Rain (23 page)

He pressed his lips against mine, but the jolt of it made the fire spark. I jerked away from him, my body arching from the pain.

The movement made my
keitai
fall onto the grass. The little bell on the charm jingled as it hit.

Protection from evil.

How could you protect yourself when the evil was inside? Is this what it felt like to be a Kami?

Katie.

It was Mom’s voice, and the sound of it stunned me.

You’re not giving up, are you?

It was a memory, sitting at the kitchen table with her after a failed ballet audition. Nothing big—just a part in the class recital at the end of the year. But god I’d wanted it.

You can do this, Katie. Size it up. Move on.

“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t.”

But hearing Mom’s voice reminded me who I was. The ink in me wasn’t everything. It had tried to take my life from me before, when I wasn’t even born. And I’d won. I’d won without even knowing. I was stronger; I could beat this.

The fire dulled, and I heaved in a breath of the cold air.

Tomo’s chin rested on my forehead, bringing me back to Nihondaira, to my life.

I stared up at the gray clouds that circled the sky. Golden dust glimmered in the cracks between them, shimmering like tiny lightning strikes.

“Katie,” Tomo said.

I looked at the relief on his face. Jun hung back, watching with a pained expression.

“Tadaima,”
I said to Tomo.
I’m back.

Tomo laughed once and choked it back.
“Okaeri.”
Welcome back.

“Katie,” Jun said. “I didn’t...I didn’t mean to...”

Tomo glared at him. “Fuck off, Takahashi.” He reached for the ink-stained blazer by his notebook and stuffed it gently under my head as a pillow. Then he rose up slowly, walking toward Jun. “Get out of here. It’s over.”

“It’s not over,” Jun said, his eyes cold. They looked darker than before. “Or did you miss what your sketch said? We’ve been enemies since the dawn of time. We must put an end to what our ancestors started.”

“Jun, no,” Ikeda said.

“Are you a moron?” Tomo said. “I have the ink of two
kami
in my veins, Jun. If I lose control, everyone will get hurt.”

Jun stared back, his expression cold. “Which is why I have to deal with you now. I was right, Yuu. The world isn’t safe with you in it.”

“Jun,” I said. I pressed my hands into the soft grass, pulling myself up until I was sitting. “Stop it, okay? Let’s end this.”

“My thoughts exactly,” he said, shoving Tomo backward. Tomo growled in his throat, shoving Jun back.

Jun laughed. “I’m the bad guy, huh? Then I will make you suffer. I wanted to be a king, but if you want a tyrant, so be it. I don’t care if you have the ink and blood of two
kami,
Yuu. I’m stronger than you’ll ever be.”

The ground began to shake. I steadied myself and rose to my feet, pressing my fingers into the bark of the tree for support. Ikeda gasped, and I tried to see what had startled her. She was looking across Suruga Bay, past the water and the tiny boats, across to Mount Fuji with its snowcapped peak.

I watched with horror as a thick stream of ink gushed through the clean snow on the summit, staining it black. From this distance the torrent looked so small, but I couldn’t even imagine how much ink was pouring down the mountain.

A matching streak poured down the left side of Fuji like a tear, carving a jagged path of darkness.

Did Jun have that much power?

His eyes gleamed. “I will make the world cry.”

He lunged at Tomo, knocking him over. Sparks of gold and blue crackled around them as they fought. Jun reached his hand into the air and the ink formed into a
shinai,
which he brought cracking down on Tomohiro’s arm. It jabbed into the wound from the
inugami
bite and Tomo cried out, his face crumpled in pain. He managed to kick Jun off and rise to his feet. He ran as the wings spread on his back, flapping before they were even strong enough to lift him. He started to rise but Jun grabbed him by the waist, driving him hard into the ground.

It will never stop,
I thought. Jun and Tomo. Susanou and Tsukiyomi, the
kami
I didn’t know anything about. And Amaterasu, the ink that swirled in my veins, too.

Wait. Maybe I wasn’t powerless. The ink might not be my birthright, but it had been on fire a moment ago. Maybe I could use it.

I flipped open Tomo’s sketchbook, but the pen was lost somewhere in the dark field. I scanned the grass, but I couldn’t see anything.

