Shadow (5 page)

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.

Chapter Nine

Katie

“Katie!” Diane shrieked, waving wildly at me. She was
easy to spot on the other side of the crowds. It’s not that she was really
overweight or anything, but she had, as Mom put it, a “healthy appetite.” With
her build, height and pale skin among the bustling Japanese crowd, she was like
a sad version of
Where’s Waldo?

But once we’d hugged and I trailed her to the lower level of
Narita airport, everything changed. She wasn’t awkward. She wasn’t the piece
that didn’t fit, the difference that needed circling. She spoke fluently to
everyone, placing a ticket in my hand for the Narita Express train—the NEX—and
standing with the crowd, watching the kanji fly by on the digital board to tell
us which platform and which car to line up for.

I was the one who didn’t fit, not her. I stared at her,
awed.

She smiled. “You’ll pick it up quickly, too,” she said as we
took our seats on the train.

I tilted my head back against the fuzzy headrest.

“Are you kidding?” I said. “I studied for four months and I
could barely nod my way through customs.”

“Just give it four or five months here, and you’ll speak like a
pro,” Diane said. “It’s completely different when you’re immersed in the
language.”

“Okay,” I said, halfway between not believing and not caring. I
was too exhausted from the jet lag to worry about it much. The train tunneled
out of the darkness and to the outside, the February trees bare and the grass
brown as mud.

“Just forget English,” Diane said, folding her hands in front
of her. “Don’t even think of it as an option. Don’t translate things in your
head—just go with what sounds right. If you translate, you’re not really
thinking in Japanese, right?”

“I guess.”

Diane smiled. “Never mind. Rest a bit. We still have to take
the bullet train after this.”

I peered out the window at the tracks, nestled between two
steep hillsides so that I could see nothing of Japan but the slopes of winter
forest. The train swayed from side to side gently, and a stream of steady
Japanese echoed in the train car, announcements telling us something or other
about the train and the destinations. The tracks clacked underneath us in a
steady rhythm—
click-clack
,
click-clack
. Then another tunnel and out again, and the hills pulled
away briefly.

I stared at the low buildings. They looked strange, somehow,
deep reds and browns, with black-tiled roofs and gray brick walls.

“This isn’t exactly how I pictured Tokyo,” I said.

“Oh? What did you expect?” Diane peered out the window to look
with me.

The hills blotted out the buildings again.

“I guess—skyscrapers? Pagodas? Millions of people?” But the
glimpses of road that sped past were empty.

“Well, we’re not really in Tokyo for one thing. It’ll be an
hour before we get there.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling ridiculous. Wasn’t Narita Airport in
Tokyo? Just how big was a sprawling city of 13 million people? I couldn’t
picture it.

I closed my eyes, the jet lag hitting me as the train rocked me
from side to side. When I opened them again, Diane was gently prodding my arm as
she grabbed the handle of my suitcase.

“We need to transfer to the Shinkansen,” she said. “We’re in
Tokyo Station now.”

“Wow,” I said. “I slept that long?”

“You’re like a pro already,” she said. “Lots of people sleep on
the trains here.”

We left the doors of the NEX and stepped onto the platform. The
air smelled musty like train stations do, and I followed Diane quickly through
the thick crowds. A tune chimed from the speakers followed by a steady stream of
polite Japanese—some sort of train announcement, I guessed.

Everywhere there were men in business suits and teens in school
uniforms. All the boys in blazers and dress pants, the girls in pleated
skirts.

That’s going to be me
, I thought.
I’m going to wear one of those.

One student passed me, a white mask over her mouth and hooked
over her ears like she was a hospital patient. Weird. We kept walking, and then
a businessman passed by with one on.

“What’s up with the masks?” I said.

“Huh?” Diane said. It wasn’t even foreign to her anymore. “Oh,
those? It’s a courtesy because they have a cold. They don’t want to spread the
germs, you know?”

“Seriously?” I guess it was a nice gesture, but it was strange
to see them walking around like they were fresh from an operating room or
something.

Another happy tune chimed as I tripped over a thick strip of
yellow plastic bumps.

“So what about all the songs?” I said. “And the bumps?”

Diane smiled. “The chimes make the announcements more pleasant,
right?” she said. “And the bumps are to help the blind get around. You’ll get
the hang of it, Katie. It’s a lot all at once. Are you hungry?” She stopped at a
kiosk, breaking into rapid Japanese that I couldn’t follow. If I couldn’t even
understand Diane, I was definitely doomed.

I tried to listen to the announcements as I waited for her,
concentrating to hear any words I knew. Okay, got a particle. Got a past tense
marker. But nothing concrete. I couldn’t grasp a single full sentence. They
could be announcing Godzilla was about to smash the station into pieces and I’d
be the only one who hung around and got crushed.

I was completely helpless, like some kind of little kid. I
hated the feeling.

Diane came over a minute later and pressed a green triangular
thing wrapped in plastic into my palm.

I turned it over, staring at the kanji on the label. “Um,” I
said. “Thanks?”

“
Onigiri
,” she said patiently.
“Rice ball wrapped in seaweed. Well, rice triangle I guess. It’s got salmon
inside.”

