Rise by Amanda Sun Read Free Book Online

for someone. Um, enjoy the zoo.” He turned in a hurry, his black coat swaying around him.
    “Yuki,” Tanaka laughed. “Did you just ask a stranger to sketch us? You probably embarrassed him!”
    “I’m telling you, I’ve seen him before,” Yuki said. “Anyway, he had drawings of people on the sketchpad and they were good.”
    “Maybe he was too embarrassed to say yes.” He smiled, leaning his arms over the side of the enclosure as he scanned the rocky terrain for the foxes. “And maybe we could get back to our date now?”
    Yuki smiled. “Sorry,” she said. “You’re right. Ah! Look at that one!” A fox rolled back and forth on the grass, all four feet sticking into the air.
    “So cute,” Tanaka said. He took a breath and moved his arm to wrap it around Yuki. She looked at him, surprised for a moment, then beamed.
    “Do you want to sit down for a bit and have those macarons?”
    “Sure. I saw a picnic bench back by the red pandas.”
    “Great,” Yuki said. She turned slowly to keep Tanaka’s arm around her as they headed toward the bench.
    Suddenly the speakers on the nearby pole crackled with life. The sound of it sent the foxes scurrying around their pen in a flurry of tails and fur. “We’re sorry for the interruption,” the message blared, “but we are facing an emergency closure. Please make your way toward the exit of the zoo. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience.”
    “Wait, what?” Tanaka said.
    Then a gurgle of sound near the wolf pen. Yuki hesitated, looking over. A tall man in a leather coat lay on the ground, the zoo staff in light green vests surrounding him. She tugged on Tanaka’s coat arm as she watched.
    “
Doushita?
” he asked, but Yuki shook her head.
    “No idea,” she said. “Maybe a heart attack or something?”
    “Look, let’s just go,” Tanaka said. “I don’t feel good about this.” He took Yuki’s hand in his, trying to ignore the warmth of it, the softness that made him want to pull her closer. They hurried toward the gate just as the others were doing.
    It had to be the medical emergency, Yuki thought. Maybe the wolf had somehow managed to maul the man through the bars? But that couldn’t be.
    Yuki saw a blur of black and white as they headed toward the zoo gate. “Wait,” she said, stepping backward to check the side of the gift shop again.
    It was the guy in the black coat, the one they’d seen by the fox pen. He had a paintbrush out, and he was painting, but not on the sketchpad—on the wall.
    “Kami Arise,” he’d written in dark, blood-like ink that oozed down the brick. And below it, a raven with wings outspread. Yuki froze at the sight of it—the new gang, the one that rivaled the Yakuza.
    The boy looked up at her, his eyes cold as ice.

Chapter Nine
    Izanagi looked down at the
washi
paper in his hand, a thin, veined sheet Kunitoko had fashioned from the pulp of the inky reed leaves on the shore. Kunitoko had sketched a living map of ink on the
washi
, which had led Izanagi to this remote spot, a valley of large rocks cracked open like eggs and scattered across the brown grass. He didn’t remember ever painting this place, nor did it seem to have come from Izanami’s hand. He wondered if the ink that had dripped from the
naginata
spear had spread out on its own, splaying out in tendrils against the waves, creating a darkness he’d never seen before. Even the inky chaos of the oceans was beginning to empty of shadow, eroding away from its black origin, catching the light of the pale blue sky that Yamato had taken to painting over top of the rainbow fireflies.
    Kunitoko’s map had led to this place, barren and quiet, nothing but rocks and boulders and silence. This was the last place he’d expect to find Izanami, so vibrant and full of life—but that was before, wasn’t it? No, an empty place like this echoed in his own heart now. This had to be the gate to Yomi, the World of Darkness.
    “Who created it?” Izanagi had asked