I looked down at the paper, still touching the tip of my shoe. I reached for it, flipping the page over to look.

A girl lay back on a bench, roughly sketched in scrawls of ink.

A sick feeling started to twist in my stomach, like motion sickness.

And then the sketched girl turned her head and her inky eyes glared straight into mine.

Available from Amanda Sun and

The Paper Gods series (in reading order)

SHADOW (eBook Prequel Novella)

INK

Ink

The Paper Gods

Book 1

Amanda Sun

www.miraink.co.uk

For Emily

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am so grateful to everyone who put their heart, soul and energy into making Ink a reality. Without all of you, this book would never have become everything I had hoped it to be.

Mary Sheldon, this book would not exist without you. The passion and conviction with which you live your life and advocate for reading are an inspiration to me. You are a spark of color in this life, a vibrant example of what the world should and can be. I continue to aspire to the faith you place in me, for the world is changed because of you.

Thank you to my family at MIRA Ink, to Natashya Wilson for believing in Katie and Tomo from the start, to Adam Wilson for my first fan mail, to Giselle Regus for your hard work behind the scenes, to the digital and sales teams and copy editors, and to those who inspire me—Debbie Soares, Amy Jones, Erin Craig and Lisa Wray. Thank you to Gigi Lau for the gorgeous cover, and for taking so much care in breathing life into the book of my heart.

To my fantastic editor, T.S. Ferguson. TiduS, you have loved my world and characters as your own, and your thoughtful and brilliant advice allowed me to take the story to a level I didn’t know was possible. Your wit and kindness continue to inspire me, and I’m so fortunate to have you as my editor and friend. I look forward to the great things we will accomplish together.

Thank you to my agent, Melissa Jeglinski, for your advice, confidence and support. I am so grateful to you for your hard work and passion, and for saying what I need to hear when I need to hear it. Thank you for believing in me, and in Ink. Without my family’s support, I could never have reached this point. Thank you, Mum and Dad, for always believing in my writing and in me. Kevin and Emily, thank you for those trips to the park so I could meet my deadlines, and for the long plot discussions you were always willing to have with me. Thank you, Nathan Conquergood, for reading my early novels and doing book reports on them in school, and Bridget Ball, for passing around a petition at school to publish my book. I so appreciate your enthusiasm and faith in my work.

Thank you, Mio Matsui, for making sure Tomohiro speaks like a real Japanese teen. Thank you, Harumi Sugino and the Hasegawa family, Nobuko, Yoko and all my friends in Japan. Because you opened your arms to me, I can now share that love through Ink.

Thank you to Caroline Schmeing and Diana Jardine, who read every piece of fan fiction, every full notebook passed under the table in class. To Terry Lim, Clélie Rich and Walter Davies for cheerleading every step of the way. To Alex Neary for my beautiful author photo, and my fellow Lucky 13s for their support. To Nerdfighteria for being a haven where I am understood.

And finally to my readers. Thank you for sharing this journey with me. Wherever you may go in life—itterasshai.

1

I made it halfway across the courtyard before I realized I was still wearing my school slippers. No lie. I had to turn around and slink all the way back to the genkan, the stifled laughs from my classmates trailing me as I mustered what slippered dignity I could.

God, way to scream foreigner. You’d think after a couple of weeks I’d have the routine down, but no. I’d gone into that mode again, the one where I forgot everything for a minute and walked dazed through the sounds of the Japanese being spoken around me, not fully comprehending that it wasn’t English, that I was on the other side of the world, that Mom was…

“Katie!”

I looked up to see Yuki running toward me, breaking from a group of girls who stopped chatting, staring at us. Their stares weren’t unfriendly—they just weren’t exactly subtle. I guess that’s expected when you’re the only Amerika-jin in the school.

Yuki grabbed my arms with her slender fingers. “You do not want to go in there,” she said in English, motioning at the school entrance behind us.

“Um, I kind of have to,” I answered in broken Japanese. Forget English, Diane had said. It’s the easiest way to get fluent faster. It’s easier to forget everything, I guess. Forget I ever had any other kind of life.

Yuki shook her head, so I pointed at my slippered feet. “You still shouldn’t,” she said, this time in Japanese. I liked that about Yuki—she knew I was trying. She didn’t insist on English like some of the other kids. “There’s an ugly breakup going on in the genkan. Really, really awkward.”

“What am I supposed to do, wait?” I said. “I’ll just be in and out, ten seconds.” I held out my fingers for emphasis.

“Trust me,” she said, “you don’t want to get in the middle of this.”

I peeked around her shoulder, but I couldn’t see anything through the glass. I tapped the toe of my slipper on the ground; it felt so flimsy.

“Some big shot?” I said in English, and Yuki cocked her head to the side. “You know, a daiji na hito or something?” If Yuki was worried, it was probably gossip-worthy.

She leaned in conspiratorially. “Yuu Tomohiro,” she whispered. In Japan, everyone went by their last names first. “He’s fighting with Myu.”

“Who?”

Yuki’s friends giggled behind us. Had they been eavesdropping the whole time?

“Myu, his girlfriend,” she said.

“No, I know Myu. The other one,” I said.

“Yuu Tomohiro?” Yuki said, her arms waving wildly as if that would jog a memory I didn’t have. “Top of the kendo team? They let him get away with almost anything. You don’t want to draw his attention, trust me. He has this cold stare. I dunno…he seems dangerous.”

“So, what, he’s going to stare me down?”

Yuki rolled her eyes. “You don’t get it. He’s unpredictable. You don’t want to make enemies with a third year in your first two weeks, do you?”

I bit my lip, trying to peer through the glass door again. I didn’t need more attention, that’s for sure. I just wanted to blend in, get my homework done and drift through school until Nan and Gramps could take me in. But I also didn’t want to stand in the courtyard in a pair of slippers, stuck for who knows how long. Anyway, it’s not like they could make my life a living hell if I left Japan, and it would all be sorted out soon, right? This wasn’t where Mom intended me to end up. I knew that.

“I’m going in,” I said.

“You’re crazy,” Yuki said, but her eyes shone with excitement.

“They don’t scare me.”

Yuki raised her fists up to her chin. “Faito,” she said. Fight. In her most encouraging, you-can-do-it voice.

I grinned a little, then stepped toward the door. Even from outside I could hear the muffled yelling. When it died down for a minute, I took my chance.

Just in and out. I’m in slippers, for god’s sake. They’re not even going to hear me.

I pulled open the door and let it close quietly behind me before I stepped onto the raised wooden floor. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. The yelling was still muffled, and I realized the couple were on the other side of the sliding door into the school. Perfect—no way they’d see me now.

I snuck between the rows and rows of shoe cubbies looking for mine. It wasn’t hard to find—it was the only one with a pair of leather shoes sticking out approximately a mile, surrounded by the neatly tucked-away slippers in everyone else’s boxes. We all wore slippers in the school to keep it clean, but they weren’t your typical cozy bedroom slippers. They were more like papery white flats. Japan had slippers for everything—school, house, toilet room, you name it.

I reached for my shoes as Myu’s high and whiny voice echoed from the hallway behind the sliding door. Rolling my eyes, I pulled off the first slipper and then the other, clunking my shoes onto the floor and sliding my feet in.

And then the door slid open with a crash.

I crouched down, jolted by the footsteps stomping toward me. I did not want in on this performance.

“Matte!” Myu shouted, followed by a flurry of shuffling footsteps. “Wait!”

I glanced at the door to the courtyard—too far to make it without being seen. And just by trying to plan my escape route, I’d waited too long. If she saw me now, the way I was pressed against the wall all spylike, she’d think I was eavesdropping, and I didn’t need rumors circulating about me. I was already a gaijin, an outsider—I didn’t need to be a weirdo, too.

“Oi,” said a second, annoyed voice. It was deep and rich—must be Yuu Tomohiro, dangerous kendo star. He didn’t sound that dangerous. In fact, he sounded pretty disinterested. Cold, like Yuki had said.

Myu rapidly churned out Japanese words I didn’t know. I caught a particle here and a past tense there, but let’s face it—I’d only been in the country for a little more than a month and studying for five. I’d crammed all the Japanese I could, but I realized the minute I was on the plane that it had all been useless if I wanted to have a real conversation. At least I could name just about all the fruits and vegetables in the grocery store.

Great plan there. Real useful. Things had improved since I arrived, but still, talking to Yuki or taking notes in class was not the same as following the high-pitched babbling of a major social breakup like this one. That was hard enough in English. I could really only make out the most important detail, which was that she was seriously pissed. You didn’t need much vocab to tell.

I peeked around the wall of cubbies, hugging the wooden frame so I wouldn’t be seen. Yuu Tomohiro had stopped in his tracks, his back to me and his head tilted back, staring up at her. Myu’s long legs made her school uniform look scandalously short, her knee socks slumped in coils around her ankles. She clutched a black book at the top of the steps, her nails painted neatly in pinks and glittery silver.

“What is this? What is it?” she said over and over, waving the book in Yuu’s face.

Um…I thought. A notebook?

Yuu Tomohiro shrugged and climbed the steps back up to the sliding door. He reached for the notebook, but Myu whisked it behind her. He sighed as he leaned back against the opened door, his slipper pressing against the wooden frame.

“Well?” Myu said.

“What’s it look like?” he said. “A notebook.”

I rolled my eyes, even though my answer had been pretty much the same.

“Baka ja nai no?” Myu shrieked at him.

He was taller than her, but not when he slouched like that against the wall. And the more she fumed at him, the farther he seemed to slouch into the door. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his navy blue school blazer and tilted his head down, like he couldn’t stand to even look at her or something. His copper hair, too bright to be natural, flipped in every direction like he hadn’t taken the time to brush it, and he’d grown his bangs long—the way he was staring at the floor made the tips of them brush against his eyelashes.

I felt the heat rise up my neck. Yuki had not warned me he was so, well, pretty. Okay, gorgeous. I almost expected sparkles and rainbows to burst out of the walls anime-style, except his lips were turned in a smirk, and the way he crumpled against the wall exuded a smug superiority.

It was obvious Myu got the message. She looked absolutely livid.

“You think I’m stupid?” she said again. “Or are you?”

“Does it matter?”

What the heck had I walked into?

I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Myu’s face was puffy and pink, and every now and then her words got all choked up in her throat. She threw a string of questions into the air and they hung there with no reply. She became more frantic, the silence more tense.

What the hell did he do?

Cheat on her, maybe. That was the obvious answer or she wouldn’t be so pissed. And he had no reply for it, because really, what could he say?

Yuu Tomohiro shook his head, the copper strands dancing around, and his head suddenly twisted to the cubbies beside me.

I shrunk flat against the wall, squeezing my eyes shut and praying he didn’t see me. Myu had stopped ranting and a thick silence fell over the genkan.

“Is someone there?” she said.

Oh, crap—he had seen me. It was all over. I’d forever be the gaijin who has no life and eavesdrops on bad breakups to sate my emo side.

“No one,” he said, but it sounded off.

I couldn’t bear it and I peeked around the cubby wall. Yuu was looking away. So he hadn’t seen me after all. Thank god—I could go back to just being the Slipper Slinker.

Myu’s eyes puffed up and overflowed, the tears streaming down her cheeks. “So it’s really true,” she said. “She’s pregnant.”

Oh my god. What is this? Who are these people?

“Sou mitai,” Tomohiro smirked, which was way too casual a yes. A response like that was downright cruel. Even I knew that.

Myu’s glittery fingernails tightened around the book. She raised it high above her shoulders, the loose papers inside it slipping until it was a mess of corners.

Then she hurled the book at the floor.

The notebook exploded with pages as it trailed down, the papers catching in the air and filling the room like rain. They twirled and twisted as they came down, white edges framing thick lines of black ink and charcoal. They fluttered down to the floor like cherry petals.

One of the drawings fell in front of me, tapping gently against the end of my shoe as it came to a rest.

“What the hell?” Yuu shouted, picking up the book from the floor.

“What did it all mean, then?” she whispered. “What was I to you?”

Yuu straightened to his full height and tilted his chin back until his gleaming dark eyes gazed straight into hers. He took two swaggering steps toward her, bending forward until their lips almost met. Myu’s eyes widened.

He stood silently for a moment. Then he looked to the side, and I saw a pained look in his eyes. He breathed heavily, his cheeks pink, his eyes glossy. So he did have feelings after all, the beast. He started to reach for her chin with his fingers. And then his hand suddenly dropped into his pocket and he laughed.

“Betsu ni,” he said in a velvet voice. Nothing special.

You’re lying, I thought. Why are you lying?

But Myu looked like she’d been punched in the gut. And even with the cultural barriers that stood in my way, it was clear to me that he’d just discounted all her suffering, her feelings—the whole relationship. He looked like he didn’t give a shit, and that’s pretty much what he’d said.

Myu’s face turned a deep crimson, and her black hair clung to the sides of her snot-streaked face. Her hands squeezed into fists at her sides. Her gaze of hope turned cold and listless, like a mirror of Yuu’s face.

And then Myu lifted her hand and slugged him right in the jaw. She hit him so hard his face twisted to the left.

He lifted his hand to rub his cheek, and as he raised his eyes, they locked with mine.

Shit.

His gaze burned into me and I couldn’t move. Heat flooded my cheeks, and shame tingled down my neck.

I couldn’t look away. I stared at him with my mouth open.

