Rain

14

I called Tomo when I got home, but his keitai was off. I phoned his home number once but hung up when I got scared his dad would answer.

I couldn’t get the image out of my mind, the way his dad had slapped him—the sound of it, the veins protruding in his dad’s neck as he screamed at him.

And the way Tomo didn’t fight back at all. The way he just stared at the floor, like nothing mattered anymore. Like he was as lost as I felt.

When had it all started to fall apart like this? I thought I’d come back to fix things, but I felt like it was all turning to sand in my hands, slipping through my fingers.

I slumped down at my desk and pulled out my notebook for kanji practice. I might be falling apart, but I couldn’t afford to let my studying drop. There was no way I was going to an international school, and there was no way I was leaving Japan. I copied the kanji until my wrist ached.

Then I found myself doodling names, checking characters in my dictionary when I got stuck.

Watabe Yuki. Tanaka Ichirou.

Ishikawa Satoshi. I smirked. The kanji for his first name really was “wisdom.”

Yuu Tomohiro.

I stared at that one for a while. I wrote it a few more times.

Then I wrote my name beside it. Katie Greene—unlike the others, written only in phonetic kana. No elegant kanji. No deeper meaning to the characters.

I dropped my pencil and flopped onto my bed, staring at the ceiling.

What had the police asked Tomo? He’d looked so defeated. Were things okay? Had they asked about the ink on his back or more about that night with the Yakuza?

I clicked my light off and lay in the darkness. The weather had turned too cold to turn on my air conditioner, and the room felt unsettling in its silence. I drifted in and out of sleep, imagining all kinds of nightmares that might materialize before me.

None of them did. Weird dreams, sure, things that didn’t make sense. Sparring in a kendo match with Yuki and baking a strawberry shortcake with Tanaka. I jolted awake, and I swore I could still smell the berries, feel them crushed against my fingertips in bright red stains. I fell back to sleep and dreamed of Ishikawa at Tokugawa’s shrine on top of Mount Kuno, the painted inugami snarling as Ishikawa poured water from a bamboo ladle over his bleached hair. He flung a ladle of water at me and I leaped out of the way as it splashed against the stone beneath us. I woke when my body slammed against the tatami on my floor.

Grumbling, I pulled myself back into bed. I hadn’t slept this badly since Mom died. Was Tomo okay? I almost called him right then and there, at four in the morning. But I was awake enough to know it was a bad idea, and I tossed my phone back onto my mini study table, falling back to sleep.

I dreamed of Jun, leaning against the tree at Nihondaira, lazy fireflies flitting through the sky. These ones didn’t bite; they just hummed in the air like live sparks from a fire, deep red and orange in color. Jun wrapped his arms around me tightly and I leaned against him, smelling the sweetness of cherry blossoms, the sharp pine of the rosin on his cello bow, the fresh lemon of his oiled shinai blade.

I jolted awake, and for a moment I couldn’t move, paralyzed by the guilt at such a thought.

“They’re just stupid dreams,” I whispered into the darkness, but it wouldn’t take away the pink from my cheeks. It wouldn’t slow the heartbeat I could hear in my ears.

I checked the clock—five-thirty.

Was Tomo awake? Was he lost in the nightmares of the Kami? He couldn’t possibly be sleeping worse than I was.

Well, maybe. At least I wasn’t getting chased by inugami in my dreams.

I tossed and turned until the sun rose. I heard the roar of the shower as Diane got ready for the day, but I didn’t budge. Life seemed better today if I didn’t get up.

After a while she knocked on my door and slid it open. My room was the traditional room of the apartment, which meant a sliding door and tatami floors. I even had a little alcove with a fake plant and a scroll in it.

“Katie?” she smiled. “Sleeping in?”

“A rare occasion here,” I mumbled. We usually had to go to school on Saturdays, too, for club activities.

“I’m going out with some teacher friends. I promised we’d meet up today—do you need anything before I head out? Breakfast or anything?”

“I’m fine,” I said, rubbing at my eyes.

“Did you sleep okay?”

“Not so much.” No point in denying it—I probably looked like crap.

“Listen, why don’t you call up Yuki or something? Get your mind off this boy.”

Yeah, right. My problems were way past mere boy troubles.

“Sure,” I said. “That’s a good idea.”

She smiled. “Positive you don’t need anything?”

“I’ll be fine. Have fun.”

Diane nodded and slid my door shut. I listen to the clunk of her shoes, the door clicking shut, the keys jingling in the lock.

