Ink (14 page)

“From what?”

“His destiny,” he said. “Anyway,” he added, cupping his arm around his helmet, “he already has a girlfriend, so you’re wasting your time.”

My fingers squeezed so hard against my palms that I could feel my nails digging in. “Not that I care, but some best friend you are. He doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

Ishikawa looked blank for a moment and started to laugh.

It was a wicked laugh, cold and scornful, and as much I wanted to tell him to go to hell, the sound of it made my whole body shudder.

Ishikawa leaned in right beside my ear. He smelled of kendo leather and sweat.

“What did Yuuto tell you?” he said quietly. “Did he tell you his pregnant girlfriend was only a cousin? A sister? A family friend?” He smirked and turned away, his gray
hakama
swaying as he walked.

The words pulsed in my head. I felt like I’d lost my sense of direction, like I’d just spiral down to the floor and collapse.

I forced myself into the change room, unfastened all the
bogu
armor and pulled the
tenugui
headband from my sweaty hair.

My head was spinning, and I could think of nowhere to go to clear it but Toro Iseki. I didn’t have Diane’s bike, so I hurried for the local yellow-and-green bus that Tomohiro and I often took on rainy days. It cut the trip in half, which was a good thing because I felt like I might pass out on the way.

I tried to call Tomohiro’s
keitai,
but it was off. I started a text, but the kanji kept grouping into the wrong ones and I was too embarrassed to send a message with only phonetic hiragana.
Damn auto spell!
Eventually I sent a message in English.

Call me when you’re back from Chiba. —Katie I hit Send, but when I pushed the button, I immediately regretted it. He would get the message at his uncle’s funeral, and for what? So I could accuse him of lying to me?

No, it wasn’t that. Tomohiro and I had become close, and Ishikawa was jealous. He was just trying to piss me off. I was sure of it. But I also knew it had worked, and I needed help to pull myself out of the spiral.

Renovations at Toro Iseki were almost complete by the summer. I ducked under the fence with no trouble and stepped into the belt of forest around the site. The pungent smell of humid summer forest flooded my nostrils and clogged up my nose. Damn allergies. I wove between the trees, trying to avoid the patches of wildflowers. Cicadas whirred all around me, and the wagtails leaped from branch to branch above, their tails bobbing like they’d had too much caffeine.

I leaned against a tree trunk, finally able to face what Ishikawa had said.

Tomohiro was drawn to me because I was weak. He really did have a pregnant girlfriend. I was keeping him from his destiny.

What destiny? We’d kept our meetings private, so he couldn’t mean study time for entrance exams. Was I distracting him from kendo? But that wasn’t his destiny.

Joining the Yakuza? Maybe.

The wagtails’ songs turned erratic and I looked up, trying to figure out what had happened. They jumped around and chirped high-pitched warnings to each other. Were they that worried about me?

Then I saw the problem—an intruder among the birds. It was another wagtail, but his tail feathers stretched out longer than the others, his round eyes void and vacant like…like the sketched girl in the
genkan.
All the wagtails were white and black, but this one looked papery, like he would crinkle in the breeze. His feathers were jagged, messy scrawls, and when he beat his wings to move to another branch, little swirls of shimmering dust trailed his flight.

Oh my god. He’s…he’s a sketch.

The wagtail hopped toward another bird and lunged. Red sprayed across the black-and-white victim, and the shock of color sent my head spinning.

He’s attacking them. The way my drawings came after me.

In a flurry of feathers, the sketched wagtail lunged at the others, clawing at them, pecking at their eyes and throats.

I flailed my arms around to scare him away, then found a twig and threw it at the patch of birds. It clipped his wing and he took off into the air, chased by some of the puffier wagtails. He soared across the clearing of Toro Iseki, the trail of black dust following him. I took off after him.

Suddenly my
keitai
phone chimed with a text, and the sound scattered the whole flock of wagtails, their wings beating like a crashing waterfall. My heart pounded at the sudden electronic notes beeping through the chirps of the birds.

And just as suddenly, the sketched wagtail stopped in midair like he’d slammed into a glass wall. He plummeted to the ground, landing with a thud in the grass.

I stepped out of the trees and ran to where he fell. I scanned the long grasses, but I couldn’t find his body anywhere. Black dust fell from the sky like snow, gathering on my shoulders like an oily sheen.

“Katie?” a voice said, and I knew it instantly.

Tomohiro.

I turned and saw him there, sitting with his sketchbook balanced on his knees.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“The wagtail,” I said. “It— What are you doing here? I thought you were in Chiba for the funeral.”

Tomohiro motioned to the blazer he’d discarded beside him, a bracelet of wooden Buddhist prayer beads resting on top of it. He wore his red-and-navy-striped tie, part of the boys’ school uniform, but he’d loosened the knot so it hung unkempt around his neck.

“The funeral was this morning,” he said. “My dad had a business meeting, so we caught the afternoon train back.

Are you okay?”

“Not really,” I said. My head was pounding. Tomohiro’s face wrinkled with concern and he patted the ground beside him.

“Sit down,” he said.

“I have to find the bird,” I said, scanning the ground.

“What bird?”

“Didn’t you see it? It attacked the other birds,” I said. I crouched down and bent the grasses out of the way with my hand.

“You mean like rabies? I didn’t see anything.”

“Maybe. But it looked weird. There was something wrong with its feathers. And it just dropped all of a sudden out of the sky, like it smacked into something. It looked like it was…

made of paper.”

