A DARK POWER IS RISING IN JAPAN

After almost a year in Japan, Katie Greene has finally unearthed the terrible secret behind her boyfriend Tomohiro’s deadly ability to bring drawings to life—not only is he descended from Kami, the ancient Japanese gods, but he is the heir to a tragedy that occurred long ago, a tragedy that is about to repeat.

Even as the blood of a vengeful god rages inside Tomo, Katie is determined to put his dark powers to sleep. In order to do so, she and Tomo must journey to find the three Imperial Treasures of Japan. Gifts from the goddess Amaterasu herself, these treasures could unlock all of the secrets about Tomo’s volatile ancestry and quell the ink’s lust for destruction. But in order to complete their quest, Tomo and Katie must confront out-of-control Kami and former friend Jun, who has begun his own quest of revenge against those he believes have wronged him. To save the world, and themselves, Katie and Tomo will be up against one of the darkest Kami creations they’ve ever encountered—and they may not make it out alive.

Praise for Amanda Sun’s Ink:

“The descriptions of life in Japan...create a strong sense of place, and set an exotic backdrop for this intriguing series opener by a debut author.”

—Booklist

“The unique setting and observing how Katie learns to live in...foreign surroundings...make this story special.”

—VOYA

“An enjoyable peek at a world very different from America, yet inhabited by people whose hearts are utterly familiar.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A harrowing and suspenseful tale set against the gorgeous backdrop of modern Japan. Romance and danger ooze like ink off the page, each stroke the work of a master storyteller.”

—Julie Kagawa, New York Times bestselling author of The Iron Fey series

“With smart, well-drawn characters, cool mythology, and a fast-paced plot that keeps you on your toes, Ink is a modern day fairytale that reminds us: Sometimes you need to get a little lost in order to find your true self.”

—Amber Benson of TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and author of the Calliope Reaper-Jones novels

“Amanda Sun’s Ink is a captivating story of love, passion, and the choices people make to keep themselves safe. The vivid portrayal of Japan kept me completely intrigued and immersed. A beautiful story!”

—Jodi Meadows, author of Incarnate and Asunder

“An imaginative and totally unique debut. Japanese gods, mysterious magics, beautiful boys, and an exotic setting. Ink is a fresh brushstroke.”

—Zoraida Córdova, author of The Vicious Deep trilogy

Books by Amanda Sun

The Paper Gods series (in reading order):

SHADOW (e-novella)

INK

RAIN

STORM

Storm
Amanda Sun

www.miraink.co.uk

For Kevin

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise for Amanda Sun’s Ink

Books by Amanda Sun

Title Page

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

Glossary

Acknowledgments

Extract from Rain by Amanda Sun

Copyright

Ways to Put a Kami to Sleep Forever 1. Leave Japan 2. Die

I tapped my pencil against the paper propped on my knees. Ten minutes, and I only had two ideas, the latter scribbled in Tomo’s handwriting. If I went to live with Nan and Gramps, if I left Japan for good, maybe Tomo would be better off. There was ink trapped in me, kami power that didn’t belong, darkness that caused Tomo’s power to spiral out of control. But even if I distanced myself, it wouldn’t put the kami in him to sleep. He’d struggled before I’d even arrived here. And if he left the country, who knows what would happen? He could run, but the power would still lurk in him. I didn’t think it would work.

And the second on the list wasn’t an option, not at all.

How to put a dark power to sleep, one that whispered in your ear that you were a demon, one that gave you nightmares and brought your drawings to life with teeth and claws?

“Maybe a really good lullaby?” I suggested. Tomo rolled his eyes. We were slouching on either side of his living room couch, our backs curved against the arms of the sofa and our knees flopped against each other’s in the middle. Tomo mashed the buttons on the TV remote, cycling through the channels over and over.

“Or a bedtime story?” Tomo teased back. “Goodnight Moon?”

I shoved his knee with mine, gently, but he still winced. The bruises from his fight with Jun hadn’t faded yet. They hadn’t even had time to fade.

Only a few days ago we’d learned the truth, that the kami Amaterasu, goddess of the sun, wasn’t the only one with descendants. The power to make ink drawings come alive, the nightmares that plagued Tomo and Jun and the others who could control the ink...that power could come from other kami. Tomo had sketched Amaterasu in his notebook, and she had revealed the truth to us—that Jun was descended from Susanou, the kami of storms, snakes and the World of Darkness.Yomi, or, you know, Hell. Susanou was Amaterasu’s brother and most dangerous rival.

And worse, Tomo was descended from not one but two kami—Amaterasu, the imperial ancestor, and Tsukiyomi, the god of the moon, her scorned and vengeful lover. The two bloodlines fought within him, which meant that Tomo often lost control of his drawings and himself, his eyes growing large and vacant and deadly. It had become so bad that he couldn’t enter shrines anymore; going through the Shinto gateways knocked him out cold. Jun had called him a land mine; he could go off and cause mass destruction at any time. And then Jun had decided it was up to him to destroy Tomo, right then and there. It had been like both of them had lost consciousness, taken over by the ancient hatred between Susanou and Tsukiyomi. Ikeda and I had barely pulled them apart in time before they killed each other.

“Funny,” I said. “But I don’t think Goodnight Moon will cut it.”

I wished I could go back to the time I’d arrived in Japan, when the cherry blossoms had rained through the sky and Tomo had just been an annoying senior classmate, when neither of us had awakened the sort of forces we now faced.

I sketched a cherry blossom in the corner of my paper, thinking back on that spring. I wasn’t the artist that Tomo was, but I still drew a mean stick figure and flower bud.

Tomo lifted the remote to flip the channel again. The tiny gust of air spun the sketched cherry blossom in circles. I stared at it, my eyes wide.

When Tomo’s drawing of Amaterasu had come to life, so had the ink trapped in me. When Mom was pregnant with me, she’d been accidentally poisoned by a kami drawing. We’d both barely survived, and now the ink ran in my veins—Jun called me a manufactured Kami, a man-made descendant. I was nowhere near as powerful as Tomo and Jun were, but the ink in me called out to the ink in them. And now it was going totally haywire. I pressed my pencil against the edge of the sketched petal, stopping the blossom from twirling.

“Yurusenai yo,” Tomo said in a high, clipped voice, and at first I thought he was talking to me. I won’t forgive you. But then he made a peace sign with his free hand, holding it up to the side of his face. God he looked adorable. I wanted to reach over and ruffle his hair.

I glanced at the TV, anime sparkles and canned music blaring at me from the screen. A group of magical schoolgirls in a rainbow of skirt colors pulled elaborate poses, peace signs cupped to their faces like Tomo. They blasted a bunch of monsters with their special powers as they backflipped and whirled around the Tokyo Skytree tower in ridiculously high heels.

I rolled my eyes. “How can they fight in those? Where are all the broken ankles?”

The leader of the girls got a close-up now, tilting her head to the side as she posed. “Yurusenai yo!” she squeaked, and Tomo looked smugly pleased.

The scene cut to one of the girls smacking a monster in the face with an ofuda, a paper scroll that banished evil. Wait. “Hey, would that work in real life?”

“I don’t look so great in high heels and a miniskirt,” Tomo said. “Unless you’re into that kind of thing.”

I smacked his knee again. “I mean the ofuda. That’s a Shinto scroll, right? Couldn’t it stop a kami?”

He frowned. “I doubt it. They usually invoke the help of a kami, not banish one. They’re more for expelling demons. Like a larger version of the omamori I gave you.”

I pulled out my phone, looking at the soft yellow pouch Tomo had risked entering a shrine for, just to give to me. The charm read “Yaku-yoke Mamoru,” embroidered on the fabric in soft pink kanji. Protection from Evil.

The last time Tomo had entered a shrine with me, he’d collapsed in a pool of ink, attacked by some kind of kami alarm system as a threat to the sacred place. I am evil, he’d told me. I’m the demon lurking in the shadows. But even now, knowing he was descended from Tsukiyomi, I couldn’t believe it. He was descended from Amaterasu, too, right? And wasn’t she supposed to be the protector of Japan? The little bell on the charm jingled as I put the phone back in my pocket.

“If you remember, the omamori didn’t work so well,” Tomo said.

I chewed on my bottom lip and said nothing. It had worked. The omamori had fallen out of my pocket and clinked against the floor when Jun had kissed me at his school. It had broken me out of the moment; it had protected me from the awful mistake I’d made. I still wasn’t sure if Jun had actually liked me, or had just been using me to get to Tomo. It didn’t matter—I’d screwed up big-time, and almost lost Tomo. Heat prickled down my neck as I shook the guilt away.

“We’ve got to have more options than leave Japan or die,” I said, trying to get back on track.

Tomo closed his eyes. “What if I draw Tsukiyomi, and then rip the sketch in half?”

I stared at him; he’d lost his mind. “You’re joking, right? Ripping the drawing of Amaterasu nearly killed me. Ripping Tsukiyomi in half might kill you.”

He frowned. “There’s never been a constant way to stop the kami. Sometimes it overpowers me and I collapse, and sometimes I can get startled out of its control, but... I can’t see a connection. Maybe I just need to live under a torii and stay unconscious.”

I groaned, scribbling out my list. We weren’t getting anywhere this way.

Tomo rested the remote on the side table and sat up, resting his hands on my shoulders. “Hey,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll think of something.” He pulled me gently toward him, turning me so my back was against his chest. I leaned into the warmth of him, the scent of miso and vanilla around me, his heart thudding gently against the back of my shoulder.

The paper list slipped off my lap, floating toward the floor and slipping halfway under the couch. The cherry blossom in the corner spun like a pinwheel, and Tomo went rigid beneath me, his breath catching in his throat. “Is that—is it moving?”

I sat up as he grabbed the paper. He frowned as the flower shriveled before us, crumpling into a scribbled ugliness in the corner. “Katie,” he said, his voice deep and troubled.

“I know,” I said. “Ever since your drawing of Amaterasu came to life it’s been happening. But my sketches don’t come off the page like yours. They seem pretty harmless so far.”

“Yeah, but this is...” He ran a hand through the copper spikes of his hair. “Katie, I don’t want this for you.”

“Maybe it’ll stop,” I lied. “It’s not a big deal. We need to worry about you right now. And what’ll happen tomorrow.”

He dropped the page and leaned back into the couch. I curled up on top of him, my shoulder pressed to his collarbone and my nose tucked under his neck. When he spoke, the vibration tickled against my skin.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Did you talk to your aunt?”

I nodded, my chin grazing his warm skin. “They want her to come in, too.”

The day Tomo had discovered his connection to Tsukiyomi, there had been horrible ink messages dripping from every chalkboard in the school, things like She Must Die and Demon Son. Then ink had poured from every sink in the boys’ change room by the gym. It was a huge mess, and the headmaster was convinced it was Tomo’s fault because of the way he’d reacted. Well, true, the ink probably was his fault, but there’s no way it was the horrible prank they were accusing him of. He’d been just as shocked as any of us to see it. Headmaster Yoshinoma had arranged a meeting for tomorrow with Tomo and his dad, and my aunt Diane and I had to attend, too, seeing as I had been in the change room with Tomo and given the ridiculous excuse that Tomo had been framed. Tomo had said my eyes must have given me away. They’re always earnest, he’d said, which had made my stomach flip over a little.

“Is she still going to let us see each other? Your aunt?” Tomo laughed, but it was dry and empty of humor.

I tried to smile. “So far you’re not making the best impression, no. What do you think will happen, though?”

“Suspension, maybe. Or off the kendo team.”

“They wouldn’t do that. You’re one of the top students, and they need you on the team.”

Tomo reached for my hand and laced his fingers between mine, squeezing with their warmth. “We’ll face it together, whatever it is.”

