Amanda Sun - Shadow

It’s not real. It can’t be real . I wouldn’t do that, not even to a demon like the inugami . It had to be a lie, a fake memory. I wasn’t a monster. This wasn’t me.

“You don’t know who you are, Tomohiro. We know.”

I shook my head, but the sound of my name chilled me to the core. I didn’t want her to know anything about me.

“You’re lost. You’ve forgotten.”

My hands squeezed into fists as beads of sweat broke out all over my skin. The sweat trickled down my forehead like blood.

“You’re wrong,” I said.

“We are never wrong.”

And then a second voice echoed in the labyrinth. “Yuu-chan?”

My body went cold. Oh god. Myu. She couldn’t be here. She couldn’t.

“Please,” I begged. “Leave her alone.”

“Yuu-chan? I’m scared!”

The scatter of wolf-beasts, footsteps everywhere.

And then another faint voice.

“Tomo-kun!”

“Shiori!” I cried. I raced into the labyrinth, twisting and turning in the dark paths, until suddenly I slammed into a wall in the dim blue light. My body pulsed with sharp pain as I stepped aside, squinting in the darkness. I staggered forward, my hands in front of me. Walls rose up in the shadows, and I crashed again and again as I raced blindly through the maze, my palms scraped raw and stinging.

“Myu!” I shrieked. “Shiori!” The sound of footsteps and claws echoed from everywhere, meaningless without reference. I didn’t know if I’d find the girls or the inugami around the next corner. My body shuddered with fear, with the anticipation of sharp teeth taking hold.

“You are not like those girls,” the woman’s voice said, and suddenly she was in front of me in her pale kimono.

A scream in the distance, muffled by snarls. Oh god.

“Myu!” I shrieked. I ran forward and grabbed the woman’s shoulders, shaking her violently, desperately. “Leave her alone!” I cried. “Please!”

The woman tilted her head, looking at me curiously.

“It is you who is the threat,” she said, and suddenly it wasn’t the woman I was holding at all but Myu, drenched in ink as thick as blood.

“Myu!” I cried, clutching her desperately to myself. Only she pushed away, flailing against my grip, splattering me with ink.

And then the worst sight in her eyes. The worst thing imaginable.

The truth.

Because there was nothing but fear in her eyes when she looked at me. Fear and disgust. To her, I was the same as the monsters. One of them.

“This is what you truly are,” said the woman’s voice, now behind me, and then there was nothing but darkness and the sound of rushing like a black waterfall, engulfing me, flooding my lungs with ink.

I wanted to drown. Let me drown.

And then I gasped for breath, and the ticking of the clock beside me filled the silence.

I waited for a moment, letting myself come back to what was real. My heart thumped against my ribs, my blood coursing in a panic through my limbs.

I couldn’t let it drown me, I knew. But sometimes it was easy to forget.

I knew I would never hurt Myu or Shiori willingly. But I knew the accidents that had come before. The warped, twisted talent I had in me. And I didn’t know what it was capable of.

I swallowed, the bitter taste of sleep lodged in my dry throat.

I knew what I had to do, to protect that horrible truth.

There was no place in my life for Myu. I had tricked myself into thinking it was love when deep down she feared me, maybe even despised me. If she didn’t yet, she would soon. Not answering her texts, spending time with another girl. Yeah, I was leading a second life—one she’d hate me for.

I felt the shame, the anger, the uselessness of it all.

I folded a corner of myself and tucked it neatly away.

The price of being marked.

Katie

Diane practiced the walk through Sunpu Park with me for an entire week before school started and I still managed to get lost on the first morning of classes.

“I decided not to send you to an International school,” she’d told me. “You’ll learn faster if you go to a regular Japanese high school.”

“You’re joking,” I’d said, my mouth agape.

She’d shaken her head. “You have it in you. I know it.”

But apparently I couldn’t even make it to school without help. The paths through Shizuoka Station wound underground and split off into unmarked pathways. I’d been seconds away from asking a frightening Buddhist monk for directions, his face hidden under his giant pointy woven hat, a bell in one hand and a bowl for alms in the other. But then I’d seen a pack of students in the same navy-and-white uniform as mine and followed them sheepishly out of the labyrinth, all the way to the Suntaba School gate.

I searched the numbers in the genkan for the cubby that was supposed to be mine. I pulled on the white school slippers and whirled through the maze of corridors.

Great. Lost again. But at least so were all the other freshmen.

“Can I help you?” a girl said in Japanese. She held a clipboard list, and had a little badge pinned to her chest. But—surprise, surprise—I didn’t know the kanji on the clasp. I’d improved a lot with cram school, both in New York and the one I’d started since I arrived in February, but fluency still lay just beyond my reach.

“Um,” I answered in Japanese. “I’m Katie Greene?”

The girl stared at her list as my cheeks blazed red. It was like some sort of test, except we both knew I was a fraud. My Japanese embarrassed both of us.

“Here we are,” she said. “1-D. Follow me.” I followed.

We passed room after room with narrow windows along the side, until I saw the little white sign that marked the classroom as mine.

“Thanks,” I said and the girl nodded, eager to get away. Funny. I’d thought making friends would be easier than that.

The rows of desks were nearly empty, students gathered in groups discussing the winter break. The homeroom fell silent as I entered.

“Um,” I said. “Hi.” I bobbed my head in a tiny bow. No one said anything. My legs felt like they’d give out, so I sat down at a desk near the back. Still nothing. I could almost hear the crickets.

O - kay . Not the reception I’d expected. It was hard to breathe then, like my chest had constricted. What was I doing here anyway? I’d been wrong—there was no life for me here. This was all a mistake. God, I hoped Nan and Gramps could pull things together quickly so this could be done with.

“ Ohayo !” yelled out a girl as she entered the classroom, and the students buzzed with activity again.

“Morning!” they shouted back as she joined the group, and the chatter enveloped the silence.

I unpacked my book bag slowly, trying to look busier than I was. I dropped my pen with a clatter, and a few of the students looked over and giggled, then lowered their voices. Great. Now I was the topic of conversation. I reached down and wrapped my fingers around the pen as it rolled away.

“They’re shy because they think you’re an exchange student,” said a voice, and I looked up from the floor. A girl sat backward on the chair in front of me, her shoulder-length hair pulled up in a messy bun. “And they don’t want to get attached in case we all cry when you leave.”

“Oh,” I said.

“But I heard you’re permanent. Is that true?”

Maybe? No—I couldn’t think like that. I just had to survive until I could go home. This world was too foreign for me. Mom was right to stick to home soil.

“For now,” I said.

The girl raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. She smiled. “I’m Watabe Yuki,” she said, using her last name first.