CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: WITH TEETH

She pulled me inside.

 Not rough, but enough to let me know it was non-negotiable. I was going inside my room.

 With Natsumi.

 "Natsumi!" Yuki yelled. "Take your paws off Ryu!"

 Natsumi stood before me, my futon cover draped over one of her shoulders like a cloak.

 She was in her underwear. It accented her curves and left little to my fifteen-year-old imagination.

 "Natsumi wants the American-jin's love. Give Natsumi your love," she purred, ignoring Yuki.

 And she stepped forward, letting my covers fall behind her and putting her arms around my shoulders.

 I wanted to — badly, but I felt Yuki's ice blue eyes judging everything I was doing and it felt like trying to watch porn with my mother in the same room looking over my shoulder.

 Then, I felt footsteps coming up the stairs, and Natsumi let me go so quickly and leapt out of my room, into the hallway, and onto the upstairs stairwell in three bounds.

 It was Hibana. She stopped at the edge of the hallway.

 She was listening for Natsumi.

 "Well, that was some nerve," Yuki said.

 I felt like a death row inmate who suddenly got a surprise phone call from the governor.

 A tense minute later, I felt Hibana slowly descend back down the stairs.

 I let out a breath that I'd been holding longer than I realized.

 "I'm glad Hibana showed up when she did," I said.

 Yuki floated closer. "Is that why Natsumi suddenly left? I wondered."

 Then I watched her float beside the window and look out over the onsen with the glowing lanterns beneath the shifting steam.

 I pulled out the chair beside my creaky wooden desk and took a seat.

 After a moment I heard Yuki ask, "Are you really glad she left?"

 Kinda. "Yeah. For real," I said.

 Then Yuki turned to me and smiled. "That's perfectly groovy, Ryu. You know that girl's nothing but trouble. She skips school all the time. Doesn't she consider that her mother's a teacher at Crescent Moon? I mean, really. She's lucky to go there at all."

 Yuki's shoulders dropped a little. "It must be nice to get away with everything."

 I didn't say anything for a minute. I tuned to my unopened bag of homework and then looked out the window to watch the moon through the rising steam.

 I saw Yuki shift in her yukata. Then she looked over at me and saw me watching her.

 She put her head down and shut her eyes, as though thinking.

 "I saw you watching me at the park when I was kicking my feet," she said.

 She looked back at me and smiled. "It's okay, you know. I don't mind at all. I… I really did like it a little bit."

 She looked back out the window beside my desk.

 And I saw her fingers playing with the obi around her white yukata. She loosened it just enough to reveal the curve of her breast underneath.

 But she looked down, to the side. "I know I don't have a proper body, like Natsumi, or even…"

 I saw her tense.

 "Even Shion." She took a deep breath. Her fingers slowly opening the front of her yukata.

 I saw the braids and charms Yuki made fall across her breasts.

 "But what I have… if it pleases you," she bit her trembling lower lip. "I-I just want to be good for you, Ryu. I want to be… enough. Whatever you are, black dragon spirit, I simply don't care. I don't even know if I'm anything, but I want to be enough for you."

 Tiny, frozen tears slowly crept down her face where they vanished into steam before hitting the floor below.

 Yuki didn't leave a single teardrop. How could I tell her she didn't need to do a thing for me?

 I saw that she was here, and she was enough.

 She looked up at me, her ice blue eyes glowing, manic braids surrounding the ghostly white wanton beauty of her breasts.

 Look, but don't touch, Blondie.

 I could hear her in my head, living there, rent free.

 Gently, I reached out and caressed Yuki's face for a second. "You don't have to do this. You're here for me, Yuki. And I don't care if I can see you, or even if I never saw how pretty you are. You've done more for me than anyone just by being you. That makes you more here than this chair I'm sitting on."

 She swallowed. Then she blushed and quickly covered herself up.

 I watched her for a moment. She stared at the floor, her hands trembling as she clutched her yukata tightly, hugging herself.

 Because I couldn't.

 "Hey, Yuki, would you mind meditating with me?"

 She let out a little gasp that was the happiest sound on earth. "Oh, Ryu! I'd love to!"

