Ink

Chapter 15

I grabbed Tomohiro’s shoulders and shook them.

“Tomo!” I shrieked, but his head rolled from side to side as I shook. He coughed, and ink spilled out of his mouth.

A meaty pair of hands grabbed me and yanked me backward.

“Forget it!” I heard Ishikawa say. “Let’s just get out of here!”

“Screw you!” yelled Sunglasses. His thick fingers cut into my arms as I struggled. “You gonna let a freak that powerful just walk around? He’s gonna hunt us down. Let’s deal with this now.”

“No Kami, no pay,” said Cigarette. He reached over and pulled Tomohiro off the ground.

“Let go!” I screamed. Cigarette hoisted Tomohiro over his shoulder, bracing himself under the weight. He headed toward the unmarked truck I’d hidden behind, and threw the doors open with a sour metal clang.

Ishikawa got to his feet, his hands squeezed into fists. His face was pale and he stumbled as he moved forward.

“What makes you think we can control him, huh?” Ishikawa said. His eyes were wild and full of fear. I’d seen him scared before, but not like this. I could see his fists shaking as he struggled to keep them balled. “I know Yuuto. He’ll leave us alone if we leave now.” Cigarette slumped Tomohiro across the floor of the truck, then hopped in behind and dragged him by his shoulders into the darkness.

“Tomo!” I yelled. I kicked my shoes into Sunglasses’s legs over and over, but it was like he couldn’t even feel it.

“Having second thoughts, Satoshi?” Sunglasses said. “You know what we think of cowards like you.”

“It’s not like that,” he said. And then Sunglasses yanked me over to the truck. “Shit, man,” Ishikawa said. “Leave Katie here.”

“So she can report us, you mean?” said Cigarette. “She’s the missing piece, if you didn’t notice. She’s the freaking ink magnet. The inkwell.” He emerged from the shadows, lighting a new cigarette and holding it between two fingers.

Fear rattled down my spine and spread its icy grip to every limb. I knew I was kicking, but I couldn’t feel my legs moving anymore. The darkness of the truck loomed closer and closer, until Sunglasses threw me into it. I skidded across the metal floor, cold and studded with metal bolts that caught and sliced across my finger. My shoulder ached, but I sat up as quickly as I could, lunging toward the doors Cigarette was closing.

“Greene!” yelled Ishikawa.

I saw Sunglasses turn around and slug Ishikawa in the jaw, and then the doors slammed in my face.

“Let me out!” I banged my fists on the doors over and over. The sound of a metal bolt sliding into place echoed in the emptiness of the truck. I hit the door again.

Footsteps, the driver’s door opening and banging shut, the engine roaring to life.

“Shit!” I shrieked, hot tears blurring in my eyes. My cut finger burned as I slammed my fists into the metal over and over.

The truck lurched and I tumbled backward, half on top of Tomohiro.

I cried out in panic for a minute, Tomohiro’s limp legs pressed against mine. I screamed at my brain to think.

My keitai.

I grabbed it out of my pocket and f lipped it open, the LCD screen illuminating the darkness of the truck. I dialed 911, pressed the send button and squeezed the phone against my ear.

Come on, come on…

A strange beeping noise and a recorded woman’s voice babbling in Japanese.

What the crap? I dialed again.

How can the number not be in service?

And then it dawned on me. The emergency number in Japan is not 911.

But what the hell is it?

I stared at my phone, willing myself to know the number to call.

But I didn’t.

I stared down at Tomohiro, putting my hand on the small of his back and shaking him gently.

“Tomo?” I said, my voice trembling.

The wings were still there, feathers of ink sprawled over him and draped onto the floor. There was a gaping hole in the wings where my hand touched his back. I lifted my fingers; the ink felt greasy and warm as it dripped down my hand and over the blood from my cut.

“Tomo.” I shook him gently. But he was out cold, and the truck was driving us farther and farther into trouble.

My keitai screen blinked out suddenly, the truck dark except for a faint candlelike glimmer around the ink melting off Tomohiro’s back.

I scrolled through the names in my address book, thinking who else I could call. Diane was in Osaka and I didn’t have a contact number with me. I stared at each name as it illuminated on the screen.

There weren’t many of them to choose from.

Then Tanaka flashed up on the display.

I mashed the buttons and pressed the phone to my ear.

It rang and rang. The truck lurched to the left and picked up speed. The ink and blood dripped off my wrist and onto my keitai. I switched hands and rubbed the gunk off on my jeans, making a big, ugly splotch.