The rain poured down.

The rain.

I cupped my palms together and caught the ink as it fell.

Beside me, Jun and Tomo tore into each other, blood and ink flowing, Ikeda shouting for them to stop. Tomo’s eyes had gone large and vacant, and he fought with all the strength he had.

Ikeda stood near me, watching them fight with horror.

“Ikeda!” I shouted. “You’re a Kami, right? Can’t you do something?”

She crouched beside me. “I’m not that strong. I usually can’t get things off the page.”

“You have to try,” I said. “I’m not strong, either, but maybe together we can stop this.”

She nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

I wasn’t sure. What was their weakness? Did they have one?

Susanou,
kami
of storms, and Yomi, the World of Darkness. Tsukiyomi,
kami
of the moon.

“Amaterasu,” I said. “The
kami
of the sun. The shadows and clouds are making their powers stronger. Can we get rid of them?”

“I’ll try,” Ikeda said. She dipped a finger into the ink I cupped with my hands, and turned the page in Tomo’s notebook.

“That’s it?” I shouted. “‘Sun?’” Nothing happened.

“I told you,” Ikeda said. “I’m not very strong.”

“Because there’s already sun,” I said. “It’s just hidden behind the clouds.”

She cupped her hands and I poured the ink rain into them, wiping my stained hands on the grass. I dunked my finger in the ink and ran it across the page.

Please,
I thought.

Thank god I’d practiced my kanji. Thank god I knew what to write.

Amaterasu.
The word glowed with a faint golden dust, then turned black again. That was it. That was the extent of my power.

Ikeda dropped the cupped ink with a splash and reached in front of me. With her stained hands, she traced the kanji I’d written, making them darker and bolder.

The word rippled, then gleamed with golden sparks. It flickered with light, the way the fireflies had.

It grew brighter and brighter, and Ikeda backed away, shielding her eyes. All around us the field glowed with crisp white light, the trees turning black and gray, like we were in a moving ink painting.

There was the loud sound of thunder crashing, and Tomohiro and Jun plummeted from the sky, hitting the ground hard. Both of them lay still, unconscious. The bright light faded, until the clearing was normal again, the colors vibrant after so much darkness. The clouds were gone, except a small patch that had floated toward Kunozan, where they zapped into nothingness with a flash of blue light.

“Jun,” Ikeda cried out and raced to his side. I stared from Jun to Tomohiro. How peaceful they both looked with their eyes closed. Like they were sleeping.

Oh god.

“Tomo,” I said, running to his side.

I smoothed the copper bangs out of his eyes and wiped the ink and blood from his face with the backs of my hands.

Jun moved first, groaning as he turned his head.

“Jun,” Ikeda said.

“Naoki,” he said, and Ikeda flushed. I wondered if it was the first time he’d called her by her name. “Katie. Is she okay?” He called out for me. “Katie?”

Ikeda’s face fell. But I was too busy to worry about either of them.

“Tomo,” I said, but he didn’t move. I put my fingers against his lips, and his warm breath spread over them. He was alive, then. But was he himself or still controlled by his Kami side?

He blinked his eyes open slowly, and my body pulsed with relief to see the soft hazel of them. He was in control.

“Katie?” Tomo said quietly. He looked at me, broken and bleeding, covered in mud with ink trailing through his hair. He’d never looked more stunning.

“You all right?” I said.

He laughed, and it turned into a cough. “I’ve felt better. You?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s get you home.”

“You going to carry me?” He attempted a grin. “I can’t exactly bike right now.”

“I’ll ask Ikeda. We can come get your bike later.”

I turned my head to look toward the pools. Jun was sitting upright, coughing up ink as Ikeda dunked her handkerchief in cold water.

I went to sit with her, watching the ripples as she swirled the handkerchief around.

“Are you okay?” I said quietly.

Ikeda didn’t look up. “Jun called for you,” she said.

I knew I should be quiet, but her suffering felt like my own. I didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. “After all this, you’re still by his side. You deserve better, Ikeda. Why do you stay?”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand. Jun has always been there for me. My parents worked all the time, and I had no siblings. Without Jun, the world was lonely, empty. Meaningless.” She pulled the towel from the water and squeezed the droplets out. “I was terrified when my drawings started to move. Jun stayed with me through my first nightmares. He showed me how to survive.” She looked at me, her eyes piercing and strong. “I owe him everything, Katie. I won’t leave his side, no matter what.”

