Shadow

spoke rapidly with a lot of slang, and I found him harder to understand than Yuki. I hoped Diane was right about the learning curve, because I needed fluency to kick in right...now.

Damn. Nothing.

A chime trilled in the speaker above us, and a moment later Suzuki-sensei walked in. Everyone scurried to their desks, the room falling silent.

“Good morning,” he barked. “Welcome to Suntaba. I’m your homeroom teacher, Suzuki Kentaro.” He turned his back to us and scrawled the kanji for his name on the board. I grabbed my pen and scribbled the name in the corner of my notebook so I wouldn’t forget the kanji. “I also teach math, so we’ll be together for that class. Let’s do our best this year, and I hope that you will all work your hardest to get the most out of your time here.” He bowed stiffly, and the students rose to follow suit. I rushed to finish copying the last kanji of his name and stood just in time for the last half of the bow, so I bobbed down as they stood up. “Time for the welcome ceremony,” he added, “so if you want to just leave your bags here, we’ll get going.”

Yuki nodded at me and I tried to smile, but every cell in my body ached with nervousness.

This was it. My new life was beginning.

Chapter Twelve

Tomohiro

The winter break faded quietly away as part of me died. The nightmares ebbed, like the tide of fear had gone out. I didn’t want to be alone again, but it was stupid of me to let things with Myu go on as long as they had.

I breathed in the fresh spring air. The pink blooms of sakura were late this year and Sunpu Park stood bare, not even any buds on the cherry trees. Everything was dead, as if I’d killed it.

I coasted my bike through the courtyard and leaped off just before the tire crashed into the racks. In the genkan, I kicked off my shoes and reached for my slippers. My last year at Suntaba, the last year before I could vanish.

I reached into my bag and placed my black notebook on top of my shoes. I wouldn’t need it until later anyway, when I left for cram school.

Right. I don’t know why I lied to myself, but it was better than facing the truth of what I was doing.

“Be good,” I said quietly, rubbing the corner of the book with two fingers.

I walked to homeroom squeezing between students greeting each other. I couldn’t shake the anxiety inside me. Myu had texted almost every day during break. I’d never written back.

It had been a nice dream, but it was time to move on. There was nothing for me, only death.

Except protecting Shiori. That was something I still clung to. I couldn’t cut her off as easily. She needed me, and I needed her.

When I reached my new homeroom, 3-C, I sighed with relief that Myu wasn’t in it. Seemed like Tanaka Keiko had been moved as well.

“Oi, Yuuto!” called Sato from his desk. A ring of students clustered around him. Weird, because he was usually alone like me.

“Why the board meeting?” I asked as Sato smirked.

“New girl in school,” said one of the guys.

“News flash,” I said, collapsing into the desk behind Sato’s. “There’s a whole freshman year of new girls.”

Sato grinned. “Not like that. It’s a foreigner. An American.”

I looked up, tucking my bangs behind my ears. “American? Like an exchange student?”

One of the guys shook his head. “I hear she’s permanent.”

“At Suntaba?” We had the occasional exchange student but never anyone long-term.

“Now you’ve got him riled up,” Sato laughed. “I bet you have a thing for foreign girls, Yuuto. Poor Myu will have to share.” I smirked. He had no idea how far apart Myu and I had drifted. She didn’t belong in my world anymore. She never had.

“She’s probably Japanese-American,” I said. “Parents moving back or something.”

But Sato shook his head. “We saw her in the hallway this morning,” he said, running a hand through his bright white hair. He must have re-bleached it over the holidays; I didn’t remember it being so blinding. “She’s blonder than me.”

“Well you better give her your keitai number before someone else does,” I said.

“Please. Some of us have lives that don’t involve turning down half the school’s population, Yuuto.”

“Shut up, Sato.” I didn’t want reminders of that now. Once Myu and I broke up, the confessions might start coming again, and the attention that I didn’t want...

But what could I do? I couldn’t go back.

“So give up on the ladies for a while and focus on kendo, yeah? You know Takahashi’s going to be in the ward tournament and he’ll be tough.”

“Yeah, ’cause you’re a model kendouka,” I grinned. “Your shinai binding still unraveling?”

“Screw you,” Sato laughed.

When the bell chimed, we filed into the auditorium for the annual welcome ceremony. After three years it was getting old, so I spent most of it trying not to nod off—I’d been up early putting together my own bentou lunch. No way was Myu going to cook for me now, but I didn’t care. My own imperfect sweet egg was good enough, a splash of cold water in the face that I sorely needed.

The headmaster went on and on—welcoming the new students, greeting the old. The introduction of a new math teacher, the induction of the freshman class.

And then I saw her when we stood to sing the school anthem, a bob of blond hair tied back in a ponytail amidst a sea of black and brown dye jobs. The American girl. Sato noticed too when my singing died in my throat. He jabbed an elbow in my side as I stared.

I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t that she was pretty, although she was that too, all curves and uncertainty as she tucked her hair behind her ears with delicate fingers. And it wasn’t even the stupid pull I felt toward her, like a spark buzzing through me and pissing me off. I didn’t want to be that stupid beast falling for a beauty, especially while I was still dating someone else. Especially when I had just resolved to stay the hell away from relationships.

I couldn’t stop staring because it was her, the girl from my nightmares. The one holding the mirror on the shores of Itsukushima, the one in the pale kimono.

Her hair wasn’t black, and her features were different. She was American, blond, but there was an unmistakable feeling that I’d seen her before. Sometimes faces aren’t quite right in dreams, but this time it wasn’t quite right while awake. There was a connection, but I didn’t understand.

What the hell was going on?

“I knew it,” Sato mumbled. “God, you are so screwed.”

I dropped my eyes as the last verse of the school anthem sounded around us.

“Whatever,” I said, joining back in with the song. He thought it was a stupid crush. If only it was that trivial.

And then the floor trembled, the notes of the song pulled from my lungs as I lurched forward. It was just a tremor, but it had caught me off guard. Sato stared at me, his head tilted to one side.

“Aren’t you overreacting?” he said as the ground shuddered beneath us. “It’s just a tiny earthquake.”

But I felt off balance as the world shook. I had that same sense of dread that always hit just before the nightmares materialized. The shadows clawed at the seams of me, ready to rip right through. I clenched my fists, willed myself to calm down. The tremor stopped.

The headmaster sighed with relief. “I think we shook the very earth with our singing,” he chuckled before