of low buildings, built with earth-quakes in mind. Yuki chattered excitedly about how we were going almost two hundred miles per hour, but it just made my ears pop and ache the whole way.
Yuki and I got off the bullet train in Hiroshima and switched to the local trains for the big red-and-white ferry to Miyajima. We saw the giant o-Torii gate in the distance, an archway of bright orange reflected in the deep blue water.
Itsukushima Shrine splayed out on its stilt legs above the tide, which swelled around the barnacle-encrusted base of the snaking orange hallways. Against the blue of the sky and the dark green forested mountains, the sight took my breath away.
Yuki squeezed my arm. “It’s beautiful, right? It’s the one thing I like about visiting my brother.”
I grinned. “Is he that awful?”
“Worse,” she said, and we laughed. I breathed in the smell of the sea, the motor of the ferry whirring in my ears. And in the back of my mind, I felt the happy thrill of a summer vacation with friends.
But whenever I closed my eyes, the imprint of the ink dragon leaped at me, Ishikawa’s words filling me with doubt and dread. What sort of world was Tomohiro walking into at his kendo training retreat? Could he hold out against Ishikawa?
And if there really was a secret society of Kami—a dangerous one at that—why the hell didn’t he tell me? Did he really not know? So how come Ishikawa did? As if the Yakuza were really the good guys, and I was supposed to fall for that.
But no matter how I played the scene out in my head, I was never fully convinced that I’d figured it out. It didn’t add up.
The ferry docked and Yuki’s brother was there, waving wildly at us.
“Niichan!” Yuki shouted.
“Yuki!” he shouted back.
Niichan was short and slender, and looked an awful lot like Yuki. They had the same round, warm face, and the same willowy fingers.
“So good to see you,” he said, when we’d finally docked at the Miyajima Terminal. “And this is your friend Katie?”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, and we bowed to each other.
“I’m Watabe Sousuke,” Niichan said. “But you can call me Niichan, too, if you like.”
“Thanks.” I smiled. I’d never had any siblings, and it was nice to have a brother, even if he was a surrogate.
He took our suitcases, one in each hand, and loaded them into his white three-wheeled truck. We puttered up a few side streets and then scaled the side of the mountain.
He pulled into a narrow driveway and there it was, a little two-room house halfway up the mountainside and out of the way of the tourists. The view was amazing, the ocean stretching out to tiny islands that rose from its depths. From the inside of the house, the roar of the waves was a gentle lapping, a pleasant sound that filled the house.
Niichan put our suitcases in the corner of the main room and then walked over to the little stove to boil some water.
He made us each a cup of tea, and we sat down together on the tatami floor.
“Yuki’s glad you could come this year,” he said, passing a plate of cookies. I sat up straight on my knees, ready to put into practice what I’d learned at Tea Ceremony Club. But Yuki sat with her legs sprawled to the side, so I collapsed, too, relieved but a little deflated. So much for tea-ceremony stud-ies. “She always complains about how bored she is.”
“How could you be bored here? It’s beautiful!”
Yuki groaned. “It’s beautiful,” she said, “and tiny. Once you’ve been here every summer for the last four years, it starts to wear on you.”
“Well, at least you can show Katie around this time,
Niichan said, and I blushed at the familiarity of hearing my first name from a stranger. I guess I’d been in Japan long enough for it to affect me like that. “Listen, Katie, if you’re interested, I can show you around Itsukushima Shrine.”
“Isn’t that the one we saw from the ferry?”
Yuki nodded. “Niichan works there.”
My eyes almost popped out of my head. “You’re a monk?”
He laughed. “No, no,” he said. “Just a caretaker. I main-tain the website for the priests, clean the grounds, lead tours, that sort of thing.”
“Oh.” But my heart was still pounding. If he worked at a Shinto shrine, wouldn’t he know a lot about Kami?
After the tea, we took a walk along the shoreline of Miyajima, the giant orange arch of Itsukushima in the distance. We had dinner at a cafe, and on the way home, Niichan bought us each a maple leaf–shaped custard cake, the pastry warm in our hands. He laid out futons for us in the living room, which was also the kitchen, and was now a bedroom. He slept in the other room, which was his bedroom and had a Western-style bed in it. Diane’s mansion had Western beds, too, and I wasn’t used to the tatami pressing against my spine through the thin futon as I tried to sleep. Yuki and I whispered for a while, but when she fell asleep I stared into the darkness, listening to the lapping of the ocean outside the window.
Suntaba School and my life there felt so far away, the happiness and the danger Tomohiro brought into my world. I wasn’t sure how I’d managed to get mixed in with gangsters and secret societies. I wished I’d fallen for Tanaka, that I’d called Tomohiro on the jerk he was and just stayed away from him. But I’d seen the real him, that he was deeper and different and changed. Now I couldn’t imagine a world without him in it. My heart was glass— easy to see through, simple to break.
I wondered if this was how Mom had felt after Dad. It was enough to make me swear off boys forever.
The ocean breeze blew in through the window, the rich, salty smell of the sea pressing against my face. I thought of riding the horse through Toro Iseki, galloping freely through the clearing and laughing until tears swelled at the corners of our eyes and our stomachs ached.
A buzzing noise sounded in my purse. My
A text from Tomohiro. Of course.
How is Miyajima? Training started today. Katakou’s sensei is tough. Sato thinks you and I are spending too much time together. He’s joking that you’re seeing Takahashi on the side. —Tomo
I read the message again, scouring it for the messages hidden underneath. If Ishikawa thought we were spending too much time together, it must mean he was pestering Tomohiro about the Kami thing. My cheeks flushed when I read about Jun. Was he actually worried about it? I didn’t want to explain myself and come off looking dumb. Or worse, defensive.
I thought carefully, then typed a response.
Miyajima is beautiful, more fun than a sweaty old kendo summer. I only saw Takahashi at Sunpu when Ishikawa was being a—I deleted what I’d originally put, and tried again—
jerk.
I stared at it for a while, then clicked Send. I couldn’t risk any hidden messages of my own, anything that might give him away. I hoped my concern went with the message, because I was out of my mind over here on this tranquil island, unable to do anything to help.
In the morning, we took the ropeway up the mountain and searched for monkeys with Niichan’s binoculars. When the afternoon got too hot, we had plenty of summer homework to keep us occupied in the little house while we blasted the air-con.
Niichan and I went for a walk while Yuki perfected her chicken curry for dinner. We talked about the weather, the sights in Miyajima, about New York and Canada, and my life straddled between the two. When we reached Itsukushima Shrine, we wandered straight in, walking along the boardwalk planks above the water, through the long tunnels of orange and white that snaked along the building.
“Niichan,” I said, looking down at the big koi circling the stilts of the shrine.