I could understand. It was how I felt clinging to Tomo, when he’d gotten me through the storm of losing Mom and living adrift in Japan. “Ikeda, let’s get them home.”

“Katie,” Jun called out, and Ikeda’s eyes went flat and lifeless. The friendship I’d seen sparking suddenly dulled.

“No,” she said.

I blinked. No?

“I’m sick of you and your shit, Katie. Shiori was right—you’ve messed up everyone’s lives.”

What was I supposed to do? Jun didn’t feel the way she felt.

“I couldn’t care less if you make it home,” Ikeda spat. “Do you know what Jun’s been through? His whole life fell apart with a single mistake.” She pointed an accusatory finger at Tomo. “Jun tries to help
him,
to give him control of the ink and a chance to rule the world—and he slaps him in the face.
Mou ii
wa yo
.
I’ve had enough of your crap.”

“Ikeda, enough,” Jun said.

Tomo sat hunched over, covered in bruises, blood and dirt. “It’s over, Jun. Go home.”

Jun tucked his legs under himself. “You’re wrong. This won’t end here, Yuu. Whether it’s me who does it or not, you need to be stopped. You are dangerous; that hasn’t changed.”

“You’re right,” Tomo said. “But you’re worse. You don’t even try to fight the darkness in you. You’ve accepted your fate. That’s something I’ll never do.”

“There’s only death ahead for both of us,” Jun said. “You know that.”

Tomo paused a minute, looking down at his sketchbook and then across the bay to Mount Fuji. The snow was perfectly white again, like it had never happened.

“I know,” Tomo said. “But that’s all any of us have in the end, isn’t it? There is death ahead of all of us. And so we live.”

I returned to Tomo’s side and he wrapped his arm around me for support, leaning down to collect his notebook and blazer.

We limped away from them slowly, one small step at a time.

We managed to make our way to Tomo’s with me pedaling and him seated and slumped over my back. Nihondaira was a mountain, so we mostly coasted down, but I worked up a sweat as we cycled through Otamachi toward his house.

“This is great,” Tomo mumbled into my shoulder as I pulled up his front walkway. “Can you bike me home every day?”

I shoved him off and leaned the bike against the side of the wall around his house. “Maybe if you lose some weight,” I puffed.

“Hey,” Tomo said, flexing his arm. “This is all muscle.” But as he pulled his arm back, the bite wound pressed against his skin and he winced, dropping his arm quickly.

“Let’s get you inside,” I said. He fumbled in his pocket for the house key and I turned it in the lock, the two of us entering the warm house from the outside cold.

He stumbled toward the couch, but stopped as he looked down at the floor. He’d left a trail of ink. “I better shower,” he said.

“Can you handle it?” I asked. He was hunched over and didn’t look too steady on his feet.

He tried to grin, but it came out pained. “You better come help me.”

I turned all shades of red. “Shut up,” I stammered. I couldn’t believe he could still joke after the video he’d seen of Jun and me. Maybe between that, the fight and the info that he was descended from two
kami
that hated each other, he was still processing it all.

He tugged at the knot of his school-uniform tie, twisting it back and forth to loosen it from his neck. I followed him carefully as he limped toward the bathroom, in case he collapsed.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’ll be okay,” he said, dropping the tie to the floor. “But I don’t think that’s what you meant.”

It wasn’t. Instead I said, “You went through a lot today.”

He fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, his tired fingers struggling to undo them. “I bet the teachers had a fit when they saw the change room.”

It felt like ages since those threatening kanji and ink faucets at school. “I told them it was part of the prank played on you.”

“So I’ll probably only be suspended for about...oh, fifty years, then.”

“Give or take,” I said.

He still fumbled with the same button.
“Kuse-yo,”
he swore, pretending to laugh. “Can’t stop shaking.” His eyes blurred with moisture, the tears he was forcing back. I wanted to hold him to me tightly, to protect him from all of this.

