He bit his lip, trying to stop laughing, and bobbed his head at me. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. Let me draw something to make it up to you.”

“Draw yourself getting smacked in the face.”

“Katie,” he protested, in the smooth voice he used when he said my name. I said nothing.

A wagtail chirped, and I turned to watch it fly across the clearing, into the ring of trees. And then I felt warmth as Tomohiro stepped forward and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, pressing his head against mine, his chest solid against my back. Tufts of his copper hair tickled against my neck, and his skin was warm, the sound of his breathing calm.

“Warui,” he whispered in apology, and I knew then that I couldn’t live without him, even when he was infuriating.

Which was pretty much all the time.

My only chance was to stop the ink from reacting to me.

There had to be a way. I couldn’t just bail on him—I had to save us both.

I couldn’t walk away, and I knew it. Not until we both could.

Three weeks until summer vacation, and each time we visited Toro Iseki, Tomohiro’s ambitions grew. He drew birds and trees, turtles and rabbits. I pleaded with him to try to scratch the drawings out slowly, to see if it could be less traumatic to watch, but nothing seemed to help. Everything keeled over like its soul had been sucked from its body. And the turtle had time to take a chunk out of my finger before it collapsed, the ingrate, so I gave up on my humane-sketching plans. Tomohiro still insisted the creatures were just thoughts, so that made me feel a little better. So did searching recipes for turtle soup.

“They’re just extensions of me, I think.”

“So which part of you wanted to bite me?” I sneered.

Wrong thing to say. His eyes took on this fiery look and he gave me a wicked grin.

“Okay, grow up. I did not mean that. ”

“Oh, please. It’s obvious how you feel about me.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Can’t say I blame you.”

“Ugh,” I said. “And so modest, too. That’s super attractive.”

“Well, it must be working,” he said, “because you’re the one coming on to me.”

“I am not coming on to you! Your stupid pen pal bit me.”

“And I took him out for it.”

“Well, thanks.”

His eyes shone as he curled his hand around mine, and my heart almost stopped. “Anytime.”

Yuki invited me to go with her family to Miyajima Island for a couple weeks of summer break. Her older brother was working there, and she pleaded with me to go, too, so she wouldn’t be bored out of her mind.

The humidity of the Japanese summer wiped out any energy I’d had for kendo, and I could barely make it through practice drills. But Tomohiro and Ishikawa did the hundred push-ups without complaint, completing round after round of kiri-kaeshi as we looked on, dabbing our faces with the handkerchiefs everyone carried around because it was so ridiculously humid. The sweat dripped down their backs as they fought without their men on, their headbands damp and their hair slicked down to their necks.

“How come you and Ishikawa dye your hair?” I asked as Tomohiro chugged back a water bottle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm.

“It’s Ishikawa’s strategy,” he said, loud enough for him to hear. “He figures he might blind the opponent with his ugly mop.”

“Shut up,” Ishikawa said, but the corners of his mouth tugged in a grin.

“So why is yours red?”

“White and red, right?” said Ishikawa. “Because we’re rivals.” He grabbed Tomohiro in a headlock and they both grinned as they fought. I wondered what Tomohiro had said to Ishikawa, because he seemed like a different person, too.

Outside of kendo, they both slouched, looked badass and, in Ishikawa’s case, got into a lot of serious trouble. But somehow wearing the bogu armor and covering their faces with the men actually unmasked them and put them at ease. They were really themselves here, and Ishikawa and I somehow came to a truce. He stopped acting like a jerk, and I pretended his threats had never happened. Every now and then I still caught him glaring at me, though, so I avoided him when I could.

You’re keeping him from his destiny. The words haunted me.

But he didn’t know for sure Tomohiro was a Kami. He only suspected it, and we had to keep it that way.

Watanabe-sensei announced a special kendo retreat, man-datory for those proceeding to the prefecture competition.

