Ink

the way Tomohiro did.

“Sensei?” I said to Watanabe, but he nodded at me.

“We want you to compete in the tournament,” he said. “It would look great for our club to have more girls and more gaijin competing. So you need as many challenges as we can give you before you go out there. Take it lightly, Ishikawa, okay? Let her get warmed up first.” Ishikawa gave a faint nod, but his eyes were piercing. He wasn’t going to go easy on me. I knew that.

Ishikawa and I crouched to the floor, shinai at our sides.

We pulled them from their imaginary sheaths and pointed the tied bamboo slats at each other.

Ishikawa shrieked as he ran at me, and two thoughts snapped into my head: how different his movements and kiai were from Tomohiro’s, and how his yell rattled even Tomohiro. He often said Ishikawa would be the better fighter if he didn’t let the rage block his thinking, but the upcoming tournament had made him ferocious, so that panic grasped my mind as his shinai came at me. I tried to block, but within a minute his shinai slammed down on my wrist for a migi- kote point.

It was like I forgot all my training, like I was regressing.

Watanabe barked combinations at me, but my mind was so murky I could barely hear him. I was drowning in my own fear, off balance. Through the metal screen, Ishikawa’s dark eyes glared at me, a shock of white hair clinging to his forehead.

When the match finished, Ishikawa had managed four good hits, and I’d only had one pathetic swing to his dou.

And missed.

Class wrapped up, and Ishikawa pulled off his men and walked toward me, towering over me the way Tomohiro had done before.

“You think you’re so important to Yuuto,” he sneered, his voice low and hushed. His hot breath was in my ear, and the sounds of students unfastening armor and pushing open the change room doors all blurred into the background. “But he’ll lose interest in you, like he did in Myu. He always does.”

“We’re just friends,” I said quietly, but Ishikawa snorted.

“Yuuto always liked girls who were weak,” he said. “His interest in you will end, and then he’ll cast you aside.”

“Shut up,” I said. My whole body shook and my ears buzzed from the blood rushing through them. “What do you care anyway?”

“Because he’s my best friend,” Ishikawa said, combing a hand through his bleached hair. “And you’re distracting him.”

“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.