by Amanda Sun
A pause. “But you and Yuki aren’t the same size.”
“It’s just for sleeping, Diane. I’ll make do.”
“I still think you should come home.” Her voice sounded off, somehow. Was she onto me? Was I that obvious? I needed to change tactics, and fast.
“Diane,” I said. “Look. Moving to Japan has been hard for me, and I’m really starting to make good friends, you know?”
I could hear her breathing on the line. “Please let me stay over,” I said. I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped the sympa-thy card would pull through.
It did. I heard a sigh of defeat.
“Okay,” Diane said. “As long as you’re safe and dry, and as long as Yuki’s mom doesn’t mind.”
“It’s fine with her,” I said and quickly said my goodbyes before she could change her mind. As much as Diane had protested, I was more interested in what she hadn’t said. For example, that there were giant inky dragons floating through the sky.
I dialed Yuki’s keitai and waited for the tinny ring.
“Katie?” she said when she answered.
“Yuki-chan, I need a favor,” I said, wincing as the words came out of my mouth. God, I sounded thirteen or something. “If Diane calls, can you cover for me?”
“What?”
“I got caught in the rain and my seifuku is a mess. If I go home like this, Diane is going to seriously question where I was.”
“And where were you?”
“On a bike ride with Tomohiro,” I said. “But we fell off the bike into the mud.”
She squealed. “And now you’re staying at his house?” I gritted my teeth, but there was no way around it. I needed her help.
“It’s not like that. His dad’s here, too. Look, please cover for me, okay? Please?”
“Katie, try to be careful, okay? You don’t know for sure that those were all rumors.”
“They were,” I said. “Promise.” I mean, except the attack on Koji, which, when you thought about it, was very much Tomohiro’s fault. And had almost happened to me.
“Okay, got it. No problem,” Yuki said, like she was in on the secret. I could almost imagine her winking, throwing her fingers up in the peace sign. It’s what she would do at school, but at the same time she had no idea what the secret really was, how deep and dark it ran. I closed my keitai and shoved it back into my bag.
Safe, for now.
The water shut off downstairs, and a minute later Tomohiro padded up the stairs, toweling his copper hair.
“Ah.” He sighed as he came in wearing a gray T-shirt and red plaid pajama bottoms. “Feels good to be dry and out of the rain.” He sat down beside me without thinking, and suddenly we were there, sitting on the side of his bed. His cheeks turned a deep red and he stood up.
“C’mon,” he said and led me downstairs to the living room.
He flipped on the TV and started switching channels. A fresh bandage was knotted around his wrist, and the tails of it hung down his arm. I clued in suddenly about what he was looking for. He was studying every news report before switching to the next.
“You’re looking for the dragon.”
“There’s no way nobody saw it,” he said, and the fear started to sink back into me, colder than the damp rain outside. But he clicked and clicked, and it was nowhere on the news. He sank back into his white couch and sighed.
“Looks like we were lucky,” I said.
I jumped when a cheerful chime rang through the room.
Tomohiro narrowed his eyes and sat up, padding across the room to his book bag. He pulled out his keitai, his tiny kendouka charm dangling across the back of his hand.
He stared at the ID on the phone as it rang, rainbow colors spreading across the metal edge where he’d flipped it open.
“Shit,” he said. “Can’t he leave me alone?”
“Ishikawa?” I said.
“Probably needs backup again.” He sighed. “I’m tired of saving his ass every time things go wrong, but he doesn’t have anyone else to help him. I’m it. I don’t wanna see him get thrashed.”
“You better go, then,” I said.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said, his eyes searching my face.
“Anyway, I’m pretty sure he’d notice that my wrist is sliced open.”
He clicked the cell phone shut, and the phone stopped ringing, the colors fading away. Then it rang again. When that died down, a text chimed in.
“What’s his problem?” Tomohiro said, opening the phone again. “He usually gets the message if I don’t answer.” He opened the text and his eyes widened, his face turning pale.
“What is it?” I asked. My throat felt thick and dry.
Tomohiro didn’t answer, just stood there and stared, his face frozen in horror.
