Yuki Nekoyama's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

The morning after the mall, Yuki couldn't focus. In science class she sat two rows back from Kenji Mizushima, the quiet boy from her own club. He usually just read. Today his pencil moved fast. Yuki leaned to see. He was drawing cats. Small, round, careful cats in the margin of his notebook. Her stomach twisted. She knew that shape. It looked like the sketches in her library book. Kenji drew the way the note-writer drew. She should have been glad. One name meant proof. Instead her chest went tight and cold. She thought of the poem, the tiny cats, the person she'd imagined for weeks. She hadn't imagined Kenji. She'd started to imagine Kai. After class Yuki walked to the quad and dropped onto the open lawn. She set her grey plaid backpack beside her and stared up. Clouds moved slow. She kept finding Kai's face in them. She hated that she did. Raven sat down without a word. She pulled up a blade of grass and studied it, the way she studied her plants. She waited. "I saw Kenji drawing cats," Yuki said. "In class. They looked like the ones in my book." "So it's him," Raven said. Flat. Like the answer was obvious and she was done. "That's the problem." Yuki pressed her hands over her eyes. "I don't want it to be him. I keep hoping it's Kai. I saw him for one afternoon at the mall and now I can't think straight. I was hunting for the writer, and I stopped caring who it was. I only cared it might be Kai." She let her hands fall. "I can't trust what I read in those notes anymore. Not while I feel like this." Raven turned the grass blade over. "I don't know," she said. "I saw Kai drawing a cat today too. In the library." Yuki sat up. "By the short story shelf," Raven said. "Small. Round. Like yours." The cold in Yuki's chest flipped to something faster. "Kai can't draw. Yuna said so." "Yuna says a lot of things." Raven shrugged. "He was drawing. I watched." Yuki looked back at the clouds. She had two boys now. Two hands that drew the same cat. She'd wanted to sort her feelings before she trusted her read. But her feelings had just answered her. The face in the clouds was Kai's. And now Raven had put him at the exact shelf where every note began. "Then I stop guessing," Yuki said. Her voice was low but steady. "I go to the library after class. I watch the shelf myself. Whoever leaves the next note, I catch his hand doing it." Raven dropped the grass. "Finally." Yuki grabbed her backpack and stood. The confusion hadn't lifted. But she knew what she wanted now, and it aimed her straight at the shelf.