“He said that, too. What did he mean he couldn’t lay anything on you then? When we... When your wrist broke?”
“I’m slippery like a koi,” Jun laughed, looking across the street to the murky moat of Sunpu Park. “‘Back then’ meaning when my dad died. They tried to say I was involved with the Yakuza, too. Bunch of bullshit, of course. I’d never join those bastards.”
So that’s why they’d had such strong suspicions that Jun’s and Ishikawa’s incidents were related—they could both be traced to the Yakuza. And now thanks to this fight, so could Tomo. Jun’s voice turned so cold when he talked about the gang that it was almost frightening. It made me think of the way he’d asked Tomo to draw Hanchi dead.
“You didn’t...you didn’t kill any Yakuza, did you?”
“What?” His eyes were pools of cool black ice. “Of course not.”
“It’s just that you asked Tomo to...to kill Hanchi.”
“Ah.” Jun leaned back on the step, his palms pressed against the concrete. “Well, I would like him dead, yes. He was the one who employed my dad before everything went to hell.”
“Why—” I couldn’t believe I was asking this. “Why didn’t you just do it yourself?”
“Katie,” Jun said, his voice velvet. “Is that what you think of me? I thought if Hanchi would leave me alone, I’d leave him alone. But when he went after Yuu, I realized something. He’s never going to change. He’ll keep exploiting Kami any chance he gets.”
I stretched my legs out, rolling my heels from one side of the concrete to the other until my toes tapped against it, like mini windshield wipers.
“You want to stay, don’t you?” Jun said after a minute. “Until Yuu can leave.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You don’t have to, though.”
“I’ll stay.”
“It could be a long wait.”
“I know.”
I looked out over Sunpu Park. The leaves had turned golden and crimson, ready to be lifted off the branches by the swirling autumn wind.
“Did you tell him yet?” Jun asked.
“Tell him?”
“That you’re a Kami.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t complicated. “I’m not a Kami, Jun.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I told him.”
“And about Susanou?”
Susanou. Wouldn’t it be dangerous to tell him that? “I didn’t think he was ready to hear it.” Jun nodded. “Anyway, I don’t know for sure. It’s just a theory.”
“It makes so much sense, though,” Jun said. “I don’t know why I’d never thought of it before.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “Does that mean your Kami cult doesn’t want him anymore?”
Jun’s eyes flashed with hurt. “Hey,” he said. “That’s not fair. We’re not a cult. I didn’t ask to be born into this heritage, but I’m a Kami...it’s my fate.” He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on them. “We’ve inherited great power, and we can’t ignore it. I’m glad this is who I am.”
“It’s hard to know what to use that power for, though.”
Jun shook his head. “The world is corrupt. Look at those thugs who attacked Yuu just now. You saw the ink running down his back—it was crying out for justice.”
“We have a system for that,” I said. “You’re not supposed to take it into your own hands.”
“The system is broken, Katie. Not just criminals, but the way we treat each other. By now you must have seen the bullying in the schools.” I’d seen a bit, not so different from the bullying I’d seen back in New York. But Shiori...she was suffering, I knew. “Everything is rotting. We need the old system—justice by the hands of the ruling kami.”
“Do you know the kami stories?” I’d done enough internet searches to recognize the similarities with other types of myths. “They’re not exactly model rulers. They’re always throwing dead horses at each other and stuff.”
“That was Susanou—once,” Jun laughed. “And besides, Susanou isn’t always the bad guy he’s cracked up to be.”
I blinked. I hadn’t heard that before. So Tomo wasn’t...evil? “What do you mean?”
“Think way back,” Jun said. “Mongol invasion, a long time ago. They took China—kyu! They took over Korea—zashu! And they’re on boats, coming for Japan.”
I rolled my eyes. “Are the sound effects necessary?”
“And then what happens? Bashan!” More of Jun’s effects, but the sound of this one startled me. He waved a huge arc with his hand. “Huge wave and a giant storm. The rain falls in sheets, and the thunder booms from the sky. The boats crash into the shores, the Mongols drown. Kamikaze, it was called. The divine wind. A kaze sent by kami.”
“Kamikaze means something different now,” I said, which sounded stupid the minute I said it, but too late.
“It still has the same idea, though,” Jun said. “Saving others through your own sacrifice. Susanou saved Japan that day, if you want to think about it that way. Samurai were on the shores waiting to fight the Mongols. There would’ve been hundreds of Susanou’s descendants among them.”
“There’s no way to know for sure,” I said, but I still sighed in relief. Susanou might be evil, but he still wanted to protect Japan. So maybe Tomo’s nightmares were worse, but he had the same goals as descendants of Amaterasu. Which meant there was hope at the end of that storm.
“Maa, ne,” Jun mused. “I guess not.”
The only part we didn’t talk about was how many lives Susanou had taken to keep Japan safe. How many men drowned in the rains that day? Is that what Tomohiro would do someday? Could he really kill people with his abilities?
And is that what Jun thought? Make them pay, no matter who got hurt in the process?
“Yuu and I would make good princes,” Jun said after a minute. “And you would rule with us, Katie.”
I stared at him—was he for real? His lip curled up into a smile, and I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not.
“Are you joking?”
His eyes gleamed. “Maybe. I guess I have to make it through entrance exams first, huh?”
I couldn’t get a straight answer out of him. How much did the thoughts consume him—justice, corruption, revenge? Is that what he thought about as he lay awake at night?
We sat in silence for a bit, sprawled out on the police-station steps. The sun dipped low in the sky and the world turned golden, then shadowy. I wrapped my arms around myself and pulled my legs close.
“Sa-me zo,” Jun said, the tough-guy way of saying It’s cold.
“Un,” I mumbled, a casual Japanese yes. Sometimes it felt easier to fit in than others. But thinking of myself as a Kami...as one of them...I couldn’t picture it.
“I’d give you my jacket, but I’m not wearing one,” he grinned. “Wait there.” He ran around the side of the building, where I could hear the faint hum of a vending machine. When he came back, he placed a hot can of café au lait in my hands. I breathed in the sweet steam, burning my tongue with the first sip. The heat raced all the way down my throat, warming me from the inside.
“Thanks,” I said. “You know, you really don’t have to stay.”
“I know,” he smiled. “But I want to be here with you, even if it’s because you’re waiting for him.” He motioned at the doorway with his coffee.
“Jun,” I said.
“I know. I’m pathetic.”
“Not at all. I—”
A car pulled into the parking lot and startled both of us into silence. A man opened the passenger’s side and got out, and at first I wondered who must be driving. A flash from my old life, before I remembered that the right was the driver’s side in Japan. Life in reverse, nothing the way I thought it would be.
It was Tomo’s father, looking like a somber version of his son. He wore a tight-fitting suit with a dark tie, his black hair slicked down neatly and his face hiding any trace of emotion. He walked up the steps with grace and pride, like he was going to some really important meeting, not at all like he was going to pick up his son from the police station. I almost felt sorry for him, except I knew none of it had been Tomo’s fault. His dad must have known that, too. He knew what kind of person Tomo was.
He walked straight past us, not recognizing me in the dark, and through the glass doors. I rose to my feet, hurrying toward the closing door. It was made of glass and we could see through it easily.
His dad stopped at the desk and spoke to the person taking the important-looking notes. Then he waited. They must be getting Tomohiro. Relief pulsed through me. He could go home.
Tomo appeared from the side, escorted in handcuffs by the woman constable I’d seen earlier. Handcuffs—my heart raced at the sight of it. She undid the cuffs and he swung his arms forward, rubbing his wrists with his fingers. The back of his shirt was stained with dried ink in the shape of sprouting wings. I hoped to god it had stopped there. It could just look like blood, right? From here the tiny wings looked kind of like handprints. Maybe.
Tomohiro’s dad stepped forward toward his son. At first I thought he was going to hug him, but I was wrong. He swung his hand back and slapped Tomohiro so hard across the face that I heard the sound of it from outside the glass door. Tomo’s face twisted from the blow, his head falling limp as he stared at the tiled floor. I gasped a breath of cold air; the café au lait burned at my fingertips.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” shouted his dad. “Humiliating me like this! Causing trouble for others. What the hell is wrong with you, Hiro?”
I thought the police would stop him or something. You couldn’t just slap your own child in a police station, could you? But they weren’t doing anything. Tomo’s dad bent over in a deep bow, his face as red as if he’d been the one slapped. “Moushi wake gozaimasen,” he shouted, which I knew was a super-formal apology. After a moment he yanked Tomohiro’s arm and pulled him into an awkward bow. Tomo didn’t say anything at first, so his dad smacked him across the back of his head.
I winced at the impact, and Tomo raised his hand instinctively to rub the spot, but he didn’t say a word, not even that it hurt.
“Apologize properly!” his dad shouted, and Tomo bent over, his face a map of black and blue from the fight, a new pink bruise forming on his cheek and a lump on his head. I saw his lips move, but I couldn’t hear him from out here. He was apologizing, though. I knew.
“It’s late,” one of the police said. “Get him home and get some rest.”
His dad bowed his head sharply and then turned toward the door. Jun and I backed up as he came through, his face flushed pink.
Tomohiro followed. I could smell the sweat and dried blood, the stale air from the police station. I knew his skin would be warm from being indoors, and I longed to reach out and touch the bruises on his face. I wanted to run my fingers over them, to wish them away. Tomohiro looked at me for a moment, and then his eyes flicked away, down to the ground.
“Tomo,” I said, but he walked right past Jun and me, following his dad down the steps. He got in the driver’s side—no, the passenger’s side here—and the car rumbled to life, its headlights as bright as the ghost-white koi Tomo had drawn.
Jun curled his fingers around my elbows, but I was glad, because I felt like I was going to collapse.
I felt like I’d lost something, like everything had come undone.
Across from us in Sunpu Park, a maple leaf broke from the tree and drifted into the murky, cold moat, spinning lightly as it swirled on the surface.
Chapter 14
I called Tomo when I got home, but his keitai was off. I phoned his home number once but hung up when I got scared his dad would answer.
I couldn’t get the image out of my mind, the way his dad had slapped him—the sound of it, the veins protruding in his dad’s neck as he screamed at him.
And the way Tomo didn’t fight back at all. The way he just stared at the floor, like nothing mattered anymore. Like he was as lost as I felt.
When had it all started to fall apart like this? I thought I’d come back to fix things, but I felt like it was all turning to sand in my hands, slipping through my fingers.
I slumped down at my desk and pulled out my notebook for kanji practice. I might be falling apart, but I couldn’t afford to let my studying drop. There was no way I was going to an international school, and there was no way I was leaving Japan. I copied the kanji until my wrist ached.
Then I found myself doodling names, checking characters in my dictionary when I got stuck.
Watabe Yuki. Tanaka Ichirou.
Ishikawa Satoshi. I smirked. The kanji for his first name really was “wisdom.”
Yuu Tomohiro.
I stared at that one for a while. I wrote it a few more times.
Then I wrote my name beside it. Katie Greene—unlike the others, written only in phonetic kana. No elegant kanji. No deeper meaning to the characters.
I dropped my pencil and flopped onto my bed, staring at the ceiling.
What had the police asked Tomo? He’d looked so defeated. Were things okay? Had they asked about the ink on his back or more about that night with the Yakuza?
I clicked my light off and lay in the darkness. The weather had turned too cold to turn on my air conditioner, and the room felt unsettling in its silence. I drifted in and out of sleep, imagining all kinds of nightmares that might materialize before me.
“I’m slippery like a koi,” Jun laughed, looking across the street to the murky moat of Sunpu Park. “‘Back then’ meaning when my dad died. They tried to say I was involved with the Yakuza, too. Bunch of bullshit, of course. I’d never join those bastards.”
So that’s why they’d had such strong suspicions that Jun’s and Ishikawa’s incidents were related—they could both be traced to the Yakuza. And now thanks to this fight, so could Tomo. Jun’s voice turned so cold when he talked about the gang that it was almost frightening. It made me think of the way he’d asked Tomo to draw Hanchi dead.
“You didn’t...you didn’t kill any Yakuza, did you?”
“What?” His eyes were pools of cool black ice. “Of course not.”
“It’s just that you asked Tomo to...to kill Hanchi.”
“Ah.” Jun leaned back on the step, his palms pressed against the concrete. “Well, I would like him dead, yes. He was the one who employed my dad before everything went to hell.”
“Why—” I couldn’t believe I was asking this. “Why didn’t you just do it yourself?”
“Katie,” Jun said, his voice velvet. “Is that what you think of me? I thought if Hanchi would leave me alone, I’d leave him alone. But when he went after Yuu, I realized something. He’s never going to change. He’ll keep exploiting Kami any chance he gets.”
I stretched my legs out, rolling my heels from one side of the concrete to the other until my toes tapped against it, like mini windshield wipers.
“You want to stay, don’t you?” Jun said after a minute. “Until Yuu can leave.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You don’t have to, though.”
“I’ll stay.”
“It could be a long wait.”
“I know.”
I looked out over Sunpu Park. The leaves had turned golden and crimson, ready to be lifted off the branches by the swirling autumn wind.
“Did you tell him yet?” Jun asked.
“Tell him?”
“That you’re a Kami.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t complicated. “I’m not a Kami, Jun.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I told him.”
“And about Susanou?”
Susanou. Wouldn’t it be dangerous to tell him that? “I didn’t think he was ready to hear it.” Jun nodded. “Anyway, I don’t know for sure. It’s just a theory.”
“It makes so much sense, though,” Jun said. “I don’t know why I’d never thought of it before.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “Does that mean your Kami cult doesn’t want him anymore?”
Jun’s eyes flashed with hurt. “Hey,” he said. “That’s not fair. We’re not a cult. I didn’t ask to be born into this heritage, but I’m a Kami...it’s my fate.” He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on them. “We’ve inherited great power, and we can’t ignore it. I’m glad this is who I am.”
“It’s hard to know what to use that power for, though.”
Jun shook his head. “The world is corrupt. Look at those thugs who attacked Yuu just now. You saw the ink running down his back—it was crying out for justice.”
“We have a system for that,” I said. “You’re not supposed to take it into your own hands.”
“The system is broken, Katie. Not just criminals, but the way we treat each other. By now you must have seen the bullying in the schools.” I’d seen a bit, not so different from the bullying I’d seen back in New York. But Shiori...she was suffering, I knew. “Everything is rotting. We need the old system—justice by the hands of the ruling kami.”
“Do you know the kami stories?” I’d done enough internet searches to recognize the similarities with other types of myths. “They’re not exactly model rulers. They’re always throwing dead horses at each other and stuff.”
“That was Susanou—once,” Jun laughed. “And besides, Susanou isn’t always the bad guy he’s cracked up to be.”
I blinked. I hadn’t heard that before. So Tomo wasn’t...evil? “What do you mean?”
“Think way back,” Jun said. “Mongol invasion, a long time ago. They took China—kyu! They took over Korea—zashu! And they’re on boats, coming for Japan.”
I rolled my eyes. “Are the sound effects necessary?”
“And then what happens? Bashan!” More of Jun’s effects, but the sound of this one startled me. He waved a huge arc with his hand. “Huge wave and a giant storm. The rain falls in sheets, and the thunder booms from the sky. The boats crash into the shores, the Mongols drown. Kamikaze, it was called. The divine wind. A kaze sent by kami.”
“Kamikaze means something different now,” I said, which sounded stupid the minute I said it, but too late.
“It still has the same idea, though,” Jun said. “Saving others through your own sacrifice. Susanou saved Japan that day, if you want to think about it that way. Samurai were on the shores waiting to fight the Mongols. There would’ve been hundreds of Susanou’s descendants among them.”
“There’s no way to know for sure,” I said, but I still sighed in relief. Susanou might be evil, but he still wanted to protect Japan. So maybe Tomo’s nightmares were worse, but he had the same goals as descendants of Amaterasu. Which meant there was hope at the end of that storm.
“Maa, ne,” Jun mused. “I guess not.”
The only part we didn’t talk about was how many lives Susanou had taken to keep Japan safe. How many men drowned in the rains that day? Is that what Tomohiro would do someday? Could he really kill people with his abilities?
And is that what Jun thought? Make them pay, no matter who got hurt in the process?
“Yuu and I would make good princes,” Jun said after a minute. “And you would rule with us, Katie.”
I stared at him—was he for real? His lip curled up into a smile, and I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not.
“Are you joking?”
His eyes gleamed. “Maybe. I guess I have to make it through entrance exams first, huh?”
I couldn’t get a straight answer out of him. How much did the thoughts consume him—justice, corruption, revenge? Is that what he thought about as he lay awake at night?
We sat in silence for a bit, sprawled out on the police-station steps. The sun dipped low in the sky and the world turned golden, then shadowy. I wrapped my arms around myself and pulled my legs close.
“Sa-me zo,” Jun said, the tough-guy way of saying It’s cold.
“Un,” I mumbled, a casual Japanese yes. Sometimes it felt easier to fit in than others. But thinking of myself as a Kami...as one of them...I couldn’t picture it.
“I’d give you my jacket, but I’m not wearing one,” he grinned. “Wait there.” He ran around the side of the building, where I could hear the faint hum of a vending machine. When he came back, he placed a hot can of café au lait in my hands. I breathed in the sweet steam, burning my tongue with the first sip. The heat raced all the way down my throat, warming me from the inside.
“Thanks,” I said. “You know, you really don’t have to stay.”
“I know,” he smiled. “But I want to be here with you, even if it’s because you’re waiting for him.” He motioned at the doorway with his coffee.
“Jun,” I said.
“I know. I’m pathetic.”
“Not at all. I—”
A car pulled into the parking lot and startled both of us into silence. A man opened the passenger’s side and got out, and at first I wondered who must be driving. A flash from my old life, before I remembered that the right was the driver’s side in Japan. Life in reverse, nothing the way I thought it would be.
It was Tomo’s father, looking like a somber version of his son. He wore a tight-fitting suit with a dark tie, his black hair slicked down neatly and his face hiding any trace of emotion. He walked up the steps with grace and pride, like he was going to some really important meeting, not at all like he was going to pick up his son from the police station. I almost felt sorry for him, except I knew none of it had been Tomo’s fault. His dad must have known that, too. He knew what kind of person Tomo was.
He walked straight past us, not recognizing me in the dark, and through the glass doors. I rose to my feet, hurrying toward the closing door. It was made of glass and we could see through it easily.
His dad stopped at the desk and spoke to the person taking the important-looking notes. Then he waited. They must be getting Tomohiro. Relief pulsed through me. He could go home.
Tomo appeared from the side, escorted in handcuffs by the woman constable I’d seen earlier. Handcuffs—my heart raced at the sight of it. She undid the cuffs and he swung his arms forward, rubbing his wrists with his fingers. The back of his shirt was stained with dried ink in the shape of sprouting wings. I hoped to god it had stopped there. It could just look like blood, right? From here the tiny wings looked kind of like handprints. Maybe.
Tomohiro’s dad stepped forward toward his son. At first I thought he was going to hug him, but I was wrong. He swung his hand back and slapped Tomohiro so hard across the face that I heard the sound of it from outside the glass door. Tomo’s face twisted from the blow, his head falling limp as he stared at the tiled floor. I gasped a breath of cold air; the café au lait burned at my fingertips.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” shouted his dad. “Humiliating me like this! Causing trouble for others. What the hell is wrong with you, Hiro?”
I thought the police would stop him or something. You couldn’t just slap your own child in a police station, could you? But they weren’t doing anything. Tomo’s dad bent over in a deep bow, his face as red as if he’d been the one slapped. “Moushi wake gozaimasen,” he shouted, which I knew was a super-formal apology. After a moment he yanked Tomohiro’s arm and pulled him into an awkward bow. Tomo didn’t say anything at first, so his dad smacked him across the back of his head.
I winced at the impact, and Tomo raised his hand instinctively to rub the spot, but he didn’t say a word, not even that it hurt.
“Apologize properly!” his dad shouted, and Tomo bent over, his face a map of black and blue from the fight, a new pink bruise forming on his cheek and a lump on his head. I saw his lips move, but I couldn’t hear him from out here. He was apologizing, though. I knew.
“It’s late,” one of the police said. “Get him home and get some rest.”
His dad bowed his head sharply and then turned toward the door. Jun and I backed up as he came through, his face flushed pink.
Tomohiro followed. I could smell the sweat and dried blood, the stale air from the police station. I knew his skin would be warm from being indoors, and I longed to reach out and touch the bruises on his face. I wanted to run my fingers over them, to wish them away. Tomohiro looked at me for a moment, and then his eyes flicked away, down to the ground.
“Tomo,” I said, but he walked right past Jun and me, following his dad down the steps. He got in the driver’s side—no, the passenger’s side here—and the car rumbled to life, its headlights as bright as the ghost-white koi Tomo had drawn.
Jun curled his fingers around my elbows, but I was glad, because I felt like I was going to collapse.
I felt like I’d lost something, like everything had come undone.
Across from us in Sunpu Park, a maple leaf broke from the tree and drifted into the murky, cold moat, spinning lightly as it swirled on the surface.
Chapter 14
I called Tomo when I got home, but his keitai was off. I phoned his home number once but hung up when I got scared his dad would answer.
I couldn’t get the image out of my mind, the way his dad had slapped him—the sound of it, the veins protruding in his dad’s neck as he screamed at him.
And the way Tomo didn’t fight back at all. The way he just stared at the floor, like nothing mattered anymore. Like he was as lost as I felt.
When had it all started to fall apart like this? I thought I’d come back to fix things, but I felt like it was all turning to sand in my hands, slipping through my fingers.
I slumped down at my desk and pulled out my notebook for kanji practice. I might be falling apart, but I couldn’t afford to let my studying drop. There was no way I was going to an international school, and there was no way I was leaving Japan. I copied the kanji until my wrist ached.
Then I found myself doodling names, checking characters in my dictionary when I got stuck.
Watabe Yuki. Tanaka Ichirou.
Ishikawa Satoshi. I smirked. The kanji for his first name really was “wisdom.”
Yuu Tomohiro.
I stared at that one for a while. I wrote it a few more times.
Then I wrote my name beside it. Katie Greene—unlike the others, written only in phonetic kana. No elegant kanji. No deeper meaning to the characters.
I dropped my pencil and flopped onto my bed, staring at the ceiling.
What had the police asked Tomo? He’d looked so defeated. Were things okay? Had they asked about the ink on his back or more about that night with the Yakuza?
I clicked my light off and lay in the darkness. The weather had turned too cold to turn on my air conditioner, and the room felt unsettling in its silence. I drifted in and out of sleep, imagining all kinds of nightmares that might materialize before me.
