Ink

effort, right?

I waited outside the bus loop until I saw him stride over, his eyes cold and distant. He had the same look from school, the way he’d look staring at me from across the courtyard.

“Come on,” he said, looping his fingers around my wrist.

“Hey,” I said, following behind him. I pulled my hand out of his grip as I followed him. “What’s up with you today?”

“Sorry,” he said, looking down at the ground. “It’s my wrist. It’s really bugging me.” He pulled up the black wristband he wore to cover it and I gasped. The stitches were still visible, and the gash looked way bigger than I remembered.

“Will it…will it leave a scar?”

He hesitated for a second, then smirked and slipped the soft wristband back over the cut.

“I’ve got quite the collection,” he said, but the joke just made my stomach twist.

He led me through the winding, narrow streets of the Oguro neighborhood, until I’d completely lost track of where we were. He reached again for my arm and pulled incessantly, checking his watch again and again. So much for a nice date.

My pink-and-cream outfit looked completely out of place against the monotonous gray of the streets.

At last he led me toward a tall building. I couldn’t read the kanji, which wasn’t new. When he stopped abruptly, I almost crashed into his back.

“Close your eyes,” he said, turning his head to the side and not meeting my eyes.

“Tomo.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Trust me.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Trust you, Mr. Cheesy?”

He gave me an agitated sigh. “Ii kara!”

“Fine, fine.”

“Okay.” His voice was heavy, but I closed my eyes and let him lead me up the stairs and through some glass door.

The building inside smelled of dried flowers and musty carpet. We went up some more stairs and down a hallway, and I opened my eyes to peek. The hallway was lit with yellow lights glaring from above, an ugly carpet on the floor. Doors flanked both sides of the wall, like an apartment building.

Only, I was wrong.

Tomohiro stopped at one door and fiddled with a key in his pocket. He slid the lock open and led me in. The door clicked behind us, his hands on my shoulders. I stepped forward slowly, panic rising up my shoulders, buzzing in my ears.

I could barely get the words out. “What is this?” My throat felt like it had seized up.

“It’s a love hotel.” And there it was.

“What?” I couldn’t have heard him right.

“It’s popular in Japan,” he said, isolating me as he said it.

“It’s a place where we can be alone.” He turned around then, a sly smile on his face.

The room was huge, with a big soaker tub on the other side with marble steps leading up to it. And behind him, a neatly made bed. The whole thing looked like a very fancy hotel room, and I felt the lump in my throat growing.

He kissed me then, but it wasn’t at all like the kisses in his living room. His arms wrapped around me, but they weren’t gentle.

My world no longer felt like it was slipping out of balance.

It had tilted right over and I was falling, tumbling into space, into the flames below.

Yeah, he was gorgeous, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about him a lot since that night at his house. But it was too fast, way too fast. There was no way I was ready for this.

His kisses trailed to my shoulder, and the panic burned through me. My ears hummed like I’d been surrounded by screaming tweens at an Arashi concert.

“Tomo,” I said. “I don’t— I think— I’m not really ready for this.” I tried to lift his hands off me, but they snaked away and landed on my arms, my back, my hips. I stepped away from his lips as he leaned in, but his hands pressed me into the wall and he kissed me so hard I swore my lips would bruise.

I grabbed his shoulders with my hands and shoved him away. “I said quit it!”

The look on his face was horrible, an ugly sneer that made me look ungrateful. It made me feel like garbage, like he thought I was utter garbage.

“Typical Western girl,” he snapped, and time stopped. Hot tears sprang to my eyes and my stomach churned. He leaned in to kiss me again, but I turned away. I darted for the door and stumbled into the hallway.

“Katie!” I heard him call after me, but I ran faster, throt-tled down the stairs as my heart pounded in my chest. The tears wouldn’t stop, tracing down my cheeks and blurring my vision as I ran. I didn’t know where to go, but when I stared down the first-floor hallway, I saw that one end led to an array of doors and the other a glass door to the street.

I burst onto the sidewalk, clacking down the stairs in the shoes I’d so carefully chosen to go with my outfit. It seemed ridiculous now; all the warning signs, and yet I’d never admitted to myself what kind of guy he really was.

I raced down the street, choking back sobs. I stumbled as a shape rose in front of me, a person I hadn’t seen through my blurry vision. I tried to stop before we crashed, but my shoe twisted underneath me and I collapsed. He caught me before I hit the cement.

I looked up with horror.

Ishikawa.

“Greene?” he said, looking puzzled. His forehead creased as he looked at me with concern. “Are you okay?”

“Leave me alone,” I said, struggling out of his arms. I ran forward, but I could feel his eyes burning into my back as I sprinted away.

Oguro was a messy labyrinth of streets. I hurried onward, getting more and more lost, feeling like a dragon coiling in on its own tail, until my legs gave out. I fell to my knees, my lungs burning, and I cried there, cried and cried until the sobs ran dry.

I spent the night watching variety shows on TV, eating melon ice with a miniature wooden spoon they gave me at the conbini store. My head was spinning, even though I’d already downed two headache tablets with a slug of bitter oolong tea.

All the signs had been there. Didn’t I know better than to go for that kind of guy, thinking I had seen a different side of him and just excusing the way he acted the rest of the time?

I watched the variety-show panel as they jumped on little trampolines and shot hoops, and then talked about the history of onigiri rice balls.

I flinched when the phone rang. I didn’t want to answer it in case it was Tomohiro, although he hadn’t tried my keitai yet, so I figured he was pretty pissed.

Well, good. I was way more pissed.

The phone kept ringing. If it was Diane and I didn’t answer, then she’d worry and I’d never be allowed to be by myself again. Although that wasn’t really the worst punish-ment; apparently I wasn’t capable of making good judgments anymore.

The phone rang again. Maybe it was Yuki or Tanaka. They could pull me out of this spiral of misery. I swallowed hard, lifted the receiver and put it to my ear.

“Hello?”

“Um, hello?” It was a girl’s voice, gentle but unfamiliar. I wondered if it was a wrong number.

“Yes?”

“Is this, um, Katie Greene?”

“Unfortunately, it is.”

A confused hesitation. “What?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Yes, it’s me.”