Ink

The castle vanished behind me as I twisted down the pathways. I ended up walking way too far—all the paths looked the same. Students from different schools always cut through the park on their way home from after-school clubs, so when I saw the couple standing by the wooden bridge out of the park, it wasn’t unusual. At least, not at first.

The girl wore a deep crimson blazer and a red-and-blue-tartan skirt. Definitely a uniform from another high school, but I wasn’t sure which one. She was sobbing, quick, hiccupy breaths stif led by the back of her hand. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her.

The boy with her was from my school, dressed in our dark navy blue. His copper-dyed hair gleamed in the sunlight.

Give me a break. Not here, too. Didn’t he say he had kendo practice, or was that just another cover so he could disappear, like Keiko said?

The girl with him wasn’t Myu—that’s for sure—and her stomach curled outward under her skirt in a way that it shouldn’t.

I covered my mouth when I realized why.

A moment later Tomohiro embraced her, pulling her and her blooming stomach toward him.

The girl’s teary eyes flicked toward me as her head pressed into his shoulder.

The same burning eyes that had stared at me from the paper.

I turned and ran, spraying the gravel stones as I raced toward Shizuoka Station. I didn’t slow until I was across the bridge, down the tunnels and through the doors of the station.

She’s real. It’s her.

I felt like the station was spinning. And even though most of me was freaking out that the girl from the drawing was real, the shallow part of me was flipping out because Tomohiro was hugging another girl. A pregnant girl.

I stumbled through the crowds, desperate to be anonymous. I just needed a break from all this, just for a few minutes. Just so my heart could stop pounding.

I tried to lose myself, but as much as I wanted to be alone in the great mass of travelers, my blond hair assured I could never really blend in.

3

“Okaeri!”

“Are you going to do that every time?”

“Until you play along.”

I sighed.

“Tadaima,” I muttered in a flat tone. “I’m home. Happy?”

Diane’s mouth curved into a slanted frown. “Not really.”

I kicked my shoes against the raised foyer until they dropped off my feet, and headed toward the couch.

“Hey, rough day?” Diane said, looking worried.

“No,” I mumbled. “Just tired.”

“You’re home late,” she said. “Did you join a club at school?”

“I went to a café with Yuki,” I said. It was probably for the best not to mention the encounter with Tomohiro. Or, you know, that my drawings were coming at me with pointy teeth.

“That’s great! See, you’re making friends!”

I shrugged.

“And I got dragged into the English Club at school.”

“Ah,” said Diane. “Yes, that generally happens to gaijin. Did you join anything else?”

“Tea Ceremony, with Yuki.”

“Glad to see you finally taking an interest in the local culture.”

I rolled my eyes. “You know it’s not that. It’s not like I’m not interested in Japan.”

“I know. It’s homesickness.” And what she didn’t say. It’s Mom. And that’s a home I can’t go back to.

“So how was your day?” I asked. She looked shocked and way too happy that I’d asked.

“Busy,” she said. “The other English teacher is getting married soon, so I’m having to sit in on an extra period until we hire a temp. I don’t have any prep time now.”

“You need a temp because she’s getting married?”

“She’s going to quit to be a housewife,” Diane said. “A lot of women do in Japan. Not as much anymore, but Yamada is really traditional. So no prep period for me.”

“Taihen da ne,” I drawled, stretching my legs out on the couch. Diane beamed at me.

“Yes, it is tough,” she said. “And I can see that cram school is really paying off.”

“Give me four or five more months.” I smiled.

I helped Diane ladle out plates of spaghetti and we ate our dinner in exhausted silence. In the middle of dinner, Diane’s friends phoned to go out for drinks, and she hastily clipped on dangling gold earrings as I assured her for the fifth time that I would be just fine by myself.

“I am sixteen, you know.”

Diane gave me a once-over and arched her eyebrow. “I know.”

“I’m fine,” I said, pushing her out the doorway. “Have fun.”

“You have my keitai number if you need me,” she stuttered.

“Go!” I said.

“Ittekimasu.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, but she stood there with her frowny face until I gave in and muttered the response. “Itterasshai.” Go and come back safely.

