Chapter Text
Night had fallen over the Ni-Chrome district. The cold night air blew gently through the narrow streets, but Nodoka Saotome barely felt it. She walked with her back perfectly straight, hiding her face under the wide hood of her dark cloak. She carried her katana tightly wrapped under her arm, like a shield against the outside world... or perhaps against her own thoughts.
With every step she took toward the neon-lit alley, her mind turned into a battlefield.
'A man and a woman. Yin and Yang. That is the only immutable truth, the sacred law of nature, and the fundamental pillar of the family.'
Then why...?
'The duty of an exemplary wife is to seek the guidance of a strong spouse, serve the home with submission, and never divert her gaze from family righteousness.'
Then why...?
'Only sinners, those lost souls corrupted by the decadence of modern life, would dare look at another woman's body with desire and lust. It is a nameless aberration.'
Then why...?
'It was Genma's fault. Yes, the blame lies entirely with my husband. He left me alone for over a decade on his absurd mission to train our son as a true man among men... If he hadn't abandoned me to my fate, my heart would never have been so vulnerable and I would never have entered this district, nor would I have met her...'
But her conscience struck back with a vengeance:
'Then why do you keep coming back here every Wednesday night, even now that you have already found Genma and Ranma at the Tendo dojo? Your family is reunited. Your duty demands you be at home.'
'It's because of... the stress! Yes, of course. The stress of being a devoted wife and dealing with the constant eccentricities and lack of discipline of my husband and my son. I come here merely to release tension in a peaceful environment.'
Her conscience gave her no quarter:
'And back in high school? Were you also stressed about being a wife when you cornered that beautiful classmate behind the kendo dojo and kissed her with such passion under the rain?'
Nodoka blushed violently beneath her hood, gritting her teeth.
'That... that was the foolishness of youth! A passing confusion of no importance!'
Her relentless conscience struck again:
'And why is it that when you go to the market, your gaze always strays so fixedly toward the curves, elegance, and graceful stride of the young ladies, while the supposed gallantry of men bores you absolutely? Why does the mere thought of admiring feminine beauty thrill you in a way that the clumsiness of men has never managed?'
Nodoka clenched her fists, on the verge of mental desperation:
'Why is it that when I close my eyes in the silence of the dojo, I cannot stop thinking about that woman's walk? Why does the mere thought of hearing her melodious voice make my skin tingle in a way I never experienced in my marriage?'
Then why...?
'Why does my heart beat with such strength and desperation as I turn this corner, knowing that I am going to "sin" once more... just for the fleeting, warm touch of her hand over mine?'
The silence in the VIP lounge was so thick it could almost be cut with Nodoka's katana.
Ranma felt her legs shaking like jelly beneath her black pants. The urge to take a leap backward, burst through the window, and sprint across the rooftops of Ni-Chrome back to the safety of her room was incredibly tempting. But she knew perfectly well how stupid that would be right now. If she ran away, she would not only abandon her boss, but she would also raise catastrophic suspicions. And worst of all: her mother had already seen her. There was no possible physical escape.
Swallowing hard with difficulty and forcing her hands to stop trembling, Ranma took a step forward. With quick, clumsy movements, she dropped the silver tray onto the low wooden table. The glasses clinked dangerously and a couple of delicate seasonal cookies went flying off the plate straight onto the tatami mat.
"H-Here is your drink, distinguished customer!" Ranko exclaimed in an excessively high-pitched voice, taking a step back and clasping her hands in front of her, sweating buckets.
Nodoka kept her gaze fixed on her, completely petrified. Her eyes, usually serene and dignified, were wide open, reflecting a mixture of...
...panic and total bewilderment. It took her several seconds to regain her speech, and when she did, she repeated the question with a thread of a voice.
"Ranma... is that really you?" Nodoka whispered, processing the red braid and the bartender uniform. "But... what does this mean? What are you doing working in a place like this?"
