“Right, but the ink in you has its own agenda. If we can figure it out—if we can figure out how I fit into all this—we can stop it.”
Tomo’s voice was breathy and dark. “I think there’s only one way to stop me.”
I shivered.
The ink dripped off Tomohiro’s bangs and curved down his cheeks. I reached up with the elephant towel and dabbed his face. “Arigatou,” he said quietly, and I wanted to kiss him right there on the train, to tell him everything would be okay.
“What about the other Kami?” The k came out so loudly. We shouldn’t be talking on the train; it wasn’t safe. I pressed my lips right to his ear. “What if one of them suddenly loses control? Although you’re the only one I’ve seen that’s so powerful, except for J—” Oops. “Um, I mean...”
If he was hurt by my comment, he hid it really well. “It’s okay. Except for Takahashi. He’s strong. I know it.”
“But you can’t be the only two. Has anything ever happened before? Some other you-know-what losing control?”
Tomo scrunched up his nose a little while he thought. The train curved around the Abe River and tilted us to the side. Someone behind Tomo stumbled, their bag smacking him hard in the leg. He buckled forward, stopping himself from falling over by pressing harder against the wall. He grimaced as they apologized, but all I could think about was how he was pressed up against me, the warmth of his body against mine.
He didn’t seem to notice, still lost in thought. “I don’t know. Except for Takahashi and his groupies I don’t know any others. Except my mom, and I can’t ask her.”
I thought about what Jun had said, about how the ink in me was pulled like a magnet to the ink in him and Tomo. If I was going to get anywhere, I needed to know more about how it all worked.
“Maybe Jun can...” I trailed off. The look on Tomo’s face made me stop in my tracks.
“You can’t trust him. He wanted to use us.”
“I know,” I said. But I wasn’t sure. Maybe I’d overreacted. Sure, he was a little messed up in the head, but he’d done a lot more kind things for me than creepy. I mean, was it really such a bad thing that he wanted to take out gangsters and world crime? His methods were questionable, but his intentions?
The train ground to a stop and Tomo leaned into me as the doors sprang open beside us. We were pressed so close his cheek was against my ear, his bangs tickling my skin.
“We need to figure it out,” I whispered, pretending that’s what I was still thinking about. Only a few weeks apart, and I’d become this nervous around him again? Must not think about his body pressed against mine. Must not think about how good he smells, like vanilla and miso.
And then he pressed his lips against my neck, and my thoughts exploded.
“We can figure it out without Takahashi,” he mumbled, his words tickling as they vibrated against my skin. “I’ve lived my whole life like this. Marked, stained, however you think of it. It’s not going to go away. I’m not normal, Katie. I can never be normal.”
You don’t have to be normal, I thought. You just have to be in control, so no one gets hurt. Especially us. But the words never made it to my lips. I wished we weren’t on the train, that we weren’t surrounded by a hundred people pretending not to see him kissing my neck. I wished we could be alone in Toro Iseki, surrounded by furin and wagtail birds and a starlit sky. But we could never be there alone again, not with his drawings around us. Things would never be the same now that renovations at the site were done.
Shin-shizuoka was the next station and we stumbled out of the train, hands entwined. Tomo walked me the whole way to Diane’s mansion—my mansion, I reminded myself. There was no time limit now. This was home, as long as I wanted it to be.
Tomohiro grasped both of my hands.
“I have to go,” I said. “It’s getting late.”
“I know.”
“It would be easier to leave if you let go of my hands.”
“I know.”
“Tomo.”
“You’re really here,” he said, giving my hands a tug so I stumbled forward. “I have to protect you. I can’t let anything happen to you.”
“Me, too,” I said. “I’m here to fix things, so don’t worry, okay? I can take care of myself.”
“Call me if the Kami or the Yakuza try to contact you. And I need to tell you something else.”
“What?”
He looked away, his face pained. “I’m going to stop drawing.”
