Ink (37 page)

It was almost dinnertime and the sky started to streak with colors; our last day was ending. Tomohiro pulled me into a
conbini
store and bought
bentous
for us, which the clerk heated up in a silver microwave. We boarded the puttering Roman bus, the smell of teriyaki and
katsu
curry flooding our noses.

I didn’t have to ask where we were going. I knew.

They’d finished the renovations at Toro Iseki, and most of the chain-link fence lay stacked in piles ready to take away.

A couple of university students walked around the site, the girl with her arms wrapped tightly around the guy. Near the Toro Museum at the other side of the forest edge, a group of elementary school students laughed and joked.

I stared, feeling like something was slipping away from me.

“Guess I’ll have to find a new studio,” Tomohiro said, but his voice sounded as hollow as I felt.

We stepped through the trees in silence. The wagtails called to each other, ready to roost in the
ume
trees for the night. The ancient Yayoi huts stood against the orange sky, the once long grasses around them trimmed neatly for the tourist season.

An ugly patch of brown grass was shorter still where it had burned under the dragon’s looped corpse, but that was the only mark left of what had happened to us.

Tomohiro squeezed my hand and pulled me forward. We ducked into one of the huts before we could get caught. Above us, the sun gleamed through the gaps in the thatched roof.

“We’ll get in trouble,” I hissed.

“What’s new?” He grinned and then leaned over to kiss me.

We sat pressed against the walls a long time, staring up at the sky as the colors twisted and darkened. We watched as our last day together faded, as life grew over the shape of what had once been.

I turned the wrong way when we walked back to the bus stop. That’s how much my world was shifting under my feet.

Tomohiro couldn’t make it to the airport in Tokyo, but at my front door—Diane’s front door—he’d stuffed an envelope into my hand and made me promise to read it on the plane.

Then he’d pressed a kiss onto my lips, deep and hungry and sweet, and pulled away before I could say goodbye, his hand raised to his face as he turned the corner for the elevator. I’d leaned against the wall, listening until the elevator doors slid shut. And then ink had dripped back down the hallway toward me, leaving inky trails that looked like fingers grasping, stretching.

Never quite reaching me.

“Want a sandwich for the flight?” Diane asked at the airport. I shook my head. My stomach felt like it was pressing in on me. There was no way I could eat. “Tea? Anything?”

It was like we were strangers again, like she was shoving hors d’oeuvres at me at Mom’s funeral, keeping a silver plate between us. And yet I’d really started to think that looking for ourselves on the other side of the world, we’d found each other. She wasn’t the piece that didn’t fit—she was the piece that completed everything.

We stood at the security gate, as far as she could take me.

“Well,” she said.

Well.

“Say hi to Nan and Gramps for me,” she said. She reached up and stroked my hair. She had that same wavering smile Mom always had when she was pretending not to be sad.

“They’re going to be so happy to see you.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem,” Diane answered.

“No,” I said, looking her right in the eye. “I mean, thanks.

For everything.”

She looked at me, her eyes filming over with tears. Then she hugged me tightly.

“Oh, hon,” she said, her eyes squeezed shut. “If you need anything, you call me, okay? Don’t worry about the time difference.”

“Okay,” I said. She stepped back and looked at me, her eyes shining.

“Your mom would be so proud of you,” she said, and my eyes filled with tears. “It was always so hard for her to put down roots outside her comfort zone. And you managed it in a different language, even.”

“It’s no big deal,” I said, which meant
don’t say any more or
I’ll start bawling in the middle of Narita Airport.

I guess she got the message, because she closed her mouth and stepped back.

“Bye,” I choked.

“You’ve always got a home here,” she said. “Okay?”

“Yeah.”

I turned and went through the security check. Once I
stepped through the metal detector, I turned to look back at Diane, but she was lost in the crowd.

I adjusted my backpack and rolled my carry-on toward the
empty benches near my gate. I wished the floor would open and
swallow me up so I wouldn’t have to feel anything anymore.

I sat down on one of the hard leather benches by the door.
Clusters of gaijin and Japanese tourists sat in the rows around
me, while two flight attendants talked in hushed tones. I
stared out the giant windows at the planes moving slowly
around the concrete plaza.

The whole thing felt surreal. To think that five months
ago this was what I had wanted.
To go home.

But home wasn’t there anymore, and it wasn’t even Japan,
really.

I think it was inside myself

And it was in him.

And that’s why I had to leave.
Because I couldn’t stand to
break him.

I pulled out the envelope and tapped it against my top lip,
staring at the luggage trains and the clumsy maneuvers of the
planes. They looked so awkward on the ground, big, flailing
machines that tipped from side to side as they stumbled forward.

