Storm (23 page)

Ishikawa saw the pain on my face. “Yuuto,” he said, while he looked at me. “Pull it together, man.”

But Tomo’s face crumpled in disappointment. “That’s the point, Sato,” he said. “I can’t. I’m going to... I’m going to...” He crouched on the balls of his feet, his hands pressed against the dark wooden floor of the shrine. “I’m going to lose myself,” he whispered.

I sat on the floor beside him, wrapping my arms around his arm, pressing my ear against his shoulder. “I won’t let you,” I said. “We’ll find another way.”

“Without the Kusanagi, there is no other way,” he said. He looked up, and I could see the tears glistening in his eyes as he held them back, as he fought to stay in control. “You need to get the hell away from me, Katie. For real, this time. Forever.”

I closed my eyes, screaming at myself to think. All the dreams wouldn’t have led us here if it was a dead end. Did the ink in us just not realize that it would be impossible? How else could we get the sword? It hadn’t been found in six hundred years. If it was still at the bottom of the ocean, wouldn’t it be useless? Rusting away, maybe covered in seaweed or coral or something, completely absorbed by ocean life. How could we use a dulled sword like that to cut away a
kami
soul?

“Wait,” I said. “Couldn’t you draw it? A replica wouldn’t work, but if you drew it, it would have the power of the
kami
in it, right? It would be alive, like all your sketches.”

“She has a point, Yuuto,” Ishikawa said. He reached a hand out of the shrine, to see if it was still raining, and then closed up his umbrella. “Couldn’t you draw your own Kusanagi?”

“I don’t exactly have a good track record of drawing weapons, Sato.”

Ishikawa touched the front of his shoulder, where the bullet had gone through. “You think I need reminding?”

Tomo stared at the floor as he thought. “Katie...do you remember the first thing that happened to me, the first time the ink in me woke up?”

Tanaka had told me the story when I’d first started at Suntaba School. I nodded. “You’d drawn the kanji for sword for Calligraphy Club,” I said. “The stroke that flicks across the bottom cut your wrist open.”

“I think that was the Kusanagi,” he said. “This is what the ink’s always been trying to achieve, since that first drawing. It’s always tried to attack Tsukiyomi’s blood in me. It’s why the nightmares always whispered to me that I was a murderer, that I was a demon. They weren’t speaking to me, Katie. They were speaking to Tsukiyomi. But if I can’t draw the sword without dying myself...” He shook his head and rested his chin against his knees.

“Then draw Orochi.” It slipped out, before I could stop it.

Ishikawa smacked his umbrella lightly against my arm. “Idiot.”

“Orochi?”

Ishikawa rolled his eyes. “You think an eight-headed serpent won’t kill him just as easily?”

“But the sword is in one of its eight tails,” I said. “If you can get the sword that way, it won’t cut you while you draw it.”

“Again, you somehow forget the eight-headed dragon. With eight heads. And the number of heads is eight.”

“Sato, enough,” Tomo said. “It kind of makes sense. The way Amaterasu spoke about Orochi back there... I kept thinking, Why do I feel so afraid? What is this terror gripping my heart? Orochi is long dead. I must have known, somehow... I must have known what was coming.”

“Oi, matte yo,”
Ishikawa protested, putting his hands up in the air, his umbrella hooked over his wrist. “Wait, wait. You’re actually considering drawing this eight-headed beast of horrible legend?” Tomo answered with silence, and Ishikawa widened his eyes. “No, no, no. There’s no way this could go well. Did you forget the giant dragon you drew in Shizuoka? The gun that shot me in front of Hanchi? The freaky demon face and wings that sprouted from you before you collapsed on the street? Your powers are totally unstable, Yuuto. There’s no way in hell you can survive drawing Orochi.”

Tomo rose to his feet slowly, stepping out of the shrine’s shelter and onto the muddy gravel pathway out of the shrine. “You’re right, Sato,” he said quietly. “I’m not stable enough to draw Orochi.”

“Tomo?” I stepped toward him, my umbrella folded under my arm.

His face was stone. “That’s why I’m going to ask Takahashi.”

I couldn’t form the syllables he’d said into meaningful words. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Are you a complete idiot?” Ishikawa said. “Takahashi isn’t going to help you draw Orochi to get a sword that will stop
him
.”

But Tomo was already walking toward the entrance of the shrine, toward Jingu-Mae Station and the way home.

“He’s lost his mind,” Ishikawa said to me.

“Agreed.” I ran ahead to catch up to him.

Tomo didn’t even wait for me to ask. “Takahashi is the only Kami I know who’s powerful enough to draw it,” he said. “He’s stable, and his drawings come off the page. It’s no good if it won’t come off the paper.”

“Yeah, but last time we saw him he threatened your life,” I said. “He’s not going to help you unless it means helping him. And the point of the Kusanagi is to save you and stop him.”

“Then I’ll have to give him something he wants,” he said, like it was as simple as that.

“Like?”

He stopped to put his return ticket to Nagoya Station through the slot in the metal gate. The doors burst open with a chime. “Look, I don’t know yet. I’ll figure it out on the way, okay?”