The tension in the room skyrocketed to stratospheric levels. Both of them were trapped in the worst possible scenario. Neither wanted to be in that bar, neither wanted to be discovered, and the mutual awkwardness was so massive that the air felt freezing cold.
Ranma, desperate to save her skin and prevent Nodoka from asking questions that might reveal that "Ranko" was actually her true trans identity—and that she loved working there because she was a lesbian girl—blurted out the first cheap excuse that crossed her mind, gesturing wildly:
"Ah... ha, ha! Mom! What a... what a sporty coincidence! You see... this is training! Yes, secret training from the Anything-Goes School! The old man told me that to improve my center of gravity and my balance in combat, I had to practice the art of serving tables using... my girl form! And what better place to train stealth and speed than a nightclub! It’s... it’s purely for the martial arts, I swear!"
Nodoka blinked, taking in her "son's" absurd string of lies. On one hand, her traditional mind wanted to question what kind of martial arts required a fitted vest and an environment with pink neon lights. But on the other hand... Ranma’s excuse was her ticket to salvation. If she pretended to believe Ranma, then she wouldn't have to explain what a respectable mother, wife of Genma Saotome, was doing drinking exotic cocktails in a VIP lounge exclusive to women.
Clearing her throat with military rigidity and straightening her back to regain her samurai dignity, Nodoka nodded solemnly, though her cheeks were burning a bright red.
"I... I see. The path of the warrior demands strange sacrifices in these modern times, Ranma," Nodoka said with a trembling voice, latching onto the lifeline of the lie. "It is... it is highly commendable of you to exert yourself so much in your training... even at night."
"Y-yes! Lots of effort! Lots of balance!" Ranma agreed, wiping the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve.
Just at that moment, the sliding shoji paper door glided open smoothly, interrupting the tense exchange. Megumin entered the lounge carrying a highly elegant designer liquor bottle and what looked like a beautiful gift wrapped in tissue paper with a golden bow.
"No-chan... I brought a couple of special gifts for you," Megumin said in her usual sweet, melodious tone, giving Nodoka a radiant smile.
However, after taking a couple of steps into the room, Megumin stopped dead in her tracks. Her sharp intuition immediately picked up that the atmosphere in the lounge was incredibly bizarre, almost electric. She looked at Nodoka, whose cheeks were burning a bright red, and then shifted her gaze to Ranko, who looked like she was about to disintegrate from sheer nerves.
Nodoka, trying to deflect attention and desperate to keep her "son" from suspecting her relationship with the establishment's owner, cleared her throat with military stiffness and pointed at the redhead with a trembling finger.
"Megumin-san... I did not know you knew my son," Nodoka let out, trying to sound as dignified and detached as possible.
Megumin blinked a few times, completely baffled by her "little flower's" words. She scanned her gaze from Nodoka to the braided girl, and then back to Nodoka, tilting her head with an incredulous smile.
"Son?" Megumin replied with a mix of surprise and amusement. "Are you referring to Ranko-san? I know she's a bit of a tomboy, but I thought we had already passed the stage of thinking a tomboy is necessarily a boy..."
Nodoka furrowed her brow, her discomfort quickly transforming into a rigid defensiveness.
"Megumin-san, please," Mrs. Saotome intervened, straightening her back with a sharp formality. "This is not a joke. She is not 'Ranko-san.' Her true name is Ranma, and he is my only male son, whom I have told you about."
Megumin, processing the absolute seriousness on Nodoka’s face, looked at Ranko. Trying to soften the obvious and uncomfortable tension in the room to protect her employee, Megumin flashed a conciliatory smile and took a step closer.
"Well, it doesn't matter what they call her at home, Nodoka..." the boss said, her tone soft but firm. "I can only tell you that Ranko-san has been working with me for a couple of months. She is one of my best employees; she is highly sweet, very charismatic, and, to be honest, has half of our clientelle completely in love with her. She is a wonderful girl."
"A couple of months?!" Nodoka stood up abruptly, horror painted all over her face. "And you say he charms those women?! No, no, and no! You are mistaken! He is a man! A real man!"
