Ink

Chapter 11

The blood finally stopped, Tomohiro’s kendo headband stained so dark I could barely read the black kanji painted on it. The Twofold Path of the Pen and Sword, it said. Only, to Tomo hiro the pen and sword might as well be the same thing.

It was a deep gash in his wrist and probably needed stitches, but that would mean explaining to his dad and the doctors, so I knew he wouldn’t go to the hospital.

We didn’t speak for a while, sitting under the trees for shelter as the rain poured. There wasn’t a question I could think of that encompassed everything I wanted to ask. Tomohiro sat beside me, rubbing the headband into his wrist and slicking his dripping bangs behind his ears. I was exhausted and just wanted to go home, but I didn’t know what to tell Diane, and so I stayed, trapped in the hell that had once been our paradise.

“What now?” I said, when the silence became too much to bear.

“Let’s hope the storm gave us cover,” he said. “That and not too many people live around here. They’ll say the dragon was a trick of the light. A flash of lightning against the clouds, that kind of thing.”

“Really?”

“I hope so. It didn’t lift too high up in the clouds.”

“Tomo.”

“Hmm?”

“I told you to stop drawing, but you didn’t listen.”

Tomohiro’s head slumped forward. “It was strange,” he said. “You were right beside me, but your voice sounded a mile away. I couldn’t hear what you were saying. It all sounded…fuzzy to me.”

“You have to stop drawing.”

He said nothing.

“Don’t you get it? This was almost Koji all over again. Is this really worth your life?”

He lifted his head slowly, staring at the trampled grass where the dragon’s corpse was disintegrating.

“It’s worth my life,” he said. “But it isn’t worth yours.”

“How can you say that? It’s not worth yours, either.”

He shook his head. “Even if I stopped drawing, this…power, curse, whatever the hell it is. It won’t go away. I’m a Kami, Katie. This is what I am. My nightmares are so real I could die in my sleep. The kanji I write on my entrance exams could cut open someone’s wrist. A lot of the characters have the radical for sword in them, you know. The ink is everywhere I go, and sometimes I…sometimes I lose myself, like when I couldn’t hear you. I’m marked for this darkness. This is who I am.”

He lowered his head. “My only hope is to learn to control it.”

“Then maybe I—maybe I need to go.”

“What?”

“Because I’m making things worse. I’m some sort of catalyst. And I don’t know why.”

“It—it might be more dangerous if you leave.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The way I feel about you, Katie,” he said, his brown eyes searching mine. “What if it’s reacting to my emotions or something? If you left, I might— I mean, the Kami power might overtake me. What if I completely lose it, if the nightmares finally get me? But as long as you’re safe. It’s for the best if the ink destroys me anyway. If I don’t wake up, then I can’t hurt you.”

I stared at him. Did I mean that much to him?

“Too dramatic?” he said with a laugh, shaking his head.

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s not supposed to be. It’s lonely being a monster.”

“You’re not a monster.”

He held up his blood-soaked wrist like it was proof. “I am.

But it’s not damn fair.” The rain clung to spikes of his hair, dripping off the tips of it into the grass. “It’s not just the ink hunting you, Katie. I’m hunting you. I want you like I’ve never wanted anything.”

Every part of me caught fire. Every nerve pulsed.

“I was trying to push you away, messing with you in the courtyard. I almost couldn’t go through with it. You’ll think I’m such an asshole, but when I saw you—god. I couldn’t get you out of my head. And then you climbed that tree and shouted my name. You weren’t afraid of me. You didn’t back down. I felt like you could see me, the real me. Myu was a reminder that I was too dangerous to be anything but alone and half-dead. You made me alive again, Katie. If I have to burn for that, then I’ll light the damn match myself.”

“Tomo,” I said. My mind whirled with everything he’d said.

“I know. I’m sorry. I should keep my mouth shut.”

“No, I—”

My keitai chimed then, its happy metal tune so out of place in the soaked clearing. Tomohiro pressed his back into the rough trunk of a tree while I reached for my phone.

