“You mean it’ll be easier to take over Japan when no one is looking?” I said, rolling my eyes.
He grinned. “Something like that. But it’s for their own peace of mind. I mean, how did you react when you first saw the ink move?”
Not very well. There was truth to what he was saying. The Kami would probably be rounded up and sent to labs or something to be poked and prodded. They definitely wouldn’t be left to roam free.
If anyone knew what Tomohiro was capable of... I shuddered. He would’ve been considered a threat by the royal family back then.
Jun grabbed an armful of the paints and paper and brought them to the square of white tables, putting them down with a thud.
“What do you mean by Imperial and Samurai Kami?” I asked. He took an empty glass and carried it to the sink at the back of the room. “Are they different?”
“The Imperial Kami are the direct connection to Amaterasu.” He pushed a knob on the tap and water rushed into the cup. “The emperors have always claimed descent and the right to rule. The problem is that history is never straightforward, because people aren’t, either.” He slammed the knob off and carried the water back to where I was waiting. “Kami children started showing up in the samurai families. Sometimes it was infidelity, but other times emperors and their family members married into the samurai families to show loyalty. But as the different clans fought for power, both sides became paranoid.” He put the glass down and pulled out a chair, motioning for me to do the same.
“Like a Kami war?”
He nodded, tucking his blond highlight behind his ear so he could see me better. “The emperors worried the Samurai Kami would try to overthrow them. It sparked a lot of battles, assassinations and even suicide requests.”
I gaped. “The emperors asked the samurai to kill themselves?”
“Hara-kiri,” Jun said. “You’ve heard of it, right? The emperors could claim it was because of their dishonor, and the real reason could be covered up. But the samurai families caught on. And suddenly there were no Kami children being born anymore. Strangest thing, huh?”
“They hid their abilities to survive.”
“Some parents tried to make matches that would dilute the Kami blood so the powers would decrease through the family line. Others wanted to retain the power, but had to send their children away so their talent would go unnoticed. And the ink doesn’t awaken in everyone, so it’s hard to determine who’s descended from a Kami and who isn’t. Which is why now Kami often don’t know how to control their powers. They aren’t taught. It’s a dirty secret, one many families don’t even remember.”
“I know there are a lot of people in Japan,” I said, “but if the ink goes back that far, there must be a ton of Kami now.”
Jun shook his head as he unscrewed a bottle of red paint. The room filled with the chemical smell of the acrylic. “It’s sort of like a recessive trait, you know? It shows up the strongest in the imperial family and descendants of the samurai families, where the chances of the trait are strong. But once the bloodline between the elite clans and the common people intermixed, the ink started to go dormant. More human than Kami, you know?”
That’s what he’d said to Tomohiro that night. Stop thinking you’re human.
“How do you know all this?”
Jun grimaced. “I’m from a family that believed in retaining the Kami bloodline. When I started showing signs, it was required learning.”
“So the reason you and Tomohiro are stronger than, say, Ikeda, is because you’re from samurai families?” I asked. It was lame, but I felt smug for slipping in a passive-aggressive jab at Ikeda.
Jun grinned. “Or imperial,” he said. He squirted the red paint into the glass of water. It spread its tendrils, tinting the water a deep crimson.
“What are you doing?” I said. He didn’t answer, but grabbed the blue paint and squirted some into the glass. He grabbed yellow and then green, giving them each a squeeze into the glass. They swirled into a disgusting brown. “Okay, whatever art project this is, you’re totally getting an F. That’s just gross.”
He slapped the lid on the last of the colors and pushed the glass toward me.
“Drink this.”
I stared at him. “Have you lost your mind?” Maybe he really was crazy.
“Drink,” he said, tilting the glass from side to side.
Ew. “No way. Do you know how sick I’d get? Believe me, it wouldn’t be pretty.”
“Exactly,” he said, putting the glass down and leaning back, his arms folded.
“I don’t follow.”
“If you drank this, you’d get sick,” he said. “Your stomach would hate you.”
“Yes. We’ve all learned something today. So...?”
“Okay,” he said, twisting the spiky bracelet around his wrist. “So say you did drink it. You’d get really sick, but after that, would you be okay?”
“Depends. Is it nontoxic?”
He laughed. “Yes.”
“Then yes, I’d be okay.”
He pushed the murky paint water away and grabbed a sheet of paper. He reached for a pen and began sketching. I leaned as far back as I could in my chair.
“It’s not...it’s not going to attack, is it?”
Jun looked up at me, frowning. “Kowai ka?” he said. “Are you scared? Man, how bad is Yuu’s control?”