“I thought you couldn’t.”
“I’m going to try,” he said. “No more sketching. It’ll eat me alive, but if you’re going to be here, I can’t risk it. Just notes at school.”
His fingers felt so warm laced with mine. “But your drawings mean so much to you.”
“Yeah, so much they bite and claw at me. Don’t forget the gun that shot at me.”
I shuddered. “Let’s try to get the ink under control, okay?”
“Katie,” he said, his mouth a grim line. “Do you think I set off the fireworks tonight?”
Yes.
“I don’t know. But I do know that if I don’t get in that door soon, Diane will sit me through a whole other set of fireworks and she may never let me come out again.”
Tomohiro laughed. “Wakatta. I get it. Good night.” He leaned over to kiss me, and the warmth of it threatened to knock me over. Suddenly meeting Diane’s curfew didn’t seem to matter at all.
Tomohiro’s hands slid down my arms to my hips, pulling me closer. He made a gentle noise deep in his throat and every nerve in my body tingled with the sound of it. I clung to him as I kissed him, and his fingers threaded into my hair. This was the welcome home I’d waited for.
Something papery and sharp smacked into the back of my hand, and then again. Like sharp bugbites they pierced every patch of bare skin—my feet, my wrists, my ears. I pulled back from Tomo and stared. Cherry petals made of ink lifted off my yukata, leaving behind areas of pristine and unstained fabric. The shadowy cloud of flowers swarmed around us like black flies, whipping against us over and over like we were at the center of a dark hurricane.
“Ow!” One of them nicked my finger and a drop of blood oozed from the cut.
Tomohiro swatted the petals like bugs and they fell, shriveling on the ground around us until we were surrounded by a wreath of crumpled blackness. Slowly they melted into an oily sheen, clouds of golden dust catching the light like dim fireflies. The ink, lashing out at us like it always did.
“Sorry,” he panted. “I... Maybe I should go home and clear my head. Damn hormones.”
“Fine, but next time you want to make out, leave your swarming sakura petals at home.”
He grinned and cupped my chin with his hand. “I can’t think straight when I’m with you,” he said.
He rocked back on his heels, hands shoved in his pockets, waiting until he was sure I was safely inside the lobby before turning to leave.
Like he wasn’t one of the more dangerous things lurking in the darkness.
The elevator hummed as it pulled me upward. After the closeness of him, I felt acutely aware of how alone I was. I walked toward the pale green door of our mansion and pushed it open.
“Tadaima,” I called out, kicking my flip-flops off in the genkan.
“Okaeri,” Diane answered from somewhere in the living room. I checked that Yuki’s yukata wasn’t dripping before I stepped onto the raised hardwood floors. The cherry blossoms on it were spotless, but the rest of the fabric still had sprays of ink soaked into it.
Diane appeared in the foyer, still holding the TV remote, and stared. “What happened to you?”
“It’s on the news,” I said quickly. “Some sort of prank or something.” She flipped the channel from the hallway, the voice of the newscaster blaring.
“Awful!” she said as she squinted at the screen. “Why would someone want to do that?”
“No idea,” I said, studying the damage in the mirror. The spray of flowers in my hair was still mostly pink, and so was my face, wiped clean by Tomo’s elephant towel. “Do you think the ink will come out?”
“I hope so. Poor Yuki. Her beautiful yukata.”
I was a mess of blurred yellow and pink. Diane helped me unloop the obi bow and untie the koshi-himo straps wrapped underneath.
“Just terrible,” Diane muttered. “I hope they catch the punks responsible.”
When had my life become such a tangle of lies?
* * *
“Greene-san, could I see you for a minute?”
I stopped in my tracks. Suzuki-sensei waited with his arms folded across his chest, and I wondered if I’d done something wrong. It was only the first day back at school. I couldn’t have messed up already, could I?