“Moshi moshi?” said the voice on the phone, and I was too shaken up to realize it didn’t sound familiar.

“Tanaka,” I blurted out, “call the police. These Yakuza attacked us and we’re in a truck and I don’t know where they’re taking us.” I choked up and started to cry.

And then I realized from the confusion on the other end that something was wrong.

“Katie?”

It wasn’t Tanaka. It was Takahashi.

I’d hit the wrong button and got the wrong name. But it didn’t matter, because anyone could help us.

“Jun,” I said. “Please help me.”

“Oh god, Katie. Are you okay? Where are you?”

“I don’t know!” I said through tears. My throat felt thick and I could barely get the words out. “We were at Sunpu Park.

I think maybe we’re on a highway. We’re moving really fast.”

“Don’t panic,” Jun said, and I felt like smacking him. Don’t panic? That’s your best advice? “I’ll call the police. Katie, did they say why they took you? Was it that Ishikawa guy again?”

“Tomohiro’s here, too,” I sobbed.

“Yuu’s there?” Silence. “Katie, do you know what they want?”

I opened my mouth but clamped it shut again. I cursed silently. I’d almost given away everything. Did it even matter anymore? They might be able to use Tomohiro, but not me.

They’d— Oh my god. They’d kill me.

“Jun, please help me.”

“Katie, I’m going to hang up so I can call the police. Try to keep your phone with you, okay? Put it in manner mode so they won’t find it. I’m coming for you. Hold tight.”

I didn’t want to hang up, to sever the only link I had to help. But I didn’t have to. Jun hung up first and my LCD

dimmed, leaving me in darkness again.

“Tomo,” I said, flipping my keitai closed and open again, and resting it beside us. The wings had melted, little pools of black trailing away from him, turning to dust and lifting slowly like dull fireflies.

His eyes were closed, his copper hair lined with sweat and clinging to the sides of his face. There was a dark pool near his mouth and I panicked. I grabbed the keitai and put it beside his face, then breathed out in relief.

It was ink dripping out of the corner of his mouth. Creepy, but it wasn’t blood, so I figured he was okay.

I looked at my finger again to see how bad the cut was.

It had stopped bleeding, but the truck was rusty. I hoped it wouldn’t get infected. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a tissue, wrapped it around the cut and pressed my fingers together to hold it there.

I checked Tomohiro again and made sure he was breathing. Then I sat back and stared at the truck, looking for any means of escape.

The keitai screen blacked out again, and this time I folded it up, shoving it into my pocket. As chilling as it was to sit here in the dark, I needed to save the battery.

The truck pulled us forward, and I rocked back and forth in the darkness, nothing to do but wait.

“Katie?”

The voice startled me in the darkness, and I shot forward onto my hands and knees. “Tomo?”

He groaned, and I heard the slide of fabric as he pushed himself up. I lifted the keitai out of my pocket and saw him hunched over in the dim light.

“What happened?” he said, rubbing his jaw.

“You passed out,” I said. “They took us somewhere. I don’t know where. They killed the engine an hour ago, but no one’s come for us yet.”

He moaned, running his fingers through his hair. Even sweaty, bloody and shoved in the back of a gangster truck, he still made my stomach jittery when he did that. He made a face, lolling his tongue out. “Ugh, my mouth tastes like a pen exploded.”

Okay, a little less attractive.

And then he snapped out of it and looked at me.

“Are you okay?” he said, and my keitai blinked out. “Did they hurt you?”

“I’m fine,” I said, folding the phone and shoving it into my pocket. I felt the warmth of his breath as he moved closer, his palms sliding up my arms to my shoulders. The rough cal-luses from kendo practice scraped against my skin followed by the towellike wristband covering his scar.

“What happened?” he said again, his voice raw. “I remember shouting your name, and then this intense…pain, like I was burning alive.”

“I don’t know what happened,” I said. Even trying to think back to it made me shudder. “There was ink everywhere. It made these…wings, on your back. And some kind of ugly, horned face above your head.”

“Wings? A face?”

I smirked. “It scared the crap out of Ishikawa.”

Tomohiro’s voice was stone. “Good.”

“He told them to leave us alone after that. But they didn’t listen.”

“Katie. You have to get out of here.” His cool fingertips traced down my arms, sending shivers up my spine. They rested on my fingers, hesitated on my makeshift tissue bandage.

“Yeah, because I’ve just been sitting around in this truck for fun,” I said. “Like there’s a way out.”

