sacrifice for my sport.”
We walked around Sunpu Park, avoiding the castle. The cherry blossoms were long gone, but a few cicadas still whirred in the hot summer air. He reached for my hand, his wristband pressed against the inside of my wrist, the scars up his arm scraping against my skin as we walked.
It was almost dinnertime and the sky started to streak with colors; our last day was ending. Tomohiro pulled me into a conbini store and bought bentous for us, which the clerk heated up in a silver microwave. We boarded the puttering Roman bus, the smell of teriyaki and katsu curry flooding our noses.
I didn’t have to ask where we were going. I knew.
They’d finished the renovations at Toro Iseki, and most of the chain-link fence lay stacked in piles ready to take away.
A couple of university students walked around the site, the girl with her arms wrapped tightly around the guy. Near the Toro Museum at the other side of the forest edge, a group of elementary school students laughed and joked.
I stared, feeling like something was slipping away from me.
“Guess I’ll have to find a new studio,” Tomohiro said, but his voice sounded as hollow as I felt.
We stepped through the trees in silence. The wagtails called to each other, ready to roost in the ume trees for the night. The ancient Yayoi huts stood against the orange sky, the once long grasses around them trimmed neatly for the tourist season.
An ugly patch of brown grass was shorter still where it had burned under the dragon’s looped corpse, but that was the only mark left of what had happened to us.
Tomohiro squeezed my hand and pulled me forward. We ducked into one of the huts before we could get caught. Above us, the sun gleamed through the gaps in the thatched roof.
“We’ll get in trouble,” I hissed.
“What’s new?” He grinned and then leaned over to kiss me.
We sat pressed against the walls a long time, staring up at the sky as the colors twisted and darkened. We watched as our last day together faded, as life grew over the shape of what had once been.
I turned the wrong way when we walked back to the bus stop. That’s how much my world was shifting under my feet.
Tomohiro couldn’t make it to the airport in Tokyo, but at my front door—Diane’s front door—he’d stuffed an envelope into my hand and made me promise to read it on the plane.
Then he’d pressed a kiss onto my lips, deep and hungry and sweet, and pulled awa
y before I could say goodbye, his hand raised to his face as he turned the corner for the elevator. I’d leaned against the wall, listening until the elevator doors slid shut. And then ink had dripped back down the hallway toward me, leaving inky trails that looked like fingers grasping, stretching.
Never quite reaching me.
“Want a sandwich for the flight?” Diane asked at the airport. I shook my head. My stomach felt like it was pressing in on me. There was no way I could eat. “Tea? Anything?”
It was like we were strangers again, like she was shoving hors d’oeuvres at me at Mom’s funeral, keeping a silver plate between us. And yet I’d really started to think that looking for ourselves on the other side of the world, we’d found each other. She wasn’t the piece that didn’t fit—she was the piece that completed everything.
We stood at the security gate, as far as she could take me.
“Well,” she said.
Well.
“Say hi to Nan and Gramps for me,” she said. She reached up and stroked my hair. She had that same wavering smile Mom always had when she was pretending not to be sad.
“They’re going to be so happy to see you.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“No problem,” Diane answered.
“No,” I said, looking her right in the eye. “I mean, thanks.
For everything.”
She looked at me, her eyes filming over with tears. Then she hugged me tightly.
“Oh, hon,” she said, her eyes squeezed shut. “If you need anything, you call me, okay? Don’t worry about the time difference.”
“Okay,” I said. She stepped back and looked at me, her eyes shining.
“Your mom would be so proud of you,” she said, and my eyes filled with tears. “It was always so hard for her to put down roots outside her comfort zone. And you managed it in a different language, even.”
“It’s no big deal,” I said, which meant don’t say any more or I’ll start bawling in the middle of Narita Airport.
I guess she got the message, because she closed her mouth and stepped back.
“Bye,” I choked.
“You’ve always got a home here,” she said. “Okay?”
