“Do you have any painkillers?” I asked.

“In the kitchen,” he rasped. “In the cupboard by the fridge.” I went into the kitchen and pulled out the bottle, shaking two into my hand.

“Here,” I said, and he knocked them back with the oolong tea.

“Thanks,” he said, wiping the back of his mouth with his good wrist. “But I should warn you, those are the kind that knock me out like nobody’s business.” Of course I’d grabbed the wrong ones—I could barely read the kanji on the bottles.

He leaned back into the couch, curled on his side.

“Do you want me to help you upstairs?”

“I’ll sleep down here,” he said. “You can have my room.

We have futons in the tatami room, but my dad will wonder why I pulled them out, so I better just take the couch.”

“Are you sure?” I said. His eyes already looked droopy, but maybe I was overthinking it.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s for the best since I clearly can’t control myself.” He breathed in suddenly at the pain. “Could you pass me that blanket?” I looked behind and found it, then tucked it around him. He grabbed my fingers with his left hand, resting them on his lips. His eyes looked watery and distant, but they gleamed as he stared at me. Through the tips of my fingers he said, “I’ll protect you. I promise.”

I stroked his hair, running my fingers through the copper silk of it, until he lifted my hand urgently from his head.

“The blood flow,” he gasped.

“You’re an idiot,” I said, and he grinned.

In the darkness of his room, I crawled into bed. The rain made shadows on the ink-wash paintings, as if the drops ran down the painted trees themselves.

“What do you want?” I whispered to the darkness. “Why am I the catalyst?” I hated myself for thinking it, but how much of his feelings for me were really him, and how much were…the other part of him, the part hunting me? Was it his feelings for me that were making the ink do weird things?

It couldn’t be. He hadn’t even really known me when my pen exploded.

Tomohiro had an alarm clock beside his bed that went tick, tick, annoyingly loud, as I squeezed my eyes shut.

I listened to the rain pattering on the roof. I pulled the blue duvet tighter around my shoulders, surrounded by the smell of him, my skin still pulsing where his touch had scored itself into my memory.

And once I drifted to sleep, the dragon rose in my dreams, Ishikawa standing fearlessly beside it.

Chapter 12

I awoke to Tomohiro knocking on the door and racing back down the stairs. I rubbed my eyes at first, then jolted up when I saw the alarm. I dashed downstairs and found him in the kitchen, grinning at me. I paused and thought about my hair, my face and my unbrushed teeth. My cheeks went red.

“Ohayo,” he said, waving his hand up in the air, a fresh skin-colored bandage wound tightly around his wrist. He was already dressed for school and frying up sausages in a pan.

“You’re going to school with your wrist like that?” I said.

“I don’t really have a choice. It’s kind of suspicious if I don’t show up,” he said. “My school blazer will cover it.

Don’t worry.”

I was nothing but worried. “It’s kind of warm to wear your blazer all day.”

He smiled. “I’ll manage. I left your seifuku outside the door.”

“Ah, thanks!” I shouted, running up the stairs. I saw him roll his eyes and turn back to cooking. I grabbed my seifuku and flipped the skirt back and forth. It was not only clean, but pressed, too—embarrassment spread through me as I realized how early he must have gotten up to iron the pleats, especially with his wrist chewed open. There was a bloodstain running along the hem, but it didn’t show up well unless you were looking for it. Thank god our school used dark navy skirts.

The blouse wasn’t in quite as good shape. The bleach had helped, but it looked pretty battered. The stains weren’t no-ticeably blood, though—mostly ink or mud. It’s not like I had a choice anyway, so I buttoned it up and tied the satin handkerchief around my neck. At least the long ends of the ribbon covered some of the shirt. I combed my hands through my hair and pulled on my kneesocks, practically brown with stains. Then I hurried back downstairs, where Tomohiro rolled two sausages out of the pan and onto my plate.

“Thanks,” I said, pressing my palms together. “Itadakimasu.” He nodded and put the pan back in the kitchen. There were two bowls of miso soup, two sausages each, a piece of lettuce, and a cut-up tomato.

We ate in silence, but between bites I peeked at him, dressed sharply in a clean uniform. His bangs fell into his eyes as he leaned down to scoop tofu out of the soup, the motion a little sloppy with his left hand.

“Um, so you cook,” I said, after the silence became awkward. He looked at me, a smile curving onto his lips. I hated him for being so cool and collected again when I was still a mess. I couldn’t even look him in the eye without feeling his lips against mine.

“My dad’s cooking is pretty bad,” he said. “So I thought I’d better learn before we starved to death.” I hesitated, not sure how to react to that. But then Tomohiro laughed so hard the tofu fell off his spoon back into the bowl. “You always look ready to pick a fight,” he grinned.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking about your mom, that’s all.”

“She was a great cook. She used to make sweet egg for my bentou every day. Not exactly a gourmet dish, but comfort food, you know? I’m pretty good now, but my sweet egg never tastes like hers did.”

“I miss my mom’s cooking, too,” I said. “She used to make this awesome pasta. Mushrooms and some kind of white sauce.

It tasted like heaven. God, I’m glad I can talk to you about it.”

“Of course,” he said. “I hope you took my very good advice and let yourself be changed.”

“I did.”

“The first time the ink attacked me was about a year after I lost her. It’s like the Kami bloodline realized she was gone, so it moved on to me.”

“Does it work like that?”

“Nah, coincidence, I think. Hits when you’re not a kid anymore. Otherwise there’d be some big ink-related disasters.”

“Makes sense,” I said.

“Hell of a genetic parting gift she left me.”

He tipped the bowl of miso soup into his mouth, clawing with a spare chopstick at the seaweed stuck on the bottom.

“You told me I could be angry, Tomo. That she’s gone.”