The colorful anime on the screen blinked off, replaced by a stark newsroom and a bowing reporter in a black suit.

“The news already?” I sat up, pulling out my phone to check the time. “I’ve got to get home.”

“I’ll take you,” Tomo said, but then his eyes went wide and round as he stared at the TV, his hand suddenly limp in mine.

I glanced at the bold white kanji on the screen, at the reporter who rattled off Japanese almost faster than I could follow.

“Sano Chihaya, known as Hanchi, Yakuza oyabun and leader in Shizuoka, aged fifty-seven, found this morning in a puddle of blood...”

My body seized with fear. I couldn’t move, completely immobilized by the memory. The Yakuza boss who’d kidnapped us, who’d forced Tomo to sketch money at gunpoint to save my life. The same one who’d exploited Jun’s father, making him draw drugs and weapons and money, the one who’d tried to recruit Jun after his father’s death. After Jun had killed his own dad, I remembered with a chill. His father had had an affair with one of the Yakuza, and left Jun and his mother with nothing after he took off. Devastated and desperate, Jun had scribbled down horrible messages, words of ink that had instantly and accidentally killed his dad.

“Sano was in Ginza district, Tokyo—” Ginza, the same place Jun’s father had been discovered dead “—when he had what seemed to be a stroke. Collapsed on the sidewalk...” They showed images of the storefront, the police tape and the traffic being redirected. “He appears to have hit his head,” the reporter babbled on, her words like syrup in my ears, thick and almost beyond understanding. “He was found in a significant amount of blood.”

They showed it then, a pale blue plastic tarp stretched over the shape of a body underneath, the blood seeping out the sides, unwilling to be contained, to keep the secret of what had happened.

“Police can’t identify a person of interest at this time. It appears to be accidental, but due to the suspicious circumstances and his Yakuza connection, he will be undergoing an autopsy at the NTT Forensics Center in Shinagawa, Tokyo...”

My heart pressed against my ribs with every beat.

This couldn’t be happening. I could see as clear as day that wasn’t blood.

It was ink.

Tomo squeezed my fingers in his, both of us unable to speak.

Jun...did you do this?

I found my voice after a moment, my words dry and barely above a whisper. “Was it...was it Jun?”

Tomo shook his head. “Hanchi was still trying to recruit a Kami after he realized I was too unstable to be useful,” he said, his voice scratchy and hollow. “Maybe he approached one who fought back.” But Jun had told us over and over how he wanted to rid the world of Yakuza. He’d told us he didn’t need Tomo anymore, now that he knew his true power as a Kami descended from Susanou. The words he’d said echoed in my thoughts. I will make the world cry.

I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t know what to believe.

“Maybe it was really an accident?” I said. Tomo’s eyes met mine, and we both knew. It hadn’t been blood pooled around Hanchi. The ink was all the proof we needed that a Kami was involved.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “I’m going to call Jun.”

“Da-me.” Tomo shook his head, pulling the phone out of my hands. “It’s too dangerous to confront him. If he really had something to do with this, we’re not safe.”

My pulse buzzed in my ears. How could this happen? The world had cracked; everything would shatter. “We should call the police.”

“And tell them what? That Jun murdered someone on a piece of paper? We can’t prove anything. We don’t even know if it was him.”

I drew my knees up tightly, wrapping my arms around my legs. I hadn’t thought Jun was capable of this. I still didn’t believe it. And yet, a small piece of me, a tiny butterfly in the corner of my heart, fluttered with a dark thought. Good. I’m glad Hanchi’s dead.

I didn’t want to think like that. I didn’t want to be glad this had happened.

But he would never hurt us again.

Hanchi got what he deserved, the voice whispered.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Life is precious, I said to myself. Just like losing Mom. Hanchi was someone’s son. He had family who loved him, right?

Even though he kidnapped you and Tomo? He was willing to kill you both. He had to be stopped.

Yes, but not like this.

How, then? He’s been stopped.

That’s...that’s true. He hurt so many people.

Who’s the monster now? In the end, there is only death.

The butterfly had grown too large, its wings enveloping my every thought. My mind grew dark and tinged with shadow. I could hear the whispers as if they were real. I shook my head to try and empty it, to escape.

“Katie.” Tomo’s voice snapped me back, and I blinked at the brightness of the room. His hand was on my cheek; the warmth of the pads of his fingers pressed against my skin.

I whispered, “What happened?”

“Your eyes,” he said. His face was ghostly pale. “Your eyes changed. Just for a moment.”

My heart was pounding like I’d just sprinted all the way to Shizuoka Station. It was the Kami blood that had awakened. It had enveloped me, just for a moment. I had lost myself.

“Daijoubu?” Tomo asked. Are you okay? I nodded. The darkness felt far away now. There was nothing but light and his warmth around me.

The reporter droned on about Hanchi, and the chill of her voice frosted around the edges of us. Tomo clicked the TV off and wrapped his arms around me.

“Let’s get you home,” he said. “You don’t have to be afraid. If it was Jun, he won’t hurt you. I know it.”

But he might hurt you. And even without Jun, Tomo was still in danger if the ink took control. Ikeda had said Tsukiyomi was a kami more deadly than Susanou. Didn’t that mean Tomo was more dangerous than Jun?

I closed my eyes and breathed in the warm smell of Tomo, let the tickle of his copper hair against my neck sweep away the fear. I’d always known the world of the Kami was dangerous. But with Tomo, I still felt safe. We would be all right if we clung to each other. I had to believe that, no matter what.

* * *

Seeing the Yakuza boss who once kidnapped you lying dead on the streets of Ginza takes the fear out of a reprimand from the school headmaster. Yet here we were, Tomo and me, Diane and Tomo’s dad, sitting in four tiny chairs squished into Yoshinoma’s office. I folded my hands in my lap, squeezing my own fingers as I looked down at the floor. Tomo and I sat in the center, surrounded by the parentals, surrounded by adults who were disappointed in us. I wished Tomo would reach out and take my hand, but I knew he would try to distance himself to protect me from any fallout.

Tomo’s dad rose to his feet; the edges of his suit were so crisp you could probably slice kamaboko loaf with them. He looked agitated and kept checking his watch; I wondered what meeting he was missing for this. If Tomo’s mom was alive, his dad wouldn’t even have to be here. Was he thinking that, too?

He bowed deeply to Yoshinoma. “Moushi wake gozaimasen,” he apologized. “I can’t believe my son would do such a thing. School has always been his top priority.”

“Please, Yuu-san, sit down,” Yoshinoma said, motioning with his hand until Tomo’s dad complied. “We were surprised, as well. He’s mostly been a reliable student, an example in his studies. He’s still maintaining his grades, and he’s advanced further than ever before in his kendo tournaments. But we cannot accept this disrespectful prank on our school.” The headmaster leaned back in his chair. It creaked as he pressed the back of it toward the wall. “I can only imagine that he must have become distracted.”

Tomo’s hand squeezed into a fist. “Kouchou, Katie had nothing to do with this,” he said, his voice tense. This was wrong. He had to stay calm, or we’d be in more trouble. Surely he knew that.

“Neither did Tomohiro-senpai,” I said. I figured now was a good time to put my slightly more formal Japanese into practice. “He didn’t do this.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Miss Greene,” said Yoshinoma. “It’s true that we don’t have proof that Tomo painted those offensive kanji on the chalkboards, but he was visibly upset about them, and he does have a background in calligraphy. Not just anyone could have written those in the style they appeared. Furthermore, the change room...well, it was full of ink, and students saw him go in. We’re sure he went there to wash up.”

“You don’t know that,” I said, my voice rising. “It wasn’t him. He arrived at school the same time I did that morning. It wasn’t him!”

Diane rested a gentle but urgent hand on my arm, and I hesitated. Was the way I was talking back to the headmaster not okay in Japan? I was probably out of line, but so was Yoshinoma. Tomo hadn’t done any of it—well, it had sort of been him, but it was the ink, the kami blood in his veins. He hadn’t meant for it to happen. He didn’t deserve to suffer for Tsukiyomi’s sake.

Diane’s voice was calm and reasonable as she spoke. I’d never heard her sound so collected before. “Yoshinoma-sensei, these two are good kids. Katie’s working so hard on her kanji to stay at Suntaba and catch up to the other students. The last thing these two would do is jeopardize their future.”

“I agree,” the headmaster said, leaning forward and resting his folded hands on his desk. “But part of growing up is learning there are consequences to your actions.”

Tomo’s dad nodded like he approved, but he kept sneaking peeks at his watch.

Yoshinoma let out a slow, whistling breath between his teeth. “To be honest, some of the teachers have called for expulsion.”

A small gasp escaped Tomo’s lips, his eyes round and horrified.

Tomo’s father wasn’t checking his watch anymore. “Yoshinoma-sensei!”

Yoshinoma’s voice was grave and monotone. “This isn’t the first time he’s caused trouble. He’s been in many fights since his first year.”

Tomo’s father blurted out, “Because his mother passed away, and...”

“That was seven years ago, Yuu-san. And there have been rumors that he fathered a child with a girl from Kibohan Senior High. Is that the kind of student we want to represent our school?”

So, the Shiori rumor had reached the teachers, too. Tomo clenched his hands into tighter fists as his father’s face went white. “That’s not true,” he said, looking down until his chin pressed against the knot of his uniform tie.

I could remember it now, when that knot had been loosened around his neck, his top button undone. Tomo looking up at the wagtail birds as he spread out on the warm field of Toro Iseki, when I’d first stumbled on his secret drawing place. I wanted to take his hand in mine, to pull him to his feet and run back there where we were safe, where no one could reach us. Where we could fly.

Yoshinoma sighed. “Even so, your friend Ishikawa Satoshi was shot this summer, Tomohiro. Yuu-san, do you know what kind of life your boy is up to?”

I looked away from Tomo’s dad, frightened of the emotions he tried to rein back on his face. His voice came out shakily. “Kouchou, I assure you, Tomo is not involved in the way Ishikawa is derailing his life.”

“However,” the headmaster continued, “Yuu scored the highest out of the Third Year boys in the first term exams. And he’s earning quite the spotlight for himself in kendo. It’s good for our school to gain such national recognition.” He cleared his throat. “So I am going to override the teachers and ask Tomohiro to stay at Suntaba.”

The relief washed through me, and I let out a breath I hadn’t even known I was holding. Tomo’s dad bowed his head to the headmaster.

“He will have to be suspended, of course. You understand this cannot go without punishment.”

“Of course,” Tomo’s dad mumbled.

“One month, Tomohiro,” Yoshinoma said, and I flinched. A month?

“But his entrance exams,” Tomo’s dad protested.

“He will have to spend the effort at home if he hopes to pass them when he returns. This was a serious offence to this school, Yuu-san. And a month will give him time to refocus on his work and forget any distractions.”

Oh. They wanted to separate us, thinking that time apart would make us grow apart. I took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. It wouldn’t work. They couldn’t stop us. We were something greater together than they could ever understand.

Tomo’s face was blank, unreadable. “What about kendo practices?”

“You’ll be back in time for the serious training for the tournament, Tomo. But in the meantime, Watanabe-sensei and Nishimura-sensei have recommended you do your exercises at home. They don’t want you to be out of shape when you return.”

“And for Katie?” Diane said. Her hand was still on my arm, and she squeezed it to reassure me. I was glad she was there with me. Even if she lectured me later, I knew she loved me. Did Tomo feel that way about his dad? They seemed so distant as they sat side by side, as if they were worlds apart, as if they couldn’t really see each other at all.

“Katie hasn’t given the school any other trouble,” Yoshinoma said, “and we believe she was likely dragged into this. She—I apologize, but—she lacks the skill to have written those kanji on the chalkboards.”

My own illiteracy had saved me. I guess I should’ve felt relieved, but mostly I just felt annoyed.

