Seven Deadly Shadows

by Courtney Alameda

  The aromas of breakfast still linger in the kitchen; otherwise, everyone’s left for the morning.

  Everyone, that is, except Shiro.

  I find him in the kitchen, leaning against one of the countertops, reading something on his phone. He’s styled his hair for once, keeping his long, reddish bangs swept to the side of his face. He looks up with a wolfish grin. Or perhaps it would be better to say foxish.

  “What do you think?” he asks me, stretching his arms wide to show off his outfit. His clothing, however, catches my attention only insofar as that white shirt strains across his muscular chest. “Do I look the part of earnest high school student Shiro Okamoto?”

  “You’re going with me?” I adjust my bag’s strap on my shoulder, cocking my head at him. “To school?”

  “That’s the plan,” he says.

  “Security won’t allow you on campus unless you’re a student,” I say.

  “I guess it’s good that I’m enrolled then, isn’t it?”

  My mouth drops open. “How? Have you even taken an entrance exam? Have you even been to school before—”

  “Kira,” he says with a laugh, placing a finger on my lips. “Rules are for mortals.”

  I tug his hand away. “You’re going to embarrass me. I’m already struggling to save face there.”

  He takes my hand and turns it palm up, exposing the old scabs on my palms. “You may have already lost that battle,” he says gently.

  I look away. The pain of the past still throbs under my skin.

  “Listen, I don’t mean to embarrass you,” Shiro says, covering my palm with his other hand. “But bullies are the least of our worries. We’ve been attacked by Shuten-doji’s followers three times, and I couldn’t live with myself if I wasn’t there for a fourth. I promise, I’ll follow your lead and try not to stand out, okay?”

  It’s hard to deny him anything, especially when he’s so earnest.

  “Okay,” I say. “But we’d better get going—you don’t want to be late for your first day.”

  When Shiro and I arrive at school, the other students’ whispers tiptoe around us. They range from the mundane to the extraordinary to the downright rude. Some of the students have pity in their voices, saying I’ve been in mourning for the past week. Other people theorize that the yakuza attacked my family’s shrine and I was held hostage while my family scrambled to pay the ransom money.

  The girls stare at Shiro, whispering to one another, hiding giggles with their hands.

  Who’s that new boy? they whisper, making sure their voices are loud enough to hear. Is he a bodyguard?

  Maybe Fujikawa really did get kidnapped by the yakuza.

  Her parents don’t have enough money for a ransom, baka.

  They try to tease apart the nature of our relationship in sideways glances, measuring the inches between our bodies. I spot at least one girl hiking her skirt up a little, and another sliding some gloss on her lips—breaking school rules for a boy they’ve never even met. They sneak flirty glances at Shiro, but he ignores them.

  The boys size him up, shooting him cool glances across the hall. On occasion, one will give him a short uptick with their head as if to say, Hey. I try to pay them no attention, ignoring the worst of the lies. Compared to me, their worlds are so small. I am the girl who consorted with death itself and lived; I have fought demons, outmaneuvered a death god, walked in Yomi, and befriended a kitsune. It’s hard to be cowed by gossip now that I’ve accidentally set fire to a train car full of demonic butterflies.

  I am forever changed, forever different, forever set apart from my classmates.

  As Shiro and I step into homeroom, my teacher, Mifune-sensei, beckons to us. She rises from her seat as we join her at her desk.

  “Welcome back, Fujikawa-san,” Mifune-sensei says with a gentle, condolence-filled smile. The adults, at least, are cognizant of the depth of my loss. “I take it that this is Shiro Okamoto, the . . . family friend who will be joining us for the rest of the term?”

  “Indeed,” Shiro says with a quick smile and charming bow.

  “Very well,” Mifune-sensei says. “For now, please take a seat next to Fujikawa-san. We should get started.”

  The school day passes without incident, though it leaves me anxious. I’m behind in all my classes. Several important exams fall right before the next full moon—the blood moon—so I’m stressed. If I fail to keep up with my studies, I’ll lose my place at Kōgakkon . . . and then I’d have to change schools again. While I may not like some of the students here, Kōgakkon is one of the best private schools in the country. If I graduate from this school and have top-notch entrance exam scores, I’ll be able to attend any university I want, at home or abroad.