I wished I could go anywhere without having to think about Tomohiro. And now I was in an empty apartment, flooded only with silence and the image of him hugging his crying, pregnant girlfriend.

I flicked on the desk light in my bedroom and lifted the lid of my laptop. As the colors swirled to life and the computer hummed, I thought about Tanaka and Tomohiro in calligraphy class, about the ripped canvas dripping into the trash can.

Wouldn’t the ink have dried overnight? How much did he load onto the brush? And what the hell did he do to his friend Koji?

I had an email from Nan, an update on the custody situation. What it really boiled down to was Gramps’s health, and it wasn’t great. But he was on his second-to-last round of chemo, and then they’d check to see if he was back in remission. Please let him be. I didn’t want to lose anyone else.

I tapped out a reply, then closed the lid on the laptop and collapsed onto my bed. In the dim glow of my desk lamp, I stared at the ceiling. Thin lines of light spread across the wall from the back of the metal shade. I tried to picture the kanji for sword, but had no idea. I sat up and grabbed my dictionary from the desk; Diane had an electronic one, but I still couldn’t read the kanji easily enough to use it. Sword didn’t look that complicated to write, at least not for Tomohiro. It took all of ten strokes:

I closed the dictionary and lay back, trying to picture Tomohiro standing in the arts room, holding a delicate painter’s brush between his fingers. Curving his arm in the smooth strokes he had sketched with in the school courtyard.

He slouched a lot, but Tomohiro didn’t strike me as clumsy. He moved with precision, and I didn’t think he’d cut his hand on a mounted canvas.

Maybe there’d been a loose nail or staple, like Tanaka said. But if he was painting, why would he touch the back of the canvas?

I imagined the stark spray of red across the kanji, black as night. The ripped canvas, ink and blood dripping into the trash, sluggish like the ink that had dripped down the steps of the Suntaba genkan.

And if his dad really didn’t approve of his time “wasted” on the arts, then I could imagine what he had to say about Tomohiro’s pregnant girlfriend.

If he knew, which he probably didn’t.

Not that any of it really mattered. Or it shouldn’t. I had my own life to worry about. I didn’t need moving drawings with sharp teeth and exploding pens. I didn’t need to cross paths with a guy who beat up his best friend and switched schools because of it. I’d just have to tell him to get lost so I wouldn’t have to stare at his gaudy highlight job anymore.

I closed my eyes to the spray of light in my room, and my thoughts spiraled into sleep.

The week blurred past between cram school and Sado Club, learning how to twist a teacup three times in my hand to admire the sketched cherry blossoms and leaves encircling the lacquered chawan. Hand-copying stroke after stroke, page after page of kanji. Schoolwork was getting easier, Japanese more natural, and I started to wonder if Diane was right. Maybe I’d really underestimated my language skill.

“Guess what?” Diane gushed at breakfast. I looked up from my pancakes and honey.

“What could possibly have you so giddy?” I asked.

“Cherry blossoms,” she said. “They’ve spotted the first ones in Kyoto and Osaka, and someone found a whole tree in bloom in Kamakura.”

“So Shizuoka will be next?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you see a few on your way to school.”

Sure enough, the odd tree in Sunpu unfolded in sprays of pink and white, dotting the bare park with color. Most of the trees still lay dormant as buds, but my eyes hunted for sakura trees as I snaked through to Suntaba.

When I slid open the door to our classroom, the whole class was going on about the trees. Was it really such a big deal?

“Katie-chan!” Yuki called out, and the friendly suffix she’d used wasn’t lost on me. She waved me over to where she sat huddled with her friends, who smiled shyly.

“Morning,” I said.

“The sakura are blooming. We’re going to go on the school picnic on Friday!”

“Picnic?” I said. “Nice!” Missing school to be outdoors was like skipping without getting into trouble. Everyone had trouble sitting through class, restless with thoughts of the upcoming picnic. We peered out the windows at the floating cherry petals, watching them spiral down from the trees until the final bell rang.

Tea Ceremony Club started after Yuki and I finished wiping down the blackboards and emptying the garbage cans. The teacher droned on about how to spin the whisk in our hands, the murky green in our cups frothing into a thick, bitter tea. She brought homemade sweets to go with the tea, pink nerikiri flower cakes and manju filled with red-bean paste. At first the texture of red bean had bothered me, but after almost two months in Japan, I guess I was adjusting.

