“Wait,” Sen said quickly.
Another blade unsheathed, and then Sen’s feet were movingtoward him, stepping onto the porch, the floorboards creaking under her weight.
“Forgive me,” she whispered. The words were in English, which meant they’d been for him.
There was a flash of sound, the keen whir of metal slicing through air. A gasp, then a wet noise, like the flesh of a fruit spilling open onto a plate.
And then the blood.
It poured through every seam of the floorboards, coating Lee’s mouth and eyes in salt.
He held his breath, even as its wet heat flowed over his hair, his throat, his shirt. He couldn’t breathe, or cough, or turn, or else Sen’s father would hear. Instead, he lay there in silence, baptized by blood.
He remembered standing in a stairwell, James’s blood all over him, the exact same taste—salt, but also death, which had its own peculiar taste, as if hopelessness congealed into its own flavor.
When he thought he might drown in it, he dared to turn his head to the side. Blood flowed into his ear, but he could still hear Sen’s footsteps retreating.
“You claim to care about your brothers,” her father said. “This is the only way you can protect them.”
But Lee knew, because he had already read Sen’s story, that this wasn’t true. Nothing could protect Sen from what was to come.
Chapter Seventeen
The Legend of Urashima Taro, Part II
The turtle carried the fisherman named Urashima Taro to the bottom of the sea. At first, the man worried he would drown, but he found he could breathe in the salt water as if it was the clearest air of a summer sky. Together, the fisherman and the turtle traveled down and down into the sea, and at last arrived at the palace of the Dragon God. It was carved of seashells and pearls, draped with seaweed garlands. Fish floated around it in glistening constellations.
A smaller turtle greeted them as Urashima Taro set his feet into the white sand, which held him steady. It was the turtle the children had tormented the day before, the one that Urashima Taro had saved.
The turtle rose to its hind legs and transformed into a beautiful woman. She had skin as bright as pearls, a cape of black hair that flowed behind her, eyes like the blue sea in the summer. She was the princess Otohime, the second daughter of the Dragon God.
“Thank you for saving me,” she said to Urashima Taro. “Please come stay with me in my palace.”
She led him inside and showed him the four walls of herhome. Each wall had a window that displayed the earth in different seasons. He could see the cherry blossoms of spring, the fiery forests of autumn, the stark whiteness of winter, the brightness of summer. It was the best parts of the world all at once, for as long as he wanted.
Urashima Taro stayed there happily for three days, feeling as if he was in a dream. He had never thought himself a hero, but he thought he deserved to enjoy his prize, at least for a little while.
But on the third day, he thought of his elderly mother, who awaited his return.
“I would like to go home,” he said to the princess.
Otohime was sad to say goodbye, but she honored his wish and carried him back to the shore. When it came time to part ways, she gave him a small box.
“Keep this safe,” she said. “Whatever you do, never open it.”
Urashima Taro wanted to ask her why, but she had already returned to the sea, leaving him alone on a cold shore with nothing but memories that felt like a dream, and a small box in his hand.
Part III
The Turtle
Chapter Eighteen
Lee
James left the balcony door open.
That was the beginning, though Lee didn’t know it at the time. Everything that happened next could have been avoided if only James had closed the door.