The ID flashed Diane. There was no way I could answer it. I sat there frozen, unable to answer, unable to put the phone away.

“What will you do?” Tomohiro asked softly.

“I can’t go home like this,” I said. The phone stopped ringing. A few seconds later, it started again. “What am I supposed to say?” I was soaked, covered in dirt and ink and blood. My uniform was probably ruined, and I had no clue how to explain this. Even Diane, who didn’t believe in curfews, was definitely going to ground me. And I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be going to Miyajima with Yuki.

Yuki.

“Wait,” I said. “What if I stayed at Yuki’s?” But Tomohiro’s expression was a few seconds ahead of mine.

“Can you explain the ink and blood to her?” he asked. He bit his lip, then leaned his head back against the tree trunk.

“Come to my house,” he said.

“What?”

“My father’s in Tokyo for work. You can wash your uniform.”

“And Diane?”

“Tell her you were caught in the rain. It’s the truth after all.”

“And tell her I’m staying over at a senior boy’s house.”

He blinked. “She doesn’t know who I am?”

My cheeks turned red.

“She thinks I’m with Tanaka,” I said.

He grinned as I felt my face flood with heat. “With Ichirou?” he mused. “I had no idea you thought he was hot.”

“Shut up,” I said, but I couldn’t bring myself to smack him.

“I don’t.”

“Well, you can’t go home, that’s for certain. So there really is no choice but to let me help you.” He grinned slyly.

“Unless you want to stay over at Ichirou’s.”

That time I did smack him in the shoulder. He was right, of course, even if he was being a smart-ass. It would be hard enough to make my way to his house without anyone staring at us. Hopefully the drenching rains would keep everyone indoors.

He stood up, grabbed his soaked book bag and wiped the raindrops off it with his palm.

“Let’s go,” he said, reaching out his left hand. I stared at it for a moment, the smoothness of his open palm. Then I nodded and put my hand in his. He pulled me up and led me to the outskirts of the forest, where his bike rested against a plum tree. He tried to wipe the seat off with his hand, but everything was so soaked it made no difference. He laughed then, and I heard my own voice echo it. I wasn’t sure how anything could be so funny when we’d almost been mauled by a dragon, but there we were, muddy, bloody and grinning.

We ducked under the fence, slamming it closed. Thunder still rumbled in the clouds above, and the streets were practically bare. Tomohiro got on the bike first and then patted the metal carrier above the rear wheel.

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“You don’t want to walk, do you? Anyway,” he added, “I wouldn’t let you fall.”

I sat down on the carrier and lifted my feet. I pressed my hands into the back of the seat, but Tomohiro snorted at me and wrapped my palms around his hips.

“Okay,” he said and pressed against the pedal. The bike wobbled and lurched forward, and I squeezed my hands into his stained blazer. He curved around for a bit until he got the hang of steering two people with only one good wrist, and soon we were speeding north, Shizuoka spreading before us. The rain was thick on the streets, but we didn’t mind the spray—we really couldn’t get much more soaked anyway.

Tomohiro cycled for what seemed like forever, the world around us a blur of gray skies and white umbrellas. The taller buildings shrank away, and we cycled down narrow alleyways behind houses, where cement retaining walls pulled away from us at sheer angles. At last he slowed down, in front of a two-story house with an arched gate in front.

Mounted on the gate above the bell and intercom was a silver nameplate that read The Yuu Family.

“You live here?” I gaped. It wasn’t a big house, not by American standards, but a detached home like this in over-crowded Shizuoka was a pretty big deal. Tomohiro shrugged and slouched against the gated entrance.

“My dad’s head of accounting at ShizuCha,” he said casually.

“ShizuCha?” I repeated. “The tea company?” But Tomohiro looked pretty embarrassed about the whole thing, so I dropped it. He pushed the gate open and motioned me through, following behind with his bike.

“We should probably leave our shoes outside,” he joked as we reached the front door. I peered down at our muddy, ink-coated shoes as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a key, turning the lock with a loud click.