“What? Is the text from someone else? Who’s it from, Tomo?”
With a dry voice, he whispered the name.
“Satoshi.”
Relief surged through me momentarily. “Ishikawa again?”
I said. “Jeez, you scared the crap out of me.”
“He saw it.”
My blood ran cold. “What?”
“He saw it. I know it.”
“Ishikawa—”
“He saw the dragon.”
He turned the keitai to show me the text scrawled across the screen.
えた I saw it. So simple, and so terrifying.
Suddenly the phone was alive again, swirling with color, chiming cheerfully in Tomohiro’s hand. His palm opened slowly and the keitai dropped to the floor, slamming against the hardwood and skidding a little ways, still chiming.
“How do you know that’s what he means?” I said. “There’s no way—he doesn’t even know about Toro Iseki.”
“He knows I go there to draw,” Tomohiro said.
Panic coursed through me, turning my limbs to jelly. “You told him?”
He shook his head. “You’re not the first to think of following me,” he said. “He came once, watched me draw, got bored.”
The phone stopped ringing. “But how could he have seen?”
“I don’t know,” he snapped. “I don’t know how. But he’s kept a close eye on me since that ink puddle in the kendo match. He knows what Kami are because the Yakuza know about them, and he’s tried to get me to admit it before. He thinks I have some stupid destiny as a Yakuza weapon or something.” You’re keeping him from his destiny. Oh. “I convinced him the last couple times he was wrong, that I don’t even know what Kami are, but lately I’ve been losing control.”
Because of me. Cue the stifling guilt. “But he’s your friend.
He’d keep your secret, right?”
“There are more powerful things than friendship that would sway him.” His eyes had gone dark, and he sat down on the floor, tucking his knees up to his chin. “Koji defended me until the end. He almost lost his eye and still protected my secret.
Sato won’t do that. He’s in too much trouble to think of anything but protecting himself.” It was true. I knew it. Ishikawa was drowning and he’d pull Tomohiro down with him.
“What are we going to do?” Tears welled up in my eyes.
I didn’t want to run from the Yakuza.
“We’re going to deny it,” Tomohiro said, pressing his head into his hands. The tails of the bandage splayed across his knees. “You can’t let anyone know we were together today.”
My stomach flopped as I thought of Yuki. She wouldn’t tell anyone, right? She’d keep my secret.
Who was I kidding? She couldn’t keep it to herself for five minutes. She was probably on the phone to Tanaka right now.
But it was too late, and his eyes were so sincere. I didn’t want to let him down.
“I won’t,” I said. He nodded. His phone rang again and his eyes glazed over.
“I’ve lied to him before,” he said, but he sounded like he was convincing himself. “I’ll do it again. Shit. He must have been doing deals in Ishida again. That’s how he saw it.”
; Ishida. Where they’d cornered the guy in the knit hat, where Jun had rescued me from the hairy, tattooed creep. It was close to Toro Iseki. He could easily have had a view of it from there.
“Tomo,” I squeaked out. He looked up, and I must have looked like crap because he snapped out of his mood and strode over, sitting down on the couch with me.
“Don’t worry,” he said, taking my hands in his. “We’ll be okay.”
I nodded, but my stomach ached. I blinked back tears and one rolled down my cheek. He reached for it, the tiny drop catching the light on his slender fingers, and then all I could see was the gleaming hazel of his eyes as they searched mine.
I tensed, and he leaned in. I could smell the shampoo in his still-damp hair.
I felt his breath against my mouth, and then he pressed his lips against mine, his hand still on my cheek. The heat sent a shock through me, melted away any other thoughts but this, that Yuu Tomohiro was kissing me.
He pulled back then, suddenly. His cheeks flushed red, his eyes round and surprised. He bobbed his head in apology.
“Sorry,” he said. “You must be thirsty. I’ll get you a drink.”
He excused himself and practically ran to the kitchen, where I heard way more clatter than necessary to get a glass.