But he didn’t call me out. He lifted his head, flicked his gaze back to Myu and pretended I didn’t exist. I let out a shaky breath.

“Saitei,” she spat, and I heard footsteps. After a moment, the door to the hallway slid shut.

I let out a breath.

Well, that was today’s dose of awkward.

I looked down at the paper, still touching the tip of my shoe. I reached for it, flipping the page over to look.

A girl lay back on a bench, roughly sketched in scrawls of ink as she looked out over the moat of Sunpu Park. She wore a school uniform, a tartan skirt clinging to her crossed legs. Little tufts of grass and flowers tangled with the bench legs, which had to be creative license—it was still too cold for blooms.

The girl was beautiful, in her crudely outlined way, with a lick of hair stuck to the back of her neck, her elbow resting against the top of the bench and her hand behind her head. She looked out at the moat of Sunpu Park, the sunlight sparkling off the dark water.

A pregnant bump of stomach curved under her blouse.

The other girl.

A queasy feeling started to twist in my stomach, like motion sickness.

And then the sketched girl on the bench turned her head, and her inky eyes glared straight into mine.

A chill shuddered through me.

Oh my god. She’s looking at me.

A hand snatched the paper out of mine. I looked up, my mind reeling, straight into the face of Yuu Tomohiro.

He slammed the page face-down on top of the pile of drawings he’d collected. He stood too close, so that he hovered over me.

“Did you draw that?” I whispered in English. He didn’t answer, staring hard at me. His cheek burned red and puffy where Myu had hit him.

I stared back. “Did you draw it?”

He smirked. “Kankenai darou!”

I looked at him blankly, and he sneered.

“Don’t you speak Japanese?” he said. I felt my cheeks flush with shame. He looked like he’d settled some sort of battle in his mind, and he turned, walking slowly away.

“She moved,” I blurted out.

He stumbled, just a little, but kept walking.

But I saw him stumble. And I saw the drawing look at me.

Didn’t I? My stomach churned. That was impossible, wasn’t it?

He went up the stairs, clutching the papers to his chest.

“She moved!” I said again, hesitant.

“I don’t speak English,” he said and slammed the door. It slid into the wall so hard it bounced back a little. I saw his shadow against the frosted glass of the door as he walked away.

Something oozed through the bottom of the sliding door, sluggish like dark blood. Did Myu hit him that hard?

The liquid dripped down the stairs, and after a moment of panic, I realized it was ink, not blood. From the drawings she’d thrown, maybe, or a cartridge of ink he’d kept inside the notebook.

I stood for a minute watching it drip, thinking of the burning eyes of the girl staring at me, the same flame in Yuu’s eyes.

Had Myu seen it, too? Would anyone believe me? I wasn’t even sure what the heck I’d seen.

It couldn’t be real. I was too tired, overwhelmed in a country where I struggled to even communicate. That was the only answer.

I hurried toward the front door and out into the fresh spring air. Yuki and her friends had already vanished. I checked my watch—must be for a club practice. Fine. I was too jittery to talk about what I’d seen anyway. I ran across the courtyard, sans slippers this time, through the gate of Suntaba School and toward the weaving pathways of Sunpu Park.

When my mother died, it didn’t occur to me I would end up on the other side of the world. I figured they would put me in foster care or ship me up to my grandparents in Deep River, Canada. I prayed they would send me up there from New York, to that small town on the river I had spent almost every summer of my childhood. But it turned out that Mom’s will hadn’t been updated since Gramps’s bout of cancer five years ago, when she’d felt it was too much of a burden to send me there. And Gramps still wasn’t doing well now that the cancer had come back, so for now I would live with Mom’s sister, Diane, instead, in Shizuoka.

So much sickness surrounded me. I could barely deal with losing my Mom, and then everything familiar slipped away. No life in Deep River with Nan and Gramps. No life in America or Canada at all. I’d stayed with a friend of Mom’s for a while, but it was only temporary, my life stuck in a place where I couldn’t move forward or back. I was being shipped away from everything I knew, the leftover baggage of fading lives. Mom never liked leaving American soil, and here I was, only seven months without her, already going places she wouldn’t have followed.

And seeing things, hallucinating that drawings were moving. God, I’d be sent to a therapist for sure.

I told Yuki about the fight the next day during lunch, although I left out the part about the moving drawing. I still wasn’t sure what I’d seen, and I wasn’t about to scare off the only friend I had. But I couldn’t get it out of my mind, those sketched eyes glaring into mine. I wouldn’t imagine that, right? But the more I thought about it, the more dreamlike it felt.

Yuki turned in her seat to eat her bentou on my desk. I wasn’t used to the food yet, so Diane had packed my bentou box from side to side with squished peanut-butter sandwiches. Yuki gripped her pink chopsticks with delicate fingers and scooped another bite of eggplant into her mouth.

“You’re kidding,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand as she said it. “I still can’t believe you went in there.” She’d pinned her hair back neatly and her fingernails were nicely painted, reminding me of Myu’s delicate pink and silver nails. I wondered if they’d chipped when she hit him.

“You didn’t even wait for me to come out,” I said.

“Sorry!” she said, pressing her fingers together in apology. “I had to get to cram school. Believe me, I was dying inside not knowing what happened.”

“I’m sure.” Yuki did like her share of drama.

She lifted her keitai phone in the air. “Here, send me your number. Then I can call you next time I abandon you in the middle of the biggest breakup of all time.”

I turned a little pink. “Um. I don’t have one?”

She stared at me a minute before shoving the cell phone back into her bag, then pointed at me. “Get one. Maa, I never realized Yuu Tomohiro was so mean.”

“Are you kidding? You told me he was cold!”

“I know, but I didn’t know he was cheat-on-your-girlfriend-and-get-someone-pregnant cold. That’s a different level.” I rolled my eyes, but secretly I tried to break down the number of words she’d just used. I loved that she had faith in my Japanese, but it was a little misplaced. We switched back and forth between languages as we talked.

Across the room, Yuki’s friend Tanaka burst through the doorway, grabbing his chair and dragging it loudly to our desks.

“Yo!” he said, which sounded less lame in Japanese than English. He tossed his head to the side with a friendly grin.

“Tan-kun.” Yuki smiled, using the typical suffix for a guy friend. I looked down into the mess of peanut butter lining the walls of my bentou. Tanaka Ichirou was always too loud, and he always sat too close. I needed space to think about what I’d seen yesterday.

“Did you hear about Myu?” he said, and our eyes widened.

“How do you know?” said Yuki.

“My sister’s in her homeroom,” he said. “Myu and Tomo-kun split up. She’s crying over her lunch right now, and Tomo didn’t even show up for class.” Tanaka leaned in closer and whispered in a rough tone, “I heard he got another girl pregnant.”

I felt sick. I dropped my peanut-butter sandwich into my bentou and closed the lid.

That curve of stomach under the sketched blouse…

“He did!” Yuki squealed. It was all just drama to them. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the way her head turned, the way she looked right at me.

“It’s just a rumor,” said Tanaka.

“It’s not,” Yuki said. “Katie spied on the breakup!”

“Yuki!”

“Oh, come on, everyone will know soon anyway.” She sipped her bottle of iced tea.

Tanaka frowned. “Weird, though. Tomo-kun might be the tough loner type, but he’s not cruel.”

I thought about the way he’d snatched the paper out of my hands. The sneer on his face, and the curve of his lips as he spat out his words. Don’t you speak Japanese? He seemed like the cruel type to me. Except that moment…that moment where he’d almost dropped everything and kissed Myu. His hand reaching for her chin, the softness in his eyes for just a second before it changed.

“How would you know?” I burst out. Tanaka looked up at me with surprised eyes. “Well, you called him by his first name, right?” I added. “Not even as a senior senpai, so you must know him pretty well.”

“Maa…” Tanaka scratched the back of his head. “We were in Calligraphy Club in elementary school—you know, traditional paintings of Japanese characters. Before he dropped out, I mean. Which sucked, because he had a real talent. We haven’t really talked much since then, but we used to be close. He got into a lot of fights, but he was a good guy.”

“Right,” I said. “Cheating on girls and making fun of foreigners’ Japanese. What a winner.”

Yuki’s face went pale, her mouth dropping open.

“He saw you?” She put a hand over her mouth. “And Myu? Did she?”

I shook my head. “Just Yuu.”

“And? Was he angry?”

“Yeah, but so what? It’s not like I meant to spy on them.”

“Okay, we need to do damage control and see how bad your social situation is. Ask him about it after school, Tan-kun,” Yuki said.

I panicked. “No, don’t.”

“Why?”

“He’ll know I told.”

“He won’t know,” Yuki said. “Tanaka’s sister told him about the breakup, remember? We’ll just slip the conversation in and see how he reacts to you.”

“I don’t want to know, okay? Drop it please?”

Yuki sighed. “Fine. For now.”

The bell rang. We tucked our bentous into our bags and pulled out some paper.

Yuu Tomohiro. His eyes kept haunting me. I could barely concentrate on Suzuki-sensei’s chalkboard math, which was hard enough considering the language gap. Diane had been so set on sending me to a Japanese school instead of an international one. She was convinced I’d catch on quickly, that I’d come out integrated and bilingual and competitive for university programs. And since she knew how much I wanted to move back with Nan and Gramps, she wanted to hit me over the head with as much experience as possible.

“Give it four or five months,” she said, “and you’ll speak like a pro.”

Obviously she didn’t realize I was lacking in language skills.

When the final bell rang, I was relieved to find out I didn’t have cleaning duty. I had a Japanese cram school to go to, so I decided to cut through Sunpu Park and get on the eastbound train. I waved to Yuki, and Tanaka flashed a peace sign at me as he rolled up his sleeves and started lifting chairs onto the desks. Pretty sure that counts as two friends, I thought, and in spite of everything, a trickle of relief ran through me. I headed toward the genkan to return my slippers—I wasn’t going to make that mistake again—and headed out into the courtyard.

School began in late March at Suntaba, and the spring air was fresh but cool. Green buds had crept onto each of the spindly branches of the trees, waiting for slightly warmer weather to bloom. Diane said everyone in Japan checked their cell phones daily to find out when the cherry blossoms would bloom so they could sit under them and get drunk. Well, okay, that wasn’t exactly what she said, but Yuki said a lot of the salary men turned as pink as the flowers.

I was nearly at the gate when I saw him. He slouched against the stone entranceway, hands shoved deep in his pockets. The sun glared off the neat row of gold buttons down his blazer and splayed through his hair, gleaming on the copper streaks.

Yuu Tomohiro.

My footsteps slowed as dread leached down my spine. There was no other way off school grounds; I’d have to pass him. The back of his hand curved over his shoulder, his book bag pressed against his back. He stared straight at me, as if he was waiting for me.

He wasn’t…was he?

Maybe he wanted me to keep my mouth shut about what had happened. But he hadn’t understood what I was saying, right? He didn’t speak English.

His face was turned down in a sour frown, but his eyes shone as he stared at me, like he was trying to figure me out. A bluish bruise was set in his cheek, and the skin looked a little swollen. I looked down first and then straight at him, but I couldn’t stare at him long. Nothing could settle the pit I felt in my stomach, like I was going to be sick.

If he did make that drawing move…No, that was impossible. I’d been tired, that’s all.

I stood there ten feet from the gate, unable to move, squeezing the handles of my bag as tightly as I could. My navy skirt felt short and ugly against my bleached-out legs. I was out of place at this school and I knew it.

Move! Just walk past and ignore him! Do something! my brain screamed at me, but I couldn’t move.

I let out a shaky breath and took a step forward.

He uncoiled from his slouch like a snake, rising to his full height. I wondered why he always slouched when he could look like that, but the thought sent prickles up my neck. He was a jerk anyway, even if I hadn’t seen the drawing move. He’d cheated on Myu, got someone else pregnant and still had the nerve to laugh at it. Except that he looked like he’d been lying that he didn’t care about her. And Tanaka had said he was a good guy deep down.

Must be really deep down.

His shoes clicked against the cement as he stepped toward me, and despite all my common sense, I couldn’t stop shaking. His eyes burned as he stared me down. He was only two feet from me, and now only a foot. I’m sorry, was I the only one at the school who worried he was psycho?

His eyes flicked to the ground suddenly, his bangs slipping forward and fanning over his face as he walked straight past me, so close that his shoulder grazed mine. So close that I could smell spices and hair gel, that I could feel the warmth radiating from his skin. The heat sent a shudder through me and I stopped walking, listening to the click, click of him walking farther away.

He’s screwing with me, I thought. Trying to intimidate me or something. Shame flooded through me as I realized I’d let him get away with it. He’d reeled me in, and despite everything I knew, despite drawings staring at me and pregnant girlfriends and humiliating language barriers, I’d still let my heart twist at his gorgeous eyes.

When did I become so shallow? I scrunched my hands deeper into the leather of my book bag, until the zipper dug into my knuckles.

“Ano!” I said to get his attention, squeezing my eyes shut as I said it. The clicking of his shoes stopped. Around us the noisy chatter of other students buzzed in my brain, fading into background noise like ringing in my ears. All I could focus on was the silence that had replaced his footsteps, the sound I imagined of his breathing.

