Ink
Page 26
“Oh, I’m fine,” I mumbled. “Just getting some dinner.” I motioned at him with the eel dinner box.
“Ah,” he said, smiling broadly again. He looked different out of his school uniform, all casual flare with a white T-shirt, jeans and a short-sleeved black jacket draped over his broad shoulders. He wore one of those thick black bracelets around his wrist, the kind with silver spikes on it. It looked ridiculous.
“Um,” I said, because he was still smiling and waiting for me to say something. “How was the kendo retreat?”
“Tough, but we learned a lot. It was great to get to know Yuu and Ishikawa better.”
“Oh,” I said, and relief flooded through me. So nothing weird had happened.
“I thought you’d have heard from Yuu by now,” he said, and I felt the heat rise up my neck.
“What do you mean?” I said. He looked down at the floor with a grin and bobbed his head, like he was apologizing for bringing it up.
“Because you and Yuu are friends,” he said. Which was all he needed to say, really. I hoped Tomohiro wasn’t going around bragging like a jerk. It would definitely line up with the idiot who looked up my skirt. But then I dismissed it. I knew he wasn’t really like that at all.
“Anyway,” Jun continued, “I learned a lot training with them. It turns out we have some things in common.”
“Oh,” I said, wondering why Yuu hadn’t called me if things were all fine. It didn’t even sound like Ishikawa had pestered him much about the dragon. “That’s nice.”
“You know, I knew from the way Yuu held his shinai the first time that he’d done calligraphy.”
My blood ran cold. “Calligraphy?” I choked out, but Jun looked unfazed. Of course he did. There wasn’t anything weird about calligraphy. Usually.
He nodded. “There’s something artistic about the way he moves. I’ve been in the Calligraphy Club since junior high, and I can see it in his swordsmanship. You know, they have a lot in common.”
“Who does?”
“I mean calligraphy and kendo.” He smiled patiently.
I felt stupid suddenly, hot and itchy and wishing I could just go up to the bored clerk and pay for my bentou so I could get out of there. Instead I asked, “They do?”
“They’re both Zen traditions,” Jun said. “Calming your mind, looking within yourself for beauty and inspiration.”
“Uh-huh.”
Jun smiled yet again. “I guess I’m talking too much. Anyway, I tried to get Yuu to draw with me, but he wouldn’t do it. You’ll have to convince him to show me his work sometime.”
I paled. “Sure thing.”
“Well…” he said, bobbing his head and lifting up a bottle of cold tea. He went to the front to pay and I stared down at my bentou, waiting for him to vanish. But just as he was ready to walk through the open doors, he turned and walked back to me.
“I forgot to ask you,” he said, his face twisting with concern. “How is Yuu’s wrist doing?”
The shelves in the conbini seemed to blur out of focus. I opened my mouth, but only an awful squeaking sound came out.
“Didn’t…didn’t he tell you?” Jun said, his face full of surprise. “On the first day of training, he brought his shinai down hard on Ishikawa’s men and his wrist split open. Must have been an earlier injury he didn’t take care of. He had to go to the hospital for stitches.”
I just stared at him with my mouth open. Ishikawa would’ve seen it, then. The truth, on display in front of the one person it shouldn’t be. Ishikawa would put it together, the strange jagged wound on Tomohiro’s wrist appearing on the same day a dragon lifted into the sky.
“Oh,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “I’m sorry you heard from me. He probably didn’t want to worry you.
Training was okay after that, don’t worry, but it just seemed like an awfully deep wound. It’s a shame, with the tournament coming up. And Ishikawa said Yuu is so good at calligraphy, so he’ll have to take a break from that, too. I hope it heals up.”
“Oh,” I finally squeaked out.
“Give him my regards, okay? Hope he is all healed up for the prefecture finals.” He gave a friendly wave and curved out the door.
As soon as I paid for my unagi and purin, I bolted out the door and down the dark streets. I turned down the alleyways, not even thinking of my own safety. I almost crashed into a boy on a bike as I twisted through the streets, until the houses got bigger and the crowds got smaller.