I touched my lips with my fingers, pressed them against each other, feeling the way they’d swelled when he kissed me. I didn’t think my face could get any redder; thank god he was taking so long in the kitchen.
Then his keitai rang again, spewing rainbow colors across the floor.
“Iced tea okay?” he shouted over it, his voice way too en-ergetic. “I’ve only got oolong and lemon.”
“Sure,” I said, staring at the phone.
He returned, putting the cold glass into my hands. He clicked the phone off and threw it onto a side table before sitting beside me. I took a sip of the bitter tea, resting the cup on the coffee table. His eyes never left me.
“Are you okay?” he said. I couldn’t help it—a laugh came out.
“Are you kidding?” I said. “We were nearly ripped to shreds by a dragon, and now Ishikawa’s going to blurt your secret to his little Yakuza friends. I’m just peachy.” But all I could do was stare at his soft lips, wanting to press mine against them. Stupid, stupid.
“They don’t know what they’re dealing with,” Tomohiro said, his eyes dark. “You think they’re scary?”
“Um, they’re gangsters.”
“And I’m the shadow lurking around the corner. I’m the youkai demon dragging them screaming into the night.”
“One, that’s creepy. Two, stop with the monster business.
You’re not evil, Tomo. You were there when I needed you.
You saved me from the dragon, but you also saved me when I couldn’t be myself, when everyone else told me to heal and get over it. You’re risking everything to be with me, everything to help me. You’re…you’re—” I could barely speak with him staring at me like that. He put his oolong tea down gently on the coffee table, his eyes never moving from my face.
“O-re sa,” he whispered, leaning closer. I, you know… I remembered the first time he’d started to confess those words to me, in the lush green of Toro Iseki.
His fingers slid along my jaw, each like a spark on my skin.
“Kimi no koto ga…” About you, I… And he rested his lips on my jaw, where his fingers had been. The warmth of it pulsed through me.
His lips were so close to mine, grazing along my skin to my mouth. “Suki,” he breathed, I love you, and then the softness of his lips pressed against mine and the world caught fire, everything light and flame and burning.
His fingers wound in my hair, the cloth wrapped around his wrist sliding along my collarbone as he moved. I reached for him, letting my hands trail along his jaw and around his neck, twisting the spikes of his hair flat between my fingers.
His feathery bangs tickled against my skin as his kisses brushed against my lips, my cheek, the corner of my jaw. He trailed down to my neck. He was fireworks and radiance, glare and tingling frostbite.
My voice was quiet, a crackle in the fire. “Suki,” I whispered, and the ocean of him churned against me, his kisses deepening like he was drowning. His arms closed around me, the heat of his fingertips splayed against the skin of my waist.
He pressed his fingers under the hem of the shirt he’d lent me, scorching lines of warmth up my back. I slid my hands down his back to the edge of his T-shirt, then looped them under. My fingers felt like ice against the heat of his skin, as if they were melting, and he moaned softly into my neck, the vibration of it pulsing on my skin.
Everything was floating. Everything was burning. Everything was drowning.
“Shit!” he groaned and pulled away, his hands slipping from my back, my fingers left holding emptiness.
Red bloomed across the bandage on his wrist, trails of blood and ink streaking down his arm in zigzags like rain on a window.
“Are you okay?” I said between breaths. Stupid question, but it was hard enough to think straight, like I’d been pulled from a dream, lost in that moment when you couldn’t move and you weren’t sure which world was real.
His eyes squeezed shut as he cradled his arm. “It stings like hell,” he said. He walked down the hall to the bathroom, where I heard the spray of the tap. A minute later he came back, a new cloth bandage wrapped around the wound.
I guess if you cut yourself drawing as often as he did, you’d have supplies lying around.
“I’m sorry,” I said, mostly because I felt awkward. But he sat beside me, tracing my ear with the fingers on his left hand.
“Well that got the blood going,” he grinned.
“God, you’re so stupid sometimes.”
“That’s part of my charm,” he said. Then he winced again.
“You need to go to the hospital,” I said, but he shook his head.
