Storm - Amanda Sun Page 0,1

wanted to reach over and ruffle his hair.

I glanced at the TV, anime sparkles and canned music blaring at me from the screen. A group of magical schoolgirls in a rainbow of skirt colors pulled elaborate poses, peace signs cupped to their faces like Tomo. They blasted a bunch of monsters with their special powers as they backflipped and whirled around the Tokyo Skytree tower in ridiculously high heels.

I rolled my eyes. “How can they fight in those? Where are all the broken ankles?”

The leader of the girls got a close-up now, tilting her head to the side as she posed. “Yurusenai yo!” she squeaked, and Tomo looked smugly pleased.

The scene cut to one of the girls smacking a monster in the face with an ofuda, a paper scroll that banished evil. Wait. “Hey, would that work in real life?”

“I don’t look so great in high heels and a miniskirt,” Tomo said. “Unless you’re into that kind of thing.”

I smacked his knee again. “I mean the ofuda. That’s a Shinto scroll, right? Couldn’t it stop a kami?”

He frowned. “I doubt it. They usually invoke the help of a kami, not banish one. They’re more for expelling demons. Like a larger version of the omamori I gave you.”

I pulled out my phone, looking at the soft yellow pouch Tomo had risked entering a shrine for, just to give to me. The charm read “Yaku-yoke Mamoru,” embroidered on the fabric in soft pink kanji. Protection from Evil.

The last time Tomo had entered a shrine with me, he’d collapsed in a pool of ink, attacked by some kind of kami alarm system as a threat to the sacred place. I am evil, he’d told me. I’m the demon lurking in the shadows. But even now, knowing he was descended from Tsukiyomi, I couldn’t believe it. He was descended from Amaterasu, too, right? And wasn’t she supposed to be the protector of Japan? The little bell on the charm jingled as I put the phone back in my pocket.

“If you remember, the omamori didn’t work so well,” Tomo said.

I chewed on my bottom lip and said nothing. It had worked. The omamori had fallen out of my pocket and clinked against the floor when Jun had kissed me at his school. It had broken me out of the moment; it had protected me from the awful mistake I’d made. I still wasn’t sure if Jun had actually liked me, or had just been using me to get to Tomo. It didn’t matter—I’d screwed up big-time, and almost lost Tomo. Heat prickled down my neck as I shook the guilt away.

“We’ve got to have more options than leave Japan or die,” I said, trying to get back on track.

Tomo closed his eyes. “What if I draw Tsukiyomi, and then rip the sketch in half?”

I stared at him; he’d lost his mind. “You’re joking, right? Ripping the drawing of Amaterasu nearly killed me. Ripping Tsukiyomi in half might kill you.”

He frowned. “There’s never been a constant way to stop the kami. Sometimes it overpowers me and I collapse, and sometimes I can get startled out of its control, but... I can’t see a connection. Maybe I just need to live under a torii and stay unconscious.”

I groaned, scribbling out my list. We weren’t getting anywhere this way.

Tomo rested the remote on the side table and sat up, resting his hands on my shoulders. “Hey,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll think of something.” He pulled me gently toward him, turning me so my back was against his chest. I leaned into the warmth of him, the scent of miso and vanilla around me, his heart thudding gently against the back of my shoulder.

The paper list slipped off my lap, floating toward the floor and slipping halfway under the couch. The cherry blossom in the corner spun like a pinwheel, and Tomo went rigid beneath me, his breath catching in his throat. “Is that—is it moving?”

I sat up as he grabbed the paper. He frowned as the flower shriveled before us, crumpling into a scribbled ugliness in the corner. “Katie,” he said, his voice deep and troubled.

“I know,” I said. “Ever since your drawing of Amaterasu came to life it’s been happening. But my sketches don’t come off the page like yours. They seem pretty harmless so far.”

“Yeah, but this is...” He ran a hand through the copper spikes of his hair. “Katie, I don’t want this for you.”

“Maybe it’ll stop,” I lied. “It’s not a