I didn’t stop until the iron gate was in sight. My lungs burned as I hunched over, panting, the crinkle of my conbini bag the only other sound in the thick night air. I pressed my hand against the cold metal nameplate above the intercom button. Once I’d caught my breath, I pushed the button in.
The metal gate was closed.
“Yes?” came a tinny voice across the intercom, and a thought fired through my brain.
Tomohiro.
But a moment later I realized it wasn’t Tomohiro but an older, rougher version of his voice. His dad.
“I’m looking for Yuu Tomohiro,” I said.
“He’s out” came the reply.
“I really need to talk to him,” I said, because really, what else could I say?
“Sorry.” The voice vibrated through the speaker. “I don’t know where he is. You could try his keitai. ”
Because that had worked so well over the past week.
“Thank you,” I said and turned down the street, wondering where to go next.
Toro Iseki, obviously, but as soon as I started sprinting down the street, I slowed down. There’s no way he’d be there, not this late. Would he?
I imagined his drawings fluttering through the darkness, as white as ghosts.
I flipped open my keitai, staring at his phone number on the bright screen. My finger circled the send button, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it again. It started to dawn on me, the only things I knew for sure: Yuu Tomohiro was not kidnapped by the Yakuza (yes, I had been worried about this).
Yuu Tomohiro’s wrist was seriously injured, more than he’d let on. And Ishikawa had seen it.
Yuu Tomohiro was avoiding me.
My heart felt like it had collapsed in on itself. Was that last one really true? Was it all in my head? There was this nagging unsettled feeling, like the balance of the world was tipping.
I twisted through the streets, not sure where to go. Toro Iseki was a long way to go if I was wrong, and I felt like I was. With his wrist that damaged, could he really draw anything? And would he want to draw anymore, after what had happened?
It’s worth my life, but it isn’t worth yours.
Was my life for sure at risk?
I had to find him. I stared down the street, the lights of Shizuoka blurring as I spun my head around. He was somewhere. I just had to figure it out.
I walked back to Shizuoka Station; it wasn’t like I had a better idea, and the station was the central nerve of the city.
On a board in the station, tourist flyers splayed out of little cubbyholes. Most of them had majestic views of Fuji or Shizuoka tea fields sprawled across them, but one was for Toro Iseki. I flipped the brochure open and saw the open hours.
Definitely closed by now, but that wouldn’t stop Tomohiro anyway. I debated about the twenty-minute bus ride, the long walk back if I was wrong. And if I was wrong, I sure didn’t want to break into Toro Iseki at dark. I shuddered, imagining my hand touching the wet snakeskin of the dragon, though of course his body was long gone by now.
Some places in the city didn’t close when the sun set.
Ramen-noodle-house signs gleamed in the darkness. Conbini stores glowed with their shiny mopped floors. I snuck a peek at the café where we’d had dinner together, but no luck.
What else might be open?
And what was Tomohiro thinking anyway, running off to places at night where I couldn’t find him? Didn’t he have entrance exams to worry about? And didn’t he need every spare moment of study time in between all those practices for the kendo tournament?
I stopped dead in the whirlwind of travelers that pulsed around the station.
Kendo.
I ran through Sunpu Park under the dim lamplight and the bare sakura branches, past lovers and friends strolling through, salarymen stumbling home from nights of drinking with coworkers. I ran until my lungs burned, until the roof of Sunpu Castle gleamed in the distant moonlight, and then I crossed the northern bridge toward Suntaba School.
I had to make sure Tomohiro was okay. Had Ishikawa backed off? No more swarming with creepy Yakuza members? After talking to Jun, I had to know. I had to know if everything was all right.
Most of the lights in the school had blinked out and it looked deserted, empty, like the shell of a distant memory.
Deserted except for the bright f luorescent lights that gleamed from the gym doorway.