“Can’t. It’ll be fine. I just need to rest it and, you know, keep the blood flow calm. And you’re not helping with that last part, by the way.” His head hunched toward his chest, his bangs covering his eyes from view. I couldn’t tell if they were closed, but I knew he was in more pain than he was admitting.
“Do you have any painkillers?” I asked.
“In the kitchen,” he rasped. “In the cupboard by the fridge.” I went into the kitchen and pulled out the bottle, shaking two into my hand.
“Here,” I said, and he knocked them back with the oolong tea.
“Thanks,” he said, wiping the back of his mouth with his good wrist. “But I should warn you, those are the kind that knock me out like nobody’s business.” Of course I’d grabbed the wrong ones—I could barely read the kanji on the bottles.
He leaned back into the couch, curled on his side.
“Do you want me to help you upstairs?”
“I’ll sleep down here,” he said. “You can have my room.
We have futons in the tatami room, but my dad will wonder why I pulled them out, so I better just take the couch.”
“Are you sure?” I said. His eyes already looked droopy, but maybe I was overthinking it.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s for the best since I clearly can’t control myself.” He breathed in suddenly at the pain. “Could you pass me that blanket?” I looked behind and found it, then tucked it around him. He grabbed my fingers with his left hand, resting them on his lips. His eyes looked watery and distant, but they gleamed as he stared at me. Through the tips of my fingers he said, “I’ll protect you. I promise.”
I stroked his hair, running my fingers through the copper silk of it, until he lifted my hand urgently from his head.
“The blood flow,” he gasped.
“You’re an idiot,” I said, and he grinned.
In the darkness of his room, I crawled into bed. The rain made shadows on the ink-wash paintings, as if the drops ran down the painted trees themselves.
“What do you want?” I whispered to the darkness. “Why am I the
catalyst?” I hated myself for thinking it, but how much of his feelings for me were really him, and how much were…the other part of him, the part hunting me? Was it his feelings for me that were making the ink do weird things?
It couldn’t be. He hadn’t even really known me when my pen exploded.
Tomohiro had an alarm clock beside his bed that went tick, tick, annoyingly loud, as I squeezed my eyes shut.
I listened to the rain pattering on the roof. I pulled the blue duvet tighter around my shoulders, surrounded by the smell of him, my skin still pulsing where his touch had scored itself into my memory.
And once I drifted to sleep, the dragon rose in my dreams, Ishikawa standing fearlessly beside it.
Chapter 12
I awoke to Tomohiro knocking on the door and racing back down the stairs. I rubbed my eyes at first, then jolted up when I saw the alarm. I dashed downstairs and found him in the kitchen, grinning at me. I paused and thought about my hair, my face and my unbrushed teeth. My cheeks went red.
“Ohayo,” he said, waving his hand up in the air, a fresh skin-colored bandage wound tightly around his wrist. He was already dressed for school and frying up sausages in a pan.
“You’re going to school with your wrist like that?” I said.
“I don’t really have a choice. It’s kind of suspicious if I don’t show up,” he said. “My school blazer will cover it.
Don’t worry.”
I was nothing but worried. “It’s kind of warm to wear your blazer all day.”
He smiled. “I’ll manage. I left your seifuku outside the door.”
“Ah, thanks!” I shouted, running up the stairs. I saw him roll his eyes and turn back to cooking. I grabbed my seifuku and flipped the skirt back and forth. It was not only clean, but pressed, too—embarrassment spread through me as I realized how early he must have gotten up to iron the pleats, especially with his wrist chewed open. There was a bloodstain running along the hem, but it didn’t show up well unless you were looking for it. Thank god our school used dark navy skirts.
The blouse wasn’t in quite as good shape. The bleach had helped, but it looked pretty battered. The stains weren’t no-ticeably blood, though—mostly ink or mud. It’s not like I had a choice anyway, so I buttoned it up and tied the satin handkerchief around my neck. At least the long ends of the ribbon covered some of the shirt. I combed my hands through my hair and pulled on my kneesocks, practically brown with stains. Then I hurried back downstairs, where Tomohiro rolled two sausages out of the pan and onto my plate.