Ink

Drugs, guns, your basic underworld stereotypes. In fact, as long as the other gangs know we have a member who can create monsters—that alone is all the power we need to run things properly.

“So,” said Hanchi, reaching behind his back and pulling out a gun, “let’s try again.” He pulled out the clip and reset it with a loud click. Then he tossed the gun onto the table.

I watched as it spun around on the glossy surface, slowing until the end pointed at Tomohiro. “And there’s no point in trying anything,” Hanchi added. “Gun’s empty. So draw.”

Tomohiro picked up the sumi brush, gliding his fingers over the length of it, plying the bristles back and forth.

“Horsehair,” he said without looking up.

“Ganbare,” said Hanchi. Do your best.

Tomohiro placed the brush back on the table. He gripped the sumi ink stick tightly and moved it to the suzuri inkstone.

His hands shook just a little, but no one seemed to notice but me. He took a little water and poured it on the suzuri, then started grinding the sumi. The ink bled into the water, making it thick and dark. His hand twisted and twisted around the inkstone, the scraping filling the silent room. His bangs slipped from behind his ear and fanned downward, hiding his eyes from me.

I felt so powerless it was driving me crazy.

As Tomohiro ground the ink, the Yakuza began to crowd the table, curiosity overtaking them. Even Ishikawa rose, creeping forward on socked feet to peer over our shoulders.

I wished I could sock him one, but I guessed it wouldn’t be the best move. I’d have to punch him later.

If there was a later.

The ink thickened and pooled in the suzuri stone. A faint sheen swirled through the ink, the edges of the liquid floating in ways they shouldn’t. At first my brain tried to ignore it, and no one else seemed to notice except Ishikawa, whose face crumpled in confusion. But I’d watched Tomohiro draw before, and I knew when the ink stopped being ink and started being…well, something else.

Tomohiro stopped, pouring a little of the ink into a bowl and adding some water for a lighter gray shade. I pinched the back of his leg. This isn’t art class, idiot. Why put in the effort?

But as the Yakuza leaned in, I did, too, and when I saw his eyes, the pupils were huge. And growing.

Shit. Those alien eyes. I’d lost him now.

“Tomo, stop,” I said, pinching him harder.

He said nothing, staring down at the paper with those vast, vacant eyes. He blotted the brush and dipped it into the black ink. He lifted it in a slow arc to the hanshi paper.

He drew a stroke downward, then one sideways.

Each stroke was delicate, determined. The whole room watched in silence.

He blotted the brush, shaded the handle of the gun with the gray ink. The gun was more artistic and less realistic than the ten-thousand-yen note. I hoped the design was part of some plan he had, but the look in his eyes terrified me. The Kami blood in him had taken over.

Now his eyes were gleaming, his hand moving faster and faster.

I’d lost him, just like I’d lost him when he sketched the dragon. If bottled ink had been too much for him then, how the hell could he handle hand-ground sumi ink?

The answer rang out in my head.

He couldn’t.

Damn it.

The gun started spinning on the page slowly, his hand following it around, painting it as it moved.

“Tomo,” I said louder. “Stop.” I grabbed his arm with my hands, and his whole body shuddered. He jolted his arm back with so much force that I fell backward; he barely missed a stroke.

Ink spread from my fingertips down my arms, coating my skin with a black sheen.

“Katie!” Ishikawa’s bleached hair loomed over me, his face twisted with concern. His hands reached out to pull me up.

“Don’t touch me!” I yelled. When I looked at my arms again, the ink was gone.

The Yakuza didn’t notice. They were staring at Tomohiro and getting nervous. The gun was spinning slowly again, pointing at each Yakuza as it went past and stopping for a brief moment. They leaned back, eyes wide.

“Yuuto, what happened to your eyes?” said Ishikawa.

“Hanchi!” said the Korean guy, but Hanchi waved it away.

“Wait,” he said.

Tomohiro kept drawing, filling in the sketch, adding depth. Ishikawa looked at my arms with their lack of ink.

He stared at Tomohiro’s alien eyes and at the drawing.

The ink was dripping sideways off the paper. It was reaching slowly, drop by drop, toward me.

“Yuuto,” Ishikawa whispered, like he finally got it. Like he finally realized how much danger we were in. “Yuuto, listen to Katie and stop.”

I wanted to tell him to piss off, but even more I wanted Tomohiro to listen.

“Yuuto,” Ishikawa said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Tomohiro thrust his arm back and Ishikawa tumbled into a group of Yakuza. They collapsed into the table behind them, and two of its legs shattered under the weight.

“Hanchi!” the Korean said again. This time Hanchi looked worried.

“Yuu, that’s enough,” he said, but Tomohiro’s hand whirred between the ink bowls and the hanshi paper. “Mou ii!” he said again. Nothing.

Hanchi’s eyes narrowed. He reached forward, grabbed the Korean’s gun and pointed it at Tomohiro.

“Yamero!” he shouted. Stop!

And suddenly the gun stopped spinning. The sketch rotated upright, so that the gun barrel pointed directly at Tomohiro.

And I screamed as I saw the trigger pulling back.

“Yuuto!” shouted Ishikawa and leaped forward.

Bang.

I screamed.

Tomohiro and Ishikawa collapsed to the floor.

Blood streamed up Ishikawa’s shoulder, trickling through his bleached-white hair and pooling in his ear.

Another loud bang shook the building.

“What the hell was that?” shouted Hanchi.

“Hanchi!” yelled Sunglasses, pointing at the doorway.

At least twenty snakes made of ink wriggled under the rice-paper door.

Only, Tomohiro hadn’t drawn them.

“Sato,” Tomohiro groaned, and I slumped Ishikawa off him.

“Tomo,” I said as I clawed at his chest and arms searching for wounds. But we could both see Ishikawa sprawled unconscious on the floor, the blood soaking through his shirt.

More and more snakes streamed in, and something was crashing through the hallway toward us. The Yakuza scattered, firing at the snakes, screaming as the papery serpents wrapped around their ankles and sank in their inky teeth.

“We have to go!” I said. I grabbed Tomohiro’s arm and pulled him up with me, but he crouched back down again.

“We can’t leave him!” We stared at Ishikawa and how pathetic he looked, how the blood was retracing the lines back down to his shoulder now that Tomohiro was pulling him upright, the stark red threading through his white hair.

Tomohiro ducked under Ishikawa’s injured arm and I pulled on the other. Together we adjusted him over Tomohiro’s shoulders.

Ishikawa groaned.

“Sato,” said Tomohiro. “Come on, man, help me here.”