Amanda Sun - Ink

“Katie,” she called out. “Um, Yuu Tomohiro is here to see you.”

“Thanks,” I said. She filled the frame of the doorway.

“He’s not Tanaka,” she said slowly.

“Um,” I said. “For the record, I always told you Tanaka and I are just friends.”

“You also never mentioned Tomohiro.”

“It slipped my mind?”

Diane gave me a stern look.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just didn’t want you to be worried.”

“Why would I be worried?”

“Because of his reputation?”

“Okay, now I’m worried.”

“He’s not really like that,” I said. “Trust me, Diane.” She frowned.

“Trust you because you’ve been lying all this time?”

“Touché.”

“If you were staying, we’d have a talk about this.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But I swear, he’s nice. And our planned activities are PG, I promise.”

“That doesn’t fill me with confidence.”

From the hallway, Tomohiro cleared his throat.

“Diane!” I whined.

“Home by nine,” she said. “Or I get a shotgun.” And then she couldn’t help herself and grinned.

Small victories, I guess. It wasn’t like she was going to pull the staying-for-a-boy line on me, because I wasn’t staying.

“We’re going for kakigori, ” I said. “Um. I have my keitai with me.”

“Okay,” Diane said, but she kept staring at me. “Have a good time. I’ll call you.” She emphasized that part.

“Um, okay,” I said and closed the door behind us. I tried to punch Tomohiro in the arm, but he sidestepped it, a bright grin breaking onto his face.

“What’s that for?” he said.

“Like you don’t know! Couldn’t you have dressed like a normal person?” I swung again. He jumped back, his arms up in the air and the smirk plastered on his face.

We walked to the food floor of the department store off Miyuki Road, debating which café had the most impressive spread of wax desserts in their f loor-to-ceiling windows.

We ducked under the cloth noren hanging from the doorway and sat down at a table. We ordered kakigori, shaved ice, mine melon and his strawberry with extra condensed milk.

“That’s disgusting,” I said, watching him drown the syr-upy ice with runny cream.

He shrugged. “I’m not sharing.”

“I wouldn’t want any. One bite and I’ll give my grandkids cavities.”

The nightmare of the Kami and the Yakuza hovered on the edge of our memories, and I found myself wondering if it had really happened or if it had all just been a bad dream.

“Ishikawa’s getting out of the hospital this week,” he said.

“Oh.” Back to reality.

“I’ll be careful,” he said.

I mashed the melting ice with my spoon. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

He finished the last bite of his kakigori and then reached across the table for mine.

“Hey!” I said, but all I could think about was the softness of his wristband against my skin as he pulled the dessert toward him.

“Don’t complain,” he said, scooping a huge bite into his mouth. “I’m saving your grandkids hundreds in dental bills.

And do you know how many calories are in this?” He squirted more condensed milk on top.

“About a hundred more now?”

“I need to bulk up for the kendo tournament.”

“With kakigori. ”

“Never say I don’t sacrifice for my sport.”

We walked around Sunpu Park, avoiding the castle. The cherry blossoms were long gone, but a few cicadas still whirred in the hot summer air. He reached for my hand, his wristband pressed against the inside of my wrist, the scars up his arm scraping against my skin as we walked.

It was almost dinnertime and the sky started to streak with colors; our last day was ending. Tomohiro pulled me into a conbini store and bought bentous for us, which the clerk heated up in a silver microwave. We boarded the puttering Roman bus, the smell of teriyaki and katsu curry flooding our noses.

I didn’t have to ask where we were going. I knew.

They’d finished the renovations at Toro Iseki, and most of the chain-link fence lay stacked in piles ready to take away.

A couple of university students walked around the site, the girl with her arms wrapped tightly around the guy. Near the Toro Museum at the other side of the forest edge, a group of elementary school students laughed and joked.

I stared, feeling like something was slipping away from me.

“Guess I’ll have to find a new studio,” Tomohiro said, but his voice sounded as hollow as I felt.

We stepped through the trees in silence. The wagtails called to each other, ready to roost in the ume trees for the night. The ancient Yayoi huts stood against the orange sky, the once long grasses around them trimmed neatly for the tourist season.

An ugly patch of brown grass was shorter still where it had burned under the dragon’s looped corpse, but that was the only mark left of what had happened to us.

Tomohiro squeezed my hand and pulled me forward. We ducked into one of the huts before we could get caught. Above us, the sun gleamed through the gaps in the thatched roof.

“We’ll get in trouble,” I hissed.

“What’s new?” He grinned and then leaned over to kiss me.

We sat pressed against the walls a long time, staring up at the sky as the colors twisted and darkened. We watched as our last day together faded, as life grew over the shape of what had once been.

I turned the wrong way when we walked back to the bus stop. That’s how much my world was shifting under my feet.

Tomohiro couldn’t make it to the airport in Tokyo, but at my front door—Diane’s front door—he’d stuffed an envelope into my hand and made me promise to read it on the plane.

Then he’d pressed a kiss onto my lips, deep and hungry and sweet, and pulled away before I could say goodbye, his hand raised to his face as he turned the corner for the elevator. I’d leaned against the wall, listening until the elevator doors slid shut. And then ink had dripped back down the hallway toward me, leaving inky trails that looked like fingers grasping, stretching.

Never quite reaching me.

“Want a sandwich for the flight?” Diane asked at the airport. I shook my head. My stomach felt like it was pressing in on me. There was no way I could eat. “Tea? Anything?”

It was like we were strangers again, like she was shoving hors d’oeuvres at me at Mom’s funeral, keeping a silver plate between us. And yet I’d really started to think that looking for ourselves on the other side of the world, we’d found each other. She wasn’t the piece that didn’t fit—she was the piece that completed everything.

We stood at the security gate, as far as she could take me.

“Well,” she said.

Well.

“Say hi to Nan and Gramps for me,” she said. She reached up and stroked my hair. She had that same wavering smile Mom always had when she was pretending not to be sad.

“They’re going to be so happy to see you.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem,” Diane answered.

“No,” I said, looking her right in the eye. “I mean, thanks.

For everything.”

She looked at me, her eyes filming over with tears. Then she hugged me tightly.

“Oh, hon,” she said, her eyes squeezed shut. “If you need anything, you call me, okay? Don’t worry about the time difference.”

“Okay,” I said. She stepped back and looked at me, her eyes shining.

“Your mom would be so proud of you,” she said, and my eyes filled with tears. “It was always so hard for her to put down roots outside her comfort zone. And you managed it in a different language, even.”