“We just think it best that she be...separated from Tomohiro for a while, so they can both refocus on their futures.”

There it was again, that patronizing we-know-what’s-best jab. You’re just kids. You don’t know what love is. You’re blind. You’re wrecking your own futures.

We bowed to Yoshinoma-sensei and parted in the hallway. I tried to catch Tomo’s eye, but he didn’t look up. He just stiffly followed his father out of the school. It didn’t matter, though. I could feel his thoughts as if they were my own.

They didn’t know us, not at all. They didn’t understand what we had. We belonged together. What I felt was real, and I felt it with every fiber of my being.

They couldn’t break us. Nothing could.

The dream began with a soft sigh, a whispering sound in the distance like the swell of the ocean. I’d seen glimpses of the edge of the sea that lapped against Japan, once in Miyajima with Yuki, and once looking over Suruga Bay with Tomo. But long ago, Mom and I had visited the shore of the Atlantic when we’d traveled to see friends in Maine. The sun had beamed down on the water, glistening so brightly that I’d had to squeeze my eyes shut, to make the scene almost vanish completely in order to see it at all.

“Look at that, Katie,” she’d said with a smile. “Stretching on like it has no end. Sparkling and full of life.” It had looked limitless and inspiring, warm and vibrant and blue.

This ocean was nothing like that one. It was dull and opaque, gray-tinged as the shore came into view. It looked as if it bordered on nothing—limitless—but the idea was frightening, like the whole world had drowned. There was nothing left but this earthy coast I stood upon, the sand gritty and sharp against my bare feet.

I was dreaming, I realized. The vague feeling that something wasn’t quite right overwhelmed me, like I was squinting to see the whole picture.

Everything was pallor and faded. The shore behind me seemed to stretch on for miles, but I knew it was the last refuge of earth—the seas were empty and void. The land was gone.

I began to walk along the shore. The sighs carried across the waves toward me, whispering in discord, some voices carrying so that I could almost make out the sound of them. Almost, but never quite.

Wreckage lay along the shore, pieces of bent wood that once curved around the bow of a ship, nails stuck into them that no longer attached to anything but air. A cracked turtle shell, belly-up, with kanji carved into it. The waves lapped through it like a tunnel, spilling through the other side like a fountain. Pieces from a distant storm, scraps that had lost meaning.

A bright orange torii appeared from the shadow, the Shinto gateway towering above as though the grayness had just lifted away and left color in its place. The sighs were louder now, except they sounded mournful, like wailing.

I wasn’t alone in this strange place. Someone was crying.

I fought the urge to run. Fear prickled down my spine; I didn’t want to disturb whoever it was. I didn’t want to be involved.

I turned my head to look back at the shore I’d walked along.

A beast stood in the shadows, his angular ears pressed tightly against his head. His eyes gleamed with a ghostly green.

A wolf. No, an inugami, the vengeful wolf demons that hunted Tomo, that had mauled his friend Koji and nearly cost him his eye. The inugami crouched, watching me, a challenge in his eyes.

I couldn’t go back, so I turned once again to the bright orange torii. The grains of sand stuck to my soles as I walked, miniature daggers that pricked me with their warnings.

“Machinasai,” a voice said, ordering me to wait. I stopped.

I heard the sound of fabric scraping over sand, and looked to my right. She wore a kimono of gold embroidered with elaborate phoenixes, an obi red as blood wrapped tightly around her waist.

Amaterasu, the kami of the sun. She looked like she had in the clearing with Tomo and Jun, but different somehow. Larger, more real. She exuded power about her. She smiled, and yet somehow it was terrifying.

Her headdress of beads jingled as she tilted her head, speaking in a haunting voice that seemed to echo in the vast and empty space. It sounded like Japanese, but I couldn’t make sense of it. Her speech was too formal, too ancient.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t understand.”

“I have tried to speak to you for so long,” she said, “that my voice is dry from effort.” She was speaking modern Japanese now, graciously but with a subtle distaste, like someone who pretends to be glad to accept a gift they already have.

“Who’s crying?” I asked, looking toward the gateway.

“The kami have need of tears,” she said. “We have cried so long that we have drowned the world.”

I tried to grasp the questions I’d had when I was awake. It was my chance to ask, but my head was hazy from sleep, barely able to remember the real world or the fact that I was dreaming.

“Tsukiyomi,” I managed. Was that it? It didn’t sound quite right asleep. “How can I stop him?”

“Tomohiro is the heir of calamity.”

“What can I do?”

“There is no hope for you,” she said, like she had said over and over to him. “There is nothing to be done.”

I looked over toward the torii, toward the back of a figure on her knees in the sand. She wore a kimono of white, the black obi draped in an elaborate bow across her back, and her body shook with the quiet sobs.

I hesitated, watching for a moment.

“But Tsukiyomi,” I said. “Tsukiyomi is trying to take control of Tomo.”

Amaterasu tilted her head to the side, her eyes deep pools of blackness. “Tsukiyomi is dead. Long ago he left this world.”

I saw another figure beside the crying girl—a boy on the ground in front of her, slumped with a leg bent strangely to the side.

“The mirror has seen it,” Amaterasu said. “It cannot be undone.”

I stepped toward the girl and the boy, walking slowly as my bare feet slipped in the sharp sand.

The girl wore a furisode kimono, with long sleeves that draped over the body of the boy and into the sand, the ends of the soft white fabric stained with ink. The girl had tucked her arm under the boy’s neck, and his head lolled back unnaturally, his copper spikes speckled with sand.

My stomach twisted as I looked down at the familiar face.

“Tomo,” I breathed, falling to my knees in the sand. Trails of ink carved down his face and across the elaborate silver robes he wore, collecting in the fabric like pools of dark blood. His eyes were closed, his face expressionless as he rested in her arms.

The girl looked down as she wept. Her long black hair had come out of the coils she’d tied them in at the base of her neck, and they tumbled in a tangle over her face. She looked up to take a breath and I realized she, too, was Amaterasu. There were two of them. I looked past her to see the Amaterasu in gold, and she stood there, watching, as she clasped her hands on the rim of a huge bronze mirror that stretched from her hips to her feet. I’d seen that mirror before, the one she’d held up to Jun in the clearing to show him the truth of who he really was.

The girl let out another sob, and black tears ran down her cheeks. Tears made of ink. I reached a hand toward her.

“Katie!” a voice shouted. I jumped, frightened to be recognized in this strange world. I wanted to wake up. I pinched my arm, twisting the skin back and forth. I didn’t want to know any more. “Katie,” the voice said again, and the shadowy fog pulled back.

It was Jun, hunched over on one knee and adorned in broken armor, his face streaked with ink. He wore a helmet on his head with golden horns, but one had broken off in a jagged cut and lay in the sand and tangle of brush grass at his feet.

No, that wasn’t the horn in the sand. It was the wrong shape, too...too sharp.

It was a sword, stained dark on the blade.

My blood turned to ice. My world turned black.

“Katie,” Jun said quietly. “Gomen.” I’m sorry.

No. It can’t be.

“Abunai,” Jun warned. “Look.” I heard the sound of sand shifting under paws. I looked up to four pairs of glinting eyes, four mouths filled with sharp and angry teeth. Inugami had advanced while I was looking away; they’d found us. They growled and crouched low to the ground, ready to spring, ready to destroy us all.

I reached for Tomo, stroked my hand through the copper spikes of his bangs, the ink sticking to my fingertips.

This was the end of everything. I closed my eyes, unwilling to see any more.

The inugami pounced.

* * *

I screamed into the darkness of my room, so disoriented that I barely heard the slam of my door sliding into the wall as Diane stumbled in and threw her arms around me.

“It’s okay, hon, it’s okay,” she soothed as my scream turned into sobs. My arms burned like fire; I could still feel the wolf teeth sinking into my flesh, like I’d been torn to pieces. “It was just a dream,” she said, smoothing my hair as I tried to calm down. “It’s not real.”

But it had felt more real than anything I’d dreamed before. Were these the kind of nightmares Kami had? Did Tomo suffer with these every night?

I gasped in air, trying to focus on Diane so the room would stop spinning.

“Do you hear me, Katie? You’re safe. You’re okay.”

I nodded, wanting to believe her. My heart pounded so hard against my chest it ached. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the room, but Diane reached for my lamp and clicked it on, banishing the gray shores of the dream to the corners of my mind.

“Thank you,” I said, tears streaming down my face.

Diane frowned, her lips pursed together, her hair a disheveled mop on her head. “Was it about your mom?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I wanted to forget everything. The sound of the lapping waves, the sharp grains of sand digging into my knees. The smell of inugami ripping into flesh...

“It’s probably the stress from all this school nonsense. Getting suspended when they don’t have proof he did it.” She shook her head. “They just want someone to blame.”

I smiled a little. If only it was just that. Diane was always on my side, no matter what. I was so glad to have her here with me.

“You must think I made a bad choice, but he’s not like that,” I said. “He’s not like that at all.”

“Well, you need to bring him here so I can meet him for myself, okay?”

I wrapped my arms around her tightly and she took a short breath. I’d startled her. “You can stay home today if you want,” she said. “No need to face school right away after that.”

“That’s okay. I think I’ll get up.” I didn’t want to risk going back to that dream, that world drowned in kami tears.

Diane stroked my hair for a bit and nodded. “I’ll start on breakfast,” she said. “Come on out when you’re ready.”

She slid my door shut, and I swung my legs over the side of the bed, pressing my feet against the cool tatami floor.

It had seemed so real. The mirror has seen it, Amaterasu said. Did she mean it would happen, no matter what?

That ancient sword that had lain at Jun’s side in the grass, the blade covered in ink. Did that mean Jun would... Would he kill Tomo?

Had he killed Hanchi?

I padded across the cold tatami and opened the drawer of my dresser, pulling out a pair of dark kneesocks and throwing them on the bed.

I didn’t want the ink to dictate my life. I wanted us to choose for ourselves. But were we really free to choose? Tomo had always said he didn’t have a choice.

It was just a dream, anyway. A frightening one, but nothing more.

I grabbed my navy uniform skirt and slid the drawer shut with a thud.

I hesitated, the dream still living vividly in the corners of my mind.

Amaterasu had said Tsukiyomi died long ago. That must mean there was a way to stop him. He had been stopped before.

I looked at my fingers, remembering the slick feel of the ink spreading through Tomo’s hair, pooling on his lifeless body...

I had to figure it out. I was running out of time.

* * *

I knew Tomo wouldn’t be at school, but it didn’t stop me from scanning all the students as they entered the front gates. They entered in groups, laughing and chatting through the chill of the crisp autumn morning. I tugged on the end of my fuzzy plaid scarf, my breath turning to fog in the air. It wasn’t like Tomo and I had any classes together, but knowing that he was at home, that he wasn’t welcome at school, made the crowded space seem empty.

“Katie!”

I turned, and saw Yuki darting toward me, clutching her book bag to her black wool coat. She pressed the bag against my stomach and I folded my hands around the handles without asking. Hands free, she grinned and leaned over, tugging at the kneesock that had coiled around her ankle on the way to school.

“I’m glad to see you here,” she said, straightening again. “I thought you might get suspended!”

I handed back her bag and she smiled. Our shoes crunched the momiji leaves that had fallen off the courtyard trees.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pressing the tips of my fingers together. “I should’ve called you to let you know how it went.”

She waved her hand back and forth and pursed her lips. “I know you’ve been busy,” she said. Truthfully, it wasn’t that. It was that I had so much on my mind I’d become forgetful about the people that mattered.

“I am really sorry,” I said, and her smile brightened. “I didn’t get in much trouble, which is fair because I didn’t do anything.”

“But Yuu-senpai,” she said. “I don’t see him here.”

