Ink

“The human in you fears the Kami that f lows in your veins. Once you stop struggling, things will be easier.”

“I’ll fight this as long as I live,” Tomohiro hissed.

“And if you hurt others in the process?”

Silence.

“What’s a guilty man’s death compared with many innocents’?”

“Because!” Tomohiro shouted. “It’s not my choice to make!”

“You’re still talking like you’re not a Kami,” Jun snapped back. “It is our choice. It’s our responsibility to protect them.

When others get hurt because of your inaction—what then?”

My body tensed, looking for some way out, some way to end this. But doubt pressed against me. The kanji for sword, the dragon, the gun—they’d all tried to kill Tomohiro. What if he really was so dangerous he was unconsciously trying to stop himself?

What if he—the ink— What if it killed me, too? It was already seeping into my life in every way possible. What if—

I swallowed, my throat so thick I could barely breathe.

“What then, Yuu?”

“Then it’s better if I’m not alive.”

It’s worth my life, but it isn’t worth yours.

“You can do so much more with your life,” Jun said. “Don’t settle for this. Don’t let it haunt you.”

In the breeze I could hear a whisper of that voice again, that gathering noise like a million voices talking at once. It was the same voice that had taken him over when we’d faced Ishikawa and his thugs. The sound was overwhelming, moans of pain and cries for help, animalistic screeches and overlap-ping voices. Monster, they said. Demon. Murderer.

“No!” Tomohiro cried out and fell to his knees, hands clutched over his ears. He could hear it, too, like high-pitched feedback that bounced around inside your head. Only, the way he writhed, I knew that whatever I was hearing, his was tenfold.

My mind reeled. I had to stop this torture for him.

I stared at the motorbikes, useless with the castle doors closed. And then I spotted Tomohiro’s kendo bag, its white zipper gleaming in the moonlight.

I stooped over, grabbing the pull with shaking hands. I rummaged through the bag, the smell of worn leather filling every breath, the armor slipping across my palms as I searched.

The smooth touch of bamboo as my hands closed around the shinai.

I wheeled around, the others watching me with confusion.

I stepped in front of Tomohiro, swung the shinai forward and pointed it at Jun’s throat.

“Leave us the hell alone,” I said.

“Katie,” he said, lifting his arms in front of him. “What are you doing?”

The shinai shook in my hands as I tried to hold it steady.

Jun stepped toward me. “We’re trying to help.”

“The hell you are.”

“Tell me you’ve never felt afraid of him. Tell me he’s never endangered you.”

My cheeks flushed red. “You don’t understand anything!”

I shouted. I swung the shinai at him and he leaped back.

“And you think you do? How long have you known him, a few months? Do you have any idea what Yuu is capable of?

Does he?”

Splotch, splotch. Only, now the ink was dripping onto the gravel from Jun, spreading across his back into feathered black wings. The ink dribbled down Jun’s arm and pooled in the palm of his hand. It stretched out on itself, building like an icicle of ink until it was as long as the shinai in my hand.

“I didn’t want to involve you in this. I wanted to protect you. Can you expect the same from him?”

“Shut up!” I snapped. “You’re the same as the Yakuza. You just want to use him, too!” I pushed off the back of my foot and swung the shinai at him. “Do you hear how crazy you sound? You’re just thugs trying to take over Japan!” My kiai shout rang in my ears. It was so loud I could barely believe it was my own voice.

He lifted his ink shinai to block my attack, and the force of the block pushed me backward. Ink splattered onto both of us, sprayed across the ground like dark blood.

Jun’s eyes flashed. “I’m not the same as the Yakuza. They can all rot and die.”

“Jun,” called out Ikeda, but he threw his hand back to them.

“No one touches her,” he said. Then to me, “Katie, please.

Don’t fight this. We’re on the same side.”

I circled him, but the other Kami backed up. He held his shinai ready, moving faster through the stances than I could.

Like I had a chance of beating the sixth-place national kendo champion.

But I had to try.

He was on the defensive, not lunging at me, which only pissed me off even more. It was like he knew I didn’t have a chance, like he wanted to humor me.

I shouted again, going for a right kote shot. If I could take out his wrists, wasn’t that the source of the Kami’s power?

But he turned at the last moment and I stumbled forward, leaving my dou wide open for a hit.

He didn’t take it.

“We’re not like them,” Jun said as he circled me, his leather shoes crunching the gravel slippery with ink. “All they think about is money and drugs, useless street power. I’m talking about real power, carving out a new future for Japan. Yuu belongs with us. He is one of us!”

“He’ll never be like you!”

Jun pointed the shinai down at the ground, his hands spread apart. He thought I wouldn’t fight him.

He was wrong. I swung and the tip grazed his wrist. He stumbled backward, letting go of the shinai with his left hand and shaking his fingers back and forth.

He inhaled a sharp breath. “I-te!”

Point.

I swung again, but he twisted out of the way. Now he was advancing toward me, a fire lit in his eyes. Ink feathers spread across his back, splaying out as they formed wings.

He yelled his kiai and lunged at me, his sword clacking under mine and pulling up with such force that I tumbled into the gravel.

“Katie,” he said, his voice full of concern. The sharp edges of the stones sliced across my knees as I fell, but I grabbed on to the shinai with everything left in me.

I was not going to lose, not like this. I couldn’t win, but I wouldn’t give up.

I rolled across the stones and onto my feet. My scraped knees burned, but I ran toward Jun anyway. I lifted the shinai over my head and screamed as I brought it down on his shinai.

Ink splattered everywhere as his shinai shattered. It showered the ground as he stared at me, and then the ink slowly dripped upward, re-forming into the slats of the sword again.

“It’s you,” he whispered.

“Damn right it is.”

“You manipulated the ink.”

I felt exposed, frightened. I didn’t want them to use me.