Rain

15

I could barely drag myself up for school the next day. How could I face math and biology and chemistry when my world was crumbling? I considered being sick for the day, telling Diane I had a fever and staying under the covers and pretending the world had stopped spinning. But I couldn’t hide from this forever. If I stayed home, it would look bad to Suzuki-sensei, and it would be yet another red circle on my list of reasons to go to an international school. I couldn’t lose the rest of my life, and so I pulled out my school uniform and tied my red handkerchief around my neck, desperate to hang on to the fragments I had left.

Besides, at least I could see Tomo at school.

Running the other way was not going to be easy.

I walked to school slowly, my blazer buttoned against the fall chill and my kneesocks pulled as high as I could stretch them.

I thought maybe Tomo would have early-morning kendo practice for the seniors, but of course he had the day off, since the prefecture tournament was finished. So when I walked past the Suntaba School Gate, he was there at the bike racks, leaning against the wall and talking to Ishikawa. Their bruised faces matched like a sad pair of twins. Tomo had his blazer completely buttoned, too, and his sleeve cuffs turned down. He’d have to with all those bruises and bite marks.

I watched the two of them together for a minute. A girl stopped to talk to them, her black hair curling around her shoulders. It was like an electric shock pulsed through my whole body. She moved on with a friendly wave, the talk completely innocent.

Oh god. What would it be like when Tomo got a new girlfriend? My heart twisted and felt like it dropped into my stomach.

But he wouldn’t, I told myself. It was too risky, so I didn’t have to imagine it. He’d be alone...but that was a horrible thought, too.

His eyes caught mine across the courtyard and I felt frozen, thinking of the first time I saw him at the gate that day, the way he’d slouched like he was doing now. He stepped toward me like he had that time. He shoes made the same click-click-click on the courtyard concrete. The breeze picked up the scent of his vanilla hair gel and the miso still on his lips from breakfast.

I wanted to kiss it off, but instead I stood and tried to breathe. I watched the momiji leaves swirl lazily from their branches and down to the roof over the hundreds of bikes parked in the racks.

“Ohayo,” Tomo said, his voice velvet and honey and mirin syrupy sweet. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to collapse into his arms.

Instead, I breathed in. And then I breathed out. And my heart beat in my ears and clawed at my sides like a caged dragon.

“Morning,” I said. It felt like a flock of wagtails pecking at my arms and legs.

“Doing okay?”

“Yeah.” The sour sound of furin chiming in my head.

“I brought you something.” He reached into his blazer pocket and pulled his hand out in a fist so I couldn’t see what he was holding.

“A breakup present?” I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it was hard enough talking to him right now. Why was he giving me a gift? I thought he’d wanted me to run the other way.

He shook his head, not meeting my eyes. “Oi,” he said. “It’s not like that. We don’t have a choice.” He moved his hand toward me and waited, so I held out my palm. He opened his hand, his fingers brushing against mine.

It was like living in one of the Basho haikus we’d learned in Japanese class. The beauty of the dying flower.

On dead branches

Crows remain perched

At autumn’s end.

The gift fell from his opened hand into my palm. It was a tiny pouch made of pale yellow fabric, with pink cherry blossoms weaving through the cloth. At the top of the pouch hung a little golden bell and then a braided pink-and-yellow strap for attaching it to a bag or phone. Pink kanji were embroidered on the front, reading from top to bottom.

“It’s an omamori,” Tomo said. “A charm from Sengen Jinja. I picked it up this morning.”

“You made it through the gate?” I said, but he shook his head.

“I went around.” He winked, like it was funny.

It wasn’t.

“It reminded me of the yukata you wore to Abekawa Hanabi. That moment when I knew we didn’t have to say goodbye.”

My throat was dry, my voice cracked. “We are saying goodbye, Tomo.”

“I know,” he said. “But I didn’t know that then. I just knew we had possibility. The possibility to choose.”

It seemed so long ago. I remembered the stall with the furin chimes. The sound of possibility, the vendor had said. The chance to choose how your life would go.

“Give me your keitai.”

I reached into my book bag and handed it over. He looped the charm strap through the top of my phone, the little bell jingling like a lost cat.

“What does it say?” I said, looking at the kanji.

Tomo’s lips were dry. He looked like he hadn’t slept all night.

“Yaku-yoke mamoru,” he said. “‘Protection from Evil.’”

The chill of it broke my heart. “You’re not evil.”

“I am,” he said. “I am.”

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to break into a million pieces. He put the phone back in my hand. The little bell jingled.

“May I walk you to class, Katie?” My name melted like sugar on his tongue.