“Couldn’t he just draw the sword?” I asked.

“I don’t trust him to give it to us,” Tomo said. “He’d just use it against us, wouldn’t he? But Orochi fought against Susanou. I don’t think the drawing will be on Takahashi’s side. My only hope is to get to the blade before he does.”

“Drawing that monster is suicide,” Ishikawa chimed in. “You know that, right?”

We boarded the waiting train, leaning against the opposite doors as we talked.

Tomo shrugged. “So maybe I can get Takahashi to draw him bound in chains, or deep asleep or something.”

“How about a drunken stupor?” Ishikawa suggested, and I raised an eyebrow. “What? That’s how Susanou defeated the original Orochi. Got him drunk and cut his heads off.”

“Nice,” I said. “Could you do something like that?”

Tomo nodded. “But there’s only one person who can draw Orochi, and it’s Takahashi, no matter how badly I don’t want that to be true.” The train doors closed and we lurched forward as we rattled down the track. “It’s always been Amaterasu, Tsukiyomi and Susanou. Even now, we can’t complete this without Susanou’s descendant.”

“It’s a huge risk,” Satoshi said.

“Yeah,” Tomo said. “But it’s the only one we have the choice to take.”

I was silent as the train raced toward Nagoya Station, as we slipped through the crowd and boarded the bullet train for Shizuoka City.

My phone buzzed then with a text from Diane. I swallowed my panic, hoping she’d believed my message that I was at Yuki’s for a sleepover. Yuki had known to cover for me if she checked in.

Out shopping with Kanako
, the text said, her teacher friend.
Yuki can come over to the house if she wants.
A pang of guilt shadowed my heart, but it’s not like I could help what I had to do. I dialed Yuki and put the phone to my ear. It rang and rang, and went to voice mail. I hung up.

“Calling your aunt?” Tomo asked.

I shook my head. “Yuki.”

Ishikawa grinned a little too widely, trying too hard. “Checking in with the cover story, huh?”

Tomo’s cheeks turned pink, but he smiled. “Shut up.”

Ugh. Opting out of the conversation, I dialed Yuki again.
Please pick up and save me from this awkwardness.

The phone clicked, but it was a guy’s voice who answered.
“Moshi mosh?”

I waited for my voice to catch up with my brain. “Tanaka?”

He sounded sheepish. “Uh...hi, Katie-chan. What’s up?”

“I...why do you have Yuki’s phone?”

“Oh, um.” There was a rustling sound, like he’d stumbled or something. A raven called in the distance. “Yuki’s in the bathroom right now. When you called back, I thought maybe it was urgent. You okay?”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “Fine,” I said. “I can call later.”

“Sure, okay,” he said. “Yeah, um. Yeah.”

“Tanaka, wait,” I said. I hesitated, unsure what to say. “Can...can you keep Yuki safe today?”

“Doushita?”
he asked, his voice quiet with concern. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I’d feel a lot better if you stay close to Yuki.”

He paused, like he was going to pry for more answers, but he didn’t. “No problem,” he said. “You can count on me.”

“Thanks.” I hung up, not sure exactly what I’d walked into. There could be a totally innocent explanation. Maybe. But it wasn’t time to worry about that. We had more serious things ahead. Knowing Yuki and Diane would be out of the way today made me feel better about the danger ahead.

“Do you still have Takahashi’s
keitai
number?” Tomo asked.

I fumbled with my phone. “Yeah, here.”

“Text him to meet us at the Minami Alps.”

“The what?”

Tomo took my phone and punched in the kanji for me before passing it back. “He’ll know where they are.”

“I’m coming, too,” Ishikawa said.

Tomo shook his head. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m not scared of that dipshit, Yuuto. I’m coming with you. You can’t stop me.”

I sent the text, my hands trembling.

Jun had been my friend once. I prayed silently that he would remember that, before the end.

* * *

We rode yet another train out of Shizuoka City, the houses thinning around us, the busy world shrinking away. The mountains rose up before us, nearly as tall as Fuji itself, all of them lush with trees that would be green again in the coming spring. The chill of mountain air permeated through the train windows.

“The Minami Alps,” Tomo said. It was a popular hiking spot, he’d explained, but not when the weather was this freezing. I knew what he was thinking, of course. Meet somewhere others couldn’t get hurt. I pulled my scarf tighter around myself as we stepped out of the train and into the wilderness.

We must have walked for half an hour, until we couldn’t even see the train station, until there was nothing but trees and fading sunlight filtered among them. The path through the woods curved into a clearing, and we stepped away from everything we knew, to face the fields of the Minami Alps.

The autumn forests pressed against the borders of the clearing, the mountains loomed like shadows—a painting of a dying world. In the summer, it must have been lush and green, with wildflowers swaying in the breeze. Now the winter had almost overtaken it, as the bitter cold of fate had overtaken me. Everything was on the edge of death, holding on to that last hopeless hope of one more breath. Just one.