“I’ll wait in the hallway,” Yuki said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I have to hurry to kendo after anyway.” Yuki nodded and slipped out the door. Lucky, I thought. I walked toward my impending doom at the front of the class.
“Suzuki-sensei?”
He smiled, but it was a bureaucratic kind of smile, the kind that had the same warmth to it as a February morning. “Sit down, please.” I sat in the nearest desk, while he sat on top of his. “We’re glad to have you back,” he said. “I’d heard from Headmaster Yoshinoma that you were heading to live with your grandparents in Canada for September.”
“I changed my mind,” I said.
“I see that. And I’m glad you can stay here with your friends.”
I was sure there was a but... in there somewhere.
“Shikashi...”
There it is.
“If you’re going to stay in Japan permanently, you’re going to have to give a lot of thought to your future. I know you have two more years before college, but you’ll have to work harder than the others. This isn’t an international school, Katie. You’ll have to catch up your kanji and vocabulary quickly. I can’t go easy on you.”
Somehow I hadn’t seen this coming. I’d thought things would stay the same. “I can keep up. I’m going to cram school, too.”
“So are most of your classmates,” he said. “Will you be able to take the entrance exams in two years? Can you even read a newspaper yet?”
I felt itchy. “Um, not yet.”
“How many kanji are you comfortable with?”
“Er. Not enough?”
“I want you to think seriously about this, all right? I don’t want to discourage you. You’re bright, but you’re taking on a lot. I won’t be doing you a favor if I go easy on you, you understand?”
“I get it,” I said. “I’ll work hard.”
He nodded. “I know. But think about it, because you still have time to transfer to an international school if the pressure’s too much.”
An international school, filled with English speakers like me. No Yuki, no Tanaka, no Tomohiro. Segregated somehow, separated from the reality of life in Japan. Another reminder that I could never really fit into the life I wanted to live here.
I’d just have to work harder.
“I don’t want to transfer,” I said. “I can do it.”
“Okay. Ganbarimashou ne?”
“Ganbarimasu,” I said. I’ll do my best.
So, figure out the ink and try not to flunk out of high school. Fine. I could do that.
Suzuki-sensei nodded and waved me out of the room. I rushed to the gym change room, hoping Coach Watanabe wouldn’t skin me alive for being so late.
I slipped quickly into my hakama and peeked out the locker-room door to the gym—shoot, they’d already started the push-ups. The minute the coaches looked away, I sped toward an empty spot in line and launched myself at the floor. I listened, but no yelling. I’d gotten away with it. I grinned at the floorboards, feeling like a ninja as I bobbed up and down with the team. The victory vanished pretty quickly. I’d lost my edge over the summer; my arms wobbled and ached after we got to fifteen. At twenty-five, I pressed my fingers against the varnished wood and forced myself up. The cut from the dark sakura petal throbbed and stung, but I tried to ignore it.
When we were warmed up and sweating, Watanabe and Nakamura called us all to the front and told us to kneel in a semicircle. This wasn’t normal. What was going on? I snuck a peek at Tomohiro, but he was looking down at the floor.
“I have some bad news,” Watanabe-sensei said, and my nerves started to buzz. This couldn’t be good. “Some of you have heard, but Ishikawa was injured over the summer.” Watanabe cleared his throat. “He was shot.”
Oh god. Murmurs ripped through the row of kendouka. Tomohiro kept staring at the floor. I hadn’t thought about the consequences at all. I hadn’t thought about the lies we might have to spin for me to stay in Japan safely.
“They don’t know who did it,” Watanabe said, trying to speak over the frantic students. “But the police are looking into it. Ishikawa is being less than cooperative, and so they’re concerned that it was not a random attack. The police came by yesterday during our teacher prep to interview us.”
“Is he still in the hospital?” asked one of the second-year girls.
Nakamura-sensei shook his head. “He’ll be all right. Right now he’s resting at home. His mother’s let us know that he’ll be strong enough to return to school in a few weeks. But unless the facts start looking more favorable, we may be forced to take disciplinary action against him.”