“Ohayo!” Tanaka pressed his face between ours suddenly, and we jumped back, Yuki screaming as my book bag dropped to the ground.

Yuki sighed. “Tan-kun, you can’t go around terrorizing people on a Monday morning.”

“I’m only terrorizing my favorite people.” He grinned. Yuki shrunk into the coils of her scarf and looked away, her cheeks blazing.

I reached down for my book bag but someone else grabbed it before I could.

“Greene,” Ishikawa slurred. He scratched the back of his bleached-white hair with a hand, the other lazily extending my leather bag to me. “Just the person I wanted to see.”

“Ohayo,” I said, rolling my eyes. Morning. But part of me felt just a little relieved. If I couldn’t see Tomo, at least I could see his best friend. Ishikawa was in on the Kami secret now, and as long as he stayed away from the Yakuza for good, maybe he could be someone we could rely on.

His eyes gleamed. “It’s only my second week back. Did you miss me?”

“Not sure,” I said, pulling open the door to the school genkan. We squeezed past the dozens of students placing their outdoor shoes in the stacked cubbies. “Maybe if you go away again I can let you know.”

“Funny,” Ishikawa said. “But I won’t go away until you tell me what you’ve done with Yuuto. I called him five times yesterday, and he didn’t answer.”

“Five times?” Yuki said.

I swore Ishikawa’s cheeks tinged pink as he offered her a sour smirk. “So? I worry when my sparring partner doesn’t show up for practice. Especially after a nasty prank has been played on him.” His eyes caught mine, and I knew what he was really asking. Was the ink his fault? What had happened with Jun? But it wasn’t safe to talk about it here.

“He’s been suspended,” I said. “For a month.”

Ishikawa’s eyes widened. “Ee”? He reached down and pulled a shoe off, even though the Third Year cubbies were on the other side of the room. “A month? Do you know how out of shape that shrimp is going to get in a month? He’ll lose the nationals!”

“Suntaba’s never placed in the nationals,” Tanaka said. He tapped his toes against the floor to fit on his school slippers. “That’s nothing new.”

“Yeah, but this is Yuuto we’re talking about,” Ishikawa said. “I want to see him beat Takahashi to a pulp.” But he kept looking at me, and I knew he wasn’t talking about kendo.

“You should be careful, too, Ishikawa-senpai,” Yuki said, pulling on the end of her pink scarf until it tumbled down from her neck into her waiting hand. “I heard you almost got suspended for your injury this summer and the fight outside the kendo match.”

“That’s none of your business, First Year,” he sneered, and looked at me. “Do I even know this kouhai?” he asked, hooking a thumb toward her.

“She’s my best friend,” I said, “and she’s right. You’re treading a fine line yourself.”

“Maa, whatever,” he said, running a hand through the white spikes of his hair. “I don’t need to be lectured by juniors.”

The school bell chimed, and Tanaka and Yuki headed down the hallway toward our class. I turned to follow them, but felt Ishikawa’s warm fingers tug on my sleeve.

“Hey,” he said quietly, his voice a hot whisper against my neck, his eyes deep brown and gleaming. “Is Yuuto okay?”

I hesitated. Was he? The nightmare flashed through my mind, and then thoughts of what had happened a few days earlier—fighting Jun in the sky with a rain of ink falling, learning he was linked to Tsukiyomi, that Jun was out for vengeance. I pressed my tongue to my lips, the knowledge of it swirling together in the pit of my stomach. “I don’t know.”

“Let me know what I can do.”

“Hanchi’s dead,” I said.

He looked surprised that I knew, his fingers stiff for a moment before they relaxed their grip. “Yeah.”

My voice was barely there. “I’m scared it was Jun.” I’m scared Tomo is next. I didn’t say it, but Ishikawa looked like he knew, like he was thinking the same thing. His other hand slipped into his blazer pocket. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to bring his switchblade to school, would he? But this was Ishikawa, after all. He would be stupid enough.

“Meet you here after class,” he said, and then he was gone down the hallway, and there was nothing for me to do but get to my homeroom and start the school day. I slid in the door just before the class rose to bow to Suzuki-sensei, my thoughts whirling.

How could I stop Jun, if it was him? And how could I stop Tomo if Tsukiyomi headed down the same destructive path that Susanou was leading Jun?

My phone buzzed in my bag, startling me out of my thoughts. When Suzuki-san turned to write on the board, I smuggled the phone up and behind my textbook.

Still in my pajamas. I think I got the better deal.—Tomo

I grinned and slid the phone back into my bag. With all the darkness closing in around us, I was glad to see Tomo still shining.

* * *

Ishikawa was slumped on the floor, one leg bent with his arm draped over it, the other leg stretched into the hallway, forcing students to step carefully around him. The spikes of his hair were pressed flat against the wall, his eyes closed.

I stepped forward, kicking at the calf of his outstretched leg. “Rude,” I said, and he turned his head to look at me. “You’re tripping everyone up.”

He grinned, his teeth as white as his hair, and rose to his feet. “Your fault, Greene. If you’d gotten here sooner, I wouldn’t have fallen asleep waiting.”

“How’d I get stuck hanging out with you, anyway?”

He smirked, sliding open the door to the genkan so we could put on our shoes and coats. “That would be Yuuto’s fault. As always, he’s the source of all my problems.” He zipped up his dark green coat, the dark fur trim around the collar looking a little ridiculous around his pale face and hair. “What?” he asked, and I realized I was staring.

“You look like a temaki roll,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “Ha-ha. Green coat, white hair, looks like sushi. Let’s move.” He pushed open the door to the courtyard and a gust of cold air swirled around us. He didn’t have on the standard school loafers, but wore shiny black shoes that were slightly pointed at the toes. “So,” he said, “fill me in.”

I walked alongside and told him everything. I figured it didn’t matter how much he knew. He wasn’t the enemy anymore; no matter what, he was on Tomo’s side. So I told him about the fight with Jun on Mount Kano, about the fact that Tomo was linked to two kami, Amaterasu and Tsukiyomi—the sun and the moon, lovers turned enemies. I told him about Jun and how he’d killed his own father by drawing with hatred, and that I thought the same thing had happened to Hanchi.

He stopped on the top stair of the Shizuoka Station tunnels. “Well, fuck,” he said.

“Exactly.”

He turned on his heel and headed north. I had to hurry to keep up with his wide strides. “Wait, where are you going?”

“We don’t have enough information,” Ishikawa said. “If Takahashi is involved with Hanchi, things are going to get messy, and I need to know.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. “Wait, you’re not going to sic the Yakuza on Jun’s Kami cult out of revenge, are you? You’ll start a war.”

He shook his head, his cheeks pink from the autumn cold. “If it’s true he killed Hanchi, Takahashi’s the one who started it, not me. And you forget that I’m not exactly on good terms with them right now. They’d just as likely pound me into the ground as trust me. They’d think I was heading a sting operation or something. But we need to know if it was Takahashi, because if it was, then we have a shit storm to prepare for.”

“So you’re not on the Yakuza’s side?”

“I’m on Yuuto’s side, Greene.” His voice was soft, vulnerable, and I had to strain to hear him through the wind. “I always have been. Ikuze. Let’s go.”

I wanted to remind him how he’d put all our lives in danger by involving the Yakuza in Tomo’s secret. I wanted to remind him of the anger I’d seen in his eyes, the hatred there. But he looked so sincere now that instead I found myself wondering. Had he really thought his actions were for the best all along?

We walked north toward Katakou School, Sunpu Park on our left. Half of the leaves lay in piles at the bases of the trees, but the others clung to the branches, not yet ready to let go, hanging on to what little warmth the autumn held. The wind stung my cheeks and I readjusted my scarf to try and cover them. We were going to see Jun. What would he say? I could hear Tomo warning me in my mind. Go back. Don’t confront him. It isn’t safe. But Ishikawa was on a mission, and it would be worse if I wasn’t there to temper whatever stupid thing he ended up saying. And, anyway, I wanted to know. I couldn’t stand not knowing what Jun was thinking, or what kind of threat we had to fear from him.

We approached the gates of Katakou and Ishikawa walked through without hesitation. Crowds of students heading home stared as he stormed into their courtyard, but none of them confronted us. Maybe they remembered how he’d pulled a knife outside the kendo match at their school, how he and Tomo had been yanked into police cars with the two goons who’d picked the fight in the first place.

“Oi,” Ishikawa grunted at one of the students, who flinched. “Which homeroom is Takahashi Jun’s?”

“I... I don’t know,” the boy stammered, speeding toward the gate and avoiding further eye contact with us.

“Don’t scare the wildlife,” I said. “He’s probably either in the gym or the music room.”

“Music room?” Ishikawa said, squinting as he looked up at the six floors of Katakou School.

“He plays cello,” I explained.

“When he’s not murdering people.”

My stomach twisted. “I really hope that’s not true.”

Ishikawa walked back to the school entrance and strummed his fingers over the iron gates. “It’s already true,” he said. “He’s done it once before.”

It had been an accident, though. He hadn’t really wanted something to happen to his father. It was another part of the curse he and Tomo had to live with. Their actions could spiral out of control in ways they couldn’t imagine.

I spotted Jun’s motorbike parked near the bike racks, and motioned at Ishikawa. “We can wait here. That’s his bike.”

“Let’s just go in,” Ishikawa said, but he slumped onto the bench where I’d once waited for Jun’s help. “I want answers.”

I sat beside him, wrapping my hands around the edge of the seat. “Yeah, but do you really want to question him in front of the music club? In fact, this whole thing is a terrible idea.” Tomo had warned me to stay away from Jun. Even I knew this was stupid. We were putting ourselves at risk by confronting him. He could be capable of anything.

“You’re right,” Ishikawa said, tilting his head back to look at the sky. “But leaving him alone is worse. He needs to know that we know.”

“Because when you confronted Tomo about joining the Yakuza that ended so well.”

“Uru-se na,” Ishikawa droned at me, shaking his hair from side to side and inspecting his fingernails. “You annoy me, Greene.”

“Likewise, Maki Roll.”

We sat for a few minutes in silence, watching the stragglers from the school as they got out of after-school activities and hurried home. The sun had started to set, the nights getting shorter as fall dragged on and winter drew nearer.

I got to my feet and paced for a while in front of the bench.

“You’re making me dizzy,” Ishikawa said, closing his eyes.

It was like my whole body was buzzing; I couldn’t focus. “This is bad. We should go.”

A voice sounded from behind me. “Go where?”

Ishikawa opened his eyes as I spun around. Jun stood so close he blocked the wind gusting around me. He wore a dark coat over his school blazer, his motorbike helmet tucked under his arm. His eyes, forever cold, were unreadable as he looked down at me.

“Jun,” I breathed.

His voice was stone. “You shouldn’t be here.”

He was right. I could hear my voice trembling. “I know.”

“Does Yuu know you’re here? You should stay away.” He stepped around me, resting his helmet strap on the handle of his bike.

“What kind of greeting is that?” Ishikawa drawled. He stood and put his hands on his hips, arching his back as he stretched.

“Ishikawa,” Jun said, stepping toward him. “Is he giving you trouble, Katie?”

Ishikawa narrowed his eyes and pressed his index finger against Jun’s collarbone. “The only one giving her trouble is you, Takahashi.”

I tugged on Ishikawa’s arm, trying to pull him away as he and Jun glared at each other. I accidentally pulled him off balance and he stumbled backward, then ran a hand through his bleached hair, trying to act as though he’d decided to step back on his own.

“What are you doing here?” Jun said quietly.

Ishikawa gave a short laugh in reply. “Please. Don’t patronize her. You know why we’re here.”

“Jun,” I said. My throat was dry and thick, my heart pounding. “I saw on the news...about...about Hanchi.” Jun was motionless, expressionless. “Hanchi is dead, Jun.”