  Shuten-doji’s already taken so much from me. I won’t let him have my future, too.

  Shiro excels at playing the dutiful student, going so far as to answer Kurosawa-sensei’s most difficult physics questions. He can speak English and perform complex mathematical equations in his head. Shiro wasn’t kidding when he claimed kitsune are clever—Kurosawa-sensei delights in stumping his students, but even he wasn’t able to get the better of Shiro.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll catch up quick,” Shiro says as we help clean our homeroom’s chalkboards after school concludes. Cleaning the school is a daily ritual all students engage in, no matter their status. “I can tutor you, if you’d like.”

  “There’s just so much to do,” I say, wiping the rest of Mifune-sensei’s last lecture off the board. “I’ve missed at least three exams and a paper, and I should have started my bunkasai Culture Day project last week.”

  He wrinkles his nose. “You’re too hard on yourself. Everyone’s willing to give you some extra time, Kira.”

  “I doubt Nakajima will be so . . . understanding,” I say, blowing out a breath. The class president of homeroom 3-A, Emiko Nakajima, has high expectations for this year’s Culture Day. Every fall, Culture Day festivals are held in schools all over Japan. These events are often open to the public and aim both to demonstrate the skill and talent of an individual school’s student body and attract new students to its ranks. And at a school as prestigious as Kōgakkan High School—where parents are often well-known members of Kyoto society—Culture Day is very, very important.

  Or at least, it used to be.

  “All these things seem so meaningless now,” I say, arranging pieces of chalk into dotted lines along the blackboard’s railing. “After everything we’ve been through, worrying about a school festival seems silly. How am I supposed to take everyday life seriously?”

  Shiro reaches out, smearing a little white chalk on the tip of my nose. I make a face at him. Bad move—I breathe in dry chalk dust, which forces a sneeze from me. He chuckles.

  “Hey, you don’t have to take life too seriously,” Shiro says, tipping my face up with a knuckle under my chin. “Things are going to be okay.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I say.

  Shiro steps closer, running his thumb along the edge of my jaw. One of his knees bumps mine. He grins. “Then I’ll tell you things are going to be okay until you believe it.”

  “It won’t be easy to convince me,” I say. “You might run out of breath.”

  “Challenge accepted,” he says, leaning in.

  Footsteps clatter in the hallway. A blush flares across my cheeks. Stepping back from Shiro, I grab my cleaning cloth and go back to scrubbing the chalkboard. Not two seconds later, Mifune-sensei steps into the room.

  “Are you two almost done?” she asks. “If so, I’d like to lock up.”

  “Yes, Mifune-sensei,” we say in tandem. As we put away our cleaning implements, a stream of students comes in to grab their things, before moving on to school clubs, cram schools, or afternoons spent at the arcade with friends.

  Shiro and I, however, will spend the afternoon in a very different manner: searching all of Kyoto for shinigami.

  I step into the school’s main courtyard, headed for the gates. The midaft
ernoon chill slides up my skirt. I shiver, clutching my books to my chest. The school’s white-faced buildings tower over Shiro and me, blocking the worst of the breeze.

  Ayako and her friends congregate around their favorite bench, sipping hot drinks from the vending machines and giggling. One of the girls—I think her name is Nanao—points at me, and the group turns to look like a pack of hungry wolves. Ayako steps forward, her sights set on Shiro, her mouth making a perfect little o shape. When she realizes Shiro and I are looking at her, she slips behind a mask of cool indifference.

  Shiro places a hand on my lower back, protective and familiar, sending a clear signal to the other girls that I won’t be such an easy target anymore. Ayako’s eyes narrow, but I turn away from her, unafraid.

  Maybe having Shiro around won’t be so bad after all.

  Seventeen

  Fujikawa Shrine

  Kyoto, Japan

  By the following Monday—ten days after the first shrine attack—Roji’s predawn training sessions start to take their toll. My body aches, muscles pumped full of lactic acid, caffeine, and fear. Exhaustion hangs on me like a weighted blanket. I’ve been up till midnight every night this week, catching up on homework, helping Shimada search for the shard of the Kusanagi, or answering Minami’s endless questions about the Fujikawa Shrine.