“Tadaima,” he sang as he stepped in, out of habit since no one was home. The entrance tunneled into darkness. The humid, stale air trapped in the house smelled like a snuffed-out candle, thick against our faces but warm compared to the rain outside.

Tomo clunked his shoes against the raised floor to the ve-randa as I slipped mine off. I peeled off my soaked kneesocks, laying them on top of my shoes like strips of bandage.

He led me toward the bathroom, a sink with the bath and shower behind a separate door and a laundry machine across the hall.

“Here,” he said, opening the lid of the all-in-one washer-dryer. “You can put your seifuku in here.”

“Don’t these kinds of stains need to be scrubbed out?” I asked, but neither of us was really sure.

“Put the skirt in the wash, then,” he said. “Leave the shirt in the sink and we can try scrubbing or bleaching it. And go ahead and have a hot bath. I’ll find some clothes you can borrow and leave them outside the door.”

Embarrassment crept up my neck, but he looked as cool and collected as always. I hated him for it.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t get ill from the cold,” he said, and he reached his hand up to brush wet strands of hair off my face. He tucked them behind my ear, and I hoped he would leave before my knees buckled under me.

Once I heard his footsteps thumping up the stairs, I unbuttoned my shirt. I stared at it critically before leaning it over the sink. I ran some water and scrubbed the sides of the blouse together. There was no way I was going to get the ink out, even if I could get rid of the blood streaks. I sighed and let the shirt crumple into the sink. I threw my skirt into the machine, but left it for Tomohiro to turn on; I couldn’t quite make out all the kanji on the buttons. I wasn’t sure what to do with my underwear—it was soaked, but there was no way I was leaving it in the laundry room. In the end I brought it with me into the bathroom and laid it flat on the counter, hoping by some miracle it would dry.

The shower spray was hot against my skin and I greedily breathed in the steam. My skin turned pink as I shook off the cold chill from the rainstorm. Blood and ink had crusted under my fingernails and I scrubbed until they came clean.

I rinsed off and lifted the bamboo cover off the tub of water on the other side of the tile floor.

I soaked, staring up at the azure ceiling in silence. It hit me then that I hadn’t called Diane back yet. I sat up, water sloshing over the side of the tub. I lifted myself out and opened the bath door, where I found a stack of fluffy towels beside the sink.

“Tomo?” I called tentatively by the hallway door. When there was no answer, I creaked it open a bit. Tomohiro had left a neat pile of gray sweatpants and a shirt on the floor.

My underwear hadn’t dried, obviously, so I shoved it into the pants pocket and gave a grateful sigh the pants were a little bulky. I scrambled into the clothes and called through the house until Tomohiro came downstairs, clean clothes folded in his arms, which he held far away from his chest.

He stopped walking halfway, his eyes wide. My skin felt itchy.

“Cute,” he said, and I wanted to hit him. Pins and needles scratched up my arms. “My turn,” he added. “My room’s upstairs. You’ll find it okay.”

I nodded, reached for my bag by the entrance and headed up the stairs. I heard the door of the laundry room slide shut.

There were only a couple of doors upstairs and only one was ajar, so I slipped inside. A simple bookshelf and desk sat on one side of his room, his bed across from them with a blue plaid duvet strewn across it at an angle. I felt guilty somehow, like I was trespassing in his room; the feeling thrilled me at the same time it filled me with embarrassment.

I sat on his bed, looking around the room. There were some cute trinkets—a miniature Eiffel Tower, a few plush animals that I wondered with sudden urgency if other girls had given to him. But what really caught my eye were the posters, almost twenty of them plastered on the walls. Rembrandt, Rubens, Monet, Michelangelo—all of them represented. Most of the paintings featured angels trampling demons, judgment dealt out at the end of time. The rain pelted against the roof, and the raindrops running down the windows spread creepy gray blotches of light on the paintings.

I heard the spray of the shower downstairs.

