by Megan Crewe
“Okay, now you’re weirding me out,” Chiyo said, and laughed. “Is he for real?” she asked me.
Haru strode out of the classroom behind her. He stepped to her side with a smooth assurance. “What’s going on?” he said, eyeing us.
“I don’t know,” Chiyo said. “Apparently these two need to talk to me in private about something ‘incredibly important.’ We should find out what it is. Let’s go to the roof.”
Takeo frowned. “I don’t think your... companion should—”
Haru set a hand on Chiyo’s shoulder, and she folded her arms over her chest. “If I’m going somewhere, Haru’s coming too.”
Takeo looked at me. I shrugged, still too overwhelmed to form speech. What did it matter if one more human heard? One already knew, and no one seemed to mind that.
“All right,” Takeo said. “Please lead the way.”
We passed several more students on our way up the stairs, all of whom stared at me and Takeo. Chiyo appeared unconcerned. The steps continued on past the third floor landing, ending at a door that opened to a blast of broiling air and sunlight.
As the others tramped out, a squeak below made me turn. I peered down the stairwell. Empty. Just someone passing through, I guessed. I slipped out and shut the roof door behind me.
Chiyo sauntered across the concrete tiles to the wall that bordered the rooftop. She leaned back against the glass and turned the considerable dazzle of her smile on us.
“Hit me,” she said. “What’s this all about?”
Takeo cleared his throat. “It may be difficult for you to consider,” he said. “I know faith in our kind has faded, and for you to accept something so large, so quickly... I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have. The truth is, you’re more than you think yourself to be. You are a kami.”
Haru let out a short laugh. Chiyo just raised her eyebrows.
“Say what?” she said, sounding amused.
“You are a kami,” Takeo repeated.
“I heard that,” she said. “But you could at least try to make sense if you want to pull my leg. Even if all those myths about spirits in streams and trees were true, I think I’d know if I was one of them.”
“You were purposefully kept ignorant of your true nature, for your own protection,” Takeo said.
“This is pointless,” Haru said to Chiyo. “Let’s go.”
“No, wait,” she said in a playful tone. “I’m curious. Let’s see where they go with this.” She turned to us. “Very fascinating. What else have you got?”
She obviously didn’t believe Takeo in the slightest. Of course she couldn’t. This news was just as unexpected to her as Rin’s proclamation had been to me, wasn’t it?
And I hadn’t really believed until I’d seen proof my eyes couldn’t deny.
“Telling her isn’t enough,” I said to Takeo. “Show her something you can do.” We had only six days left before Obon; we didn’t have time for a long debate. And every second this conversation dragged out, the pain inside me prickled deeper.
Takeo nodded. The air shimmered as his ki whirled around him, rippling through his uniform. I thought he might raise himself into the air, or vanish into his ethereal form. But then he gathered the energy between his strong hands, guiding it into a familiar streaming shape. My stomach twisted.
A kite. He was making my kite, our kite, for her.
Chiyo gasped as the glinting shape floated up over our heads. Takeo twitched his fingers, and it drifted one way and the other. Then he dropped his hands, and the kite dissipated against the sky.
“How did you do that?” Chiyo said, a little breathless. Haru glanced at her, and I thought I saw a flash of dawning understanding cross his angular face, as if he’d almost known. Then he looked at us and his mouth flattened.
“We’re kami too,” Takeo said. “I can’t say if the tales you’ve heard are true in their specifics, but we exist all around you, keeping the world in balance with the power I just showed you. And you are one of us.”
“I don’t know,” Chiyo said. “That kite thing could have been a trick. Are you sure this isn’t a joke?”
She kept smiling even as she asked. If there was one word for Chiyo, I thought, it would probably be “cheerful.”
“Why would we show you tricks?” Takeo said, genuinely bewildered.
“What do you want with Chiyo?” Haru broke in, the uncertainty in his tone offsetting the bluntness of his words. He straightened himself up even taller.