Fuji loomed in the distance, along with other jagged peaks that blotted out the late-afternoon sun. It was hard to imagine we’d been in Ise this morning and Nagoya at lunchtime, where we’d slurped down kishimen noodles and failed to find the last of the Imperial Treasures. The sun would set in an hour, and then it would be bitterly cold in this exposed field.

“Do you think he’ll actually come?” I asked as Tomo leaned against a nearby cedar tree.

“He wouldn’t come for me,” Tomo said, his head tilted back against the rough bark. “But he’ll come for you.”

I felt a flush of heat down my neck. “That’s not true. We found out he was only using me because of the ink inside me, right? I was nothing to him.”

Ishikawa sighed, patting my shoulder. I winced, the bruise still fresh. “Greene,” he said, shaking his head. “When are you going to learn?”

“Learn?”

“That you weren’t nothing to him,” Tomo said, closing his eyes.

“That’s not... You don’t know that.” But there had always been a tenderness in Jun, a kindness, that despite all the horrible things he’d said and done, they couldn’t erase from him. There was still something in him warm and familiar, that even until now I couldn’t bring myself to call him something as distant and unsurmountable as Takahashi.

Takahashi Jun. Literally, his name meant a bridge that was too tall, that was strong and impassable and undefeatable. And his first name meant
benefit
, a drop of sorely needed rain on the desert. The drop that would quench the thirst of the world. Or the tear that would stain its cheek.

I shuddered. A lofty name for a lofty dream, one that had borne him too high. It was time to fall.

We waited in silence, the mountain breeze whispering through the trees around the clearing. Ishikawa had his phone out, scrolling through the internet for more info on the Kusanagi and Orochi, but there wasn’t much to be found.

“Susanou fought Orochi to rescue this guy’s daughter,” Ishikawa said. “The monster had already eaten the first seven girls, and the parents begged him to save the last. He turned her into a comb to ornament his hair.”

“Dreamy,” I said. “Every girl wishes she’d be turned into a comb.”

“Why would they want that?”

I rolled my eyes. “Never mind.”

Ishikawa clicked his phone off and slid it into his pocket. “You’re weird, Greene.”

That’s when Tomo cried out and collapsed into the grass. We both shot over to him, grabbing his arms.

There was a rustle in the forest near us, and we looked up.

“Not now,” I whispered. I could hear the groans of voices as the ink in Tomo awakened.

The voice in me stirred, too. It said quietly, patiently,
Jikan de gozaimasu
.

It is time.

* * *

Tomo heaved in each breath like he was drowning. He coughed and ink spattered in black drops on the ground.

A figure stepped forward from the forest, dressed in an elaborate kimono of plum and lavender, tied with a golden obi. She’d done her hair up in a bun, with a string of tiny purple flowers dangling back and forth as she walked.

It was Ikeda, I realized after a moment. I’d only ever seen her in her school uniform or her motorcycle jacket. She wore a fluffy white stole around her shoulders to keep out the cold of the coming winter, the kind girls wore in January for Coming of Age Day. She looked so elegant.

She stumbled when she saw Tomo on his hands and knees, the two of us desperate to help him. “What happened?”

“It’s the ink,” I said. Tendrils of black trailed down his arms and dripped onto the ground below. “He’s losing control of himself.”

Jun stepped out from behind her, clad in a black men’s kimono that I’d seen him wear once before, the day he’d learned the truth about his link to Susanou. He looked regal and princely, his blond highlights and silver earring the only trace of his modern identity. When he lifted his arm to tuck his highlights behind his ear, the kimono sleeve slid back and revealed his familiar black bracelet with silver spikes.

He and Ikeda looked like they were from a different era, a different world. They looked like gods. Like
kami
.

“Katie,” Jun said gently, his voice lacking any of the wrath it had had that day in the train station. “Are you all right?”

Tomo clutched at his heart, letting out another cry.

“I see,” Jun said. “Deep breaths, Yuu. Calm down.”

“Stay out of it,” Ishikawa snapped.

I shook my head. “Help us, Jun,” I said. I ignored the glare that Ishikawa shot at me. Who cared who helped Tomo, as long as someone did?

Jun knelt at his side. “Yuu, can you hear me? Don’t get lost now. Find your way back.” He turned his icy eyes to me. “What set him off?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ve been waiting here for you for a while. Ishikawa was reading about the
kami
on his phone, and suddenly Tomo just fell over.”

“Reading what about the
kami
?”

“Susanou and his comb chick,” Ishikawa offered.

Jun frowned as he thought. “Wait...the story of Orochi?” I nodded. “Orochi was born from Tsukiyomi’s hatred for Susanou. It must have stirred the memory in his blood.”

Ishikawa let out a single laugh as he folded his arms. “That or he felt you approaching. I don’t get it, Takahashi, you go around threatening Yuuto, yet you try to help him whenever Katie’s around. Which is it?”

“Like I said from the beginning,” Jun answered, his voice calm. “Yuu is something that never should have existed, and a danger to all of us. He’s come to the end, now. If he doesn’t get this under control, I don’t think any of us will be walking off this field.”