“So are you convinced now that I’m not up to anything?”

he asked, his chopsticks suspended in the air between bites.

“Not even close,” I said. “But why did you do that to me, the day after I saw you with Myu?” I said. He raised his eyebrows and looked sincerely puzzled.

“Do what?”

“Oh, please, like you don’t remember. You waited for me at the gate, and then you walked past me all dangerous-like.”

And too close, I added to myself. The smell of his vanilla hair gel, the heat of his shoulder grazing mine. And then, you know, he proceeded to look up my skirt, but did we really need to remember that part?

I wondered if it was the wrong thing to say. It must have been, because Tomohiro’s grin faded, replaced by a look of concern. His eyes focused on some distant object that wasn’t there. I wanted to choke back the words, but it was too late.

The silence pressed against me, the tension pushing against the back of my neck and down my spine.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” I said weakly, but it didn’t help. Tomohiro picked at his curry.

“I wanted you to stay away from me,” he said, but the voice didn’t sound like his. It was too cold and distant, like his voice at school.

“Why?”

“Ichirou told you, right? I’m always getting into fights. So you’d only have trouble if you made friends with me.” Was that really the reason? I couldn’t believe anything he said in that tone anymore.

I scoffed. “Why should you care whether I get into trouble?”

“Why do you have to see everything as a challenge?”

Tomo hiro snapped. “Fine, okay? Maybe I shouldn’t have stared you down at the gate, but you’re the one who spied on me all the way to Toro.”

“You gave me reason to.”

“I never intended to be so interesting to you.” He slammed his chopsticks down and I felt too sick to eat any more of my rice. “I told you to stay away, didn’t I?”

“Ha,” I snorted. “Like you’re not going around making my writing utensils combust. Like you didn’t cheat on Myu like the lowest scum of the earth!” He grinned darkly, like he enjoyed all the fuss about him.

“You still believe that, after I explained?” he said, and that’s when the shame washed over me, when I realized the mistake.

“You were lying,” I said. “There never was another girl, was there? And you lied when you told Myu she didn’t matter. Why would you want to break up with her if there was no one else and you still cared about her? And how am I supposed to know when you’re telling the truth about anything?”

The waitress came by and Tomohiro put down his money while I counted out my yen.

“Whatever,” he said. “Take it how you want, but what I did was a warning to stay away.” He rose to his feet and lifted his book bag off the chair. He stared into the distance for a minute and I could barely look at him, utterly humiliated that I’d agreed to go for dinner with him like this.

He took a deep breath and sighed. “But that was before,”

he said.

“Before?”

He shook his head. “You didn’t take the warning, so I guess it’s void.” He tilted his head back and grinned, and his bangs slid out of his eyes and to the tips of his ears. “Follow me to Toro again. It’s nice to have company when I draw.”

And just as suddenly he was gone from the café, the bell on the door ringing and me feeling off balance like my head was spinning.

It took me a few more minutes to realize he’d paid the entire bill.

Chapter 5

By the time I left the café, the cherry petals were spinning through the darkness, lit only by the lampposts lining the streets. The blossoms appeared briefly in the sky, fluttering down, and then winked out of the light’s beams and disappeared.

The first time I told Nan I was going to live in a mansion, she’d flipped with excitement. But Japanese mansions are just newer buildings divided into tiny apartments—no caviar or butlers included.

I entered the automatic doors of our mansion, the bright golden lights of the lobby a stark contrast to the city streets outside. I hoisted the bike into the elevator, and when I fumbled with the lock on our door, Diane’s footsteps thundered to the other side and she yanked it open.

“Katie,” she said, pulling me inside. “I was worried out of my mind! I almost called the police, you know. I thought you’d been in an accident.”

“I do know how to ride a bike,” I said.

“Why didn’t you call? Do you know what time it is?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know it got so late.”

Diane sighed and rubbed her forehead. She stopped suddenly and felt around with her fingertips.

“I think you’re officially giving me wrinkles,” she said and walked toward the bathroom mirror.

“You’re just being dramatic,” I said as she poked and prodded the skin.

“So where on earth did you go? Even with cleaning duty, it wouldn’t make you this late.”

“Um.” The moment in Toro Iseki felt precious suddenly, and I was unwilling to share it. “Just out. With a friend.”

“Yuki? Doesn’t she have Sewing Club on Wednesdays?”

Shit.

“A different friend.” I could feel my cheeks blazing.

“Katie, is something going on that you don’t want to tell me?”

The hairs on the back of my neck started to rise. I did not want a conversation like that.

“Like what, host clubs filled with beer and pretty boys?

Pachinko? Drugs? Nothing like that, Diane. You know I’m not into any shit.”

“I know, I’m just scared that someone will influence you.

And watch it, by the way.”

“Sorry.”

“Just tell me the truth, Katie. Where did you go?”

I stood there, frozen. Telling her I broke into Toro was not a good idea. Telling her drawings were looking at me was not a good idea. Telling her I went for dinner with a senior boy who put his friend in the hospital was not a good idea, even if it was just as friends, or rivals, or whatever exactly we were. I broke under the pressure.

“I went for a bike ride and dinner with Tanaka,” I said.

Diane’s expression changed in an almost comically slow way.

It was like she finally got it, and I felt a little guilty that she was so off the mark.

“Katie, why didn’t you just tell me? I would’ve understood.”

I was trapped in my own lies, and I wished I could just hightail it out of there.

“It’s kind of stuff I want to keep to myself, you know?” I said. My arms and neck felt itchy.

“Well, but if you want to talk… I want you to be smart about things, Katie. I’m not as…traditional as your mom, and I’m not going to assume that you’ll be fine without any advice.”

