Rain (20 page)

“I have to go.”

“Of course,” Jun said. “Let me drive you to Nihondaira.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“I’ve ruined everything, haven’t I?”

“It’s not that. I just—”

My phone started to buzz just as Ikeda burst in the auditorium door.

“Jun,” she said, racing down the sloped aisle toward us. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Ikeda,” Jun said, his nose scrunching up as he said it.

I opened my
keitai,
wondering if it was the text from Tomo I was waiting for. I felt like crap. Kissing another guy while he was having a meltdown alone. I was the scum of the earth.

“You guys weren’t alone,” Ikeda said.

Jun tilted his head. “What are you talking about?”

My eyes went huge as I saw the text.

A photo of Jun and I kissing. It couldn’t be.

“Some pregnant girl from the girls’ school north of Suntaba,” Ikeda panted. “I recognized her uniform in the hallway. When I asked what she was doing in the auditorium, she ran.”

“Oh my god,” I said. “It was Shiori.” That’s what Hana had meant when she said
you and your friend.
Shiori had followed me here.

I turned my phone to show Jun the picture and the text that went with.

Tomo deserves better. Break up with him or he’ll be the next to see this photo.

Ikeda saw the photo and looked at the floor, her face flushing with color.

“Shiori’s actually blackmailing me,” I said in disbelief. Was she that desperate?

“Where did she go?” Jun asked Ikeda, but she shook her head.

“I lost her,” she said. “I wanted to make sure you were okay, so I didn’t follow her.”

I raced my fingers over the buttons, trying to think what to say.

Tomo and I broke up. Don’t send the photo.

It was true, sort of. I needed to talk to him first. If he saw this photo in the state he was in now...

“I have to get to Nihondaira,” I said. “Now.”

Jun nodded. “Let me drive you. Bike’s out front.”

“I’ll come, too,” Ikeda said, but Jun shook his head.

“We’re fine,” Jun said. “Stay here in case Hasegawa-sensei comes looking for me. Say I had to get new strings for the cello. Anything.”

“Sensei’s not going to come looking for you,” Ikeda said, reaching for Jun’s arm. “What are you talking about?”

Jun flinched away from her touch; he meant it to be subtle, but I saw it. I saw the way Ikeda’s face fell.

“Just stay here,” Jun said. “Katie, let’s go.” His fingers wrapped around my wrist and tugged me forward. I looked back as he pulled me toward the auditorium doors. I saw the hurt on Ikeda’s face. I saw her hands curl into fists as she looked down at the carpet.

Jun and I hurried toward his motorbike, while my phone buzzed with another text.

Liar. You’re still with Takahashi. You took Tomo from me. Now I’ll take him from you.

“Shit,” I said, straddling the bike as Jun passed me a helmet. “She’s going to send Tomo the photo.”

“He could lose his mind to the ink if she drops that on him now,” Jun said. “Hurry.”

I nodded, tugging the helmet strap too tight. It pinched my skin as Jun revved the bike to life.

I should never have listened to Tomo and stayed away. I should have been with him in Nihondaira from the beginning.

I had to make things right now.

I hoped I wasn’t too late.

I clung to Jun’s waist as we sped up Nihondaira Mountain. It felt strange and awkward to hold him after what had happened, but I tried to ignore it. I had to reach Tomo before it was too late. I’d made a mess of things.

The sky melted into grays and shadows as we ascended the mountain.

“What’s up with the sky?” I shouted into the wind. It had been sunny this morning—why the sudden gathering of clouds?

“It’s Yuu,” Jun said. “Remember the storm he pulled up with the dragon? He’s causing some kind of weird weather up here.”

What was he drawing? What was the ink drawing on him?

Jun pulled into the deserted parking lot by the ropeway to Kunozan. It was empty up here, cold and silent.

I got off the bike and yanked the helmet off my head, placing it in Jun’s waiting hands. “I’ll take it from here.”

“You’re joking, right?” He pulled off his helmet and his black-and-blond hair flopped out to the sides. “What if he got the picture text? He’s already in bad shape from what you told me. If he’s going to destroy himself, there’s no way I’m going to stand by and let him take you with him.”

I hesitated. That’s what he’d almost done, wasn’t it? With the
shinai
in kendo practice and the words on the chalkboard.
She must die.
Did it really mean me? Could the ink really kill someone?

“Jun,” I said quietly. “Remember when you asked Tomo to kill Hanchi? On paper?”

He stared at me, his eyes cold and his head tilted in confusion, like he couldn’t believe I was talking about this.

My throat felt too dry. “Can he really do it? Can a Kami really kill someone like that?”

“They can,” Jun said calmly, and my heart dropped to my stomach. “Most Kami can’t. But some...yes.”

“How do you know?” I said. “Did the Yakuza ask your dad to...to kill someone?”

Jun looked annoyed, his face flushed. “It doesn’t matter how I know. It matters that the Yakuza don’t ever get their hands on someone like Oyaji again.”

