“Not interested.” Tomohiro’s voice sounded so dark it almost made me shiver. It was like his don’t-give-a-crap attitude but more intimidating, like he could actually hold his own against these guys.

“Ah,” said Hanchi. “But I don’t think you’ve considered what a spectacle you made of yourself when you sketched that dragon.”

Tomohiro’s eyes went wide for a moment before he forced the expression off his face. I wondered if anyone else noticed.

“We can protect you, Yuu. We can take care of those close to you. We can protect your girlfriend.”

In a sharp voice, he said, “Ex-girlfriend. She’s not part of this.” The word ripped through me; it was probably a trick to throw them off, but I remembered then that we hadn’t made up. Maybe we were broken up. Or maybe he was protecting me the only way he could. So how come it still hurt so much to hear it?

And reality check, why do I even care in a room with gangsters and loaded guns? Still working on the priorities, I see, Greene.

“Ah,” said Hanchi. “Well. But I’ve heard you still draw inspiration from her, so the specifics don’t matter.” He muttered something and one of the men tossed a pad of paper in front of Tomohiro. Hanchi reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pen, clicking the end and placing it down on the pad.

“What’s this for?” Tomohiro said.

Hanchi smiled. “You don’t have to pretend with us. You’re not the first Kami we’ve come across. But it’s been a while.

Most of them can’t get the drawing off the page, Yuu. I know you can do better.”

“What’s a Kami?” Tomohiro said in a bored tone. He looked up at Hanchi, and I could see the dark challenge that radiated from Tomohiro’s narrowed eyes. A slick smile curved its way onto his lips.

What the hell? It better be an act, I thought. These guys could kill us, and he’s enjoying it?

Hanchi frowned, squeezing his hand into a fist.

“Don’t play around, Yuu,” he said. The friendliness was starting to drop from his voice.

Tomohiro reached for the tea bottle and twisted the cap, chugging down a mouthful and wiping his mouth with the back of his arm.

“So what’s that for?” Hanchi smirked, pointing at the wristband.

Shit.

“I play kendo,” Tomohiro said. “I have a weak wrist.”

Hanchi motioned at the Korean guy, who stalked toward Tomohiro and yanked the wristband off his arm, revealing the stitched-up gash along his wrist for all of them to gape at. It was pink around the edges, crisscrossed by the dozens of other cuts and scars that trailed up his arm.

“Those kendo injuries?” the Korean guy sneered.

“I’m a cutter,” Tomohiro said through gritted teeth. “I have entrance exams coming up. It’s stressful. You do the math.”

Hanchi laughed. “Sorry, Yuu,” he said. “We’re not buying it. I heard from Ishikawa you used to be quite the artist in the day. Let’s start with something simple.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wallet. He spread the leather and flipped through, the bills slicking against each other as he pulled one out. He bent over the table and spread the ten thousand yen at the top of the pad. “Draw this,” he said. “If you can do it, you can keep it. My gift to you.”

“I can’t draw,” said Tomohiro.

The Korean guy pulled a gun from his back and slowly lifted it to me. My heart drummed in my ears.

“Can you draw now?” Hanchi said.

Tomohiro stared for a minute, his fists shaking.

“If you’re not a Kami, then why is it a problem?” asked Hanchi.

The Korean guy cocked the gun.

“Shit, Yuuto, draw the damn bill!” Ishikawa shouted. I looked over at his swollen face, riddled with blue-and-yellow bruises. He looked so defeated, so small among these punks.

Tomohiro’s fingers slid along the paper until they reached the pen. He closed them gently around it, lifting it upright to draw.

It’s worth my life, but it isn’t worth yours.

“Tomo, don’t draw,” I whispered.

He didn’t answer. And then his hand slid across the page, the patchwork of scars gliding along the table edge as we watched, his secret exposed to everyone.

He sketched slowly, looking from the bill to the page. Beads of sweat trailed down his forehead and clung to his bangs. I knew he was trying to control the ink, to disguise what he was. But with me beside him, he didn’t have a chance.