“We’ve come from Mt. Fuji,” I said, “where the most powerful kami live, and many others as well. You know how sacred the mountain is, don’t you? We need help. Our home has been attacked.”
“Someone attacked Mt. Fuji?” Chiyo said, and turned to Haru. “Have you seen anything on TV about that?”
“It’s not something you’d have heard about,” Takeo said. “Our attackers would have been all but invisible to humans—an army of ghosts. Only a few of us managed to escape, and the others are in grave danger. The whole world is in danger, if they aren’t freed soon so we can return to our duties.”
“Kami and ghosts and grave danger,” Chiyo said. “This really is quite a story.”
“It’s not just a story,” I snapped before I could catch myself. But Chiyo kept smiling.
“Say it’s not,” she said. “You didn’t answer Haru’s question. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be off fighting those ghosts?”
“How would we know you’re not ghosts?” Haru put in.
“Because the last thing the ghosts would want is for Chiyo to come home,” Takeo said. “And that’s why we’ve come here.”
“Home,” Chiyo repeated.
“You were born on Mt. Fuji,” Takeo said, an edge of frustration creeping into his ever-steady voice. “You’re one of us, as I’ve said. Your kami parents left you in the care of a human family so that our enemies wouldn’t be able to harm you before you were old enough to make full use of your power. But we need you now. We need you to fight with us.”
“Hold on.” Chiyo’s tone was still bright, but she sidled closer to Haru. “You’re really trying to tell me that I’m some sort of magical being? That somehow I never realized it?”
“You wouldn’t have, growing up among humans,” Takeo said. “You had no one to teach you how to draw forth your power.”
“Okay,” Chiyo said, “if this isn’t a joke, I’m sorry about your mountain getting attacked. I really am. But I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it. Look, I’m absolutely completely human.”
She spread out her arms and swiveled on her feet, and all I could see was her glow. It eclipsed everything around her from Haru to the rooftop wall. She held so much ki she could have lit up the entire school. So much I could believe that this one girl could make the difference against the demon and his army of ghosts.
But she didn’t want it. We were offering her everything and she didn’t want it.
My jaw clenched. If Mt. Fuji was going to be saved, she had to take it.
I raised my hands, giving myself no chance to second-guess. “No, you’re not,” I said, and hurled a shining ball of ki, which I now knew I had to thank Midori for, directly into her face.
Haru flinched, and Chiyo reacted on instinct, throwing up her arms. Only, because she was kami, she didn’t deflect the ball of ki. She caught it. It smacked into her hands and clung there, bound by her own energy.
“Oh,” she said, lowering her arms. Glints of light swirled between her palms. Haru was staring at her with open awe now. “It’s me, doing this.”
“It’s you,” I said, like a piece of my soul I was tearing out and handing to her.
She rotated the ball between her short fingers, her grin growing as she watched the light dance. “Then... Then I could...” Turning, she flung it across the roof.
The ball of light whipped through the air toward the stairwell. I had just enough time to notice that the door was now standing ajar before the swirling ki slammed into
it. As the door thumped shut, a yelp echoed through it, followed by a mumbled curse.
“Someone was watching!” I said. Takeo was already dashing over, his sword drawn. He yanked the door open.
A teenage boy was crouched behind it, clutching the side of his head.
“What are you doing here?” Takeo demanded.
The boy slowly righted himself, one hand gripping the doorframe. With the other, he grabbed his fallen glasses from the ground and pushed the rectangular frames back over his wide-set eyes. The room at the top of the stairs must have been incredibly stuffy in this heat. The shaggy hair that zigzagged across the boy’s forehead looked damp, and the collar of his shirt was loosened, the knot of his tie dangling halfway down his lean chest.
He glanced at the sword pointed at his neck and then up at Takeo, offering a shaky smile.
“Oh, it’s just Mitsuoka,” Chiyo said with a wave of her hand. “He’s the class weirdo, but he’s good for a laugh sometimes. Nothing to be worried about anyway.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “Don’t tell me you’ve decided to join my league of ‘admirers.’”
