Storm (22 page)

The train ride back to Nagoya was quiet and awkward—not for Tomo, but for Ishikawa and me. Tomo brushed his fingertips down the inside of my arm, and I quietly moved away from the touch as Ishikawa tried to stare out the window at the torrential rains.

He’d arrived back at the ryokan around two in the morning, sliding the door open with a squeak that woke us from sleep. The light from the hallway had beamed around his silhouette, had illuminated the tanned skin of Tomo’s exposed back as he lay beside me on his stomach, his arm draped over me.

The light from the hallway had lit the flush of pink that rushed to Ishikawa’s cheeks.

“Ishikawa,” I’d said, panic rising in my throat. He’d looked completely dejected and worn down, the rainwater flattening his white spikes into a tangled mound of twigs and mud.

Tomo hadn’t even looked up at first, turning his head to the side as he flexed his arms to push himself up. “Sato,” he’d mumbled, his voice deep and groggy from sleep.

At the sound of it, Ishikawa’s whole face had flooded a deep crimson.

I’d panicked. Tomo didn’t have a clue, but I knew how this would hurt Ishikawa. “It’s not what it...”

“Spare me, Greene,” Ishikawa had said, his eyes cast down as he bolted for the bathroom. “By the way, I’m fine, thanks. Managed to shake off the priests and get back here without being followed. Since you were worried and all.”

“Jealous.” Tomo had grinned as he flipped over, still half-asleep.

Yeah
,
I’d thought.
You’re half-right.

The memory loomed like a cloud of horrible awkwardness as I stared at Ishikawa on the train. He’d probably joked around with Tomo in the morning to cover it up. I’d seen them talking together when I’d stepped out of the bathroom, but when they’d turned to face me Tomo had grinned, totally oblivious, while Ishikawa had looked down at the floor.

Tomo curled his fingers around mine and I winced, pulling my hand away. Was he such an idiot he didn’t notice his best friend’s feelings? Not like I’d been careful, either, and I’d known the truth. It was my fault, too.

“So, Nagoya today,” Tomo said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. He looked at me with concern, and it clicked in my thoughts—he thought I was embarrassed at the way Ishikawa had found us.
Not even close, Tomo. Think harder.

“This is the last one, huh?” Ishikawa asked, staring out at the rain. “And then what?”

“Then we use the Kusanagi to cleave out Tsukiyomi,” Tomo said. “And stop Takahashi.”

Ishikawa frowned. “Isn’t that dangerous? What if you stab the wrong soul and then
you’re
gone? What if we make a slice and, I don’t know, cut the chains that bind Tsukiyomi’s spirit or something? And he takes over?”

Tomo frowned. “I don’t think it works like that.”

My throat felt dry, but I tried to move forward, too. “How do you cleave a
kami
from a human, anyway?”

“Probably we’ll find out when we get the sword. Amaterasu’s memory has explained everything so far.”

I stared at the rain pouring into Ise Bay as the train swayed along the track toward Nagoya.

The end draws near
, a voice whispered in my head.
There is only death ahead.

Tsukiyomi’s demise, I thought, and Susanou’s. Not real death, but only sleep. I wouldn’t let it be anything more.

A man in the next row was hunched over a newspaper, and the front cover had an article about the supposed new “Kami gang” at war with the Yakuza. I nudged Tomo, who could read the newspaper more easily than I could. But he merely narrowed his eyes and looked away, and I knew it wasn’t good.

“I told you,” Ishikawa said, glancing at the newspaper. “Things are bad. People are starting to hail the Kami as more than a gang. They’re starting to see them as a movement, as a rebellion.” He folded his arms across his chest, pressing his white hair against the seat as he stared at the ceiling. “They’re calling the ‘mystery leader’ Susanou, and they’re saying he’s saving Japan the way Susanou once stopped the Mongols from invading. That jackass is becoming the adored champion he wanted to be.”

The train system chimed, and a women’s voice echoed in the speakers as the kanji
名古屋
scrolled in bright orange letters at the front of the train car.

“Nagoya is next,” she said in a chirpy tone. “Nagoya Station.”