“Ew.” It popped out; I couldn’t help it. “Diane, it was just dinner and a bike ride. It wasn’t sex.” Diane’s face turned bright red and I wondered who this conversation was really the most awkward for.

“I know, but these things have a way of speeding up,” she stuttered.

“Okay, more than I want to know or think. Please spare me.”

“Fine, but we also need to put some sort of system in place.

I can’t be wondering where you are all the time.” Great. So now she was going to limit my freedom. Bring on the lock-down.

“Please don’t tell me you’re inflicting Japanese-style curfews,” I said. Yuki had told me horror stories about hers.

Diane smirked. “I’d like to put enough trust in you that you don’t need a curfew,” she said. “I know your mom always hated those. It’s not how much time you’re out there.

It’s what you’re spending that time on and who you’re spending that time with.”

“So the deal is…?”

“The deal is we’ll get you a keitai, and I want you to let me know when you go places and where you are.”

I couldn’t really see a downside to that, so I just shrugged.

“Sounds fine,” I said.

“Good. I just worry, Katie, you know? I’m just not used to this whole being a—” She stopped just short of saying it.

A mom.

“I know,” I said, my throat dry.

“Your mom’s counting on me.”

I saw the sadness then in her eyes, the way her brows knit together the way Mom’s always did. The same creases on her face, the small bridge of her nose, the thin lips that curved into a worried frown. She was like her somehow, an older vision of the same spirit.

I felt the hot tears well up in my eyes and I blinked them back.

“You’re doing great,” I said, squeezing her arm. I breathed slowly as I passed her, walking toward my bedroom and sliding the door shut.

I turned off the light and lay on my bed. I let my breath escape, and then I let the tears come, the ones I’d been holding in since Toro Iseki. I could be angry if I wanted. I could be changed. I could be myself.

What would Mom have said about him? I felt like the real Tomohiro was tangled in this other personality that wasn’t his. How could he be gentle, understanding, beautiful like that, and still treat Myu with such cruelty? I was sure now that the cold badass at school wasn’t who he really was. But why all the lies? What was he hiding?

I grabbed another tissue, trying to cry quietly. I didn’t want Diane to hear, even though I bet she knew and was giving me space. She was doing her best. I knew it. But this just wasn’t home, and she’d never be my mom.

There would always be a void. And my shoulders shook with relief that I didn’t have to fill it.

Friday morning the clouds gathered over Shizuoka, and by the time I reached the school, the rain had drenched the city in the way that only a spring rain can.

I could barely focus on the equations Suzuki-sensei scribbled onto the board in last class. When the bell chimed and students began gathering up their books, I got to my feet and packed up my book bag, then stuffed it into my desk. I wiped off the blackboards and mopped the classroom floor while Tanaka lifted the chairs and flipped them upside down onto the desks, pushing the units against the walls.

By the time we’d scrubbed the classroom spotless, sweat was dripping down my forehead.

“We’re going for okonomiyaki, ” Yuki said. “Can you come?”

I shook my head. “I have kendo,” I said.

Yuki nearly dropped her mop. “Kendo?”

“Naaa, Katie-chan.” Tanaka sighed.

“What?” But I knew what.

“Tan-kun, is she—?”

“It’s true,” he said, shaking his head.

“Guys, can you not talk about me like I’m not here?”

“You like Yuu Tomohiro.” Yuki sighed.

“That’s not true,” I lied. I mean, I didn’t want it to be true, but…

“Katie, if you like him, then go for it,” Tanaka said.

“What?”

“What?” Yuki echoed.

“That’s not what you said last time.”

“Last time?” Yuki said.

Tanaka grinned. “You’re not going to listen to us anyway, right? And I know he’s become a little lost—”

“A little!” Yuki said, but Tanaka glared at her.

“—but I’ve known Tomo-kun a long time. He’s nice. He didn’t even make us call him senpai, even though he’s older.

He treated us equally. Just be careful, that’s all. He’s mixed up in stuff.”

“I know,” I said, and Yuki and Tanaka exchanged a glance.

“You don’t know,” Yuki said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tanaka said. “If you want this, go for it with your whole heart, okay?”

“When did you become so inspirational?” I laughed, leaning my mop against the wall, and Tanaka shrugged.

“I read a lot of manga,” he admitted with a goofy grin.

“Life doesn’t work like that!” Yuki sighed, smacking Tanaka on the arm.

Tanaka laughed and shook his fist in the air. “Faito, ne?”

Like Yuki had said to me when I went into the genkan to get my shoes. Fight. I nodded at him and went into the hallway, and the minute I was out, Yuki started whispering harshly at him.

“It doesn’t matter,” he kept telling her. What doesn’t matter? The girlfriend? The fights he gets into?

I wove through the hallways and entered the gym, where the Kendo Club members— kendouka—circled the floor with cloths, cleaning up the gym before practice. Other students buckled armor around themselves, slipping out of the change rooms in their gray hakama skirts and fitting the dou plates on their chests. I scanned the group for Tomohiro and Bleached Hair, but no luck. They were probably still in the change room putting on their hakama.

Watanabe-sensei looked way too pleased that I’d actually shown up, and sent some of the senior girls to help me put on the armor.

When we slipped out of the change room, the class was already forming into lines, so I hurried into place. Nakamura-sensei shouted out something and all the students knelt, placing their bamboo shinai swords on their left sides.

Crap. I didn’t have one.

A shadow draped over my head, blotting out the gym lights that beamed down on us from the ceiling. I looked up, straight into the face of Yuu Tomohiro, and the sudden closeness of him shuddered through me like a shock. He was in my space again, his face way too close to mine. He knelt and the bright lights beamed over his shoulders. He placed a shinai at my side, lining the hilt up carefully with my knees.