Ink

His feathery bangs tickled against my skin as his kisses brushed against my lips, my cheek, the corner of my jaw. He trailed down to my neck. He was fireworks and radiance, glare and tingling frostbite.

My voice was quiet, a crackle in the fire. “Suki,” I whispered, and the ocean of him churned against me, his kisses deepening like he was drowning. His arms closed around me, the heat of his fingertips splayed against the skin of my waist.

He pressed his fingers under the hem of the shirt he’d lent me, scorching lines of warmth up my back. I slid my hands down his back to the edge of his T-shirt, then looped them under. My fingers felt like ice against the heat of his skin, as if they were melting, and he moaned softly into my neck, the vibration of it pulsing on my skin.

Everything was floating. Everything was burning. Everything was drowning.

“Shit!” he groaned and pulled away, his hands slipping from my back, my fingers left holding emptiness.

Red bloomed across the bandage on his wrist, trails of blood and ink streaking down his arm in zigzags like rain on a window.

“Are you okay?” I said between breaths. Stupid question, but it was hard enough to think straight, like I’d been pulled from a dream, lost in that moment when you couldn’t move and you weren’t sure which world was real.

His eyes squeezed shut as he cradled his arm. “It stings like hell,” he said. He walked down the hall to the bathroom, where I heard the spray of the tap. A minute later he came back, a new cloth bandage wrapped around the wound.

I guess if you cut yourself drawing as often as he did, you’d have supplies lying around.

“I’m sorry,” I said, mostly because I felt awkward. But he sat beside me, tracing my ear with the fingers on his left hand.

“Well that got the blood going,” he grinned.

“God, you’re so stupid sometimes.”

“That’s part of my charm,” he said. Then he winced again.

“You need to go to the hospital,” I said, but he shook his head.

“Can’t. It’ll be fine. I just need to rest it and, you know, keep the blood flow calm. And you’re not helping with that last part, by the way.” His head hunched toward his chest, his bangs covering his eyes from view. I couldn’t tell if they were closed, but I knew he was in more pain than he was admitting.

“Do you have any painkillers?” I asked.

“In the kitchen,” he rasped. “In the cupboard by the fridge.” I went into the kitchen and pulled out the bottle, shaking two into my hand.

“Here,” I said, and he knocked them back with the oolong tea.

“Thanks,” he said, wiping the back of his mouth with his good wrist. “But I should warn you, those are the kind that knock me out like nobody’s business.” Of course I’d grabbed the wrong ones—I could barely read the kanji on the bottles.

He leaned back into the couch, curled on his side.

“Do you want me to help you upstairs?”

“I’ll sleep down here,” he said. “You can have my room.

We have futons in the tatami room, but my dad will wonder why I pulled them out, so I better just take the couch.”

“Are you sure?” I said. His eyes already looked droopy, but maybe I was overthinking it.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s for the best since I clearly can’t control myself.” He breathed in suddenly at the pain. “Could you pass me that blanket?” I looked behind and found it, then tucked it around him. He grabbed my fingers with his left hand, resting them on his lips. His eyes looked watery and distant, but they gleamed as he stared at me. Through the tips of my fingers he said, “I’ll protect you. I promise.”

I stroked his hair, running my fingers through the copper silk of it, until he lifted my hand urgently from his head.

“The blood flow,” he gasped.

“You’re an idiot,” I said, and he grinned.

In the darkness of his room, I crawled into bed. The rain made shadows on the ink-wash paintings, as if the drops ran down the painted trees themselves.

“What do you want?” I whispered to the darkness. “Why am I the catalyst?” I hated myself for thinking it, but how much of his feelings for me were really him, and how much were…the other part of him, the part hunting me? Was it his feelings for me that were making the ink do weird things?

It couldn’t be. He hadn’t even really known me when my pen exploded.

Tomohiro had an alarm clock beside his bed that went tick, tick, annoyingly loud, as I squeezed my eyes shut.

I listened to the rain pattering on the roof. I pulled the blue duvet tighter around my shoulders, surrounded by the smell of him, my skin still pulsing where his touch had scored itself into my memory.

And once I drifted to sleep, the dragon rose in my dreams, Ishikawa standing fearlessly beside it.

Chapter 12

I awoke to Tomohiro knocking on the door and racing back down the stairs. I rubbed my eyes at first, then jolted up when I saw the alarm. I dashed downstairs and found him in the kitchen, grinning at me. I paused and thought about my hair, my face and my unbrushed teeth. My cheeks went red.

“Ohayo,” he said, waving his hand up in the air, a fresh skin-colored bandage wound tightly around his wrist. He was already dressed for school and frying up sausages in a pan.

“You’re going to school with your wrist like that?” I said.

“I don’t really have a choice. It’s kind of suspicious if I don’t show up,” he said. “My school blazer will cover it.

Don’t worry.”

I was nothing but worried. “It’s kind of warm to wear your blazer all day.”

He smiled. “I’ll manage. I left your seifuku outside the door.”

“Ah, thanks!” I shouted, running up the stairs. I saw him roll his eyes and turn back to cooking. I grabbed my seifuku and flipped the skirt back and forth. It was not only clean, but pressed, too— embarrassment spread through me as I realized how early he must have gotten up to iron the pleats, especially with his wrist chewed open. There was a bloodstain running along the hem, but it didn’t show up well unless you were looking for it. Thank god our school used dark navy skirts.

The blouse wasn’t in quite as good shape. The bleach had helped, but it looked pretty battered. The stains weren’t no-ticeably blood, though—mostly ink or mud. It’s not like I had a choice anyway, so I buttoned it up and tied the satin handkerchief around my neck. At least the long ends of the ribbon covered some of the shirt. I combed my hands through my hair and pulled on my kneesocks, practically brown with stains. Then I hurried back downstairs, where Tomohiro rolled two sausages out of the pan and onto my plate.

“Thanks,” I said, pressing my palms together. “Itadakimasu.” He nodded and put the pan back in the kitchen. There were two bowls of miso soup, two sausages each, a piece of lettuce, and a cut-up tomato.

We ate in silence, but between bites I peeked at him, dressed sharply in a clean uniform. His bangs fell into his eyes as he leaned down to scoop tofu out of the soup, the motion a little sloppy with his left hand.

“Um, so you cook,” I said, after the silence became awkward. He looked at me, a smile curving onto his lips. I hated him for being so cool and collected again when I was still a mess. I couldn’t even look him in the eye without feeling his lips against mine.

“My dad’s cooking is pretty bad,” he said. “So I thought I’d better learn before we starved to death.” I hesitated, not sure how to react to that. But then Tomohiro laughed so hard the tofu fell off his spoon back into the bowl. “You always look ready to pick a fight,” he grinned.