There was silence, and I felt a little guilty for being snarky.

Just a little.

There was a distant sound, a crash not too far away. My heart jumped and I felt like I was going to puke.

“They’re coming,” I said.

“I’ll protect you,” Tomohiro said, squeezing my hands in his. “Go to the back of the truck.” He dropped my hands and stood. A light flipped on outside the truck, a little stream of light filtering between the truck doors. I could see Tomohiro’s hands balled into fists.

“You’re kidding, right?” I said. “They’ll kill you.”

“Go to the back of the truck.”

“Not a chance.” My legs felt like they were made of stone, but I numbly dragged myself toward him.

The doors flung open to blinding light. I’d been sitting in the truck for so long that pins and needles started to spark in my legs. I stumbled backward.

My eyes adjusted and I saw three men, two of them covered in rainbows of sprawling tattoos. They held guns pointed straight at Tomohiro, and the chill spread through me.

Guns are illegal in Japan. Most police don’t even carry them.

Which meant the police would be no match for these guys, even if they knew where to find us.

“Get out,” said the third man, his hands folded behind his back. He wore a black business suit and looked fairly normal—almost pleasant. “And don’t try anything.”

At first Tomohiro didn’t move. My brain practically screamed at him.

Then his feet dragged forward.

One of the guns followed his movement. The other one pointed at me.

Tomohiro’s eyes went wide. “Let her go,” he said.

I blinked back hot tears.

“It’s okay,” the suit guy said, staring at me. He lifted his hand, and the gun pointing at me lowered. “We’re just businessmen here. We’re hoping to come to an arrangement.” He smiled, reaching his hand out to help me out of the truck.

“We don’t want to do anything drastic, either.”

I stared at his chubby fingers until he pulled them back again.

“The thing is,” he said to me, as I sat on the edge of the truck and slid myself down, “we don’t know what he’s capable of. Even he doesn’t know. So we’re just being cautious.”

“Leave us alone,” I said.

The man didn’t say anything, but the tattooed, gun-toting guys motioned at us to get moving.

The room was a big parking garage, and our steps sounded hollow against the concrete floor. They marched us through a side door, into a maze of a house that felt way too big to be in Japan. Golden light filtered through the rice-paper walls as we approached a large tatami room. The shouji paper door stood before us, and as the businessman slid it aside, the full glare of the meeting room shone through the dark hallway.

We stumbled through the shouji, pushed by the men with guns.

There were about twenty men in the room and some tough-looking women. Some of them had ragged haircuts, tattoos racing down their arms and vanishing under their too-tight vests. Others looked friendlier, wearing suits like the businessman and smiling as we entered. Four rows of low-set tables were spread across the floor, some of the men kneeling at them and shoving sushi into their mouths with silver chopsticks. A Mohawked guy stood in the corner chugging a bottle of green tea as he spoke what sounded like rapid Korean with one of the businessmen.

And kneeling alone at one of the tables, looking dejected, was Ishikawa, a big, ugly bruise circling his right eye and three wide scratches across his jaw. His nose had swelled up so much he looked like the cartoon Anpanman.

“Satoshi,” Tomohiro said under his breath, but Ishikawa stared intensely at the tabletop, grimacing.

“Have a seat,” said the businessman, and a few of the others scattered to clear a table for us. Tomohiro and I just stared at him. One of the men cocked a gun and started to raise it. The businessman smiled and gestured at the table with his arm.

I wished I could punch him in the gut. But Tomohiro’s slender fingers curled around my wrist and he pulled me with him toward the table. We knelt down, two tough-looking guys closing in the sides of the table. At least Sunglasses and Cigarette were nowhere to be seen.

“We haven’t been properly introduced,” the businessman said. “You can call me Hanchi.” Tomohiro looked down at the tabletop, his hands still in fists.

Hanchi waited for a minute, looking at us thoughtfully.

Then he drew in a quick breath.

“Well,” he said, “I guess we should get down to it. We’re not here to threaten you, Yuu. We think you are a boy of incredible talent. Ishikawa speaks highly of you, you know.”

Tomohiro said nothing. The Korean guy came over and slammed a bottle of green tea in front of me. I looked up at his face, but he was already turning away.

“I think we could do a lot for each other,” said Hanchi.

“Not interested.” Tomohiro’s voice sounded so dark it almost made me shiver. It was like his don’t-give-a-crap attitude but more intimidating, like he could actually hold his own against these guys.

