Storm. Amanda Sun

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СКАЧАТЬ were created by Izanagi.”

      “So Tsukiyomi was going to destroy Japan?”

      “Destroy Japan?” Niichan’s surprise reminded me I hadn’t told him about the nightmare. “I don’t think that’s in the legends.”

      “Then what happened?”

      “Let me think. It’s been a while since I studied it. So Amaterasu and Susanou fought, that I remember. She hid in a cave—solar eclipse, ne? And they tricked her back out again. They threw a big party and fooled her into glancing at herself in a mirror to draw her out, and they hung the Magatama jewel in a tree to tempt her out, too.”

      The Imperial Treasures. That was two of them linked to Amaterasu and Susanou. But it didn’t make any sense. How could the treasures be involved? “What about the Kusanagi?”

      “The sword? It belonged to Susanou.” That made sense. Jun had always had the sword beside him in my nightmares.

      I remembered Tomo in the nightmare, unconscious, dripping in dark ink. Jun’s head bowed, his apology.

      Oh god. What if that hadn’t been ink spilling from Tomo’s wounds?

      I was an idiot. A complete idiot. But it was just a dream. I couldn’t let Jun hurt him.

      “How does Tsukiyomi fit in? He was Amaterasu’s lover, right?” I yanked the cutlery drawer open and dug for a spoon; my tea was already way too strong, but I dipped the spoon into the mug to chase down the tea bag, anyway.

      “At first. But then he killed another kami. Amaterasu banished him from the heavens. That’s why the sun and moon are separated, right? Night and day. It’s just a creation myth, Katie.”

      But the Amaterasu I’d met hadn’t banished him. She’d killed him. Why? “She didn’t...hurt him?”

      “I don’t think so. She had a lot more trouble with Susanou, but she was a gentle ruler. She’s always been considered benevolent, a protector of Japan.”

      “She gave the first emperor the Imperial Treasures,” I said. “I looked it up.”

      “Yeah,” Niichan said. “They each represented a trait she wanted him to rule with. The mirror is honesty, the sword is bravery and the jewel is love. She gave them to Jimmu, her descendent, and I guess one of the first humans to have the powers of the kami.”

      Emperor Jimmu. I tried to picture him, an ancient figure who was half myth himself. What had he thought when his ink kanji had started to move on their scrolls? Or had Amaterasu explained to him how to control it? Was that knowledge somehow lost over time like Jun had said?

      “I’m sorry I can’t help more,” Niichan said. “I don’t know enough about how this all ties in.”

      “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m really glad you called me back, Niichan. You’ve helped, really.” At least I understood the stories a little better. The Imperial Treasures had been handed down through the line of Kami. They had to be linked. If only one of them had been a paintbrush or something. That would’ve made a lot more sense as a starting point.

      “Katie? Be careful, okay? For your sake and Yuki’s, too. There have been powerful Kami in Japan’s history, and they always changed the landscape. I don’t know what Takahashi is up to, but stay back. At the kind of power level you’re suggesting, the ink is uncontrollable. He may just burn himself out.”

      I took a sip of my tea; it had gone cold as we’d talked. “I hope so.”

      But somehow, I didn’t think it would be that easy.

      Yuki and I sat with our backs straight and our knees folded underneath us, our hands barely touching the tatami of the school’s traditional room. It was our weekly Tea Ceremony Club meeting, and we sat in a row along the wall while Yuki’s friend Ayako whirred the bamboo whisk through the milky green tea.

      It was getting harder to go through the motions of everyday life when I felt like the world hung in the balance. Diane had passed me the newspaper that morning to practice reading my kanji, and I’d pushed it away, too frightened to see another headline about dead Yakuza. It was almost impossible not to hear about it, since it was the most sensational thing that had happened in Shizuoka City in a long time. Theories abounded among my classmates before homeroom had started; what did the ink snake mean? Was it a rival gang, or a Yakuza civil war?

      I wondered if Jun would reveal himself or his motive at some point. What was the point of a revolution if no one knew it was happening?

      Ayako shuffled toward me and placed a chawan of matcha tea on the tatami in front of me. I bowed gently, my face to the floor. “O temae choudai itashimasu,” I recited from memory, reaching for the teacup and placing it on my palm to admire the cherry blossoms drifting around its ceramic surface.

      I thought of Tomo in Sunpu Park, the cherry blossoms swirling around him.

      The tea was always more bitter than it looked. The taste of it surprised me every time.

      “So?” Yuki whispered next to me. I looked at her with warning—we weren’t supposed to talk while receiving tea—but she looked straight ahead, as if she hadn’t spoken. Ayako was serving the next girl in line, and the teacher hadn’t seemed to notice us talking.

      “So what?” I whispered back, tilting the chawan toward my mouth to take another sip.

      “Did you and Tomohiro do it yet?”

      I choked on the tea, coughing and sputtering as I clunked the cup down on the floor. Ayako looked over with wide eyes, and the teacher shook her head disapprovingly. Yuki pulled out her hand towel and passed it to me. I wiped up the tea spatter on my chin.

      “I’ll take that as a no,” Yuki said. “What’s taking you so long?”

      I could feel the heat as it spread across my face. I guess saving the world had taken priority over other thoughts, for once. I see you finally have your priorities straight, Greene. Better late than never. “I’m just... I’m not ready yet.”

      Yuki frowned, reaching for her kuromoji, a tiny bamboo stick she used to carve a bite off of the pink bean cake in front of her. “You’re thinking about it too much. You’re not in America anymore, Katie. It’s not such a big deal here. Just go for it.”

      The heat spread down my neck. I was in Japan, yeah, but I was still myself.

      “You like him, right?”

      I stared at her like she was from another planet. “Yeah.”

      “Then just do it already.”

      “You say it like it’s such a casual thing,” I said. I lifted the chawan up to my lips so I could hide behind it. The other girls had to have heard her. Whispering СКАЧАТЬ