Diane woke the next morning at five-thirty so she could cook karaage, onigiri, nasubi and stewed eggs for my picnic bentou.

“You can’t take peanut-butter sandwiches for flower viewing,” she said, and for once I agreed with her. “Only thing is, I don’t know how to make dango,” she added, embarrassed.

“Oh, dango, yeah,” I said.

“Tell me you know what dango are.”

I shrugged.

“Yuki will probably bring some. Eat them.”

I only found out after, when I peeked inside the delicate pink handkerchief she’d tied around my lunch, that she’d switched my box for the more expensive one she had, a traditional black-and-red bentou with two layers—lots of food to share.

It clicked then, in my memory—Diane hiding under platters of hors d’oeuvres at Mom’s funeral. This is how she copes, I thought. This is how she tries to be family.

I wrapped my arms around the bentou as I continued toward the park. There’s a saying in Japan, and it has to do with cherry-blossom viewing—hana yori dango. Dumplings over flowers. It basically means that someone should value needs over wants, substance over appearance. As in, make sure you have food and shelter before you burn money on something extravagant. And, you know, choose genuine friends who will be there for you over pretty, shallow ones. Don’t get carried away by beauty if it leaves you empty.

But it was hard to believe in dumplings over flowers when I reached the southern moat and stepped onto the arch of the Sunpu bridge. The beauty took my breath away, and for a minute I believed I could live off the flowers alone.

The entire park was bathed in pink, thousands of petals floating on the breeze as if it were raining sakura. The papery petals caught in my hair, on my uniform and on the leather of my book bag. Cherry blossoms littered the gravel paths, the bright green grass and the sluggish moats that pulled the petals from the park.

I walked slowly toward the castle, watching the petals falling. It was like an alien rain, something I had never experienced before. The crowds in the park were huge, salarymen, families and friends all gathered on tarps at the base of the cherry trees. They shared food as they laughed, beer cans and tea bottles lining the edges of the blankets. I closed my eyes, walking slowly, feeling the petals as they grazed my skin and floated downward. For the first time, I felt truly happy in Shizuoka, carrying my special bentou in a forest of pink under the clear sky.

I rounded the corner to shouts and howling laughter. Three guys—younger than me, probably thirteen or so—and one girl, who dabbed at her eyes with her seifuku sleeve. One of the boys chugged away at a can of something or other I couldn’t read, and another held the girl’s book bag up in the air, laughing.

“Give it back!” she begged, but the boys snorted and passed the can back and forth, tossing the book bag out of her reach to each other.

I stood there frozen. No way could I take on three punks, even if they were younger than me, but I had to do something.

I stepped forward, taking a deep breath.

A voice echoed through the park.

“Oi! Leave her alone.”

The boys looked up as a student from Suntaba stepped forward, petals clinging to the buttons of his open blazer. My mind churned—Tomohiro. The boys swore at him, and I secretly hoped he’d back off. They looked like seriously bad news.

But he swore back, apparently with a worse word, because one of the guys threw his can down and started rolling up his sleeves. They dropped the book bag, forgotten, and the girl raced over to pick it up. She darted away, running past me so fast that the breeze rushed against my face. The three came at him, shouting. Tomohiro lifted his hands slowly, and panic shot through me.

There’s no way he can handle three of them, even if he does get into a lot of fights.

The boy with the rolled-up sleeves swung at Tomohiro, but he ducked and pulled the guy’s arm so hard that I thought it might rip from the socket. The second guy lunged and clipped Tomohiro’s face, but Tomohiro swung his leg around and kicked the guy at the back of his knees. He stumbled forward and Tomohiro punched him in the back, shoving him into the third guy.

Rolled Sleeves was up again, and he kicked hard. With three of them, there was no way Tomohiro could avoid all the blows. The blood trickled down his face.

And just when his bruise from Myu was fading.

Then Tomohiro took hold of one of the wiry boys and threw him through the air. The boy’s awkward body arced, suspended for a minute among the falling petals, and then thudded hard against the sharp gravel. In a minute he was up again, running across the park followed by the second guy.