I rolled around in self-pity for another couple minutes and then stumbled out of my room, searching the kitchen for food. I put a slice of thick toast in the toaster oven, watching the machine brighten with white-hot light as it seared the bread. When it dinged, I burned my fingers sliding the toast onto a plate and drowned the white crust in glistening honey. I gulped it down with a cold glass of black-bean tea.

Then I heard a thump against the front door. It wasn’t so much a knock as the sound of a body colliding with the wooden frame.

I froze, every part of me tingling with adrenaline. After a minute I tiptoed to the door, peering through the peephole. I could see Tomo’s copper spikes—matted and unbrushed—scrunched against the door, the rest of his body folded under him.

“Tomo,” I gasped, pulling the door inward. He slumped onto the genkan floor in a mound, breathing heavily. I knelt beside him, resting my arms on his shoulders. He lifted his head like it weighed a hundred pounds.

“Hey,” he panted.

“‘Hey’?” I repeated. “You collapse at my door and you say ‘hey’?”

His face was a map of bruises from the fight with the Yakuza, his nose a little puffy around the edges, his cheek swollen. I could finally do what I’d wanted at the police station. I traced my fingers along the bruises, but he winced.

Then I saw the cuts on his arms. Little jagged lines formed a star near his elbow and dried ink crusted around them like blood. It looked like a...a dog bite.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“Close the door first,” he said, pointing at our pale green entryway. His jeans and sneakers stretched into the hallway where he’d collapsed. I hooked my arms under his and heaved. He pushed against the floor and I pulled him backward. By the time I made it to the raised floor, I was wheezing and sweaty.

“Okay, explain,” I said, clicking shut the front door. “This isn’t just from the Yakuza fight. I’m pretty sure they didn’t bite you.”

He pressed his elbows against the floor, rocking himself sideways until his upper body was upright. “I’ll be fine. I just need a minute.”

“Tomo,” I said, running my fingers over the bite marks. “What happened?”

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” he said. “Every time I drifted off, the nightmares shocked me awake. I dreamed of them again, Katie. The inugami. They were coming for me. I raced along the shore of Suruga Bay, by the strawberry farms. Up the thousand steps to Mount Kuno.”

We’d taken the ropeway to Kunozan Toshogu Shrine, but there was another way up, by climbing the steps up the steep mountainside by the water.

Tomo inched away and rested his back against the raised floor of the hallway. He lifted his palms, twisting them back and forth as he remembered. “There was blood on my hands,” he said. “I think I’d...”

I was glad he didn’t finish the thought. I didn’t want to know. “Real or dream?”

“I don’t know. Dream, I think. There’s nothing on them now. I’ve had sick nightmares before, Katie, and they’ve always been horrible but...this one was so vivid. I reached the roumon gate, the one that knocked me out last time. But this time it crumbled around me. I broke it.”

“You were stronger than the security system,” I said, and he nodded. He ran a hand through his copper hair, and the golden dust of ink sprinkled onto the floor.

“And then the inugami, the one you saw growling. It was alive, Katie. It came at me with a mouthful of teeth.” He raised the bite marks toward me.

The chill raced through me, everything feeling like pinpricks.

I whispered, “It was a dream, right?”

His voice was quiet, gentle. “Then how the hell did it bite me, Katie?”

My voice shook. “I don’t know.”

He curled his legs slowly under himself, resting his bitten arm against the edge of the raised floor. I reached out to support him, walking him down the hallway toward my room. The couch was too small and he looked like a mess. He needed to lie down.

I slid my door open, wishing I’d tidied things up a bit. I nearly tripped over my phone on the tatami. I helped him onto my pink comforter and he grunted as he swung his legs over.

“Just a minute,” I said and raced into our shower room, grabbing a fresh washcloth and wringing it out in the sink. I sat down beside him in my pajamas, dabbing the crusted ink away from the bite marks. The wounds were pink, and he winced as I mopped at them.

“Domo,” Tomohiro said through gritted teeth.

“You’re welcome,” I said. “You look like an ink painting yourself, Tomo. You’re bruised black-and-blue, and you’re so pale.” I felt stupid after I’d said it.

“Oi,” he said, but his voice was faint. He was only giving me the reaction I wanted.

“Sorry,” I said. I wiped up the last of the ink on his arm and lowered it back down.

He reached for my hand, curling his fingers around mine.

“I haven’t told you everything.”

My mind buzzed with possibility. My skin felt cold as ice where his fingers touched mine.