Haru’s expression had tensed. He clearly didn’t take that possibility lightly.
“I was just wondering what was up with these two,” the boy said, gesturing to me and Takeo. He looked past us to Chiyo and added in the same flippant tone, “You know, you really should be more careful with your magical powers, Ikeda. I thought that—whatever it was—was going to pulverize me.”
“The matters we’re discussing don’t concern you,” Takeo said. “It would be best if you left now.”
“Don’t concern me?” the boy said. “Are you kidding me? You’re the one who just said the whole world is in grave danger. Last time I checked, I live here too.”
“I guess this story is better than your comic books, huh?” Chiyo said. “But the guy with the big sword said go, so you should probably listen to him.” She managed to sound both warning and cheerful at the same time.
The boy tightened the knot of his tie and raised his chin. “No,” he said. “Apparently kami are real and Mt. Fuji’s been taken over by evil ghosts, and the world might end if we don’t stop them. I’m not going to just walk away. Maybe I can help. I might not have some secret magical power, but this is my area of expertise. I’ve read about ghosts and ogres and just about every supernatural being there is. I might have heard things none of the rest of you have—things you could use.”
“You think you know more about kami than kami do?” Haru demanded.
“No,” the boy replied. “But give me an hour and I can come up with a list of all the ways demons have ever been recorded being defeated, or what protections work so well against ghosts even regular people can use them, or anything else that’ll give you an edge.”
Standing there, sweat-damp and defiant, he looked a little ridiculous, especially with Takeo in his formal guard attire towering over him. But the determination on his face and the conviction in his words plucked a chord deep inside me, a sound I hadn’t known I was longing to hear. And there probably were human stories about ghosts and demons the kami didn’t know that contained some truth.
“Takeo,” I said, “he’s already heard so much. If he wants to try to help, why can’t we let him? Don’t we need all the help we can get, kami or not?”
Takeo turned to me, and a flicker of confusion passed over his handsome face, as if he hadn’t seen me in so long he almost didn’t recognize me. But that wasn’t it. A prickling ran down through me to my bones. He was finally realizing that I was just as human as the boy in front of him. I made myself smile.
“You’re right,” Takeo said after a moment of silence. He lowered his sword and sheathed it. “Of course you’re right. That is, as long as you—” He glanced at Chiyo.
She shrugged. “The more the merrier, I guess. As long as he doesn’t get pushy with me.” From my brief observations of her classroom, I suspected that was a problem she encountered a lot.
“He’d better not,” Haru said.
The boy swept into a low bow, snatching at his glasses the instant before they slid off his nose. “It is my pleasure simply to be of service,” he intoned. But when he straightened up, he was looking at me with open curiosity. I had the conflicting urges to drop my gaze and to stare back at him until he dropped his. His eyes were bright brown, like copper in the sun. They studied me so intently my pulse skipped.
“Keiji Mitsuoka,” he said. “You can call me Keiji. Thank you.”
“You should thank Chiyo,” I said. “It was her decision.”
After all, I didn’t have any authority now. The real daughter of Mt. Fuji’s rulers was standing over there.
Chiyo tossed back her ponytails and pushed off the wall. “Why don’t I take you all back to my house and we’ll settle this,” she said pleasantly. “If what you’re saying is true, my parents will know, right?”
Takeo inclined his head. “I hope they can confirm what I’ve told you. And I can understand your wanting to speak with them before deciding whether to trust us. Given the attention our clothing has drawn, I think it would be best if we accompanied you unseen. It is an honor to have met you, Chiyo.”
He dipped into a bow far more graceful than Keiji’s had been, forcing me to do the same. As we straightened up, he took my hand, the tingle of transformation already tickling from his skin over mine. Chiyo’s mouth dropped open as we shifted into our ethereal forms. We’d turned translucent before her eyes. Haru and Keiji were both scanning the rooftop, looking just as disturbed, but for a different reason. Their human vision wouldn’t be able to register our presence at all.
