Ink

“Thanks. How about you? You’re hard at work, I see.”

“Yeah, well…” And he looked away. Was he avoiding me because he was embarrassed about his wrist? Or maybe the kissing in his living room? Now that I thought about it, it was kind of awkward.

“Um…so how was the training retreat?” I said. I’m connected to the Kami, I wanted to blurt out, but everything about him felt weird. He started to unbuckle the armor and reached for his water bottle on the bench nearby.

“Fine,” he said. “I might have learned enough of Takahashi’s moves to beat him next time.”

“Great,” I said. “And Ishikawa?”

“Ishikawa’s fast,” he said, chugging down the water. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm and screwed the lid back onto the bottle. “But there’s a good chance we won’t be paired in the tournament. Usually they don’t pit team members against each other.”

“Oh.” Pause. “So, um, how is your wrist doing?”

He hesitated and stopped pulling off his glove so it sat there half on, half off, the laces dangling down.

“I mean because of before,” I said. His eyes were glaring, like I’d hit a sore spot. But he didn’t know Jun had told me about it, right? I could just be innocently asking.

“It’s fine,” he said, grabbing the fingers of the glove and yanking it off, dropping his arm down before I could see.

Jeez, touchy much?

“That’s great,” I said. “So Ishikawa…?”

Another pause. “We’re getting along fine.”

I felt like I was standing in the middle of a quiet street, just waiting to get run over. Why was his voice so cold?

Then, as he looked into my eyes, his voice softened. He untied the tare around his waist and placed it with the rest of the armor. I noticed the new headband in his hair, not a bloodstain on it. He pulled it backward off his head, and his copper hair flopped down around his ears.

“Did you have fun in Miyajima?”

“Yeah, it was okay.” I might be a Kami. I couldn’t say it. It felt wrong, like I was intruding on the pain he suffered. But Niichan’s alternative, keeping my distance from Tomohiro—it scared me more. “I…I went to a Shinto shrine. I think maybe I learned why the ink moves.”

“What?”

I swallowed. “What if I’m a Kami, Tomo?”

He stared at me for a moment.

“You can’t be,” he said.

“What if there’s some other way, though? What if I’m connected somehow?”

“Do you have nightmares?” he said. “Like the ones I told you about?”

“What? No.”

“Then you’re not. All Kami have nightmares.” I thought of the painting of Taira no Kiyomori, the demons and shadows encircling him. “Not all Kami’s drawings move, right?

But all Kami have the nightmares.”

“Oh.” Niichan hadn’t said that.

“There’s some other reason you’re moving the ink. I’m not sure why. But don’t worry about it, okay? You’re not a monster, not like me. Ii ka? ”

“O-okay.”

“Good.” He stooped down and packed his shinai, gloves and hakama into his navy sports bag, carrying the rest to the storage room at the back of the gym. “So…want to go for some ramen?”

Not really. Why was it so awkward?

“Sure.”

When I got home, the phone was ringing. I hurried over to pick it up, but when I heard the voice on the other end, my mistake occurred to me.

“How’d you know I’d be here?” I said, scrambling for an excuse. Diane did half a laugh on the phone.

“I’d be more surprised if you weren’t,” she said. “C’mon, what teenager doesn’t want the house to herself for a week?”

“Diane, I promise, I’ll be really careful and take good care of myself.”

“I know,” she said. “If I thought you’d throw a house party, I’d have confiscated your key.”

“Does that mean—?”

“Yes, yes.” She sighed. “You can stay. But if anything happens, you call Yuki’s mom, okay?”

“I will,” I promised.

“So how was Miyajima?”

“Really nice.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I brought some manju home. You know, those cakes with custard in them.”

“Oh, that’s even better. Try and save some until I get home.”

“I will.”

“What did you have for dinner tonight?”

I stared at the unagi bentou, still in the bag. I wondered if it was ruined by now.

“Unagi,” I said. She didn’t say anything for a minute. “Diane?”

“I’m here,” she said. “It’s just, you’re sounding…well, not so much like a gaijin anymore.” Diane laughed, and even though I felt like I should be annoyed, I felt kind of proud. “Just like Nan,” she said. “You could be planted anywhere and bloom.”

“Comes with the genes,” I said. “Well, I mean, for you and me.” Mom had only wanted to bloom in familiar ter-ritory. I don’t think she would have gone for shrimp chips and seaweed.

“I’m in Osaka for a few more days and then I’ll be back, okay? Call me if you need anything.”

“I will.”

“Love you,” Diane said, and before I could answer, she hung up.

“Love you, too,” I said to the dial tone.

I put the unagi in the fridge and went into my room to pull on my pajamas. I sprawled out on my bed, staring at the ceiling.

I thought about how dim Tomohiro’s eyes had been, not lit up the way they were when he was happy or even when he was delighting in being a jerk. Was he really so upset about his wrist?

I rolled onto my side and curled up. It made sense when I thought about it. He’d had to quit calligraphy, the one thing he loved, because of this dark ability. And now the other passion in his life, kendo, was tainted, too. He couldn’t get away from this power, a dark inkblot on his life that controlled him unless he could find a way to control it.

So far, the ink was winning.

Chapter 14

The sound of my keitai beeping woke me the next morning.

I rubbed my eyes until they turned red.

“What time is it?” I mumbled, fingers splayed out as they searched the table beside me for the phone. I flipped the keitai open and looked at the text message from Tomohiro.

Meet me at 1pm, Shizuoka Station. —Yuu I stared at the name he’d written. Yuu felt distant and strange, but maybe he’d just made a mistake. He did seem a little off since the kendo retreat.

I stayed too long in the shower, until my skin turned pink and taut under all the steam. I put on my pretty pink shirt and a cream skirt, and even tried to do my hair up, which didn’t really work that well, but hey, points for