He wasn’t surprised, that much I could see. At the very least he’d heard the news. “Sou ka,” he said. Is that so.

“That’s it?” Ishikawa sneered. “You had all this talk of killing off Yakuza, you threaten to ‘make the world cry,’ and now the first Yakuza boss is dead and you say, ‘Sou ka’? What the hell is wrong with you, Takahashi?”

“What do you want me to say?” Jun snapped. “You know more than you should. The Kami aren’t a threat, Ishikawa. They’re not weapons to be handed over to the Yakuza. They are heirs of heaven. They are protectors of Japan.” Jun turned to me, gently wrapping his fingers around my elbows. The feel of his hands sent a jolt of panic through me. “Tell me you aren’t glad Hanchi is dead, Katie. He can never hurt you again.”

My heart lurched. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

His icy eyes melted, just for a moment. “Don’t ask me that.”

I could barely move my lips to speak. “This is wrong, Jun. It’s murder.”

“What does it matter who did it? He’s dead now. You’re safe.”

Ishikawa grabbed the collar of Jun’s jacket and shoved him away from me. Jun stumbled backward, his shoes clicking against the pavement as he regained his balance.

Ishikawa’s white spikes flopped into his eyes as he snarled. “Bakayaro,” he spat.

My body was ice; my heart cracked under the weight. I blinked back tears, terrified. “Jun, tell me it wasn’t you, and I’ll believe you. Tell me.”

He said nothing, watching me with his dark eyes.

“Tell me,” I whispered.

His eyes never left mine. “I can’t.”

The fear shook through me. He was crazy. I stumbled back, Ishikawa stepping in front to protect me.

“Katie, you can’t condemn this,” Jun said, his eyes pleading. “It’s not so black-and-white. Do you know how many people died at the hands of Hanchi? Do you know what he’s done in his life? I know. So many victims cried out, and he never showed one of them mercy. He was in and out of jail so fast it never held him back for a moment. A scumbag like that doesn’t deserve to live. His death has saved lives. Can’t you see that?”

“You’re fucked up,” said Ishikawa.

Jun shook his head. “The world is rotting,” he said. “Tell me you’re not glad he’s dead, Katie.”

I am glad. I’m glad he’s gone.

No. I couldn’t think like that, not again.

The ink protects. It marks the world and paints the future. There is no escape from its judgment.

“Greene!” Ishikawa’s voice shook me out of it. “Your eyes,” he said, his face twisted in confusion.

“Even the ink in you knows,” Jun said. “We can’t sit by any longer.”

“Tomo won’t join you,” I said. “Neither will I.”

Jun laughed. “I don’t need Yuu to help me anymore. As the heir of Susanou, I am more powerful. But Yuu is an abomination. He’ll blast a hole in the world when he explodes.” Jun straddled his motorbike, sliding the helmet onto his head and pulling the strap tight below his chin. “My offer to him isn’t open anymore. He will serve me, or he will be purged from this world. And until then, I will continue to do what needs to be done.” His motorbike roared to life, sputtering as his words echoed through my head.

I thought back to my dream, the sword on the ground covered in ink, Tomo lying nearby. My eyes blurred with the tears I tried to hold back. “Jun, please. If we were ever friends, please don’t do this.”

Ishikawa rested a hand on my shoulder. “Forget it, Greene. You act like he has a heart.”

There was a sadness in Jun’s eyes. “You doubt me, even now. That I ever cared for you.”

“Oh, you cared for me all right,” I said, my hands curling into fists. “Like a dragon cares for gold.”

He smiled and revved his bike. “More than that.” He laughed. “And I’m reminded why.”

“Creep,” Ishikawa said. “Get the hell out of here before I call the police.”

“They’d be more interested in you, Ishikawa. All I ever did was sketch.” He turned to look at me for a moment, and then lowered his visor. “Gomen,” he said, almost below hearing. I’m sorry. The same thing he’d said in the dream. And then his bike roared out of the courtyard gate. We listened to the sound of it as the distance grew, as the rumbling faded into the cold wind that swirled around us.

“It’s war, then,” Ishikawa said, and the tears I’d been holding back spilled down my cheeks.

“Well, what now?” Ishikawa said. “What a jackass. Do you want a coffee or something?”

I shook my head, unable to answer.

“Why do you call him by his first name, anyway? You guys close once?”

He didn’t know that Jun had kissed me, that Shiori had used her phone to try and drive a wedge between Tomo and me. Everything Jun did seemed to contradict what I knew about him. Did he care for me, or had he really just used me the whole time? I felt like maybe it was a bit of both. And did he really believe he was helping the world by killing Hanchi? He sounded so convinced, like he’d had no choice. Hanchi had destroyed Jun’s family; he wasn’t a good person, that was for sure. And the criminal system had failed with him. But still...vigilante justice was only a good thing in movies, right?

“Katie?”

Oh god, I’d totally phased out. “Sorry.”

Ishikawa shook his head. “It’s a lot of bullshit to take in,” he said. “No wonder you’re confused. That guy is a psycho.”

I wanted to agree, but I felt like there was more to Jun. Life had given him so many bad turns—some he’d chosen, some he hadn’t. If he wasn’t a Kami, things would be different. But he was, and I couldn’t keep making up excuses for him. Ishikawa was right—I needed to stay away from him. There was nothing good to gain from being near him anymore.

“Well?” Ishikawa said. “Want to check in on Yuuto?”

I thought back to the text he’d sent me in class and smiled to myself. That glimpse of normal life—that could keep me going. “You’re Third Year, too, aren’t you? Don’t you have some kind of cram school for entrance exams?”

Ishikawa let out a laugh and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “There’s no point for me to study for entrance exams,” he said. “I’m going to fail them, anyway.”

I looked at him, unsure what to say. I couldn’t imagine giving up before I’d tried. “It’s only October,” I said. “You have time.”

He kicked at the ground and started walking away from Katakou School. “Yeah, what am I going to accomplish in four months?”

He was heading toward Otamachi, where Tomo lived. I followed, wrapping my scarf tighter around my neck as the evening darkness fell. “Yeah, but you’ve been studying all year, right? Don’t give up now.”

“So inspirational, Greene!” He put his hand to his heart and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, he smirked. “College isn’t for me, anyway.”

“What, you’d rather slum it with the Yakuza? That’s not a future, Ishikawa.”

“Why the hell are you so interested in my future? Not everyone can pull off marks like Yuuto, okay? God, drop it already.”

I’d hit a sore spot, I could see that. But Ishikawa didn’t strike me as dumb, at least not school-wise. Weren’t the exams really just about preparedness, anyway?

We were already talking about them in my homeroom, and I was only a First Year at Suntaba. Oh god...would I pass the entrance exams? Maybe I should reconsider international school, after all. But no; I’d probably have to do entrance exams regardless. And Yuki insisted they were way more brutal than the SATs that had loomed at home. I’d kind of escaped those, too. If I’d moved in with Nan and Gramps in Canada, there wouldn’t be any crazy tests to get into university, just a good GPA and all those extracurriculars they asked us to rack up. Kendo and Tea Ceremony Club were good starts, I figured.

What did I want to do, anyway? I’d always thought about journalism like Mom, but in Japan? And Shiori had said a Japanese husband would likely want me to quit my job and stay home. Was that even true? Not all of them felt that way. Or would I make my way back to the States, all alone again, ripping my roots out and starting over? I didn’t feel like I was strong enough to do that. It all felt too far away to be real.

“Earth to Greene,” Ishikawa said, waving a hand in front of me so close I blinked. “Man, you space out more than Yuuto. You coming or what?”

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go.”

He shook his head and we continued toward Otamachi, toward Tomo’s house looming in the dark, the silver plate that read The Yuu Family illuminated by a tiny light. I pressed the button underneath the plaque, and a fake-sounding electronic doorbell chimed out of the speaker attached to it. We waited, but nothing.

“Maybe he’s not home,” I said.

“There are lights on, dummy.”

I bristled, wanting to shove him. “Yeah, but his dad works so late. Maybe he stepped out to the conbini to grab some dinner. Should I try his keitai?”

Ishikawa pressed the buzzer again, then stepped backward. He cupped his hands around his mouth and took a deep breath. “Yuuto!” When nothing happened, he yelled again. “Yuuuuuutooooo!” I bit my lip to keep from laughing. I was starting to see why Tomo could be friends with this guy.

A tinny version of Tomo’s voice came across the speaker. “Shut up, Sato! I’m pretty sure they heard you on the other side of Fuji.”

Ishikawa pressed his lips against the speaker. “Open the door, then, jackass.” Tomo yelled out; the sound of Ishikawa’s voice must have been amplified inside. The gate beside us clicked open and we closed it behind us.

Tomo was already at the front door when we reached it. “Gomen ne,” he apologized, looking at me. “I didn’t know it was you at the gate.”

“That’s what the vid cam is for,” Ishikawa said. It sounded like some intense security system, but it was pretty common in Japan to have a doorbell attached to a speaker and camera.

“I laughed at your text,” I said as I lined up my shoes in the genkan and stepped onto the raised wooden hallway.

“You sent her a text? Man, you didn’t send me anything,” Ishikawa said.

Tomo smirked at him. “I forgot it was your first full week back at Suntaba after getting shot. I should’ve sent flowers.”

“I’ll forgive you this time,” he said, wandering into the kitchen. I heard him open and close some cupboards.

Tomo looked at me through his copper bangs, a worried look on his face. “Was school okay?”

I nodded. “Other than Yuki, no one brought up the ink kanji on the chalkboards.”

“We have bigger problems than that, Yuuto.” Ishikawa appeared in the doorway, shaking a can of soup up and down. I’d seen them before in the vending machines; it looked like a soda can, but you pulled a tab on the bottom and it heated up so you could have hot soup without a microwave. Ishikawa opened the top tab and tipped his head back to drink; the smell of the broth made my stomach growl.

“Bigger problems?” Tomo repeated.

Ishikawa nodded and reached into his pocket, throwing me another can of soup. Maybe I really had been wrong about him, I thought as I shook the soup to heat it. He had his good points.

“Takahashi,” Ishikawa said, and Tomo’s face scrunched up in confusion. I pulled the tab of the soup back and took a sip; it was like drinking hot creamed corn.

“What do you know about this?” Tomo said. We made our way into the living room, where Ishikawa slumped back onto the couch. He definitely made himself at home here. I sat down on a zabuton, a cushion on the floor near the coffee table.

“It was him,” Ishikawa said. “He killed Hanchi.”

Tomo turned to look at me, his face pale. “You went to see him?”

The soup can radiated warmth in my hand. “I know it wasn’t a good idea, but...”

“He could’ve hurt you!”

“Calm yourself,” Ishikawa said, tipping his head back over the couch arm to empty the can of soup into his mouth. “I was with her the whole time.”

Tomo rolled his eyes. “Like I said. She was completely defenseless.”

“Oi,” Ishikawa said, tilting his head upright to glare at Tomo.

I reached for Tomo’s hand, slipping my fingers into the curl of his. “We needed to know,” I said. “We had to talk to him.”

“What if he’d attacked you, or kidnapped you? We can’t trust him, Katie. He wants to kill me, and what if he hurts you?”

I stopped, remembering the nightmare. Why had I thought Jun might still be on our side? Of course he was dangerous. I had to protect Tomo. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was stupid to go.”

He shook his head and ran a hand through his copper spikes. “I just... I hate to be trapped in here, not knowing what’s going on. I don’t want to see your life destroyed because of what I am.”

“It’s not just you,” I said. “This affects me, too.”

“And me,” Ishikawa said. We both looked at him. “What?” he said, putting his soup can on the coffee table with a clank. “I may not be a Kami, but I am Yuuto’s best friend. And I have an objective view of what’s going on.”

