It’s worth my life, but it isn’t worth yours.
“You can do so much more with your life,” Jun said. “Don’t settle for this. Don’t let it haunt you.”
In the breeze I could hear a whisper of that voice again, that gathering noise like a million voices talking at once. It was the same voice that had taken him over when we’d faced Ishikawa and his thugs. The sound was overwhelming, moans of pain and cries for help, animalistic screeches and overlap-ping voices.
Monster,
they said.
Demon. Murderer.
“No!” Tomohiro cried out and fell to his knees, hands clutched over his ears. He could hear it, too, like high-pitched feedback that bounced around inside your head. Only, the way he writhed, I knew that whatever I was hearing, his was tenfold.
My mind reeled. I had to stop this torture for him.
I stared at the motorbikes, useless with the castle doors closed. And then I spotted Tomohiro’s kendo bag, its white zipper gleaming in the moonlight.
I stooped over, grabbing the pull with shaking hands. I rummaged through the bag, the smell of worn leather filling every breath, the armor slipping across my palms as I searched.
The smooth touch of bamboo as my hands closed around the
shinai.
I wheeled around, the others watching me with confusion.
I stepped in front of Tomohiro, swung the
shinai
forward and pointed it at Jun’s throat.
“Leave us the hell alone,” I said.
“Katie,” he said, lifting his arms in front of him. “What are you doing?”
The
shinai
shook in my hands as I tried to hold it steady.
Jun stepped toward me. “We’re trying to help.”
“The hell you are.”
“Tell me you’ve never felt afraid of him. Tell me he’s never endangered you.”
My cheeks flushed red. “You don’t understand anything!”
I shouted. I swung the
shinai
at him and he leaped back.
“And you think you do? How long have you known him, a few months? Do you have any idea what Yuu is capable of?
Does he?”
Splotch, splotch.
Only, now the ink was dripping onto the gravel from Jun, spreading across his back into feathered black wings. The ink dribbled down Jun’s arm and pooled in the palm of his hand. It stretched out on itself, building like an icicle of ink until it was as long as the
shinai
in my hand.
“I didn’t want to involve you in this. I wanted to protect you. Can you expect the same from him?”
“Shut up!” I snapped. “You’re the same as the Yakuza. You just want to use him, too!” I pushed off the back of my foot and swung the
shinai
at him. “Do you hear how crazy you sound? You’re just thugs trying to take over Japan!” My
kiai
shout rang in my ears. It was so loud I could barely believe it was my own voice.
He lifted his ink
shinai
to block my attack, and the force of the block pushed me backward. Ink splattered onto both of us, sprayed across the ground like dark blood.
Jun’s eyes flashed. “I’m not the same as the Yakuza. They can all rot and die.”
“Jun,” called out Ikeda, but he threw his hand back to them.
“No one touches her,” he said. Then to me, “Katie, please.
Don’t fight this. We’re on the same side.”
I circled him, but the other Kami backed up. He held his
shinai
ready, moving faster through the stances than I could.
Like I had a chance of beating the sixth-place national kendo champion.
But I had to try.
He was on the defensive, not lunging at me, which only pissed me off even more. It was like he knew I didn’t have a chance, like he wanted to humor me.
I shouted again, going for a right
kote
shot. If I could take out his wrists, wasn’t that the source of the Kami’s power?
But he turned at the last moment and I stumbled forward, leaving my
dou
wide open for a hit.
He didn’t take it.
“We’re not like them,” Jun said as he circled me, his leather shoes crunching the gravel slippery with ink. “All they think about is money and drugs, useless street power. I’m talking about real power, carving out a new future for Japan. Yuu belongs with us. He
is
one of us!”
“He’ll never be like you!”
Jun pointed the
shinai
down at the ground, his hands spread apart. He thought I wouldn’t fight him.
He was wrong. I swung and the tip grazed his wrist. He stumbled backward, letting go of the
shinai
with his left hand and shaking his fingers back and forth.
He inhaled a sharp breath.
“I-te!”
Point.
I swung again, but he twisted out of the way. Now he was advancing toward me, a fire lit in his eyes. Ink feathers spread across his back, splaying out as they formed wings.