The term he used for his dad...it was tough and a little unkind. He should’ve said
otousan
or
chichi
.
It was subtle and probably nothing, but it made me feel weird.

“Jun, what did they make your dad do? I have to know what a Kami is capable of.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. My dad screwed around with the Yakuza and got burned. I won’t let Yuu hurt you, okay? That’s all you need to know. Go help him before he self-destructs.”

He was right. I couldn’t waste more time on this.

“Okay,” I said and took off down the curved road toward the clearing and the giant bonsai tree.

The clouds were so thick they blotted out all sunlight. It was like a solar eclipse up here, and I stumbled over my feet in the dark as I ran. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

I reached the clearing, but it was pitch-dark. Only the ghostly glow of Mount Fuji’s snowcap in the distance gleamed with light.

“Tomo?” I called, my voice wavering. I swallowed and tried again. “Tomo?” He didn’t answer. I walked toward the tree to see if he was sitting there.

He wasn’t, but his black notebook lay among the roots. Its covers bulged with a stack of torn pages inside. The cold autumn wind twisted my hair in front of my face and I tucked it behind my ears. The jagged edges of pages poked out at odd angles. He’d done a whole collection of drawings—why tear the pages and then stuff them back into the notebook?

Come to think of it, he’d made excuses about these torn sketches before. He hadn’t shown them to me. He’d been irritated when I asked to see them and shoved them deep into his bag while he changed the subject.

Jun had listed the signs of losing control to me on the phone. Blacking out, worse nightmares, over-the-top anxiety—unexplained sketches.

I pinched the edge of the cover with my fingers and pulled it open to the loose pages.

I gasped.

It was me. He’d sketched me.

Some were on notebook paper, tiny sketch pads or napkins, one on
genkoyoushi
grid paper. Not always the same pose, but all had the same terrifying look that filled me with dread. He’d drawn me in a long kimono with phoenixes and hundreds of flowers sketched onto the fabric. In some of the drawings I was holding a giant shield or something with weird designs, like a gold disc that reached from the ground to my waist. My hands rested on the top of it, the long kimono sleeves draped over it almost touching the ground.

Each of the drawings was unfinished, a final line missing that joined my ear to my chin or the waist of the kimono to the ground.

The cold wind gusted again, and the kimono in the drawing spread to either side, billowing like a cloak around the sketch of me. The wind scattered the stack of drawings and they tumbled through the field in every direction.

“Shit!”
I yelled, racing after them. I caught a few, but they swirled every way; I couldn’t catch them all. One lodged in the branches of the tree high above.

“Katie?” Tomo said, and then I saw him at the edge of the clearing. He held one of the escaped drawings and he stared at me in surprise. Trails of ink had dried on his arms, but his face and hands were washed clean, probably from the nearby pool.

“Tomo, the drawings!” I said. The wind slowed and the papers floated down to the soft grasses. Their corners tugged in the breeze.

“You opened my sketchbook?”

Shiori’s threat was momentarily gone as I stared at the drawings I’d managed to catch. At least Tomo was talking coherently. Maybe he hadn’t seen the picture of Jun and me yet. And this was a much more serious problem. I didn’t know why, but every nerve in my body pulsed.
Run,
they said.
Run like hell.

“What are these?” I managed, the drawings crinkling as my hands shook.

He didn’t answer me.

“Tell me! What the hell are these?”

“Amaterasu,” he said.

“BS,” I said. “These are drawings of me.”

He said softly, “I know.”

Me as Amaterasu. My blood turned to ice. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

Tomo walked toward me, stooping as he went to pick up the scattered drawings. “For a month I’ve been waking up with a pen in my hand and a new sketch in front of me. The nightmares that went with them were horrible. I’ve never drawn things like that in my sleep before. I’ve had ink splattered on the walls or dripping on the floor, but never a finished drawing.”

“They’re not finished,” I said. “One line’s missing in each of them.”

“I know, and thank god.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I shouted.

“I didn’t want to freak you out, okay?” he snapped back.

“Well I’m freaked out!”

“That makes two of us.”

“What do they mean?”

“I don’t know,” Tomo said.

“They’re creeping me out.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I was scared to destroy them. In case...something happened to you. So I collected them and tried to keep them safe.”

Why would he draw me as Amaterasu?

The idea jolted through me like electricity.

“Tomo,” I said. “I’m a manufactured Kami.”

“I still don’t like that term.”

“Fine, but who are most Kami descended from? Amaterasu, right?”

He blinked, and then he got it, too.

“You’re descended from Amaterasu,” he said.

“The ink in me makes you stronger because it’s more power to add to yours,” I said. He was standing so close now that I could feel the warmth of his body as it protected me from the cold wind around us. “But you’re descended from Susanou.”

“Which means we’re enemies,” Tomo said. “And that’s why the ink’s attacking you.”

“And why we can’t be together,” I said. “Oh my god, Tomo.”

