Shadow

Chapter Six

Tomohiro

For a while I thought I was in control. There hadn’t been any more incidents, at least not ones that caught anyone’s attention. What was another scrape or gash on my arm? If it was contained to only me, then I considered it under control.

Not anymore. My hand shook as Nakamura-sensei wrote the kanji on the board.

“I know it’s the last day of class,” he chuckled, his fingers dusted white with chalk as he sketched each stroke, “but I don’t want any slackers, got it? One more lesson so you’re prepared for Year 3 History, ne?”

“Haiiiii,” droned the students, but I couldn’t speak. I stared at the name on the board.

Taira no Kiyomori. The one from the dream.

“So, who knows about Taira no Kiyomori?” Nakamura said. “Anyone?” A few tentative hands shot up. Definitely not mine.

“A samurai, right?” said Tanaka Keiko. I knew her vaguely, because a long time ago I’d been in Calligraphy Club with her brother, Ichirou. I couldn’t announce the connection to her, of course. That had been when it all started.

“More than a samurai,” Nakamura said. “He established the samurai-run government in the 12th century. He put his own son on the throne as emperor and staged a coup that changed everything for the samurai families. He also contributed heavily to the rebuilding of Itsukushima Shrine. But...” He paused dramatically, like my heart wasn’t already in my throat, like I wasn’t going to be sick. “There are rumors he wasn’t even from the Heike family, that his father wasn’t actually Taira no Tadamori.”

Nakamura leaned against his desk, looking at us with gleaming eyes.

“They called him the Monster,” he said. “The Demon Son.”

A monster. The shadows chasing him to the Torii outside Itsukushima Shrine—was it all real, then? Some sort of vision of the past? I’d thought it was just a nightmare.

“We don’t know much about his parentage, but he might have been an illegitimate heir to the throne. Or, if the rumors were true, his father was something far more sinister.”

“A demon?” Keiko laughed. “That’s just a story though.”

“Deshou,” said Nakamura, smiling. “I guess it couldn’t be true, could it?”

It could. It was. They had no idea what they were saying, but I did.

The Demon Son. Close enough to the truth about me. But I couldn’t accept it. I would run from myself, just like Taira had.

“Yuuto,” came a harsh whisper, and I looked over. Satoshi was nodding his head at my paper. I looked down, startled by the sprawling mess of ink. The letters on my page were so badly blotted that they curled out in strange shapes, completely illegible.

“Too much caffeine,” I whispered back. I lifted my hand to show him how it was shaking. And I exaggerated, because Satoshi was the only one who suspected anything about me. I had to overdo it so he wouldn’t think anything was actually wrong.

“Right,” Sato said, rolling his eyes. “Lay off the good stuff for a bit, yeah? Nakamura will kick you off the kendo team if he sees you like that.”

I gave him the finger and he grinned while I turned the page in my notebook. But inside, my heart was pounding.

The letters weren’t blotted from a shaky hand. I was losing control.

When the bell rang, we stood and bowed to Nakamura before he left the classroom. I stretched as everyone started on today’s cleaning duty. Satoshi lifted his chair and threw it at me. I barely caught it in time.

“Jeez, Yuuto,” he said. “Still out of it?”

“Just aspiring to be like you,” I said, flipping the chair over and slamming it onto his desk. Tanaka Keiko pushed between the two of us, pressing a mop against Sato’s chest.

Sato sighed. “Again?”

Tanaka smirked. “What, you’d rather have bathroom duty?”

“On second thought...” he said, grabbing the mop from her.

My keitai buzzed and I reached into my book bag for it. The kendo warrior charm swung back and forth on the strap as I flipped the phone open.

“Myu?” Sato guessed, rolling his eyes. He leaned the mop against the wall while he lifted two more chairs onto desks.

I stared at the text.

“Shiori,” I said.

Sato’s voice went quiet, full of concern. “She okay?”

Shiori and I had become closer since Kaasan’s accident, when I’d promised to look out for her. She used to hang out with Sato and me all the time in junior high. Not so much lately, since I wanted to keep her safe from him. I smirked at that—the Demon Son, keeping Shiori safe from a harmless thug like Sato. But the real problem for her wasn’t Sato or even me. It was the morons tormenting her every chance they got.

I shook my head. “I gotta go.”

“Damn. Why can’t they leave her alone?” Sato and I were used to the texts from Shiori now, pleading for help from the latest confrontation. We didn’t know who they were—students at her school, most likely—but whoever they were, when I found out, they’d see just what kind of monster I could be.

No. I couldn’t give in to the darkness, not even when I wanted to. Not even when it called my name.

“Cover for me?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill,” Sato said. “But then you’ve got to come with me Friday night.”

“Why?”

“Backup. In Ikeda. There’s this guy I gotta meet up with, and—”

“Damn it, Sato!”

He leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest with a shrug. “Those are my terms, man.”