“Ah,” said Hanchi. “But I don’t think you’ve considered what a spectacle you made of yourself when you sketched that dragon.”

Tomohiro’s eyes went wide for a moment before he forced the expression off his face. I wondered if anyone else noticed.

“We can protect you, Yuu. We can take care of those close to you. We can protect your girlfriend.”

In a sharp voice, he said, “Ex-girlfriend. She’s not part of this.” The word ripped through me; it was probably a trick to throw them off, but I remembered then that we hadn’t made up. Maybe we were broken up. Or maybe he was protecting me the only way he could. So how come it still hurt so much to hear it?

And reality check, why do I even care in a room with gangsters and loaded guns? Still working on the priorities, I see, Greene.

“Ah,” said Hanchi. “Well. But I’ve heard you still draw inspiration from her, so the specifics don’t matter.” He muttered something and one of the men tossed a pad of paper in front of Tomohiro. Hanchi reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pen, clicking the end and placing it down on the pad.

“What’s this for?” Tomohiro said.

Hanchi smiled. “You don’t have to pretend with us. You’re not the first Kami we’ve come across. But it’s been a while.

Most of them can’t get the drawing off the page, Yuu. I know you can do better.”

“What’s a Kami?” Tomohiro said in a bored tone. He looked up at Hanchi, and I could see the dark challenge that radiated from Tomohiro’s narrowed eyes. A slick smile curved its way onto his lips.

What the hell? It better be an act, I thought. These guys could kill us, and he’s enjoying it?

Hanchi frowned, squeezing his hand into a fist.

“Don’t play around, Yuu,” he said. The friendliness was starting to drop from his voice.

Tomohiro reached for the tea bottle and twisted the cap, chugging down a mouthful and wiping his mouth with the back of his arm.

“So what’s that for?” Hanchi smirked, pointing at the wristband.

Shit.

“I play kendo,” Tomohiro said. “I have a weak wrist.”

Hanchi motioned at the Korean guy, who stalked toward Tomohiro and yanked the wristband off his arm, revealing the stitched-up gash along his wrist for all of them to gape at. It was pink around the edges, crisscrossed by the dozens of other cuts and scars that trailed up his arm.

“Those kendo injuries?” the Korean guy sneered.

“I’m a cutter,” Tomohiro said through gritted teeth. “I have entrance exams coming up. It’s stressful. You do the math.”

Hanchi laughed. “Sorry, Yuu,” he said. “We’re not buying it. I heard from Ishikawa you used to be quite the artist in the day. Let’s start with something simple.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wallet. He spread the leather and flipped through, the bills slicking against each other as he pulled one out. He bent over the table and spread the ten thousand yen at the top of the pad. “Draw this,” he said. “If you can do it, you can keep it. My gift to you.”

“I can’t draw,” said Tomohiro.

The Korean guy pulled a gun from his back and slowly lifted it to me. My heart drummed in my ears.

“Can you draw now?” Hanchi said.

Tomohiro stared for a minute, his fists shaking.

“If you’re not a Kami, then why is it a problem?” asked Hanchi.

The Korean guy cocked the gun.

“Shit, Yuuto, draw the damn bill!” Ishikawa shouted. I looked over at his swollen face, riddled with blue-and-yellow bruises. He looked so defeated, so small among these punks.

Tomohiro’s fingers slid along the paper until they reached the pen. He closed them gently around it, lifting it upright to draw.

It’s worth my life, but it isn’t worth yours.

“Tomo, don’t draw,” I whispered.

He didn’t answer. And then his hand slid across the page, the patchwork of scars gliding along the table edge as we watched, his secret exposed to everyone.

He sketched slowly, looking from the bill to the page. Beads of sweat trailed down his forehead and clung to his bangs. I knew he was trying to control the ink, to disguise what he was. But with me beside him, he didn’t have a chance.

He shaded in the details, sketching in the two pheasants on the back of the note. I saw the edges of the bill flicker, almost move. He hesitated for a minute, his head falling forward and his bangs fanning into his eyes. Then he shook them out and kept shading.

The corner of the sketch was curling up, the way the real bill did. The pheasants starting flicking their heads around, pecking at the ground.

“Tomo, stop,” I whispered. I looked at his eyes. They were flooding with black, his pupils growing too large. “You have to stop.”

I reached over and pinched the back of his leg as hard as I could.

He dropped the pen and it rolled in a slow circle across the page.

“Let’s see,” said Hanchi, reaching over to pick the paper up.

