by Amanda Sun
In the corner of my eye, I saw the policeman flinch. He’d heard Tomo, too, and had turned his attention to us. I had to get them to stop before things got worse.
Jun dropped his hands to his sides. “I’m just here to watch the fireworks, Yuu. I can go somewhere else if you want.”
Tomo took a step toward him, his eyes gleaming. “Yeah. You can go to hell.”
The policeman straightened, his fingers pressed against his radio as he listened. Things were escalating, and I felt powerless to stop it. So much for controlling my link to the Kami. I couldn’t even handle two idiot guys tripped out on testosterone.
“Tomo—” I warned, moving toward him.
“No, it’s okay,” Jun said. “I’ll leave.”
And then boom!
I jumped a mile, terrified. Did Jun shoot him? Did the cop?
Another boom, and the sky flooded with light.
The fireworks. I breathed out shakily.
We all stared into the sky, the fight momentarily dropped, as bursts of color spread across the city. The crowd around us swelled, pressing the three of us close together against the railings. I became the barrier between Tomo and Jun, and it was not comfortable. Not at all.
And then I remembered Yuki’s words, that whoever I watched the fireworks with would be there for me forever.
Could I really trust Jun? Even Tomohiro was unpredictable. He’d abandoned Shiori tonight. What if he did that to me—again? Who was really telling the truth here? I needed a better hand of cards to compete. I had to learn what it really meant to have ink trapped inside me, to be connected to the Kami.
Another burst of sound in the sky, but no color, just a brief oily shimmer as it splayed across the sky. And then suddenly everyone was screaming and scattering across the road.
Ink descended like a dark rain, warm as the drops splattered down my face and stained the sleeves of my yukata.
Another firework burst, all ink instead of color, raining down on the crowd with a faint sheen. The cop had forgotten us now, pressing his radio to his ear as he called for backup to get the area under control. A woman ran past, covering her head with her hands. She bumped me into the railing and I fell forward. I dropped the milk tea, trying to grab at the railing before I fell headfirst into the sharp gravel below. And then two sets of strong hands grabbed me, pulling me back.
Tomo. And Jun. Saving me together.
“Let’s get out of here,” Tomohiro shouted. I nodded and he grabbed my wrist, pushing his way through the crowd. I turned to look at Jun, who stood silently watching me leave, the ink dripping down his cast, running down his skin in trails of black. When I looked back again he was gone, lost in the frantic swarm of people.
I wound through the crowd, staying close to Tomo. “Was it you?” I shouted, but he didn’t answer. I couldn’t have heard him over the screams anyway. The inky rain splashed down as we ran for the train station, as we were soaked by the very truth of it.
Nothing was normal, and I’d known it, deep down. It wasn’t something I could run from. The ink hadn’t forgotten me.
My fate was raining down from the sky.
We burst into the train station and pushed our way along the platform, stopping near the lines for Shin-shizuoka Station. The travelers stared at us as we stood there drenched in ink, but their eyes fell from us as more and more ink-stained festivalgoers flooded the station. It was already blaring on the news from the televisions perched above the platforms. They were calling it some sort of prank.
I wish.
Tomohiro swore under his breath and flipped his keitai open to turn it on.
“You need a new phone,” I said, trying to keep things light. “If you had one with apps, you’d be too addicted to turn it off for two weeks.” As the phone logged in, the several text messages I’d sent him all pinged in at the same time. I could feel my cheeks warm at the sound.
“I know,” he said, pushing the buttons to scroll through them. “I’m an idiot. Turning off my phone doesn’t ward off the Yakuza. But it’s not like I knew you were going to stay in Shizuoka. I’m going to text Shiori and make sure she’s okay.” He punched a few more buttons and sent the note.
“I told you not to desert her,” I said, and then I remembered I hadn’t come to the festival alone, either. “Oh crap. Yuki and Tanaka!” I pulled out my phone and started texting Yuki. This time Tomo raised an eyebrow at me and smirked.
“Shut up,” I fumed, my face burning.
He answered me in a slow, singsong voice, emphasizing every syllable. “Na-ni-mo ha-na-shi-ne-zo.” Translation: I didn’t say anything, in tough-boy speak.
I smiled and smacked his arm, and a glob of ink fell from his shirt to the ground. We stopped smiling.
Our phones chimed with replies about the same time.
