The Waking

12

M onday morning, a light rain began to fall shortly after dawn, the sun struggling to peek through a thin layer of clouds. Miho had fallen asleep first, and might have gotten three hours of sleep after the sleepwalking incident. Kara had managed less than two-perhaps four hours total, separated by the most terrifying experience of her life.

By mid-morning, the rain slowed to barely a trickle, with shafts of sunlight reaching down through breaks in the clouds. It looked like the gloom would burn off, delivering another picturesque spring day on Miyazu Bay, perfect for the tourists visiting Ama-no-Hashidate. But it felt as though all of that existed in some parallel world now, a busy, happy reality blind to the dread and death that stalked the halls of Monju-no-Chie School.

“Dad, Miho wants to get back to the dorm. I’m going to walk her, all right?” Kara asked, standing framed in his office doorway.

He looked at her, eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you want to go over there?”

Kara had shrugged. “There’ll be plenty of people around. And I want to check on Sakura.”

At his desk, Rob Harper stared at her, tapping a pen against his computer keyboard. “How do you feel? Did you get up again last night?”

His nerves were frayed. When she laughed, she knew she sounded frayed as well. There was no hiding it.

“Not as far as I know. If I did, I didn’t go anywhere.” But Kara knew she hadn’t gotten up again. “And I’m okay,” she went on. “Just really, really tired. If there’s not going to be school, I think I’m going to try to sleep a little after lunch.”

Miho came out of the bathroom then, lost in a hooded sweatshirt much too large for her. Kara’s father glanced at Miho, then back at his daughter. “All right, go ahead. But unless you’re coming back right away, after you go to the dorm, come by the school. I’m headed there shortly to help deal with the parents. There’ll be a lot of activity later today with so many people coming to collect their kids.”

Moments later, the girls were out the front door and walking briskly toward school, a silent but mutual urgency propelling them. Kara had brought her camera, but she uncapped it only once for a quick picture of the school in the distance, shafts of sunlight dappling the pagoda-style roof in splashes of golden light and gray storm shadow.

“Why did you bring that?” Miho asked in English.

Kara glanced at her. They’d spoken very little this morning, each keeping to her own thoughts. Kara’s eyes burned with exhaustion and her head felt stuffed with cotton, the way she’d felt the one and only time she’d ever drunk enough beer to wake up with a hangover. And Miho might not have been suffering from nightmares, but she had to be exhausted this morning as well.

“When I’m upset or freaked out,” Kara explained in English, “there are two things that make me feel better, taking pictures and playing guitar. I’m not some strolling troubadour, and I figured we didn’t have time to hang out and sing Jack Johnson surf tunes. So, the camera.”

Miho nodded slowly as they walked, listening, trying to take it all in. Her English was decent, but not as accomplished as Kara’s Japanese. Miho didn’t have a father who’d been teaching her a foreign language basically since birth.

“What does ‘troubadour’ mean?” she asked.

Kara smiled. She switched to Japanese. “Like a traveling musician.”

Miho shot her a sharp look. “Don’t do that,” she said, resolutely sticking to English, irritable from sleeplessness. “Don’t be so… Don’t be…”

The girl grew frustrated, sighing because she could not find a word in English to express her feelings.

“Shit,” Miho said.

Kara tried to hide her smile, and then laughed instead, raising a hand to hide her face. Miho shot her a fierce, withering look, entirely different from her usual shy, amiable demeanor.

“No, no,” Kara said. “Okay, English. I’m not laughing at you. It was just… you don’t have any problem learning English swear words.”

Miho shrugged. “Profanity is useful and it makes you feel better. It’s an… what is the word?” she said, throwing up her hands in frustration. “My brain is not working right today. Profanity is a very expressive part of any language.”

The girls walked on another half a dozen steps in silence, and then Kara bumped Miho gently. “The word you wanted was ‘condescending.’ It means to treat someone like they’re not as smart as you are, or something like that. And I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be condescending. It’s just easier to talk to you in Japanese.”

Miho bumped her back, a little harder. “But I need to speak better English.”

“Your English is freakin’ amazing. You speak English better than most Americans.”

“Really?”

“Really. No shit.”

Miho smiled. “See? Profanity is useful.”

“Oh, I can teach you all kinds of profanity you probably haven’t heard yet.”

“I would like that.”

The drizzle had picked up a bit, and Kara snapped her camera case shut, keeping it close to her body. As she and Miho walked, they continued to bump each other every few steps.

Pretending they had nothing at all to fear.