Mrs. Saotome took a step forward, pointing desperately at the redhead.
"What you see is only a physical curse. In China, Ranma fell into one of the cursed springs of Jusenkyo. Now, every time he gets splashed with cold water, his body changes into that of a girl! But it is only an external transformation, a trial that fate imposed on him! In his soul and in his duty, he remains my male son, the heir to the Saotome school. He is not a woman, and much less one of those... of those... sinners!"
Nodoka’s words struck the lounge with the force of a hammer.
Upon hearing her mother refer to her female body as a mere "external curse" and so vehemently demand her supposed mandatory manhood, Ranko felt a sharp, familiar pain in the center of her chest. Dysphoria—that cold monster she thought she had tamed since her heartfelt talk with Akane—struck back with sharp claws. She looked down at her own hands, which suddenly felt foreign to her, and her shoulders slumped. Feeling rejected in her own identity by the person she most wanted to make proud made her feel incredibly small.
Megumin saw the brightness in Ranko's eyes instantly vanish, replaced by a profound sadness. A sudden surge of fury overtook the boss's usual sweetness. Without hesitation, she took a step forward, physically interposing herself between Nodoka and the redhead.
"Enough, Nodoka," Megumin declared. Her voice, though not loud, carried an edge of steel that made the samurai fall silent immediately. "I don't care what happened in China, and I don't care about the curses of any spring. I have seen Ranko work, I have heard her laugh, and I know how happy she is when she is here, dressing how she wants and being respected for who she is. To me, she is Ranko, a valuable woman. And I am not going to allow you to make her feel like a monster in my own establishment."
The bar owner turned back toward the redhead, her gaze softening with infinite tenderness. With a delicate gesture, she took Ranko's hand, giving it a gentle squeeze of support.
"Please, Ranko, dear... sit with us. You're not going anywhere. It is time we resolve this once and for all, like the adult women we are."
Ranko looked at her boss, feeling a small wave of warmth and gratitude alleviate the emptiness in her chest. She nodded slowly and, with solemn movements, sat down on the tatami mat. Nodoka, trembling with indignation and shame, had no choice but to sit back down as well, crossing her arms rigidly and refusing to look Megumin in the eye.
The silence that followed was dense, heavy with a raw honesty that neither Saotome had ever wanted to face.
"Very well, Nodoka," Megumin commented, crossing her arms as she observed Mrs. Saotome. "If you are going to judge Ranko's life so severely... why don't we start by explaining what you are doing here, in a women-only private lounge of a lesbian bar?"
Nodoka clenched her fists over her knees, her cheeks burning with a red of pure humiliation.
"I... I have nothing to explain!" Nodoka erupted, her voice shaking with rage and desperation. "This is a mistake! An unforgivable weakness! I only come here because... because my husband abandoned me for over a decade, leaving me alone with an empty dojo and a constant ache in my chest. My mind became confused! But this that I feel... this that I do by coming to this place and seeking your company... it is a sin! An aberration against nature and the family I want to leave behind!"
Nodoka looked up, her eyes clouded with tears of frustration, searching for her "son's" approval.
""I swear it on the honor of the Saotomes, Ranma! I am going to stop coming! I am going to correct my path, fulfill my duty as a traditional wife, and erase these... these impure feelings from my mind. It is what a decent person must do!"
Hearing those words, Megumin felt her heart break a little, but her indignation was greater. The elegance of her face hardened; her gaze, usually soft, filled with a deep and painful solemnity.
"Nodoka... I love you very much, and because of that very reason, I know you aren't carrying anything truly heavy on your shoulders; your ideas chain you down, and only you, because you let them," Megumin confronted her, her voice low but vibrating with a profound sadness. "Those traditional dogmas aren't worth enough for you to call me a 'sinner' just for loving women, and much less for you to use that word as an attack. Look at yourself... You come here, you take refuge with me, you smile when I sing to your ear, and you silently hold my hand as if it were your only lifeline against the tide of the world. And now you intend to throw mud at that warmth just because you're terrified of people knowing? If you want to be brave, this is your moment."