So I made excuses for him. “You’re just tired. Here.” I reached for the button myself, slipping it neatly through the hole. He watched me intensely as I tried to force the blush off my cheeks.
I’m just helping him.

You’re undressing him, Katie. But points for trying.

I moved on to the next button. “So...two
kami,
huh? Does that make you royalty or something?” It was a lame joke, but I was flailing. I needed to talk about it, to put it out there in the open instead of just in our own thoughts.

Tomo leaned his head back, his palms flat against the wall. “I guess it’s nice to shrug off the connection with Yomi, at least.”

I couldn’t imagine being descended from the World of Darkness. The idea had crushed Tomo, sent him spiraling out of control.

He sighed. “I’m tired and a little beat-up, but I feel better than I have in a month. Actually, I feel better than I have since you...” He trailed off.

“Since I came to Japan,” I said, my mouth dry.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Can we really be together?” I asked. I unbuttoned the last of the buttons and dropped my hands away. “It sounds like Tsukiyomi hates Amaterasu’s guts.”

“I’m not Tsukiyomi,” he said. “And you’re not Amaterasu. We’ll build our own lives.” He shrugged his shirt off and it dropped in a mound on the floor. I tried to pretend I was okay with the fact that he was half-naked, but I felt queasy and awkward, like my cheeks were on fire. I looked away.

“Katie,” he said, and the velvet of it turned my head. The scars crisscrossed down his arm, broken up by the
inugami
bite marks. Deep blue bruises bloomed on his tan skin, on his shoulder and below his ribs. I stared a little more intensely than I meant to.

Tomo laughed, resting his hand on the waistband of his pants. “I could keep going.” He grinned and leaned in to kiss me.

Fire ran through my veins again, sharp and raw, but this kind I didn’t mind. This kind was nice. I wanted more.

I wrapped my arms around him, his bare skin like fire under my fingertips. He winced as my hands slid across the bruises he was covered with.

“Takahashi made a mess of me,” he sighed as I accidentally pressed against another bruise.

“I think it was the fall from the sky,” I said, giving him more excuses. “In which case, it’s my fault for writing in your notebook.”

He cupped my neck with his hands, resting his forehead against mine.

“How dare you save my life?” he whispered and pressed a kiss on my jawline.

He pulled away and staggered into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

I breathed out a sigh and turned my back to the door, sliding down it until I sat at the bottom. Why did I have to get so nervous around him? I could handle him flying around on inky wings and drawing sketches of me that came to life, but I couldn’t make out with him when he was shirtless? I needed serious help.

From the other side of the door I heard the sound of his zipper and him shrugging off his pants.

Other thoughts, other thoughts...

“Tomo,” I said, looking up at the ceiling.

“Hmm?”

“The thing with Ju—Takahashi. I’m so sorry I hurt you. I wish I could go back and change what I did. You know that, right?”

Pause. “I know.”

“He kissed me. And I knew it was wrong. It was a huge mistake. I did pull away, but—”

“Katie,” he said, his voice smooth and velvet. “I care about you. But I can’t expect you to stay beside me. What I am is not going to change. It’s going to get worse until...until it’s over.”

I shuddered. “I know. But I want to be there, until the end.”

“I want you to be,” he said. His voice was gentle, and I knew he was pressed against the door. This was our life; always something in our way.

I heard his footsteps as he padded toward the shower and turned on the spray.

“I will,” I said quietly to myself. “I’ll find a way.”

My phone buzzed, and the sound of it made me jump. I flipped it open, the little bell on the
omamori
charm tinkling as the
keitai
snapped into place.

“Yuki,” I said with relief and hit Answer, putting the phone to my ear.

“Katie!” Yuki said. “Tan-kun and I were worried. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said. My brain cycled back a few hours. She was calling because we’d bolted from the school.

“And Yuu?”

“Doing okay,” I said, leaning back. I liked the soothing sound of the shower behind me. It was nice that I was part of something so intimate, even if I was on the other side of the door. “It was a nasty prank.”

“So he didn’t do it?”

More lies, more deception. My life couldn’t be straightforward, not with Tomo. “Of course not. You saw us arrive at school this morning. Why would he do something like that?”

“I know,” Yuki said, a hint of apology in her voice. “I just heard the boys’ change room was a mess. They all think he did it, you know.”

