Shadow

twelve I could fly without an adult.

“No way, Jose,” Mom had said when I’d asked.

“Why?” I’d whined.

“Send my baby girl to the other side of the world? You’re dreaming.”

“Just for a week, Mom!”

“And then? What if you want to live there forever? What if you never come back?”

“Like that would happen.”

“Diane never came back, honey. Why do you think you would?”

It was such a strange thing to say, I remembered thinking. Who wouldn’t come home from a vacation? But Mom’s eyes had filled with tears.

“We need to stick together, Katie. You’re everything to me.”

She was afraid. Dad had left her, and she was terrified I’d leave her, too.

“Okay, Mom. I’ll stay with you. Promise.”

I flipped the pages mindlessly, past glossy photos of cherry blossoms, Buddhist temples, markets filled with rows of gleaming fish.

When my tears fell, they wrinkled the pages until I couldn’t even read the words.

I’d kept my promise. I’d stayed.

And after all her worrying, it was Mom who’d left me.

Chapter Two

Tomohiro

The nightmares were getting worse.

I sat up with a shout, my fingers clawing into my comforter. The darkness in my room was disorienting. Where was I? Who was I?

The shadows. The beach. The Torii.

My chance to escape.

All gone.

But the worst was the simple truth—the woman in the kimono was right.

There is no escape, she’d said. There is only death.

It’s not like I wanted to be all dark and hopeless about it, but night after night of monsters whispering in your ear will do that to you. I used to think there was something wrong with me, that I needed medication or serious therapy. Like my mom—Kaasan always took a bunch of different pills for her nightmares, though she tried to hide them until she thought I was upstairs.

Now I know. There’s definitely something wrong. And it’s not something I can fix with any drugs.

I pushed my bangs out of my eyes and reached for my keitai phone on the table. I flipped it open, squinting as the bright LCD screen flashed into my eyes.

A couple texts from Myu, both from last night, wondering why I hadn’t called. I was a shitty boyfriend, I’ll admit it. I wasn’t really sure why she put up with me. She was tall, leggy, determined to have her way. Sometimes I wondered if Myu just saw me as a challenge, a puzzle to untangle like the Debate Club she belonged to. When Myu confessed her feelings for me, I was a little embarrassed she hadn’t seen through me. A lot of girls confessed because they thought I was some kind of mystery. I came late to class a lot, and sometimes I needed to skip, because of my...condition. But I worked late nights and pulled the grades I needed to keep my dad off my back. Tousan’s the last one I wanted involved in what was really going on with me. And somehow the girls thought this made me a disappearing badass who was boyfriend material. I’d thought Myu was smarter than that.

Why the hell would I want to be some mysterious badass? All I wanted was for the shadow to leave me alone, the nightmares to stop.

But they won’t. Not until I’m dead. I know that, because of what I am. Marked, chosen. Hunted, like Taira.

I scanned through Myu’s text messages and clapped the phone shut, tossing it on my pillow. Half a second later my alarm went off and I slammed a hand on it in the darkness.

Normally I would stumble downstairs to start on my school bentou, but lately Myu had insisted on bringing me a homemade lunch, the box wrapped in bright furoshiki cloths and filled with cream-and-strawberry sandwiches, cherry tomatoes and onigiri rice balls. Her cooking wasn’t too bad, but she always had trouble rolling the sweet egg right. It came out lumpy and crooked, which she tried to hide with strategic flower-shaped picks.

I guess I shouldn’t complain. I couldn’t get it right either.

In the kitchen, I wolfed down a bowl of miso soup and slathered a piece of thick toast in honey and butter. I grabbed my blazer from the hook by the door just as Tousan stumbled down the stairs.

“Ittekuru,” I mumbled at him, letting him know I was heading for school. He nodded, sleepy, rubbing his head with his hand. He’s not lazy, my dad. He likes to see how far he can push the notion of overtime, which means getting home at 4:00 a.m. and waking up late. Sometimes he ends up sleeping at the company because it’s just easier. We didn’t really get along anymore, not since I’d had to transfer schools. So it’s easier for both of us if he’s at work. He thinks I’m following his rules, and I don’t have to disappoint him with the truth.

He didn’t even say the expected farewell “Itterasshai” when I closed the front door. He just grunted, like that alone was too much effort.

I grabbed my bike and cycled as fast as could toward Suntaba Senior High School. One more year and I could vanish from Shizuoka City into whatever life I wanted. Everyone wanted to move to Tokyo but I wanted somewhere quiet—Kyushu, maybe, something really remote. There were a few attractive schools in Osaka, but I wasn’t sure if they were far enough away, and they were definitely too crowded. And I wasn’t sure what Tousan would say when I brought up schools that weren’t for banking or medicine. He’d probably hit me so hard that I’d land in Osaka anyway.

The minute I slammed my bike into the rack at school, I heard Myu from across the courtyard.

“Yuu-chan!”

I wouldn’t let her use my first name. It was too close, too personal, and I wasn’t used to letting someone see that deeply into me. I had to keep Myu at a distance, to keep her safe. I couldn’t let her get hurt by the monster in me. I wasn’t that shitty of a boyfriend.

She walked toward me, waving goodbye to her friends with perfectly manicured fingernails. I rolled my eyes. She should’ve been wearing gloves—it was winter, and even though there was no snow on the ground, the wind still held a sharp bite.

It’s not like I didn’t like Myu. For one thing, she was totally hot. I was pretty sure Sato was jealous she’d confessed to me because he’d acted all pissed. And sometimes Myu whispered kind things to me that caught me off guard, and then I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and never let her go.

I liked having someone who cared about me, how being with Myu let me pretend I was normal. I liked that I was starting to really fall for her. Loud and demanding as she sometimes was, she had this other side to her that was thoughtful and soft. I wanted to let her see the real me, call me by my first name, to let her into my world. To draw for her.

Then I would remember what I was capable of, and why I could never do that. The shadows that tried to claim Taira in the nightmare—they were coming for me, too. The ink drowning my life—I could barely control it. I couldn’t afford to drop my guard, not even with Myu.

She wrapped both arms tightly around my arm, pressing her cheek against my shoulder.

“Yuu-chan,” she whined, her fingernails glittering in the sunlight. “You didn’t answer my texts last night.”

I wanted to say sorry, but that’s what nice guys said, and I couldn’t be one, not with the crowd we were drawing. Nice guys attract friends, but I needed everyone to leave me alone. I stepped back and shrugged.