There were other paintings, too, white and black and gray like Tomohiro’s sketches. Ghostly images of forests and landscapes, tossing oceans and cherry blossoms floating through the air. Ink-wash paintings, the traditional kind you saw in shrines or tatami rooms. The shadows that fell on them in the silence of his room made the landscapes seem so far away, distant worlds that almost came alive when I stared at them long enough. I wondered if they’d been drawn by Kami, too, but I realized I must be wrong. It would be too dangerous to display works like that.

Still, maybe all the creepy posters were the reason Tomohiro had nightmares. I’m not sure I could sleep with all these angels and demons ripping each other to pieces around me.

I took a deep breath and reached into my bag for my phone.

The ring echoed in my ear as I waited, still wondering what exactly I was going to say.

The phone clicked on the other end.

“Moshi moshi, Greene residence.”

“Diane—”

“Katie!” she burst out. “Thank god. Where are you? I called so many times.”

“I’m so sorry. I got caught in the rain. I didn’t hear the ring.”

“It’s a mess out there. It’s like typhoon season early or something. Where are you?”

“I’m at Yuki’s,” I lied. “We got totally soaked, so she let me come in and have a bath and put some clean clothes on.”

A sigh of relief. “Good thing you girls had common sense.

What about Tanaka?”

“Tanaka?”

“Don’t you spend every Wednesday together?”

“Oh. Today it was just Yuki and me. After Sewing Club, I mean.”

“I’ll borrow Morimoto’s car and pick you up.”

“No!” I shouted. “I mean, um, I was hoping I could stay over. My clothes are going through her laundry anyway, and she has pajamas I can borrow.”

A pause. “But you and Yuki aren’t the same size.”

“It’s just for sleeping, Diane. I’ll make do.”

“I still think you should come home.” Her voice sounded off, somehow. Was she onto me? Was I that obvious? I needed to change tactics, and fast.

“Diane,” I said. “Look. Moving to Japan has been hard for me, and I’m really starting to make good friends, you know?”

I could hear her breathing on the line. “Please let me stay over,” I said. I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped the sympa-thy card would pull through.

It did. I heard a sigh of defeat.

“Okay,” Diane said. “As long as you’re safe and dry, and as long as Yuki’s mom doesn’t mind.”

“It’s fine with her,” I said and quickly said my goodbyes before she could change her mind. As much as Diane had protested, I was more interested in what she hadn’t said. For example, that there were giant inky dragons floating through the sky.

I dialed Yuki’s keitai and waited for the tinny ring.

“Katie?” she said when she answered.

“Yuki-chan, I need a favor,” I said, wincing as the words came out of my mouth. God, I sounded thirteen or something. “If Diane calls, can you cover for me?”

“What?”

“I got caught in the rain and my seifuku is a mess. If I go home like this, Diane is going to seriously question where I was.”

“And where were you?”

“On a bike ride with Tomohiro,” I said. “But we fell off the bike into the mud.”

She squealed. “And now you’re staying at his house?” I gritted my teeth, but there was no way around it. I needed her help.

“It’s not like that. His dad’s here, too. Look, please cover for me, okay? Please?”

“Katie, try to be careful, okay? You don’t know for sure that those were all rumors.”

“They were,” I said. “Promise.” I mean, except the attack on Koji, which, when you thought about it, was very much Tomohiro’s fault. And had almost happened to me.

“Okay, got it. No problem,” Yuki said, like she was in on the secret. I could almost imagine her winking, throwing her fingers up in the peace sign. It’s what she would do at school, but at the same time she had no idea what the secret really was, how deep and dark it ran. I closed my keitai and shoved it back into my bag.

Safe, for now.

The water shut off downstairs, and a minute later Tomohiro padded up the stairs, toweling his copper hair.

“Ah.” He sighed as he came in wearing a gray T-shirt and red plaid pajama bottoms. “Feels good to be dry and out of the rain.” He sat down beside me without thinking, and suddenly we were there, sitting on the side of his bed. His cheeks turned a deep red and he stood up.

“C’mon,” he said and led me downstairs to the living room.