Tomo leaned back against the wall. “That’s a big word for you.”

“Uruse.” Ishikawa flipped him the finger. “Here’s the thing. It’s not just about you lovebirds anymore. Jun’s going to set the world on fire, one tree at a time.” He rose from the couch and approached Tomo, resting a hand on his arm. “This affects everybody. It’s everyone’s problem. He’s more screwed up than I am, man. He said he wanted to ‘purge you from the world.’ Who says that?”

Tomo gasped and doubled over like the air had been knocked out of him.

“Tomo!” Ishikawa and I each grabbed one of his arms as he keeled backward toward the hardwood floor. Gravity pulled him down as we tried to keep him upright. We lowered him gently as he shook.

Whispers gathered on the air, a cacophony of voices that grew louder as Tomo writhed on the floor. I’d heard these voices before, and I checked Tomo’s eyes, frightened. His pupils flooded with black, large and vacant.

“Oi, Yuuto! Snap out of it.” Ishikawa tapped Tomo’s cheek, trying to wake him from the nightmare overtaking him. “We’re right here. Come on, man.”

“Tomo,” I said again. “Don’t let it win. Find yourself.” Tomo let out a cry, and ink welled up underneath his shirt. It poured down his arms, dripping onto the floor.

Ishikawa leaned back, his eyes wide. “Kuse!” he swore. “What is that?”

He could see the ink, too. Oh god. This was bad.

Tomo yelled, but his voice didn’t sound right. It echoed like the voices on the wind. He curled his hands into fists, his fingers slippery from the greasy black ink.

I grabbed his hand, the ink warm on my fingers as I wrapped them around his. “Tomo, it’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay.”

He looked at me with those large eyes; he shook with fear. “No,” he said. “No!”

Ishikawa looked at me with panicked eyes. “No what?”

I knew then. Not me, but something inside me knew. Tomo and I spoke the words together, as if I’d said them a hundred times.

“No escape.”

The ink lifted into the air in a dust of fluttering gold, and Tomo closed his eyes, falling into a heavy sleep.

“You guys are freaking me out with your synchronized weirdness,” Ishikawa murmured. We were sitting on the couch, watching Tomo sleep on the floor. We’d discussed carrying him up to his room, but figured it was better to put a blanket over him and watch him for now.

I sat with my feet pulled up, my toes curled over the edge of the cushion. “It’s the Kami blood,” I said. “Amaterasu and Tsukiyomi warring in him for control.”

“Creepy,” Ishikawa said. “Like, real kami? As in he’s possessed or something?”

“I don’t think so. More like awakening to the destiny he can’t escape. He’s Kami and human. He’ll become the whole person he really is.”

Ishikawa sneered. “Don’t be an idiot. I know who he is. He’s Yuuto. That’s all.”

I blinked. I’d never thought of it like that, but he was right. Tomo had spent his whole life creating his own identity, becoming who he was. To suggest he was some other person, some time bomb that would destroy the world...that wasn’t him.

I must have stared into space too long, because Ishikawa frowned as he looked at me. “What, Greene?”

“I was just thinking that you haven’t bleached all the brain cells out of your head.”

“Hidoi,” he complained. That’s cruel.

I ignored him. “What we need to do is silence Tsukiyomi. That’s all we need to do, and Tomo’s suffering is over.”

“That and stop Takahashi.”

Tomo grunted and we stopped talking, watching as he slowly turned onto his side and continued to sleep.

“It’s getting late,” Ishikawa said. “Don’t you need to get home?”

I pulled out my keitai and checked the time. “Crap!” I’d missed text messages from Diane asking if I was coming for dinner. We both had so many late nights at school—it was common in Japan for students and teachers to stay for after-school clubs until even eight or nine—that we didn’t have the chance to eat dinner together as much as we had when I’d first arrived.

“Go home,” Ishikawa said. “I’ll stay with Yuuto and make sure he’s okay.” I hesitated, but he just smiled at me. “The worst is over, yeah? And you need to stay on good terms with your aunt so she doesn’t stop you guys from seeing each other. As much as that would make my life better, it would make Yuuto’s suck, so get going already.”

He had a point. “But you’ll tell me if something happens, right?”

“Of course. Now get lost.”

I texted Diane to let her know I’d eaten and that I was on my way home. It didn’t feel right to leave Tomo lying there, but Ishikawa tried his best to look reassuring. Maybe he’d finally listened. Maybe he was straightening his life around. I took a last look at Tomo, who really did look fine now, and headed out the door toward Suruga.

I pulled the ends of my scarf tightly around my neck as I headed home. The streetlights lit the concrete paths of Shizuoka City, autumn leaves crumpled in piles around the lamp poles. It was safe enough to be walking home at this time alone, but I saw nothing but shadows in the darkness, possible Kami in every corner, waiting for me. Or maybe Yakuza. They knew what I looked like, and I was pretty much the only American girl in the city. If they wanted to find me, it would be easy.

I ran down the last few streets, clutching my keitai in my pocket. I knew the emergency number now. I’d asked Diane. The one for police was 1-1-0, and for medical and fire stuff it was 1-1-9, which kind of made me mad. Reversed, of course! That made so much sense. I’d told Tomo, who’d just laughed and asked why we’d reversed it to 9-1-1. Good point.

I ran up the steps of our mansion—that’s what they called certain apartment buildings here—and the automatic glass doors slid away. It was still cool in the lobby and the elevator; our building didn’t have central heat like some of the newer ones, so we relied on our heated kotatsu table and lots of sweaters to stay warm. It was only late October, though. I remembered how cold that February had been when I’d first arrived in Japan. It felt so long ago now.

I leaned against our pale green door and it opened into the genkan with a quiet snick. I opened my mouth to tell Diane I was home, but she was talking to someone, and the tone of her voice made me hesitate.

“No,” she said loudly, “I don’t think it’s for the best. She’s just settling in. It’s been hard for her.”

They were talking about me. I closed the door quietly and slid my shoes off, sitting on the edge of the raised floor to listen. I didn’t hear anyone respond before she started in again—she must be on the phone.

“I know, but this isn’t about you. It’s about her right now.”

I’d never heard Diane so worked up about anything. She was always smiling too much, even when she was nervous. I’d never heard her sound angry, not like this.

“You’re not hearing what I’m saying, Steven. It’s not a good time.”

Steven. The name froze me as I leaned against the wall. My father’s name, the one who hadn’t stuck around to even meet me when I was born. The one who’d run out of town after Mom had eaten the Kami dragon fruit, after she’d nearly lost me before I’d had a chance to live. Steven had walked out after the doctors had warned them that I might never talk or walk as a result of the food poisoning.

Was Diane... Was she talking to my dad?

“It’s been a year, Steven. Where were you?” she said. “When Katie needed you, you weren’t there.” A pause. “No, I know you didn’t know, but...Yes, I get that, but...” Diane suddenly appeared from behind the corner, the phone clutched to her ear. I stared back into her wide eyes, both of us surprised to be caught out.

“I have to go,” Diane said. “I have your number...Yes, I know. Okay.” She clicked the off button as the phone slowly dropped from her ear.

My mouth was dry, my words thick. “Was that...my dad?”

“Oh, hon,” Diane said. Her eyes crinkled up, the corners of her plum-lipsticked mouth crumpled in a frown. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t going to trouble you with it.”

“What did he want?” I asked. “How did he even find you?”

“He phoned Nan and Gramps. He got my number from them. He found out about your mom a few weeks ago. He didn’t know you were here with me.”

“What does it have to do with him, anyway?” I wasn’t trying to be snarky; I meant it. He hadn’t been around for me ever. Him surfacing was like someone suddenly digging into the soil of my life and uprooting me, tipped on my side, exposed. Why now?

“He’ll be in Japan for a business trip in a couple weeks,” Diane said. “In Tokyo. He wants to see you, but I told him I don’t think that’s for the best.”

I felt like my heart had crystalized. I thought I didn’t care what happened to him, but I could feel the whisper of it circling through me. I did care. I wanted to know why I hadn’t been worth staying around for.

It would be no good getting involved with him, that much I knew. He’d destroyed Mom’s life; he’d destroy mine, too.

“Thanks,” I said, my voice shaky. “I don’t want to see him.”

Diane nodded. “I thought so.”

But part of me wanted to ask him why he had run off, and why he wanted back into my life now. And part of me wanted to cling to it, because with him, I wasn’t an orphan anymore. I’d have a parent again. But that was too idealized. It wasn’t going to be some kind of soppy reunion. It would be awkward and painful, and I had more than enough of that going on right now.

Diane rested a hand on my shoulder and attempted a smile. “I picked up some chestnut cakes from the depaato on the way home. Want to have one?”

“Yeah,” I said, giving her a fake smile back. She nodded and hurried into the kitchen. I could hear the clink of plates and the fridge door opening, the little cardboard flaps on the cake box popping open. Food as a source of comfort—that was Diane’s specialty. But after today, it sounded like the best idea ever.

I could bury the idea as soon as it had surfaced. I didn’t need to think about my dad right now; I could forget about it, erase it like it had never happened. If only I’d stayed with Tomo a little longer tonight. I would never have known about my dad being in Japan.

It didn’t matter, though. Steven could be in the same room as me, and it would feel like the farthest corner of the world, a wall of emptiness between us that couldn’t be scaled.

I sat down at the table, smelling the sweet cream on the chestnut cake as Diane hurried around the kitchen.

She was all the family I needed now.

* * *

The water was black this time, oceans of ink lapping against the stained shore. There was no orange gateway, no rolling dunes of sand. Instead, the ink waters ebbed against an inlaid stone path that trailed upward, toward a towering jumble of angled rooftops reaching toward the sky. On the distant edge of the black ocean, the ink tipped over in a waterfall that encircled the whole island, the spray sending up a fog of clouds. Were we high up in the sky, or on some cliff? I’d have to wade deep into the waters to look, and I was scared the current would drag me over the edge.

I looked back at the building—some sort of pagoda, maybe, or a fortress like Sunpu but as tall as Himeji Castle, layer upon layer of slanted tile rooftops and whitewashed walls, placed upon one another like tiers of a fancy wedding cake. Simple wooden steps led into the building; there was nowhere else to go on this tiny island surrounded by ink.

I stepped forward, and saw the first victim.

He lay at my feet, nearly buried in the grasses that sprung up around him. He wore armor, like some kind of samurai, but his eyes were empty, staring at a future that wasn’t there, his breastplate splashed with ink.

I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound escaped my lips. A dream, I thought. Another Kami nightmare.

I looked around the steps of the castle as I moved forward. Dozens of men lay slumped in horrible, lifeless heaps, ink soaking each of them as they lay beside their shattered weapons and snapped bowstrings. My feet moved toward the building against my own will. I didn’t want to see what was inside. I didn’t want to know what was responsible for this.

The stairs creaked as I went up them. Inside, the room was musty and dark, the only light shining from the windows near the raised platform at the end of the room, where great white curtains billowed out with a wind I couldn’t feel. The bamboo tatami mats were cold and hard against my bare feet as I stepped forward. There were fallen soldiers here, too; what horrible battle had taken place?

Wait, that one’s alive. I looked and saw him crouched in the corner, a dark shape hunched over his bended knee, a sword on the tatami beside him.

His silver earring glinted as he tilted his head forward, his blond highlights slipping from behind his ears.

“Jun,” I said, and he looked up at me. He lifted the sword; it almost looked as though it was made of stone. It was a deep black, like the inside of a cave, and the blade of it dripped with a darkness that must be ink. Or blood.

“It’s over now,” said a woman’s voice.

