Friday night, I received another text from him.
Did something happen? You okay?
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to push him away. It seemed easier to just say nothing.
I hope you can still make it to the tournament tomorrow. Or you owe me shabu shabu and a night of wild passion. You hear me? Tomo
“You jerk,” I said aloud. It stung avoiding him like this.
Fine, I typed back. I’ll come to the tournament. Jeez, keep your pants on, Romeo.
A moment passed, and then my phone buzzed.
I’m not making any promises.
How the hell was I going to stay away? He was so lame it was cute.
Chapter 12
The next morning I got ready early, putting on my new pink blouse and lacy beige skirt with my soft pink ballet flats. It wasn’t so much that I was dressing up for him. I was trying to blend in more with the other girls, and here, supercute and girlie fashion was the way to go.
Okay, so it’s not like I didn’t hope he noticed how adorable the combo was.
Wow, Katie. What happened to staying away?
Great. So my resolve was going to last all of five seconds?
I headed toward Katakou School, where the prefecture tournament would be held. The stands were already thick with crowds when I arrived, and I searched for the best possible place I could sit to watch the matches.
I stepped down to the next aisle and just about tripped over a girl’s purse.
“I’m so sorry!” I blurted out and the girl looked up at me. She wore a bright red dress with a lacy sweater. The skirt of her dress ruffled out like a ballet tutu but was way too short, so she’d paired it with leggings and a pair of cute sandals.
“Shiori?” I said, her presence throwing me off. “You came to watch kendo?” She seemed too...delicate for it somehow.
“Not kendo,” she smiled. “I came to support Tomo-kun.” Of course. I hoped she wouldn’t ask me to sit with her. It seemed so awkward.
Instead, she said, “I wish you could sit with me, but there’s just no room here. Maybe somewhere in the back?” She said it pleasantly, like we both didn’t notice the slight it was.
I noticed. And it was almost worse than having her ask me to sit.
“No problem,” I said. “Um, I’ll just...”
“Greene!” I looked down the row and saw Ishikawa, his bright white hair sticking out in the crowd like a kendo flag.
“Excuse me,” I said, a little smug. It felt good to be invited, even if it was by Ishikawa. I sidestepped down the row and collapsed into the seat beside him. “Hey,” I said. “You were allowed to leave the house for this?”
“No, but since when has that ever stopped me?” He wore a white dress shirt with a red tie and khaki pants. The shirt was so thin I could see the bandage patched over his shoulder and the colorful outlines of the tattoo on his arm. “I’m doing better, but I couldn’t miss this.”
“Everything...okay?” I said. “You know, with the—”
“The police?” he said. He waved a hand in front of him and I looked. Four cops stood on the sides of the gym, dressed in black with official white bands encircling their arms just above the elbow. “Nah. They keep questioning me, but I’m not going to talk.”
“What are they doing here?” I panicked. They weren’t going to arrest Tomo, were they?
“Relax,” Ishikawa said. “After today, their whole conspiracy theory will be blown to smithereens. Anyway, if Takahashi and I are here cheering for Yuuto, it won’t look suspicious for him, right? No malice, no motive.”
“Those are big words for a rice ball,” I said, flicking him in the shoulder.
“I’m not a rice ball, Greene. Do you know the meaning of the myoji for ‘Satoshi’? Wisdom. It’s wisdom, jackass.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Do you know what irony is? Because your mom did.”
He laughed. “You’re as bad as Yuuto.”
“So Ju—Takahashi is here, too?”
“Over there.” He pointed a few rows down, where Jun sat with a group of kids. They laughed and joked as they waited for the first match to start. Some of them were dressed in school uniforms, holding banners in blue and green.
I looked past them nervously to the police. One of them, a woman constable, was talking to the referee. I hoped Ishikawa was right. I was tired of worrying about what they might find out.
The kendouka entered the gym in a line and the crowd rose to their feet, cheering. The competitors wore full bogu, but I noticed Tomohiro right away. The way he walked, with confidence and grace. The way he held his shinai with just the right amount of tension. He looked beyond the league of any of the others. He looked like an ancient samurai.
