Free The Waking by Thomas Randall

all day!”
    He grinned. “You know what I mean. With the long school hours, we’re just busier.”
    “I’ll try to ask more questions in your classes,” Kara said.
    Her father shook his head as he went to stir the chicken and vegetables they’d chopped into a frying pan. “We’ll be fine. It’s not just my adventure, Kara. It’s ours. All of it.”
    She leaned against the counter. “Then you won’t mind if I go over to school after lunch? I have a study date with Sakura and Miho.”
    With a fork, he split a piece of chicken in the pan to make sure it was cooked through, then looked up at her. “Like your father’s ever gonna stop you from studying. Or from checking out what it’s like to live in the dormitory. Go and have fun. Will you be home for dinner?”
    “Definitely.”
    The first thing Kara saw when Sakura opened the door to her dorm room were the masks. There were three of them hanging on the far wall, to the left of the window, lined up one above the next like a totem pole. The top and middle masks were ugly, monstrous things, but the bottom one was the pretty, elegant face of a woman.
    “Wow.”
    Miho looked up from the book she was reading. “English? You must like them.” She smiled and sat up on her bed.
    “They’re amazing,” Kara said. “Noh masks?”
    “Yes!” Miho beamed.
    “She collects them,” Sakura explained as she closed the door. “Fortunately, she leaves most of them at home.”
    Kara admired the masks as Miho stood and pointed to them each in turn.
    “The top one is Karura, a great bird of legend, who flies in four heavens and eats dragons,” Miho explained, and now Kara saw that the green-painted mask did have a beak and a red crest so that it looked vaguely like a bird. “Next is Daikijin, Great Devil God, who protects festivals and ceremonies from evil spirits.”
    Kara blinked. The white and silver mask had been crafted with such care that its beauty was undeniable. But with its horns and shaggy mane and the sharp fangs in its wide-stretched, blood-red mouth, it was also ugly and frightening.
    “It looks like an evil spirit,” she said.
    Miho frowned in disapproval. “You should not judge only by appearance.”
    Kara gave her a small shrug. “Of course. I meant no offense.”
    Sakura laughed. “Don’t let her get to you. She loves those ugly things too much.”
    Miho shot Sakura an unpleasant look and then smiled and gave them a small shrug. “I can’t help it.”
    “What about the bottom one? The woman?” Kara asked.
    “That is Zoh-onna. She is not a goddess or spirit, only a woman of purity and serenity,” Miho said.
    Sakura sat on a cushion in the floor. “I always ask if there’s one that is the opposite of those qualities. I’d like to wear that one.”
    The girls laughed. They were both in T-shirts and pajama bottoms, and seeing them like that gave Kara a relaxed, familiar feeling. She’d worn black jeans and a green hooded sweater and felt comfortable enough, but Sakura’s silky-looking red pajamas and the cotton, very American-looking bottoms Miho had on—white and covered with the red and yellow S-crest that Superman wore on his chest—made her wish she’d worn pajamas as well.
    Kara surveyed the rest of the dormitory room. There wasn’t much more to see. The beds were wooden boxes with soft futon mattresses that unrolled for sleeping. At first she thought there were straw tatami mats on the floor but then realized the whole floor was tatami. There were a couple of big zabuton cushions on the floor. The two desks were tiny, and a slender laptop sat open atop one of them. There were bamboo sliding doors that must have been closets and two bookcases. One held mostly school books, but the shelves of the other were lined with manga digests.
    “I can guess whose bookcase that is,” Kara said, pointing to the manga.
    “I’ll let you borrow some,” Sakura replied.
    Miho crossed her arms. “Why not show her your art?”
    Sakura’s smile