He shaded in the details, sketching in the two pheasants on the back of the note. I saw the edges of the bill flicker, almost move. He hesitated for a minute, his head falling forward and his bangs fanning into his eyes. Then he shook them out and kept shading.

The corner of the sketch was curling up, the way the real bill did. The pheasants starting flicking their heads around, pecking at the ground.

“Tomo, stop,” I whispered. I looked at his eyes. They were flooding with black, his pupils growing too large. “You have to stop.”

I reached over and pinched the back of his leg as hard as I could.

He dropped the pen and it rolled in a slow circle across the page.

“Let’s see,” said Hanchi, reaching over to pick the paper up.

As he lifted the pad, the sketch fell right off the page and fluttered to the table.

Hanchi reached over and picked up the bill.

“Su-ge,” he said in a low voice. Everyone watched in stunned silence.

The sketch looked just like the bill. There was still a drawing on the paper, but it looked blurry and made my head ache when I stared at it.

“One problem, though,” Hanchi said as he flipped it back and forth in his hands. He held the note right in front of Tomo hiro’s eyes. “It’s black-and-white.”

“It’s a pen sketch,” I said. “What did you expect?”

“I can’t use this,” Hanchi said. “Are you messing around with me?”

Tomohiro shook his head, breathing heavily. A trail of ink trickled from his shirtsleeve down to his wrist, where it dripped onto the paper.

Splotch, splotch.

“All my drawings are black-and-white,” Tomohiro said.

“I only do calligraphy and ink wash.”

“This is no good,” Hanchi said. “Draw something else.

Get him a sumi and an inkstone.”

“No!” I said, then clamped my hand over my mouth. Hanchi raised an eyebrow.

“Ah, I think we’ve hit on something here,” he said with a smile. “Your…abilities only work with raw ink.”

“Look,” Tomohiro snapped. “I’m not interested in working for the Yakuza, and I don’t know what Satoshi told you, but I can’t make dragons appear in the sky. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

“You just sketched counterfeit money, Yuu.”

“And you saw how pathetic it was. I’m no good at this, okay? Let us go.”

Hanchi sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Let’s try again, hmm?”

Sunglasses came in, and the sight of him sent prickles up my spine. He put down an inkstone, a sumi ink stick and a sumi brush for Tomohiro, while the Korean guy brought a small dish of water. They backed into the group of Yakuza watching curiously.

“So you can’t draw money. There are other things we need.

Drugs, guns, your basic underworld stereotypes. In fact, as long as the other gangs know we have a member who can create monsters—that alone is all the power we need to run things properly.

“So,” said Hanchi, reaching behind his back and pulling out a gun, “let’s try again.” He pulled out the clip and reset it with a loud click. Then he tossed the gun onto the table.

I watched as it spun around on the glossy surface, slowing until the end pointed at Tomohiro. “And there’s no point in trying anything,” Hanchi added. “Gun’s empty. So draw.”

Tomohiro picked up the sumi brush, gliding his fingers over the length of it, plying the bristles back and forth.

“Horsehair,” he said without looking up.

“Ganbare,” said Hanchi. Do your best.

Tomohiro placed the brush back on the table. He gripped the sumi ink stick tightly and moved it to the suzuri inkstone.

His hands shook just a little, but no one seemed to notice but me. He took a little water and poured it on the suzuri, then started grinding the sumi. The ink bled into the water, making it thick and dark. His hand twisted and twisted around the inkstone, the scraping filling the silent room. His bangs slipped from behind his ear and fanned downward, hiding his eyes from me.

I felt so powerless it was driving me crazy.

As Tomohiro ground the ink, the Yakuza began to crowd the table, curiosity overtaking them. Even Ishikawa rose, creeping forward on socked feet to peer over our shoulders.

I wished I could sock him one, but I guessed it wouldn’t be the best move. I’d have to punch him later.

If there was a later.

The ink thickened and pooled in the suzuri stone. A faint sheen swirled through the ink, the edges of the liquid floating in ways they shouldn’t. At first my brain tried to ignore it, and no one else seemed to notice except Ishikawa, whose face crumpled in confusion. But I’d watched Tomohiro draw before, and I knew when the ink stopped being ink and started being…well, something else.