“Yuuto!” Ishikawa screamed, waving his arms in wild circles. “Ganbare!”
Tomohiro looked up and saw both of us. I couldn’t see his expression through the men, but he saw us, together, cheering for him. Maybe that was enough.
I took a deep breath. “Ganbare!” But the crowd had quieted down, and my voice rang out in the silence. Trust me to embarrass myself.
“Aaaand now the whole gym knows you’re in love with him,” Ishikawa said. “You have quite the pair of lungs. Impressive.”
“What about you?” I smirked. “You were as loud as me.” I’d just meant it as a gibe, but I realized what I’d said the minute the words were out.
“Yeah, well,” Ishikawa said, his eyes soft as he stared straight ahead at the kendouka. “It’s you he heard.”
My heart hurt a little, but I wasn’t sure why. I wanted to ask if he was okay. “Ishikawa, are you—”
“His best friend,” Ishikawa said. “So shut up.”
“Kendouka, in position!” the referee called.
Tomohiro was up first, against a junior from Katakou. I could hear Jun’s voice as he called out, cheering for the boy I didn’t know. Tomohiro advanced as he shrieked a kiai. He galloped across the floor toward him and smacked the shinai toward the kote.
“Point!” yelled the main referee as the three of them lifted their red flags.
“Already?” I said.
Ishikawa laughed. “Yuuto’s gonna mop the floor with that kid.”
He wasn’t kidding. It was an easy match for Tomo. The shinai clacked together as the two circled in the arena. Tomohiro lunged, and the boy barely blocked it. But he stepped too far into the move, and Tomohiro snuck his shinai underneath for a hit to the dou.
Next up were two girls from a school we didn’t know. And then a boy from Suntaba against a girl from Katakou. The matches went on and on, but every time Tomohiro went up, the competition had no chance. He was in perfect form, focused and quick, his attacks precise and calculated.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed. The police muttered to each other below us.
But they couldn’t suspect him just because he was winning, could they? That wasn’t fair. He hadn’t done anything. I mean, on purpose. We had been responsible for Jun’s fracture, but not to put him out of the tournament.
Match after match, Tomohiro got faster, sharper, more vicious. I shook when he screamed his kiai—had he always sounded so frightening? A whistle blew as his shinai accidentally lunged toward an opponent’s leg. When had he ever got a penalty warning like that before?
The match ended, and the crowd clapped wildly. He was heaving each breath in now, exhausted. He lifted the men from his shoulders to cool off.
That’s when I saw his deep black eyes, the pupils large and empty.
“Oh shit,” I said.
“Greene,” Ishikawa said, clasping my shoulder. “Such language.”
“Look, moron,” I said quietly. “His eyes.”
Ishikawa breathed out. “Oh shit.”
“Like I said. What are we going to do?”
“That’s why he’s getting so aggressive. It’s like when he attacked you in practice.”
Tomohiro was on his last match of the tournament now, lunging again and again. His elegant form and careful thinking were gone. He attacked viciously, without thought. It was like he wasn’t even the same person.
“Yuuto!” Ishikawa yelled out, but it didn’t faze him. He nudged me in the arm. “Snap him out of it, Greene.”
“Tomo-kun!” I yelled. I could feel Shiori’s eyes on me as I yelled. And then Jun turned around, startled by the sound of my voice. “Tomo-kun, stay calm. Faito!” But it was like he couldn’t hear me.
He raced toward his opponent, turning his back to us. And then I saw that the tenugui headband wrapped around his copper hair was dripping with black ink, trailing in raindrop lines down his back.
Jun noticed, too. He rose to his feet, looking at me frantically.
We couldn’t reach him. He was going to lose control right here. Some scary ink thing would explode around him and the police would arrest him, maybe worse. He was a demon, Susanou’s descendant. He was capable of anything.
“Tomo!” I shrieked, my whole body shaking. I felt so helpless.