As they stepped up onto the curb and then onto the lawn in front of the school, Kara felt words coming up from deep within her, felt her mouth opening to ask a question to which she did not want an answer. She rubbed at her itchy eyes.

“Did you smell the cherry blossoms last night?” Kara asked.

“I was just thinking about that,” Miho said, looking at her oddly. “I looked around this morning, but there are no cherry trees near your house.”

“No. There aren’t.”

Kara expected Miho to pursue the point, to want to talk about what had caused the smell, but instead the other girl fell silent. But Kara couldn’t bear silence right now.

“Did you see it, Miho? Last night, when I was outside?”

Miho glanced at her for a fraction of a second, obviously reluctant to meet her gaze. “I don’t know.”

Kara stopped. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

Miho went on two steps further, then turned. Her gaze kept dropping, shifting from Kara to the ground and then up again.

“When I came out, for a moment I saw something,” she said, then shifted into Japanese, pointing to Kara’s camera. “If someone takes a photograph with a bright flash, sometimes it makes you blink, and there are colored lights that linger when you close your eyes. It was like that. I had only a glimpse of something that seemed only barely there, like I was looking out of the corner of my eye, but instead it was right in front of me. And as soon as your father yelled for you, I blinked and it was gone.”

The two girls stared at each other. Kara had a hard time catching her breath. The damp, gray day enveloped them. Sleep deprivation had made the whole world surreal and dreamlike to her, so that there on the grounds of Monju-no-Chie School, she felt as though she were no longer in the world she had always known.

“I saw it, for just a second. I came out of a nightmare, but I’m not sure I was ever really dreaming,” she said, sticking to Japanese now, needing to be understood. Her voice was barely a whisper. Her father had put ointment on her palms last night but the little cuts still stung. She forced herself not to make fists of her hands. “Last night, as long as I stayed awake, I could still sort of picture it. But then I slept a little, and now all I have is the impression of it in my head, like the whole thing was a dream.”

Miho hugged herself, looking like a tiny little girl in that voluminous sweatshirt. “It wasn’t, though. It isn’t a dream.”

“No. It isn’t.”

“I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

“That’s okay,” Kara said. “We both need a peaceful night’s rest. We need to get away from here.”

“What about Sakura?” Miho asked.

Kara pressed her lips together a moment. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think she’d want to leave.”

Miho blanched, looking like she might be sick, but she didn’t argue the point.

“Let’s go talk to her,” Kara went on.

When they started toward the school again, they walked a little faster. Several unfamiliar cars were in the lot to the left of the main school building. They went around, cutting across the field that separated the school from the dormitory. Other vehicles were parked beside the dorm where several mothers were gathered outside, and two boys were loading suitcases into car trunks.

Kara and Miho ignored everyone. A couple of boys tried to stop Miho to talk to her, but she brushed them off. Some of the doors were open on the corridor; the rooms were empty of students and any personal belongings. It was still early, but some parents had already come and gone, collecting their children. More boarders would depart over the next day or so. By tomorrow night, Kara had a feeling, the dorm would be empty except for a handful of kids, Miho and Sakura included. And then Miho would leave, and Sakura would be alone with her grief and obsession.

When Miho unlocked her door and pushed it open, they both saw Sakura sprawled, half-tangled in her sheets, unmoving. Kara gasped and from the visible jolt that went through Miho, she knew the other girl had made the same assumption.

But then Sakura moaned and stretched and rolled over. Her jagged, short hair stood up in tufts and wings. Bleary-eyed, she gave them a soft smile.

“Do you have to be so loud?”

“Sakura!” Miho said, hurrying toward her. “You scared me. For a second, I thought you were dead.”

The smile drained from Sakura’s face as she sat up, blanket around her waist. “That would be helpful. Then the police wouldn’t think I had Chouku’s blood on my hands.”

“Oh, no,” Miho said. “They don’t, really.”

Sakura nodded, rubbing her hands over her face. “Yeah. They do.”

“But they talked to everyone,” Kara said. “They asked me and Miho if you’d left the room during the night, and we told them no.”

“How do you know?” Sakura asked bitterly.

Kara blinked. “What do you-?”

“You were sleeping,” Sakura said. “You don’t know if I left or not.”

“We would’ve heard you,” Miho argued.

Sakura gave a short, humorless laugh. “I’m sure the police were totally convinced by that argument.”

She’d made a mess of the room, with dirty clothes strewn on the floor and piles of manga on Miho’s bed. Now she seemed to notice the condition of the place.