 I was so tired that I don't remember lying down.

 I don't remember how long it was before I realized that I was listening to Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."

 And then I heard a loud clack that I immediately recognized as billiard balls scattering from the break.

 "Do you play, Andy?" Lana asked.

 And all around us, the lights came on one-by-one.

 We were in a grimy pool-hall/dance club. Smoke-stained Tiffany-style stained glass lamps swung from chained snaked-through with a yellowed extension cord.

 I realized I was sitting on a barstool. I nearly jumped, but then I saw a cold glass of whiskey on the rocks in my hand and I immediately drank it.

 Oh my god I need it, I don't care how bad it stung the back of my throat.

 Lana was looking at me from across the pool table, casually leaning on the cue stick. "Hey," she said, a little awkwardly. "I hope you don't mind me showing up like this. I thought you might want to talk. You want some more whiskey, American boy?"

 I looked down at my glass and saw it was full again, but I stopped myself from downing it.

 "What's it cost?" I asked.

 Lana shot me a smile. "Your credit is fine, Mr. Torrance."

 Her voice dripped with playful sarcasm.

 I sat the whiskey down.

 She just shrugged. "Suit yourself. The truth is that it doesn't really matter if you drink it or not, right?"

 I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Why do you always speak in riddles? I'm tired, and I'm up to my neck in enough problems already. What do you want?"

 Her smile didn't falter for a second. She just put one hand on the pool table and leaned on the cue stick like it was her wizard's staff.

 "Look. You are the one making everything harder than it needs to be," she said. "Don't pin that on me. That nightmare in the mall that you had last night? Yeah. That was all you. Not me, Andy. And good on you for saying so."

 She nodded, like she was one of the teachers at Crescent Moon Academy, and I wasn't sitting on a bar stool. I was sitting at a desk.

 I looked down. Nope. I was still in the bar. I picked the whiskey back up.

 There was no reason to waste good whiskey. Even in a dream.

 She smiled at me. "See? Nothing to worry about. And I mean that. So, to answer your question: what do I want? I told you, like, a thousand times. I liked your idea. I'm letting you live it out."

 I shook my head. "Why are you doing this to me? What is all this anyway? Crescent Moon Academy? Who am I? Did I always have a black dragon spirit or is that something you did to me when you put me here?"

 She shrugged. "Do you play, Andy? You never answered my question. Why am I doing this to you? Do you even know how ridiculous that sounds to me? From my point of view?"

 I had no idea what she meant. The whiskey began to swim through my head. That or the flickering lights overhead were beginning to get to me.

 Lana rolled her eyes lazily. "Okay, I tell you what. I'll answer your questions, okay? But that doesn't mean you'll like the answers. Let's do the easy one first. I'm sure, from your limited perspective, that it's the most important. But…"

 She looked around the empty pool hall like she was searching for spies.

 "Spoilers, Andy, it's not. Why am I doing this to you?" she asked.

 She spoke in my voice. The forty four year old me.

 Then she shook her head. "I'm not."

 "Boom," she mimed an explosion.

 "Mind blown. But it's true. I'm not pulling some strings, you know. And as for the whole 'black dragon spirit' thing…"

 She rolled her eyes, clearly enjoying herself. "Poor Larry the bus driver explained that to you already," she said. "Everyone has a gift or a special ability. You just woke yours up, and you've got some weird dragon abilities. You'll figure it out. Or you won't. Either way, I'm along for the ride."

 I looked back down at my whiskey glass. Empty.

 I heard Lana scoff, and it was full again.

 "Oh the house, American boy. It's that Irish whiskey you like so much."

 I took a drink, and when I set the glass down, Lana was standing beside me.

 She put her hand on my arm and leaned over. I felt her breath against my ear.

 "Hey, Andy, do you wanna know a funny secret?"

 And suddenly I was standing in the parking lot of the Clarksburg Public Library watching myself from yesterday.

 I was checking my watch on my wrist as I was stepping out into the parking lot.

 I didn't see the oncoming car.

 "Oh my god," I said.

 "Right?" asked Lana.