Storm. Amanda Sun

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СКАЧАТЬ father blurted out, “Because his mother passed away, and...”

      “That was seven years ago, Yuu-san. And there have been rumors that he fathered a child with a girl from Kibohan Senior High. Is that the kind of student we want to represent our school?”

      So, the Shiori rumor had reached the teachers, too. Tomo clenched his hands into tighter fists as his father’s face went white. “That’s not true,” he said, looking down until his chin pressed against the knot of his uniform tie.

      I could remember it now, when that knot had been loosened around his neck, his top button undone. Tomo looking up at the wagtail birds as he spread out on the warm field of Toro Iseki, when I’d first stumbled on his secret drawing place. I wanted to take his hand in mine, to pull him to his feet and run back there where we were safe, where no one could reach us. Where we could fly.

      Yoshinoma sighed. “Even so, your friend Ishikawa Satoshi was shot this summer, Tomohiro. Yuu-san, do you know what kind of life your boy is up to?”

      I looked away from Tomo’s dad, frightened of the emotions he tried to rein back on his face. His voice came out shakily. “Kouchou, I assure you, Tomo is not involved in the way Ishikawa is derailing his life.”

      “However,” the headmaster continued, “Yuu scored the highest out of the Third Year boys in the first term exams. And he’s earning quite the spotlight for himself in kendo. It’s good for our school to gain such national recognition.” He cleared his throat. “So I am going to override the teachers and ask Tomohiro to stay at Suntaba.”

      The relief washed through me, and I let out a breath I hadn’t even known I was holding. Tomo’s dad bowed his head to the headmaster.

      “He will have to be suspended, of course. You understand this cannot go without punishment.”

      “Of course,” Tomo’s dad mumbled.

      “One month, Tomohiro,” Yoshinoma said, and I flinched. A month?

      “But his entrance exams,” Tomo’s dad protested.

      “He will have to spend the effort at home if he hopes to pass them when he returns. This was a serious offence to this school, Yuu-san. And a month will give him time to refocus on his work and forget any distractions.”

      Oh. They wanted to separate us, thinking that time apart would make us grow apart. I took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. It wouldn’t work. They couldn’t stop us. We were something greater together than they could ever understand.

      Tomo’s face was blank, unreadable. “What about kendo practices?”

      “You’ll be back in time for the serious training for the tournament, Tomo. But in the meantime, Watanabe-sensei and Nishimura-sensei have recommended you do your exercises at home. They don’t want you to be out of shape when you return.”

      “And for Katie?” Diane said. Her hand was still on my arm, and she squeezed it to reassure me. I was glad she was there with me. Even if she lectured me later, I knew she loved me. Did Tomo feel that way about his dad? They seemed so distant as they sat side by side, as if they were worlds apart, as if they couldn’t really see each other at all.

      “Katie hasn’t given the school any other trouble,” Yoshinoma said, “and we believe she was likely dragged into this. She—I apologize, but—she lacks the skill to have written those kanji on the chalkboards.”

      My own illiteracy had saved me. I guess I should’ve felt relieved, but mostly I just felt annoyed.

      “We just think it best that she be...separated from Tomohiro for a while, so they can both refocus on their futures.”

      There it was again, that patronizing we-know-what’s-best jab. You’re just kids. You don’t know what love is. You’re blind. You’re wrecking your own futures.

      We bowed to Yoshinoma-sensei and parted in the hallway. I tried to catch Tomo’s eye, but he didn’t look up. He just stiffly followed his father out of the school. It didn’t matter, though. I could feel his thoughts as if they were my own.

      They didn’t know us, not at all. They didn’t understand what we had. We belonged together. What I felt was real, and I felt it with every fiber of my being.

      They couldn’t break us. Nothing could.

      The dream began with a soft sigh, a whispering sound in the distance like the swell of the ocean. I’d seen glimpses of the edge of the sea that lapped against Japan, once in Miyajima with Yuki, and once looking over Suruga Bay with Tomo. But long ago, Mom and I had visited the shore of the Atlantic when we’d traveled to see friends in Maine. The sun had beamed down on the water, glistening so brightly that I’d had to squeeze my eyes shut, to make the scene almost vanish completely in order to see it at all.

      “Look at that, Katie,” she’d said with a smile. “Stretching on like it has no end. Sparkling and full of life.” It had looked limitless and inspiring, warm and vibrant and blue.

      This ocean was nothing like that one. It was dull and opaque, gray-tinged as the shore came into view. It looked as if it bordered on nothing—limitless—but the idea was frightening, like the whole world had drowned. There was nothing left but this earthy coast I stood upon, the sand gritty and sharp against my bare feet.

      I was dreaming, I realized. The vague feeling that something wasn’t quite right overwhelmed me, like I was squinting to see the whole picture.

      Everything was pallor and faded. The shore behind me seemed to stretch on for miles, but I knew it was the last refuge of earth—the seas were empty and void. The land was gone.

      I began to walk along the shore. The sighs carried across the waves toward me, whispering in discord, some voices carrying so that I could almost make out the sound of them. Almost, but never quite.

      Wreckage lay along the shore, pieces of bent wood that once curved around the bow of a ship, nails stuck into them that no longer attached to anything but air. A cracked turtle shell, belly-up, with kanji carved into it. The waves lapped through it like a tunnel, spilling through the other side like a fountain. Pieces from a distant storm, scraps that had lost meaning.

      A bright orange torii appeared from the shadow, the Shinto gateway towering above as though the grayness had just lifted away and left color in its place. The sighs were louder now, except they sounded mournful, like wailing.

      I wasn’t alone in this strange place. Someone was crying.

      I fought the urge to run. Fear prickled down my spine; I didn’t want to disturb whoever it was. I didn’t want to be involved.

      I turned my head to look back at the shore I’d walked along.

      A beast stood in the shadows, his angular ears pressed tightly against his head. His eyes gleamed with a ghostly green.

      A wolf. No, an inugami, the vengeful wolf demons that hunted Tomo, that had mauled his friend Koji and nearly cost him his eye. The inugami crouched, watching me, a challenge СКАЧАТЬ