“Sorry about this. I couldn’t sleep, so I tried reading.”

But Kara had stopped listening, stopped paying attention to her. The window stood wide open and the temperature in the room was a good fifteen degrees colder than out in the hall. She went over and closed the window tightly, locking it.

“Why are you so quiet?” Sakura asked.

Kara looked at her. “We need to talk.”

“About what?”

“You know what,” Kara said. She glanced at Miho, but the quieter girl only sat, waiting for her to speak. Miho and Sakura were best friends as well as roommates, but their dynamic had long since been established. Sakura was the wild one, the bold, outgoing one, and though Miho seemed more talkative with Kara, around Sakura she chose to play the part of modest mouse.

“Fine,” Kara went on, sitting down on the edge of Miho’s bed, locking eyes with Sakura. “You think Akane’s come back, that she’s giving us these dreams, that she’s the one who killed Chouku and Jiro, and made Hana jump off the roof, because they were all involved in her murder. Maybe they were. And maybe you’re right and Ume really did have something to do with it, too.”

Sakura’s nostrils flared, her expression cold. “And you think I’m crazy.”

Kara and Miho exchanged a look.

“Not entirely,” Kara said. Her heart raced and she felt her face flush. God, it’s so hard to say this stuff out loud, she thought. “Okay, a lot of people would think the whole thing was nuts. Ghosts? Spirits of murdered girls back from the dead? That’s pretty crazy. But Miho and I… we’ve been talking about it. What’s going on here isn’t normal. There’s something awful at this school. I feel like a total idiot using the word ‘evil,’ but I know what I feel.”

This last bit felt to Kara like a plea, and emotion welled up in her. Fear and desperation made her voice quaver.

“You’re talking about vampires again, aren’t you?” Sakura said, crossing her arms almost petulantly.

“Not exactly,” Kara said.

Miho took a breath before speaking. “You know the legend of the ketsuki?”

Sakura rolled her eyes, but instead of humor, a grim anger emanated from her. “Seriously? That’s so much easier to believe? I’ve seen the looks between the two of you, I know what you think. I’m losing my mind. I miss Akane so much that I’m wishing for this to be true. But I don’t wish it! I wish she was still alive, not a thing, not a spirit killing people! But she was my sister, and if she can’t rest because the police are such fools they don’t know how to make her killers pay, then she should rise! She should make them pay!”

Kara nodded. “Maybe she should. But I don’t think it’s Akane.”

Sakura threw up her hands, then turned away, wiping tears from her eyes. “How insane is this whole conversation? They’ll lock us all up if they hear us talking like this.”

Miho went to sit beside her, pulled her into an embrace. For a while, Sakura wept into the soft fabric of Miho’s sweatshirt. At last she steadied her breath and pulled away, looking up first at Miho and then at Kara.

“What makes you so sure it’s a ketsuki?”

Kara hesitated, running her tongue over dry lips.

Miho answered for her. “It came for Kara last night.”

Sakura’s eyes widened. “What?”

Kara nodded. “If Miho hadn’t woken my father, I’d probably be.. .”

She couldn’t say dead, but she did not need to. Miho and Sakura both knew what word she had left out.

Sakura sat a moment, taking that in, and then she shook her head.

“No. It’s Akane.”

“Sakura?” Miho said in surprise.

“You imagined it,” Sakura said, simmering with anger. “Akane’s back. I know it. I can feel her when she’s near. She wants justice. The police wouldn’t give it to her, so she’s taking it in blood, the way the old spirits always did.”

“You’re wrong,” Kara said, shaking her head, trying to get through to her friend. “I saw it. And even if I hadn’t, why would she come after me? I never even knew her.”

“Maybe she was there to frighten you because you don’t believe,” Sakura said, lips curling into cruelty now. “Or maybe she just doesn’t like you.”

“That’s not fair,” Miho said, reaching for her hand.

Sakura pushed her away. As they stared at her, she stood and pulled on pants and a sweater, slipped into shoes, and went to the door.

“Wait, Sakura,” Miho pleaded. “Don’t go.”

She didn’t even hesitate, slamming the door as she went out.

Miho turned to Kara, eyes pleading. “What are we going to do?”

Kara gnawed on her lower lip. “She’s having the dreams, too. If the ketsuki comes for her, she’ll go willingly, thinking it’s Akane. We can’t let her be here by herself anymore.”

Miho stared at the closed door. “We’re going to have to stop it, aren’t we?”

“Someone has to.”

“How?” Miho asked.