Damn. Even without meaning to, I was giving him way too much information about Tomo.
“His control is fine,” I lied. “It’s you I’m worried about. Those snakes you called up against the Yakuza were pretty vicious.”
He smiled. “But none attacked you.” He was right.
He sketched and I peered over his left arm, curled casually around the drawing. He was bolder in his drawings than Tomohiro was. Tomohiro’s strokes were more delicate somehow, more thoughtful and hesitant. Jun’s were determined, steady, practiced.
He drew a glass of water, and before he’d even finished, the water sloshed around with each stroke, dripping down the side of the glass like beads of ink.
When he was finished, he lifted the paper upright and touched the surface gently with his hand. The blur of the image against his skin made me feel sick, and I had to look away. It was the same kind of motion sickness I had watching Tomo draw. There was something about that moment when the drawing stopped being a drawing and started being something else. Something alive.
When I looked up again, the glass of water still sloshed on the page, but Jun held a copy of it in his hand. The edges of the glass looked uneven and scratched and the water inside swirled with veins of black, like the ink had dropped into the clear water, spreading out in tendrils. The water didn’t muddy with color like the paint water had.
“Thirsty?” Jun asked.
I stared at him with disbelief. Knowing what I knew about the ink, a drink like that could kill someone.
He could probably tell what I was thinking from the pale look on my face. He lifted his free hand and waved it back and forth.
“I drew water, not poison,” he said. “It would probably make you really sick. But at the end of it, you’d be all right.”
Hesitant, I touched the glass. If Tomohiro had drawn it, I would’ve gotten a sharp cut. I knew I would’ve. But Jun’s glass was smooth to the touch, and except for the sprawling ink in the water, it looked almost normal. Why did I feel guilty thinking that?
“The thing is,” he said, “if you drink something that makes you sick, there’s a good chance you’ll come out of it okay. But what if it’s not just you? What if, say, the person who drank this was pregnant?”
My eyes widened, and I lifted my hand to my mouth. I got it. I got what he was saying. My voice wavered. “You think my mom ingested ink when she was pregnant with me.”
“If someone drinks the ink, they don’t acquire the abilities of a Kami,” Jun said. “Not even by blood transfusion. But if that ink got trapped somehow, got pumped into you as you were forming...your body might think it was natural.”
“Oh god.”
Jun’s voice was gentle, quiet. “Katie, when you were about ten or eleven...is that when you noticed the ink reacting?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t notice anything until...” My voice dropped away. “Until I came to Japan. When I first arrived, I felt like something was coursing around inside me. The plane—there was this turbulence, and I could’ve sworn it moved in time to my pulse. It happened again when I started at Suntaba, and then I started seeing Tomo’s drawings move.”
“That makes sense,” he said. “It was probably dormant until it returned here. Until it could sense the other Kami around. Not that it’s alive, but...it’s the power given by Amaterasu. And that power will seek its own like a magnet. It’s like how people are driven to a certain calling in life. The Kami are driven to protect Japan.”
“But how did the ink get to my mom in the first place?” It was horrifying to think about. I was shaking now, and I rested my arms on the table to steady them.
“What about your aunt?” Jun said. “Did she send any omiyage gifts from Japan?”
I shook my head. “She didn’t move to Japan until I was eight. And Mom’s never been. Diane could never convince her to visit, and I doubt she would’ve gone before I was born, either. She doesn’t like traveling outside the country.” Didn’t like, I meant. I still couldn’t think of Mom in the past tense.
Jun looked away. “What about your dad?” he said, reaching to fiddle with his silver earring. I was starting to notice he did that when he was anxious.
“My dad wasn’t in the picture,” I said. “He left Mom before I was born.”
“Sasuga,” he said. As expected.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just...my dad was a deadbeat, too.”
“He ditched you guys?”
“Sort of. He’s dead now.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “My mom’s dead, too.”
It was news to him, which just reminded me that we really didn’t know each other. So why did I feel like we did?
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It was a heart attack, a year ago now. What happened to your dad?”
Jun’s eyes were dark and cold, more than usual. He lowered his hand from his earring and tightened it into a fist. He didn’t say anything.
I knew that look, that pain. I wanted to reach out to him, like Tomo had reached out to me. The death might have happened a while ago, but Jun’s wound was fresh. He hadn’t dealt with it.
I rested my hand on his wrist and he looked at me, surprised. “I want to help if I can. I’ve been through the same thing, you know?”
He’d always looked so controlled—I’d never seen him look shaken like this. “Yakuza,” he said. “It was the Yakuza.”