“Shiori’s fine,” Tomo said. “She was under a tent when it happened, and she’s heading to the station now. She said to go ahead.”
“You sure?” I said. “We should wait.”
“That’s what I just wrote back. And...” Ding. “She insists. And Watabe-san?”
The sound of Yuki’s last name startled me a little bit. I kept forgetting Yuki and Tomo didn’t know each other very well, so of course he’d refer to her more formally. “With Tanaka,” I said. “And they’re fine. Drenched in ink, but fine. You know, Shiori’s probably embarrassed about how you brushed her off.”
“I just wanted time with you, Katie, not to hurt her. I think she’ll understand.”
“And if it comes back to haunt you?”
“It’s worth it,” he said. And my pulse drummed in my ears, even though I didn’t think I should be flattered by that. It always had to be complicated with him.
He headed toward the marked lines on the train platform and I followed. The passengers around us spoke in quick, panicked murmurs. They had no idea what sort of prank they’d just witnessed, but we did. We knew it wasn’t a prank at all.
“Was it you?” I asked again, quietly, as we boarded the train.
“I don’t think so. Maybe it was Takahashi. But who knows anymore? The ink does what it wants.”
I leaned against the wall by the far doors of the train car. I couldn’t exactly sit in the dripping yukata. The ink had stained all the embroidered cherry petals black.
“It’s totally ruined,” I said. “I hope Yuki won’t be mad.”
“It’s not your fault. Well, it might be,” he added with a grin.
“Not funny.”
“Warui,” he apologized, but he didn’t wipe the grin off his face. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue handkerchief with a cute cartoon elephant on it. He gently wiped the ink off my face with it before pressing it into my hands. The elephant’s adorable smile stared up at me.
Tomohiro, the kendo star of Suntaba School, the unreachable tough guy who sparked rumors and pretended to be badass, carried around this adorable cartoon-elephant hanky. I couldn’t help smiling a little as I mopped at the ink dripping down my arms. Poor Mr. Elephant turned pitch-black as the ink soaked into his smiling face.
The train car flooded with people, but more festivalgoers kept boarding, trying to escape the inky rain. We couldn’t possibly all fit, could we? It was like a nightmare rush hour at Tokyo Station, the kind that needed professional people pushers to close the doors. The flustered crowd swelled around us, elbows and shoulders prodding into me, squishing me until I felt a claustrophobic panic attack coming on. It reminded me of Mom’s funeral, the heat and sweat of all the bodies circling around me, too close.
“Here,” Tomo said, pressing his hands against the wall on either side of me. The crowd continued to push toward us, but Tomohiro took the brunt of it, forced closer and closer toward me.
“Thanks,” I said. He nodded once, bracing himself against the um
brellas and bags that jabbed into his arms and legs. We were pressed together like sardines; his breath was warm against my neck, and I could see the ribbons of badly healed scars trailing up his right arm. The biggest, where the painting of the kanji for sword had sliced him in elementary school, was mostly hidden under his soft wristband, but the edges of the scar trailed toward his palm and up his arm.
He hunched over me, trying not to press his body against mine, trying to give me some kind of modest space. This was the kind of guy he was, I reminded myself. Not the one who could lurk in dark alleys and call up people-eating dragons just by sketching them on paper.
But that was him, too.
The buzz of worried conversation hummed through the train car. No one would hear us, I thought. We were pressed so close together anyway.
“It was a warning, wasn’t it?” I whispered, hoping everyone else would just think I was the foreigner who didn’t really understand the Japanese she was using. “Those ink fireworks.”
“A warning? Since when have there been warnings?”
“I don’t know, it just feels like it. It’s like when my doodles came at me that time. Or when the picture of Shiori looked at me.” Like they were letting me know that they saw me, that they wanted to reach me.
“The doodles were an attack, not a warning,” Tomo said. “And are you sure the message wasn’t meant for me?”
“It knows I stayed in Japan. It’s not going to stop, Tomo.”
“You mean I’m not going to stop.”
“Don’t say that. It’s creepy.”
“Well, you talk about the ink like it has a life of its own.” He looked around to make sure no one was listening, and lowered his face only a few inches from mine. “It’s me, Katie. I’m the Kami. I’m the one drawing the pictures, not the other way around.”
“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 shado
wy 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?”