Tomohiro stopped, pouring a little of the ink into a bowl and adding some water for a lighter gray shade. I pinched the back of his leg. This isn’t art class, idiot. Why put in the effort?

But as the Yakuza leaned in, I did, too, and when I saw his eyes, the pupils were huge. And growing.

Shit. Those alien eyes. I’d lost him now.

“Tomo, stop,” I said, pinching him harder.

He said nothing, staring down at the paper with those vast, vacant eyes. He blotted the brush and dipped it into the black ink. He lifted it in a slow arc to the hanshi paper.

He drew a stroke downward, then one sideways.

Each stroke was delicate, determined. The whole room watched in silence.

He blotted the brush, shaded the handle of the gun with the gray ink. The gun was more artistic and less realistic than the ten-thousand-yen note. I hoped the design was part of some plan he had, but the look in his eyes terrified me. The Kami blood in him had taken over.

Now his eyes were gleaming, his hand moving faster and faster.

I’d lost him, just like I’d lost him when he sketched the dragon. If bottled ink had been too much for him then, how the hell could he handle hand-ground sumi ink?

The answer rang out in my head.

He couldn’t.

Damn it.

The gun started spinning on the page slowly, his hand following it around, painting it as it moved.

“Tomo,” I said louder. “Stop.” I grabbed his arm with my hands, and his whole body shuddered. He jolted his arm back with so much force that I fell backward; he barely missed a stroke.

Ink spread from my fingertips down my arms, coating my skin with a black sheen.

“Katie!” Ishikawa’s bleached hair loomed over me, his face twisted with concern. His hands reached out to pull me up.

“Don’t touch me!” I yelled. When I looked at my arms again, the ink was gone.

The Yakuza didn’t notice. They were staring at Tomohiro and getting nervous. The gun was spinning slowly again, pointing at each Yakuza as it went past and stopping for a brief moment. They leaned back, eyes wide.

“Yuuto, what happened to your eyes?” said Ishikawa.

“Hanchi!” said the Korean guy, but Hanchi waved it away.

“Wait,” he said.

Tomohiro kept drawing, filling in the sketch, adding depth. Ishikawa looked at my arms with their lack of ink.

He stared at Tomohiro’s alien eyes and at the drawing.

The ink was dripping sideways off the paper. It was reaching slowly, drop by drop, toward me.

“Yuuto,” Ishikawa whispered, like he finally got it. Like he finally realized how much danger we were in. “Yuuto, listen to Katie and stop.”

I wanted to tell him to piss off, but even more I wanted Tomohiro to listen.

“Yuuto,” Ishikawa said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Tomohiro thrust his arm back and Ishikawa tumbled into a group of Yakuza. They collapsed into the table behind them, and two of its legs shattered under the weight.

“Hanchi!” the Korean said again. This time Hanchi looked worried.

“Yuu, that’s enough,” he said, but Tomohiro’s hand whirred between the ink bowls and the hanshi paper. “Mou ii!” he said again. Nothing.

Hanchi’s eyes narrowed. He reached forward, grabbed the Korean’s gun and pointed it at Tomohiro.

“Yamero!” he shouted. Stop!

And suddenly the gun stopped spinning. The sketch rotated upright, so that the gun barrel pointed directly at Tomohiro.

And I screamed as I saw the trigger pulling back.

“Yuuto!” shouted Ishikawa and leaped forward.

Bang.

I screamed.

Tomohiro and Ishikawa collapsed to the floor.

Blood streamed up Ishikawa’s shoulder, trickling through his bleached-white hair and pooling in his ear.

Another loud bang shook the building.

“What the hell was that?” shouted Hanchi.

“Hanchi!” yelled Sunglasses, pointing at the doorway.

At least twenty snakes made of ink wriggled under the rice-paper door.

Only, Tomohiro hadn’t drawn them.

“Sato,” Tomohiro groaned, and I slumped Ishikawa off him.

“Tomo,” I said as I clawed at his chest and arms searching for wounds. But we could both see Ishikawa sprawled unconscious on the floor, the blood soaking through his shirt.