As he lifted the pad, the sketch fell right off the page and fluttered to the table.

Hanchi reached over and picked up the bill.

“Su-ge,” he said in a low voice. Everyone watched in stunned silence.

The sketch looked just like the bill. There was still a drawing on the paper, but it looked blurry and made my head ache when I stared at it.

“One problem, though,” Hanchi said as he flipped it back and forth in his hands. He held the note right in front of Tomo hiro’s eyes. “It’s black-and-white.”

“It’s a pen sketch,” I said. “What did you expect?”

“I can’t use this,” Hanchi said. “Are you messing around with me?”

Tomohiro shook his head, breathing heavily. A trail of ink trickled from his shirtsleeve down to his wrist, where it dripped onto the paper.

Splotch, splotch.

“All my drawings are black-and-white,” Tomohiro said.

“I only do calligraphy and ink wash.”

“This is no good,” Hanchi said. “Draw something else.

Get him a sumi and an inkstone.”

“No!” I said, then clamped my hand over my mouth. Hanchi raised an eyebrow.

“Ah, I think we’ve hit on something here,” he said with a smile. “Your…abilities only work with raw ink.”

“Look,” Tomohiro snapped. “I’m not interested in working for the Yakuza, and I don’t know what Satoshi told you, but I can’t make dragons appear in the sky. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

“You just sketched counterfeit money, Yuu.”

“And you saw how pathetic it was. I’m no good at this, okay? Let us go.”

Hanchi sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Let’s try again, hmm?”

Sunglasses came in, and the sight of him sent prickles up my spine. He put down an inkstone, a sumi ink stick and a sumi brush for Tomohiro, while the Korean guy brought a small dish of water. They backed into the group of Yakuza watching curiously.

“So you can’t draw money. There are other things we need.

Drugs, guns, your basic underworld stereotypes. In fact, as long as the other gangs know we have a member who can create monsters—that alone is all the power we need to run things properly.

“So,” said Hanchi, reaching behind his back and pulling out a gun, “let’s try again.” He pulled out the clip and reset it with a loud click. Then he tossed the gun onto the table.

I watched as it spun around on the glossy surface, slowing until the end pointed at Tomohiro. “And there’s no point in trying anything,” Hanchi added. “Gun’s empty. So draw.”

Tomohiro picked up the sumi brush, gliding his fingers over the length of it, plying the bristles back and forth.

“Horsehair,” he said without looking up.

“Ganbare,” said Hanchi. Do your best.

Tomohiro placed the brush back on the table. He gripped the sumi ink stick tightly and moved it to the suzuri inkstone.

His hands shook just a little, but no one seemed to notice but me. He took a little water and poured it on the suzuri, then started grinding the sumi. The ink bled into the water, making it thick and dark. His hand twisted and twisted around the inkstone, the scraping filling the silent room. His bangs slipped from behind his ear and fanned downward, hiding his eyes from me.

I felt so powerless it was driving me crazy.

As Tomohiro ground the ink, the Yakuza began to crowd the table, curiosity overtaking them. Even Ishikawa rose, creeping forward on socked feet to peer over our shoulders.

I wished I could sock him one, but I guessed it wouldn’t be the best move. I’d have to punch him later.

If there was a later.

The ink thickened and pooled in the suzuri stone. A faint sheen swirled through the ink, the edges of the liquid floating in ways they shouldn’t. At first my brain tried to ignore it, and no one else seemed to notice except Ishikawa, whose face crumpled in confusion. But I’d watched Tomohiro draw before, and I knew when the ink stopped being ink and started being…well, something else.

Tomohiro stopped, pouring a little of the ink into a bowl and adding some water for a lighter gray shade. I pinched the back of his leg. This isn’t art class, idiot. Why put in the effort?

But as the Yakuza leaned in, I did, too, and when I saw his eyes, the pupils were huge. And growing.

Shit. Those alien eyes. I’d lost him now.

“Tomo, stop,” I said, pinching him harder.

He said nothing, staring down at the paper with those vast, vacant eyes. He blotted the brush and dipped it into the black ink. He lifted it in a slow arc to the hanshi paper.

He drew a stroke downward, then one sideways.

Each stroke was delicate, determined. The whole room watched in silence.

He blotted the brush, shaded the handle of the gun with the gray ink. The gun was more artistic and less realistic than the ten-thousand-yen note. I hoped the design was part of some plan he had, but the look in his eyes terrified me. The Kami blood in him had taken over.