“Katie, sit down,” Tomohiro said, and there was something in his voice that made my thoughts snap into place. I turned to him, all my suspicions colliding in my head.

“Yuu, why do you destroy your drawings?”

“What?”

“I swear to God I saw them move.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“And the dragon tail.”

“The what?”

“I found a scrap from your notebook. It moved, too.”

“Katie, what the hell?” Tomohiro snapped. “Do you know how crazy you sound?” He sounded ticked off, but somehow his face didn’t line up. It didn’t add up.

What was Tomohiro’s destiny, and why did Ishikawa think I was in the way?

“Ishikawa said Shiori is your girlfriend,” I said. Tomohiro narrowed his eyes.

“Satoshi is full of shit,” he said darkly.

“Is he?”

“Katie! You seriously believe him over me? He’s just messing with you. I told you Shiori is like a sister. She’s a family friend.” He looked down at his closed sketchbook, and his bangs fanned over his dark eyes.

“How do I know?” I said. “Tell me why my drawings moved, Yuu. Tell me why my pen blew up and why I saw ink on your hands that wasn’t there. Tell me what really happened to Koji. You’ve always been keeping something from me. Ishikawa said you’re drawn to me because I’m weak.

What does he mean?”

“How are you weak, Katie?” Tomohiro looked up at me, his eyes shining. “You’re far from home, in a country you don’t fully understand, speaking a language you haven’t fully mastered, and all of that leaves you isolated to deal with your mom’s death.” Tomohiro stepped toward me and placed his hands on my arms. His palms felt warm through the thin summer sleeves of my uniform. “Tell me how that’s weak,”

he urged quietly.

“You wanted me to stay away from you,” I said. “I thought it was because of the Yakuza. But there’s more, isn’t there?”

Tomohiro smiled. “There’s nothing more—”

“Cut the crap,” I shouted and shook his hands off. He stood staring at me and I felt the shame rise in me. But I had to know.

“Show me your sketchbook,” I said.

“What?”

“I want to see your sketchbook,” I said, pointing at the black cover. Tomohiro turned and stared at it. “Maybe Ishikawa was messing with me. I don’t know. But I need to know what’s going on. Please, Yuu.”

“Katie. Just trust me, and don’t ask this.” Tomohiro’s eyes were wide and gazed at mine with pleading. But I’d gone this far, and I couldn’t go back.

“Yuu, you know I have to see it.” He hesitated. “Please,”

I said.

He backed up slowly, each foot dragging through the grass, then bent over and picked up the sketchbook. He held it out to me with one hand, and I took it, even though his eyes looked so sad.

My hands shook as I pressed my fingers into the cover.

I pulled it open slowly, flipping through the drawings I’d seen him sketch over the past several weeks. They all looked weird, in poses I didn’t remember, each with the same thick lines scribbled through them, scraped right through the pictures, rendering them ugly and useless. The horse had his nostrils flared, his head over his shoulder—not the way he had been drawn.

I fanned the pages until I reached the blank ones, and turned backward until the last sketch came into view.

I stopped and looked at the drawing.

A wagtail, with a thick X across its neck. His eyes gleamed like vacant pools of ink, and his feathers jagged out in awkward directions.

I stared at the picture. Tomohiro said nothing.

I looked up at him slowly.

“You drew him,” I said. “You
made
that wagtail.”

He didn’t make any excuses. He just looked at me with a heaviness in his eyes.

“How did you do this?” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

“What’s going on?”

His gaze was piercing and I wished he’d drop his eyes to the ground. Shivers of fear pulsed through my body, but I couldn’t tear myself away from him. I’d had my suspicions, but they couldn’t have prepared me for the truth. My heart pounded in my ears.

“What are you?” I said.

“Katie. Calm down.”

“Calm down? Either your fucking drawings are coming to life or I’m losing my mind! How the hell am I supposed to calm down?”

“It’s not you, okay? Sit down, and—and I’ll answer your questions.”

“Well, you better!” I shouted, but he looked about as threatening as a puppy. When I thought about it, he actually looked more frightened than me.

I stayed standing.

“Is this why you quit calligraphy?” I asked.

He gazed at me with gleaming eyes. “Yes.”

“Is this why you destroy your drawings?”

Another pause. Then a nod.

“And the girl really looked at me, in the
genkan.
And you made my pen explode.”

“Yes.”

My mind went blank. Hot tears carved their way down my cheeks. I sobbed and didn’t care how wretched I looked.

The reality I’d believed in and the reality that existed were too different, and there was no way to reconcile them. It was like seeing a ghost or a miracle, or someone fly. Something impossible. My brain throbbed as I tried to rationalize it.

“Katie.” Tomohiro’s gentle voice cut through my sobs.

He reached out his hands for the sketchbook, or for me. I wasn’t sure.

I took a shaky breath and moved toward him. I pressed the notebook into his hands, the metal spiral cold beneath my trembling fingers.

“You can’t tell anyone,” he said, and I snorted.

“That’s your major concern here?”

“Please,” he said again. “Especially Sato.”

“Tell them what?” I said. “That your drawings come to life? They’d send me to the loony bin.”

He shook his head. “Satoshi will believe you,” he said quietly. “He’s been trying to prove it for years and I’ve always denied it. If he knew the truth… He’ll try and get the Yakuza to use me. Do you understand? It will put us both in serious trouble if anyone knows.”