I turned to the raised platform in front of me, where the voice had come from. A woman knelt on the floor, the folds of her crimson kimono stretching in a pool of red around her. The sleeves of the kimono layered in a dozen different colors, all variations of black, red, gold and silver. An elaborate golden headdress rested on her head, the strings of golden beads tinkling against one another as she tilted her chin to the side.

“Okami Amaterasu,” I said, stepping over a long smear of ink on the tatami. I glanced at the fallen soldiers in the throne room as I walked toward her. “Who did this?”

“You did,” she said, and the world went cold with fear.

I shook my head. “I could never do something like this. And I only just got here.”

“There is only death,” she said. “There is no escape.”

Tomo had said those words so many times. He heard them in his nightmares, too.

“No escape from what?” I said. “Fate as a Kami?”

Amaterasu smiled sadly. “No escape from the past.” She twisted her knees to the side, the fabric of her red kimono swishing as she moved away slowly, and I saw one more body beside her.

“Tomo,” I whispered. I wanted to throw up; I wanted to wake up. I pinched my arm, hard, to remind myself this wasn’t real. It’s just a dream. But there was no comfort from seeing him there, lifeless, drenched in ink.

“Tsukiyomi,” she answered, and I saw then that his hair wasn’t copper, but black. I’d thought it was ink staining his hair, but he looked different—older, more worn and...less human than he’d ever looked, an almost angelic beauty that left me feeling terrified. He looked like a trickster fairy, the kind that was too beautiful to trust.

He was, and wasn’t, Tomo. I couldn’t explain it, except that dreams are strange and never quite right.

“I don’t understand,” I said. Was this all meaningless nightmare stuff? Why was I seeing this?

“I loved Tsukiyomi,” Amaterasu said. “And so I killed him.”

Ikeda had mentioned the story to me before, that Amaterasu and Tsukiyomi had once been lovers, before Tsukiyomi lost his mind.

“I had to stop him, before he destroyed everything the August Ones had made.”

“The August Ones?”

“And now he’s dead. But he lives in the shards of his soul that carry on.” She motioned at the ground, and I saw shattered pieces of glass in every color.

“Like Tomo,” I said.

“Taira no Kiyomori, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Yuu Tomohiro, all of them magatama of one soul,” she said.

I tilted my head. “Magatama?”

She motioned again to the broken glass. “Susanou shattered it,” she said. “Only the sword remains.” I looked to Jun and the stained sword at his side.

“Listen to me, child,” Amaterasu said to me. “Green means an eternal circle. You will betray Yuu Tomohiro, just as I have betrayed Tsukiyomi.”

The heat rose up in my cheeks. “I would never hurt him.”

She leaned back, the golden beads jingling on her headdress.

“You will kill him, before the end.”

My mind reeled. I wanted to retch. Kill him? Me?

I fell to my knees. “No,” I said. “This is just a stupid dream. I don’t have to do what you tell me. We make our own fates.”

“There is only one fate,” she said.

I looked down, my clothes soaked in ink.

I woke to my own screaming, to the sound of Diane thumping across the floor to hold me tightly in her arms.

* * *

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Tomo said, his eyes wide and filled with concern. We were hiding inside one of the Yayoi huts at Toro Iseki. His dad was asleep at home, after stumbling in from overtime work sometime in the middle of the night. Considering the whole separating-us-for-a-month business, this had seemed the best place to meet without anyone knowing.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” I said. “Anyway, I was pretty sure these were just typical nightmares. I mean, they don’t mean anything, right?”

Tomo pulled me toward him, wrapping me in the warmth and smell of him as we held each other. “They don’t,” he said gently, his voice against my ear. “I’ve been fighting them my whole life. Don’t listen to what they tell you. I never have.” But that was only half-true. He fought against it, sure, but he believed it, didn’t he? He believed he was a monster, that he only had a short time left, that in the end, there was only death.

I hadn’t told him everything about the dreams. It sounded stupid, but I was scared that if I said it out loud, that Tomo had died, that it would come true. I didn’t want to tell him Amaterasu had said I was the one who would betray him. Maybe she’d only meant the stupid mistake I’d made kissing Jun? But Tomo had forgiven me, and, anyway, Amaterasu’s face had looked like the topic was a whole lot more serious than a kiss.

Instead, I’d told Tomo about the castle and the dead samurai, about Tsukiyomi dead beside Amaterasu. “What did she mean by the Magatama?” I said as Tomo and I sat on the packed dirt floor, our backs pressed against the wall of the straw hut. “What is that?”

“It’s a curved jewel,” Tomo said. He lifted his hand palm-up, and I could see the ribbons of scars peeking out from under his soft wristband. “I’ve seen it before in my nightmares, too. Like glass in my hand...” He closed his hand slowly, remembering. “It shatters, and the shards dig into my skin. Kuse, they burn like fire.”

“It was broken in my dream, too,” I said. “There were sharp pieces all over the floor.”

“The Magatama is one of the Imperial Treasures,” Tomo said. “But I don’t get what it means. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it’s just kami memories, from when they ruled Japan.”

“Imperial Treasures?” I wrapped my arms around my knees. “Like mythical, or real?”

“Real,” he said. “Well, sort of. They’re called the Sanshu no Jingi. They’re real, but I don’t know if the myths surrounding them are. There are three of them—the mirror, the sword and the jewel. I think they’re kept in the palace in Tokyo. The mirror is linked to Amaterasu. Not sure about the sword and Magatama.”

The large brass mirror, the one the paper Amaterasu had held in front of Jun in Nihondaira—it had revealed the truth about all of us, that we were tied to some kind of awful tragedy that kept repeating itself with the kami’s descendants. Jun and Tomo would always be enemies, because Susanou and Tsukiyomi were. And Amaterasu and Tsukiyomi, in love until...until what, exactly?

I shivered in the morning cold. “What happened between Amaterasu and Tsukiyomi?”

Tomo pulled the top of his knit hat until it snapped off his head, his copper spikes flopping around his ears. I felt the warmth from the hat as he gently pressed it onto my head, smoothing it over my hair and pulling it down over my ears. “Better?” he said. I nodded, and he grinned. “I don’t know what happened, Katie, but it doesn’t matter. They aren’t us. They’re long gone.”

“You’re right,” I said. “But we still have to deal with their drama.” The mirror, the sword and the jewel. The sword...was it the one I had seen beside Jun? How did these treasures tie into all this? Were they really just fragments of kami memories?

Tomo took my hand in his and pulled me up from the ground. “We’ll beat this,” he said, his deep eyes searching mine. “You’ll be just fine.”

“So will you,” I said, and he smiled, but I saw the sadness in his eyes, the disbelief. Amaterasu’s threat echoed in my thoughts.

I will never hurt him again, I thought as I pulled him toward me, as I pressed my lips against his. We will make our own future.

* * *

I grabbed Yuki’s arm right when the bell rang. “Yuki-chan, I need a favor.” She looked at me, surprised.

“Everything okay?” she said.

I nodded. “I just... I was wondering if Niichan is still in town.”

She raised an eyebrow, puzzled. Behind her, Tanaka started fake laughing, flipping his chair on top of his desk before walking over to us. “Hu-hu-hu,” he said in an over-the-top voice that the drama club could probably hear from here. “Does Tomohiro have a rival?”

“Ew,” Yuki said, smacking Tanaka in the arm. “My brother? He’s, like, six years older than us.”

“Maybe she’s seen enough of Tomo-kun’s immature side,” Tanaka grinned slyly. “She wants an older man.”

I flushed with awkwardness. “Chigau yo”, I stammered. “Not even close.”

Yuki put a finger to her lips and blinked slowly, looking thoughtful. “He has a point, though. Boys our age are totally immature.”

Tanaka’s face drained of color. “O...oi! That’s not...” His shoulders slumped and he headed toward the blackboard, grabbing a cloth and starting to clean. Poor guy. He’d been asking for it, though.

“Niichan’s back in Miyajima,” Yuki said, “but I can give you his number. Everything all right?”

“I just wanted to ask him something about my history assignment,” I lied. “He knows a lot about kami myths.”

“Oh, yeah, he knows all that stuff. Here.” She took out her keitai and sent the number to me.

“Thanks.”

She grinned. “No problem.” I helped her push the desks out of the way while our classmates mopped the floor, and then I dashed to kendo practice. I’d call Niichan as soon as I had a chance, I thought. He’d be able to help me understand how the Imperial Treasures were caught up in this mess.

“Oi, Greene!” Ishikawa drawled from across the gym as I opened the change room door. He wore his gray hakama skirt, the dou chest plate already tied overtop. The colorful swirls of his tattoo slipped from sight as he slid on his kote glove. “Still taking kendo when Yuuto isn’t here?”

I reached for his other kote, still on the floor, and smacked his arm with it before passing it to him. “I don’t take kendo for Tomo, baka.” Maybe at first I had, to spy on him, but the sport of Japanese fencing had given me an outlet to deal with my grief over losing Mom. I loved the way I felt when I held the shinai, when the world was silent except for the shouts of opponents and the shuffling of feet. There wasn’t room to think about anything else.

“You’re tougher than I thought.” Ishikawa grinned. A lick of white hair pressed against his forehead, and he tucked it under the cloth tenugui wrapped around his head. Our club’s headbands were stamped with the black kanji that made up our motto: The Twofold Path of the Pen and the Sword. The last time I’d looked at the motto, it had been covered in Tomo’s blood as he’d pressed the tenugui against a bite from the dragon he’d sketched. My stomach twisted at the memory of the blood in the rain, the limbs dropping from the dragon as it tried to lift into the sky.

“Greene,” Ishikawa said, and I snapped out of it. “Man, you phase out a lot now. You okay?”

“Fine,” I said. “Thanks for staying with Tomo the other night.”

“You’re all right, for a kouhai,” Ishikawa said, ruffling my hair with a strong hand before getting into line for push-ups. “Juniors,” he mumbled.

“Hey!” I called out, but he didn’t look back. I grinned and dropped to the floor, ready to sweat and spar my troubles away, to escape just for an hour.

The dial tone sounded tinny and strange in my ear. I couldn’t call Niichan long-distance on my keitai, so I was using the house phone. Diane wasn’t home yet, but as long as I kept it short, she probably wouldn’t mind me calling. I was allowed to call Nan and Gramps anytime—that was different, but still.

I punched in Niichan’s number and waited, my thoughts drifting to his small place on Miyajima Island in Hiroshima. I remembered how Yuki and I had slept in his one-room apartment on the tatami floor, how we’d whispered and chatted in our soft futons while the ocean outside lapped against the beach. It had only been a few months ago, but it felt like ages.

The ringing sound cut out, and a woman’s voice recited ultra-politely that the customer was unavailable. I left a short, awkward message, and then hung up. Guess my questions would have to wait.

I opened the lid of my laptop, putting it on the low table by my bed, and sat down on my zabuton cushion beside it. Might as well find out what I could about the Imperial Treasures.

It turned out they were just about as mysterious to the rest of Japan as they were to me. They were called the Sanshu no Jingi, the Three Sacred Treasures. Only the emperor and his close aides had ever seen them, and even then only for special occasions. No one was even sure what they looked like, or if the treasures kept by the royal family were the originals.

They had really long, fancy names. The Yata no Kagami, for one, was Amaterasu’s mirror, the same one that had haunted Tomo’s nightmares and sketches. The one I had seen for the first time in my dreams a few nights ago.

Tomo had been wrong about their location, too. Only the Yasakani no Magatama jewel was kept in the palace in Tokyo. The sword, Kusanagi no Tsurugi, was in Nagoya, about two hours west of Shizuoka by bullet train. They were thought to be replicas, but Amaterasu’s mirror was supposedly the real one, and they kept it in a shrine in Ise, Mie Prefecture. I pulled up a map to see where Mie was. Southwest from here, past Nagoya and curved around a bay of water.