Jun curled his hands into fists and turned to face the tournament. Tomohiro’s opponent was running scared now, dodging every deadly attack. The referees looked antsy, ready to call Tomo on any violation they could.
“Yuu-san, faito!” Jun chanted, and the sound of it startled me. He said it over and over in a steady rhythm. “Yuu-san, faito!” He curled his fingers into fists, shaking them up and down in time with the chant.
Beside me, Ishikawa joined in. Then Shiori.
And then the whole crowd added their voices.
Jun was trying to reach him. He was trying to break him out of it. The crowd chanted as one loud voice.
“Yuu-san, faito! Yuu-san, faito!”
The boy stumbled and fell backward in the arena. Tomohiro lifted his shinai into the air, the way he had with me in practice. I watched, unable to move. My heart beat in my ears, and my pulse raced.
And then the ground started to shake, just a little. I looked at Ishikawa, alarmed.
“Just a tremor,” he said. “Keep chanting!”
But it wasn’t just a tremor. It was moving in time with my pulse.
Tomohiro screamed out, his shinai throttling downward. The boy winced as it approached. The referee’s whistle started to blare in his mouth.
“Tomo!” I shrieked.
Tomohiro stumbled, almost falling on the boy. The whistle died off, cut short. The earthquake stopped rumbling.
The boy quickly lifted his shinai up and struck Tomo’s dou.
“Point!” yelled the referee, the white flags rising.
The shinai dropped from Tomo’s hand, landing in a splatter of black ink. I gasped, but no one else seemed to see it. Tomo had lost, and the boy had won. That’s all anyone focused on.
Tomo fell to his knees, the shinai gently rolling back and forth on the gym floor. He reached his hand out to the boy and said something we couldn’t hear. The boy took his hand and Tomo pulled him up. They put their arms around each other’s backs and raised their free hands to the crowd in triumph.
Everyone cheered loudly.
“Nice move, Yuuto,” Ishikawa said quietly, and he was right. Tomo had won the crowd over; they’d forgotten what he’d almost done. He was the gracious loser now. He was the good sport.
I looked where the patch of ink had bled around his shinai, but it was gone, as if I’d imagined it. But sometimes the others didn’t see the ink the way I did; Ishikawa hadn’t said anything. But Jun turned to look at me, his lips pursed in a tight line. He’d seen it, too. Maybe only those with ink inside saw it.
Only Kami. And artificial inductees.
I wasn’t sure which was worse—belonging, or not.
“Come on, Greene,” Ishikawa said, rising to his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Are you stupid? Tomo needs us right now. The match is over—let’s go.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me along the row. Shiori and her bright red ballerina outfit were long gone. We twisted toward the door and down the stairs to the gym floor.
I hesitated, unsure if we should be down here. Wasn’t this kind of an official area? But Ishikawa slammed his palms against the gym doors and walked in, determined, his eyes lit as if they were on fire.
The gym lights shone brightly into my eyes. All the kendouka were milling around, gathering their supplies, going over their point totals with the coaches. In the corner I saw Watanabe-sensei with the young kendouka from our school. Tomo was sitting on a bench beside his navy-and-white sports bag as he chugged down a bottle of water. His headband was draped across the wooden seat beside him, and his copper spikes pressed against his head, slick with sweat.
“Tomo,” I said, stumbling toward him. I sat beside him on the bench, resting my hand on his back as he twisted the cap back onto the water bottle. Ishikawa dragged a chair toward us and straddled it backward, resting his hands on the back of the chair and his chin on the back of his hands.
“Yuuto, you okay?” His eyes gleamed, and I had to look away.
“Fine,” Tomohiro said. “But I had to throw the match.”
Ishikawa nodded. “You had no choice. You couldn’t exactly win every time. That’s a little suspicious.”
“It was the ink, wasn’t it?” I said. Why were they pretending it hadn’t happened? “You lost control.”
Tomo stared at the police, who were pretending not to watch him as they circled the gym. His voice was just above a whisper. “Could we talk about it later?”
But I couldn’t let it go. “That boy,” I said. “You almost put him in the hospital.”