Now what? I wanted to ask why he’d been staring at me, why everything felt off when he was there. And about the drawing, the memory sitting unsettled in my gut. But how could I ask him that? He’d think I was nuts. The limits of my Japanese shoved against me, which only proved his point and pissed me off more. What was I thinking to confront him? And what exactly could I say that wouldn’t make me look like an idiot?

A moment passed, and I heard a single laugh under his breath. Then the click, click, click of him walking away toward the eastern wall. The clicking suddenly sped up, and I turned to look. He ran at the wall, leaping up the stone face and grabbing the branches of the momiji tree above, slipping over the wall and out of sight.

I’d let him do it again, let him tip me off balance for the second time in five minutes. I shuddered with anger as I stared at the branch, still swaying, dusting the wall with maple leaves.

The branch.

I didn’t spend my summers hiking in the woods for nothing.

My shoes pounded against the cement as I raced toward the wall. Students backed out of my way just in time, breaking apart their little groups out of curiosity about what I was about to do next. Slippers were about to take a back seat.

I threw my hands around the tree trunk and pressed my feet against the slippery bark. My book bag clattered to the ground as I reached for the branches, hoisting myself up. Leaves and twigs tangled in my hair, but I climbed higher and higher, until I cleared the wall and the street on the other side came into view.

I scanned the sidewalks for the Suntaba uniform—there, behind the line of salary men. He was combing a hand through his copper hair, his blazer draped over his arm.

“Yuu Tomohiro!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. He jerked to a stop, but didn’t turn around. I stared at the curve of his shoulder blades under the white dress shirt as he breathed in and out slowly.

Then he turned, looking up in slow motion when he didn’t see me on the street.

“That’s right, Tarzan, look up!” I screamed in English. “You’re not the only one around here who can make an exit!” My lungs burned with adrenaline as I watched him stare at me.

I couldn’t help it. The grin spread across my face, knowing I’d beaten him at his own game.

He waited a minute, completely still, and I wondered if he hadn’t understood a word I’d said. Not that it mattered. He’d still get the point. I was the winner.

“What do you have to say now?” I shouted.

Still nothing.

And then he slowly raised his arm, his finger pointed.

“I can see up your skirt,” he said.

Oh god.

I’d totally forgotten I was wearing my short uniform skirt.

Crap, crap, crap!

I twisted to look down at the ring of students gathered around the tree trunk. They were starting to giggle, and if they hadn’t been looking up my skirt before, they definitely were now.

A couple of squealing girls reached into their bags. They better not be bringing out cell phones to immortalize my humiliation.

I let go of the branches with one hand to press my skirt tight against my legs. I turned back to look at Yuu. He was smiling, beaming even, like this was some sort of amusing moment we were sharing. Like it was just the two of us. And worse, the smile made my stomach twist. Then he beat his fists against his chest a couple times Tarzan-style and turned, walking out of sight.

My fingers tightened around the branch. Why did he act like two different people? A giggle from below and my anger surged up again.

All right, Mr. Creepy Sketch Guy. You want war?

You’re on.

The maze of Sunpu Park calmed me down a little. It always did, with the twisting hedges and the murky moats in deep channels. An old castle towered over the eastern side of the park, but I didn’t see much of it on my way home. I headed south over a long concrete bridge above the water teeming with koi, and then twisted past the underground walkways to Shin-shizuoka Station.

I scanned my pass, and the little metal doors slammed into the sides of the barriers to let me through. I walked slowly to the platforms, my eyes squinting at the signs of scrolling kanji. The train was coming in three minutes, so I sat on one of the light blue benches and rested my bag on my lap.

I noticed a twig caught in the wool of my skirt, and I pulled it from the fabric.

“Why did I do that?” I groaned, slumping my chin on my bag. As if fitting in wasn’t hard enough, I had to go and climb a tree to yell at a boy and flash my underwear to half the school population.

Maybe I should be sick tomorrow.

A group of girls suddenly rushed in front of me, laughing as they punched out texts on their cell phones. One of them tripped over my foot, and her friends caught her by the shoulders as she stumbled.

“Sorry!” I burst out, tucking my feet as far as I could under the bench.

The girl looked at me for a minute, and then the three of them shuffled away, mumbling loudly to each other. Their green-and-blue-tartan skirts showed me they were from a different high school, so why should I care if they were being snobby? I wanted to stick my tongue out but stopped short. It was too much—I didn’t fit in at school, and I couldn’t even blend in at the train station. How the heck was I supposed to survive here anyway? Without Mom, without anything familiar. The tears started to blur in my eyes.

I heard a muffled greeting as a boy called to the girls. They didn’t answer him. Typical. Rude bunch of—

He said hello to them again. They still didn’t answer. What was their problem?

“Domo,” he tried again, and this time I looked up.

His dark eyes caught mine immediately. He had black hair that flopped around his ears, with two thick blond highlights tucked behind them. His bangs trailed diagonally across his forehead, so they almost covered his left eye. A silver earring glinted in his left ear as he nodded at me.

Wait. He’s talking to me.

“Hi?” I managed. It came out like a question.

He smiled. He wore the same uniform colors as the girls—a white dress shirt and navy blazer, a green-and-blue tie and navy pants—and he leaned against the pillar near the bench. His body was turned away from the clique, and they seemed a little pissed that he was talking to me. From the smile on his face, I wondered if that was the point.

“You go to Suntaba?” he said, pointing at my uniform.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You must speak Japanese well, then.”

I smirked. “I wouldn’t say that.”

He laughed and walked toward me. “Can I sit?” he said.

“Um, it’s a free station.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Okay, so when did hot guys from other schools start trying to pick me up on train platforms?

He leaned in a little, so I leaned back.

“Don’t let them get to you,” he mumbled. “They’re just airheads anyway.”

“Them?” I said, looking over at the girls. They pretended they weren’t staring, which only made it more obvious.

“Yeah,” he said.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ve been through worse.”

He laughed again. “Rough day?”

“You have no idea.”

“Jun!” one of the girls squealed at him—an ex he was trying to make jealous, maybe? He leaned in closer and winked like we were coconspirators. And then a little chime flooded the station, and the train roared past, the brakes squealing as it slowed.

I grabbed my bag from my lap and we lined up by the giant white arrows on the floor. The cars opened up and we filed in. I grabbed the metal rail by the door so I could make a quick getaway at Yuniko Station. It’s not like I didn’t appreciate attention from Jun the ikemen—and was he ever gorgeous—but I just needed some space to myself to think.

The doors closed behind us and the train lurched forward. But in the crowds outside the window, I saw a tall figure in the Suntaba uniform. With copper hair and a puffy bruise on his cheek.

I stepped back as the train jolted, nearly knocking me over. It pulled slowly out of the station, barely moving along the platform.

“You okay?” Jun said behind me.

Impossible. Why would Yuu Tomohiro be here when I’d watched him walk the opposite direction? He looked different when no one was watching, like his features had softened. He waited in line for a Roman bus, emerald-green with an old motor that made the vehicle bump around as it idled. When it was his turn to get on, he actually stepped to the side with a smile and helped a gray-haired lady behind him up the steps.

Was I hallucinating again? That did not just happen.

Then I lost his face in the crowd, and the train reached the end of the platform, speeding up as it snaked across the bustling city.

“I’m fine,” I said when I found my voice again. “Just saw a guy from my school over there.” I waved my hand vaguely at the window, but the sight of the bus was long gone.

“Tomodachi?” Jun said. “Maybe koibito?”

I choked. “What? No! We are not friends. Not even close.”

Jun smiled. “You just looked flustered, that’s all.” He tucked a blond highlight behind his ear, rubbing his earring between his fingers.

“Because I’m tired,” I said a little too sharply. “It’s nothing.”

“Ah,” he said, giving the earring a tug. “The rough day you mentioned.”

“Right.”

“Sorry,” he said, dropping his hand into his blazer pocket. In the corner of the train car, the group of girls was still whispering about us. Jun stood beside me, silent as he stared out the window. I felt a little guilty shutting down the conversation, but I couldn’t help it. My thoughts were a tangled mess.

I watched the buildings blur outside the window as the train sped past.

What was I thinking, climbing a tree and yelling at Yuu like that? So much for a fancy exit—I’d just dug a deeper social hole to curl up and die in. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the smile on his face, as if we were in on the same joke. He’d looked harmless enough helping that woman onto the bus.

But that’s not how he’d looked staring at me from the gate.

2

“Okaeri,” Diane said in a singsong voice when I opened the door.

“I’m not saying it,” I said, kicking the toes of my shoes against the raised floor until they slipped off my feet.

“Oh, come on,” Diane whined, appearing around the corner. She’d draped her navy and pink flowered apron over her teaching clothes, and the smell of curry rice wafted from the kitchen. “If you want to learn Japanese, you have to use it all the time.”

“Not interested,” I said. “I’ve been speaking it all day. I need some English right now.” I strode past her and collapsed onto the tiny purple couch in the living room. It was ugly, but definitely comfortable.

“So how was school?”

“Fine.” Other than the part where half the school looked up my skirt.

I picked up the remote and started flipping through variety shows. Bright kanji sprawled across the screen in neon pinks and greens, quoting outrageous things guests said. Not like I could get the joke, of course.

“It’s curry rice again. I got held up with the Drama Club meeting.” Diane stepped into the kitchen and lifted the lid of the pot, the spicy fragrance wafting around the room as she stirred. I flipped the channel, looking for something English to watch, some reminder of the fact that I was still on the same planet.

“And how was cram school?” The rice cooker beeped and Diane shuffled over to turn it off. I leaned back so my head faced the kitchen upside down.

“It was crammy,” I said.

“Could you at least set the table?” She sighed, and then I felt guilty.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I flipped the TV off and tossed the remote onto the couch, setting plates on either side of the flimsy table.

I hadn’t known Diane much before Mom’s funeral, but she’d never struck me as the motherly type. She’d spent most of the service shoving hors d’oeuvres at everybody with a fake smile, like she was a balloon ready to pop. She’d insisted on my calling her just Diane. I think “Aunt” emphasized the fact that her sister was gone, and made her feel like we were some sort of dysfunctional family, trying to keep going after the fact. Which, of course, we were.

She’d picked me up at the airport with the same over-excitement, waving wildly at me to make us even more of a spectacle. “Katie!” she’d screeched, like this was some kind of fun vacation, like we weren’t terrified of each other.

The bullet-train ride made my ears pop and sting, and once we got to Shizuoka, I stood out even more. There were a lot of gaijin in Tokyo, but in Shizuoka I rarely saw anyone foreign.

Diane lifted the lid of the rice cooker, and steam swirled out, fogging up her glasses. She reached for my plate and paddled the rice on, and then dumped a ladle of curry on the side.

“Great,” I said.

“You mean ‘itadakimasu.’”

“Whatever.”

“So any new friends yet, or are they still being shy?” Diane sat down and mixed the curry and rice together with her chopsticks. I pushed my rice into a sticky mound and dug my fork into a carrot.

Well, let’s see. Cute guy on the train from another school, and annoying senior who has it out for me at my school. But friends? “Tanaka, I guess. He’s Yuki’s friend.” Big mistake. Diane clasped her hands together and her eyes shone.

“That’s great!” she said.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I figure it won’t take too long to settle the whole will dispute. I’ll be in Deep River before we know it.” Diane frowned, which looked almost clownish in her thick plum lipstick.

“Come on, it’s not that bad here with me, is it?”

“Why would it be bad in a country where I can’t even read where the bathroom is?” Speaking was one thing; even writing phonetic hiragana and katakana had come without too much study. But learning two thousand kanji to read signs and newspapers was a slow, grueling process.

“I told you, it’ll take time. But you’re doing great. And you know Gramps still isn’t in the best of health. It’s too much of a strain on them right now, at least until we know the cancer is in remission for sure.”

“I know,” I sighed, pushing my potatoes around in the thick curry.

“So tell me about Tanaka.”

I shrugged. “He’s into calligraphy painting. Tall, skinny, pretty loud when he comes into a room.”

“Is he cute?”

“Gross, Diane.” I slammed my fork down in disgust.

“Okay, okay,” she conceded. “I just wanted you to know that we can talk boys, if you need to.”

“Noted.”

“Do you want some tea?”

I shook my head. “I’ve just got some kanji sheets to write out and some math homework. Then I’m going to bed.”

“No problem. Do your best. Ganbare, as they say.” Diane’s cheerful tone had returned. I rose to take my plate to the sink.

“Like I give a shit what they say.”

“Hey, watch it. You know your mom wouldn’t be impressed with that kind of talk.”

I paused, thinking of Mom. She was always a prude, which is why I was stunned to find out she’d dated someone unpredictable like Dad. Maybe he’d set her on the straight and narrow after he ran out on her. Kind of like Yuu Tomohiro was doing to Myu now.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I just had a crazy day.”

“I just…I hope you’ll be a little happier here with me,” Diane said gently. It was about the most serious voice I’d ever heard from her, and I suddenly felt like a jerk. She’d always been the piece that didn’t fit, Mom said, the one searching for herself on the other side of the world. Kind of the way I felt now. And even then she’d opened up her tiny world here for me when I’d needed her the most.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’ll try.” Diane smiled, and I wondered if she realized we were both lost now, adrift together but somehow alone.

The moment over, I headed to my room to suffer writer’s cramp copying pages and pages of kanji.

I was sure Yuu Tomohiro would be waiting the next morning, leaning against the Suntaba plaque on the gate. I’d flipped through my dictionary after cram school, perfecting what I was going to say to him. When he wasn’t there, I wondered whether I felt more relieved or disappointed.

