Ink

“Oh.” Pause. She sounded so nervous. Why the heck was she calling me? “I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Yamada Shiori.”

My head buzzed with a migraine, but the name hit some sort of recognition. How did I know that name?

“I go to a girls’ school near Sunpu Park. I’m a friend of Yuu Tomohiro…?”

It struck me like a hit between the eyes, like a shinai cracking down on my head.

Shiori. The pregnant “girlfriend.”

“Oh, hi,” I said weakly. She gave an embarrassed laugh on the phone, like she was relieved I knew who she was.

“I wanted to ask you about Tomo-kun,” she said, and I felt like I would throw up. That was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I bet she really was his girlfriend after all. Nothing would surprise me at this point.

I dug the wooden spoon into the melon ice while I held the phone with my shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Well, have you noticed anything strange lately?”

The world that had been spinning stopped suddenly. I fell back into the couch and cupped the receiver with both hands.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s been coming to visit me and help me with my…

situation. Our mothers were best friends before, um, before the accident. But he hasn’t been coming around lately, and he’s been sort of…cold, somehow. Tough.”

I couldn’t speak.

“The thing is, Yuu has some friends who are no good. I’m a little scared that he’s in trouble. You know, with his last girlfriend, when she was in trouble with them, he actually—

I know it sounds cruel but—he asked if he could sketch me so she would think he was cheating. He said he had to do something severe to protect her.”

Her words blurred in my ears. Yuu’s last girlfriend. Saeda Myu. The name cracked into my head.

Point. Two wins the match.

It hit me then, in a horrible way. The argument between Myu and Tomohiro in the genkan at school, the way he’d been a total ass to her. The betrayal in her eyes, that she’d thought he was different, and his confession to me later in Toro Iseki.

I had to hurt her to protect her, to keep her safe from what I am.

My thoughts spun. I could hear Shiori calling my name, but I couldn’t respond.

I was a moron. An absolute, total moron.

It wasn’t like Tomohiro to take me to a love hotel, to say the things he’d said. He was messing with me to get me to hate him.

To save me.

“Katie?” Shiori’s gentle voice reached through the chaos swirling in my head.

“Shiori,” I said. “I think he’s in trouble. I’m going to find him.” I copied down her number, promising to call her back, and slammed the phone down.

I grabbed my purse and pushed open the sliding door to the deck, where Diane’s bike gleamed in the setting sun. I lifted the handlebars over my shoulder and dragged the bike to the door, shoving it into the elevator and cramming it through the lobby doors.

The wheels hit the pavement and I was off, snaking away from the sunset over Shizuoka, into the end-of- day humidity. I wove through cars, motorbikes and taxis. The clouds above gathered and the rain started to drizzle down, not much more than a fog around me.

How could I have been so stupid? How could I fall for it so easily?

The more I thought about it, the sicker I felt. What were the chances in a city of seven hundred thousand people that I would run into Ishikawa right outside the hotel? That’s why Tomo hiro kept checking his watch—he’d asked Ishikawa to wait outside so he could see us break up. It was a setup to throw off the Yakuza. I could see that now. And I’d fallen for it.

He really pissed me off.

I wound past Shizuoka Station and up into the streets of Oguro, where I was a bit lost. It had been hours since it had happened, so why would he still be here? I followed the way as well as I could remember, which really wasn’t that well.

The streets were deserted in the rain, and the darkness fell quickly. Before I knew it, I was biking through Oguro alone, the roads lit by the humming fluorescent lights of the conbini stores every few blocks.

I stopped in front of one and flipped open my keitai. I dialed Tomohiro, but his phone was off and it went straight to his voice mail. I pedaled forward again, hunting through the maze of Oguro, searching for…something.

An hour later, the backs of my legs ached and I hadn’t found anything. I decided on a new plan and set out for Shizuoka Station. And then came a loud crash.

There was an overturned garbage can near the mouth of Sunpu Park, and beside it on the bridge I saw a familiar shock of white hair.

I slowed down, lifting my leg over the bike. I coasted on one pedal the way Tomohiro always did. I jumped off as I neared the bridge, slipping behind a white truck parked there.

Ishikawa pulled himself up onto the cement railing of the bridge, kicking his legs against the stone. Two of his unshaven cronies stood with him, one wearing sunglasses, the other smoking a cigarette. I wondered if they were the same ones who’d confronted me when I was with Jun, but they didn’t look familiar. How many Yakuza were in Shizuoka anyway?

It wasn’t like it was Tokyo or Kobe, the center of their headquarters. What the hell were they here for? The fields of tea?

Oh. Probably.

And then I saw Tomohiro standing across from them, his navy gym bag at his feet, surrounded, with no hope of escaping.

He didn’t look stressed, though. He leaned against a sakura trunk, hands in his pockets, slouching. He wore a short-sleeved cream jacket over his black T-shirt and jeans, the soft color catching the dim lights around the bridge. He looked down at the ground, his bangs fanning into his eyes.

“How long are you going to deny it?” Ishikawa said. I pressed my fingers into the cold metal edge of the truck and slid down to squat on my heels. Alarm bells blared in my head. Should I call the police? Or would that be even more exposure Tomohiro didn’t want?

Tomohiro didn’t answer, and Ishikawa laughed, smacking his fist against the railing.

“It doesn’t really matter if you admit it or not,” he said.

“We know you drew the dragon, Yuuto. I’m just trying to give you a chance. We’ve been best friends a long time. I want to help you, man. I know you’re scared.”

It sounded like the speech he gave me. And Tomohiro smirked at it, too, staring Ishikawa straight in the eye.

“Scared of what?” he said. “You’re talking shit.”

“Scared of your power,” Ishikawa said. “Scared of the possibilities. You think you’re the only Kami in Shizuoka? I heard about the nightmares you ‘gifted ones’ have. And shit are you gifted, Yuuto. You think all Kami can make dragons?”

Tomohiro smirked and looked away. “Like I said, you’re crazy, Sato.”

“Oh? How’d you get that scar on your wrist, Yuuto?”

Tomohiro wrapped his slender fingers around his wristband and twisted it back and forth.

“Fuck you,” he spat. The two guys beside Ishikawa lurched forward and Tomohiro uncoiled, balling his hands into fists.

My breath caught in my throat.

“Yuuto,” Ishikawa said, his eyes gleaming in the darkness. There was something tender in his voice. “I don’t