Oh my god. No wonder he wanted to take them all down. I remembered now, what he’d said when Ishikawa’s henchman had threatened me. Jun had wrestled the knife from the thug and stopped him. I don’t like gangsters, he’d said. I’ve had run-ins with them before.
“My dad was a Kami,” he said. “He used to work for Hanchi.”
My eyes went huge. “Hanchi’s the one who tried to get Tomo to work for him.”
He nodded. “They asked me, too. But there was no way in hell I’d work for them. They destroyed our life. Mom and I had to move back in with her parents. We lost our house, our car, everything.”
“After your dad died?” I said. He nodded, closing his eyes. His skin was hot beneath my fingers. I wanted to hug him, but it felt awkward. What if he got the wrong idea? So I just clung to his wrist while he sat there, still, silent.
“Those bastards,” he said, his voice dark and unforgiving. “That’s why I’ll use the ink to get rid of them. So they can’t hurt anyone else.”
I understood his suffering and his longing for justice. I couldn’t agree with the way he wanted to achieve his goals, but at least it was something...at least he was coming from somewhere.
“Anyway, never mind,” he said, looking up. He looked composed again, in control. “What’s important is I think we’ve figured out how you’re connected to the ink. Next is how to control it.”
“Control it?” I said. “I’m not a Kami, though.”
“You are, in a way. You’re like a manufactured Kami.”
“That’s creepy,” I said, and he laughed.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought it was cool. Your drawings don’t move, but you can manipulate the ink.”
The art studio was getting darker, lit by the dim glow of the sunset.
I glanced at my watch. “Yikes. Diane will wonder where I am. I was supposed to be home for dinner half an hour ago.”
“Ah, gomen!” he apologized. “Let me drive you.”
“No, it’s okay,” I stammered. I didn’t really want him to know where I lived.
“At least to the station,” he said. “Until we know the Yakuza will leave you alone, it’s dangerous for you to wander Shizuoka in the dark, don’t you think?”
He had a point. Anyway, he seemed less intimidating than before. I didn’t feel like he was out to get us. He had his own agenda, and it was a little twisted, sure. But his heart seemed in the right place.
“Thanks,” I said. I helped carry the paint bottles back to the cabinets as he scratched out the water-glass sketch. The paint made a murky black swirl in the sink as we poured it out.
He grinned. “Something like that. But it’s for their own peace of mind. I mean, how did you react when you first saw the ink move?”
Not very well. There was truth to what he was saying. The Kami would probably be rounded up and sent to labs or something to be poked and prodded. They definitely wouldn’t be left to roam free.
If anyone knew what Tomohiro was capable of... I shuddered. He would’ve been considered a threat by the royal family back then.
Jun grabbed an armful of the paints and paper and brought them to the square of white tables, putting them down with a thud.
“What do you mean by Imperial and Samurai Kami?” I asked. He took an empty glass and carried it to the sink at the back of the room. “Are they different?”
“The Imperial Kami are the direct connection to Amaterasu.” He pushed a knob on the tap and water rushed into the cup. “The emperors have always claimed descent and the right to rule. The problem is that history is never straightforward, because people aren’t, either.” He slammed the knob off and carried the water back to where I was waiting. “Kami children started showing up in the samurai families. Sometimes it was infidelity, but other times emperors and their family members married into the samurai families to show loyalty. But as the different clans fought for power, both sides became paranoid.” He put the glass down and pulled out a chair, motioning for me to do the same.
“Like a Kami war?”
He nodded, tucking his blond highlight behind his ear so he could see me better. “The emperors worried the Samurai Kami would try to overthrow them. It sparked a lot of battles, assassinations and even suicide requests.”
I gaped. “The emperors asked the samurai to kill themselves?”
“Hara-kiri,” Jun said. “You’ve heard of it, right? The emperors could claim it was because of their dishonor, and the real reason could be covered up. But the samurai families caught on. And suddenly there were no Kami children being born anymore. Strangest thing, huh?”
“They hid their abilities to survive.”
“Some parents tried to make matches that would dilute the Kami blood so the powers would decrease through the family line. Others wanted to retain the power, but had to send their children away so their talent would go unnoticed. And the ink doesn’t awaken in everyone, so it’s hard to determine who’s descended from a Kami and who isn’t. Which is why now Kami often don’t know how to control their powers. They aren’t taught. It’s a dirty secret, one many families don’t even remember.”
“I know there are a lot of people in Japan,” I said, “but if the ink goes back that far, there must be a ton of Kami now.”