Tomohiro grabbed Rolled Sleeves’ collar and walked him backward, shoving him against the fence that overlooked the deep, cold moat. Tomohiro muttered something and Rolled Sleeves flinched. Tomohiro dropped him, wiping at the blood dripping from his nose.

But as Tomohiro walked away, the boy stood up slowly and pulled out a switchblade.

Oh my god.

My legs started moving before I could think. “Watch out!” I screamed, running at Tomohiro. He looked up in surprise and then saw the boy behind him. He caught the boy’s arm as it swung down, squeezing his wrist hard until he dropped the blade. I grabbed it from the ground and threw it into the river, where it was sucked into the water with a sploosh.

“Teme!” the boy shrieked at me.

“You need some manners!” Tomohiro shouted and punched the boy so hard I could hear the crack of his nose as it snapped.

Rolled Sleeves felt around his nose as the blood soaked his chin. He stumbled to his feet and took off, swearing at Tomohiro. Tomohiro swore back and the boy sped up.

The blood trickled down Tomohiro’s face as he heaved in every breath.

“Are you—are you okay?” I said.

Tomohiro nodded, his shoulders moving up and down as he panted. “You?” he said.

“I’m fine.”

He wiped at his nose with the back of his arm, and as he dropped it down again, I saw a gash across the skin.

“He cut you.” I panicked.

“What?”

“On your wrist!”

He looked down, then quickly pushed the cuff of his sleeve down.

“Just an old injury. It’s nothing,” he said.

It didn’t look like nothing.

“Thanks,” he said finally. “For the warning.”

“Um, no problem,” I said.

He paused. “But just for your own safety, maybe you shouldn’t run toward boys with knives. You know, in the future.” The corner of his mouth lifted as he tried to keep the grin off his face.

I found myself grinning back. “I’m sorry, are you insulting me after I saved your butt?”

He laughed, and the warmth of the sound spread through me.

“I’m just saying you should avoid running toward sharp objects and dangerous guys.”

“Like you,” I said. It just popped out—I didn’t mean it to.

The grin faded, and he was serious again. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Like me.” He kicked the toe of his shoe into the gravel. “Che! What the hell am I doing?” He turned, his shoulders lifting with a breath, and then he ran.

“Wait,” I said. “I just wanted to—”

The gravel sprayed across the grass, tiny drops of blood clinging to the stones. Except, some of the drops didn’t look like blood. They oozed like…like black ink.

The shower of pink petals rained down.

I stepped forward, one foot, then the other, numb to the beauty of the park. I bent down and lifted one of the stones. The droplet of ink spilled onto the side of my finger before dripping back to the ground.

He’d been warm, laughing, the weight of something lifted. And then he’d stopped. What the hell am I doing? he’d said. What are you doing, Yuu? He was keeping something secret, something about the ink. He wanted me to stay away. But he’d forgotten.

And it was nice.

The castle rose as I neared the picnic site, and I saw the classes spread out under the branches laden with hundreds of pink-and-white blooms. I spotted the Class 1-D tarp, and Yuki waved wildly at me.

“Hey, slowpoke, what took you so long?” she said.

“Yuu Tomohiro,” I said. “Where’s 3-C?”

“They’re not coming until this afternoon,” she said. “They have class.”

I said nothing. It was still early enough that he could have been on his way to school through the park. With no book bag. Maybe. Or maybe he was headed somewhere else.

More drops of ink where they shouldn’t be. And all I could think about was his face lighting up with that laugh.

We ate our lunch amid the excited chatter of first-year senior high students. Yuki’s friends sat with us and shyly exchanged a few pink, white and green dango sticks with me for some of Diane’s karaage. The dango looked like pastel traffic lights and tasted overwhelmingly sweet.

After the picnic, I helped fold up the tarp and carry it back to the school with Tanaka. We resumed our afternoon classes, but no one’s heart was really in it, even the teachers’.

