Ink

“My sister told me,” Tanaka said quickly. “Keiko’s in Myu’s homeroom.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tomohiro said, rubbing the back of his neck. “You don’t have to cover for her. The whole school knows anyway.”

But it did matter. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right when he wasn’t.

“He’s not covering,” I said. “I have better things to do than gossip about you.”

“So you have a new girlfriend now?” Yuki piped up again. She was determined to drag the gossip out at any cost.

Tomohiro tilted his head. “Why? Are you confessing?”

That’s what they called it here when you admitted you liked someone. Yuki turned bright pink.

“It’s—it’s not like that,” she said, waving her hand back and forth.

“Oh, her, then?” he said, motioning at me.

My heart almost stopped. “Excuse me?”

“It’s a joke,” Bleached Hair said. “Calm yourself.”

“Um,” Tanaka said, looking from Tomohiro to me and back with wide eyes. “Um, so are—are you going to join the Shoudo Club this year?”

A dark look crossed Tomohiro’s eyes. “I don’t do calligraphy anymore,” he said quietly.

“Tan-kun told us you were really talented,” Yuki bubbled, but Tomohiro took a step toward her, glaring at her from behind his bangs.

“I don’t paint anymore,” he said, and I wondered why he had to get so uptight about it. “It doesn’t interest me.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Tanaka said, laughing politely to smooth things out. “With me in the club, they need all the help they can get.” Tomohiro let out a small laugh, which only egged Tanaka on. “God help us if they put my drawings on display!”

“You did always draw the lines too thickly.” Tomohiro grinned. The storm in his eyes looked as if it had passed. I could see a faint image in my mind of what he must have been like in elementary school, when he and Tanaka had been friends.

“Sou ne…” Tanaka trailed off, staring into the distance, deep in thought. He tapped his fingers against his chin. “How do I fix it?”

Tomohiro gripped his fingers together, as if he were holding a paintbrush. “If you hold it like this,” he said, “with the right support here, and move like this…” His arm moved gently through the air, making light brushstrokes, and even I, who had no background in calligraphy—heck, even my school notes were illegible—could tell there was something more going on here.

“Try to load less paint on the tip of the brush,” Tomohiro said. “And move like this.”

Tanaka smiled and crossed his arms as he watched. “You’re really good, you know? A natural.”

Tomohiro’s arm stopped suddenly like a dance cut short. It hung there in the air, rigidly, until he dropped it down to the side and shoved his hand into his blazer pocket.

“I told you,” he said sharply, “it doesn’t interest me anymore.”

Tanaka’s face fell while Bleached Hair leaned back into the tree, grinning. What the hell? I thought. Tanaka and Tomohiro used to be friends, and now he treated him like this?

“You don’t have to be a jerk about it,” I snapped. “Tanaka’s just trying to be nice to you.”

“Katie,” Yuki whispered, urgently squeezing my arm.

Tomohiro sneered. “You’re always sticking your nose in, aren’t you?”

“So are you. You’re everywhere I turn. What, are you a stalker, too, or something?”

“If I was, I wouldn’t stalk you.”

“Oh, I’m not your type, huh? You don’t like gaijin?”

“I don’t like annoying girls who think they know everything.”

“Unless they have a skirt to look up, right?”

Tomohiro grinned, and my nerves flipped over. It was that same secret-alliance look. I almost expected him to wink like Jun had at the train station. I took a deep breath.

“So if you hate art so much, how come you had a sketchbook full?”

The grin vanished.

“And how come they move?”

“Move?” Bleached Hair said.

“That’s right,” I fumed. “I know you’re doing something.”

I looked at Tomohiro, and did he ever look pissed!

Good. I’ll finally get some answers.

“Oh, are you working on another of those animations, Tomo?” Tanaka said.

Tomohiro smiled.

No.

“He used to do these really neat ones on the edges of his notebooks.”

No! Don’t give him an escape hatch!

“Right, Ichirou. Animation.”

“On one page?” I sneered.

“On lots of pages,” he said. “That’s why I had so many drawings. It’s a project for my cram school. I didn’t want to draw, but I have to if I want full credit.”

Yuki nodded knowingly.

The answers were slipping through my fingers like sand.