I ran toward the door, my lungs about to burst and my legs about to give way. The warm light from the gym spread across the shadows of the rear courtyard, lighting up the tennis-court lines in a ghostly shade of yellow.
I stopped as I reached the open door, pressing myself against the frame as I peered in.
Tomohiro was inside, alone and decked out in kendo armor, swinging his shinai through the air. He turned, moving through the katas and kiri-kaeshis like a dancer in slow motion, silently at first, then with shouts of determination.
Even from here I could see how unsatisfied he was with the movements. He’d swipe through the air, curse as he walked back into place, then strike again. The shinai shook in his hands; he lost his grip and the sword fell an inch—not at lot, but enough to distinguish a point from a miss.
It wasn’t like him to struggle with the easier movements.
It took me five seconds to realize it was his wrist, because although the strength in a shinai swing comes from the left hand, it’s the right that guides the hit. And Tomohiro’s was going all over the place.
He swore and got back into place, shaking his head, clearing his thoughts. He thrust again, swung for a hit. He got it, but then the shinai fell again; better than I could do, but not like him at all.
I watched him struggle. I wasn’t sure what to do, whether I should let him know I was there. But why did I go all the way to Suntaba if I wasn’t even going to talk to him?
I stepped into the splash of artificial lights and walked toward him. He noticed me after a moment, lowering the shinai and pulling the men off his shoulders. I tried not to notice the way he stared at me, surprised and silent. I tried to stay focused on the fact that he was possibly avoiding me, and not to let on that I knew. Or to come off all mad at him. Something like that.
“You’re back,” he said, advancing toward me across the gym floor.
I squeezed the grain of annoyance in my mind as it struggled to get away.
“We got back this morning,” I said.
“Okaeri.” His voice was too gentle, passive almost. The whole thing felt off.
“Thanks. How about you? You’re hard at work, I see.”
“Yeah, well…” And he looked away. Was he avoiding me because he was embarrassed about his wrist? Or maybe the kissing in his living room? Now that I thought about it, it was kind of awkward.
“Um…so how was the training retreat?” I said. I’m connected to the Kami, I wanted to blurt out, but everything about him felt weird. He started to unbuckle the armor and reached for his water bottle on the bench nearby.
“Fine,” he said. “I might have learned enough of Takahashi’s moves to beat him next time.”
“Great,” I said. “And Ishikawa?”
“Ishikawa’s fast,” he said, chugging down the water. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm and screwed the lid back onto the bottle. “But there’s a good chance we won’t be paired in the tournament. Usually they don’t pit team members against each other.”
“Oh.” Pause. “So, um, how is your wrist doing?”
He hesitated and stopped pulling off his glove so it sat there half on, half off, the laces dangling down.
“I mean because of before,” I said. His eyes were glaring, like I’d hit a sore spot. But he didn’t know Jun had told me about it, right? I could just be innocently asking.
“It’s fine,” he said, grabbing the fingers of the glove and yanking it off, dropping his arm down before I could see.
Jeez, touchy much?
“That’s great,” I said. “So Ishikawa…?”
Another pause. “We’re getting along fine.”
I felt like I was standing in the middle of a quiet street, just waiting to get run over. Why was his voice so cold?
Then, as he looked into my eyes, his voice softened. He untied the tare around his waist and placed it with the rest of the armor. I noticed the new headband in his hair, not a bloodstain on it. He pulled it backward off his head, and his copper hair flopped down around his ears.
“Did you have fun in Miyajima?”
“Yeah, it was okay.” I might be a Kami. I couldn’t say it. It felt wrong, like I was intruding on the pain he suffered. But Niichan’s alternative, keeping my distance from Tomohiro—it scared me more. “I…I went to a Shinto shrine. I think maybe I learned why the ink moves.”
“What?”
I swallowed. “What if I’m a Kami, Tomo?”
He stared at me for a moment.
“You can’t be,” he said.
“What if there’s some other way, though? What if I’m connected somehow?”