  Any time I want to complain, I turn my eyes up to the sky. Some days, the ghost of the moon is there, haunting me, watching, waiting. It’s grown so thin, it’s nearly disappeared into the sky.

  I yawn as Shiro and I leave Kōgakkon for the day, covering my mouth with the back of my hand. A few snowflakes flutter from low-hanging silver-bellied clouds. One lands on my forehead like a cold kiss.

  “You need to get more sleep, Kira-chan,” Shiro says as we turn onto the sidewalk.

  When did I become your -chan? I think, but bite the words back. It’s not like I’ve given Shiro a reason not to use that endearment. “Tell that to Roji, my teachers, and Shuten-doji,” I say, adjusting my scarf to hide my lips and nose from the wind’s bite.

  “Nobody on that list will listen to me,” Shiro says, blowing on his hands to warm them. He refuses to use the gloves I bought him yesterday, even if the cold turns the tips of his fingers bright red. “Least of all Roji.”

  I laugh. “She wants to add afternoon training sessions to my schedule.” I take my umbrella out of my bag. I open it, and the wind immediately fills its belly and tugs it skyward. “I told her I can’t, not until we find more shinigami.”

  Without a word, Shiro takes the umbrella handle and holds it over our heads. He leans in close. My cheeks burn so hot with embarrassment, I don’t need my scarf to keep my face warm. I look around, checking to make sure nobody has noticed. Public displays of affection—even simple ones—aren’t proper, and I would feel bad if I made someone else uncomfortable. Plus, any of my parents’ friends might see us, which would infuriate my mother. I’ve sworn to her that Shiro and I aren’t dating.

  A middle-aged woman motions at us, clucking to her teenage daughter; but otherwise, nobody’s looking our way.

  Shiro leans his head on mine. “You know what I think?”

  “I’m a priestess, Shiro, not a mind-reader,” I reply.

  He chuckles good-naturedly. “You’d be happier if you stopped worrying about what other people think of you.”

  I nudge him off me. “There are rules to being human, you know. Most times it’s just easier not to break them.”

  “Easier, but far less fun,” Shiro replies, flattening his ears in mock frustration. “I thought human girls liked sharing an umbrella with handsome boys?”

  “Oh, I never said I didn’t like this,” I reply, drawing a grin out of him. “And whoever said you were handsome?”

  “Just about every girl at your school,” he says, grinning at me. “Have I mentioned I have great hearing? I can hear them swooning through the walls, ‘Oh, Shiro!’”

  “Ugh, gross, they can have you!” I say with a laugh. Now that I’m standing this close to him, I admit it feels good to be noticed, to be seen by someone. Especially when that someone is Shiro.

  We reach the shrine. As we step past the chain link fences, Shiro tugs me behind one of the large KATAYAMA BUILDING CORP signs. It’s snowing harder now, and big, thumb-size flakes dance in circles across the ground. The cold blows straight through my tights. I shiver. Hooking one finger around my scarf, Shiro tugs it down, stroking my cheek with the back of his finger. His touch sends sunshine racing through my body.

  “I don’t understand why humans have so many rules,” he whispers.

  “Don’t you?” I say, tilting my face up to his. “I thought kitsune were supposed to be clever.”

  “We are terribly clever,” he says, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me flush against his body. He’s warm. I place a hand on his chest, bracing myself. “But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any mysteries left in the world.”

  His fingers dig into my wool coat, gathering me as close as he can. I stand on tiptoe. My blood rushes through my heart and floods my head, making me dizzy. His lips brush mine, tentatively, and he smiles.

  “Is this okay?” he whispers, so close our foreheads touch.

  But just as I’m about to say, Kiss me already, baka! my umbrella flies upward. A large drift of snow dumps down on our heads. “Hey!” I cry. The snow tumbles into my scarf, getting into the warm nooks and crannies and freezing me immediately. Cursing, I take a step back and glance up.

  A blue-skinned oni perches on a crumbled bit of masonry wall. He clutches the top spindle of my umbrella in one hand, holding it just out of Shiro’s reach. He looks familiar, but I’ve never seen an ogre this close before: his fangs are stained a urine-yellow color, his skin is pockmarked, his beard scraggly and unkempt. His body odor might be even uglier than he is—a mixture of three-day-old tuna and sweat-stained laundry basket. Despite the cold, he’s half-naked, dressed only in a loincloth made of tiger fur.

