Shadow

Chapter Eight

Tomohiro

“Shiori!” I shouted as I neared the courtyard of her school. It was a private girls’ academy, but I didn’t hesitate, just plowed straight through groups of girls in their crimson blazers and tartan skirts, past the open iron gates and toward the door of the main building.

I flung the door open. Their genkan wasn’t as old-fashioned as ours. Instead of shoe cubbies, rows of beige half lockers filled the room.

A few of the girls looked up at me with wide eyes, but I ignored them, weaving between them like they weren’t even there. On the other side of a row of lockers I heard the muffled sobs.

“Shiori?”

The sobbing stopped.

“Tomo-kun?”

Shiori was the one person I had let get close to me, because despite everything that had happened—the accidents, the accusations—she had never doubted me. If I could just protect her, maybe I wouldn’t have to accept what the nightmares repeated, that I was destined for nothing but destruction and death. If I protected her, my life could have meaning. I could fight what I knew I was.

I looked down the next row of lockers and found her sitting on the floor in a slump, surrounded by crumpled white papers. Her locker door hung open, the corner of it warped in a new and ugly dent.

“Are you okay?” I said. I crouched down beside her, and my movement sent several more of the white papers tumbling from her locker. She shook her head, the tears streaking down her face as she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

I picked up one of the crumpled papers and unfolded it. Giant kanji scrawled across it, childish names like dirty slut with Shiori’s phone number scrawled at the bottom. You don’t need a kotatsu table to keep warm. Call Shiori! She’ll sleep with anyone! It was the filth of washroom graffiti, juvenile really, but Shiori’s petite frame shook with sobs.

I scrunched the paper into a ball. “Assholes,” I said. “You know who it was?”

She shook her head again, her voice almost a whisper. She looked as pale as the lockers, like if I touched her shoulder she might just vanish completely.

One of the girls leaned over, her hands clasped in front of her. “Um...are you her boyfriend? I don’t think you’re supposed to be here—”

“Shut it,” I snapped, and she held her hands up.

“Mou! Just trying to warn you. You want to get her in more trouble?”

I stood up, my bangs falling into my eyes as I stared at her. “If you girls looked out for each other I wouldn’t have to be here,” I growled. “What, are you going to just let her sit there in a pile of hate mail? What if it was you, huh? What if you had the whole school breathing down your neck because they weren’t getting any?”

“Tomo-kun, stop.” Shiori’s voice trembled and the rage in me melted away. What the hell was with me today?

The other girl looked at me like I was crazy, but I didn’t care. “Sorry,” I mumbled to Shiori, and started scooping up armfuls of the paper. The girl stood watching for a minute, then turned and left silently. Like she wasn’t just ignoring the bullying. I cursed under my breath.

“It’s okay,” Shiori said. “It’s nice that you’re mad.”

“Mad? I’m furious. Fuming, you might say.” She fought a smile, so I kept pushing. “I’m enraged. Incensed!” A small smile broke through, and I grinned. Back in control, finally. “Let’s get a bag to put these in, and then I’m taking you to get shabu shabu for dinner.”

“Be serious,” Shiori said. “Like you have the money for that.”

“Okay, maybe not,” I grinned. “But udon I could handle.”

“Um, Yamada-san?” came the nervous voice, calling Shiori formally by her last name. I looked up. The girl had returned, a white plastic bag held open in her outstretched hands.

Shiori just stared. Finally, she breathed, “Thank you.”

I lifted the pile of papers in my arms and shoved them into the bag, nodding at the girl. She nodded back.

Just a little kindness. That’s all anyone needed. Not to be alone. Why was it so hard for any of us to give?

Deep thoughts for a Demon Son. The thought sent me whirling back to the history lesson. Taira no Kiyomori was real. The nightmares were real. What did it mean?

I wanted to be alone all of a sudden, to figure it out. But Shiori was already at my side, a new smile on her lips, her eyes puffy from dried tears. I’d worry about it later.

“Let’s go,” I said, and she nodded.

We wove through the pathways of Sunpu Park in the crisp February sunlight.

“Don’t let me eat too much this time,” Shiori laughed. “I’m getting fat.” She patted her stomach.

I grinned, but inside I felt drained, frozen. I couldn’t keep this up anymore. One wrong move and everything would shatter.

“Shiori,” I said, stopping on the path.

“You okay?” she said, but I didn’t answer. I stared down the grassy hill to the moat around the park. The murky water rippled under the cold breeze. Not quite spring, but not quite winter. Caught in between, like me. How had I lost control of my own life?

I slumped down on the bench, running a hand through my hair. She sat down delicately beside me.

“Shiori, you can’t—you can’t let them keep bullying you like this. I’m not always going to be around to help you.”

She smiled, hooking her elbows over the back of the bench as she crossed her legs. “You always say that,” she said. “And yet you always come.”

“But what if I couldn’t?” I said. “What if something happened to me?”

She frowned. “What’s wrong, Tomo-kun?”

“Nothing,” I lied. It scared me to know the nightmares might be real, visions of the past or something. It scared me because it meant maybe they were true.

How much time did I have before it consumed me? Is that what had happened to Taira?

Shiori’s small hand curled into mine, and I looked up, surprised. Her skin felt cold and soft, fragile. Something precious. “Tomo-kun,” she said. “I’ll try to be tougher, okay? I won’t let them get to me. I don’t want to be a trouble to you anymore.”

“You’re not,” I said. “You could never be. I just hate to see them hurt you, Shiori. I don’t want that for you.”

She smiled and nodded, her hand pulling away from me. Emptiness where her fingers once were. I was alone again, somehow.

She looked out over the moat, strands of her hair pulled loose from her ponytail and clinging to her neck.

As a rule, I never sketched people. It was too dangerous, the ink taking off in ways I couldn’t control. But looking at her sitting there, with her sad eyes and her slender fingers curled around the nape of her neck, I couldn’t fight the urge to capture it. I wanted to hold on to this moment like nothing else. It was quiet, peaceful. Normal. Everything I wanted.

And as dangerous as the ink was, if there was anything in me at all that wasn’t monstrous, it would protect Shiori. Maybe I could trust myself to protect her—I always had.

“Shiori,” I said.

“Nani?” she smiled. “What is it?”

“I want to sketch you.”

She tilted her head. “What? But you never draw people.”

“Just this once.”

“Why?”

I looked at her, wanting to tell her but not sure how to express it. Her eyes fell away from me and back to the moat. “Ii yo,” she relented. “Sure.” She knew when to stop asking questions. She protected me too. And I wanted to remember this moment, before everything fell apart again. This one, normal moment, when we were just a boy and a girl in Sunpu Park.

I opened my sketchbook and clicked the end of my pen. I sketched the lines furiously, reaching with a gentle hand to tilt her chin for the portrait, to smooth the hair beside her ear.

I watched for inkblots, for the lines to drip the way they had in class. I watched for the warning signs that I should stop, but they didn’t come. Even the shadows were frightened to break the fragile moment.

It was nice, pretending to be normal. Later, when I’d tucked the sketch away, we walked to the department store on Miyuki Road and ate udon together, seeing who could shove the most noodles in their mouth without laughing. I choked on the spicy broth and gulped down my water as the waiters eyed me with suspicion.

But the darkness always waited, always lurked in the corners. It couldn’t stay like this forever. And when the time came, the claws would reach for me again, and I would be engulfed in darkness.