He flipped on the TV and started switching channels. A fresh bandage was knotted around his wrist, and the tails of it hung down his arm. I clued in suddenly about what he was looking for. He was studying every news report before switching to the next.

“You’re looking for the dragon.”

“There’s no way nobody saw it,” he said, and the fear started to sink back into me, colder than the damp rain outside. But he clicked and clicked, and it was nowhere on the news. He sank back into his white couch and sighed.

“Looks like we were lucky,” I said.

I jumped when a cheerful chime rang through the room.

Tomohiro narrowed his eyes and sat up, padding across the room to his book bag. He pulled out his keitai, his tiny kendouka charm dangling across the back of his hand.

He stared at the ID on the phone as it rang, rainbow colors spreading across the metal edge where he’d flipped it open.

“Shit,” he said. “Can’t he leave me alone?”

“Ishikawa?” I said.

“Probably needs backup again.” He sighed. “I’m tired of saving his ass every time things go wrong, but he doesn’t have anyone else to help him. I’m it. I don’t wanna see him get thrashed.”

“You better go, then,” I said.

“I’m not leaving you,” he said, his eyes searching my face.

“Anyway, I’m pretty sure he’d notice that my wrist is sliced open.”

He clicked the cell phone shut, and the phone stopped ringing, the colors fading away. Then it rang again. When that died down, a text chimed in.

“What’s his problem?” Tomohiro said, opening the phone again. “He usually gets the message if I don’t answer.” He opened the text and his eyes widened, his face turning pale.

“What is it?” I asked. My throat felt thick and dry.

Tomohiro didn’t answer, just stood there and stared, his face frozen in horror.

“What? Is the text from someone else? Who’s it from, Tomo?”

With a dry voice, he whispered the name.

“Satoshi.”

Relief surged through me momentarily. “Ishikawa again?”

I said. “Jeez, you scared the crap out of me.”

“He saw it.”

My blood ran cold. “What?”

“He saw it. I know it.”

“Ishikawa—”

“He saw the dragon.”

He turned the keitai to show me the text scrawled across the screen.

えた I saw it. So simple, and so terrifying.

Suddenly the phone was alive again, swirling with color, chiming cheerfully in Tomohiro’s hand. His palm opened slowly and the keitai dropped to the floor, slamming against the hardwood and skidding a little ways, still chiming.

“How do you know that’s what he means?” I said. “There’s no way—he doesn’t even know about Toro Iseki.”

“He knows I go there to draw,” Tomohiro said.

Panic coursed through me, turning my limbs to jelly. “You told him?”

He shook his head. “You’re not the first to think of following me,” he said. “He came once, watched me draw, got bored.”

The phone stopped ringing. “But how could he have seen?”

“I don’t know,” he snapped. “I don’t know how. But he’s kept a close eye on me since that ink puddle in the kendo match. He knows what Kami are because the Yakuza know about them, and he’s tried to get me to admit it before. He thinks I have some stupid destiny as a Yakuza weapon or something.” You’re keeping him from his destiny. Oh. “I convinced him the last couple times he was wrong, that I don’t even know what Kami are, but lately I’ve been losing control.”

Because of me. Cue the stifling guilt. “But he’s your friend.

He’d keep your secret, right?”

“There are more powerful things than friendship that would sway him.” His eyes had gone dark, and he sat down on the floor, tucking his knees up to his chin. “Koji defended me until the end. He almost lost his eye and still protected my secret.

Sato won’t do that. He’s in too much trouble to think of anything but protecting himself.” It was true. I knew it. Ishikawa was drowning and he’d pull Tomohiro down with him.

“What are we going to do?” Tears welled up in my eyes.

I didn’t want to run from the Yakuza.

“We’re going to deny it,” Tomohiro said, pressing his head into his hands. The tails of the bandage splayed across his knees. “You can’t let anyone know we were together today.”

My stomach flopped as I thought of Yuki. She wouldn’t tell anyone, right? She’d keep my secret.

