you.”
Kara and Hachiro stood at the same time.
“You’re the best!” she said happily. On impulse, she moved forward and gave him a quick kiss.
Hachiro blinked in surprise, but Kara thought she might be even more stunned than he was.
She got over it.
Her smile faded and she swallowed, her throat dry, feeling suddenly nervous and more than a little shy. But she stepped closer to him, tilting her head back to search his eyes.
This time when Kara kissed him, Hachiro kissed back.
As night began to settle over Miyazu City-its lights glittering and the black pines of Ama-no-Hashidate like a scar across the bay-Kara, Hachiro, and Miho stood in the darkness of the woods that bordered the school grounds.
“We have to be quick,” Kara said, glancing anxiously over her shoulder among the trees. “I promised my father I’d be back by now. He’s going to be worried and angry.”
“And we’re supposed to be in the dorm,” Hachiro reminded her.
“I know, I know. All right,” she said, glancing at Miho. “Let’s get this done.”
They crept along the tree line toward the bay, watching the looming monolith of the school-only a few lights burned inside-and the driveway that ran out to the main road. Monju-no-Chie School sat slightly askew, facing northwest toward the neighborhood where Kara lived. Its northeast corner jutted toward the bay, and the eastern wall faced the woods. Unless someone looked out from the school itself, or came across the grass from the street, they would not be seen.
Or so Kara hoped.
Her skin felt flushed and her heart raced. A host of childhood images flashed across her mind, walks in the woods with Tammie Bledsoe and Jim Orton when they’d been sure they were being watched from the upper branches or from behind stone property marker walls; heading home after dark from Tammie’s house, cutting through neighborhoods of darkened houses and backyards. At eleven or twelve years old, she’d been certain that things waited in the dark to grab her. As she got older, she had realized how foolish such thoughts were.
Yet now that old certainty had returned.
“This is wrong,” Hachiro whispered.
Kara and Miho exchanged a glance. They were frightened and disturbed enough without Hachiro’s second thoughts. Kara reached out and took his hand, held it in hers as they kept walking.
“It is,” she agreed. “But it has to be done.”
“If you’re right,” Hachiro said.
Kara glanced at him. She really liked him, and it seemed important that he believe her for several reasons. As crazy as she knew all of this must seem, it hurt her to hear the edge of doubt in his voice.
“You don’t have to believe,” she whispered. “But unless you can come up with a better explanation for everything that’s happened.. .”
She let her words trail off, and Hachiro glanced away. They kept walking through the deepening darkness along the tree line, and at last he squeezed her hand. Kara looked up at him.
“What if you’re wrong?”
“Then we’ll have to live with this for the rest of our lives.”
Miho let out a long, shuddery breath. Her eyes glistened wetly in the dark.
In the distance they could hear cars on the street that led away from the school. Kara thought about her father, back at their little house. He’d be looking at the clock now, wondering where she was. Her cell phone felt heavy in her pocket; she’d turned it off, anticipating his call. If she took too long, he might even start wondering if he’d lost his daughter the way he’d lost his wife, and Kara couldn’t let it go that far. She hated the idea of hurting him like that, felt sick to her stomach. But chances were good before the sun rose again, she would have put him through worse.
Unless she and Miho were just crazy.
But Jiro and Chouku had been drained of blood, and that didn’t happen on its own. Mysteries all had solutions; some of those simply weren’t acceptable to the people hoping to find them.
None of them spoke as they approached the shrine to Akane. No candles burned tonight on that small patch of grass, set against the trees by the bay. They stood in respectful silence for several very long moments. A girl had died there. Been murdered there. People she knew, some of whom she must have laughed and gossiped with, sat next to in class, had killed her, all because another girl’s boyfriend had fallen in love with her.
They stared at the yellowed, curling photos and the wilted flowers-no fresh ones had been placed there in a while-and the messages and stuffed animals. A Hello Kitty had turned brownish gray from the elements.
“Sakura will never forgive us,” Miho said, barely able to get the words out. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
Kara thought she had it all together. She thought she had conquered her own fears and ghosts, the grief that lingered in her heart and in all of the darkest corners of her mind. But as she stared at the shrine-so much like a grave marker-and then turned toward Hachiro and Miho, her chest ached and her breath hitched.
“Do you think I don’t understand what you’re feeling?” she asked. Tears sprang from her eyes, shocking her, and her hands shook as she wiped them away. “I look at this spot and I think of someone doing this to my mother’s grave. My mother, Miho. I didn’t know Akane. That makes this harder for the two of you than it is for me. But Sakura talks about her sister coming back to life, and I wish she were right because if she were, that would mean that my mother could come back, too. It doesn’t work like that. This is a shrine to Akane. She died here, yes, but something terrible was born here.”
She covered her mouth with her right hand. Hachiro started to speak but she dropped her hand and continued.
“I know how awful what we’re doing is. But we’re not doing it to hurt Sakura. We’re doing it to save her and to keep anyone else from dying.”
Miho and Hachiro both stiffened.
Hachiro reached for her hand again. “I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
“Tell that to Chouku. Her roommate was right there. Slept through the whole thing. The ketsuki gets what it comes for.”
Kara wiped her tears away and managed to stop more from coming. She steadied her breathing, but her heart still fluttered in her chest.
Hachiro glanced back toward the school and the road, then looked out toward the water, making absolutely certain no one was watching them. If anyone noticed them from the windows of the school, they would be caught and vilified by other students disgusted by their actions.
Miho stepped forward first. She dragged her feet the way Kara always did when her father raked leaves in the fall, moving through the candles and dying flowers and pictures in a path of destruction. With her heart in her throat, Kara joined her, and at last Hachiro helped out as well.
Quickly and quietly, they scattered the pieces of Akane’s shrine along the grass and among the trees. It took less than two minutes and when they were done, Kara felt sick.
“We have to get back,” Miho said to her.
Hachiro looked at Kara. “ You have to get back.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Miho shook her head. “No. Hachiro has to walk you.”
“Yes. If it’s… I mean, the ketsuki has already come after you at least once,” he agreed.
Kara frowned at Miho. “What about you?”
“It hasn’t visited my dreams. I’ll be fine.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Go,” Miho told them. “Hurry.”
Kara nodded. Hachiro took her hand and she liked the way their hands fit so easily together. Miho started across the grass back toward school and the dormitory beyond it. After a few steps, she broke into a light run.
“Come on,” Hachiro said. “She’ll be all right.”
Kara watched her go, then glanced one last time at the wreckage they had made of Akane’s shrine, sick with guilt.