Did something happen? You okay?
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to push him away. It seemed easier to just say nothing.
I hope you can still make it to the tournament tomorrow. Or you owe me shabu shabu and a night of wild passion. You hear me? Tomo
“You jerk,” I said aloud. It stung avoiding him like this.
Fine, I typed back. I’ll come to the tournament. Jeez, keep your pants on, Romeo.
A moment passed, and then my phone buzzed.
I’m not making any promises.
How the hell was I going to stay away? He was so lame it was cute.
Chapter 12
The next morning I got ready early, putting on my new pink blouse and lacy beige skirt with my soft pink ballet flats. It wasn’t so much that I was dressing up for him. I was trying to blend in more with the other girls, and here, supercute and girlie fashion was the way to go.
Okay, so it’s not like I didn’t hope he noticed how adorable the combo was.
Wow, Katie. What happened to staying away?
Great. So my resolve was going to last all of five seconds?
I headed toward Katakou School, where the prefecture tournament would be held. The stands were already thick with crowds when I arrived, and I searched for the best possible place I could sit to watch the matches.
I stepped down to the next aisle and just about tripped over a girl’s purse.
“I’m so sorry!” I blurted out and the girl looked up at me. She wore a bright red dress with a lacy sweater. The skirt of her dress ruffled out like a ballet tutu but was way too short, so she’d paired it with leggings and a pair of cute sandals.
“Shiori?” I said, her presence throwing me off. “You came to watch kendo?” She seemed too...delicate for it somehow.
“Not kendo,” she smiled. “I came to support Tomo-kun.” Of course. I hoped she wouldn’t ask me to sit with her. It seemed so awkward.
Instead, she said, “I wish you could sit with me, but there’s just no room here. Maybe somewhere in the back?” She said it pleasantly, like we both didn’t notice the slight it was.
I noticed. And it was almost worse than having her ask me to sit.
“No problem,” I said. “Um, I’ll just...”
“Greene!” I looked down the row and saw Ishikawa, his bright white hair sticking out in the crowd like a kendo flag.
“Excuse me,” I said, a little smug. It felt good to be invited, even if it was by Ishikawa. I sidestepped down the row and collapsed into the seat beside him. “Hey,” I said. “You were allowed to leave the house for this?”
“No, but since when has that ever stopped me?” He wore a white dress shirt with a red tie and khaki pants. The shirt was so thin I could see the bandage patched over his shoulder and the colorful outlines of the tattoo on his arm. “I’m doing better, but I couldn’t miss this.”
“Everything...okay?” I said. “You know, with the—”
“The police?” he said. He waved a hand in front of him and I looked. Four cops stood on the sides of the gym, dressed in black with official white bands encircling their arms just above the elbow. “Nah. They keep questioning me, but I’m not going to talk.”
“What are they doing here?” I panicked. They weren’t going to arrest Tomo, were they?
“Relax,” Ishikawa said. “After today, their whole conspiracy theory will be blown to smithereens. Anyway, if Takahashi and I are here cheering for Yuuto, it won’t look suspicious for him, right? No malice, no motive.”
“Those are big words for a rice ball,” I said, flicking him in the shoulder.
“I’m not a rice ball, Greene. Do you know the meaning of the myoji for ‘Satoshi’? Wisdom. It’s wisdom, jackass.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Do you know what irony is? Because your mom did.”
He laughed. “You’re as bad as Yuuto.”
“So Ju—Takahashi is here, too?”
“Over there.” He pointed a few rows down, where Jun sat with a group of kids. They laughed and joked as they waited for the first match to start. Some of them were dressed in school uniforms, holding banners in blue and green.
I looked past them nervously to the police. One of them, a woman constable, was talking to the referee. I hoped Ishikawa was right. I was tired of worrying about what they might find out.
The kendouka entered the gym in a line and the crowd rose to their feet, cheering. The competitors wore full bogu, but I noticed Tomohiro right away. The way he walked, with confidence and grace. The way he held his shinai with just the right amount of tension. He looked beyond the league of any of the others. He looked like an ancient samurai.
