Ink

No one would believe what I knew. Even I barely believed it.

So why was I shaking?

Chapter 9

A muffled chime rose from my book bag. I’d forgotten to put my keitai in manner mode, and Yuki raised her eyebrows at me.

“Good thing it’s lunch,” she said as I ruffled through the bag. “They have a way of never coming back after Suzuki-sensei confiscates them.”

“Sorry,” I said absentmindedly. I pulled the phone out and flipped it open to the text.

Talked to Ishikawa. He won’t bother you again. Join me today. I’ll wait for you there. —Yuu

“From Tomo-kun?” Tanaka chimed in. I snapped the keitai closed and slipped it back into my bag.

“Not your business,” I said, and he grinned.

“You know, Katie,” said Yuki quietly. Her eyes were round and sad, and I knew what she would say. I’d thought about it myself after the kendo match. “Please don’t get involved with someone like him. What he did to his friend… And you saw what he did to Myu. Even Yuu’s friends are bad news.”

“He was always a good guy,” said Tanaka thoughtfully.

“He got into a lot of trouble, but when it came down to the wire, he always did the right thing.”

“Right,” I said. “And you were right about Koji, Tanaka.

It was an accident.”

“Hai?” Tanaka’s jaw hung open, and I realized what I’d said. It wasn’t like I could tell him what had really happened—

now what?

“Um. They broke into a construction site, and there was a guard dog.” More lies, but closer to the truth than Tomohiro stabbing him.

“I knew it!” he shouted.

I took a deep breath and turned to Yuki. “And he didn’t cheat on Myu, you know. The pregnant girl? She’s a family friend, and he’s only trying to help her.” There was a pause while Tanaka and Yuki absorbed this.

“Well, even if that’s true,” Yuki said doubtfully, “you saw the way he broke up with her. It wasn’t pretty.” It was true; he’d been heartless to her, cold and ugly. I’d spent so much time remembering the way the drawing looked at me and not enough thinking about the dark look in Tomohiro’s eyes as he broke up with Myu, the way he’d slouched against the door frame while she wept. I knew he’d been lying, but even then—that was cruel.

Maybe they were right. I had to admit it had been on my mind since the tournament—okay, so since I’d learned he was a Kami. Did I really need the nightmares he came with? But every time I decided to step away, my heart twisted.

“It’s not like we’re a serious couple or anything,” I said.

“He hasn’t even confessed.” But I knew how ridiculous I sounded. If his phone hadn’t gone off that time, what would he have said? What would I have said?

“Not serious at all. He’s just sending you texts for a date,”

Tanaka said. I picked up his packet of furikake seasoning and smacked him with it.

“Sonna wake nai jan!” I whined with a Japanese accent.

It’s not like that. But from the look of them, I’d already lost the argument. I took my black chopsticks and lifted the leftover croquettes from my bentou into my mouth. The taste of peanut-butter sandwiches had drifted away with my old life.

I wondered who I was then, when I couldn’t speak or read or eat, totally immobilized by the change in my world. Vines were entangling the hole in my heart, buds sprouting on the outskirts. There was still a void, a pocket of emptiness. But around it, my heart was blooming.

Tomohiro sat in his usual place beside the Yayoi house, his notebook resting on his pulled-up knees. That was the only thing that was the same. Clouds of shimmering dust encircled him, wisps of inky swirls that glinted in the sunlight. They curled in slow motion, spreading around him like waves of fireflies.

I gasped. He heard me and looked up, a grin plastered on his face, and I began to understand how much effort it had been to keep all this from me. This was why he’d always stopped so abruptly in the middle of a sketch, why he’d scraped those desperate lines across the paper. It was to keep me safe from the truth, when all the time this was supposed to be his safe haven.

“Katie,” he said, his hands still. The clouds faded and swirled into nothingness as his pen stopped.

“Does it always do that?” I asked, walking forward slowly and clutching the handles of my bag.

He laughed. “No. Don’t you think the Calligraphy Club would’ve noticed?”

“That’s where I come in, right? Where you lose control like the kendo match?”

“That,” he said, “was not my fault.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Oi. I’m serious.”

“Okay,” I said. “So if it wasn’t you, then who was it?”

There was silence. My jaw dropped.

“Me?”

“Maybe,” he said.

“No, no, you’re the Kami.” I panicked.

“But you’re the one making the ink do weird things. Well…

extra weird.”

“Look, I’ve had enough, okay?” I said, feeling sick to my stomach. “I don’t want ink following me around. I don’t want Yakuza following me around. You need to get this thing under control or I need to switch schools.” It was one thing to watch him draw things here, but the idea of the ink permeating my own life, never knowing when it was going to show up…

He smiled.

“Luckily I have a plan,” he said. “The wagtail that attacked the others—I couldn’t stop it. I’ve been thinking about the way Takahashi Jun was in control in the kendo match. You know, like he wouldn’t let me see what attack was coming next, not a shift of body weight or a glance or anything, and yet he had his moves planned out, everything calculated. If I could learn to keep my thoughts so focused and hidden, maybe I could take control of what I draw. Here, look what I brought.”

He lifted a velvet drawstring pouch out of his book bag and slipped its contents into the palm of his hand. His eyes shone as he held them out.

“A bottle of ink,” I said. “And a paintbrush. For calligraphy?”

“It’s too dangerous for me to paint,” he said. “But maybe over time I can use them again.”

He rested them gently on the grass and shook his head, tossing his bangs out of his eyes. A useless gesture, because the minute he leaned forward to the notebook, they slid back again.

“This isn’t much of a plan,” I said. “Focusing your thoughts?

Super Zen, but I need the ink to leave me alone.”

“The ink isn’t always bad,” he said. “I mean, it’s dangerous, but sometimes it’s beautiful. At first, I never wanted you to know. I thought I could never tell you. But now I can show you.”

He moved his pen in a broad stroke, and then another. And as he drew the lines more quickly, the firefly specks of ink appeared again, shimmering like oil as they rippled in the air.

He drew a butterfly, but its movements blurred on the page. The closer I looked at it, the more my head ached.

“It’s because we think it’s impossible,” he said. “So our brain tells us it isn’t moving. Like an optical illusion or something. It used to give me migraines all the time.” And the more I watched it, the queasier I got. I had to turn away.