Tomo’s voice was breathy and dark. “I think there’s only one way to stop me.”
I shivered.
The ink dripped off Tomohiro’s bangs and curved down his cheeks. I reached up with the elephant towel and dabbed his face. “Arigatou,” he said quietly, and I wanted to kiss him right there on the train, to tell him everything would be okay.
“What about the other Kami?” The k came out so loudly. We shouldn’t be talking on the train; it wasn’t safe. I pressed my lips right to his ear. “What if one of them suddenly loses control? Although you’re the only one I’ve seen that’s so powerful, except for J—” Oops. “Um, I mean...”
If he was hurt by my comment, he hid it really well. “It’s okay. Except for Takahashi. He’s strong. I know it.”
“But you can’t be the only two. Has anything ever happened before? Some other you-know-what losing control?”
Tomo scrunched up his nose a little while he thought. The train curved around the Abe River and tilted us to the side. Someone behind Tomo stumbled, their bag smacking him hard in the leg. He buckled forward, stopping himself from falling over by pressing harder against the wall. He grimaced as they apologized, but all I could think about was how he was pressed up against me, the warmth of his body against mine.
He didn’t seem to notice, still lost in thought. “I don’t know. Except for Takahashi and his groupies I don’t know any others. Except my mom, and I can’t ask her.”
I thought about what Jun had said, about how the ink in me was pulled like a magnet to the ink in him and Tomo. If I was going to get anywhere, I needed to know more about how it all worked.
“Maybe Jun can...” I trailed off. The look on Tomo’s face made me stop in my tracks.
“You can’t trust him. He wanted to use us.”
“I know,” I said. But I wasn’t sure. Maybe I’d overreacted. Sure, he was a little messed up in the head, but he’d done a lot more kind things for me than creepy. I mean, was it really such a bad thing that he wanted to take out gangsters and world crime? His methods were questionable, but his intentions?
The train ground to a stop and Tomo leaned into me as the doors sprang open beside us. We were pressed so close his cheek was against my ear, his bangs tickling my skin.
“We need to figure it out,” I whispered, pretending that’s what I was still thinking about. Only a few weeks apart, and I’d become this nervous around him again? Must not think about his body pressed against mine. Must not think about how good he smells, like vanilla and miso.
And then he pressed his lips against my neck, and my thoughts exploded.
“We can figure it out without Takahashi,” he mumbled, his words tickling as they vibrated against my skin. “I’ve lived my whole life like this. Marked, stained, however you think of it. It’s not going to go away. I’m not normal, Katie. I can never be normal.”
You don’t have to be normal, I thought. You just have to be in control, so no one gets hurt. Especially us. But the words never made it to my lips. I wished we weren’t on the train, that we weren’t surrounded by a hundred people pretending not to see him kissing my neck. I wished we could be alone in Toro Iseki, surrounded by furin and wagtail birds and a starlit sky. But we could never be there alone again, not with his drawings around us. Things would never be the same now that renovations at the site were done.
Shin-shizuoka was the next station and we stumbled out of the train, hands entwined. Tomo walked me the whole way to Diane’s mansion—my mansion, I reminded myself. There was no time limit now. This was home, as long as I wanted it to be.
Tomohiro grasped both of my hands.
“I have to go,” I said. “It’s getting late.”
“I know.”
“It would be easier to leave if you let go of my hands.”
“I know.”
“Tomo.”
“You’re really here,” he said, giving my hands a tug so I stumbled forward. “I have to protect you. I can’t let anything happen to you.”
“Me, too,” I said. “I’m here to fix things, so don’t worry, okay? I can take care of myself.”
“Call me if the Kami or the Yakuza try to contact you. And I need to tell you something else.”
“What?”
He looked away, his face pained. “I’m going to stop drawing.”
“I thought you couldn’t.”
