It’s only you he doesn’t want to be friends with. Terrible, terrible you. Ellie bit down hard on her cheek to shut up the voice in her head, turning to the boy with headphones. Up close she could see that his skin was browner than most of the other students’, with dyed-red hair and piercings on the top of his left ear and both eyebrows, which were thick and black like some kind of evil caterpillar. The other boy, who still wasn’t looking up, had the sharpest cheekbones she’d ever seen and skin so pale it was almost translucent, drawing attention to his bruised crescent-moon eyes. He looked as if he never slept, only read.
“Hey, Micky.” The red-headed boy beamed over at him and pulled out a chair, gesturing for him to sit, which he did happily.
“Hi, Rio! Hi, Wei!” Micky replied, ignoring the tension.
Without a word, Rio winked at Ellie, and she felt like kicking him.
“Obviously we were hoping one of you guys could tell us what’s got everyone so excited,” Anastacia said bluntly, taking a seat next to Wei, the boy with the book.
“I like your eye makeup.” Caterpillar Eyebrow’s hand moved a lock of red hair from his eyes, looking Ellie up and down. “Very cool.”
“Rio, stop being a nuisance,” Jamie chastised, which only made Rio laugh.
But if Ellie didn’t know any better, she sensed that Jamie also wanted to know. She took a seat opposite them, spreading her legs across the bench, hoping to give off the energy of a dangerous gangster.
Thank goodness for the boys’ uniform, she thought. Something about this boy was already getting on her nerves. “Can you tell us or not?”
“It’s the Pink Demon, Pinku Oni-chan.” It wasn’t Rio who had replied, but Wei, who thrust out his phone for them all to look at, clicking “Translate.”
Everyone leaned over, even Jamie, the phone in the middle of the table while Lottie read aloud.
“‘The Pink Demon, who has been making sporadic appearances throughout Tokyo and nearby cities for the last two months, was spotted this morning in Shinjuku without her usual gang. This has now dispelled rumors that she can only be spotted at night.” She scrolled down and pressed play on the blurry video below the article.
What Ellie saw set her whole body alight.
From the video came the sound of an engine revving, a high-voltage purring in the distance getting closer and closer, until a flash of pink, so fast it could send the whole world spinning, whooshed past the camera. The video stopped just as she appeared. The Pink Demon. Dressed in a black graffiti-covered uniform and oversize pleated trousers, she roared in the wind, mounted atop her magenta sports motorbike, with all the grace of someone riding a valiant steed. On the side of the bike was a black-painted number four in a circle like a brand, and in the girl’s hand was a baseball bat, her weapon, inscribed with colorful writing and numbers. But the most shocking part of the image was the girl’s head, magenta like the bike, with two massive horns protruding from her helmet.
The Pink Demon.
Ellie didn’t know if it was the bike or the girl, but she wanted to be that powerful. She wanted to be that free.
“Whoa!” Saskia echoed Ellie’s feelings precisely.
Ellie looked up, her mind still a blur of pink and black and the number four.
A familiar voice sounded, bringing the fun to a sudden stop.
“Phones away, everyone.” Sayuri repeated the words in Japanese as well, standing with her hands on her hips in the doorway of the food hall, Miko at her side.
“The queen of the school has spoken,” Rio declared, smirking while everyone rushed to put their phones out of sight.
Ellie couldn’t help scowling at Sayuri as she floated across the hall to a table where she pulled out her own beautifully handmade lunch. How could anyone be that perfect?
Takeshin Gakuin’s secret treasure has long been a mystery to historians around the world, a rumor grown from one of Kou Fujiwara’s poems that hints at a priceless artifact hidden “in her heart.” To this day no one has been able to solve the mystery and it is widely considered to be a myth.
Beside the text was an ukiyo-e painting of Kou, depicting her with black hair flowing down to her knees, turning to the spectator with a long deadly sword in her hand. Although there was a tranquility to the image, there was no denying it—the painting reminded Lottie of the first time she’d seen a picture of Liliana last year in a textbook. The ferocity, the sword, the edge of authority that you could taste. Lottie was getting serious déjà vu. It was far too similar to the curiosities at Rosewood, curiosities that she’d learned not to overlook.
“Secret treasure and pink demons!” Lola whispered in the near-silent library. “I think I love this school.”
Micky was spread out quietly opposite them on a cushion, reading over his notes from class while pushing long chocolate-covered biscuits into his mouth.
Staring down at the image, Lottie couldn’t help thinking of Ellie’s dad. Had King Alexander known about the treasure? Had he looked for it? Had he met Sayuri’s parents?
A buzzing came from her pocket and she peeped at her phone to see a message from Ollie, her oldest friend from home. Without reading it she typed back: Can’t talk. Busy.
It was the fifth message he’d sent her since she’d arrived in Japan, and she didn’t know how she could make it more clear to him that she had important things to worry about and couldn’t be messaging him all the time to tell him about Japan. She had too much on her plate right now.
The library was small compared to Rosewood’s—three wooden rooms that smelled of dusty paper, separated by decorated screens, all filled to the brim with books. Nonfiction, ancient stories, poems, their aging spines created ladders into whole new worlds.
“Do you think