Now his eyes were gleaming, his hand moving faster and faster.

I’d lost him, just like I’d lost him when he sketched the dragon. If bottled ink had been too much for him then, how the hell could he handle hand-ground sumi ink?

The answer rang out in my head.

He couldn’t.

Damn it.

The gun started spinning on the page slowly, his hand following it around, painting it as it moved.

“Tomo,” I said louder. “Stop.” I grabbed his arm with my hands, and his whole body shuddered. He jolted his arm back with so much force that I fell backward; he barely missed a stroke.

Ink spread from my fingertips down my arms, coating my skin with a black sheen.

“Katie!” Ishikawa’s bleached hair loomed over me, his face twisted with concern. His hands reached out to pull me up.

“Don’t touch me!” I yelled. When I looked at my arms again, the ink was gone.

The Yakuza didn’t notice. They were staring at Tomohiro and getting nervous. The gun was spinning slowly again, pointing at each Yakuza as it went past and stopping for a brief moment. They leaned back, eyes wide.

“Yuuto, what happened to your eyes?” said Ishikawa.

“Hanchi!” said the Korean guy, but Hanchi waved it away.

“Wait,” he said.

Tomohiro kept drawing, filling in the sketch, adding depth. Ishikawa looked at my arms with their lack of ink.

He stared at Tomohiro’s alien eyes and at the drawing.

The ink was dripping sideways off the paper. It was reaching slowly, drop by drop, toward me.

“Yuuto,” Ishikawa whispered, like he finally got it. Like he finally realized how much danger we were in. “Yuuto, listen to Katie and stop.”

I wanted to tell him to piss off, but even more I wanted Tomohiro to listen.

“Yuuto,” Ishikawa said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Tomohiro thrust his arm back and Ishikawa tumbled into a group of Yakuza. They collapsed into the table behind them, and two of its legs shattered under the weight.

“Hanchi!” the Korean said again. This time Hanchi looked worried.

“Yuu, that’s enough,” he said, but Tomohiro’s hand whirred between the ink bowls and the hanshi paper. “Mou ii!” he said again. Nothing.

Hanchi’s eyes narrowed. He reached forward, grabbed the Korean’s gun and pointed it at Tomohiro.

“Yamero!” he shouted. Stop!

And suddenly the gun stopped spinning. The sketch rotated upright, so that the gun barrel pointed directly at Tomohiro.

And I screamed as I saw the trigger pulling back.

“Yuuto!” shouted Ishikawa and leaped forward.

Bang.

I screamed.

Tomohiro and Ishikawa collapsed to the floor.

Blood streamed up Ishikawa’s shoulder, trickling through his bleached-white hair and pooling in his ear.

Another loud bang shook the building.

“What the hell was that?” shouted Hanchi.

“Hanchi!” yelled Sunglasses, pointing at the doorway.

At least twenty snakes made of ink wriggled under the rice-paper door.

Only, Tomohiro hadn’t drawn them.

“Sato,” Tomohiro groaned, and I slumped Ishikawa off him.

“Tomo,” I said as I clawed at his chest and arms searching for wounds. But we could both see Ishikawa sprawled unconscious on the floor, the blood soaking through his shirt.

More and more snakes streamed in, and something was crashing through the hallway toward us. The Yakuza scattered, firing at the snakes, screaming as the papery serpents wrapped around their ankles and sank in their inky teeth.

“We have to go!” I said. I grabbed Tomohiro’s arm and pulled him up with me, but he crouched back down again.

“We can’t leave him!” We stared at Ishikawa and how pathetic he looked, how the blood was retracing the lines back down to his shoulder now that Tomohiro was pulling him upright, the stark red threading through his white hair.

Tomohiro ducked under Ishikawa’s injured arm and I pulled on the other. Together we adjusted him over Tomohiro’s shoulders.

Ishikawa groaned.

“Sato,” said Tomohiro. “Come on, man, help me here.”

Ishikawa wrapped one arm tighter around Tomohiro. He tried to wrap the other and yelled out when he couldn’t.

“It’s burning,” he rasped. “I-te, i-te!”

“It’s okay,” Tomohiro said. “Let’s go.”

The crashing sound got louder, and suddenly the whole shouji door collapsed into the room, a serpent as tall as me hissing at the shrieking Yakuza.

Ink dripped off his fangs and pooled on the floor.

And behind him, a man dressed in black, blond highlights tucked behind his pierced ear.

What the hell?

Takahashi Jun.