I slid into my seat behind Yuki, putting my book bag on the ground and reaching in for my textbooks.

“Ohayo,” Yuki said, twisting in her chair.

“Morning,” I said. “You didn’t see Yuu come in, did you?” Okay, so I was just a little anxious to know. I was ready to take him on and get some answers.

Yuki shrugged. “Probably early morning kiri-kaeshi,” she said.

“Early morning what?”

“You know, for Kendo Club.”

“Morning!” Tanaka sang as he burst into the class, striding toward his seat.

“Okay,” I said, “he’s got way too much energy for the morning.” I lifted my hand in a feeble wave. Tanaka nodded at us and broke into a huge grin. The conversation with Diane surfaced like bad heartburn, and I turned to look at my desk, desperately ignoring the fact that Tanaka was a little cute. Jeez, thanks, Diane. I did not need to be looking at one of my only friends like that. What if I lost both friends over a dumb crush? Life was complicated enough right now. I shoved the feeling down and concentrated on the cover of my textbook.

Advanced Mathematics. Fascinating.

“Did you decide which clubs to join?” Yuki said.

“You should at least join English Club,” said Tanaka, inviting himself into the conversation. Yeah, English Club wouldn’t make me stick out. But Tanaka looked so sincere and I really only had the two friends….

“Okay, okay.”

“Yatta!” Tanaka said, throwing his fist high in the air.

“No fair!” whined Yuki. “You have to join at least one club with me. Sado? Kado?”

“Kado?”

“Flowers.”

“I have allergies.”

“Then Tea Ceremony. You get to have cakes and learn the roots of Japanese culture…?” Yuki sounded like a brochure, but I was starting to crack under the pressure. Anyway, it wasn’t like I wasn’t interested in Japanese culture—just homesick, disoriented. Orphaned.

“Okay,” I relented. “Sado it is.”

Suzuki-sensei stepped into the room. We stood, bowed our good-mornings and opened our books.

I scribbled notes from the board but pretty soon got bored and started doodling. And as I sketched flowers and snails down the margins, the eyes of the inky girl from Tomohiro’s drawing flooded my thoughts. I didn’t think I was coming apart at the seams—why would I be seeing things?

The look on Tomohiro’s face when he’d grabbed the drawing out of my hands still bothered me. Half anger, half worry. What was he trying to hide? He’d got some girl pregnant and humiliated me in front of the school. But I was pretty sure he’d also lied to Myu about how he really felt. And the smile he’d given me when I was up in the tree—like we were on the same team, like we were friends…

I felt itchy suddenly, my head throbbing the way it had when I’d stared at his sketch. I kept picturing the inky girl looking at me, the way her hair curled around her shoulders. I could hear the birds singing in the park, the water in the moat sloshing along. I could feel the breeze on my skin.

The corner of my notebook flipped up, lifted by a cool spring wind. Wait, that couldn’t be—we were indoors, and the windows were shut. Then the whole side of the book started to ripple.

The flowers I’d doodled started to bend in the breeze. One of the petals fell to the little bit of ground I’d sketched. A snail tucked himself into his shell.

Is this happening? Is this real?

The pen was hot in my hand and I gripped it tighter, watching the pages of my notebook flutter in the wind, watching the snails leave glittering trails across the page…

Watching as they turned and came toward me, mouths full of sharp, jagged teeth I didn’t know snails had, teeth that I hadn’t drawn….

The pen shattered beneath my fingers, drowning the doodles in ink. Shards of plastic flew across the room and scattered on desks and floors. Students shouted in surprise, jumping back from their desks to their feet. Suzuki-sensei whirled around from the board.

“What happened?” he snapped.

Tanaka and Yuki stared at my hand, covered in ink.

“Katie?” Yuki whispered.

“I—I’m sorry,” I said, my throat dry.

And then I saw Yuu Tomohiro standing in the hallway, his startled eyes watching me, his fingers wrapped around the door frame. He looked almost afraid. Had he seen it, too? Or maybe—maybe he’d caused it.

“Go clean up,” Suzuki-sensei said, and I forced my head to nod. My chair squeaked as I pushed it back to stand up, the whole class staring at me. Ink dripped off the side of my notebook and onto the floor.

“Sorry,” I choked again and ran into the hallway.

When I got there, Tomohiro was gone.

I ran to the washroom and scrubbed my hands, splashing water on my face.

I stared at myself in the mirror. I looked thin and frightened, barely there.

The ink spiraled down the drain. I carved lines through it with my fingertips.

There was no way this was a hallucination. The whole class had seen the pen explode. And the drawings definitely moved. I could still smell the murky moat water; the breeze had left tangles in my hair.

And Tomohiro had been there when it happened, just like before.

I splayed my inky fingers under the rush of clean water.

He was doing something to the drawings. I just didn’t know what.

“Ready to go?” said Yuki.

We stepped out of the genkan door and into the courtyard, Yuki and Tanaka laughing about something Suzuki had said—I’d missed that joke, too. The sunlight was streaming down, and a gentle, warm breeze blew through the branches of the momiji and sakura trees.

I took a deep breath and looked up at the gate to the school.

He wasn’t there.

Relief flooded through me. At least I could put off my planned confrontation for now. I just needed time not to think, time to forget everything that had happened.

Except I couldn’t. It was all I saw every time I closed my eyes.

I wanted my life with Mom back. I wanted to be normal and not see drawings move.

I started to giggle along with Yuki, pretending I understood the joke, pretending I wasn’t shaking inside. But Tanaka suddenly shot out his arm.

“Oh!” He pointed. “It’s Tomo-kun!”

You’ve got to be kidding.

I looked up, and there he was, leaning against the stone wall and chatting with a friend. The other guy had bleached his hair so white it looked like he was wearing a mop on his head.

“Introduce us!” Yuki squealed. “We can get the whole story about Myu!”

“Please don’t,” I whispered, but Tanaka was already running across the courtyard. Yuki grabbed my arm.

“Come on!” she said, squeezing my elbow and rushing us forward.

“Oi, Tomo-kun!” Tanaka shouted.

Yuu Tomohiro looked up slowly, his eyes dark and cold. His friend sagged back against a tree trunk, watching us approach with mild amusement.

“It’s me, Tanaka, from Calligraphy,” said Tanaka, panting as he stopped beside them. He placed his hands on his knees and then gave Yuu a thumbs-up.

Yuu’s face was blank at first, but then remembrance flickered into his eyes.

“Oh,” he said. “Tanaka Ichirou.”

“This is Watabe Yuki and Katie Greene,” Tanaka said. He didn’t reverse my name because gaijin never put their last names first. Yet another way I stood out. Yuki bowed, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I squeezed my hands into fists and tried to do the same with my fear—I tried to squeeze it into anger.

Tomohiro didn’t bother to introduce his friend or say hello to us. He leaned his head forward slightly so his bangs fell into his eyes, then exchanged a side glance with Bleached Hair. I got the message—they wanted us gone.

But Tanaka didn’t clue in. He laughed, nervous, grasping for things to say.

“It’s been a long time, huh?” he said.

Tomohiro nodded, his bangs bobbing curtly. “You got taller, Ichirou.”

“Well, I had to fend for myself after you left.” Tanaka grinned before turning to us. “Tomo-kun used to get into fights over everything.”

Tomohiro smirked. “That hasn’t changed,” he said, staring directly at me.

So he was picking a fight with me. But over what? He was the one doing creepy stuff, not me. He ran a hand through his hair and looked over at Bleached Hair, who rolled his eyes.

Yuki spoke up. “Sorry about you and Myu.”

Tomo’s eyes snapped back to mine. I bet he was wondering how much I’d told. Was he worried I’d spilled about the drawing, too?

“Maa,” he said with a dramatic sigh, pressing his slender fingertips to his forehead. “Some people don’t know when to keep their mouths shut.”

Fire spread through me. “I didn’t say anything,” I blurted.

“My sister told me,” Tanaka said quickly. “Keiko’s in Myu’s homeroom.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tomohiro said, rubbing the back of his neck. “You don’t have to cover for her. The whole school knows anyway.”

But it did matter. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right when he wasn’t.

“He’s not covering,” I said. “I have better things to do than gossip about you.”

“So you have a new girlfriend now?” Yuki piped up again. She was determined to drag the gossip out at any cost.

Tomohiro tilted his head. “Why? Are you confessing?”

That’s what they called it here when you admitted you liked someone. Yuki turned bright pink.

“It’s—it’s not like that,” she said, waving her hand back and forth.

“Oh, her, then?” he said, motioning at me.

My heart almost stopped. “Excuse me?”

“It’s a joke,” Bleached Hair said. “Calm yourself.”

“Um,” Tanaka said, looking from Tomohiro to me and back with wide eyes. “Um, so are—are you going to join the Shoudo Club this year?”

A dark look crossed Tomohiro’s eyes. “I don’t do calligraphy anymore,” he said quietly.

“Tan-kun told us you were really talented,” Yuki bubbled, but Tomohiro took a step toward her, glaring at her from behind his bangs.

“I don’t paint anymore,” he said, and I wondered why he had to get so uptight about it. “It doesn’t interest me.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Tanaka said, laughing politely to smooth things out. “With me in the club, they need all the help they can get.” Tomohiro let out a small laugh, which only egged Tanaka on. “God help us if they put my drawings on display!”

“You did always draw the lines too thickly.” Tomohiro grinned. The storm in his eyes looked as if it had passed. I could see a faint image in my mind of what he must have been like in elementary school, when he and Tanaka had been friends.

“Sou ne…” Tanaka trailed off, staring into the distance, deep in thought. He tapped his fingers against his chin. “How do I fix it?”

Tomohiro gripped his fingers together, as if he were holding a paintbrush. “If you hold it like this,” he said, “with the right support here, and move like this…” His arm moved gently through the air, making light brushstrokes, and even I, who had no background in calligraphy—heck, even my school notes were illegible—could tell there was something more going on here.

“Try to load less paint on the tip of the brush,” Tomohiro said. “And move like this.”

Tanaka smiled and crossed his arms as he watched. “You’re really good, you know? A natural.”

Tomohiro’s arm stopped suddenly like a dance cut short. It hung there in the air, rigidly, until he dropped it down to the side and shoved his hand into his blazer pocket.

“I told you,” he said sharply, “it doesn’t interest me anymore.”

Tanaka’s face fell while Bleached Hair leaned back into the tree, grinning. What the hell? I thought. Tanaka and Tomohiro used to be friends, and now he treated him like this?

“You don’t have to be a jerk about it,” I snapped. “Tanaka’s just trying to be nice to you.”

“Katie,” Yuki whispered, urgently squeezing my arm.

Tomohiro sneered. “You’re always sticking your nose in, aren’t you?”

“So are you. You’re everywhere I turn. What, are you a stalker, too, or something?”

“If I was, I wouldn’t stalk you.”

“Oh, I’m not your type, huh? You don’t like gaijin?”

“I don’t like annoying girls who think they know everything.”

“Unless they have a skirt to look up, right?”

Tomohiro grinned, and my nerves flipped over. It was that same secret-alliance look. I almost expected him to wink like Jun had at the train station. I took a deep breath.

“So if you hate art so much, how come you had a sketchbook full?”

The grin vanished.

“And how come they move?”

“Move?” Bleached Hair said.

“That’s right,” I fumed. “I know you’re doing something.”

I looked at Tomohiro, and did he ever look pissed!

Good. I’ll finally get some answers.

“Oh, are you working on another of those animations, Tomo?” Tanaka said.

Tomohiro smiled.

No.

“He used to do these really neat ones on the edges of his notebooks.”

No! Don’t give him an escape hatch!

“Right, Ichirou. Animation.”

“On one page?” I sneered.

“On lots of pages,” he said. “That’s why I had so many drawings. It’s a project for my cram school. I didn’t want to draw, but I have to if I want full credit.”

Yuki nodded knowingly.

The answers were slipping through my fingers like sand.

“But I saw you in the hallway,” I said, “when my pen—I know you’re trying to freak me out with all your ink stuff.”

Tomohiro stepped toward me, his eyes studying mine. He was a little taller than me, and his bangs feathered around his eyes like the hairs of a painter’s fan brush. My stomach twisted and I focused hard on hating him.

“Why would I want to freak you out?” he said in a smooth voice.

“I don’t know,” I said. I could hear my pulse in my ears. Tomohiro smiled, his eyes gleaming from behind his bangs. So he could look normal after all, I thought. Okay, more than normal. Damn it! Focus!

“Greene-san,” he said in accented English, giving me just about the politest suffix he could, “I assure you, I don’t have the time or the intention to scare you. I’m third year, yes? I have two cram schools to go to and I have university entrance exams to take. If you don’t want to see me, then don’t look for me at the school gate every morning.”

English. He was speaking English. Not only that, but calling me by my last name like I wasn’t some outsider, as if I belonged. I felt off balance, like he’d rolled a single marble to my side of a plank and the sudden change of weight might cause me to topple over. He’d turned this into a game, and he was winning.

Bleached Hair grinned. “I didn’t know you spoke English so well, Yuuto.”

“You understood me that day, in the genkan,” I whispered. I felt nauseous and wished he would stop looking at me and turn away. “You told me you didn’t speak English.”