“Okay,” I whispered.

We walked stiffly beside each other into the genkan. We changed our shoes in silence, on opposite sides of the room assigned to our school years. We joined up in front of the door to the school. He slid it open, and I stepped forward to walk through.

His fingers slid around my wrist and tugged me back gently.

I looked at him, the touch of his warm skin shocking me out of my defenses. I couldn’t handle this. We needed to just rip the bandage off, didn’t we? This was torture.

We were standing where I’d seen him for the first time, on the stairs where Myu had slapped him, where his drawings had rained down around me.

“Suki,” he whispered, his eyes gleaming. I love you.

“Suki,” I said.

And then his fingers slipped away from my wrist, like sand in the empty top of an hourglass. Our time was up.

“Sayonara,” he said. No one ever said that kind of goodbye except when things were final, when they were over.

“No,” I said in English. I refused to say it. I wouldn’t. I stepped up onto the school floor and turned toward my room. He followed me like a ghost.

I walked slowly, not wanting to reach the room. Then it would be over.

It was already over.

Everyone stared at us as we passed. I guess we both looked like a wreck. But they were staring way too intently—how would they know we broke up? I touched my hand to my face. Was something up?

Tomo noticed, too, and glanced at me with a confused look.

Maybe they’d heard about the kendo tournament? But no one was congratulating him on his incredible matches or perfect form. No one was saying anything loud enough that I could hear.

They were whispering.

“Something’s wrong,” I said, and we peeked in the next classroom.

A group of second years stood staring at the front of their homeroom, hands dropped to their sides or covering their mouths. None of them paid attention to us arriving.

I stepped into the room.

Giant kanji made of thick ink dripped on the front wall of the class, spanning the chalkboards from floor to ceiling. The ink oozed slowly down the characters like blood and pooled on the floor with an oily sheen.

Demon Son, it read. You cannot hide.

“Oh my god,” I whispered, my eyes wide. I’d never seen anything like this before.

Behind me I heard a crash, and I turned. Tomo was shaking, his book bag on the floor with its contents spilling out. His eyes were huge and horrified.

“Katie,” Tanaka sang from the hallway, walking over to us. “Tomo-kun.” He grinned. “Wrong classroom, dorks.”

“What the hell is this?” I said, pointing at the ominous kanji.

“Some kind of stupid prank,” Tanaka said. “It’s in all the classrooms.”

Tomo’s words wavered, his voice barely audible. “All of them?”

“Yeah.”

Tomohiro bolted across the hallway, and I followed. He raced in the doorway, where another group of students stood gawking at their ink-coated chalkboard.

There is no escape from betrayal. You will kill.

I lifted my hand to my mouth as I started to retch. This couldn’t be happening.

Tomo burst from the room and raced down the hall; I chased after him. He sped toward my classroom, 1-D. He slid the door open so hard it slammed into the wall.

I entered the room behind him.

There is only death. She must die.

It couldn’t mean me, could it? It couldn’t.

My legs collapsed under me.

Someone caught me as I went down. All I could think was how different his arms were from Tomohiro’s.

“Katie!” Tanaka said. “You okay?” Tomo couldn’t take his eyes off the board.

I steadied myself against Tanaka. He was strong for someone so lean and willowy. He helped me stand as Yuki twisted between the rows of desks to reach us. “I know,” Tanaka said. “It’s bad. But don’t get too upset, okay? It’s just a stupid prank.”

I wish.

Yuki rested her hand on my shoulder. “Who would do something like this?”

Suzuki-sensei entered our classroom, stopping abruptly as he stared at the giant kanji.

There was silence for a moment while he was as stunned as the rest of us.

Tomohiro looked deathly pale. I could see his hands shaking from here.

Suzuki’s face turned bright red. “Who is responsible?” he said, his voice boiling over like a rice cooker.

No one answered. I chanced another look at Tomohiro. He needed to get out of here before people noticed him. He didn’t belong in our classroom; what if they accused him of writing the kanji? Tanaka had told me before that Tomo’s calligraphy style was really easy to pick out. Was this it? And was this his fault? Like the fireworks, this was ink that had spun out of control. It had to be him—it couldn’t be anyone else.

“Who is responsible?” shrieked Suzuki, and the sound jolted the class to movement.

“We don’t know, sir,” Tanaka said. “It’s in every classroom.”

“Tanaka, get the headmaster.”

Tanaka nodded, then looked at me with concern. “Will you be okay?”

Yuki reached for my arm. “I’ll help her,” she said. “Go.” I looked at her gratefully. I probably wouldn’t collapse again, but I was glad to have her beside me.