“They’ve disappeared, just like that,” Keiji said. “Now that’s amazing.”
“Don’t be silly,” Chiyo said. “They’re right...” She trailed off as it must have hit her that she was the only one who could still see us.
“You’re kami,” I said, and her gaze darted back to me, startled.
From the look on her face, that was the first moment she started to really believe.
On the sidewalk outside the school, Chiyo turned to the right with a discrete motion for us to follow her. Haru strode along beside her. Keiji had stopped to unlock a bicycle and now trailed behind, peering at the air around him as he walked his bike, as if hoping if he looked hard enough he’d be able to make us out. Takeo and I brought up the rear of our strange procession.
Even though I’d slept the previous night and it was still early in the afternoon, I felt worn out. Midori adjusted her grip on my hair, her wings fluttering as she gave me an affectionate nudge. I’d been so lost in my reactions to what was happening to me, I hadn’t given her much thought.
“Are you all right?” I murmured, directing a thread of concern her way. She answered with a touch of contentment.
“You don’t think it’s hurting her, do you?” I said to Takeo. “Sharing so much of her energy with me?”
Takeo smiled at the dragonfly. “She’s a fine old kami, small as she is. She’s got plenty to spare.”
I supposed Midori wouldn’t have been the one tasked to stay with me whenever I left the mountain otherwise.
The scent of freshly steamed vegetables seeped from the open doorway of a dim restaurant we passed. Next to it, the brightly lit window of a cafe showed off plastic replicas of a vast array of desserts. Chiyo grazed her fingers over them with an avid look, but kept going. A lilting melody whispered through the glass: piano and bass and a woman’s high voice. Human music.
I absorbed it as it carried after us down the street. Mr. and Mrs. Nagamoto had often put on instrumental pieces full of strings and woodwinds, not so different from the songs kami played. Their children had usually worn earphones when listening to music at home, but I had vague memories of pounding beats and screeching guitars. This didn’t sound quite like any of that.
I’d thought I’d known so much about humans after all the time I’d spent in town, but I didn’t really know anything, did I? Nowhere near enou
gh to start living as one myself.
We headed into a quiet residential neighborhood several blocks from the school. Chiyo picked up her pace, and my heart started to beat a little faster. What would they be like—the mother and father who’d raised her in my place? How could I possibly talk to them? Midori send me another wisp of reassurance, but my mouth had gone dry.
Finally, Chiyo stopped outside a beige house surrounded by a low wrought-iron fence. A scuffed red mat lay in front of the door and filmy curtains hid all view of the interior. Chiyo opened the gate. Keiji leaned his bike against the fence.
Takeo glanced around to make sure no one was watching and then nodded to me. We shifted back into corporeal form. Haru flinched, but Keiji just grinned.
“If you can do that, does that mean I can too?” Chiyo asked, cocking her head. “Invisibility would be really useful for dodging questions in class.”
I recognized Takeo biting back a grimace. “It’s how we survive,” he said. “If we couldn’t hide, humans would stumble on us all the time. And we can’t assume all of them would be kind.”
“Is he always so gloomy?” Chiyo asked me. Without waiting for a response, she breezed past us with a swish of her lavender ponytails.
Six days, I thought as we followed her into the house. We had six days to make this girl into a kami focused enough to defeat a demon and an army of the dead.
“Mom!” Chiyo said brightly, kicking off her shoes. “I’ve brought home a couple of kami who want me to save Mt. Fuji.”
A sharp clink sounded from somewhere farther inside, like a dish set down abruptly. A middle-aged woman appeared in the hall. Her searching gaze took in her daughter and the small crowd of us standing behind her. With a twitch of her fingers, she tucked her chin-length hair behind her ears. Hair as thick and straight as mine, by a chin as sharply curved into her slim, pale face. My breath stopped in my throat.
Then I registered her expression. Her eyes and the set of her thin mouth held no surprise or disbelief, only a sort of sad resignation.