“Do you have nightmares?” he said. “Like the ones I told you about?”
“Ah,” he said, smiling broadly again. He looked different out of his school uniform, all casual flare with a white T-shirt, jeans and a short-sleeved black jacket draped over his broad shoulders. He wore one of those thick black bracelets around his wrist, the kind with silver spikes on it. It looked ridiculous.
“Um,” I said, because he was still smiling and waiting for me to say something. “How was the kendo retreat?”
“Tough, but we learned a lot. It was great to get to know Yuu and Ishikawa better.”
“Oh,” I said, and relief flooded through me. So nothing weird had happened.
“I thought you’d have heard from Yuu by now,” he said, and I felt the heat rise up my neck.
“What do you mean?” I said. He looked down at the floor with a grin and bobbed his head, like he was apologizing for bringing it up.
“Because you and Yuu are friends,” he said. Which was all he needed to say, really. I hoped Tomohiro wasn’t going around bragging like a jerk. It would definitely line up with the idiot who looked up my skirt. But then I dismissed it. I knew he wasn’t really like that at all.
“Anyway,” Jun continued, “I learned a lot training with them. It turns out we have some things in common.”
“Oh,” I said, wondering why Yuu hadn’t called me if things were all fine. It didn’t even sound like Ishikawa had pestered him much about the dragon. “That’s nice.”
“You know, I knew from the way Yuu held his shinai the first time that he’d done calligraphy.”
My blood ran cold. “Calligraphy?” I choked out, but Jun looked unfazed. Of course he did. There wasn’t anything weird about calligraphy. Usually.
He nodded. “There’s something artistic about the way he moves. I’ve been in the Calligraphy Club since junior high, and I can see it in his swordsmanship. You know, they have a lot in common.”
“Who does?”
“I mean calligraphy and kendo.” He smiled patiently.
I felt stupid suddenly, hot and itchy and wishing I could just go up to the bored clerk and pay for my bentou so I could get out of there. Instead I asked, “They do?”
“They’re both Zen traditions,” Jun said. “Calming your mind, looking within yourself for beauty and inspiration.”
“Uh-huh.”
Jun smiled yet again. “I guess I’m talking too much. Anyway, I tried to get Yuu to draw with me, but he wouldn’t do it. You’ll have to convince him to show me his work sometime.”
I paled. “Sure thing.”
“Well…” he said, bobbing his head and lifting up a bottle of cold tea. He went to the front to pay and I stared down at my bentou, waiting for him to vanish. But just as he was ready to walk through the open doors, he turned and walked back to me.
“I forgot to ask you,” he said, his face twisting with concern. “How is Yuu’s wrist doing?”
The shelves in the conbini seemed to blur out of focus. I opened my mouth, but only an awful squeaking sound came out.
“Didn’t…didn’t he tell you?” Jun said, his face full of surprise. “On the first day of training, he brought his shinai down hard on Ishikawa’s men and his wrist split open. Must have been an earlier injury he didn’t take care of. He had to go to the hospital for stitches.”
I just stared at him with my mouth open. Ishikawa would’ve seen it, then. The truth, on display in front of the one person it shouldn’t be. Ishikawa would put it together, the strange jagged wound on Tomohiro’s wrist appearing on the same day a dragon lifted into the sky.
“Oh,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “I’m sorry you heard from me. He probably didn’t want to worry you.
Training was okay after that, don’t worry, but it just seemed like an awfully deep wound. It’s a shame, with the tournament coming up. And Ishikawa said Yuu is so good at calligraphy, so he’ll have to take a break from that, too. I hope it heals up.”
“Oh,” I finally squeaked out.
“Give him my regards, okay? Hope he is all healed up for the prefecture finals.” He gave a friendly wave and curved out the door.
As soon as I paid for my unagi and purin, I bolted out the door and down the dark streets. I turned down the alleyways, not even thinking of my own safety. I almost crashed into a boy on a bike as I twisted through the streets, until the houses got bigger and the crowds got smaller.