He looked at me carefully, his bangs spread across the tips of his eyelashes. “When I woke up...Katie, I woke up at Kunozan.”

“What?”

“I was there. The gate wasn’t damaged, but I was on the other side of it, just inside the trees at the back of the shrine.”

My throat was dry. I wanted to go into the kitchen and get my black-bean tea, to pretend none of this had happened. “You were sleepwalking?”

He sounded frustrated. “I don’t know.” Had he blacked out and gone the whole way to Nihondaira? Maybe it had felt like a dream because he wasn’t in control—maybe the Kami side of him had taken over again.

His fingers pulled away from mine and ran through his bangs, pushing them back to his ears as he lay back. “How much was a dream?” His voice got louder, agitated. “I don’t even fucking know what’s real anymore, Katie. What the hell is happening to me?”

“Hey,” I said, my voice shaking. “It’s okay. Just lie down for a bit. We’ll figure it out.”

He grabbed at me, his arms wrapping around and pulling me close. He smelled of warm spice mixed with the sourness of dried ink. My head pressed against his heart, listening to it beat in my ear as his breath tickled against my forehead.

“I’m scared,” he whispered, and he was so vulnerable in that moment that he was almost someone else, that I almost couldn’t recognize him.

He clung to me until he fell asleep, his chest rising and falling slowly on my soft pink comforter.

It was an hour before he woke up, his eyes opening first and looking around, trying to figure out where he was.

I sat up from the zabuton cushion where I’d been hunched over my laptop, searching the internet for any help I could find. Sleepwalking, inugami, Susanou, Yomi—none of them had yielded any help. Apparently no one had ever been bitten by a dream before, or whatever it was that had happened.

“Tomo?” I said quietly, lifting my laptop to my table and snicking its lid shut.

“Katie,” he said. “How long was I asleep?”

“Not that long.” I lifted myself onto the comforter beside him. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah,” he said. “A lot.”

“Good.” I’d been worried that being near him would make his nightmares worse.

He scrambled upright, leaning his back against the wall. “Did I...? I collapsed in your genkan, didn’t I? Oh god. I’m such an idiot.”

I scrunched up my face in confusion. “Yeah,” I said, “how dare you fall over bleeding in my doorway? What are you talking about?”

“Scaring you. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’m not scared,” I lied. “I’m used to this by now.”

“That’s not a good thing, you know.”

“I’m fine with it.”

Tomohiro lifted his hand and traced his fingertips down my cheek. I leaned in and pressed my lips again his. The world was sweetness; why did everything feel right when we were like this?

He pulled back just a little, his words floating across my lips. “So this is your room, huh? Where’s the giant poster of me?”

“I’m getting it laminated.”

He grinned and laced his fingers through my hair, the feel of it sending buzzing happy pinpricks shooting through me.

I stared at the trail of scars up his arm.

“What happened with the police?” I said quietly.

He sighed, shaking out his bangs and leaning back against my wall. “That feels like years ago. Tousan was so pissed.”

“I gathered that,” I said. I couldn’t get the image of him slapping Tomohiro out of my mind. It was so horrible, so cold. What bothered me most was the truth it revealed—Tomo’s dad was more worried about his pride than his son.

“You saw,” he said, his voice hollow, his eyes tired and red.

I shook my head. “I just saw the way he stormed to his car.” At least I could save him some embarrassment. “I called you last night, but you didn’t pick up.”

“He took my keitai. Scared I was going to call my goons and come up with more evil plots.” He laughed, but the sound was hollow and filled with scorn.

“How much trouble are you in, Tomo?”

“I have bigger problems than the police,” he said, lifting his arm to inspect the dog bite by his elbow. “Sato was in way more trouble than me. They said I was a first-time offender and I didn’t use a weapon. Plus when they found out who my dad was, they figured I’d just made a bad choice of friends. They wanted to know why Takahashi was hanging around the police station waiting for me, whether we’re both involved in gangs. But at least they figure there’s no deeper meaning to my injuries, like gambling on the tournament, so for the moment the pressure’s off.”

I bit my lip, feeling awkward. “I told him to leave.”

“It’s not my business.”

The guilt pulsed through me and I felt like I would be sick. Somehow him not caring was worse than him getting upset. “Tomo, there’s nothing more to it.”

“You’ve become close, though.”

“Chigau,” I said, shaking my head firmly.

He snorted, trailing his finger down my cheek and onto my lips. “Usotsuki,” he accused me, and he was right. I was a liar.

