Ink (21 page)

Tomohiro cycled for what seemed like forever, the world around us a blur of gray skies and white umbrellas. The taller buildings shrank away, and we cycled down narrow alleyways behind houses, where cement retaining walls pulled away from us at sheer angles. At last he slowed down, in front of a two-story house with an arched gate in front.

Mounted on the gate above the bell and intercom was a silver nameplate that read
The Yuu Family.

“You live here?” I gaped. It wasn’t a big house, not by American standards, but a detached home like this in over-crowded Shizuoka was a pretty big deal. Tomohiro shrugged and slouched against the gated entrance.

“My dad’s head of accounting at ShizuCha,” he said casually.

“ShizuCha?” I repeated. “The tea company?” But Tomohiro looked pretty embarrassed about the whole thing, so I dropped it. He pushed the gate open and motioned me through, following behind with his bike.

“We should probably leave our shoes outside,” he joked as we reached the front door. I peered down at our muddy, ink-coated shoes as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a key, turning the lock with a loud click.

“Tadaima,”
he sang as he stepped in, out of habit since no one was home. The entrance tunneled into darkness. The humid, stale air trapped in the house smelled like a snuffed-out candle, thick against our faces but warm compared to the rain outside.

Tomo clunked his shoes against the raised floor to the ve-randa as I slipped mine off. I peeled off my soaked kneesocks, laying them on top of my shoes like strips of bandage.

He led me toward the bathroom, a sink with the bath and shower behind a separate door and a laundry machine across the hall.

“Here,” he said, opening the lid of the all-in-one washer-dryer. “You can put your
seifuku
in here.”

“Don’t these kinds of stains need to be scrubbed out?” I asked, but neither of us was really sure.

“Put the skirt in the wash, then,” he said. “Leave the shirt in the sink and we can try scrubbing or bleaching it. And go ahead and have a hot bath. I’ll find some clothes you can borrow and leave them outside the door.”

Embarrassment crept up my neck, but he looked as cool and collected as always. I hated him for it.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t get ill from the cold,” he said, and he reached his hand up to brush wet strands of hair off my face. He tucked them behind my ear, and I hoped he would leave before my knees buckled under me.

Once I heard his footsteps thumping up the stairs, I unbuttoned my shirt. I stared at it critically before leaning it over the sink. I ran some water and scrubbed the sides of the blouse together. There was no way I was going to get the ink out, even if I could get rid of the blood streaks. I sighed and let the shirt crumple into the sink. I threw my skirt into the machine, but left it for Tomohiro to turn on; I couldn’t quite make out all the kanji on the buttons. I wasn’t sure what to do with my underwear—it was soaked, but there was no way I was leaving it in the laundry room. In the end I brought it with me into the bathroom and laid it flat on the counter, hoping by some miracle it would dry.

The shower spray was hot against my skin and I greedily breathed in the steam. My skin turned pink as I shook off the cold chill from the rainstorm. Blood and ink had crusted under my fingernails and I scrubbed until they came clean.

I rinsed off and lifted the bamboo cover off the tub of water on the other side of the tile floor.

I soaked, staring up at the azure ceiling in silence. It hit me then that I hadn’t called Diane back yet. I sat up, water sloshing over the side of the tub. I lifted myself out and opened the bath door, where I found a stack of fluffy towels beside the sink.

“Tomo?” I called tentatively by the hallway door. When there was no answer, I creaked it open a bit. Tomohiro had left a neat pile of gray sweatpants and a shirt on the floor.

My underwear hadn’t dried, obviously, so I shoved it into the pants pocket and gave a grateful sigh the pants were a little bulky. I scrambled into the clothes and called through the house until Tomohiro came downstairs, clean clothes folded in his arms, which he held far away from his chest.

He stopped walking halfway, his eyes wide. My skin felt itchy.

“Cute,” he said, and I wanted to hit him. Pins and needles scratched up my arms. “My turn,” he added. “My room’s upstairs. You’ll find it okay.”

I nodded, reached for my bag by the entrance and headed up the stairs. I heard the door of the laundry room slide shut.

There were only a couple of doors upstairs and only one was ajar, so I slipped inside. A simple bookshelf and desk sat on one side of his room, his bed across from them with a blue plaid duvet strewn across it at an angle. I felt guilty somehow, like I was trespassing in his room; the feeling thrilled me at the same time it filled me with embarrassment.

I sat on his bed, looking around the room. There were some cute trinkets—a miniature Eiffel Tower, a few plush animals that I wondered with sudden urgency if other girls had given to him. But what really caught my eye were the posters, almost twenty of them plastered on the walls. Rembrandt, Rubens, Monet, Michelangelo—all of them represented. Most of the paintings featured angels trampling demons, judgment dealt out at the end of time. The rain pelted against the roof, and the raindrops running down the windows spread creepy gray blotches of light on the paintings.

I heard the spray of the shower downstairs.

There were other paintings, too, white and black and gray like Tomohiro’s sketches. Ghostly images of forests and landscapes, tossing oceans and cherry blossoms floating through the air. Ink-wash paintings, the traditional kind you saw in shrines or tatami rooms. The shadows that fell on them in the silence of his room made the landscapes seem so far away, distant worlds that almost came alive when I stared at them long enough. I wondered if they’d been drawn by Kami, too, but I realized I must be wrong. It would be too dangerous to display works like that.

Still, maybe all the creepy posters were the reason Tomohiro had nightmares. I’m not sure I could sleep with all these angels and demons ripping each other to pieces around me.

I took a deep breath and reached into my bag for my phone.

The ring echoed in my ear as I waited, still wondering what exactly I was going to say.

The phone clicked on the other end.

“
Moshi moshi,
Greene residence.”

“Diane—”

“Katie!” she burst out. “Thank god. Where are you? I called so many times.”

“I’m so sorry. I got caught in the rain. I didn’t hear the ring.”

“It’s a mess out there. It’s like typhoon season early or something. Where are you?”

“I’m at Yuki’s,” I lied. “We got totally soaked, so she let me come in and have a bath and put some clean clothes on.”

A sigh of relief. “Good thing you girls had common sense.

What about Tanaka?”

“Tanaka?”

“Don’t you spend every Wednesday together?”

“Oh. Today it was just Yuki and me. After Sewing Club, I mean.”

“I’ll borrow Morimoto’s car and pick you up.”

“No!” I shouted. “I mean, um, I was hoping I could stay over. My clothes are going through her laundry anyway, and she has pajamas I can borrow.”

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.