He yelled his
kiai
and lunged at me, his sword clacking under mine and pulling up with such force that I tumbled into the gravel.
“Katie,” he said, his voice full of concern. The sharp edges of the stones sliced across my knees as I fell, but I grabbed on to the
shinai
with everything left in me.
I was not going to lose, not like this. I couldn’t win, but I wouldn’t give up.
I rolled across the stones and onto my feet. My scraped knees burned, but I ran toward Jun anyway. I lifted the
shinai
over my head and screamed as I brought it down on his
shinai.
Ink splattered everywhere as his
shinai
shattered. It showered the ground as he stared at me, and then the ink slowly dripped upward, re-forming into the slats of the sword again.
“It’s you,” he whispered.
“Damn right it is.”
“You manipulated the ink.”
I felt exposed, frightened. I didn’t want them to use me.
“The ink’s reacting to you, isn’t it?” Jun said. “Even my
shinai.
It was you at the tournament. You’re why I lost control in the match.” So the pool of ink hadn’t been Tomohiro; it had been Jun. “Katie, you’re in serious danger.”
I paled, my
shinai
still thrust out at his. “Why?”
“His power,” he said, pointing at Tomohiro, who hunched over in agony as a pair of ink wings spread on his back. He opened his mouth to scream, but only trickles of ink came out. “It’s reacting to you. The longer you’re near him, the stronger and more deadly he’s going to grow.”
“You’re lying.” But it was an echo of what Niichan had said to me in the temple.
“Why would I? I’m your friend.”
“Huh, suddenly I feel all warm and fuzzy.”
“Katie,” he said, and I hated myself for the goose bumps that prickled along my skin.
“I’m not a Kami,” I said. “I don’t have the nightmares.”
“I never said you were a Kami. I said you’re in danger.”
Tomohiro writhed beside me, still unable to hear anything but the voices shouting. It was horrifying to watch. I bent down and rested a hand on his arm, stroking his back and wishing it would stop. Jun watched with his piercing eyes. I hated him for knowing more about it than me. I hated all of this. I couldn’t take it.
“So what am I, if you’re such a genius?” I shouted. “Yeah, okay? The ink’s bitten me. It’s trailed me, whispered to me, blown my pen up in class. It likes me, okay? I get it! But can you tell me why, Jun? Can you tell me why the hell the ink finds me so interesting? What does it want?”
“I don’t know how, but you have ink in your blood,” he said. “I’ve heard of it happening before. The ink inside you calls to the Kami blood. It’s trying to awaken in you any way it can.”
“Why?” I whispered. “What does the ink want?”
“Power,” Jun said. “The ink senses something of its own in Yuu and is drawn to it, like a stream to a lake. It augments our ability. It knows how he—how he feels about you.” His voice sounded bitter, and he looked away from my hand on Tomohiro’s back. “It’ll use those feelings to get the most out of him until—”
“Until what?” I breathed.
Jun looked at me with sad eyes. “Until the power overtakes him. Until his emotions for you make him lose control and he becomes only Kami.”
I rose to my feet, my hands clenched in fists. “So to save myself I just have to stay away from him? No going for coffee? That’s lame, Jun. Got anything else?”
“You don’t get it!” he shouted, and I took a step back. He was looking at me like he was going to break. He’d never looked so fragile. His eyes were melted ice, warmth spilling everywhere. “It’s going to kill you, Katie! If the ink kills you, Tomohiro will never regain control, and that’s what it wants!”
My ears stopped hearing. My eyes stopped seeing. All I could feel was my heart pounding, pulsing through my whole body.
“You’re lying,” I whispered.
“I hope so. I hope to hell I’m wrong.”
“You
are
wrong,” I said. “That can’t be it.” Tomohiro’s love for me, was it all just the ink attracted to something within me? Just power seeking its own like magnets, not caring if it crushed me to death?
Impossible.
Tomohiro moaned on his side, clawing away demons that weren’t there. His pupils were huge and alien, like he was living in some other world. And then the whispers dissipated and he stopped struggling, his breathing shallow. He blinked as his pupils shrank to their normal size, concentrating as he tried to focus them on me. He’d made it through whatever hell he’d trod, from being more Kami than human. But what about the next time? What if he didn’t come back?