I glared for a minute. “Sometimes I really hate you.”

“Same here,” he smiled, and smacked my arm. I waited until Tanaka’s back was turned and then slipped out the door of the classroom, hurrying to the genkan to put on my shoes.

“Yuu-chan!” I heard as I pulled on the second shoe.

Not now. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to see her, but I had to help Shiori and I couldn’t exactly tell Myu that. She stood in the doorway, her foot dangling just above the top stair. As usual, she’d pulled the waist of her skirt too high to show off her legs. A thought buzzed in the back of my head that I should be upset about the rest of the guys at school seeing her like that, but I was more worried about Shiori right now. They were making her life a living hell again, and I had to get there to stop it.

“Myu,” I said. She smiled and descended the three stairs, walking toward me until she was so close the hem of her skirt pressed against me. So did the rest of her bare thigh.

“I thought you had to clean today,” she said. God, she smelled good. I had to stop myself from pulling her closer.

“Sato’s covering for me.”

“I have Debate Club, but I saw you in the hallway and thought I should say hi.” She pressed herself against me as her lips found mine, and then my thoughts went all hazy.

I pulled away for a minute. “Hi,” I managed, then pulled her back for more. Yeah, shallow, okay? But I wasn’t made of stone. The tips of her glittery fingernails ran through my hair as I tried to control the part of me that wanted to shove her against the wall and do things to her. She knew it, and her hands started to roam, making it even more difficult to fight.

A muffled giggle behind us broke me out of it. We both looked over at the first years, standing on the steps with their hands over their mouths. Normally I wouldn’t care—gossip about Myu and I sucking face kept away the darker rumors—but one of the girls reminded me of Shiori. Damn it. I stroked Myu’s face with my fingers.

“I’ll see you later, okay?” I said, and started to walk away.

She grabbed my arm and the jolt of it shocked me back. She pulled me behind the wall of cubbies and kissed me harder. Shit. She was not making this easy for me.

“Myu,” I warned.

“Come on,” she whispered, her fingers trailing down my arm. “Let’s go to a love hotel.”

“We can’t,” I said, struggling for reasons why. “You have Debate.”

“So I’ll skip,” she giggled.

“I’m broke,” I tried, looking at the clock that hung over the door.

“So your house, then. Come on, Yuu-chan.” She leaned closer, her breath hot in my ear.

It was enough to jolt me out of it. What the hell was I doing? Without even trying, I was destroying everyone around me. Shiori couldn’t rely on me, and Myu would get dragged into whatever nightmare this was that I was living. The ink was a danger to both of them just by being around me. The Demon Son. That was me, and I’d rather arrive at the gates of Hell alone than bring down someone like them.

I hated this. I hated myself. What the hell was wrong with me that I couldn’t live a normal life?

“Muriko,” I snapped. “I can’t, okay? I have to go!”

She looked like I’d slapped her when I used her full name. It was a harder rejection than I’d meant it to be. She stepped back, her eyes cold.

“Go where?”

“Cram school,” I lied, but my hands were shaking again. I was a mess. I couldn’t deal with this right now.

“Fine,” she said.

“Myu,” I said softly, touching her chin. “I’ll call you later.”

“No you won’t,” she sighed, pushing my hand away. And then she jumped back, slamming her back against the wall as she cried out.

“What happened?” I panicked. “Are you okay?”

Her hands were shaking. She turned them slowly.

Her nails, once bright and glittery, were coated with dripping black ink. It trickled down her fingertips, pooling in the creases of her hand.

Shit.

“What the hell, Yuu?” she shrieked. “Where did this ink come from?”

“I don’t know,” I said, but she stared at me like it was my fault. I couldn’t pretend to be baffled. It would become another rumor with the first-years nearby. “Must—must have leaked from my bag,” I stammered. “I have a bottle of ink for cram school.” I grabbed for my handkerchief and wiped the black ink off. It was no use. The silver glitter on her nails was tainted a dark gray.

“I’m sorry,” I said after a minute, “but I really have to go.”

I’d only walked a few steps when she spoke behind me.

“Yuu, why are you drawing at cram school?”

I stopped. “What?”

“Because I told Keiko, and she said you used to be in calligraphy with her brother, but that you quit because something happened. Something weird. And that you don’t draw now.”

Oh god. It was starting. So Tanaka Keiko knew who I was after all.

“Nothing weird,” I said. “I just left school because of Kaasan’s accident.”

She took a step forward. “But Keiko said—”

“I don’t care what she said!” I put my shaking hands on her shoulders. “Who are you going to believe, Myu? Tanaka or me?” She looked at my fingers as they trembled on her skin.

“I don’t know anymore,” she said quietly.

“Look, I’m sorry. It’s nothing, okay? It’s nothing.”

“But—”

I left without another word, the door closing behind me with a soft snick.

Running from myself, like Taira in the dream. But I didn’t have a choice.

Shiori needed me.