I didn’t stop until the iron gate was in sight. My lungs burned as I hunched over, panting, the crinkle of my conbini bag the only other sound in the thick night air. I pressed my hand against the cold metal nameplate above the intercom button. Once I’d caught my breath, I pushed the button in.
The metal gate was closed.
“Yes?” came a tinny voice across the intercom, and a thought fired through my brain.
Tomohiro.
But a moment later I realized it wasn’t Tomohiro but an older, rougher version of his voice. His dad.
“I’m looking for Yuu Tomohiro,” I said.
“He’s out” came the reply.
“I really need to talk to him,” I said, because really, what else could I say?
“Sorry.” The voice vibrated through the speaker. “I don’t know where he is. You could try his keitai. ”
Because that had worked so well over the past week.
“Thank you,” I said and turned down the street, wondering where to go next.
Toro Iseki, obviously, but as soon as I started sprinting down the street, I slowed down. There’s no way he’d be there, not this late. Would he?
I imagined his drawings fluttering through the darkness, as white as ghosts.
I flipped open my keitai, staring at his phone number on the bright screen. My finger circled the send button, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it again. It started to dawn on me, the only things I knew for sure: Yuu Tomohiro was not kidnapped by the Yakuza (yes, I had been worried about this).
Yuu Tomohiro’s wrist was seriously injured, more than he’d let on. And Ishikawa had seen it.
Yuu Tomohiro was avoiding me.
My heart felt like it had collapsed in on itself. Was that last one really true? Was it all in my head? There was this nagging unsettled feeling, like the balance of the world was tipping.
I twisted through the streets, not sure where to go. Toro Iseki was a long way to go if I was wrong, and I felt like I was. With his wrist that damaged, could he really draw anything? And would he want to draw anymore, after what had happened?
It’s worth my life, but it isn’t worth yours.
Was my life for sure at risk?
I had to find him. I stared down the street, the lights of Shizuoka blurring as I spun my head around. He was somewhere. I just had to figure it out.
I walked back to Shizuoka Station; it wasn’t like I had a better idea, and the station was the central nerve of the city.
On a board in the station, tourist flyers splayed out of little cubbyholes. Most of them had majestic views of Fuji or Shizuoka tea fields sprawled across them, but one was for Toro Iseki. I flipped the brochure open and saw the open hours.
Definitely closed by now, but that wouldn’t stop Tomohiro anyway. I debated about the twenty-minute bus ride, the long walk back if I was wrong. And if I was wrong, I sure didn’t want to break into Toro Iseki at dark. I shuddered, imagining my hand touching the wet snakeskin of the dragon, though of course his body was long gone by now.
Some places in the city didn’t close when the sun set.
Ramen-noodle-house signs gleamed in the darkness. Conbini stores glowed with their shiny mopped floors. I snuck a peek at the café where we’d had dinner together, but no luck.
What else might be open?
And what was Tomohiro thinking anyway, running off to places at night where I couldn’t find him? Didn’t he have entrance exams to worry about? And didn’t he need every spare moment of study time in between all those practices for the kendo tournament?
I stopped dead in the whirlwind of travelers that pulsed around the station.
Kendo.
I ran through Sunpu Park under the dim lamplight and the bare sakura branches, past lovers and friends strolling through, salarymen stumbling home from nights of drinking with coworkers. I ran until my lungs burned, until the roof of Sunpu Castle gleamed in the distant moonlight, and then I crossed the northern bridge toward Suntaba School.
I had to make sure Tomohiro was okay. Had Ishikawa backed off? No more swarming with creepy Yakuza members? After talking to Jun, I had to know. I had to know if everything was all right.
Most of the lights in the school had blinked out and it looked deserted, empty, like the shell of a distant memory.
Deserted except for the bright f luorescent lights that gleamed from the gym doorway.