“The ink doesn’t care about right or wrong,” Jun said quietly. “If you read the myths, the ancient
kami
are terrifying because they don’t share human judgments of right and wrong. We can wield the power, or the power can destroy us. Tomohiro needs our help or he’ll…he’ll destroy you. You need to stay away from him. Please.”
A world alone, without him. The flowers around the void in my heart wilted, crumpled beneath the weight of the truth.
Going back to being alone.
I screamed and thrust the
shinai
at Jun. “Don’t you dare tell Tomohiro that crap.”
“And what, wait for you to die? I can’t do that.”
“Don’t you understand? If he thinks the power will kill me—” I fell to my knees, the tears spilling over my cheeks.
“If he knows it, that might be enough to send him over the edge.”
He hesitated, because we both knew I was right. We were holding a ticking time bomb. Wait and it explodes. Try to defuse it and
boom.
We all die.
Unless one of us was wrong.
“What will you do?” Jun said.
And then I felt the warmth of Tomohiro’s fingers as they wrapped around mine on the
shinai.
He pulled us upright, the
shinai
pointed at Jun’s throat. Something slick squished against my shoulder and I turned to see Tomohiro’s inky wings spread out to match Jun’s, warm ink oozing down my skin where the feathers touched me. He squinted a little, his eyes still having trouble focusing, and his shoulder leaned into me as he legs wobbled underneath him.
“We’re done here,” he said faintly, and Jun smirked.
“Get it through your head. We’re not the enemy.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Jun looked at me hard, lowering his
shinai
and dropping it to the ground. It splashed into a puddle of ink as it hit the stones.
“The power is hunting you both, Yuu. What if it gets to you first?”
“Then at least it’ll keep me out of your hands,” Tomohiro spat.
Jun squeezed his hands into fists so tight the veins popped along the strokes of the snake kanji on his skin.
He said, “You don’t know how to handle your gift.”
Translation: you may accidentally kill your girlfriend, which I
can’t tell you in case you blow up and kill us all right here and now.
Tomohiro smacked the
shinai
into Jun’s right wrist so hard the bamboo slats rattled. I heard the snap of bone as Jun fell to the ground with a cry.
“Jun!” said Ikeda, running to his side.
“It’s my life!” Tomohiro shouted. “I’ll live it how I want. I don’t owe you anything!” He threw the
shinai
to the ground and grabbed me by the wrist, pulling us toward the closed castle doors. He yanked on the heavy handles, but they wouldn’t budge.
I looked back at Jun, the way he was sprawled on the gravel with Ikeda’s arms wrapped around him. He lifted his head, his face covered with sweat and dirt, his fingers scratched raw by the sharp stones he’d fallen into. He looked so pathetic cradling his broken wrist that I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“You have no idea,” Jun rasped. “You’ve barely seen the surface of what you’re capable of.”
Tomohiro wrapped his arms around me tightly, the warmth of his body pressed against mine so hard I could barely breathe.
“Then we’ll find out together,” he said and flapped his dark wings, lifting us upward. The walls of Sunpu Castle slicked past, my sneaker tapping against the clay roof tiles as we lifted. The Kami scattered as we hovered an inch above the shingles, slamming into the drain spout on the other side of the castle wall. Tomohiro’s wings gave out and we collapsed onto the rail of the bridge, the ink feathers melting and splashing into the dark water below. Tomohiro tipped forward toward the water, but I pulled him back as hard as I could and we tumbled onto the bridge.
We could hear the groan of the wooden doors as the Kami pulled on them, the rumble of the motorbikes revving to life.
But as the gate opened to the scene of Jun crumpled on the ground, we heard his voice, hollow and defeated.
“Mou ii,”
he said.
That’s enough.
“But—” Ikeda said.
“It’s enough!” he yelled. “He’ll come back when he sees his mistake.”
I stared at him, but Tomohiro grabbed my wrist and started running, and my eyes fell off the shape of Jun, off the wings that were pooling into puddles of ink below him like thick black tears. We ran until the tunnels of the underground walkway swallowed us up, until we stumbled through the glaring lights of the empty train station, where our footsteps echoed in the silence.