He smirked, but his face was pale. “And you told me you didn’t speak Japanese,” he said. “So we’re even.”

“I don’t—” Wait, was he complimenting my Japanese?

“Look, we’re already late for kendo practice.” He turned to his friend and snapped, “Ikuzo.” Let’s go, trying to sound like a tough guy. He took off toward the genkan, followed by Bleached Hair.

There was more to it all—I knew it. How could he hate something that had made him come alive? I saw the way his arm arced through the air, the graceful way he moved, the look in his eyes and the softness of his voice as he sketched the kanji with his fingers. And he hadn’t denied the ink moving. He hadn’t said no.

My head flooded with questions, too many to handle. I wanted him to leave me alone—didn’t I? I never wanted to see him again—right? I just wanted things the way they were before. My whole world was shaken up. I didn’t want to see things that weren’t there. I didn’t want to lose whatever it was I had left without Mom. And every step he took away from me was a step away from normal. I needed answers and I needed them now.

I panicked and grabbed his left wrist with my hand. He turned, his eyes wide with surprise.

His skin felt warm beneath the shirt cuff, and time felt like it stopped.

“Katie,” Yuki whispered. Tanaka’s mouth was half open, half shut. I guess you didn’t just grab someone in Japan. I was making a spectacle of myself again—but it was too late. I clung to the softness of his skin, unsure what to do next or what I had been thinking.

“Oi,” Bleached Hair said, annoyed. The whole courtyard was staring at me. Again. Tomohiro looked at me, face flushing pink, his eyes wide and gleaming. He even looked a little frightened. I opened my fingers and let his wrist slip away.

“I—”

“Stay away from me,” Tomohiro said, but his voice wavered, and his cheeks blazed red as he turned and took off. I looked down at my hands.

Stay away from me.

Isn’t that my line?

And then I saw the pads of my fingers, covered in dark ink.

I screamed and wiped them on my jeans. But when I lifted them to look, the ink was gone. There was nothing on my jeans, either.

“Katie.” Yuki, looking worried, grabbed my arm and steered me away from the scene I was making. “Let’s go, okay?”

I followed, my mind racing.

I hated myself for the heat that flushed through me when I thought of the warmth of his wrist against my fingers. I tried to crumple up the feeling and toss it away like I had with Tanaka, but when I thought I’d crushed it, it dripped back into my thoughts like black, sluggish ink.

I walked silently through Sunpu Park, Yuki with a sympathetic arm around me.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s not like everyone saw. I mean…um.”

“You okay?” Tanaka said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t like how he was talking to you. He said he’s your friend, and then he goes all crazy when you ask him about calligraphy. I just feel like he’s hiding something. Sometimes he looks so pissed, and other times he looks worried or like I’m in on some kind of secret. I don’t get it—I want to know what’s going on.”

“Katie,” Yuki said, squeezing my arm. “That’s just how Yuu is. I’ve been talking to the second years, and he’s just touchy like that.”

“Right,” said Tanaka. “He likes his space. My sister told me he’s always disappearing somewhere—a loner or something, right? I know he’s cold, but don’t take it personally.”

Disappearing somewhere? So he is up to something.

Yuki flipped her phone open to check the time. “Listen, I have to go. They’ll kick me out of cram school if I’m late again. Later, okay?”

We waved as she took off ahead of us.

“Tanaka,” I said quietly as we walked.

“Hmm?” he said, tilting his head to the side.

“Why did Yuu quit Calligraphy Club?”

“MEh? Oh,” Tanaka said, looking a little embarrassed. Maybe I’d hit a sore spot. “He was getting into a lot of fights, and sensei warned him he’d have to quit the club if it continued.”

“So he got kicked out.”

Tanaka shook his head. “He was doing all right for a while. We had a big show coming up, our winter exhibit. Tomo-kun was working so hard on his painting. He chose the kanji for sword, and it was supposed to be our feature piece. Anyway, he practiced so many times and then went to paint the one for the display.”

“And?”

“Somehow he cut himself on it. Some sharp nail in the back of the frame or something. It was a deep cut, and he bled across the canvas. After all his hard work, his painting was ruined.”

I struggled to imagine it, Yuu Tomohiro throwing himself into creating a work of art. It didn’t mesh with his tough image, that was for sure.

“So, what, he just quit?”

“When I came into the arts room the next day, his canvas was ripped in two in the garbage. I still remember the sound of the ink dripping into the trash can.”

I stopped walking. “Ink dripping…”

Tanaka nodded. “He must have used a lot of pigment. It was really thick. I remember how weird it looked, kind of an oily sheen with dust or something. He never came back to Calligraphy Club. And shortly after he switched schools.”

“Switched schools? Isn’t that a little drastic?”

Tanaka laughed. “Different reason,” he said.

Ink dripping in ways it shouldn’t, with sparkling clouds of dust. So Tanaka had seen weird stuff, too. “Kanji only have so many strokes. If he’s so talented, why didn’t he start over?”

“I thought so, too. But after that, the fights started getting worse. When I asked what was going on, he said his dad made him quit. Of course, he wouldn’t want to admit it if he just gave up. Probably the ruined painting was the last straw for him.”

“Why would his dad make him quit?” I said, incredulous. Tanaka grinned and his whole face lit up. He looked handsome, but not in a way, I noticed, that distracted me.

“Well, I didn’t really hang out with Tomo-kun outside of school,” he said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if his father was pushing him to study harder and spend less time on the arts, even the traditional ones. My mom is always pushing my sister and me to study harder.”

“Hmm.” I wondered what sort of home Tomohiro went to at night, where he slipped off his shoes, whether he had curry waiting for him, too. “So why did he switch schools?”

“You like him.”

My heart stopped. “What?”

“Trust me, I can tell. But you should probably keep your distance. Tomo switched schools because he was almost expelled. There was a really bad fight with his best friend, Koji.”

“The white-haired guy?”

“No, no, I don’t know him. I haven’t seen Koji since…well, since it happened. It was bad. There was a lot of pressure to expel Tomo. So he withdrew and went to a different school.”

“How bad is bad?”

“Enough to put Koji in the hospital. But don’t freak out or anything, okay? I mean, no one’s really sure what happened, and knowing Koji, he probably started it.”

I felt a chill as fear replaced the memory of Tomohiro’s skin against my fingers.

“Anyway, this is as far as I go,” Tanaka said, and I slipped out of my thoughts.

“Oh, of course. Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t fall for him, Katie. Choose someone less complicated. Like me, okay?”

I stared at him until he clapped me on the arm.

“I’m joking.” He laughed. “Jaa ne,” he said, waving.

“Jaa,” I said, but my mind was far away. I wandered the maze of pathways and moats of the park. Sunpu Castle loomed above the tree branches, entangled like crosshatching around its base. The arching castle bridge gleamed in the crisp sunlight, and the moat below bubbled in its murky, thick movements.

The castle had seen generations rise and fall, had even burned down and been rebuilt. I bet from the roof you could almost see the whole park, paths and moats and bridges crossing, the buds on the trees almost ready to burst.

Maybe living in Shizuoka with Diane wasn’t that bad. Once it was time, cherry petals would fall gently into the cloudy water, swirling on its surface and painting the park pink and white for spring. Dancing across the sluggish waterways, dripping slowly down their channels, almost oozing like ink…

Shit.

Why did all my thoughts have to turn to him? He wanted to mess with my head and he’d managed to do it. I decided to kick him out. Thank god it was the weekend, where I could go home and not have to see him for two whole days.

The castle vanished behind me as I twisted down the pathways. I ended up walking way too far—all the paths looked the same. Students from different schools always cut through the park on their way home from after-school clubs, so when I saw the couple standing by the wooden bridge out of the park, it wasn’t unusual. At least, not at first.

The girl wore a deep crimson blazer and a red-and-blue-tartan skirt. Definitely a uniform from another high school, but I wasn’t sure which one. She was sobbing, quick, hiccupy breaths stif led by the back of her hand. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her.

The boy with her was from my school, dressed in our dark navy blue. His copper-dyed hair gleamed in the sunlight.

Give me a break. Not here, too. Didn’t he say he had kendo practice, or was that just another cover so he could disappear, like Keiko said?

The girl with him wasn’t Myu—that’s for sure—and her stomach curled outward under her skirt in a way that it shouldn’t.

I covered my mouth when I realized why.

A moment later Tomohiro embraced her, pulling her and her blooming stomach toward him.

The girl’s teary eyes flicked toward me as her head pressed into his shoulder.

The same burning eyes that had stared at me from the paper.

I turned and ran, spraying the gravel stones as I raced toward Shizuoka Station. I didn’t slow until I was across the bridge, down the tunnels and through the doors of the station.

She’s real. It’s her.

I felt like the station was spinning. And even though most of me was freaking out that the girl from the drawing was real, the shallow part of me was flipping out because Tomohiro was hugging another girl. A pregnant girl.

I stumbled through the crowds, desperate to be anonymous. I just needed a break from all this, just for a few minutes. Just so my heart could stop pounding.

I tried to lose myself, but as much as I wanted to be alone in the great mass of travelers, my blond hair assured I could never really blend in.

3

“Okaeri!”

“Are you going to do that every time?”

“Until you play along.”

I sighed.

“Tadaima,” I muttered in a flat tone. “I’m home. Happy?”

Diane’s mouth curved into a slanted frown. “Not really.”

I kicked my shoes against the raised foyer until they dropped off my feet, and headed toward the couch.

“Hey, rough day?” Diane said, looking worried.

“No,” I mumbled. “Just tired.”

“You’re home late,” she said. “Did you join a club at school?”

“I went to a café with Yuki,” I said. It was probably for the best not to mention the encounter with Tomohiro. Or, you know, that my drawings were coming at me with pointy teeth.

“That’s great! See, you’re making friends!”

I shrugged.

“And I got dragged into the English Club at school.”

“Ah,” said Diane. “Yes, that generally happens to gaijin. Did you join anything else?”

“Tea Ceremony, with Yuki.”

“Glad to see you finally taking an interest in the local culture.”

I rolled my eyes. “You know it’s not that. It’s not like I’m not interested in Japan.”

“I know. It’s homesickness.” And what she didn’t say. It’s Mom. And that’s a home I can’t go back to.

“So how was your day?” I asked. She looked shocked and way too happy that I’d asked.

“Busy,” she said. “The other English teacher is getting married soon, so I’m having to sit in on an extra period until we hire a temp. I don’t have any prep time now.”

“You need a temp because she’s getting married?”

“She’s going to quit to be a housewife,” Diane said. “A lot of women do in Japan. Not as much anymore, but Yamada is really traditional. So no prep period for me.”

“Taihen da ne,” I drawled, stretching my legs out on the couch. Diane beamed at me.

“Yes, it is tough,” she said. “And I can see that cram school is really paying off.”

“Give me four or five more months.” I smiled.

I helped Diane ladle out plates of spaghetti and we ate our dinner in exhausted silence. In the middle of dinner, Diane’s friends phoned to go out for drinks, and she hastily clipped on dangling gold earrings as I assured her for the fifth time that I would be just fine by myself.

“I am sixteen, you know.”

Diane gave me a once-over and arched her eyebrow. “I know.”

“I’m fine,” I said, pushing her out the doorway. “Have fun.”

“You have my keitai number if you need me,” she stuttered.

“Go!” I said.

“Ittekimasu.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, but she stood there with her frowny face until I gave in and muttered the response. “Itterasshai.” Go and come back safely.

I wished I could go anywhere without having to think about Tomohiro. And now I was in an empty apartment, flooded only with silence and the image of him hugging his crying, pregnant girlfriend.

I flicked on the desk light in my bedroom and lifted the lid of my laptop. As the colors swirled to life and the computer hummed, I thought about Tanaka and Tomohiro in calligraphy class, about the ripped canvas dripping into the trash can.

Wouldn’t the ink have dried overnight? How much did he load onto the brush? And what the hell did he do to his friend Koji?

I had an email from Nan, an update on the custody situation. What it really boiled down to was Gramps’s health, and it wasn’t great. But he was on his second-to-last round of chemo, and then they’d check to see if he was back in remission. Please let him be. I didn’t want to lose anyone else.

I tapped out a reply, then closed the lid on the laptop and collapsed onto my bed. In the dim glow of my desk lamp, I stared at the ceiling. Thin lines of light spread across the wall from the back of the metal shade. I tried to picture the kanji for sword, but had no idea. I sat up and grabbed my dictionary from the desk; Diane had an electronic one, but I still couldn’t read the kanji easily enough to use it. Sword didn’t look that complicated to write, at least not for Tomohiro. It took all of ten strokes:

I closed the dictionary and lay back, trying to picture Tomohiro standing in the arts room, holding a delicate painter’s brush between his fingers. Curving his arm in the smooth strokes he had sketched with in the school courtyard.

He slouched a lot, but Tomohiro didn’t strike me as clumsy. He moved with precision, and I didn’t think he’d cut his hand on a mounted canvas.

Maybe there’d been a loose nail or staple, like Tanaka said. But if he was painting, why would he touch the back of the canvas?

I imagined the stark spray of red across the kanji, black as night. The ripped canvas, ink and blood dripping into the trash, sluggish like the ink that had dripped down the steps of the Suntaba genkan.

And if his dad really didn’t approve of his time “wasted” on the arts, then I could imagine what he had to say about Tomohiro’s pregnant girlfriend.