“You can feel any way you want to,” he said, clanking the bowl down on the table. “Any way you need to.”

“Are you angry?”

“Angry as hell.”

It shouldn’t have, but it made me smile. Tomo smiled, too, and stood up suddenly, pushing his dishes to either side.

He reached across the table and pressed his lips to mine. He smelled of tofu and seaweed and miso paste, his hair gel like sweet vanilla.

When he pulled away, I said quietly, “What happened to her, Tomo?”

He frowned, tracing circles on my jaws with his thumbs.

“The nightmares,” he said. “They can be so bad. It’s not like I have them all the time, but when I do—god. Things made of shadow calling for you, chasing you, forcing you into corners and revealing the darkness inside you. Telling you horrible things they say they know you want, the things you don’t want, so when you wake up you don’t know what’s real anymore. And you— Never mind. I don’t really want to talk about it, but they’re sick.” He looked jittery, his eyes staring at something far away. I couldn’t believe anything could shake him up like this. “I know. They can’t really hurt you, right? They’re just dreams. But even dreams can kill you if they’re scary enough. Heart attack in your sleep, and that’s it.”

“They killed her?” I whispered. Was it just like what had happened to Mom? But he shook his head.

“She couldn’t sleep at night,” he said. “She couldn’t face them. She’d wake up screaming all the time but wouldn’t tell me why. She’d stay up as late as she could, terrified to close her eyes. Sometimes she’d be awake for days at a time. She was a wreck. And then—”

He slumped down into his chair.

“I forgot my lunch. She was bringing it to me. When she heard the crosswalk chime, she didn’t even check which direction it was. She didn’t even look before she stepped out.”

My hand went to my mouth. “Oh god.”

“I remember running to the window of my classroom, the sound of all the sirens. The rice and sweet egg all over the road.”

My eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry.”

“So you bet I’m angry. And that’s why I won’t lose anything else to the ink. Not my life, not my mind—not you.”

The table was a barrier, Tomohiro so far away. I skirted it desperately and wrapped my arms around him, sinking into his warmth.

“I’m okay,” he said. “It was almost eight years ago.”

“It’s horrible.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to make you sad. I’m fine, just changed. And mad.” He brushed the hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ears with his good wrist. “And now we need to get to school before we’re both late.”

I dabbed my eyes, nodding, and I felt a small thrill then, that I knew Tomohiro better than anyone at school, that he trusted me more than Myu or Ishikawa or anyone. It was a stupid thrill in the face of such a story, but I couldn’t help feeling it.

I left the house first, walking south a few blocks before turning west. That way I would still come from the south side of Shizuoka Station and wouldn’t stand out. Tomohiro would ride his bike north and come along the stone wall, the one he often jumped over to look badass, to cover that he was really sneaking off to draw.

The rain had cleared some of the humidity, and the crisp morning air felt refreshing against my bare arms. I passed OLs—office ladies—in suits on their way to work, salarymen and schoolteachers, students wearing other uniforms. One of them, a guy from another school, walked the same way I did for a while; I got a little paranoid. If he hadn’t been in front of me, I would’ve sworn he was following me. I wasn’t sure about which school uniform he wore—from behind I couldn’t see the tie, and the white shirt and dark pants were pretty basic—but then he turned his head to look across the street, and I saw the shock of blond hair tucked behind his ears, the silver earring glinting in the sunlight.

Jun.

He saw me, too, and stared at my Suntaba uniform. He smiled broadly, lifting his hand and bobbing his head.

“Good morning!” he said.

“Morning,” I stammered. He stopped and waited for me.

“You get caught in the storm last night?” he said.

“What?” Oh god, how did everyone know? Did I radiate guilt or something?

“The mud,” he said, pointing at the stains that pretty much covered me head to toe.

“Oh. Yeah.” Jeez, Katie. Can we bring the tension down a notch?

He stared at me another minute. “So you’re on Suntaba’s kendo team, huh? I was surprised to see you at the tournament.”

Of course he’d noticed. I was the only blond-haired girl in the school, for god’s sake.

“Yeah,” I said politely, stifling my inner monologue. “So you’re the famous Takahashi.”

“I guess I am.” He grinned. “Just a sport I’m into, right?”

His hair slipped from behind his ear and he tucked it back again. “This weekend is the kendo retreat with some kendouka from your school. Are you going, too?” We were walking together now, but I wasn’t sure how it had happened.

“I’m not going,” I said, waving my hand in front of me.

“I’m not good enough. Mostly the seniors are going.”

“Ah,” he said, tilting his head backward and looking up at the bright blue sky. “Too bad.”

He was just being polite, I knew. But somehow his subtle compliment made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

“That ink thing was weird, huh?” he said.

“What?”

“At the tournament.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, that was super weird.”

“Made me think of that story you told me at the station.

You know, with that boy at your school who was drawing things.”

Not good. Not. Good. Get out, get out now!

“Oh, yeah, he transferred,” I said. “Haven’t seen him since.”

Jun paused. “Oh. Guess it wasn’t him, then.”

Thank you, Brain. For once.

“We always run into each other, but did you know we’ve never been properly introduced?” he said, swinging his book bag back and forth. The green-and-navy tie on his neck bounced against his shirt as he walked. “You know I’m Jun, but after all this time I still don’t know your name. After a while it was kind of embarrassing to ask.”

“Really?” I said. But when I thought about it, it was true.

I’d never told him. He looked at me with genuine, friendly interest, and I don’t know why it made me blush. Okay, I did know. He was gorgeous. And he’d saved me in Ishida and plucked that cherry petal from my hair. But Tomohiro was right about Jun keeping his thoughts hidden; he smiled, but his piercing eyes didn’t give away any emotion at all. They felt like they could reach deep inside you.