Who was I kidding? She couldn’t keep it to herself for five minutes. She was probably on the phone to Tanaka right now.

But it was too late, and his eyes were so sincere. I didn’t want to let him down.

“I won’t,” I said. He nodded. His phone rang again and his eyes glazed over.

“I’ve lied to him before,” he said, but he sounded like he was convincing himself. “I’ll do it again. Shit. He must have been doing deals in Ishida again. That’s how he saw it.”

Ishida. Where they’d cornered the guy in the knit hat, where Jun had rescued me from the hairy, tattooed creep. It was close to Toro Iseki. He could easily have had a view of it from there.

“Tomo,” I squeaked out. He looked up, and I must have looked like crap because he snapped out of his mood and strode over, sitting down on the couch with me.

“Don’t worry,” he said, taking my hands in his. “We’ll be okay.”

I nodded, but my stomach ached. I blinked back tears and one rolled down my cheek. He reached for it, the tiny drop catching the light on his slender fingers, and then all I could see was the gleaming hazel of his eyes as they searched mine.

I tensed, and he leaned in. I could smell the shampoo in his still-damp hair.

I felt his breath against my mouth, and then he pressed his lips against mine, his hand still on my cheek. The heat sent a shock through me, melted away any other thoughts but this, that Yuu Tomohiro was kissing me.

He pulled back then, suddenly. His cheeks flushed red, his eyes round and surprised. He bobbed his head in apology.

“Sorry,” he said. “You must be thirsty. I’ll get you a drink.”

He excused himself and practically ran to the kitchen, where I heard way more clatter than necessary to get a glass.

I touched my lips with my fingers, pressed them against each other, feeling the way they’d swelled when he kissed me. I didn’t think my face could get any redder; thank god he was taking so long in the kitchen.

Then his keitai rang again, spewing rainbow colors across the floor.

“Iced tea okay?” he shouted over it, his voice way too en-ergetic. “I’ve only got oolong and lemon.”

“Sure,” I said, staring at the phone.

He returned, putting the cold glass into my hands. He clicked the phone off and threw it onto a side table before sitting beside me. I took a sip of the bitter tea, resting the cup on the coffee table. His eyes never left me.

“Are you okay?” he said. I couldn’t help it—a laugh came out.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “We were nearly ripped to shreds by a dragon, and now Ishikawa’s going to blurt your secret to his little Yakuza friends. I’m just peachy.” But all I could do was stare at his soft lips, wanting to press mine against them. Stupid, stupid.

“They don’t know what they’re dealing with,” Tomohiro said, his eyes dark. “You think they’re scary?”

“Um, they’re gangsters.”

“And I’m the shadow lurking around the corner. I’m the youkai demon dragging them screaming into the night.”

“One, that’s creepy. Two, stop with the monster business.

You’re not evil, Tomo. You were there when I needed you.

You saved me from the dragon, but you also saved me when I couldn’t be myself, when everyone else told me to heal and get over it. You’re risking everything to be with me, everything to help me. You’re…you’re—” I could barely speak with him staring at me like that. He put his oolong tea down gently on the coffee table, his eyes never moving from my face.

“O-re sa,” he whispered, leaning closer. I, you know… I remembered the first time he’d started to confess those words to me, in the lush green of Toro Iseki.

His fingers slid along my jaw, each like a spark on my skin.

“Kimi no koto ga…” About you, I… And he rested his lips on my jaw, where his fingers had been. The warmth of it pulsed through me.

His lips were so close to mine, grazing along my skin to my mouth. “Suki,” he breathed, I love you, and then the softness of his lips pressed against mine and the world caught fire, everything light and flame and burning.

His fingers wound in my hair, the cloth wrapped around his wrist sliding along my collarbone as he moved. I reached for him, letting my hands trail along his jaw and around his neck, twisting the spikes of his hair flat between my fingers.

His feathery bangs tickled against my skin as his kisses brushed against my lips, my cheek, the corner of my jaw. He trailed down to my neck. He was fireworks and radiance, glare and tingling frostbite.