If he knew, which he probably didn’t.

Not that any of it really mattered. Or it shouldn’t. I had my own life to worry about. I didn’t need moving drawings with sharp teeth and exploding pens. I didn’t need to cross paths with a guy who beat up his best friend and switched schools because of it. I’d just have to tell him to get lost so I wouldn’t have to stare at his gaudy highlight job anymore.

I closed my eyes to the spray of light in my room, and my thoughts spiraled into sleep.

The week blurred past between cram school and Sado Club, learning how to twist a teacup three times in my hand to admire the sketched cherry blossoms and leaves encircling the lacquered chawan. Hand-copying stroke after stroke, page after page of kanji. Schoolwork was getting easier, Japanese more natural, and I started to wonder if Diane was right. Maybe I’d really underestimated my language skill.

“Guess what?” Diane gushed at breakfast. I looked up from my pancakes and honey.

“What could possibly have you so giddy?” I asked.

“Cherry blossoms,” she said. “They’ve spotted the first ones in Kyoto and Osaka, and someone found a whole tree in bloom in Kamakura.”

“So Shizuoka will be next?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you see a few on your way to school.”

Sure enough, the odd tree in Sunpu unfolded in sprays of pink and white, dotting the bare park with color. Most of the trees still lay dormant as buds, but my eyes hunted for sakura trees as I snaked through to Suntaba.

When I slid open the door to our classroom, the whole class was going on about the trees. Was it really such a big deal?

“Katie-chan!” Yuki called out, and the friendly suffix she’d used wasn’t lost on me. She waved me over to where she sat huddled with her friends, who smiled shyly.

“Morning,” I said.

“The sakura are blooming. We’re going to go on the school picnic on Friday!”

“Picnic?” I said. “Nice!” Missing school to be outdoors was like skipping without getting into trouble. Everyone had trouble sitting through class, restless with thoughts of the upcoming picnic. We peered out the windows at the floating cherry petals, watching them spiral down from the trees until the final bell rang.

Tea Ceremony Club started after Yuki and I finished wiping down the blackboards and emptying the garbage cans. The teacher droned on about how to spin the whisk in our hands, the murky green in our cups frothing into a thick, bitter tea. She brought homemade sweets to go with the tea, pink nerikiri flower cakes and manju filled with red-bean paste. At first the texture of red bean had bothered me, but after almost two months in Japan, I guess I was adjusting.

Diane woke the next morning at five-thirty so she could cook karaage, onigiri, nasubi and stewed eggs for my picnic bentou.

“You can’t take peanut-butter sandwiches for flower viewing,” she said, and for once I agreed with her. “Only thing is, I don’t know how to make dango,” she added, embarrassed.

“Oh, dango, yeah,” I said.

“Tell me you know what dango are.”

I shrugged.

“Yuki will probably bring some. Eat them.”

I only found out after, when I peeked inside the delicate pink handkerchief she’d tied around my lunch, that she’d switched my box for the more expensive one she had, a traditional black-and-red bentou with two layers—lots of food to share.

It clicked then, in my memory—Diane hiding under platters of hors d’oeuvres at Mom’s funeral. This is how she copes, I thought. This is how she tries to be family.

I wrapped my arms around the bentou as I continued toward the park. There’s a saying in Japan, and it has to do with cherry-blossom viewing—hana yori dango. Dumplings over flowers. It basically means that someone should value needs over wants, substance over appearance. As in, make sure you have food and shelter before you burn money on something extravagant. And, you know, choose genuine friends who will be there for you over pretty, shallow ones. Don’t get carried away by beauty if it leaves you empty.

But it was hard to believe in dumplings over flowers when I reached the southern moat and stepped onto the arch of the Sunpu bridge. The beauty took my breath away, and for a minute I believed I could live off the flowers alone.

The entire park was bathed in pink, thousands of petals floating on the breeze as if it were raining sakura. The papery petals caught in my hair, on my uniform and on the leather of my book bag. Cherry blossoms littered the gravel paths, the bright green grass and the sluggish moats that pulled the petals from the park.

I walked slowly toward the castle, watching the petals falling. It was like an alien rain, something I had never experienced before. The crowds in the park were huge, salarymen, families and friends all gathered on tarps at the base of the cherry trees. They shared food as they laughed, beer cans and tea bottles lining the edges of the blankets. I closed my eyes, walking slowly, feeling the petals as they grazed my skin and floated downward. For the first time, I felt truly happy in Shizuoka, carrying my special bentou in a forest of pink under the clear sky.

I rounded the corner to shouts and howling laughter. Three guys—younger than me, probably thirteen or so—and one girl, who dabbed at her eyes with her seifuku sleeve. One of the boys chugged away at a can of something or other I couldn’t read, and another held the girl’s book bag up in the air, laughing.

“Give it back!” she begged, but the boys snorted and passed the can back and forth, tossing the book bag out of her reach to each other.

I stood there frozen. No way could I take on three punks, even if they were younger than me, but I had to do something.

I stepped forward, taking a deep breath.

A voice echoed through the park.

“Oi! Leave her alone.”

The boys looked up as a student from Suntaba stepped forward, petals clinging to the buttons of his open blazer. My mind churned—Tomohiro. The boys swore at him, and I secretly hoped he’d back off. They looked like seriously bad news.

But he swore back, apparently with a worse word, because one of the guys threw his can down and started rolling up his sleeves. They dropped the book bag, forgotten, and the girl raced over to pick it up. She darted away, running past me so fast that the breeze rushed against my face. The three came at him, shouting. Tomohiro lifted his hands slowly, and panic shot through me.

There’s no way he can handle three of them, even if he does get into a lot of fights.

The boy with the rolled-up sleeves swung at Tomohiro, but he ducked and pulled the guy’s arm so hard that I thought it might rip from the socket. The second guy lunged and clipped Tomohiro’s face, but Tomohiro swung his leg around and kicked the guy at the back of his knees. He stumbled forward and Tomohiro punched him in the back, shoving him into the third guy.

Rolled Sleeves was up again, and he kicked hard. With three of them, there was no way Tomohiro could avoid all the blows. The blood trickled down his face.

And just when his bruise from Myu was fading.

Then Tomohiro took hold of one of the wiry boys and threw him through the air. The boy’s awkward body arced, suspended for a minute among the falling petals, and then thudded hard against the sharp gravel. In a minute he was up again, running across the park followed by the second guy.

Tomohiro grabbed Rolled Sleeves’ collar and walked him backward, shoving him against the fence that overlooked the deep, cold moat. Tomohiro muttered something and Rolled Sleeves flinched. Tomohiro dropped him, wiping at the blood dripping from his nose.

But as Tomohiro walked away, the boy stood up slowly and pulled out a switchblade.

Oh my god.

My legs started moving before I could think. “Watch out!” I screamed, running at Tomohiro. He looked up in surprise and then saw the boy behind him. He caught the boy’s arm as it swung down, squeezing his wrist hard until he dropped the blade. I grabbed it from the ground and threw it into the river, where it was sucked into the water with a sploosh.

“Teme!” the boy shrieked at me.

“You need some manners!” Tomohiro shouted and punched the boy so hard I could hear the crack of his nose as it snapped.

Rolled Sleeves felt around his nose as the blood soaked his chin. He stumbled to his feet and took off, swearing at Tomohiro. Tomohiro swore back and the boy sped up.

The blood trickled down Tomohiro’s face as he heaved in every breath.

“Are you—are you okay?” I said.

Tomohiro nodded, his shoulders moving up and down as he panted. “You?” he said.

“I’m fine.”

He wiped at his nose with the back of his arm, and as he dropped it down again, I saw a gash across the skin.

“He cut you.” I panicked.

“What?”

“On your wrist!”

He looked down, then quickly pushed the cuff of his sleeve down.

“Just an old injury. It’s nothing,” he said.

It didn’t look like nothing.

“Thanks,” he said finally. “For the warning.”

“Um, no problem,” I said.

He paused. “But just for your own safety, maybe you shouldn’t run toward boys with knives. You know, in the future.” The corner of his mouth lifted as he tried to keep the grin off his face.

I found myself grinning back. “I’m sorry, are you insulting me after I saved your butt?”

He laughed, and the warmth of the sound spread through me.

“I’m just saying you should avoid running toward sharp objects and dangerous guys.”

“Like you,” I said. It just popped out—I didn’t mean it to.

The grin faded, and he was serious again. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Like me.” He kicked the toe of his shoe into the gravel. “Che! What the hell am I doing?” He turned, his shoulders lifting with a breath, and then he ran.

“Wait,” I said. “I just wanted to—”

The gravel sprayed across the grass, tiny drops of blood clinging to the stones. Except, some of the drops didn’t look like blood. They oozed like…like black ink.

The shower of pink petals rained down.

I stepped forward, one foot, then the other, numb to the beauty of the park. I bent down and lifted one of the stones. The droplet of ink spilled onto the side of my finger before dripping back to the ground.

He’d been warm, laughing, the weight of something lifted. And then he’d stopped. What the hell am I doing? he’d said. What are you doing, Yuu? He was keeping something secret, something about the ink. He wanted me to stay away. But he’d forgotten.

And it was nice.

The castle rose as I neared the picnic site, and I saw the classes spread out under the branches laden with hundreds of pink-and-white blooms. I spotted the Class 1-D tarp, and Yuki waved wildly at me.

“Hey, slowpoke, what took you so long?” she said.

“Yuu Tomohiro,” I said. “Where’s 3-C?”

“They’re not coming until this afternoon,” she said. “They have class.”

I said nothing. It was still early enough that he could have been on his way to school through the park. With no book bag. Maybe. Or maybe he was headed somewhere else.

More drops of ink where they shouldn’t be. And all I could think about was his face lighting up with that laugh.

We ate our lunch amid the excited chatter of first-year senior high students. Yuki’s friends sat with us and shyly exchanged a few pink, white and green dango sticks with me for some of Diane’s karaage. The dango looked like pastel traffic lights and tasted overwhelmingly sweet.

After the picnic, I helped fold up the tarp and carry it back to the school with Tanaka. We resumed our afternoon classes, but no one’s heart was really in it, even the teachers’.

I had cleaning duty—the bathrooms—and I wrinkled up my nose when I heard it. I headed toward the ones by the gym, armed with my brush, my apron, my hair tie and my gloves. Not the most fun task, but I scrubbed away anyway. Making students clean the school toilets would never fly in my school back home, but here it was just expected. When everything was clean, I washed my hands in the sink and opened the bathroom door.

Shouts erupted from the gym, a chorus of tired voices yelling in unison and the clatter of wood hitting wood. I walked toward the sound, carrying my toilet brush with me, and pulled the gym door open a fraction.

About forty students were decked out in black armor, masks of screen mesh covering their faces. They wore long black skirts down to their ankles and stepped barefoot across the gym in pairs. Each student held a long bamboo stick with both hands, and at the shout of the teacher, they clashed them against each other. The noise echoed to the rafters of the gym and rang in my ears.

One of the teachers, chemistry, I think, saw me peeking and hurried over.

“I see you’re interested in kendo,” he said in English. He had a broad smile and a towel scrunched around his neck. The veins almost popped out from his head, and thick-rimmed glasses hunched over his nose.

“Kendo,” I said. So this was what Tomohiro and Bleached Hair were always running off to. “Japanese fencing, right?”

“Yes,” the teacher said. “We’re practising for the ward competition coming up.”

I’d wanted to take karate in New York but always chickened out at the last minute. I couldn’t bring myself to willingly sign up for something that involved sparring.

The students moved in unison, like ghostly visions of samurai dancing. They swung their bamboo swords in the air, each movement timed to the other teacher’s strained voice. The students lined up along the edge of the gym, called forward in pairs to challenge each other.

“You want to try?” the chemistry teacher asked.

My eyes popped. “Me?”

He nodded.

“No. No, I mean, I…” I trailed off. It’s pretty rude to flat out refuse something in Japanese, so I decided to find a more subtle way out. “I’m already in a few different clubs, so…” The chemistry teacher looked crestfallen.

“Sou ka…” he mused. Then he shook his head. “Well, never mind. Come in and watch for a bit, ne?” I couldn’t think of a way to refuse, so I shuffled into the gym, slumping down against the wall where the students waited for their turn to duel.

“Okay, next pair!” the other teacher shouted. The chemistry teacher nodded at me with a smile and started across the floor. Throaty shouts echoed through the gym as the pair came at each other. They pressed their swords against each other’s, circling at arm’s length. With lightning speed, one approached and smacked his sword on the other’s helmet.

“Point!” the chemistry teacher yelled. I stared wide-eyed. It had happened so fast it was almost a blur. The skirts of the fencers swayed as they moved back and forth, coming at each other and drawing back.

Another pair was called forward, and another. I watched in amazement until I’d lost track of time.

“See you next week!” the teacher called, and I stared down at my watch. Really?

The students untied their helmets and wiped the sweat off their foreheads with their arms. There were a few girls, but mostly guys. I scanned the group as they walked toward the change rooms.

And then Bleached Hair strode past me, followed by Tomohiro.

So. This was why he could take care of that fight. Next to this, the fight with three thirteen-year-old morons was probably nothing to him.

“What did you think?” came an English voice beside me. I looked over, startled, into the glowing face of the chemistry teacher.