I wanted to care, but it just didn’t seem important anymore. Ink on the chalkboards—big deal. It was the
kami
we had to worry about now.

“Let me know if you need anything, okay?” she said. “I’ll bring you my notes tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” I said, and then I hung up the phone. I had the best friends in the world, I really did. They worried about me, watched out for me. So did Diane.

Who did Tomo have?

Me. His dad, sort of. Ishikawa. And that was about it.

I got to my feet and wandered upstairs into Tomo’s bedroom. His blue-checked comforter was a tangled mess on the bed and he’d left a couple dark T-shirts and jeans littered across the floor. He still had all the creepy
sumi-e
ink drawings up, and the Renaissance paintings of angels trampling demons.

I sat down at his desk, where he’d left an open notebook and a pile of textbooks meant for the entrance exams. I wondered if he’d ever had time to study for them.

His handwriting was elegant and practiced, and you could see the flair for calligraphy in the kanji. But even then, you could see the careful control he’d written his notes with. Any kanji with the character
sword
in them were given blunt edges, ones that stopped short instead of trailing off in a slice of a line.

I lifted his pen, twisting it between my fingers. His room smelled faintly of his vanilla hair gel; it was nice being in here, when you avoided looking at the creepy paintings on the walls.

I pressed the pen to the paper and drew a tiny heart in the margin of his notebook. Maybe he’d notice it there later when he was studying.

I lifted the pen and felt ill suddenly, like motion sickness.

The heart flashed once with a golden shimmer, and then the pen ink trailed down the center in a jagged line, breaking the heart in two.

I stared at it, stunned. Downstairs I heard the shower shut off.

My drawing had moved. It had come to life and moved.

The ink in me had awoken when Jun ripped that drawing. I was connected to the paper Katie; like a channel between river and lake, she’d made the connection between Tomo’s ink and mine.

“Oh my god,” I whispered. Maybe it was Tomohiro’s closeness in the house that made it move, like how my doodles had come at me that day in school.

But it felt different. I felt different.

Outside a crow cawed loudly, making me think of the rush of black feathers on Tomo’s back.

I stared at the heart with its jagged break down the center. We could never be happy; we could never be together.

I wished the ink had never woken in me. I wished it would just go back to sleep.

I blinked, considering what I’d just thought.

The ink in Tomo took control sometimes, but it always subsided. Jun said one day it would get so bad that it wouldn’t reverse again. But for now, it did. It went back to sleep.

I looked at the broken heart again. Two halves. Two
kami.

Tomo’s door creaked open and he stood there in a pair of track pants and a blue T-shirt, his copper hair dripping wet in odd spikes as he rubbed it with a towel.

He saw my face and his arms lowered.
“Doushita?”
He padded across the room to his desk, leaning over my shoulder. His skin radiated warmth from the shower, and he smelled of milky soap. “My drawing moved, Tomo.”

“Just now?”

I nodded, pointing at the broken heart with the pen. “I drew a heart, and the ink broke it in two.”

He reached over my shoulder to press his fingers against the heart. He’d left his kendo wristband off and I could see the deep gash where the kanji for
sword
had cut him all those years ago, the old wound the dragon had bitten open in Toro Iseki.

“Harsh,” he said, tracing the jagged break in the heart. “The ink’s cruel.”

“That’s what I thought, too. But what if it means something else?” I took a deep breath, my whole body buzzing. “Before I came to Japan, the ink in me was asleep, even past the age it should’ve awakened. And if I’d gone to Canada to live with Nan and Gramps, that would’ve been a temporary fix because the ink in you would calm down. Like, go to sleep kind of.”

Tomo’s face darkened. “So we have to be apart.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not the answer. We have to make the ink go dormant, Tomo.”

“How?”

I bit my lip. “I’m not sure. But look at this heart. Two sides. Two
kami
. Split them in half. You don’t have to worry about Amaterasu. She has lots of descendants and they’re living normal lives. It’s Tsukiyomi that’s the problem. You just have to put his blood to sleep.”

Tomo stared with shining eyes, his mind racing with ideas. “Like a disease,” he said. “We just have to make the Tsukiyomi cells go dormant.”