From our school, only Ishikawa, Tomohiro, two senior girls and one junior boy would attend. Takahashi Jun from Katakou would be there, too. I still couldn’t believe he was the same Jun I’d met on the train. He already knew there was a strange boy at my school who drew weird sketches. In my thoughts I pleaded that he wouldn’t make the connection to the ink, that he wouldn’t question the puddle at the tournament. But then I reminded myself that no one knew about the Kami anymore anyway. There was nothing to put together at all.

That week the school set up a big sasa tree by the office.

The bamboo leaves splayed out like a Christmas tree, and students crowded a nearby table lined with neatly stacked papers.

“Tanabata,” Yuki told me as she chose a soft yellow piece.

“Tanabata?”

“The lovers’ festival. Two stars in the sky meet only at this time of year, and the rest of the year they’re forced to be apart.

When the lovers are reunited, our wishes can come true.”

I thought about Tomohiro and his kendo retreat, how he would slave away in the heat while Yuki and I splashed around on the beach. But even when we were together, we had to keep a distance, at least until I figured out how to stop whatever was going on with the ink.

“So what are you wishing for?” I said.

“A boyfriend.” Yuki grinned.

“You’re going to write that?”

“No, no,” she said. “I’m writing good grades and health, like everyone else.” She took her slip of yellow paper and wrapped it around one of the branches. “What about you?”

she said, offering me the pen. “You already have a boyfriend, so…”

I’d stopped denying it. It wasn’t worth the effort. After Tomohiro had held me like he had the other day, there was something in his eyes when he looked at me. And even if I wasn’t sure about the label, I knew we were connected now, that we shared a special bond.

“You going to wish for good grades?” Yuki said. I stared thoughtfully at the tree. Then I chose a blue paper, dark enough that students would have to strain to read my words.

I wrote in English to try to keep the wish to myself.

I hope Mom has found peace.

Yuki went silent when she saw it, unsure of what to say. I didn’t blame her; I didn’t know what to say, either.

I took a piece of the yarn and tied my wish to the tree, on a lower branch where it would go unnoticed.

The tree ballooned with wishes as the week went past.

Tanaka wrote his wish at the end of the week. I wish my sister could cook. Yuki and I raised our eyebrows.

“Did you see my lunches this week?” he said, tapping his finger on the paper for emphasis.

“If you flunk out of high school and have to eat ramen for the rest of your life, it’ll be your own fault,” I said. “You wasted your wish.”

“Obviously you haven’t tried my sister’s onigiri, ” Tanaka said. He threaded the yarn through the end of the paper and looked for a spot.

“You waited too long,” said Yuki. “The tree’s full.”

“Here,” I said. “Put it beside mine.”

I stooped down and found mine quickly enough, the English writing standing out amid the blocky kanji.

“Here it is,” I said, reaching my hand out for the twirling paper. But there was a new scribble on it, not in my hand-writing. I pulled the tag forward, squinting to read the faint reply to my wish.

Mine, too.

Tears brimmed in my eyes and I tried to blink them back.

I dropped my paper before the other two could read it and did my best to smile with Yuki as Tanaka tied his wish next to mine.

* * *

Chapter 10

I grabbed my ticket and hopped on the Roman bus down to Toro Iseki. I’d stayed behind to clean the classroom and had to make up time. It was way too humid to bike anyway. I wiped my face with my handkerchief.

Since Monday, Tomohiro had been grinning at me. His tall figure had loomed in the doorway of our classroom at lunch. He’d waited patiently as the class went from chatting, to noticing, to mumbling and whispering, and finally to tapping me on the shoulder. I’d walked over to the door slowly, the eyes of my classmates burning into my back. Tomohiro seemed to enjoy my embarrassment, which didn’t surprise me.

“Are you coming on Wednesday?” he said when I reached the doorway. I could hear the whispers mounting, so I slipped into the hallway and out of sight. Okay, except for the row of windows along our classroom that was suddenly crowded with faces.

“Tomo, we always go on Wednesdays,” I said in a hushed voice.

“I know,” he said. “I just want to make sure you’re going.”