Jun shook his head as he unscrewed a bottle of red paint. The room filled with the chemical smell of the acrylic. “It’s sort of like a recessive trait, you know? It shows up the strongest in the imperial family and descendants of the samurai families, where the chances of the trait are strong. But once the bloodline between the elite clans and the common people intermixed, the ink started to go dormant. More human than Kami, you know?”
That’s what he’d said to Tomohiro that night. Stop thinking you’re human.
“How do you know all this?”
Jun grimaced. “I’m from a family that believed in retaining the Kami bloodline. When I started showing signs, it was required learning.”
“So the reason you and Tomohiro are stronger than, say, Ikeda, is because you’re from samurai families?” I asked. It was lame, but I felt smug for slipping in a passive-aggressive jab at Ikeda.
Jun grinned. “Or imperial,” he said. He squirted the red paint into the glass of water. It spread its tendrils, tinting the water a deep crimson.
“What are you doing?” I said. He didn’t answer, but grabbed the blue paint and squirted some into the glass. He grabbed yellow and then green, giving them each a squeeze into the glass. They swirled into a disgusting brown. “Okay, whatever art project this is, you’re totally getting an F. That’s just gross.”
He slapped the lid on the last of the colors and pushed the glass toward me.
“Drink this.”
I stared at him. “Have you lost your mind?” Maybe he really was crazy.
“Drink,” he said, tilting the glass from side to side.
Ew. “No way. Do you know how sick I’d get? Believe me, it wouldn’t be pretty.”
“Exactly,” he said, putting the glass down and leaning back, his arms folded.
“I don’t follow.”
“If you drank this, you’d get sick,” he said. “Your stomach would hate you.”
“Yes. We’ve all learned something today. So...?”
“Okay,” he said, twisting the spiky bracelet around his wrist. “So say you did drink it. You’d get really sick, but after that, would you be okay?”
“Depends. Is it nontoxic?”
He laughed. “Yes.”
“Then yes, I’d be okay.”
He pushed the murky paint water away and grabbed a sheet of paper. He reached for a pen and began sketching. I leaned as far back as I could in my chair.
“It’s not...it’s not going to attack, is it?”
Jun looked up at me, frowning. “Kowai ka?” he said. “Are you scared? Man, how bad is Yuu’s control?”
Damn. Even without meaning to, I was giving him way too much information about Tomo.
“His control is fine,” I lied. “It’s you I’m worried about. Those snakes you called up against the Yakuza were pretty vicious.”
He smiled. “But none attacked you.” He was right.
He sketched and I peered over his left arm, curled casually around the drawing. He was bolder in his drawings than Tomohiro was. Tomohiro’s strokes were more delicate somehow, more thoughtful and hesitant. Jun’s were determined, steady, practiced.
He drew a glass of water, and before he’d even finished, the water sloshed around with each stroke, dripping down the side of the glass like beads of ink.
When he was finished, he lifted the paper upright and touched the surface gently with his hand. The blur of the image against his skin made me feel sick, and I had to look away. It was the same kind of motion sickness I had watching Tomo draw. There was something about that moment when the drawing stopped being a drawing and started being something else. Something alive.
When I looked up again, the glass of water still sloshed on the page, but Jun held a copy of it in his hand. The edges of the glass looked uneven and scratched and the water inside swirled with veins of black, like the ink had dropped into the clear water, spreading out in tendrils. The water didn’t muddy with color like the paint water had.
“Thirsty?” Jun asked.
I stared at him with disbelief. Knowing what I knew about the ink, a drink like that could kill someone.
He could probably tell what I was thinking from the pale look on my face. He lifted his free hand and waved it back and forth.
“I drew water, not poison,” he said. “It would probably make you really sick. But at the end of it, you’d be all right.”
Hesitant, I touched the glass. If Tomohiro had drawn it, I would’ve gotten a sharp cut. I knew I would’ve. But Jun’s glass was smooth to the touch, and except for the sprawling ink in the water, it looked almost normal. Why did I feel guilty thinking that?
“The thing is,” he said, “if you drink something that makes you sick, there’s a good chance you’ll come out of it okay. But what if it’s not just you? What if, say, the person who drank this was pregnant?”
My eyes widened, and I lifted my hand to my mouth. I got it. I got what he was saying. My voice wavered. “You think my mom ingested ink when she was pregnant with me.”
“If someone drinks the ink, they don’t acquire the abilities of a Kami,” Jun said. “Not even by blood transfusion. But if that ink got trapped somehow, got pumped into you as you were forming...your body might think it was natural.”
“Oh god.”
