But I’d rather have blood on my skirt than evil slithering across my skin.
“Who were those girls?” Miss Oba asks. “They don’t attend Kōgakkan, do they? Surely our students have more decorum than that.”
You saw their uniforms. “I didn’t see their faces. They knocked me down and wouldn’t let me up.”
Miss Oba purses her lips. I’ve never been a good liar, but neither is Miss Oba. She knows those girls were Kōgakkan students. I know who they were. It’s easier for us both not to admit it and avoid the messy details. Neither of us wants Ayako making the consequences worse for us on Monday morning.
Besides, I can’t tell Miss Oba about the yokai. Adults don’t handle the inexplicable very well. Even my own parents refuse to believe that Grandfather and I can see and interact with yokai. Despite my mother’s upbringing at the Fujikawa Shrine, the yokai exist only in the realms of pop culture and manga to her. And while Shinto is the cultural backbone of Japanese life, many people don’t identify as religious. Not in the strictest sense, at least.
Miss Oba helps me gather my things off the ground. “Would you like to make a report?” she asks.
I shake my head, trying to shove my books into a bag too ripped to carry them. “I’m already late for work. I’ll get some bandages at my family’s shrine, it’s not far.”
“But Fujikawa-san—”
“I’m fine, thank you. Have a good day, Oba-san,” I say with a short bow. With that, I usher my sister away from the courtyard before Miss Oba decides to ask any more questions.
Ami and I are fifteen paces away when Miss Oba calls out, “Fujikawa-san, wait!”
I pick the last rock out of my palm and pretend not to hear her.
Two
Fujikawa Shrine
Kyoto, Japan
On our way to the shrine, my sister asks me enough of her own questions, tugging on my skirt to get my attention. I keep my head up and walk fast, clutching my tattered book bag to my chest, ignoring strangers’ curious gazes. Despite the late November chill, sweat dampens my clothes, making them stick to the small of my back.
“Don’t you need some bandages?” Ami asks. “You’re hurt!”
Bandages can’t fix me, I wish to say but don’t. I’m too distracted by the number of yokai monsters on the street today, and I need to focus to keep us safe. Not all yokai are evil, but many love mischief for mischief’s sake. They’ve adapted to living in modern Japan by concealing their true natures in human-looking glamours, concealing their hides, horns, and claws under expensive business suits, construction workers’ clothing, or even grandmotherly flowered prints.
Ami waves to one of our “neighbors,” Mrs. Nakamura, not realizing she’s waving to a hone-onna, or “bone woman.” Ami can’t see the yokai’s skeleton face, and always insists on greeting the neighbors on our route as we head home.
Some people, like Grandfather and me, are born with the ability to see through yokai glamours. Others can be trained. Once upon a time, Grandfather tried to teach my mother to spot the yokai. Mother was his heir, his eldest daughter, the pride of his life. I don’t know what happened, only that their story didn’t end happily. Now Mother visits the shrine only on major holidays. She and Grandfather hardly speak.
I’m Grandfather’s backup heir, preparing to carry the legacy that my parents and elder brother, Ichigo, try so hard to ignore. In their minds, there’s no fortune to be made in working at a shrine. My mother might have been raised in one, but neither she nor my father is religious. At least not anymore. And my brother, Ichigo, has no interest in becoming a priest.
“Kira?” Ami asks, tugging on my skirt again.
We pass a café’s big windows. Inside, a young woman looks up from a magazine, sees my blood-spattered clothing and wrecked knees, and smiles. Ghostly whiskers ripple across her cheeks.
“Kira.”
My bracelet burns almost as hot as summer sunlight. Everywhere I look, I see yokai. What’s going on? I wonder. I never see this many of them on the street—
“Kira!” my sister shrieks, startling our neighbors on the street. Their eyes narrow, blaming me, the elder sister, rather than the squawking child five paces back. Their thoughts are plain from their faces: Kira should be able to control that child, she is the elder sibling. Somehow, I’ve managed to disappoint even the neighbors and bystanders today.
I whirl around to face Ami, digging my fingernails into my palms. “What?”
“We passed the shrine, dummy.” She pulls her lower eyelid down with one finger, sticks out her tongue, then turns on her heel to run down the sidewalk. I look up, realizing the Fujikawa Shrine’s vermilion torii gate lies half a block behind us. I’d been so lost in my thoughts, I hadn’t even noticed passing it by.
Ami sprints past the main gate, nearly colliding with a shrine visitor. She always forgets to walk under the left side of the torii gate, which is proper, and has barreled into our patrons more than once. With a sigh, I hurry after her.
“Don’t take too long on your homework,” I call out. “I don’t want to be late getting home again!”
Ami waves me off and continues up the shrine’s steps.
One of the shrine’s priests stands at the bottom of the stone staircase, saying goodbye to a couple of elderly patrons. I hurry by with a short bow, not wanting to embarrass myself in front of our regulars. There are tourists on the steps, too, taking selfies with the stone lion guardians. They laugh too loudly, twisting their faces up in ugly grimaces, mocking the statues. Foreigners don’t always respect our shrines the way they should, ignorant of what these spaces mean.
Step by step, the shrine comes into view. The Fujikawa Shrine is nearly a thousand years old, set like a gem into one of Kyoto’s lush mountainsides. The main hall stands at the heart of the shrine. The resident kami spirits are enshrined inside the honden, or main shrine, behind the hall. While there are hundreds of thousands of kami—the spirits that animate the landscape around us, or the ancestors who graced this earth before us—chief among them all is Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, and the most venerated kami in all Shinto.
The shrine’s offering and assembly halls stand to the left and right of the main hall, respectively; the three buildings form a large public courtyard area, one that hides the more private places in the shrine from view.
The moment I slip past the shrine’s gate, I breathe easier. The air cools my face, smelling verdant. Green. Alive. I pause at the purification font to cleanse my hands and mouth, then hurry past a large courtyard pond and racks of wooden ema plaques. The plaques bear our patrons’ good wishes to the kami. At the shrine office counter, Usagi uses both hands to present a protective charm to a patron. If she’s out front, it means the private office area might be empty. Good.
Priests pass me by, occupied with their own tasks or with preparations for the upcoming autumn festivals. Everyone’s busy, everyone’s in a hurry. Nobody notices me. Which is great, because I’m not in the mood to explain the state of my school uniform.
To my relief, I find myself alone in the office. Stowing my books and busted backpack in a cubby, I grab my miko’s uniform from a set of drawers, careful not to smear my blood on my white kimono. I go into the bathroom, close the door, and bang my forehead on it thrice.