“Oh,” I stuttered. “It was, um, great.” The other teacher had walked over now, another senior-level sensei that I didn’t know.

“This is the foreign student at Suntaba,” said the chemistry teacher. Thanks, real subtle. The man arched his eyebrows.

“You going to join our club?” he asked. I began to protest, unsure how to word it. I looked over at Bleached Hair and Tomohiro rubbing their faces with towels and chugging water bottles. Tomohiro had a white-and-navy sports bag strapped over his shoulder and he grinned as he chatted with his friend. He glanced over, and I couldn’t tell if he was smirking or actually smiling.

“Well? What do you think?” said the teacher. “Give it a try?”

I stared at Tomohiro. I wanted to figure out why he’d ditched calligraphy for kendo and what that glimpse of him in the park had meant. And anyway, the way he stared at me felt like a challenge. Like I had to prove that I could do it, too.

“Sure,” I said, glancing at Tomohiro. “I want to try.” The teachers smiled, sputtering about how wonderful it was, while the grin slipped from Tomohiro’s face. He looked away, turning toward the end of the empty gym.

“I joined the Kendo Club at school,” I said to Diane over dinner. She went bug-eyed and just about dropped the shrimp straddled between her chopsticks.

“You what?”

“I joined the Kendo Club.”

“I thought you hated contact sports.”

I shoved in a forkful of salad. “I do.”

“Kendo does not translate to ‘ballet,’ Katie.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know. I sat in on a practice today. And anyway? Ballet isn’t easy, either, thanks very much.”

“It’s dangerous. You could get hurt,” Diane said, but I shrugged.

“You could get hurt crossing the street.”

“Katie, I’m serious. Are you really sure you want to do kendo? Did the teacher talk you into it?”

“No, I want to do it.” I poured my cup of green tea over my rice and mashed it in.

Diane sighed. “I don’t know about this. What would your mom say if I let you try it? And don’t pour your tea in your rice, Katie. You’ll ruin it.”

“Tanaka said it tastes better this way,” I said. “And don’t worry. Mom would say, ‘Good for you, Katie! Japan needs more girls taking kendo!’”

I could almost hear her voice when I said it. Mom had always been like that, making sure I knew girls could take on anything. If Mom couldn’t be here to say it, then I would say it for her. I swallowed the sadness back, biting my lip. I could keep her alive, just a little bit. I wouldn’t have to let go. Not entirely.

Before the tears could start, I rose to my feet and started clearing up my empty dishes. Diane stared down at her pile of shrimp tails and I knew I’d won when her shoulders sagged. I knew she was thinking about Mom, too, about what she would want for me.

“All right,” she said eventually. “It’s okay with me, but take it slowly and be careful. If you get hurt, I’m pulling you out.”

“Diane, come on,” I said. “What’s a contact sport without contact?” Okay, so I was egging her on, but I couldn’t help it. A sport where I was expected, even encouraged, to smack Tomohiro. What could be better? I placed my dishes in the sink with a clank and raced to my room before she could say anything.

I sank into the quilt of my bed, the comfort of a Friday night where I didn’t have to slave away at homework. Diane shouted that our favorite drama was on, but by then I was half-asleep, dreaming of the clatter of bamboo swords.

Oh god. What had I signed up for?

4

On Monday, I slipped out the front door of Suntaba just as Tomohiro pedaled away on his white bike.

Where’s he sneaking off to all the time anyway?

I watched with frustration as he cycled out of sight. If he was trying to keep me at a distance, it couldn’t be good. I knew better than to spy on a boy who put his best friend in the hospital. I did. But I couldn’t get him out of my mind. And it’s not like I wanted my drawings to come at me again with pointy teeth, ever. Maybe I needed to pre-empt the next weird ink encounter.

“Diane,” I said, when she finally got in from a late night of drinking beer and slurping noodles with her coworkers—a required social thing.

“Hmm?” she said, slipping off her high heels and rubbing her feet. Her face looked worn and tired.

“Can I get a bike?”

“You want a bike?”

“It is a long way to school,” I said. “Most of the kids bike anyway. Tanaka does.” Diane arched her eyebrows, like she’d understood something.

“Oh,” she said, “you want to go biking with Tanaka.”

“Ew. Please don’t start that again.”

“All right, all right,” she said, but she looked unconvinced and suspicious. “You can take my bike on Wednesday, and I’ll see about getting you your own if you decide you like biking so much.”

“What about you?”

“Wednesdays I have a prep period first. They finally hired another English teacher, so it’s not a problem. And you may find you prefer walking, in which case I can get my bike back.”

There was no way I preferred walking. That Wednesday I hoisted Diane’s thin white bike from our balcony and shoved it into the elevator with me. I almost knocked out our neighbor with the wheel when I got to the lobby, but once I was on the streets, it was a breeze to maneuver through the traffic. The tires spewed up gravel in the park, so I had to slow down to avoid spraying passers-by. With the slow speed, I almost collapsed on my side, but once I’d found the right rhythm, it was perfect to cycle under the shower of pink petals, which would be hopelessly tangled in my hair by the time I reached Suntaba.

The breeze whipped my hair behind me and closed my ears to the noise of hanami-goers in the park. All I could hear was air, birds, the odd traffic signal beeping across the moats from the city, all buzzing together in a blurred combination. I pumped the pedals hard as I crossed the northern bridge, falling back into the city on the other side and through the gate of our school.

Class passed by slowly, and I kept staring out the windows, where I could see the pink snow of sakura from the tree in the courtyard. Yuki said the blossoms only lasted a couple weeks. Pretty soon I would wake up and discover the branches all bare.

Tanaka offered to help Yuki with the bathrooms because I’d mopped the floors for him the day before, so I managed to leave school earlier than usual, just in time to see Tomohiro straddling his bike.

I fumbled with my lock as he sped out of sight. Although I guess I didn’t have to hurry that much—I knew he’d end up at the station because he’d turned left first, which meant he was trying to throw everyone off his trail.

Always with the tricks. What was so important no one else could see?

I pulled the rusty lock off and scrunched it into my book bag, slipping the leather straps over the handlebars and yanking the tire out of the rack. I sped through the gate, nearly knocking out two second-year boys, and headed south.

I stopped for a breather at Shizuoka Station. I had a few minutes at least before he’d finish his wild-goose-chase route, and when he showed up, I’d be ready.

“Guzen da!”

I may have jumped clear out of my skin. I whipped around, but it wasn’t Tomohiro. For one thing, this guy had floppy black hair and blond highlights tucked behind his pierced ear.

“Jun!”

“You remembered.” He smiled. “Are you waiting for someone?”

“Oh, no, no,” I stammered. I could feel my face turning red. It was a million kinds of obvious that I was.

Jun grinned. “A guy, maybe? The one you saw on the train?”

Was I that transparent?

“What are you talking about?” I stuttered.

“Sorry,” he said. “None of my business, right? You just have that same flustered look again.” He reached for the heavy bag on his shoulder and pulled on the strap. “I’m on my way to practice, but I saw you and thought I’d say hi.”

“Practice?”

“Just a sport I’m into,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, trying to peer around him without looking like I was peering around him.

He leaned in a little, and whispered, “Who are we spying on?”

“Okay, fine, it is the guy from the other day,” I said. “Jeez, what are you, some kind of detective or something?”

“I watch a lot of police dramas.” He grinned. He lifted his left palm and pretended to take notes on it, his fingers poised around an imaginary pencil. “So is he giving you trouble or something?”

“He’s not—Well, I mean. Kind of?”

Jun frowned. “Kind of?”

“He’s just up to something, that’s all.” I thought of the inky eyes staring at me—they still made my heart flip over when I thought of them. “He draws these sketches that creep me out. It’s almost like they’re alive or something.”

“Creepy sketches? That’s definitely criminal activity,” he said, madly tracing kanji onto his palm.

My cheeks blazed red. “Forget it. It’s stupid,” I said, and he dropped his hands to his sides as he shook his head.

“It’s not stupid if he’s bothering you,” he said.

“He’s not bothering me. I mean, he is, but—” The words tangled as much as my thoughts. What exactly was he doing? “Sometimes it’s like he’s picking on me. And then other times, he looks like he’s scared of me, or like I’m in on some kind of secret.”

“Ah,” said Jun. “Now that, I understand.”

“So?”

“He likes you.”

I snorted. “You’re way off base, keiji-san. He even has a girlfriend.”

“I guess I’m losing my touch.” He laughed. “That just seemed like the obvious answer.”

Then he stared at me intensely and started to lean in.

“What are you doing?” I said, my pulse racing. How was this happening? His eyes were soft and dazed, like he was looking at me while half-asleep. The blond highlight tucked behind his ear escaped and fanned over his cheek, the longest strands brushing the corner of his lips. He reached his hand out toward my hair. I flinched and tried to back up, but I was on my bike and huddled against a wall. There wasn’t anywhere to go.

I felt the soft brush of his fingers through my hair, and then he leaned back.

“Cherry blossom,” he said, the pink petal pressed between his fingers. He let it flutter to the ground as we watched, and then he looked up at me. “So beautiful,” he whispered.

My heart might possibly have stopped for a second.

And then Tomohiro whizzed past with his unmistakable hair slicked to the sides of his head. Jun must have seen the urgency on my face because he turned to watch him go by.

“Ah,” he said, and I wondered if I imagined the hurt in his voice. “He’s here, the boy who draws things. You’re flustered again.”

“I’m not flustered! I’m just—”

“I know, I know. But I’m late for practice, so I’ll catch you later, okay?”

Yeah, right. He smiled as he walked away, limping a little under the weight of the sports bag. I watched him go, wondering if I imagined it. So beautiful. He meant the cherry petal—right?

No time to think about it. Tomohiro veered toward the walkways and I was on his tail, coasting down the hill and looping around pedestrians. This was my chance to finally figure it all out. What he was hiding, why he was pushing me away. Sure, there was the I’m-a-jerk component, but after the fight in the park, there was more than that. There had to be.

The city thinned as we moved forward, and then I really got nervous. Maybe he was onto me. Maybe he was messing with me again, because I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary here. I half expected him to stop his bike and look back at me with a smug grin and a slow clap.

But then a tipsy Roman bus snorted along the street, and relief washed through me. He was just following the bus route.

A mass of trees in fresh bud spread in front of us like an emerald beacon amid the city streets, and I realized where we were headed.

Yuki had told me about it—Toro Iseki, an excavated archaeological site in the thick of Shizuoka City. A chain-link fence surrounded the area, and suspended from the barrier was a big orange sign with kanji I couldn’t quite read—but there was a big picture of a bowing, apologetic workman with a hard hat, so I got the idea.

Tomohiro coasted along the side of the fence, his fingers strumming the chain links as he went. He leaped off his bike and pushed in on the side of the fence. It lifted from the rail and he ducked under, pulling his bike through the gap. When he disappeared into the trees, I pedaled up to the loose fence.

There was a thin trail on the other side—not very noticeable, but I had spent every summer in the forests of Deep River, and clear as day I saw the stomped-down grass and broken branches.

A slip of ripped paper fluttered in the grass, with little torn holes like it was pulled from a notebook. Something had been scribbled on it. And I bet it was Tomohiro’s.

I peeked around me, my heart pounding. Even when friends egged me on, there were lines I never crossed. I couldn’t believe I was even considering breaking into a restricted area.

I stared at the tuft of forest, the trees bursting upward. I knew Tomohiro was there, and I had to know what he was doing.

I took a deep breath. Hot adrenaline raced into my fingertips and down my tired legs.

I pushed the chain-link fence in and ducked under.

The tension prickled down my neck and shoulders, but nothing happened. The park was silent except for the chirps of strange birds grating against each other.

I bent over and lifted the scrap of paper, rubbing the grainy notebook page between my fingers. With a deep breath, I flipped it over. Scribbled, panicky lines had somehow woven together into the end of a dragon’s tail, curved with shaded-in scales. Tufts of hair and ridges sprawled from the tail in sharp, ragged scrawls of ink.

I squinted as I stared at the paper. Something was off—the proportion maybe, but part of the tail looked funny. One spike looked too long, but then it looked fine again, and then another patch of scales seemed out of place. I scrunched up my face, trying to figure it out, as a gust of wind almost blew it out of my hand.

The tail flicked from one side of the paper to the other.

I dropped the scrap, my heart pounding.

I stood there, unsure what to do. Should I let Tomohiro know I was here and make him explain? I’d probably come off as a wacko. Not that spying on him from afar was any better, but it’s not like I’d planned this out well. I just wanted to know what the hell he was up to. I shivered as I thought of the pregnant girl’s eyes on me, the horrible moment that had started all this weirdness. I had to know the truth.

The forest wasn’t as dense as it had seemed, and a few meters ahead the trees thinned into the clearing of Toro Iseki. My breath caught in my throat as I stepped forward.

Bathed in the pink of sakura, the white of late ume plum blossoms and the vibrant greens of fragrant spring leaves, walking into the silent ruins of Toro felt like walking into an ancient painting. The floating petals rained on the thatched rooftops of the old Yayoi houses and collected in the grasses around them.

Tomohiro sat beside one of the huts, his knees tucked up and a black notebook balanced on them like a canvas. His hand arced over the paper quickly, black spreading across the stark white page. Every now and then he had to stop to blow the cherry and plum petals off his work.

I hung beside the trees on the edge of the clearing, watching him.