The boss leaned slightly forward. Her dark eyes, once filled with longing, now shone with a harsh but compassionate firmness.
"There is no poison in your gaze seeking mine, Nodoka. There is no aberration in the sweetness between women, nor is there any in Ranko deciding to flourish under her own light instead of withering in the shadows to please someone else's fantasies. The only true sin in this room is that you use your code of honor as a sledgehammer to beat your own daughter... and to finish bleeding yourself dry from the inside."
Nodoka opened her mouth to retort, to wield the code of honor once more, to shout that samurai morality demanded decorum above personal whims. She wanted to lift her wrapped sword, but she suddenly stopped. Her eyes, blurred with tears and heavy with a confusion that was consuming her from within, slowly shifted from Megumin toward Ranko.
Nodoka fixed her gaze intently on her "son." Her voice was no longer military or authoritative, but a trembling, broken thread, almost pleading.
"Ranma... tell me the truth," Mrs. Saotome demanded, clenching her fists over her knees. "Why are you really here? Why do you dress like this? Is it... are you truly a man in your heart, or did that curse from China finally finish eating away at your head?"
The air in the private lounge froze completely. Ranko felt a knot in her throat, feeling the weight of a lifetime of traditional expectations crushing her. She wanted to invent another martial arts excuse, she wanted to use her boy voice or laugh exaggeratedly, but seeing her mother's pleading eyes, the words caught in her...
...throat. She swallowed hard, lowered her gaze to her lap, and, with a mixture of fear but also a deep and liberating honesty, could only stammer in a trembling whisper:
"...Woman."
The word floated in the air like an irrefutable truth.
Nodoka seemed to physically shrink before the answer. The shock painted on her face transformed into a silent storm of emotions she didn't know how to process. The rigidity of her samurai pride and the walls of her denial crashed head-on against the reality of her own daughter and her own feelings for Megumin.
Without knowing what else to say, without arguments to attack but completely unable to admit that her world of honor had been torn down, Nodoka stood up slowly. She didn't look at Megumin. Nor did she dare look at Ranko. She kept her gaze fixed rigidly on the floor, straight at her own feet.
"That... that is all for today," Nodoka announced with a thread of a choked voice. She made a monumental effort to keep her back straight, though her shoulders looked defeated. She took a step toward the sliding door and, without lifting her eyes from the floor, added in a rigid but polite manner: "Excuse... excuse me for making you open such a special bottle, Megumin-san. But... I must go."
She slid the shoji paper door and left the private lounge with quick steps, leaving them alone in a dense and overwhelming silence, but with the truth finally out in the open.
Seconds after the echo of Nodoka's hurried footsteps faded downstairs, Ranko took a deep breath, trying in vain to swallow the knot still tightening her throat. She forced a trembling smile, rigidly adjusted her black vest, and began to pick up the silver tray with noticeably clumsy hands.
"Well..." Ranko commented, trying to make her voice sound as casual as possible. "I think... I should head back downstairs. There are still tables to attend to and customers waiting for their drinks and..."
"Ranko, no," Megumin interrupted firmly, placing a gentle but protective hand on her shoulder. "Look at yourself. You are in no condition to serve anyone tonight, much less to pretend you're in the mood to smile, joke, and flirt with the clientelle. Take the rest of the night off. Go rest."
Ranko lowered her gaze, gripping the edges of the tray tightly. She let out a bitter laugh that held no hint of amusement.
"Rest? Boss... I live with my mom. In the same dojo. If I go back right now... I don't think either of us could stand the idea of crossing paths in the hallway or looking each other in the face."
An awkward silence settled over the lounge. Megumin took in the harsh reality of the redhead's words; sending Ranko back to the Tendo house at this precise moment was a surefire recipe for the emotional disaster of both Saotomes. After a few seconds of reflective quiet, the boss sighed softly and nodded understandingly.
"Ah... of course. You're absolutely right, I'm sorry," