“Amaterasu,” I said. “The kami of the sun. The shadows and clouds are making their powers stronger. Can we get rid of them?”
“I’ll try,” Ikeda said. She dipped a finger into the ink I cupped with my hands, and turned the page in Tomo’s notebook.
“That’s it?” I shouted. “‘Sun?’” Nothing happened.
“I told you,” Ikeda said. “I’m not very strong.”
“Because there’s already sun,” I said. “It’s just hidden behind the clouds.”
She cupped her hands and I poured the ink rain into them, wiping my stained hands on the grass. I dunked my finger in the ink and ran it across the page.
Please, I thought.
Thank god I’d practiced my kanji. Thank god I knew what to write.
Amaterasu. The word glowed with a faint golden dust, then turned black again. That was it. That was the extent of my power.
Ikeda dropped the cupped ink with a splash and reached in front of me. With her stained hands, she traced the kanji I’d written, making them darker and bolder.
The word rippled, then gleamed with golden sparks. It flickered with light, the way the fireflies had.
It grew brighter and brighter, and Ikeda backed away, shielding her eyes. All around us the field glowed with crisp white light, the trees turning black and gray, like we were in a moving ink painting.
There was the loud sound of thunder crashing, and Tomohiro and Jun plummeted from the sky, hitting the ground hard. Both of them lay still, unconscious. The bright light faded, until the clearing was normal again, the colors vibrant after so much darkness. The clouds were gone, except a small patch that had floated toward Kunozan, where they zapped into nothingness with a flash of blue light.
“Jun,” Ikeda cried out and raced to his side. I stared from Jun to Tomohiro. How peaceful they both looked with their eyes closed. Like they were sleeping.
Oh god.
“Tomo,” I said, running to his side.
I smoothed the copper bangs out of his eyes and wiped the ink and blood from his face with the backs of my hands.
Jun moved first, groaning as he turned his head.
“Jun,” Ikeda said.
“Naoki,” he said, and Ikeda flushed. I wondered if it was the first time he’d called her by her name. “Katie. Is she okay?” He called out for me. “Katie?”
Ikeda’s face fell. But I was too busy to worry about either of them.
“Tomo,” I said, but he didn’t move. I put my fingers against his lips, and his warm breath spread over them. He was alive, then. But was he himself or still controlled by his Kami side?
He blinked his eyes open slowly, and my body pulsed with relief to see the soft hazel of them. He was in control.
“Katie?” Tomo said quietly. He looked at me, broken and bleeding, covered in mud with ink trailing through his hair. He’d never looked more stunning.
“You all right?” I said.
He laughed, and it turned into a cough. “I’ve felt better. You?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s get you home.”
“You going to carry me?” He attempted a grin. “I can’t exactly bike right now.”
“I’ll ask Ikeda. We can come get your bike later.”
I turned my head to look toward the pools. Jun was sitting upright, coughing up ink as Ikeda dunked her handkerchief in cold water.
I went to sit with her, watching the ripples as she swirled the handkerchief around.
“Are you okay?” I said quietly.
Ikeda didn’t look up. “Jun called for you,” she said.
I knew I should be quiet, but her suffering felt like my own. I didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. “After all this, you’re still by his side. You deserve better, Ikeda. Why do you stay?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. Jun has always been there for me. My parents worked all the time, and I had no siblings. Without Jun, the world was lonely, empty. Meaningless.” She pulled the towel from the water and squeezed the droplets out. “I was terrified when my drawings started to move. Jun stayed with me through my first nightmares. He showed me how to survive.” She looked at me, her eyes piercing and strong. “I owe him everything, Katie. I won’t leave his side, no matter what.”
I could understand. It was how I felt clinging to Tomo, when he’d gotten me through the storm of losing Mom and living adrift in Japan. “Ikeda, let’s get them home.”
“Katie,” Jun called out, and Ikeda’s eyes went flat and lifeless. The friendship I’d seen sparking suddenly dulled.
“No,” she said.
I blinked. No?
“I’m sick of you and your shit, Katie. Shiori was right—you’ve messed up everyone’s lives.”
What was I supposed to do? Jun didn’t feel the way she felt.
“I couldn’t care less if you make it home,” Ikeda spat. “Do you know what Jun’s been through? His whole life fell apart with a single mistake.” She pointed an accusatory finger at Tomo. “Jun tries to help him, to give him control of the ink and a chance to rule the world—and he slaps him in the face. Mou ii wa yo. I’ve had enough of your crap.”
“Ikeda, enough,” Jun said.
Tomo sat hunched over, covered in bruises, blood and dirt. “It’s over, Jun. Go home.”
Jun tucked his legs under himself. “You’re wrong. This won’t end here, Yuu. Whether it’s me who does it or not, you need to be stopped. You are dangerous; that hasn’t changed.”
“You’re right,” Tomo said. “But you’re worse. You don’t even try to fight the darkness in you. You’ve accepted your fate. That’s something I’ll never do.”
“There’s only death ahead for both of us,” Jun said. “You know that.”
Tomo paused a minute, looking down at his sketchbook and then across the bay to Mount Fuji. The snow was perfectly white again, like it had never happened.
“I know,” Tomo said. “But that’s all any of us have in the end, isn’t it? There is death ahead of all of us. And so we live.”
I returned to Tomo’s side and he wrapped his arm around me for support, leaning down to collect his notebook and blazer.
We limped away from them slowly, one small step at a time.
Chapter 20
We managed to make our way to Tomo’s with me pedaling and him seated and slumped over my back. Nihondaira was a mountain, so we mostly coasted down, but I worked up a sweat as we cycled through Otamachi toward his house.
“This is great,” Tomo mumbled into my shoulder as I pulled up his front walkway. “Can you bike me home every day?”
I shoved him off and leaned the bike against the side of the wall around his house. “Maybe if you lose some weight,” I puffed.
“Hey,” Tomo said, flexing his arm. “This is all muscle.” But as he pulled his arm back, the bite wound pressed against his skin and he winced, dropping his arm quickly.
“Let’s get you inside,” I said. He fumbled in his pocket for the house key and I turned it in the lock, the two of us entering the warm house from the outside cold.
He stumbled toward the couch, but stopped as he looked down at the floor. He’d left a trail of ink. “I better shower,” he said.
“Can you handle it?” I asked. He was hunched over and didn’t look too steady on his feet.
He tried to grin, but it came out pained. “You better come help me.”
I turned all shades of red. “Shut up,” I stammered. I couldn’t believe he could still joke after the video he’d seen of Jun and me. Maybe between that, the fight and the info that he was descended from two kami that hated each other, he was still processing it all.
He tugged at the knot of his school-uniform tie, twisting it back and forth to loosen it from his neck. I followed him carefully as he limped toward the bathroom, in case he collapsed.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’ll be okay,” he said, dropping the tie to the floor. “But I don’t think that’s what you meant.”
It wasn’t. Instead I said, “You went through a lot today.”
He fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, his tired fingers struggling to undo them. “I bet the teachers had a fit when they saw the change room.”
It felt like ages since those threatening kanji and ink faucets at school. “I told them it was part of the prank played on you.”
“So I’ll probably only be suspended for about...oh, fifty years, then.”
“Give or take,” I said.
He still fumbled with the same button. “Kuse-yo,” he swore, pretending to laugh. “Can’t stop shaking.” His eyes blurred with moisture, the tears he was forcing back. I wanted to hold him to me tightly, to protect him from all of this.
So I made excuses for him. “You’re just tired. Here.” I reached for the button myself, slipping it neatly through the hole. He watched me intensely as I tried to force the blush off my cheeks. I’m just helping him.
You’re undressing him, Katie. But points for trying.
I moved on to the next button. “So...two kami, huh? Does that make you royalty or something?” It was a lame joke, but I was flailing. I needed to talk about it, to put it out there in the open instead of just in our own thoughts.
Tomo leaned his head back, his palms flat against the wall. “I guess it’s nice to shrug off the connection with Yomi, at least.”
I couldn’t imagine being descended from the World of Darkness. The idea had crushed Tomo, sent him spiraling out of control.
He sighed. “I’m tired and a little beat-up, but I feel better than I have in a month. Actually, I feel better than I have since you...” He trailed off.
“Since I came to Japan,” I said, my mouth dry.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Can we really be together?” I asked. I unbuttoned the last of the buttons and dropped my hands away. “It sounds like Tsukiyomi hates Amaterasu’s guts.”
“I’m not Tsukiyomi,” he said. “And you’re not Amaterasu. We’ll build our own lives.” He shrugged his shirt off and it dropped in a mound on the floor. I tried to pretend I was okay with the fact that he was half-naked, but I felt queasy and awkward, like my cheeks were on fire. I looked away.
“Katie,” he said, and the velvet of it turned my head. The scars crisscrossed down his arm, broken up by the inugami bite marks. Deep blue bruises bloomed on his tan skin, on his shoulder and below his ribs. I stared a little more intensely than I meant to.
Tomo laughed, resting his hand on the waistband of his pants. “I could keep going.” He grinned and leaned in to kiss me.
Fire ran through my veins again, sharp and raw, but this kind I didn’t mind. This kind was nice. I wanted more.
I wrapped my arms around him, his bare skin like fire under my fingertips. He winced as my hands slid across the bruises he was covered with.
“Takahashi made a mess of me,” he sighed as I accidentally pressed against another bruise.
“I think it was the fall from the sky,” I said, giving him more excuses. “In which case, it’s my fault for writing in your notebook.”
He cupped my neck with his hands, resting his forehead against mine.
“How dare you save my life?” he whispered and pressed a kiss on my jawline.
He pulled away and staggered into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
I breathed out a sigh and turned my back to the door, sliding down it until I sat at the bottom. Why did I have to get so nervous around him? I could handle him flying around on inky wings and drawing sketches of me that came to life, but I couldn’t make out with him when he was shirtless? I needed serious help.
From the other side of the door I heard the sound of his zipper and him shrugging off his pants.
Other thoughts, other thoughts...
“Tomo,” I said, looking up at the ceiling.
“Hmm?”
“The thing with Ju—Takahashi. I’m so sorry I hurt you. I wish I could go back and change what I did. You know that, right?”
Pause. “I know.”
“He kissed me. And I knew it was wrong. It was a huge mistake. I did pull away, but—”
“Katie,” he said, his voice smooth and velvet. “I care about you. But I can’t expect you to stay beside me. What I am is not going to change. It’s going to get worse until...until it’s over.”
I shuddered. “I know. But I want to be there, until the end.”
“I want you to be,” he said. His voice was gentle, and I knew he was pressed against the door. This was our life; always something in our way.
I heard his footsteps as he padded toward the shower and turned on the spray.
“I will,” I said quietly to myself. “I’ll find a way.”
My phone buzzed, and the sound of it made me jump. I flipped it open, the little bell on the omamori charm tinkling as the keitai snapped into place.
“Yuki,” I said with relief and hit Answer, putting the phone to my ear.
“Katie!” Yuki said. “Tan-kun and I were worried. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. My brain cycled back a few hours. She was calling because we’d bolted from the school.
“And Yuu?”
“Doing okay,” I said, leaning back. I liked the soothing sound of the shower behind me. It was nice that I was part of something so intimate, even if I was on the other side of the door. “It was a nasty prank.”
“I’ll try,” Ikeda said. She dipped a finger into the ink I cupped with my hands, and turned the page in Tomo’s notebook.
“That’s it?” I shouted. “‘Sun?’” Nothing happened.
“I told you,” Ikeda said. “I’m not very strong.”
“Because there’s already sun,” I said. “It’s just hidden behind the clouds.”
She cupped her hands and I poured the ink rain into them, wiping my stained hands on the grass. I dunked my finger in the ink and ran it across the page.
Please, I thought.
Thank god I’d practiced my kanji. Thank god I knew what to write.
Amaterasu. The word glowed with a faint golden dust, then turned black again. That was it. That was the extent of my power.
Ikeda dropped the cupped ink with a splash and reached in front of me. With her stained hands, she traced the kanji I’d written, making them darker and bolder.
The word rippled, then gleamed with golden sparks. It flickered with light, the way the fireflies had.
It grew brighter and brighter, and Ikeda backed away, shielding her eyes. All around us the field glowed with crisp white light, the trees turning black and gray, like we were in a moving ink painting.
There was the loud sound of thunder crashing, and Tomohiro and Jun plummeted from the sky, hitting the ground hard. Both of them lay still, unconscious. The bright light faded, until the clearing was normal again, the colors vibrant after so much darkness. The clouds were gone, except a small patch that had floated toward Kunozan, where they zapped into nothingness with a flash of blue light.
“Jun,” Ikeda cried out and raced to his side. I stared from Jun to Tomohiro. How peaceful they both looked with their eyes closed. Like they were sleeping.
Oh god.
“Tomo,” I said, running to his side.
I smoothed the copper bangs out of his eyes and wiped the ink and blood from his face with the backs of my hands.
Jun moved first, groaning as he turned his head.
“Jun,” Ikeda said.
“Naoki,” he said, and Ikeda flushed. I wondered if it was the first time he’d called her by her name. “Katie. Is she okay?” He called out for me. “Katie?”
Ikeda’s face fell. But I was too busy to worry about either of them.
“Tomo,” I said, but he didn’t move. I put my fingers against his lips, and his warm breath spread over them. He was alive, then. But was he himself or still controlled by his Kami side?
He blinked his eyes open slowly, and my body pulsed with relief to see the soft hazel of them. He was in control.
“Katie?” Tomo said quietly. He looked at me, broken and bleeding, covered in mud with ink trailing through his hair. He’d never looked more stunning.
“You all right?” I said.
He laughed, and it turned into a cough. “I’ve felt better. You?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s get you home.”
“You going to carry me?” He attempted a grin. “I can’t exactly bike right now.”
“I’ll ask Ikeda. We can come get your bike later.”
I turned my head to look toward the pools. Jun was sitting upright, coughing up ink as Ikeda dunked her handkerchief in cold water.
I went to sit with her, watching the ripples as she swirled the handkerchief around.
“Are you okay?” I said quietly.
Ikeda didn’t look up. “Jun called for you,” she said.
I knew I should be quiet, but her suffering felt like my own. I didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. “After all this, you’re still by his side. You deserve better, Ikeda. Why do you stay?”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. Jun has always been there for me. My parents worked all the time, and I had no siblings. Without Jun, the world was lonely, empty. Meaningless.” She pulled the towel from the water and squeezed the droplets out. “I was terrified when my drawings started to move. Jun stayed with me through my first nightmares. He showed me how to survive.” She looked at me, her eyes piercing and strong. “I owe him everything, Katie. I won’t leave his side, no matter what.”
I could understand. It was how I felt clinging to Tomo, when he’d gotten me through the storm of losing Mom and living adrift in Japan. “Ikeda, let’s get them home.”
“Katie,” Jun called out, and Ikeda’s eyes went flat and lifeless. The friendship I’d seen sparking suddenly dulled.
“No,” she said.
I blinked. No?
“I’m sick of you and your shit, Katie. Shiori was right—you’ve messed up everyone’s lives.”
What was I supposed to do? Jun didn’t feel the way she felt.
“I couldn’t care less if you make it home,” Ikeda spat. “Do you know what Jun’s been through? His whole life fell apart with a single mistake.” She pointed an accusatory finger at Tomo. “Jun tries to help him, to give him control of the ink and a chance to rule the world—and he slaps him in the face. Mou ii wa yo. I’ve had enough of your crap.”
“Ikeda, enough,” Jun said.
Tomo sat hunched over, covered in bruises, blood and dirt. “It’s over, Jun. Go home.”
Jun tucked his legs under himself. “You’re wrong. This won’t end here, Yuu. Whether it’s me who does it or not, you need to be stopped. You are dangerous; that hasn’t changed.”
“You’re right,” Tomo said. “But you’re worse. You don’t even try to fight the darkness in you. You’ve accepted your fate. That’s something I’ll never do.”
“There’s only death ahead for both of us,” Jun said. “You know that.”
Tomo paused a minute, looking down at his sketchbook and then across the bay to Mount Fuji. The snow was perfectly white again, like it had never happened.
“I know,” Tomo said. “But that’s all any of us have in the end, isn’t it? There is death ahead of all of us. And so we live.”
I returned to Tomo’s side and he wrapped his arm around me for support, leaning down to collect his notebook and blazer.
We limped away from them slowly, one small step at a time.
Chapter 20
We managed to make our way to Tomo’s with me pedaling and him seated and slumped over my back. Nihondaira was a mountain, so we mostly coasted down, but I worked up a sweat as we cycled through Otamachi toward his house.
“This is great,” Tomo mumbled into my shoulder as I pulled up his front walkway. “Can you bike me home every day?”
I shoved him off and leaned the bike against the side of the wall around his house. “Maybe if you lose some weight,” I puffed.
“Hey,” Tomo said, flexing his arm. “This is all muscle.” But as he pulled his arm back, the bite wound pressed against his skin and he winced, dropping his arm quickly.
“Let’s get you inside,” I said. He fumbled in his pocket for the house key and I turned it in the lock, the two of us entering the warm house from the outside cold.
He stumbled toward the couch, but stopped as he looked down at the floor. He’d left a trail of ink. “I better shower,” he said.
“Can you handle it?” I asked. He was hunched over and didn’t look too steady on his feet.
He tried to grin, but it came out pained. “You better come help me.”
I turned all shades of red. “Shut up,” I stammered. I couldn’t believe he could still joke after the video he’d seen of Jun and me. Maybe between that, the fight and the info that he was descended from two kami that hated each other, he was still processing it all.
He tugged at the knot of his school-uniform tie, twisting it back and forth to loosen it from his neck. I followed him carefully as he limped toward the bathroom, in case he collapsed.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’ll be okay,” he said, dropping the tie to the floor. “But I don’t think that’s what you meant.”
It wasn’t. Instead I said, “You went through a lot today.”
He fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, his tired fingers struggling to undo them. “I bet the teachers had a fit when they saw the change room.”
It felt like ages since those threatening kanji and ink faucets at school. “I told them it was part of the prank played on you.”
“So I’ll probably only be suspended for about...oh, fifty years, then.”
“Give or take,” I said.
He still fumbled with the same button. “Kuse-yo,” he swore, pretending to laugh. “Can’t stop shaking.” His eyes blurred with moisture, the tears he was forcing back. I wanted to hold him to me tightly, to protect him from all of this.
So I made excuses for him. “You’re just tired. Here.” I reached for the button myself, slipping it neatly through the hole. He watched me intensely as I tried to force the blush off my cheeks. I’m just helping him.
You’re undressing him, Katie. But points for trying.
I moved on to the next button. “So...two kami, huh? Does that make you royalty or something?” It was a lame joke, but I was flailing. I needed to talk about it, to put it out there in the open instead of just in our own thoughts.
Tomo leaned his head back, his palms flat against the wall. “I guess it’s nice to shrug off the connection with Yomi, at least.”
I couldn’t imagine being descended from the World of Darkness. The idea had crushed Tomo, sent him spiraling out of control.
He sighed. “I’m tired and a little beat-up, but I feel better than I have in a month. Actually, I feel better than I have since you...” He trailed off.
“Since I came to Japan,” I said, my mouth dry.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Can we really be together?” I asked. I unbuttoned the last of the buttons and dropped my hands away. “It sounds like Tsukiyomi hates Amaterasu’s guts.”
“I’m not Tsukiyomi,” he said. “And you’re not Amaterasu. We’ll build our own lives.” He shrugged his shirt off and it dropped in a mound on the floor. I tried to pretend I was okay with the fact that he was half-naked, but I felt queasy and awkward, like my cheeks were on fire. I looked away.
“Katie,” he said, and the velvet of it turned my head. The scars crisscrossed down his arm, broken up by the inugami bite marks. Deep blue bruises bloomed on his tan skin, on his shoulder and below his ribs. I stared a little more intensely than I meant to.
Tomo laughed, resting his hand on the waistband of his pants. “I could keep going.” He grinned and leaned in to kiss me.
Fire ran through my veins again, sharp and raw, but this kind I didn’t mind. This kind was nice. I wanted more.
I wrapped my arms around him, his bare skin like fire under my fingertips. He winced as my hands slid across the bruises he was covered with.
“Takahashi made a mess of me,” he sighed as I accidentally pressed against another bruise.
“I think it was the fall from the sky,” I said, giving him more excuses. “In which case, it’s my fault for writing in your notebook.”
He cupped my neck with his hands, resting his forehead against mine.
“How dare you save my life?” he whispered and pressed a kiss on my jawline.
He pulled away and staggered into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
I breathed out a sigh and turned my back to the door, sliding down it until I sat at the bottom. Why did I have to get so nervous around him? I could handle him flying around on inky wings and drawing sketches of me that came to life, but I couldn’t make out with him when he was shirtless? I needed serious help.
From the other side of the door I heard the sound of his zipper and him shrugging off his pants.
Other thoughts, other thoughts...
“Tomo,” I said, looking up at the ceiling.
“Hmm?”
“The thing with Ju—Takahashi. I’m so sorry I hurt you. I wish I could go back and change what I did. You know that, right?”
Pause. “I know.”
“He kissed me. And I knew it was wrong. It was a huge mistake. I did pull away, but—”
“Katie,” he said, his voice smooth and velvet. “I care about you. But I can’t expect you to stay beside me. What I am is not going to change. It’s going to get worse until...until it’s over.”
I shuddered. “I know. But I want to be there, until the end.”
“I want you to be,” he said. His voice was gentle, and I knew he was pressed against the door. This was our life; always something in our way.
I heard his footsteps as he padded toward the shower and turned on the spray.
“I will,” I said quietly to myself. “I’ll find a way.”
My phone buzzed, and the sound of it made me jump. I flipped it open, the little bell on the omamori charm tinkling as the keitai snapped into place.
“Yuki,” I said with relief and hit Answer, putting the phone to my ear.
“Katie!” Yuki said. “Tan-kun and I were worried. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. My brain cycled back a few hours. She was calling because we’d bolted from the school.
“And Yuu?”
“Doing okay,” I said, leaning back. I liked the soothing sound of the shower behind me. It was nice that I was part of something so intimate, even if I was on the other side of the door. “It was a nasty prank.”