“Yuu Tomohiro,” barked Suzuki. “Get to your own classroom. Now.”

Tomo didn’t move. He stared at the board, transfixed.

“Who did this?” Tomo said, his voice wavering.

I stared at him. What did he mean? He knew it was the ink, didn’t he?

His voice shook with anger. “Who the hell thought this was funny?” He looked around the room, his eyes narrowed and fiery. My stomach flipped with fear. Don’t lose control, I pleaded in my head. You’ll only make it worse.

“Yuu,” Suzuki snapped. “Out.”

“Maybe you did it,” said a voice at the back of the classroom. Everything turned to ice as I stared at the student who’d spoken up. “We heard what happened at the prefecture tournament,” he said. “The ink that splattered on the ground when you knocked that boy over. You could write kanji like these. Didn’t you used to be in Calligraphy Club with Ichirou?”

So someone else had seen it, and now everything was unraveling.

Another student chimed in, “I saw the police take you away after. I heard you bashed in Takahashi’s hand so you’d win.”

“That’s a lie,” I said before I could stop myself.

“I heard he had to transfer schools because he almost killed a kid,” said another classmate.

“Enough,” ordered Suzuki. “Yuu, to your classroom. The rest of you, keep it to yourselves until the headmaster gets here. We don’t know who’s responsible, and pointing the finger at each other won’t help.”

Tomohiro shook, heaving in deep breaths. He stared at the last boy who’d spoken. “You don’t know anything,” he said. “I didn’t do any of this. I would never hurt anyone.” His eyes flashed to me. “Never.”

“You did,” the boy said. “You almost killed him.”

“It wasn’t me!” Tomo shouted. “This isn’t me!” He stormed to the front of the classroom, knocking over the desks in his way. They crashed to the ground on their sides. I cringed against Yuki at the sound of it.

“Yuu-san,” Yuki called out, but he didn’t listen.

He reached for the huge kanji that said , “death.” He pressed his palms against the chalkboard and smeared the ink around, blurring the strokes of the kanji together until it said nothing at all.

“Yamenasai!” ordered Suzuki, but Tomo didn’t stop. He moved on to the next, his hands stained black as he crossed out the kanji. It splattered around like a modern-art project, dripping down his arms onto his white school shirt and the cuffs of his blazer, dripping onto his bare skin where the top buttons had been left unbuttoned.

“Yuu, yamenasai!”

The tears blurred in my eyes as I watched him. He stalked out of the room and to the class across the hall, swiping his hands through the ink on their wall, the blackness of it dripping in his hair and onto his gold buttons.

“Chigau!” he yelled. It’s different, it meant. It’s not true. It’s not who I am. Every meaning of defiance held in that single word. “Chigau! Chigau!”

“Tomo,” I cried, staggering across the hallway. “Stop.”

He looked at me, and the pain in his eyes hurt so much that I felt it. I could feel the pain in my heart, as if it were my own.

His body heaved with his breath, and then he took off running down the hallway. I followed; I couldn’t lose him, not now.

“Tomo!” I shouted, but he didn’t slow down. I could hear his cries of anguish as he raced through the hall, leaving a trail of ink behind him.

He entered the boys’ change room by the gym, where he always prepared for Kendo Club. I pushed the door in behind him. I thought for a minute and locked the door behind me. If he was going to be taken over by the ink, then I needed to salvage what was left of his secret.

Along the white tiled wall ran a row of faucets, all sharing the same deep troughlike sink. Tomo fumbled with the tap, his slippery ink-covered hands shaking too much to turn it on. The tears streaked down his face, carving lines through the splatters on his face, trailing along the edges of the bruises.

The tap finally turned, and he reached his hands under the flow to wash the ink away.

But there was no water.

Ink poured from the faucet, spraying against the bottom of the trough and coating Tomohiro’s hands black.

He wailed and turned on the next faucet, and more ink poured out.

“Tomo,” I said, reaching for the faucet near me. We turned them all, and the ink flowed in. I twisted the handles shut but they kept pouring, the trough filling up with blackness, ink spilling over the sides and dripping onto the floor.

Tomo let out a scream and hit the side of the trough with his palms. He turned and slammed a bathroom stall door as hard as he could. It swung inward and crashed against the wall, the sound echoing around the change room. Tomo dropped down by the trough, his feet flat and his arms wrapped around his knees. He let out a strangled sob. “I’m not evil. I’m not.”

I bent down beside him and wrapped my arms around him, the ink warm and slippery against my blazer sleeves.

