LITMIR.BIZ

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the only American girl in the city. If they wanted to find me, it would be easy.

      I ran down the last few streets, clutching my keitai in my pocket. I knew the emergency number now. I’d asked Diane. The one for police was 1-1-0, and for medical and fire stuff it was 1-1-9, which kind of made me mad. Reversed, of course! That made so much sense. I’d told Tomo, who’d just laughed and asked why we’d reversed it to 9-1-1. Good point.

      I ran up the steps of our mansion—that’s what they called certain apartment buildings here—and the automatic glass doors slid away. It was still cool in the lobby and the elevator; our building didn’t have central heat like some of the newer ones, so we relied on our heated kotatsu table and lots of sweaters to stay warm. It was only late October, though. I remembered how cold that February had been when I’d first arrived in Japan. It felt so long ago now.

      I leaned against our pale green door and it opened into the genkan with a quiet snick. I opened my mouth to tell Diane I was home, but she was talking to someone, and the tone of her voice made me hesitate.

      “No,” she said loudly, “I don’t think it’s for the best. She’s just settling in. It’s been hard for her.”

      They were talking about me. I closed the door quietly and slid my shoes off, sitting on the edge of the raised floor to listen. I didn’t hear anyone respond before she started in again—she must be on the phone.

      “I know, but this isn’t about you. It’s about her right now.”

      I’d never heard Diane so worked up about anything. She was always smiling too much, even when she was nervous. I’d never heard her sound angry, not like this.

      “You’re not hearing what I’m saying, Steven. It’s not a good time.”

      Steven. The name froze me as I leaned against the wall. My father’s name, the one who hadn’t stuck around to even meet me when I was born. The one who’d run out of town after Mom had eaten the Kami dragon fruit, after she’d nearly lost me before I’d had a chance to live. Steven had walked out after the doctors had warned them that I might never talk or walk as a result of the food poisoning.

      Was Diane... Was she talking to my dad?

      “It’s been a year, Steven. Where were you?” she said. “When Katie needed you, you weren’t there.” A pause. “No, I know you didn’t know, but...Yes, I get that, but...” Diane suddenly appeared from behind the corner, the phone clutched to her ear. I stared back into her wide eyes, both of us surprised to be caught out.

      “I have to go,” Diane said. “I have your number...Yes, I know. Okay.” She clicked the off button as the phone slowly dropped from her ear.

      My mouth was dry, my words thick. “Was that...my dad?”

      “Oh, hon,” Diane said. Her eyes crinkled up, the corners of her plum-lipsticked mouth crumpled in a frown. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t going to trouble you with it.”

      “What did he want?” I asked. “How did he even find you?”

      “He phoned Nan and Gramps. He got my number from them. He found out about your mom a few weeks ago. He didn’t know you were here with me.”

      “What does it have to do with him, anyway?” I wasn’t trying to be snarky; I meant it. He hadn’t been around for me ever. Him surfacing was like someone suddenly digging into the soil of my life and uprooting me, tipped on my side, exposed. Why now?

      “He’ll be in Japan for a business trip in a couple weeks,” Diane said. “In Tokyo. He wants to see you, but I told him I don’t think that’s for the best.”

      I felt like my heart had crystalized. I thought I didn’t care what happened to him, but I could feel the whisper of it circling through me. I did care. I wanted to know why I hadn’t been worth staying around for.

      It would be no good getting involved with him, that much I knew. He’d destroyed Mom’s life; he’d destroy mine, too.

      “Thanks,” I said, my voice shaky. “I don’t want to see him.”

      Diane nodded. “I thought so.”

      But part of me wanted to ask him why he had run off, and why he wanted back into my life now. And part of me wanted to cling to it, because with him, I wasn’t an orphan anymore. I’d have a parent again. But that was too idealized. It wasn’t going to be some kind of soppy reunion. It would be awkward and painful, and I had more than enough of that going on right now.

      Diane rested a hand on my shoulder and attempted a smile. “I picked up some chestnut cakes from the depaato on the way home. Want to have one?”

      “Yeah,” I said, giving her a fake smile back. She nodded and hurried into the kitchen. I could hear the clink of plates and the fridge door opening, the little cardboard flaps on the cake box popping open. Food as a source of comfort—that was Diane’s specialty. But after today, it sounded like the best idea ever.

      I could bury the idea as soon as it had surfaced. I didn’t need to think about my dad right now; I could forget about it, erase it like it had never happened. If only I’d stayed with Tomo a little longer tonight. I would never have known about my dad being in Japan.

      It didn’t matter, though. Steven could be in the same room as me, and it would feel like the farthest corner of the world, a wall of emptiness between us that couldn’t be scaled.

      I sat down at the table, smelling the sweet cream on the chestnut cake as Diane hurried around the kitchen.

      She was all the family I needed now.

      * * *

      The water was black this time, oceans of ink lapping against the stained shore. There was no orange gateway, no rolling dunes of sand. Instead, the ink waters ebbed against an inlaid stone path that trailed upward, toward a towering jumble of angled rooftops reaching toward the sky. On the distant edge of the black ocean, the ink tipped over in a waterfall that encircled the whole island, the spray sending up a fog of clouds. Were we high up in the sky, or on some cliff? I’d have to wade deep into the waters to look, and I was scared the current would drag me over the edge.

      I looked back at the building—some sort of pagoda, maybe, or a fortress like Sunpu but as tall as Himeji Castle, layer upon layer of slanted tile rooftops and whitewashed walls, placed upon one another like tiers of a fancy wedding cake. Simple wooden steps led into the building; there was nowhere else to go on this tiny island surrounded by ink.

      I stepped forward, and saw the first victim.

      He lay at my feet, nearly buried in the grasses that sprung up around him. He wore armor, like some kind of samurai, but his eyes were empty, staring at a future that wasn’t there, his breastplate splashed with ink.

      I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound escaped my lips. A dream, I thought. Another Kami nightmare.

      I looked around the steps of the castle as I moved forward. Dozens of men lay slumped in horrible, lifeless heaps, ink soaking each of them as they lay beside their shattered weapons and snapped bowstrings. My feet moved toward the building against my own will. I didn’t want to see what was inside. I didn’t want to know what was responsible for this.

      The stairs creaked as I went up them. Inside, the room was musty and dark, the only light shining from the windows near the raised platform at the end of the room, where great white curtains billowed out with a wind I couldn’t feel. The bamboo tatami mats were cold and hard against my bare feet as I stepped forward. There were fallen soldiers here, too; what horrible battle had taken place?

      Wait, that one’s alive. I looked and saw him crouched in the corner, a dark shape hunched over his bended knee, a sword on the tatami beside him.

      His silver earring glinted as he tilted his head forward, his blond highlights slipping from behind his ears.

      “Jun,” I said, and he looked up at me. He lifted the sword; it almost looked as

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