Without lifting his head, he said into his drawing, “You might as well sit down instead of standing there gawking at me. It’s annoying.”

Heat coursed through my cheeks, and my ears burned with embarrassment.

When I didn’t reply, Tomohiro stopped drawing. Still not looking up, he moved his hand to a spot on the ground beside him and patted it. “Sit.”

I smirked. “What am I, a dog?”

He looked over and grinned, the breeze twisting his spiky hair in and out of his deep brown eyes. I almost melted on the spot.

“Wan, wan,” he barked, the Japanese version of a dog’s noise. I nearly jumped back at the sound of it, and his eyes gleamed with twisted delight. “I’m the animal around here, right?” he said with a smirk. “Don’t sit if you don’t want. I don’t care.” He turned back to the page.

I took a deep breath and stepped forward, walking slowly toward his back, curved over his drawing.

My eyes flicked nervously to the drawing, a sketch of a wagtail bird. The drawing was beautiful, but I was relieved to see it didn’t move around.

Tomohiro shook his head.

“You just don’t get the message, do you?” he said, his pen curving around the back of the wagtail. High in the trees I saw a wagtail in a cherry tree, singing while other birds darted through the branches.

“You told me to stay away from you,” I said.

“And so you followed me to Toro Iseki.” He looked up at me, but I gazed back suspiciously.

“I just think—”

“You think I’m up to something.”

I nodded. He tilted his notebook toward me.

“I’m up to this,” he said, tapping the page.

I said nothing, but the heat rose to my cheeks.

“You think Myu had the right idea, don’t you?” he said. “You want to slap me, too?”

I stared at him. Why so much attitude? The way he’d saved that girl in the park, the moment we’d had after, even the softness of his face when he’d waited for the Roman bus—it didn’t match up with this I-don’t-give-a-shit act he was pulling now, the one he always put on at school.

“Well?” He stared at me expectantly, and I forced my mouth to move.

“I’m not going to hit you, but I think it was pretty shitty of you to cheat on her.” He smirked and glanced into the trees, lifting his pen to shade the wagtail’s beak. “Why did you lie to her?”

“Lie to her?”

“Yeah. Myu didn’t mean nothing to you. I saw it in your eyes, how you really felt.”

He paused in his drawing.

“That,” he said, “is not your business.”

A moment passed before either of us said anything. The tip of his pen made a loud scratchy noise as it scribbled back and forth across the paper.

“Okay, so how about something that is my business? Tell me why your drawings move, and how you made my pen explode.”

“Animation, and a faulty pen.”

“Like crap it was,” I said.

“Watch if you don’t believe me,” he said, and I stared at his page. Completely normal. “You must be seeing things. You should probably get that checked out.”

“Shut up,” I said, but the comment worried me. I’d done an internet search of the symptoms of hallucinating, and apparently, grieving the loss of a loved one was a big one.

“So Watanabe-sensei and Nakamura-sensei say you’ve joined kendo,” Tomohiro said after a minute.

“Yeah,” I said. He grinned and leaned forward to brush the ume petals off his paper. His bangs slipped over his eyes and he tossed his head to the side.

“You’re doing a thorough job of stalking me,” he said.

“I’m not stalking you!” I snapped. “I couldn’t care less what you’re doing with your time.”

“Which is why you followed me here.”

“Like I said, I thought you were up to something.”

“The arts.”

I lowered my voice, embarrassed. “I see that.”

He stopped drawing abruptly, and the wagtails peeped high-pitched warnings to each other. He scratched thick black strokes through his drawing, scribbling it out of existence. I watched with surprise.

“It wasn’t that bad,” I said. He didn’t answer, but flipped to a fresh page. I could hear his breath, tired and labored like when he’d fought in the park. After a moment, he swallowed and his hand started moving across the paper, sketching what looked like a plum tree.

“Why did you quit calligraphy?” I asked, watching his hand pause a moment as he studied the foliage of the nearby ume.

“My dad,” he said. “He thinks art is nonsense. He wants me to study medicine or go into banking like him.”

“But you’re really good at it,” I said. “I mean really good.” Tomohiro sketched in a few more ink leaves. “Maybe if your dad saw your work—”

“He’s seen it,” Tomohiro snapped darkly. The ink blotted from his pen and trickled down the tree. “Shit!” he added, scratching violently through the drawing.

I rolled my eyes. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“My mother’s dead,” he said.

I stared at him, my hands shaking. I’d been standing until then, but my legs buckled under me and I sank down to my knees beside him. I opened and closed my mouth, but no sound. I’d never expected we were connected in this way.

“Mine, too,” I managed.

He looked up from the page, his eyes searching my face, and I felt like he was seeing me for the first time, really me, how broken I was.

“Sorry,” he said.

“What…what happened to yours?” I asked. His eyes were intense, and I felt exposed suddenly, like I’d told him too much. And maybe I had, but for a minute I’d felt like maybe he could understand me.

“It was an accident,” he said. “I was ten.” Not recent, then, like mine. Not like mine at all. His voice was all softness and velvet. “Yours?”

My eyes started to blur with tears. Having this in common knocked all the fight out of me. I could barely get out the words. “Heart attack, eight months ago. One minute she was fine and then…”

“No warning, then,” Tomohiro said. “Like mine.” Oh. I guess it was like his after all. Except his voice was steady as he spoke. Time healing all wounds and all that, like everyone kept telling me. He was where I’d be in seven years. Without the attitude, hopefully. He was where I’d be if I let myself forget my old life.

I watched him draw for a little while in silence, and even though he was just doodling with a pen, each drawing was so beautiful. But he was critical of his work. He’d start and stop drawings like he had a short attention span. He’d scribble things out, sometimes striking them out so hard the pen tore through the paper and blotted onto the next page of the notebook.

“They tell you you’ll forget how it used to be,” he said suddenly, and the sound of his voice startled me. “You’ll get used to it, that it’s better to move on. They don’t realize you can’t. You’re not the same person anymore.”

My eyes flooded again and I stared at his blurry form through them. This wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. I mean, when he had half the school staring up my skirt, I was pretty sure he didn’t even have a soul.

“Don’t let them tell you you’ll be fine,” he said, looking at me urgently. His brown eyes caught the sunlight and I could see how deep they were before his bangs fell into them again. He tucked the bangs to the sides with his slender fingers; I couldn’t help wondering what his fingertips felt like. “Be angry, Katie Greene. Don’t forget how it was. Because there’ll always be a hole in your heart. You don’t have to fill it.”

Satisfied with his pep talk, he gave me a small grin and then turned back to his drawing. The wind caught the cherry and plum petals and they spun in drifts before my eyes.

And I felt that I wasn’t alone, that Tomohiro and I were suddenly linked. No one had told me I wouldn’t feel better. No one had let me be empty and changed. I knew which side of him was real now, and it wasn’t the part everyone else saw.

When he moved his hand across the drawing, the cuff of his white school shirt caught on the edge of the paper and rolled up his arm. He left his palm up as he studied the Toro houses, and that’s when I saw the scars that slashed across his wrist, the ones I’d seen in Sunpu Park. The biggest one spanned from one side to the other, interlaced with the rest. They were smaller and not as deep, but they looked ragged, fresher and not anywhere as neatly healed.

Concern welled up in me. Oh—he’s a cutter. Now that I looked, I could see the pattern of dark scars that trailed up his arm beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. But when he saw my expression, he looked down at his wrist and grinned, like he thought my assumption was funny.

“It’s from the sword,” he said.

“The what?”

“Sword. The kanji. In elementary Calligraphy Club? I’m sure Ichirou told you about it.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s a pretty bad scar.”

“It was a deep cut. I had to go to the hospital for it.” He switched to English and tried to explain, and I got the message that he’d needed stitches and lost a lot of blood. All I could think of was how he’d put his friend Koji in the hospital, too. At the moment, he didn’t seem capable of it.

“Sorry,” I said, but he smiled grimly.

“Art is a dangerous hobby,” he said, and somehow I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

“So how come you draw here?” I asked.

“It’s safer here.”

“You mean your dad doesn’t know?”

“Something like that. Anyway, look around the clearing. People lived here almost two thousand years ago. There are birds, trees, silence. Ever try to be alone in a city like Shizuoka?” He ran his hand through his copper hair and shook it from side to side, flower petals tumbling onto his notebook. I thought of Jun reaching for the flower petal in my hair. So beautiful. I quickly pushed the memory aside with shame. I felt like I’d betrayed Tomohiro by thinking of it, which was dumb, but I felt it anyway.

“You know you’re trespassing here,” I said. Tomohiro broke into a broad grin.

“A place like this doesn’t belong to anyone,” he said. “They can’t keep me out like they can’t keep the birds in.”

It was surreal among the ruins, and I could see why he risked coming in here. Besides, with his entitled attitude, the orange sign on the gate was probably a challenge, a dare, more than anything else.

He stopped sketching and a bead of sweat rolled down his face. He drew an ugly rigid line through his beautiful sketch of a Yayoi hut and slammed the cover of the notebook closed.

“Why’d you wreck it?” I asked as he shoved the notebook deep into his book bag. When I thought about it, he’d crossed out every single drawing.

He shrugged it off, but his eyes were dark. “They’re not good enough,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Go? Together? I struggled to push down the panic that rose to my throat and reminded myself what a jerk he could be. And he was a taken jerk, on top of it. Cheater. Pregnant girlfriend. Koji in the hospital. It was a mantra I repeated in my mind, but somehow it wasn’t working.

He strode ahead into the trees and I followed, reaching for my bike as he lifted his. When we were both through the chain-link fence, he let go and it clanged into place.

We leaped on our bikes, coasting across the street and up through the thickening maze of Shizuoka.

He led the way, but competitiveness overtook me and I pedaled past him, coasting in front and weaving around the traffic. He didn’t challenge me but sat back and relaxed, following my lead and riding in my wake.

Maybe there was something to his friendship with Tanaka. He wasn’t acting the same as before, different than the Tomohiro that Myu had slapped.

Not different than the one who’d tenderly embraced his crying girlfriend in the park, though. The memory flashed through my mind like a good slap to the head.

We stopped at Shizuoka Station.

“I go north from here, to Otamachi,” he said.

“I live west,” I said. “Near Suruga.”

He nodded. “You hungry?”

I just stared at him. My hunger was definitely clawing at the sides of my stomach, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

It was like he knew what I was thinking. He smiled, then burst into another of his grins, looking down and shaking his head as he laughed.

“You should see your face,” he said between laughs. “Like I’d just asked you to jump off the top of Sunpu Castle!”

I flushed red.

“Come on,” he said. “There’s a good café in the station.”

I grasped for words, reasons, that I could not go.

“Won’t your girlfriend be upset?” I said.

He tilted his head to the side. “Girlfriend?”

“The pregnant one? Or do you have more than one?”

He stared at me blankly and then burst out laughing.

“So that made it into the rumor?” he managed to say. He looked pretty pleased with himself. My face would have turned redder if I’d had any humiliation left in me.

When he saw how pissed I was, he stopped laughing. “Oh, right. You heard Myu say it. I don’t have a girlfriend. Especially a pregnant one.”

“But I saw you. In the park,” I said and regretted the words the minute they came out. His eyes went wide.

“You really have been spying, ne?” he said. “Shiori’s not my girlfriend. She’s more like a sister, and I promised her mom I’d look out for her. Students are giving her a rough time because she’s keeping the baby.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“Now, come on. I’m hungry.”

I protested, but he just walked his bike toward the station, waving his arm in the air like he wasn’t going to hear it.

I stood there for a moment, squeezing the handlebars of my bike. I could just take off for home and ignore him. But when he turned around to see if I was following, I hurried forward, like I didn’t control my own legs anymore.

I ordered a melon soda and he got a platter of tonkatsu curry.

“You sure you don’t want something to eat?” he said, breaking his wooden chopsticks apart. I held up my hand.

“I’m fine,” I said. He narrowed his eyes at me.

“I know what it is,” he said. “You’re scared I’m going to try and pay for you.”

The heat prickled up my neck. “It’s not that at all,” I stuttered.

“No problem,” he said, “because I’m not going to.”

“What?”

He raised an eyebrow and shone a cocky grin at me.

“I’m pretty broke at the moment. So order yourself something and I won’t protest, promise.”

“Fine,” I mumbled. I called the waitress over and ordered a bowl of gyudon. Tomohiro picked at his meal until mine came, and by then his curry was cold. But even though I insisted he go ahead and eat, he just prodded it.

When my bowl of teriyaki beef and rice arrived, Tomohiro just about leaped out of his seat.

“Itadakimasu!” he shouted, clasping his hands together and wolfing down the pork cutlet.

He took a gulp of his water to wash it down. “I’m starving,” he said, but the sound of the childish words he chose made me snort. “Peko peko” coming from the mouth of someone like Tomohiro.

“So are you convinced now that I’m not up to anything?” he asked, his chopsticks suspended in the air between bites.

“Not even close,” I said. “But why did you do that to me, the day after I saw you with Myu?” I said. He raised his eyebrows and looked sincerely puzzled.

“Do what?”

“Oh, please, like you don’t remember. You waited for me at the gate, and then you walked past me all dangerous-like.” And too close, I added to myself. The smell of his vanilla hair gel, the heat of his shoulder grazing mine. And then, you know, he proceeded to look up my skirt, but did we really need to remember that part?

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