Kara shrugged, troubled but no longer confused. She felt strangely awake now. “I’m not sure. Nobody else will believe us. You’re leaving in a couple of days. But we have to… Wait a second.” Kara turned to Miho, mind racing, forcing herself not to succumb to the powerful temptation to pretend none of it was real. They both knew it was real. Denying it might cost Sakura her life. “You said there was a Noh play about the ketsuki. We should ask Miss Aritomo about it.”

Miho thought about that a moment, then nodded. “She might be busy dealing with parents, like your father, but let’s see if we can find her.”

A ripple of anticipation went through Kara. They might be crazy, but it felt good to be taking some kind of action.

“I should go tell my father I might be a while,” she said.

“Okay. I want to take a shower anyway. I’ll meet you on the school steps in half an hour?” Miho suggested.

Kara stood up. “See you there.”

The new school term had barely started, really, and already it was coming to a close. Boxes and suitcases and trunks were being carried out of the dorm. In a way, that seemed fitting to Kara. It felt like many weeks had passed since school had begun-since she had walked so nervously toward Monju-no-Chie School-instead of a comparative handful of days. She remembered vividly how anxious she had been and how Sakura and Miho had set her at ease.

She left the dorm and strode across the field, going toward the trees that lined the opposite side. Sakura had taken off quickly, and Kara expected to find her in the arch of that recessed door on the east side of the school, smoking a cigarette, hiding out. That first day she’d had her uniform jacket inside out, all of those badges and patches on the inside, and Kara had thought Sakura was so cool, that the girl had it all together.

But even back then, she’d been falling apart.

How did you not notice? she wondered now. If not then, when you found out about her sister? How did you not know how broken she was inside?

Kara couldn’t blame herself, though. Miho hadn’t noticed either, and they were roommates. And Sakura hadn’t really begun to fray at the edges until the nightmares came and Jiro died.

If all of this was real-if she and Miho weren’t completely freaking out and seeing things that weren’t there-then they had to be so careful now. The ketsuki had come after Kara, but at least she knew it wanted to hurt her. Sakura felt righteous and invincible. She needed help desperately, and her parents weren’t even returning calls from the school.

When she walked around the side of the building, she peered past the small trees up against the wall, into the deep shadows of that recessed doorway, in the shadow of the overhanging pagoda roof. So certain had she been that, for a moment, she thought she saw a figure there. But the little alcove was empty. Only cigarette butts, stubbed out in the dirt, remained.

With a sigh, Kara continued on. The ancient prayer shrine to her right loomed in the shadows of the trees, damp with rain and unattended. No candles burned there today. Students had been busy this year building shrines of a different sort. The one in memory of Akane still remained down by the bay. A second one had been established for Jiro just a few yards away, with photographs and candles and T-shirts, pins and bits of school uniforms, stuffed animals and toys left as little mementos, offerings from those who missed him. At the back of the school, where Hana had struck the ground after leaping from the roof, a third shrine had been created.

But the students were all leaving now. It appeared Chouku’s spirit would have to wait for her own shrine.

As Kara came around the front of the school, she looked down along the tree line toward the bay and faltered. Coming to a halt, she stared at the lone figure who knelt not far from the water, just at the edge of the shrine of remembrance that students had built for Akane. For just a moment she thought it might be Akane herself, that Sakura was right. But she pushed the thought away. Death had taken Akane. It couldn’t be her.

Narrowing her eyes, Kara realized who it was who knelt there, as though in supplication.

Ume.

Maybe she’s asking for forgiveness, Kara thought. If Ume believed what Sakura had said, that Akane had come back for her killers, her going down to the shrine seemed like a foolish thing to do. And if Ume wanted people to believe she had nothing to do with Akane’s death, hanging around the shrine looking guilty wasn’t going to convince anyone of her innocence.

Kara took a step toward Ume, thinking she should try to talk to her. But whatever Ume’s role had been, Kara had come to believe that Sakura was right about her involvement in Akane’s death, and she decided that she didn’t have time to waste on sympathy for a murderer. She hoped no one else would have to die, but if Ume was haunted by guilt or fear, Kara had no interest in alleviating her torment.

Turning away, she went up the steps and into the school. She kept her street shoes on. It felt odd not to stop in the genkan to change into uwabaki. But right now, no one would be paying much attention to the rules.

Kara found her father in his homeroom, talking to two couples who had come to retrieve their children. He came out into the hallway to tell her he thought it would be hours before he could leave and that she should go back without him.