“It can’t be,” he whispered. He dropped the stack of drawings and they took to the wind again, scattering across the field. He fell to his knees, his hands pressed against the cool grass.

I fell to my knees, too, placing the drawings I’d collected in the notebook and closing the cover. I couldn’t believe it—after all this, after everything we’d vowed to change. We couldn’t take our lives into our own hands. We’d never had a chance to be together.

The silence of the clearing suddenly filled with the revving of a motorbike. It got louder as it approached, and then the headlight beamed against us, blindingly bright. Tomo looked up, surprised.

What the hell was Jun doing? He’d promised to stay away.

But there were two people on the bike, and the bike wasn’t Jun’s. It was black with a blue stripe along the side, not quite as sleek in its build.

A second bike, Jun’s, throttled around the curve of the road.

“Katie!” he called out, but I could barely hear him over the rumbling of the idling motors. Both bikes shut off, and the driver and passenger of the first one got to their feet, lifting the helmets from their heads. The passenger rested a hand on her swollen, pregnant belly.

Shiori and...and Ikeda.

“Shiori?” Tomo said, staring at them. “What the hell is going on? Did they hurt you?”

Of course. He’d think Jun and Ikeda had brought her as some kind of bargaining tool for him to join the Kami.

But I knew better. I knew why she was here.

Jun slammed his helmet against the ground as he stormed forward. “Ikeda, what’s going on?”

“Katie’s been keeping something from you, Tomo-kun,” Shiori said.

“Stop it!” I shouted. She had no idea what she was doing, the damage she could cause.

Jun grabbed Ikeda’s arm and swung her around to face him. “What are you doing?” he hissed.

“I went looking and found her in Sunpu Park,” Ikeda said. “She was having a crisis of ethics, you could say. I thought it would be better to bring her face-to-face with Yuu, to make sure she wouldn’t chicken out.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Jun snapped.

“She’s not the only one suffering,” Ikeda said quietly, looking at me. “Go on, Shiori. Set this straight. We haven’t done anything wrong. We don’t have anything to hide.”

Shiori pulled out her phone, her buttons beeping as she sorted through her files. So she hadn’t texted him after all.

“What’s going on?” Tomo asked me, rising to his feet.

“Tomo, it’s not what you think.” My pulse drummed in my ears.

Shiori threw her phone in the air, and it came down like a shining, falling star. Tomo caught it, turning it to face him.

“There,” Shiori said, her voice quivering as she held back the tears. “This is what you gave up everything for, Tomo-kun.”

I watched the pain carve its way onto his face as he stared at the photo of me kissing Jun. I wanted to look away. He crouched down slowly, pressing his knees into the grass. The LCD screen cast an eerie light on his face, bathing him in light and shadows as his eyes filled with angst.

“Yuu, it’s not Katie’s fault,” Jun said. “You pushed her away. You made her cry.”

I felt ill. Jun was
not
helping.

The look on his face broke my heart in two. I wanted to take him in my arms, but I was scared he’d push me away. “Tomo, I swear, it’s not what it looks like.”

“Don’t try to talk your way out of it,” Shiori smirked. “I didn’t send him the photo.” She paused, stepping closer to Tomohiro. “I sent the video.”

Oh god.
“You took a video? What kind of twisted person are you?”

“You’re one to talk, aren’t you, Katie?” she said. “You kissed for eleven seconds, if you look at the video clock. It’s not exactly like you tried to stop it.” Shiori leaned over Tomohiro, resting a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t shrug it off, but sat there looking numb. She reached out to press the play button on the screen, to put Tomo through all of it again. She tilted her head to the side. “From the looks of it, you were quite enjoying yourself.”

“You don’t know anything!” I screamed. I stepped forward, too scared to reach out for him. “Tomo, let me explain. Please. Look at me.” But he wouldn’t look up. He tilted his face forward and his copper bangs fanned over his eyes, hiding them from me.

He flipped the phone shut, pressing it into Shiori’s hands. A flash of lightning lit up the sky, and a distant thunder rumbled.

“
Betsu ni
,”
he said, looking disinterested. “No big deal.”

I froze, my pulse in my ears. Shiori looked stunned.

“What?” she breathed.

“I said it doesn’t matter,” Tomohiro said.

“But, Tomo-kun. Katie cheated on you with your kendo rival. You’re telling me it doesn’t matter?”

“
Sou
,”
he said. He raised himself to one knee and then stood, towering over her. “It doesn’t.”

I glanced at Jun, who looked as puzzled as I was. Ikeda sat down sideways on her bike, her fingers tapping on the handlebars.

“Katie doesn’t belong to me, Shiori,” Tomo said quietly. “She’s free to choose her own life and who she wants to be with. If Takahashi makes her happy...then I’m happy.”

“Oh, what a load of crap,” I said. The adrenaline coursing through my body made me feel woozy. “Like you’d be happy if I was with Takahashi. And you know I’m not with him. Why are you spouting this kind of philosophical garbage?”