“I know,” I said. “I know.” But I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure. The more I saw, the more I thought it might be true after all, as horrible as it was to admit.

“I didn’t choose this,” he said, his voice frantic. “I never chose this. Why am I being punished when I didn’t have a choice?”

Someone pushed against the locked change-room door, and we looked up, eyes wide.

“Yuu-san!” Headmaster Yoshinoma banged against the door, his voice gruff and serious. “Open this door.”

“I can’t let them see me like this,” he whispered, his inky fingers linking with mine. “What am I going to do?”

I looked at the door on the other wall of the change room that led to the tennis courts. “Run,” I said. “Go somewhere safe.”

“Where do I have that’s safe?”

More banging on the door. “Yuu!”

“Go,” I whispered harshly. “Home.”

“I can’t. My dad’s home until lunch and he’ll kill me if I show up during school hours. And I can’t go to Toro Iseki.”

“Nihondaira, then.”

“How the hell am I going to get so far?”

“It’s quiet up there, isn’t it? It’s safe.”

He nodded.

“Go ahead, and I’ll meet you there later.”

His eyes widened. “You can’t. What if it gets worse? You have to stay away, Katie. Promise you’ll stay away.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Please.” He was using puppy-dog eyes. It wasn’t fair. “You can’t follow. I’ll text you, okay?”

“Yuu, if you don’t let us in right now—”

“Run,” he said. “Get out of here so you don’t get in trouble.”

“Too late for that,” I said. “They saw me chase after you. I’ll stay here and smooth it over. Just go!”

“I’m sorry.” His fingers squeezed mine, the ink warm as it squelched between us. Like we were in kindergarten playing in the mud, about to get in trouble for wrecking our uniforms. I wished that was all it was.

“Go!” I hissed. The headmaster pushed against the door, and then Tomo was gone, out to the tennis courts and around the side of the school. He’d make for the bike racks, and then? Wouldn’t everyone notice him stained with ink? I hoped it would dry, lift off him like sparks or golden fireflies the way it sometimes did.

“Yuu Tomohiro!” barked Suzuki-sensei’s voice from the other side of the door. I went along the row of taps, twisting them off as I approached the door. It was easy now that Tomohiro had left. The last two ran clear trails of water through the ink as I turned them off. I pulled the dead bolt back on the door and swung it open. Headmaster Yoshinoma was there with Suzuki-sensei beside him, followed by Watanabe and Nakamura. They all peered at me, awaiting an explanation.

“He’s not well,” I said. It’s the first thing I could think of. “He left. He feels sick.”

“I bet he does,” Suzuki-sensei said, “pulling something like this.”

“Chigaimasu,” I said, using the polite form of the word Tomo had shouted over and over. It’s not true. It’s different. “It’s not what you think. This is a prank, but he didn’t do it.”

“Then why did he run?”

The headmaster peered past me into the change room, his eyes bulging. “And what happened in here?”

I looked carefully at the teachers. I needed a good explanation.

“He was washing the ink off, but they ran it through the pipes somehow,” I said. “Look, there was an incident in elementary school, but it wasn’t Tomo—Yuu’s fault. A dog attacked his friend, but he always blamed himself. This is bullying, Headmaster. It’s a bullying prank. Yuu wouldn’t do something like this.”

I paused, hoping they’d believe me.

“Katie, back to class,” Suzuki-sensei said at last. “This doesn’t concern you.”

Like hell it didn’t.

“Suspend him, I think, and possible expulsion,” muttered one of the teachers, and another nodded in agreement.

“But—”

“Back to class now,” Suzuki-sensei said, and I knew I had lost. I nodded, walking toward my classroom.

But as soon as I was around the corner, I dashed for the genkan. I pulled my shoes on quickly, waiting to be discovered, but with the chaos no one seemed to notice. I snuck a peek at Tomo’s cubby—empty, his notebook and shoes gone, his slippers scattered on the floor by a trail of black ink. They must have fallen out in the hurry. I shoved my uniform loafers on and raced into the courtyard, tucking my hair over my shoulder to try to conceal it.

Sneaking out of school sucked when you were the only blonde girl.

The ink trail stopped at the gate of the school. I thought about hiding in Sunpu Park until Tomo was ready for me to join him in Nihondaira. He would text me eventually to meet up, wouldn’t he? Was it really too dangerous to be near Tomo? No—it scared me more to think that he was up there on the mountain alone. What if he fell apart? What if he lost himself?

But it was more than I understood, more than I could handle. I needed help. Whether Tomo liked it or not, we couldn’t do this alone.

I turned sharply down the street and ran toward Katakou School.