“Yuuto!” Ishikawa screamed, waving his arms in wild circles. “Ganbare!”
Tomohiro looked up and saw both of us. I couldn’t see his expression through the men, but he saw us, together, cheering for him. Maybe that was enough.
I took a deep breath. “Ganbare!” But the crowd had quieted down, and my voice rang out in the silence. Trust me to embarrass myself.
“Aaaand now the whole gym knows you’re in love with him,” Ishikawa said. “You have quite the pair of lungs. Impressive.”
“What about you?” I smirked. “You were as loud as me.” I’d just meant it as a gibe, but I realized what I’d said the minute the words were out.
“Yeah, well,” Ishikawa said, his eyes soft as he stared straight ahead at the kendouka. “It’s you he heard.”
My heart hurt a little, but I wasn’t sure why. I wanted to ask if he was okay. “Ishikawa, are you—”
“His best friend,” Ishikawa said. “So shut up.”
“Kendouka, in position!” the referee called.
Tomohiro was up first, against a junior from Katakou. I could hear Jun’s voice as he called out, cheering for the boy I didn’t know. Tomohiro advanced as he shrieked a kiai. He galloped across the floor toward him and smacked the shinai toward the kote.
“Point!” yelled the main referee as the three of them lifted their red flags.
“Already?” I said.
Ishikawa laughed. “Yuuto’s gonna mop the floor with that kid.”
He wasn’t kidding. It was an easy match for Tomo. The shinai clacked together as the two circled in the arena. Tomohiro lunged, and the boy barely blocked it. But he stepped too far into the move, and Tomohiro snuck his shinai underneath for a hit to the dou.
Next up were two girls from a school we didn’t know. And then a boy from Suntaba against a girl from Katakou. The matches went on and on, but every time Tomohiro went up, the competition had no chance. He was in perfect form, focused and quick, his attacks precise and calculated.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed. The police muttered to each other below us.
But they couldn’t suspect him just because he was winning, could they? That wasn’t fair. He hadn’t done anything. I mean, on purpose. We had been responsible for Jun’s fracture, but not to put him out of the tournament.
Match after match, Tomohiro got faster, sharper, more vicious. I shook when he screamed his kiai—had he always sounded so frightening? A whistle blew as his shinai accidentally lunged toward an opponent’s leg. When had he ever got a penalty warning like that before?
The match ended, and the crowd clapped wildly. He was heaving each breath in now, exhausted. He lifted the men from his shoulders to cool off.
That’s when I saw his deep black eyes, the pupils large and empty.
“Oh shit,” I said.
“Greene,” Ishikawa said, clasping my shoulder. “Such language.”
“Look, moron,” I said quietly. “His eyes.”
Ishikawa breathed out. “Oh shit.”
“Like I said. What are we going to do?”
“That’s why he’s getting so aggressive. It’s like when he attacked you in practice.”
Tomohiro was on his last match of the tournament now, lunging again and again. His elegant form and careful thinking were gone. He attacked viciously, without thought. It was like he wasn’t even the same person.
“Yuuto!” Ishikawa yelled out, but it didn’t faze him. He nudged me in the arm. “Snap him out of it, Greene.”
“Tomo-kun!” I yelled. I could feel Shiori’s eyes on me as I yelled. And then Jun turned around, startled by the sound of my voice. “Tomo-kun, stay calm. Faito!” But it was like he couldn’t hear me.
He raced toward his opponent, turning his back to us. And then I saw that the tenugui headband wrapped around his copper hair was dripping with black ink, trailing in raindrop lines down his back.
Jun noticed, too. He rose to his feet, looking at me frantically.
We couldn’t reach him. He was going to lose control right here. Some scary ink thing would explode around him and the police would arrest him, maybe worse. He was a demon, Susanou’s descendant. He was capable of anything.
“Tomo!” I shrieked, my whole body shaking. I felt so helpless.