“Of course.”

“It’s the last time before summer break,” he said.

“I know.”

“I promise I won’t draw a turtle.”

“Good,” I said, looking over my shoulder at my classmates.

Their heads dipped below the windows.

He lifted my fingers in his, and the sudden touch made me turn. He flipped my hands over in his, looking for the bite mark where the turtle had snapped me.

“I’m okay now,” I said, staring at the top of his head as he scanned my hands gently.

“Good,” he said and lifted my fingers to his mouth. His smooth lips brushed over them softly, and the students at the windows whooped like idiots. Then he let go and turned down the hallway, his leather bag slung over his shoulder.

It wasn’t just the last time we’d go to Toro Iseki before summer vacation. They’d finished the renovations, and the site was opening to the public at the beginning of August.

Tomohiro would have to find a new safe haven to practice his art. So far, we’d come up with Mount Fuji and Antarctica.

I ducked under the chain-link fence and into the mini forest. The breeze pushed the humidity against my body in waves.

Then I heard the chimes.

There were at least forty of them hanging in the tree above me, little Japanese wind chimes tinkling in the hot gasp of wind, their papers floating and rippling as they twisted back and forth. Most furin chimes in Japan were bright summer colors, but these were black-and-white with jagged edges, so I knew Tomohiro had drawn them into existence. Some of the chimes sounded mournful, likely the drawings that had gone wrong, but the sound of them all jingling together was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard.

He was sitting in the grass, his notebook balanced on his lap. I watched him for a moment before he realized I’d arrived. He looked up at the sky, the clouds drifting lazily above. He’d loosened the tie around his neck and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. The top buttons of his shirt were unbuttoned, exposing the defined edges of his collarbone.

He seemed lost in the sound of the chimes, and I hesitated, listening to them, too.

Then the pollen of the flowers caught in my nose and I sneezed. He whirled around, his eyes wide until he realized it was me.

“Okaeri,” he said, and as much as I’d felt awkward when Diane said it to me, when Tomohiro said it I got goose bumps.

“I’m a bit late,” I apologized.

“I’ll say,” he said with a laugh. “Come see what I’m drawing for you today.”

I walked forward and sat beside him in the grass. He opened his notebook, and a half-finished sketch draped across the page. I stared with wide eyes.

“You’re serious.”

He just grinned and pulled the cap from his pen. I rested my hand on his arm.

“Don’t you think people will notice that?”

“In Toro Iseki?” he said. I just stared at him. “Katie, this is our last chance to try this. We won’t have another opportu-nity like this for who knows how long. I want to try.”

“You’re totally crazy,” I said. “It could trample us.”

But he placed the nib of his pen on the paper and started filling in the sketch. He drew in the eye, a dark pool of ink on the page. He filled out the ear and the mane, the muzzle and the long, strong flanks that whizzed across the page as he drew them. The sketch tossed its head and turned to bite a fly off its withers.

There was a gentle thud in the grass, and another, and then the horse stepped out from behind a Yayoi hut. There was a ghostly, vacant look in its eyes, and its mane was as jagged as Tomohiro’s hurried pen strokes.

Tomohiro drew faster and faster, his own eyes growing vacant and strange like the horse’s. He was scribbling in details, fetlocks above the hooves and muscles trailing down the horse’s legs.

“I think that’s enough,” I said.

“Huh?” He broke away like I’d snapped him out of a dream. I pointed to the horse sniffling at the grass with his scribbled black muzzle.

He whispered, “I did it.”

He rose to his feet, placing the notebook gently on the grass.

“Stay here,” he warned. I knelt, ready to tear the drawing to shreds if I had to. The horse lifted its head high as Tomohiro approached, and then it swallowed back a distressed whinny. Tomohiro whispered as he stepped closer. The horse pawed the ground, then lowered its head.

I watched him reach his gentle hands to the horse’s muzzle, and I waited for it to take a big chunk out of him. My fingers bent the corner of the drawing as I waited for the jaw to open.