“We don’t have much time,” Tomo said. “We have to take the sword and get the hell back to Shizuoka.”

Take the sword? Even though it had been the plan, I hadn’t really thought about how we were going to
take
it. It had been hard enough to get to the first two treasures—wouldn’t the priests notice that we were walking off with the most valuable sword in the country?

We transferred to the local train in Nagoya and got off at Jingu-Mae Station, where the sprawl of Atsuta Shrine spread out inside the depths of the modern city, fenced off only by dark green hedges sewn together with spiderwebs.

I stepped away from the station, but Ishikawa’s hand reached out for my wrist. I turned to see him holding a clear umbrella. “Here.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking it from him. He nodded and opened another umbrella for himself. I looked over to see Tomo had one, too.

“I bought them inside,” Ishikawa said.

Tomo clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go.” He walked forward, ready to face what awaited us, but I held back.

“Ishikawa,” I said. “What happened in Ise. I’m...”

“Uruse,”
he said, his cheeks flushed pink. “Shut up, Greene.”

I kept going. “I feel horrible. You were out there in the cold, and I... Well, we didn’t mean for it to happen, and I’m sorry, and...”

“Katie.” He’d used my first name, and the sound of it startled me into silence. He looked straight ahead, watching Tomo cross the street in the rain. “Like I’ve already said. If I can’t be there for him, then you need to cover for me, okay?”

I swallowed. “Okay.”

“It’s just...it’s just hard to accept sometimes. I’ll be fine.” Ishikawa grinned. “He’s an idiot, so don’t think that you’re too lucky.”

I couldn’t help but break into a smile.

“And another thing,” he said as he stepped forward, the rain pattering against his umbrella. “Call me Satoshi if you want. Doesn’t bother me.”

“Satoshi-kun,” I tried out.

He gently smacked the back of my head. “Satoshi-senpai,” he corrected. “Damn it, Greene, you’re either stupid or you have no respect for your elder classmates.” He ran ahead to catch up to Tomo. I watched them for a moment, the two of them walking together in the rain with matching umbrellas.

My heart ached, but I had to focus on why we were here. To give Tomo and Satoshi and me the normal life we all longed for. I stepped forward into the pounding rain.

Atsuta Shrine was like a smaller version of Ise Jingu, the wandering pathways through gardens and the gravel crunching underfoot, the thick cedar trees wrapped with rope and the white cloth lightning bolts. Tomo jumped the fence to avoid the huge wooden Shinto gateway, and we bypassed the main shrine as he headed toward a large square building on the right.

I ran to keep up with him. “You can feel the presence of the Imperial Treasure again?”

He shook his head, and I saw the worry in his eyes. “Actually, I don’t feel anything.” He’d been so desperate to reach the other two treasures, but he seemed normal now, his expression too calm.

“Let’s check here first,” Ishikawa said as we approached the square building. “It’s the museum archive. They keep all kinds of antique swords and crap in here.”

We stepped up the stairs into the darkness of the dimly lit exhibit. Ishikawa—Satoshi—was right. It was like a minimuseum, with gray-carpeted walls and artifacts mounted on clear plastic encased in glass. There were cases full of small magatama jewels and rusted swords, curved like katanas in sheaths of tarnished brass and silver. One case had a suit of samurai armor that looked like the one Jun had been wearing in my dream.

“Anything here, Yuuto?”

Tomo shook his head as he passed a display of demon masks. “I don’t get it. It should be here, but... I don’t feel it anywhere.”

“We could try a different building,” I said. “The main shrine, maybe.”

“No,” Tomo said. “I mean, I don’t feel anything anywhere. The Magatama I could feel a mile away, and same with the mirror. It’s like it had a heartbeat, a voice on the wind.”

He was right. I’d heard the voice of them, too, a faint whisper, but still something calling me. But it was silent here. No voice, no whisper, no tingle on my skin of something more.

Tomo left the museum building and we followed him through the gardens. The rain rippled on the streams and stone channels that threaded through the shrine grounds. We passed two shrine maidens carrying boxes of charms, their bright red
hakama
skirts swaying as they hurried toward shelter from the rain. Dark slate clouds blanketed the sky, the morning sun barely lighting the paths through the trees.