“I wanted to find out more,” I blurted. Maybe now was the right time to tell him everything. He was falling apart anyway. Maybe we needed some new info to get the ink in check. “He told me I might be an artificial Kami, that my mom might have ingested the ink. He was right, Tomo.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“About the Samurai and Imperial Kami.”

Tomo smirked. “He’d like that kind of hierarchy. I suppose he’s an Imperial type. An emperor or a prince or some shit.”

Wow. He’d hit it on the head. But I didn’t like the snarky way he’d said it.

“Actually, he thought you were both Imperial Kami.” Why was I defending him? “But I have my own theory.”

“Which is?” He tilted his head to one side and his bangs slanted across the tip of his ear. I reached out and tucked them behind it, unable to stop myself.

This was the moment. And it was hard.

“I’ve been thinking that maybe not all Kami are descended from Amaterasu.”

Silence. He didn’t understand yet what I was saying.

“There are other kami, right? Why should Amaterasu be the only one with children?”

“Of course the others had children,” Tomo said. “But not human children. Hell, not even all of Amaterasu’s Kami manifest the ink. Why look to other ancestors?” But he sounded uncertain. I could see him processing the idea as he spoke.

“Okay, but she’s the kami of the sun, right? And your drawings have nothing to do with sunshine, Tomo. Storms, yes. Rain, yes. Earthquakes. Lightning. Dragons and demons.”

He laughed once, like he couldn’t believe me. “Because that’s what I draw, Katie! You want me to doodle a sun with a pair of sunglasses on? What about the wagtails and the butterflies? The horse? What about the koi?”

I took a deep breath. “Koi can turn into dragons, too. And one time Amaterasu’s brother threw a dead horse at her to frighten her.”

His eyes went dark then, not alien and vacant like when the ink took over, but like they’d been extinguished. He was staring at me, but I felt like he couldn’t really see me. They were cold, like Jun’s.

“Her brother,” he said, his voice flat. “You think I’m descended from Susanou. The gatekeeper of Yomi.”

“I don’t know.” I reached my arms out wide as I shrugged. “It would make a lot of sense, wouldn’t it? Why the ink is so destructive to you, why everything that happens to us relates back to things associated with Susanou.”

“Not everything relates back.”

“And the shrines you keep dreaming about. Itsukushima Shrine, the one Taira rebuilt—it’s dedicated to daughters of Susanou. And Kunozan, where the inugami attacked you. It was built by Tokugawa, right? And Tokugawa restored the Sengen Shrine for another of Susanou’s daughters.”

Tomohiro sighed loudly, burying his head in his hands. “That’s messed up,” he said, his voice muffled through his fingers. “So I really am a demon, is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m not,” I said. “I—I just—”

He looked up slowly, his eyes cold and angry.

“You’re telling me I’m the heir to the ruler of Yomi, Katie. The World of Darkness. Hell. What does that make me?”

My body buzzed with the adrenaline of telling him the truth, the horror of it. I wanted to be sick. I wanted to run and never come back.

“I didn’t say that,” I said.

“You’re scared of me,” he said. “Look at you.”

“I’m not.” My voice practically squeaked like a mouse.

“Then that’s it,” he said. “If you’re right about this, I’m beyond redemption.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be horrible. I know it’s coming out that way. I just want to figure this out so I can help.”

“I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense,” Tomo said. He lay back and rested his arms on the back of his head, his elbows jutting out to either side of my pillow. “But it means we’re right back where we started.”

I lay down beside him, and he draped an arm over me without speaking. He didn’t hate me, then. “Back where we started. Meaning...?”

He looked at me, and his eyes were deep and beautiful. I wanted to kiss his eyelids, to turn my back on this nightmare and lie beside him forever.

“Meaning,” he said, “that you need to run like hell from me.”

The tears brimmed in my eyes as I nestled into his warmth. Our legs and stomachs were little explosions of heat where we touched. The spikes of his hair tickled the tip of my ear.

“I don’t want to,” I whispered.

He kissed the top of my head.

“You have to, and you can’t look back.”

“I’m sorry.” I hadn’t meant to break us. I thought there would be hope in figuring it out. But Tomo was right. How could there be hope or exile from what he was? He was falling apart before our eyes.

“Gomen,” he said into my hair. “I’m so sorry. I should never have dragged you into this. God, I was so selfish.”

“No,” I said. “I wanted this. I still want this.”

“Gomen,” he said again.

And then it was over.