  The ogre makes a kissy face at us, snorting.

  “Kiku!” Shiro shouts, grabbing my umbrella back from the demon. He hands it to me. “Get out of here!”

  “You know this thing?” I ask Shiro, gesturing at the ogre.

  “Unfortunately,” Shiro says, eyes narrowed. “Your grandfather always asked me to shoo him away from the shrine.”

  Kiku wipes his nose with his dirty wrist. “I hear you idiots are gonna fight Shuten-doji. I want in.”

  “What?” I ask, furrowing my brows. “You’re an ogre. Shuten-doji is your king.”

  “I don’t bow to no king,” Kiku says, spitting on the ground. “Especially not that old bastard. I wish he’d just stay dead.”

  “Wait, why?” I ask, surprised to find that I care.

  “Because!” Kiku roars. “And because is a good enough reason for you!”

  “Because isn’t a good enough reason for anyone,” I say flatly.

  “Fine!” Kiku says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Give me something to do to prove myself, then.”

  Shiro rolls his eyes. “I don’t know, how about you bring us a golden peach from heavenly Takamagahara? Or pluck a feather from the robe of a holy tennin, or some other equally crazy, impossible task?”

  Kiku blows out a breath. “Those are baby quests!”

  “Then bring me the shards of the shattered Kusanagi no Tsurugi,” I say jokingly. “And we’ll let you fight with us.”

  Kiku’s eyes grow wide. “Oh, the girlie wants the sword, eh? The shiny bits of sword?” The ogre grins.

  Shiro glances at me. “Do you know where Shuten-doji keeps the shards of the Kusanagi no Tsurugi, Kiku?”

  “Of course! I will bring you the sword,” he says, hopping off the wall. “And when I do, you will let me help you kill Shuten-doji!” He whoops, loping off into the snow.

  “Well, that was, uh, interesting,” Shiro says.

  “I didn’t think he’d take me seriously.”

  “Did we just send an ogre off on an epi
c quest?”

  I wince. “I think so?

  “Don’t worry about it,” Shiro says. “Kiku may be an oni, but he’s mostly harmless. C’mon, I’m in the mood for some ramen. There’s a good place just up the street, if you’re hungry?”

  “Ramen sounds great,” I say with a smile.

  Shiro’s favorite ramen shop lies a few blocks away from the Fujikawa Shrine. The building is machiya-style, with elegant wooden lattices over the windows and a fabric drape—known as a noren—hung in front of the door. Golden light melts through the windows. Parting the noren with one hand, I step under the restaurant’s eaves. My stomach rumbles.

  Inside, the warmth seeps into my pores and burns the cold away. The umami scents waft around us, bold and inviting; and the gentle conversation from other guests wraps me up in a warm, comforting embrace. Like many ramen shops, this restaurant is so small, it can probably seat only ten or fifteen people at a time. There are a few cozy wooden tables, plus space at the bar.

  Shiro and I settle at the bar. From where we sit, we can watch the chefs cooking in the kitchen. They’re both dressed in black polo shirts, burnt-orange aprons, and matching kerchiefs to hold back their hair. One noodle chef acknowledges us with a big grin, then shouts, “Hey, look who’s back! I haven’t seen you in ages, how you been, kid?”

  “Heihachi-san,” Shiro replies to the noodle chef with a toothy smile. “It’s been too long. You heard about what happened at the shrine, right?”

  “I did. What a shame.” As he walks toward us, he dries his hands on a kitchen towel. He’s not an imposing man—he stands just an inch or two taller than me. He’s stout and barrel-chested, with a clean-shaven face and his long hair tied in a bun. “Glad to see you’re all right. You want your usual?”

  “Yeah, but this is Kira-chan’s first time. Give us a minute?” Shiro asks, sliding a double-sided, laminated menu across the bar. The tips of our fingers touch, and a bit of static jumps from his fingers to mine. I look away, embarrassed.

  “Kira-chan, huh? She’s cute,” Heihachi says with a wink at Shiro, which only makes my blush burn brighter. “I’ll be right back, then,” he says.