I clung to Diane’s side as she led us through the noisy
station. I felt like the stupidest person in the world. Who was I kidding to
think I could live in Japan? It felt like I’d dropped off the face of the earth.
Was this even the same planet?

I unwrapped the
onigiri
, taking a
cautious bite. The seaweed crinkled like paper and the cold rice stuck to my
teeth. Not awful, but strange. Everything was strange.

The Shinkansen was way worse than the NEX. The train sped along
at something like a million miles per hour, which is the speed that makes your
ears pop and sting like they’re going to fall off.

“Thank god we’re only going an hour out of Tokyo,” I said, and
Diane frowned a little.

“Do you want me to get you a drink from the trolley when it
comes past? It might help.”

I shook my head, remembering the bitter taste of the green bean
tea on the plane. “I’m okay.”

She shrugged and reached into her purse, unwrapping a candy for
me.

“Strawberry milk,” she said, pressing it into my hand.

“Strawberry milk? What kind of flavor name is that?” I looked
at it suspiciously, but popped it into my mouth anyway. The world turned pink
and sweet.

“Good, right?” Diane laughed. “Wait till you try the
yuzu
ones. You’ll forget lemons ever existed.”

I stared out the window until we pulled into Shizuoka
Station.

“Why are the buildings all so short?” I said.

“Earthquakes,” Diane said. “You know, for safety.”

“Oh.”

I followed her, groggy from all the travelling.

“We could walk from here, but with the suitcase we’ll want to
catch the bus,” she said.

I gazed at the ground while we waited, pulling my peacoat
tighter around me to keep out the chill. We hopped on the yellow-and-green bus
from the back door, Diane carrying my bag through the crowd. I could barely look
around or even make small talk. I’d seen enough—my tired brain was saturated.
After a few stops, Diane shoved some yen in my hand and nudged me forward. The
five yen coins had little holes drilled through the middles of them. I tipped
the coins into the slot by the driver and stepped out the front door.

Starting at the back of the bus, ending at the front. Life in
reverse. Why not? Everything had turned on its head anyway.

Shizuoka had these elaborately painted manhole covers and I
stared at them as we walked from the bus to Diane’s apartment.

“Mansion,” she corrected, but I was too tired to ask, just
gazed at the chalklike drawings on the sewer covers as my suitcase bumped over
them. Mt. Fuji in whites and blues, cherry blossoms in pinks and greens. Some
weird temple with a samurai and a yellow sunset behind him.

“Here we are. Welcome home,” Diane smiled.

I looked up. It was a modern-looking building with tiny
concrete balconies centered like giant steps up the five floors. The glass doors
slid open as we approached the lobby, a giant chandelier hanging from the
ceiling and rows of steel boxes stretching the length of the room.

“Mailboxes,” Diane said, walking across the marble floor and
toward the elevators.

I’m clueless
, I thought. So much
for language. I don’t even know the context.

We rode the elevator up to the fourth floor, where a pale green
door led into whatever home awaited me. Diane smiled nervously, like even she
didn’t know what was in store.

As she opened the door, the burst of cold whisked past me.

“Jeez,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself.

“Sorry,” Diane said, flipping the light switch on as she
stepped into the foyer.

“Why’s it so cold in here anyway?” I said, closing the door
behind me and clicking it shut.

“No central heating in most of Japan.”

My jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”

“It’s not so bad,” she said. “At least you’re here in February.
It’ll get warmer by the day. And you’ll be happy to know the previous owners
left their
kotatsu
table.” She motioned toward the
small living room. Beside a tiny crime-against-fashion-purple couch stood the
table, encircled by a thick gray blanket. “The table has an electric heater in
it,” she said. “So you sit under the futon and get snug. The futon comes off for
the summer, of course. Then it’s just a glorified coffee table.”

“Wow,” I said. “All the same, I think I’ll keep my coat on for
a bit.”

“Sure,” Diane chuckled. “Want to see your room?”

Yes.

No.

Sleep. I needed sleep. It was all too much. The dull buzzing
came back, my blood pulsing, the taste in my mouth sour.

“I’m so tired,” I said.

Diane nodded. “It’s the middle of the night for you,” she said,
and she pushed open my door.

Unlike the rest of the house, the room was traditional, the
floor woven with tatami mats and an alcove set in the wall displaying some kind
of wall scroll and the scrawniest of fake bonsai trees. A Western-style bed had
been placed on some special mat and pressed along the side of the alcove, taking
up half the space in the tiny room. A cheery pink comforter lay over the bed,
with a tiny glass coffee table beside it, low to the ground and covered with the
inventory of my new life—an electronic Japanese dictionary, a vase of purple
flowers, an intro package from the cram school I’d start attending on Friday and
a pair of red-and-white Hello Kitty slippers. A desk had been shoved in the
other corner by the window, beside a tiny dresser and bookshelf.

It was small and crowded, but the effort was obvious. And on
top of it all, Diane’s only electric heater rested beside the head of the
bed.

Diane shifted from foot to foot, looking at the floor.

“Let me get you some towels,” she said, rubbing the back of her
head as she went, shy about the effort she’d made with my new room. It was a
sweet gesture. It was.

I stared at my new room, but exhaustion was taking over.

This was my new life, no matter what happened.

Face that mountain
,
Katie.
Size it up.

But I wasn’t sure if I could.