“I’ll be home before dark,” he promised.

She wondered if the words sprang from something he saw in her eyes or his own fear for his daughter.

“I just have a few things to do with Miho, and then I’ll be headed home,” she promised. “Have you seen Miss Aritomo?”

He shook his head, too distracted by the impatient parents waiting in his classroom to wonder why she would ask. “I assume she’s in her room.”

Kara kissed his cheek and thanked him, then went down to the front door to wait for Miho.

“As much as I love Noh theater,” Miss Aritomo said, giving them a curious look, “this is certainly not the time for club discussions.”

In the art teacher’s office was a bookshelf laden with hardcover Noh plays and books on the staging of such productions. Several crude masks hung on the wall above the bookshelf, unobtrusive, as though the display itself was an apology for its own existence.

“I’m not even in the Noh club,” Kara said. “We just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

Miss Aritomo glanced at the clock on her desk, then at Miho, who looked away a bit guiltily. The teacher settled her gaze on Kara.

“I know you must be aware of the crisis the school faces at the moment,” the teacher said. “You girls are really not even supposed to be in the school building right now-”

“Yeah, like it’s so much safer in the dorm,” Kara scoffed.

Miss Aritomo flinched and then her expression went slack, closed off completely. Miho gave a sharp intake of breath.

Kara realized her mistake immediately. She stood stiffly and executed a deep bow, not raising her eyes. “Sensei, please accept my apology for interrupting you, and for the disrespect with which I spoke. It brings dishonor to me and to my father.”

The woman visibly relaxed, brushing the words away with a wave of her hand.

“You are nervous and afraid and frustrated, Kara. Under the circumstances, much can be forgiven.”

Kara gave a second, shorter bow.

Miss Aritomo bowed in return and continued. “A staff member is working with those boarding students who are not leaving today, making certain that we know who will still be in the dormitory tonight. Miho should be there. And Kara, your father must be wondering where you are.”

Miho bowed her head and murmured an apology, ready to leave.

“Wait,” Kara said to her.

Both of them looked at her in surprise.

“Miss Aritomo, Miho and I are going to have a few days before she leaves and wanted to do something to distract ourselves. I’m not a member of the Noh club, but I’m interested. We’ve talked about taking a Noh play and trying to write it as a comic book. Miho’s roommate Sakura loves manga and she would draw it. So if we could just ask you a few, quick questions, I promise we won’t keep you for very long.”

She had come up with the explanation on the spur of the moment, but she warmed to the lie even as it left her lips. Miho blinked, staring at her.

Kara smiled and bowed her head briefly yet again. “Of course, if you’d rather be dealing with terrified and angry parents, I’m sure we can find some other way to occupy ourselves for the next few days.”

Miss Aritomo’s nostrils flared as though annoyed, and Kara worried that she had miscalculated. But then the art teacher smiled.

“All right. Five minutes. What Noh play were you interested in?”

Miho perked up, blinking in surprise. She smiled softly and then, as though remembering the real purpose behind their visit, grew serious once more.

“When I was younger, I remember seeing part of a Noh play about a ketsuki, a cat-demon that drank the blood of its enemies. At least, I think that was what it was about. I saw the mask once, too, at a Noh museum in Tokyo. My parents took me there three years ago.”

Miss Aritomo began to nod even before Miho had finished her first sentence.

“Yes, of course. I know the play you mean,” the teacher said. “And it would make a perfect manga. But I think it’s in incredibly poor taste for you to ask about it now.”

Kara flinched in surprise. “What do you mean?”

Miss Aritomo crossed her arms, studying them with obvious disdain. “You saw Chouku’s body, Kara-I know you did-all those little bite marks on her. And I’m sure you’ve heard that she and Jiro lost a lot of blood. So the two of you start thinking something supernatural-”

“There’s no such thing-,” Miho began.

“Of course there isn’t!” Miss Aritomo snapped, glaring at them. “But suddenly you’re thinking about the ketsuki and now you want to do a manga story. Students are dead, and you want to use that for manga?”

Kara took a deep breath. Miss Aritomo had already made the connection to the ketsuki legend. Of course she had, with her knowledge of Noh theater. For a moment, Kara had thought the art teacher believed the ketsuki had killed Jiro and Chouku, but it was clear she didn’t believe the creatures were real. She considered trying to convince the teacher but suspected that would only lead to Miss Aritomo telling her father and the principal that the girls were losing their grip on reality.

“It isn’t like that, sensei,” Kara said.