I had cleaning duty—the bathrooms—and I wrinkled up my nose when I heard it. I headed toward the ones by the gym, armed with my brush, my apron, my hair tie and my gloves. Not the most fun task, but I scrubbed away anyway. Making students clean the school toilets would never fly in my school back home, but here it was just expected. When everything was clean, I washed my hands in the sink and opened the bathroom door.

Shouts erupted from the gym, a chorus of tired voices yelling in unison and the clatter of wood hitting wood. I walked toward the sound, carrying my toilet brush with me, and pulled the gym door open a fraction.

About forty students were decked out in black armor, masks of screen mesh covering their faces. They wore long black skirts down to their ankles and stepped barefoot across the gym in pairs. Each student held a long bamboo stick with both hands, and at the shout of the teacher, they clashed them against each other. The noise echoed to the rafters of the gym and rang in my ears.

One of the teachers, chemistry, I think, saw me peeking and hurried over.

“I see you’re interested in kendo,” he said in English. He had a broad smile and a towel scrunched around his neck. The veins almost popped out from his head, and thick-rimmed glasses hunched over his nose.

“Kendo,” I said. So this was what Tomohiro and Bleached Hair were always running off to. “Japanese fencing, right?”

“Yes,” the teacher said. “We’re practising for the ward competition coming up.”

I’d wanted to take karate in New York but always chickened out at the last minute. I couldn’t bring myself to willingly sign up for something that involved sparring.

The students moved in unison, like ghostly visions of samurai dancing. They swung their bamboo swords in the air, each movement timed to the other teacher’s strained voice. The students lined up along the edge of the gym, called forward in pairs to challenge each other.

“You want to try?” the chemistry teacher asked.

My eyes popped. “Me?”

He nodded.

“No. No, I mean, I…” I trailed off. It’s pretty rude to flat out refuse something in Japanese, so I decided to find a more subtle way out. “I’m already in a few different clubs, so…” The chemistry teacher looked crestfallen.

“Sou ka…” he mused. Then he shook his head. “Well, never mind. Come in and watch for a bit, ne?” I couldn’t think of a way to refuse, so I shuffled into the gym, slumping down against the wall where the students waited for their turn to duel.

“Okay, next pair!” the other teacher shouted. The chemistry teacher nodded at me with a smile and started across the floor. Throaty shouts echoed through the gym as the pair came at each other. They pressed their swords against each other’s, circling at arm’s length. With lightning speed, one approached and smacked his sword on the other’s helmet.

“Point!” the chemistry teacher yelled. I stared wide-eyed. It had happened so fast it was almost a blur. The skirts of the fencers swayed as they moved back and forth, coming at each other and drawing back.

Another pair was called forward, and another. I watched in amazement until I’d lost track of time.

“See you next week!” the teacher called, and I stared down at my watch. Really?

The students untied their helmets and wiped the sweat off their foreheads with their arms. There were a few girls, but mostly guys. I scanned the group as they walked toward the change rooms.

And then Bleached Hair strode past me, followed by Tomohiro.

So. This was why he could take care of that fight. Next to this, the fight with three thirteen-year-old morons was probably nothing to him.

“What did you think?” came an English voice beside me. I looked over, startled, into the glowing face of the chemistry teacher.

“Oh,” I stuttered. “It was, um, great.” The other teacher had walked over now, another senior-level sensei that I didn’t know.

“This is the foreign student at Suntaba,” said the chemistry teacher. Thanks, real subtle. The man arched his eyebrows.

“You going to join our club?” he asked. I began to protest, unsure how to word it. I looked over at Bleached Hair and Tomohiro rubbing their faces with towels and chugging water bottles. Tomohiro had a white-and-navy sports bag strapped over his shoulder and he grinned as he chatted with his friend. He glanced over, and I couldn’t tell if he was smirking or actually smiling.

“Well? What do you think?” said the teacher. “Give it a try?”

I stared at Tomohiro. I wanted to figure out why he’d ditched calligraphy for kendo and what that glimpse of him in the park had meant. And anyway, the way he stared at me felt like a challenge. Like I had to prove that I could do it, too.

“Sure,” I said, glancing at Tomohiro. “I want to try.” The teachers smiled, sputtering about how wonderful it was, while the grin slipped from Tomohiro’s face. He looked away, turning toward the end of the empty gym.