I looked down at the envelope in my hands.

I was practically on the plane. It was close enough.

I pulled the edge of the envelope up and slid my finger

along
the top, the paper ripping into litde puckered edges.
I pulled out the note, a plain piece of white paper, and unfolded
it carefully.

I’d wondered what he would say to me, agonized over
what he would write and what it would mean. And here in
red pen was a single word at the top of the
page.

いて
い てい

Itterasshai.

Go and come back safely.

Like I was leaving on a vacation and returning to him.

A sketch spanned the rest of the paper, a haunting black-and-white rose chained to the page by five thick X marks, the lines scribbled and rescribbled to bind the drawing. Even then it was risky, but it was only pen, and he’d always managed to keep tabs on his school notes and doodles.

The rose barely moved as I looked at it, its petals fluttering softly in the drafty airport. It almost looked normal. In fact it was beautiful, the same beauty I saw in Tomohiro’s eyes when he gazed at the wagtails or the
sakura
trees, when he gave them life in his notebook. The look in his eyes when he gazed at me.

The tears rolled down my cheeks, curving under my chin and dripping onto the paper. The ink ran where they fell, smearing into blots on the leaves and the petals.

But it was done now. He wanted me to go, to be safe. I wanted to be safe, too. The Yakuza and the Kami scared me.

Tomohiro scared me. And by leaving, I was keeping Tomohiro’s power under control and out of Jun’s hands.

I traced the rose with my fingers, trying to imitate the movements of his pen. I’d never been much of an artist, and I pretended that each stroke was mine, that I could capture the soul of a rose the way he had.

My hand ran down the stem, and a hot pain seared through my fingertip.

I yanked my hand backward, flipping it over to inspect the paper cut. A dark bead of blood pooled on the pad of my index finger. It stung like crazy.

I looked down at the sketch.

A thorn. It wasn’t a paper cut—I’d cut myself on the thorn.

“
Okyaku-sama,
we apologize for the wait. This is your boarding call for Flight 1093 to Ottawa.…”

The blood trickled down the side of my finger and fell onto the page with a sound like someone flicking the paper.

Tak, tak, tak.

The other guests rose around me, businessmen with leather bags on wheels, mothers with sprawling infants wrapped to their fronts, carry-ons of every color whirling by the glass wall where our bulky, awkward plane waited on the concrete.

Tak.

I couldn’t do anything now. Nan had bought the ticket.

Diane had left for the bullet train back to Shizuoka.

Tak.

I’d promised Tomohiro I would leave.

If I stay, I might die.

I stared at the blood, stark red on the paper—the only color on the page, except for the single word Tomohiro had left me with.

Itterasshai.

Come back safely.

Come back.

But it was last call for the airplane. I couldn’t just run out of the airport. That wasn’t the way real life worked. Maybe in Japanese dramas, or the bad Hollywood flicks we watched in English Club. But I had a ticket in my jeans pocket, a suitcase on the seat beside me. You can’t just pick up and leave in real life.

Tak.

Can you?

I rose to my feet slowly, my whole body shaking. My pulse thumped in my ears, drummed through every vein in my body.

It wasn’t running away. If the decision to leave was wrong…

changing it wouldn’t be running away. Would it?

Please…live.

Come back safely.

I balled my hands into fists, the stickiness of the blood against my palm.

It wasn’t about what Tomohiro said or wanted. It wasn’t ever about him, not really.

It was my life and my choice.

Because running away, giving up the life that mattered to me, wasn’t living.

There’s only one chance. I only get one life. If the ink reacts to
me, then maybe I can stop it. And if I don’t, then we’re not the only
ones who are going to suffer.

I stepped forward, my legs like stone. I walked away from the row of seats, away from the gate where a few stragglers fumbled with their passports and carry-ons.

I stumbled and then began to run through the mono-chrome pathways of the airport, Tomohiro’s note crumpled around my fingers. I felt alive, the power surging through me stronger than any fear that had pulsed there.

It was my destiny.

I was going to face it.

It was my life.

I was going to live it.

Amerika-jin:

An American

Ano:

“Um,” a filler word telling the speaker you have something to say

A-re:

A word expressing surprise

Bai bai:

“Bye-bye” pronounced just like the English

Baka ja nai no?:

“Are you stupid or something?”

Betsu
ni:

“Nothing special” or “nothing in particular”

Bogu:

The set of kendo armor

Chan:

Suffix used for girl friends or those younger than the speaker

Chawan:

The special tea bowl used in a Tea Ceremony

Che:

“Damn it!”

Conbini:

A convenience store

Daiji
na
hito:

An important person, big shot,
etc.