Jun’s voice was gentle, quiet. “Katie, when you were about ten or eleven...is that when you noticed the ink reacting?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t notice anything until...” My voice dropped away. “Until I came to Japan. When I first arrived, I felt like something was coursing around inside me. The plane—there was this turbulence, and I could’ve sworn it moved in time to my pulse. It happened again when I started at Suntaba, and then I started seeing Tomo’s drawings move.”
“That makes sense,” he said. “It was probably dormant until it returned here. Until it could sense the other Kami around. Not that it’s alive, but...it’s the power given by Amaterasu. And that power will seek its own like a magnet. It’s like how people are driven to a certain calling in life. The Kami are driven to protect Japan.”
“But how did the ink get to my mom in the first place?” It was horrifying to think about. I was shaking now, and I rested my arms on the table to steady them.
“What about your aunt?” Jun said. “Did she send any omiyage gifts from Japan?”
I shook my head. “She didn’t move to Japan until I was eight. And Mom’s never been. Diane could never convince her to visit, and I doubt she would’ve gone before I was born, either. She doesn’t like traveling outside the country.” Didn’t like, I meant. I still couldn’t think of Mom in the past tense.
Jun looked away. “What about your dad?” he said, reaching to fiddle with his silver earring. I was starting to notice he did that when he was anxious.
“My dad wasn’t in the picture,” I said. “He left Mom before I was born.”
“Sasuga,” he said. As expected.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just...my dad was a deadbeat, too.”
“He ditched you guys?”
“Sort of. He’s dead now.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “My mom’s dead, too.”
It was news to him, which just reminded me that we really didn’t know each other. So why did I feel like we did?
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It was a heart attack, a year ago now. What happened to your dad?”
Jun’s eyes were dark and cold, more than usual. He lowered his hand from his earring and tightened it into a fist. He didn’t say anything.
I knew that look, that pain. I wanted to reach out to him, like Tomo had reached out to me. The death might have happened a while ago, but Jun’s wound was fresh. He hadn’t dealt with it.
I rested my hand on his wrist and he looked at me, surprised. “I want to help if I can. I’ve been through the same thing, you know?”
He’d always looked so controlled—I’d never seen him look shaken like this. “Yakuza,” he said. “It was the Yakuza.”
Oh my god. No wonder he wanted to take them all down. I remembered now, what he’d said when Ishikawa’s henchman had threatened me. Jun had wrestled the knife from the thug and stopped him. I don’t like gangsters, he’d said. I’ve had run-ins with them before.
“My dad was a Kami,” he said. “He used to work for Hanchi.”
My eyes went huge. “Hanchi’s the one who tried to get Tomo to work for him.”
He nodded. “They asked me, too. But there was no way in hell I’d work for them. They destroyed our life. Mom and I had to move back in with her parents. We lost our house, our car, everything.”
“After your dad died?” I said. He nodded, closing his eyes. His skin was hot beneath my fingers. I wanted to hug him, but it felt awkward. What if he got the wrong idea? So I just clung to his wrist while he sat there, still, silent.
“Those bastards,” he said, his voice dark and unforgiving. “That’s why I’ll use the ink to get rid of them. So they can’t hurt anyone else.”
I understood his suffering and his longing for justice. I couldn’t agree with the way he wanted to achieve his goals, but at least it was something...at least he was coming from somewhere.
“Anyway, never mind,” he said, looking up. He looked composed again, in control. “What’s important is I think we’ve figured out how you’re connected to the ink. Next is how to control it.”
“Control it?” I said. “I’m not a Kami, though.”
“You are, in a way. You’re like a manufactured Kami.”
“That’s creepy,” I said, and he laughed.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought it was cool. Your drawings don’t move, but you can manipulate the ink.”
The art studio was getting darker, lit by the dim glow of the sunset.
I glanced at my watch. “Yikes. Diane will wonder where I am. I was supposed to be home for dinner half an hour ago.”
“Ah, gomen!” he apologized. “Let me drive you.”
“No, it’s okay,” I stammered. I didn’t really want him to know where I lived.
“At least to the station,” he said. “Until we know the Yakuza will leave you alone, it’s dangerous for you to wander Shizuoka in the dark, don’t you think?”
He had a point. Anyway, he seemed less intimidating than before. I didn’t feel like he was out to get us. He had his own agenda, and it was a little twisted, sure. But his heart seemed in the right place.
“Thanks,” I said. I helped carry the paint bottles back to the cabinets as he scratched out the water-glass sketch. The paint made a murky black swirl in the sink as we poured it out.