“I’m going to try,” he said. “No more sketching. It’ll eat me alive, but if you’re going to be here, I can’t risk it. Just notes at school.”
His fingers felt so warm laced with mine. “But your drawings mean so much to you.”
“Yeah, so much they bite and claw at me. Don’t forget the gun that shot at me.”
I shuddered. “Let’s try to get the ink under control, okay?”
“Katie,” he said, his mouth a grim line. “Do you think I set off the fireworks tonight?”
Yes.
“I don’t know. But I do know that if I don’t get in that door soon, Diane will sit me through a whole other set of fireworks and she may never let me come out again.”
Tomohiro laughed. “Wakatta. I get it. Good night.” He leaned over to kiss me, and the warmth of it threatened to knock me over. Suddenly meeting Diane’s curfew didn’t seem to matter at all.
Tomohiro’s hands slid down my arms to my hips, pulling me closer. He made a gentle noise deep in his throat and every nerve in my body tingled with the sound of it. I clung to him as I kissed him, and his fingers threaded into my hair. This was the welcome home I’d waited for.
Something papery and sharp smacked into the back of my hand, and then again. Like sharp bugbites they pierced every patch of bare skin—my feet, my wrists, my ears. I pulled back from Tomo and stared. Cherry petals made of ink lifted off my yukata, leaving behind areas of pristine and unstained fabric. The shadowy cloud of flowers swarmed around us like black flies, whipping against us over and over like we were at the center of a dark hurricane.
“Ow!” One of them nicked my finger and a drop of blood oozed from the cut.
Tomohiro swatted the petals like bugs and they fell, shriveling on the ground around us until we were surrounded by a wreath of crumpled blackness. Slowly they melted into an oily sheen, clouds of golden dust catching the light like dim fireflies. The ink, lashing out at us like it always did.
“Sorry,” he panted. “I... Maybe I should go home and clear my head. Damn hormones.”
“Fine, but next time you want to make out, leave your swarming sakura petals at home.”
He grinned and cupped my chin with his hand. “I can’t think straight when I’m with you,” he said.
He rocked back on his heels, hands shoved in his pockets, waiting until he was sure I was safely inside the lobby before turning to leave.
Like he wasn’t one of the more dangerous things lurking in the darkness.
The elevator hummed as it pulled me upward. After the closeness of him, I felt acutely aware of how alone I was. I walked toward the pale green door of our mansion and pushed it open.
“Tadaima,” I called out, kicking my flip-flops off in the genkan.
“Okaeri,” Diane answered from somewhere in the living room. I checked that Yuki’s yukata wasn’t dripping before I stepped onto the raised hardwood floors. The cherry blossoms on it were spotless, but the rest of the fabric still had sprays of ink soaked into it.
Diane appeared in the foyer, still holding the TV remote, and stared. “What happened to you?”
“It’s on the news,” I said quickly. “Some sort of prank or something.” She flipped the channel from the hallway, the voice of the newscaster blaring.
“Awful!” she said as she squinted at the screen. “Why would someone want to do that?”
“No idea,” I said, studying the damage in the mirror. The spray of flowers in my hair was still mostly pink, and so was my face, wiped clean by Tomo’s elephant towel. “Do you think the ink will come out?”
“I hope so. Poor Yuki. Her beautiful yukata.”
I was a mess of blurred yellow and pink. Diane helped me unloop the obi bow and untie the koshi-himo straps wrapped underneath.
“Just terrible,” Diane muttered. “I hope they catch the punks responsible.”
When had my life become such a tangle of lies?
* * *
“Greene-san, could I see you for a minute?”
I stopped in my tracks. Suzuki-sensei waited with his arms folded across his chest, and I wondered if I’d done something wrong. It was only the first day back at school. I couldn’t have messed up already, could I?
“I’ll wait in the hallway,” Yuki said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I have to hurry to kendo after anyway.” Yuki nodded and slipped out the door. Lucky, I thought. I walked toward my impending doom at the front of the class.
