Hina’s gaze settled on his face, and Lee gritted his teeth against the sudden thought that Hina knew everything, could see every single one of his lies written across his face.
“All right,” she said at last. Lee let out a breath as she turned around.
Just before she closed the door behind her, the bright hallway lights glinted off something in Hina’s left hand, tucked behind her back. For a moment, it looked like she was clutching a ball of sunlight. But then the light shifted as she moved the object in front of her, and Lee caught a glimpse of a cooking knife, immaculately sharp.
As the sound of Hina’s footsteps faded, a strange coldness bloomed in Lee’s bones. Hina had always felt safe and warm, but in the last few days, she’d become another puzzle piece that wouldn’t fit.
Once he was sure Hina was gone, he knelt in front of the suitcase. His numb hands ghosted over the lid but didn’t dareopen it, too afraid of what he would find. He imagined lifting the lid and finding a suitcase full of bones. Or maybe he would find Sen’s rotting corpse, just like the dead turtle—skin pale and stiff, gray and unseeing eyes rolled back. Sen never should have climbed inside. She might as well have thrown herself into the mouth of a beast.
But then the suitcase shifted and the lid popped open.
Lee scrambled back as Sen emerged from the suitcase, her hair askew.
“Get out of there,” Lee said, gripping Sen’s arm over her sleeve and all but hauling her out. “Why would you do that?” he said. “Wh-why would you hide in there?”
But Sen must have misunderstood his question, because she glanced warily at the hallway, where Hina had departed. “There’s something wrong with Hina,” she said.
Lee wanted to defend Hina, to say that Sen was the ghost, the one who wasn’t right. But after seeing how coldly Hina had spoken to Sen, and now the knife behind her back, Lee didn’t know what to think.
“Her energy is strange,” Sen continued. “It felt like a forest fire was tearing down the hallway, but it had eyes and was coming only for me.”
Hina wouldn’t hurt you, Lee wanted to say. But now he wasn’t so sure. Hina had said she knew he was keeping a secret—maybe she thought it had something to do with Sen. She probably didn’t know Sen was a ghost, but she clearly thought Sen was a threat.
Lee felt as though all the fragile threads of his life were pulled taut, threatening to snap. He was supposed to know exactly what everyone was thinking, how to pluck their delicate strings like a harpist. But he could no longer read Hina, his father, or even Sen.
“Forget about Hina!” Lee said. His words were too harsh, but he no longer cared. Let Sen see the real Lee Turner, the onewho’d fed James Baldridge to the darkness. Lee was alone no matter what he did, so there was no use pretending to be anything but this dark, ugly thing. “You don’t get to come here making demands of me when you haven’t held up your end of our deal,” he said. “You didn’t even show up this morning. I’ve given you information and you’ve given me nothing. You...”
He trailed off, because Sen wasn’t even listening to him. It was obvious from the way she was staring transfixed at his chest, as if seeing straight through him.
“Sen!” Lee said.
Sen blinked hard, tearing her gaze from his chest and meeting his eyes. “I intend to help you,” she said, though her voice sounded far away. “I never lied to you, I just—”
“Justwhat?” Lee said, taking a challenging step forward.
Once more, Sen’s gaze drifted to his chest before she blinked quickly and looked away.
“What is it?” Lee said, clenching his fists. Sen had come in here and cornered him, climbed into his suitcase, and now, worst of all, she was keeping secrets. If she made him, he would shove his arm down her throat and wrench every secret up from deep inside her.
“What is it?” Lee said, the last time he would ask kindly.
Sen grimaced. “It’s just... You have a stain on your shirt.”
Lee felt as if he’d been doused in kerosene and lit aflame, his whole body alight with terror. He followed Sen’s gaze, but he couldn’t see any stain in the dim light.
He tore off his shirt and cast it to the floor. The sword ferns shifted restlessly beyond the windows, jagged shadows cutting through the moonlight, shifting like they were at the bottom of a dark sea, rocked by the waves. Lee fell to his knees and slammed his shirt into the shivering prism of light that the window had cast on the floor. He scrutinized every inch of his shirt for stains, his frantic fingers pinching the fabric, feeling for errant textures.
Sen knelt beside him, her hands clawing into the tatami mats as she watched intently. “There,” she said, pointing to the neckline.
And there it was—a small spot on the right side of his collar, dark brown, nearly a perfect oval. Lee raised the shirt to his nose and inhaled.
Soy sauce.
That’s right, Hina was cooking with soy sauce when I walkedby, Lee thought. The fear fell away like dead skin once the stain had a name, a reason, a story.
A breeze sighed through the window and his skin prickled with goose bumps. He was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that he was shirtless, that Sen was sitting so close he could hear her heartbeat, that she was staring at him. For a moment, he saw himself through Sen’s eyes—so thin that his skin wrapped tight around his ribs, his chest ghostly white, his stomach soft. He was one of the tiny white bugs that devoured rotting driftwood the sea gave back, small and ugly.
He moved to put his shirt back on, but hesitated at the sight of the stain. Even though he knew what it was, the whole shirt felt tainted now.
