Amanda Sun - Ink

“I—”

“Stay away from me,” Tomohiro said, but his voice wavered, and his cheeks blazed red as he turned and took off. I looked down at my hands.

Stay away from me.

Isn’t that my line?

And then I saw the pads of my fingers, covered in dark ink.

I screamed and wiped them on my jeans. But when I lifted them to look, the ink was gone. There was nothing on my jeans, either.

“Katie.” Yuki, looking worried, grabbed my arm and steered me away from the scene I was making. “Let’s go, okay?”

I followed, my mind racing.

I hated myself for the heat that flushed through me when I thought of the warmth of his wrist against my fingers. I tried to crumple up the feeling and toss it away like I had with Tanaka, but when I thought I’d crushed it, it dripped back into my thoughts like black, sluggish ink.

I walked silently through Sunpu Park, Yuki with a sym-pathetic arm around me.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s not like everyone saw. I mean…um.”

“You okay?” Tanaka said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t like how he was talking to you. He said he’s your friend, and then he goes all crazy when you ask him about calligraphy. I just feel like he’s hiding something. Sometimes he looks so pissed, and other times he looks worried or like I’m in on some kind of secret. I don’t get it—I want to know what’s going on.”

“Katie,” Yuki said, squeezing my arm. “That’s just how Yuu is. I’ve been talking to the second years, and he’s just touchy like that.”

“Right,” said Tanaka. “He likes his space. My sister told me he’s always disappearing somewhere—a loner or something, right? I know he’s cold, but don’t take it personally.”

Disappearing somewhere? So he is up to something.

Yuki flipped her phone open to check the time. “Listen, I have to go. They’ll kick me out of cram school if I’m late again. Later, okay?”

We waved as she took off ahead of us.

“Tanaka,” I said quietly as we walked.

“Hmm?” he said, tilting his head to the side.

“Why did Yuu quit Calligraphy Club?”

“ Eh? Oh,” Tanaka said, looking a little embarrassed. Maybe I’d hit a sore spot. “He was getting into a lot of fights, and sensei warned him he’d have to quit the club if it continued.”

“So he got kicked out.”

Tanaka shook his head. “He was doing all right for a while.

We had a big show coming up, our winter exhibit. Tomo-kun was working so hard on his painting. He chose the kanji for sword, and it was supposed to be our feature piece. Anyway, he practiced so many times and then went to paint the one for the display.”

“And?”

“Somehow he cut himself on it. Some sharp nail in the back of the frame or something. It was a deep cut, and he bled across the canvas. After all his hard work, his painting was ruined.”

I struggled to imagine it, Yuu Tomohiro throwing himself into creating a work of art. It didn’t mesh with his tough image, that was for sure.

“So, what, he just quit?”

“When I came into the arts room the next day, his canvas was ripped in two in the garbage. I still remember the sound of the ink dripping into the trash can.”

I stopped walking. “Ink dripping…”

Tanaka nodded. “He must have used a lot of pigment. It was really thick. I remember how weird it looked, kind of an oily sheen with dust or something. He never came back to Calligraphy Club. And shortly after he switched schools.”

“Switched schools? Isn’t that a little drastic?”

Tanaka laughed. “Different reason,” he said.

Ink dripping in ways it shouldn’t, with sparkling clouds of dust. So Tanaka had seen weird stuff, too. “Kanji only have so many strokes. If he’s so talented, why didn’t he start over?”

“I thought so, too. But after that, the fights started getting worse. When I asked what was going on, he said his dad made him quit. Of course, he wouldn’t want to admit it if he just gave up. Probably the ruined painting was the last straw for him.”

“Why would his dad make him quit?” I said, incredulous.

Tanaka grinned and his whole face lit up. He looked hand-some, but not in a way, I noticed, that distracted me.

“Well, I didn’t really hang out with Tomo-kun outside of school,” he said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if his father was pushing him to study harder and spend less time on the arts, even the traditional ones. My mom is always pushing my sister and me to study harder.”

“Hmm.” I wondered what sort of home Tomohiro went to at night, where he slipped off his shoes, whether he had curry waiting for him, too. “So why did he switch schools?”

“You like him.”

My heart stopped. “What?”

“Trust me, I can tell. But you should probably keep your distance. Tomo switched schools because he was almost ex-pelled. There was a really bad fight with his best friend, Koji.”

“The white-haired guy?”

“No, no, I don’t know him. I haven’t seen Koji since…well, since it happened. It was bad. There was a lot of pressure to expel Tomo. So he withdrew and went to a different school.”

“How bad is bad?”

“Enough to put Koji in the hospital. But don’t freak out or anything, okay? I mean, no one’s really sure what happened, and knowing Koji, he probably started it.”

I felt a chill as fear replaced the memory of Tomohiro’s skin against my fingers.

“Anyway, this is as far as I go,” Tanaka said, and I slipped out of my thoughts.

“Oh, of course. Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t fall for him, Katie. Choose someone less complicated. Like me, okay?”

I stared at him until he clapped me on the arm.

“I’m joking.” He laughed. “Jaa ne,” he said, waving.

“Jaa,” I said, but my mind was far away. I wandered the maze of pathways and moats of the park. Sunpu Castle loomed above the tree branches, entangled like crosshatching around its base. The arching castle bridge gleamed in the crisp sunlight, and the moat below bubbled in its murky, thick movements.

The castle had seen generations rise and fall, had even burned down and been rebuilt. I bet from the roof you could almost see the whole park, paths and moats and bridges crossing, the buds on the trees almost ready to burst.

Maybe living in Shizuoka with Diane wasn’t that bad.

Once it was time, cherry petals would fall gently into the cloudy water, swirling on its surface and painting the park pink and white for spring. Dancing across the sluggish water-ways, dripping slowly down their channels, almost oozing like ink…

Shit.

Why did all my thoughts have to turn to him? He wanted to mess with my head and he’d managed to do it. I decided to kick him out. Thank god it was the weekend, where I could go home and not have to see him for two whole days.

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 stifled 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?