Outside the rain began to fall, tapping against the sliding door to our tiny balcony. I hoped Diane would be home soon, or at least that she wasn’t caught out in this. It was getting heavier by the second.

The breath caught in my throat as I looked at the search page. The real mirror of Amaterasu. Was it really the real one? I knew the Kami were real—I knew the ink lived in me and in Tomo—but it was still a scary thing to think about, that someone as powerful as Amaterasu had really existed. The paper copy of the goddess, the one whose name I had written with Ikeda in the sketchbook, had already been strong enough to send both Tomo and Jun reeling in the sky. After learning they were descended from Susanou and Tsukiyomi, Tomo and Jun had grown ink wings and fought high above the trees. It was only with Ikeda’s help that we’d summoned Amaterasu’s power to blast them apart and stop them from killing each other.

And that was only the Amaterasu that Tomo had drawn. What about the real one? For anyone to have that amount of power was terrifying. And like Ikeda and Niichan had told me, kami didn’t play by our modern rules of morality. They had their own code entirely of what was right and wrong.

I shut down the search tab and reached for the lid of my laptop, but the news column on my home page made me hesitate. The kanji for death, , stared up at me from the headline. I clicked the article, my hand rising to my mouth.

Two more Yakuza found dead in Shizuoka. They showed old photos of them, smiling.

I knew that one. The Korean guy with the Mohawk who’d brought the bottle of green tea over when Hanchi was forcing Tomo to draw. His photo smiled back at me, completely unaware of what awaited him in his future.

I scrolled down the news article, much of it still illegible to me with my current kanji-reading abilities. The page showed a photo of the crime scene, a dark graffiti image painted across the rice paper door in the room where they’d died.

A black viper, tall as a person, with ink dripping down his painted fangs.

Oh god.

I grabbed my keitai, my thoughts whirling. I pressed it to my ear, listening to the ring as I held back tears.

His voice was steady, emotionless. “Katie.”

“Jun, please,” I said, holding the phone with shaking hands. “Please stop.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can. You have to.” The rain swelled, beating against my window as the wind whipped the storm around.

“Katie, these aren’t innocent people, you know. We’ve talked about this. The world is better off without them.”

“That’s what courts are for,” I said, the tears streaming down my face. “I should call the police.”

His voice softened, warmth seeping in. “They won’t believe you.”

“That’s why I’m asking you to stop. Please.”

A pause. “It’s not in my hands anymore.”

“I don’t get it.” And then it dawned on me. His followers. “Wait...is your Kami cult helping you?”

“Katie, I...”

The rain pummeled my window as I jumped to my feet. “I thought you said most of them weren’t strong enough for their sketches to lift off the page!”

“They’re not, but...when Amaterasu showed me the mirror, the truth about who I really was, I felt the shift. I felt the power of Susanou awaken in me. It’s affecting them, too. They grow stronger being near me, the way Yuu and I were affected by you.”

Ishikawa was right. It was war, and Jun had his own army. Could you fight death sketched on a page? How do you catch the murderer? How do you protect the victim? My mind raced.

Jun’s voice turned gentle and patient. “Katie, the Kami are rising. It’s a new world now, and we don’t need these scum polluting it. Listen...almost every religion in the world talks of a final judgment, right?” He laughed, the sound of it jarring in my ears. How the hell could he laugh at a time like this? “I’m the heir of Susanou. This is my fate. It’s always been my fate.” I collapsed onto my bed, the rain outside nearly overcoming the sound of Jun’s voice. “I’m the heir to the ruler of Yomi, the World of Darkness. The Judge. I will fulfill my purpose until the end.”

“Not like this,” I pleaded. “That can’t be what it means. You don’t have to do this. You can choose your own fate.”

His calm voice cracked open, his voice tinged with panic. “It’s not like I want to do this, okay? Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do.”

This was the real Jun, now. This was the guy who’d rescued me in Oguro, the one who’d asked me out for coffee. But then I realized, fear creeping up my spine—the other side of him was just as real, wasn’t it? They were both him.

“But Tomo is fighting his fate.”

“Tomo is the descendent of Tsukiyomi. Don’t you get it? Tsukiyomi lost his mind and murdered the other kami. What do you think is going to happen with Yuu?” My heart froze; I collapsed onto my knees, the hard tatami pressing lines into my skin. Murdered the kami? Is that what had happened to Tsukiyomi? Is that what would happen to Tomo? “It can’t go on forever like this. You always knew it would end. He’s a monster that should never have existed. A monster who wished to be human. Sore dake. That’s all.”

I clutched the phone as the rain poured. Everything was changing. Everything was ending.

There is only death.

I took a deep breath. “You’re a monster, too, Jun.”

“Gomen,” Jun said, his voice a whisper lost in the rain. “I’m sorry it has to be this way.” And then he was gone, and there was nothing but the sound of the rain washing away the only world I’d ever known.

I woke to the sound of my keitai buzzing beside my laptop. I blinked, trying to orient myself in the dark room. Had Diane come home? I hadn’t heard her. The rain was quiet now; the storm must have stopped. The phone screen was too bright to look at with my tired eyes, so I lifted it to my ear as I stretched out my legs.

“Hello?”

“Katie-chan?” It was Niichan, Yuki’s brother. I realized my mistake then, that I’d answered the phone in English.

“Oh, hi,” I said, switching to Japanese.

“Sorry, is it too late to call? I think I woke you.”

“No, no,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes. “I was in the bath.” I stopped midrub. That was more embarrassing. “I mean, um, the rain is really something, huh?” Bath was furo, and the verb for raining was furu. Maybe I’d get away with it.

Niichan sounded like his face was bright red. “Uh, I...don’t know,” he said. “It’s not raining in Miyajima.”

“Right,” I said, squeezing my eyes closed.

“Is everything okay? I was worried about calling so late, but you sounded nervous on your message.”

I shook my head and flicked on my bedside light so I wouldn’t crash into anything as I talked. “I need to talk to you about the kami,” I said. “Things are out of control, Niichan, and I don’t know how to stop them.”

“You didn’t stay away from him, huh?”

“It’s more complicated now,” I said, sliding my door open and stumbling into the hallway. I was relieved to see Diane’s shoes in the genkan. She must have figured I’d gone to bed and so she hadn’t woken me. “There’s a rogue Kami out there and he’s trying to take over the world.”

Niichan hesitated. “Are you joking?”

“I wish,” I said. “I need to know how to make the ink go dormant, Niichan. For Tomo’s sake, so he doesn’t...lose himself. And I have to make this guy Takahashi Jun’s power go away, too, or he’s going to destroy everything.”

“Wait, wait. Takahashi Jun, the kendo champ? He’s a Kami? Katie, tell me everything.”

I grabbed a mug and held it under our hot water dispenser as I filled in Niichan on the details. “Jun told me there are two kinds of Kami, right? Imperial ones, descended from Amaterasu. That’s the royal line, all the emperors and stuff. But there were also Kami in the samurai families, and they showed up through a bunch of different ways. Marriages, affairs, even different kami ancestors than Amaterasu.”

“Right,” Niichan said. “You said to me that day you were scared Yuu was descended from Susanou.”

“I was wrong,” I said, dipping a genmai tea bag into the hot water, smoothing the little string attached over the ceramic lip. The side of the mug burned my finger and I pulled away, the string slipping into the cup. “It was Jun—Takahashi—that got his ink bloodline from Susanou. Tomo is descended from Amaterasu on his dad’s side, and Tsukiyomi on his mother’s.”

Niichan was silent for a moment, and then he let out a shaky breath. “Maji de,” he said. “That’s impossible.”

“It’s true,” I said. “And I need a way for the power to go dormant. There’s got to be a way, Niichan.”

“Maybe, but I... I’m sorry, Katie. I don’t know.”

My heart sank. I curled my fingers around the handle of the mug. “Not even any ideas?”

“No pleasant ones,” he said. His list was probably about the same as mine. 1) Leave Japan. 2) Die.

“Well...can you at least tell me more about Tsukiyomi?” I said. “Jun said he went crazy and murdered kami. Is that true?”

“They’re myths, Katie. How do we know what’s true? And remember what I told you about judgment calls—times have changed. You can’t judge what the kami did by the way society works now.”

“I know,” I said. “I just need to know what happened. Maybe there’s some detail that can help us, Niichan. Please.”

“Ee to,” he said, deep in thought. I could hear a sound across the phone, like a pencil tapping against a chair. “Well, Amaterasu, Tsukiyomi and Susanou were all created at the same time by the August Ones.”

August Ones. Where had I heard that before? The vision of the dead samurai snapped back into my memory. Amaterasu had mentioned them. I had to stop him, before he destroyed everything the August Ones had made. What had she meant? “Who are the August Ones?”

“The first kami, Izanagi and Izanami. They created Japan, and then they gave birth to all the other kami. Well, a lot of them. The three you mentioned were created by Izanagi.”

“So Tsukiyomi was going to destroy Japan?”

“Destroy Japan?” Niichan’s surprise reminded me I hadn’t told him about the nightmare. “I don’t think that’s in the legends.”

“Then what happened?”

“Let me think. It’s been a while since I studied it. So Amaterasu and Susanou fought, that I remember. She hid in a cave—solar eclipse, ne? And they tricked her back out again. They threw a big party and fooled her into glancing at herself in a mirror to draw her out, and they hung the Magatama jewel in a tree to tempt her out, too.”

The Imperial Treasures. That was two of them linked to Amaterasu and Susanou. But it didn’t make any sense. How could the treasures be involved? “What about the Kusanagi?”

“The sword? It belonged to Susanou.” That made sense. Jun had always had the sword beside him in my nightmares.

I remembered Tomo in the nightmare, unconscious, dripping in dark ink. Jun’s head bowed, his apology.

Oh god. What if that hadn’t been ink spilling from Tomo’s wounds?

I was an idiot. A complete idiot. But it was just a dream. I couldn’t let Jun hurt him.

“How does Tsukiyomi fit in? He was Amaterasu’s lover, right?” I yanked the cutlery drawer open and dug for a spoon; my tea was already way too strong, but I dipped the spoon into the mug to chase down the tea bag, anyway.

“At first. But then he killed another kami. Amaterasu banished him from the heavens. That’s why the sun and moon are separated, right? Night and day. It’s just a creation myth, Katie.”

But the Amaterasu I’d met hadn’t banished him. She’d killed him. Why? “She didn’t...hurt him?”

“I don’t think so. She had a lot more trouble with Susanou, but she was a gentle ruler. She’s always been considered benevolent, a protector of Japan.”

“She gave the first emperor the Imperial Treasures,” I said. “I looked it up.”

“Yeah,” Niichan said. “They each represented a trait she wanted him to rule with. The mirror is honesty, the sword is bravery and the jewel is love. She gave them to Jimmu, her descendent, and I guess one of the first humans to have the powers of the kami.”

Emperor Jimmu. I tried to picture him, an ancient figure who was half myth himself. What had he thought when his ink kanji had started to move on their scrolls? Or had Amaterasu explained to him how to control it? Was that knowledge somehow lost over time like Jun had said?

“I’m sorry I can’t help more,” Niichan said. “I don’t know enough about how this all ties in.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m really glad you called me back, Niichan. You’ve helped, really.” At least I understood the stories a little better. The Imperial Treasures had been handed down through the line of Kami. They had to be linked. If only one of them had been a paintbrush or something. That would’ve made a lot more sense as a starting point.

“Katie? Be careful, okay? For your sake and Yuki’s, too. There have been powerful Kami in Japan’s history, and they always changed the landscape. I don’t know what Takahashi is up to, but stay back. At the kind of power level you’re suggesting, the ink is uncontrollable. He may just burn himself out.”

I took a sip of my tea; it had gone cold as we’d talked. “I hope so.”

But somehow, I didn’t think it would be that easy.

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