I ran toward the door, my lungs about to burst and my legs about to give way. The warm light from the gym spread across the shadows of the rear courtyard, lighting up the tennis-court lines in a ghostly shade of yellow.
I stopped as I reached the open door, pressing myself against the frame as I peered in.
Tomohiro was inside, alone and decked out in kendo armor, swinging his shinai through the air. He turned, moving through the katas and kiri-kaeshis like a dancer in slow motion, silently at first, then with shouts of determination.
Even from here I could see how unsatisfied he was with the movements. He’d swipe through the air, curse as he walked back into place, then strike again. The shinai shook in his hands; he lost his grip and the sword fell an inch—not at lot, but enough to distinguish a point from a miss.
It wasn’t like him to struggle with the easier movements.
It took me five seconds to realize it was his wrist, because although the strength in a shinai swing comes from the left hand, it’s the right that guides the hit. And Tomohiro’s was going all over the place.
He swore and got back into place, shaking his head, clearing his thoughts. He thrust again, swung for a hit. He got it, but then the shinai fell again; better than I could do, but not like him at all.
I watched him struggle. I wasn’t sure what to do, whether I should let him know I was there. But why did I go all the way to Suntaba if I wasn’t even going to talk to him?
I stepped into the splash of artificial lights and walked toward him. He noticed me after a moment, lowering the shinai and pulling the men off his shoulders. I tried not to notice the way he stared at me, surprised and silent. I tried to stay focused on the fact that he was possibly avoiding me, and not to let on that I knew. Or to come off all mad at him. Something like that.
“You’re back,” he said, advancing toward me across the gym floor.
I squeezed the grain of annoyance in my mind as it struggled to get away.
“We got back this morning,” I said.
“Okaeri.” His voice was too gentle, passive almost. The whole thing felt off.
“Thanks. How about you? You’re hard at work, I see.”
“Yeah, well…” And he looked away. Was he avoiding me because he was embarrassed about his wrist? Or maybe the kissing in his living room? Now that I thought about it, it was kind of awkward.
“Um…so how was the training retreat?” I said. I’m connected to the Kami, I wanted to blurt out, but everything about him felt weird. He started to unbuckle the armor and reached for his water bottle on the bench nearby.
“Fine,” he said. “I might have learned enough of Takahashi’s moves to beat him next time.”
“Great,” I said. “And Ishikawa?”
“Ishikawa’s fast,” he said, chugging down the water. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm and screwed the lid back onto the bottle. “But there’s a good chance we won’t be paired in the tournament. Usually they don’t pit team members against each other.”
“Oh.” Pause. “So, um, how is your wrist doing?”
He hesitated and stopped pulling off his glove so it sat there half on, half off, the laces dangling down.
“I mean because of before,” I said. His eyes were glaring, like I’d hit a sore spot. But he didn’t know Jun had told me about it, right? I could just be innocently asking.
“It’s fine,” he said, grabbing the fingers of the glove and yanking it off, dropping his arm down before I could see.
Jeez, touchy much?
“That’s great,” I said. “So Ishikawa…?”
Another pause. “We’re getting along fine.”
I felt like I was standing in the middle of a quiet street, just waiting to get run over. Why was his voice so cold?
Then, as he looked into my eyes, his voice softened. He untied the tare around his waist and placed it with the rest of the armor. I noticed the new headband in his hair, not a bloodstain on it. He pulled it backward off his head, and his copper hair flopped down around his ears.
“Did you have fun in Miyajima?”
“Yeah, it was okay.” I might be a Kami. I couldn’t say it. It felt wrong, like I was intruding on the pain he suffered. But Niichan’s alternative, keeping my distance from Tomohiro—it scared me more. “I…I went to a Shinto shrine. I think maybe I learned why the ink moves.”
“What?”
I swallowed. “What if I’m a Kami, Tomo?”
He stared at me for a moment.
“You can’t be,” he said.
“What if there’s some other way, though? What if I’m connected somehow?”
“Do you have nightmares?” he said. “Like the ones I told you about?”