I wanted to ask Tomo again if he felt anything, but the dark look of confusion on his face answered my fear. “Did they know we were coming somehow?” I asked quietly. “Did they hide the sword?”

“I’d still feel it,” Tomo said, his eyes desperate.

“Guys.” Satoshi was standing inside a nearby shrine building, his hands on his hips as he looked up at the ceiling. We stepped under the shelter of the porch roof, slipping our shoes off to join him. “I think I know what happened.”

There was a broad painting near the rafters of the roof, an ancient-looking woodblock that was peeling at the edges. The artist had painted angry waters tossed with black inky waves, the surface foaming and swirling with some sort of storm. The ocean lashed against the rugged cliff of gray paint, where the colored dots of an army stood perched, pennants unfurled in the wind. In the swells of the surging waters, a small figure swam, his arms raised. Nearby, another larger figure flailed as a wave swept her toward the sharp rocks below the cliff. And at the bottom of the painting, a sword, sinking to the bottom of the sea.

Tomo stared, his eyes wide.

“It’s not here,” Ishikawa said. “The Kusanagi is gone.”

“What do you mean it’s gone?” I said, staring up at the rafters of the shrine. How could some hundreds-of-years-old painting have anything to do with finding the Kusanagi now? “The emperor uses the three treasures for ceremonies, right? He’d notice if it was gone.”

“He means the real one is gone,” Tomo said. “It’s been gone for over six hundred years.”

I stared at them like they’d grown new heads. “Explain?”

“This painting,” Satoshi said, pointing to the inscription beside it. “It’s Emperor Antoku. He was overthrown by the Minamoto clan, one of the most powerful samurai families in Japanese history.”

“Kami?” I asked.

“Probably part of the ongoing Kami war, yes,” Tomo said. His voice sounded so tired. Everything linked back to the
kami
, back to his own destiny.

I squinted at the painting. “So Emperor Antoku is that tiny figure in the water?”

“Antoku was a child when they attacked,” Ishikawa said. “It says the larger figure is his grandmother. She pushed him off the cliff to help him commit suicide.”

I nearly choked on my own spit. “Sorry?”

Tomo nodded. “What else could he do? The whole army had cornered him onto a cliff.”

Like throwing yourself into the ocean was the only reasonable option. I couldn’t even imagine. “How...how old was he?”

Ishikawa squinted at the inscription by the painting. “Seven. He was Taira no Kiyomori’s grandson.”

“Seven?” My stomach turned. He wouldn’t even have understood what was going on at seven years old. I could picture him holding his grandmother’s hand, trusting her as she shouted at him to jump into the water. I shivered at the thought.

Tomo frowned. “It says she threw the treasures into the ocean, too. The mirror was recovered by one of the Minamoto who jumped into the water after it, and the Magatama jewel washed up on the nearby beach. But the sword sank to the bottom of the sea.”

“But...the sword the emperor uses...” I said.

“It’s a copy,” Ishikawa said. “Obviously they’d make another one over the next six hundred years. And it’s probably kept in Tokyo.”

“The mirror wasn’t the original, either,” I said. “We can just go back to Tokyo and get it.”

Tomo tucked his bangs behind his ears. “Even if it’s kept there, it doesn’t matter. It’s not the Kusanagi no Tsurugi. The mirror was different. A replica sword won’t cleave a
kami
from a body.” He clenched his fingers into a fist. “It means all of this was for nothing.”

Satoshi clapped his hand onto Tomo’s shoulder. “Yuuto, don’t say that.”

“I knew I shouldn’t believe there was more for me,” he said darkly. “I’m the same as I always was—just the bastard son of some world-hating demon.”

Anger welled up in me. “Don’t say that,” I said. “We’ve come this far—there’s got to be a way.”

“There isn’t,” he snapped. “There is no way for me, Katie. There never was. This whole trip was a waste of time.”

His words stung as I tried to hold back my tears. Without the Kusanagi, there was no way to stop Tsukiyomi. It was only a matter of time before he took over Tomo, and before Jun took over Japan.