“Suzuki-sensei?”
He smiled, but it was a bureaucratic kind of smile, the kind that had the same warmth to it as a February morning. “Sit down, please.” I sat in the nearest desk, while he sat on top of his. “We’re glad to have you back,” he said. “I’d heard from Headmaster Yoshinoma that you were heading to live with your grandparents in Canada for September.”
“I changed my mind,” I said.
“I see that. And I’m glad you can stay here with your friends.”
I was sure there was a but... in there somewhere.
“Shikashi...”
There it is.
“If you’re going to stay in Japan permanently, you’re going to have to give a lot of thought to your future. I know you have two more years before college, but you’ll have to work harder than the others. This isn’t an international school, Katie. You’ll have to catch up your kanji and vocabulary quickly. I can’t go easy on you.”
Somehow I hadn’t seen this coming. I’d thought things would stay the same. “I can keep up. I’m going to cram school, too.”
“So are most of your classmates,” he said. “Will you be able to take the entrance exams in two years? Can you even read a newspaper yet?”
I felt itchy. “Um, not yet.”
“How many kanji are you comfortable with?”
“Er. Not enough?”
“I want you to think seriously about this, all right? I don’t want to discourage you. You’re bright, but you’re taking on a lot. I won’t be doing you a favor if I go easy on you, you understand?”
“I get it,” I said. “I’ll work hard.”
He nodded. “I know. But think about it, because you still have time to transfer to an international school if the pressure’s too much.”
An international school, filled with English speakers like me. No Yuki, no Tanaka, no Tomohiro. Segregated somehow, separated from the reality of life in Japan. Another reminder that I could never really fit into the life I wanted to live here.
I’d just have to work harder.
“I don’t want to transfer,” I said. “I can do it.”
“Okay. Ganbarimashou ne?”
“Ganbarimasu,” I said. I’ll do my best.
So, figure out the ink and try not to flunk out of high school. Fine. I could do that.
Suzuki-sensei nodded and waved me out of the room. I rushed to the gym change room, hoping Coach Watanabe wouldn’t skin me alive for being so late.
I slipped quickly into my hakama and peeked out the locker-room door to the gym—shoot, they’d already started the push-ups. The minute the coaches looked away, I sped toward an empty spot in line and launched myself at the floor. I listened, but no yelling. I’d gotten away with it. I grinned at the floorboards, feeling like a ninja as I bobbed up and down with the team. The victory vanished pretty quickly. I’d lost my edge over the summer; my arms wobbled and ached after we got to fifteen. At twenty-five, I pressed my fingers against the varnished wood and forced myself up. The cut from the dark sakura petal throbbed and stung, but I tried to ignore it.
When we were warmed up and sweating, Watanabe and Nakamura called us all to the front and told us to kneel in a semicircle. This wasn’t normal. What was going on? I snuck a peek at Tomohiro, but he was looking down at the floor.
“I have some bad news,” Watanabe-sensei said, and my nerves started to buzz. This couldn’t be good. “Some of you have heard, but Ishikawa was injured over the summer.” Watanabe cleared his throat. “He was shot.”
Oh god. Murmurs ripped through the row of kendouka. Tomohiro kept staring at the floor. I hadn’t thought about the consequences at all. I hadn’t thought about the lies we might have to spin for me to stay in Japan safely.
“They don’t know who did it,” Watanabe said, trying to speak over the frantic students. “But the police are looking into it. Ishikawa is being less than cooperative, and so they’re concerned that it was not a random attack. The police came by yesterday during our teacher prep to interview us.”
“Is he still in the hospital?” asked one of the second-year girls.
Nakamura-sensei shook his head. “He’ll be all right. Right now he’s resting at home. His mother’s let us know that he’ll be strong enough to return to school in a few weeks. But unless the facts start looking more favorable, we may be forced to take disciplinary action against him.”