Miss Aritomo raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“No,” Miho said. “It’s true that what happened to Jiro and Chouku made me think about the ketsuki, but we mean no disrespect. We’ve been talking about doing a manga of a legend from Noh theater, and once I thought about the ketsuki, I knew it would make a good one. It would be a faithful retelling of the story.”

The teacher seemed to relax a little. “Nothing to do with what’s happening at school?”

Kara shook her head. “We would never disrespect Chouku and the others like that. We knew them, sensei.”

Miss Aritomo hesitated, apparently trying to decide how much she trusted them. In the end she nodded, giving them the benefit of the doubt.

“All right. But I want to see every page as you create it.”

“Of course,” Miho said, giving the teacher a small bow of her head.

“The story would be perfect for a manga,” Miss Aritomo said. “But it is somewhat different from what you remember.”

“Could you tell us, please?” Kara asked. “Different how?”

“The story is not about a ketsuki,” Miss Aritomo said, reaching back to pull a book from her shelf. As she continued, she flipped pages, searching for something. “Well, I suppose in a way it is. In the play, a woman named Riko is murdered by her husband, who has taken a new lover. Her children mourn for her, and her parents make a shrine at her grave, and there is so much grief that the demon Kyuketsuki senses their rage and grief and comes to their village.

“Kyuketsuki is only spirit but can work terrible evil on the world through surrogates. Kyuketsuki influenced Riko’s family, luring them to the place where her husband spilled her blood. Her father killed a cat on the spot, offering it up to Kyuketsuki. The demon takes all of the sadness and rage and collects it in a bowl, then pours it into the dead cat, transforming it into a blood-drinking monster, forged in the image of Kyuketsuki herself.”

Miss Aritomo stopped flipping pages, then slowly went back several pages to something she had missed.

“There,” she said, pointing to the page. She turned the book around for them both to see. “That’s the mask of Kyuketsuki.”

Miho leaned over for a better look. Kara felt frozen in place. The pointed ears and sharp little horns, the black lips and bloody red teeth, the bright orange eyes. The feline qualities of the tengu were noticeable, from the shape of the nose to the hissing mouth and sharp, tiny fangs. But the face was distorted and gruesome.

Kara closed her eyes so that she would have the strength to look away.

She’d seen it before.

“It’s a rare play, almost never performed anymore,” Miss Aritomo said, not noticing Kara’s reaction. “So many Noh plays are lost to time and become unfashionable. If you really mean to take it seriously, it would be a ser vice to the theater and to Japan for you to create a manga of this story. I’m sure I could give you credit for it in class, as well.”

The teacher said this with a tiny smile, but the girls did not smile in return.

Kara looked at her. “So, the Kyuketsuki legend is older than this play, right?”

“Yes, very old. Most Noh plays are just retellings of older stories.”

“Is it always someone sacrificing the cat? Are there other ways to call the demon? To create a ketsuki?”

Miss Aritomo cocked her head, studying them more closely now, her prior suspicions obviously returning. “There are different versions of the story. Most of them begin with a cat walking over the grave of a murder victim and Kyuketsuki taking the cat that way. But it’s so coincidental, it would never work in the play.”

Kara nodded slowly, mind racing.

“Unless it’s not coincidental,” Miho said quietly. She turned to Kara. “If Kyuketsuki has a bond with cats, maybe she can summon them. Maybe they come when she calls them, and she fills them with all that hate and makes them monsters.”

Kara’s pulse throbbed in her temples. Her chest ached with the pounding of her heart and she took a deep breath.

Then she noticed the way Miss Aritomo was staring at them, and she knew they’d gone too far.

“Perfect,” she said, faking a smile. “That’s just the twist we need for a manga version.”

A look of utter disapproval replaced the confusion on the teacher’s face. “You just told me you were going to be faithful to the original. If you are going to adapt a Noh play, you should respect the material enough to tell the story the way it is meant to be told.”

Miho bowed. “Thank you, sensei. You’re right. We will discuss it.”

Kara bowed her head as well. “Of course. But one more thing, sensei. The play? How does it end?”

“In tragedy,” Miss Aritomo said. “The ketsuki kills Riko’s husband and his new lover, but its bloodlust and need for vengeance are not sated. It decides that the woman’s parents and children could have prevented her murder and so kills them as well. Only the youngest daughter, a little girl, survives. She lights candles and kneels on her mother’s grave and prays for mercy. The sun rises, and the ketsuki vanishes.

“It’s all very dramatic, if you like that sort of thing.”