Jun curled his hands into fists and turned to face the tournament. Tomohiro’s opponent was running scared now, dodging every deadly attack. The referees looked antsy, ready to call Tomo on any violation they could.
“Yuu-san, faito!” Jun chanted, and the sound of it startled me. He said it over and over in a steady rhythm. “Yuu-san, faito!” He curled his fingers into fists, shaking them up and down in time with the chant.
Beside me, Ishikawa joined in. Then Shiori.
And then the whole crowd added their voices.
Jun was trying to reach him. He was trying to break him out of it. The crowd chanted as one loud voice.
“Yuu-san, faito! Yuu-san, faito!”
The boy stumbled and fell backward in the arena. Tomohiro lifted his shinai into the air, the way he had with me in practice. I watched, unable to move. My heart beat in my ears, and my pulse raced.
And then the ground started to shake, just a little. I looked at Ishikawa, alarmed.
“Just a tremor,” he said. “Keep chanting!”
But it wasn’t just a tremor. It was moving in time with my pulse.
Tomohiro screamed out, his shinai throttling downward. The boy winced as it approached. The referee’s whistle started to blare in his mouth.
“Tomo!” I shrieked.
Tomohiro stumbled, almost falling on the boy. The whistle died off, cut short. The earthquake stopped rumbling.
The boy quickly lifted his shinai up and struck Tomo’s dou.
“Point!” yelled the referee, the white flags rising.
The shinai dropped from Tomo’s hand, landing in a splatter of black ink. I gasped, but no one else seemed to see it. Tomo had lost, and the boy had won. That’s all anyone focused on.
Tomo fell to his knees, the shinai gently rolling back and forth on the gym floor. He reached his hand out to the boy and said something we couldn’t hear. The boy took his hand and Tomo pulled him up. They put their arms around each other’s backs and raised their free hands to the crowd in triumph.
Everyone cheered loudly.
“Nice move, Yuuto,” Ishikawa said quietly, and he was right. Tomo had won the crowd over; they’d forgotten what he’d almost done. He was the gracious loser now. He was the good sport.
I looked where the patch of ink had bled around his shinai, but it was gone, as if I’d imagined it. But sometimes the others didn’t see the ink the way I did; Ishikawa hadn’t said anything. But Jun turned to look at me, his lips pursed in a tight line. He’d seen it, too. Maybe only those with ink inside saw it.
Only Kami. And artificial inductees.
I wasn’t sure which was worse—belonging, or not.
“Come on, Greene,” Ishikawa said, rising to his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Are you stupid? Tomo needs us right now. The match is over—let’s go.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me along the row. Shiori and her bright red ballerina outfit were long gone. We twisted toward the door and down the stairs to the gym floor.
I hesitated, unsure if we should be down here. Wasn’t this kind of an official area? But Ishikawa slammed his palms against the gym doors and walked in, determined, his eyes lit as if they were on fire.
The gym lights shone brightly into my eyes. All the kendouka were milling around, gathering their supplies, going over their point totals with the coaches. In the corner I saw Watanabe-sensei with the young kendouka from our school. Tomo was sitting on a bench beside his navy-and-white sports bag as he chugged down a bottle of water. His headband was draped across the wooden seat beside him, and his copper spikes pressed against his head, slick with sweat.
“Tomo,” I said, stumbling toward him. I sat beside him on the bench, resting my hand on his back as he twisted the cap back onto the water bottle. Ishikawa dragged a chair toward us and straddled it backward, resting his hands on the back of the chair and his chin on the back of his hands.
“Yuuto, you okay?” His eyes gleamed, and I had to look away.
“Fine,” Tomohiro said. “But I had to throw the match.”
Ishikawa nodded. “You had no choice. You couldn’t exactly win every time. That’s a little suspicious.”
“It was the ink, wasn’t it?” I said. Why were they pretending it hadn’t happened? “You lost control.”
Tomo stared at the police, who were pretending not to watch him as they circled the gym. His voice was just above a whisper. “Could we talk about it later?”
But I couldn’t let it go. “That boy,” I said. “You almost put him in the hospital.”