My voice was quiet, a crackle in the fire. “Suki,” I whispered, and the ocean of him churned against me, his kisses deepening like he was drowning. His arms closed around me, the heat of his fingertips splayed against the skin of my waist.

He pressed his fingers under the hem of the shirt he’d lent me, scorching lines of warmth up my back. I slid my hands down his back to the edge of his T-shirt, then looped them under. My fingers felt like ice against the heat of his skin, as if they were melting, and he moaned softly into my neck, the vibration of it pulsing on my skin.

Everything was floating. Everything was burning. Everything was drowning.

“Shit!” he groaned and pulled away, his hands slipping from my back, my fingers left holding emptiness.

Red bloomed across the bandage on his wrist, trails of blood and ink streaking down his arm in zigzags like rain on a window.

“Are you okay?” I said between breaths. Stupid question, but it was hard enough to think straight, like I’d been pulled from a dream, lost in that moment when you couldn’t move and you weren’t sure which world was real.

His eyes squeezed shut as he cradled his arm. “It stings like hell,” he said. He walked down the hall to the bathroom, where I heard the spray of the tap. A minute later he came back, a new cloth bandage wrapped around the wound.

I guess if you cut yourself drawing as often as he did, you’d have supplies lying around.

“I’m sorry,” I said, mostly because I felt awkward. But he sat beside me, tracing my ear with the fingers on his left hand.

“Well that got the blood going,” he grinned.

“God, you’re so stupid sometimes.”

“That’s part of my charm,” he said. Then he winced again.

“You need to go to the hospital,” I said, but he shook his head.

“Can’t. It’ll be fine. I just need to rest it and, you know, keep the blood flow calm. And you’re not helping with that last part, by the way.” His head hunched toward his chest, his bangs covering his eyes from view. I couldn’t tell if they were closed, but I knew he was in more pain than he was admitting.

“Do you have any painkillers?” I asked.

“In the kitchen,” he rasped. “In the cupboard by the fridge.” I went into the kitchen and pulled out the bottle, shaking two into my hand.

“Here,” I said, and he knocked them back with the oolong tea.

“Thanks,” he said, wiping the back of his mouth with his good wrist. “But I should warn you, those are the kind that knock me out like nobody’s business.” Of course I’d grabbed the wrong ones—I could barely read the kanji on the bottles.

He leaned back into the couch, curled on his side.

“Do you want me to help you upstairs?”

“I’ll sleep down here,” he said. “You can have my room.

We have futons in the tatami room, but my dad will wonder why I pulled them out, so I better just take the couch.”

“Are you sure?” I said. His eyes already looked droopy, but maybe I was overthinking it.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s for the best since I clearly can’t control myself.” He breathed in suddenly at the pain. “Could you pass me that blanket?” I looked behind and found it, then tucked it around him. He grabbed my fingers with his left hand, resting them on his lips. His eyes looked watery and distant, but they gleamed as he stared at me. Through the tips of my fingers he said, “I’ll protect you. I promise.”

I stroked his hair, running my fingers through the copper silk of it, until he lifted my hand urgently from his head.

“The blood flow,” he gasped.

“You’re an idiot,” I said, and he grinned.

In the darkness of his room, I crawled into bed. The rain made shadows on the ink-wash paintings, as if the drops ran down the painted trees themselves.

“What do you want?” I whispered to the darkness. “Why am I the catalyst?” I hated myself for thinking it, but how much of his feelings for me were really him, and how much were…the other part of him, the part hunting me? Was it his feelings for me that were making the ink do weird things?

It couldn’t be. He hadn’t even really known me when my pen exploded.

Tomohiro had an alarm clock beside his bed that went tick, tick, annoyingly loud, as I squeezed my eyes shut.

I listened to the rain pattering on the roof. I pulled the blue duvet tighter around my shoulders, surrounded by the smell of him, my skin still pulsing where his touch had scored itself into my memory.

And once I drifted to sleep, the dragon rose in my dreams, Ishikawa standing fearlessly beside it.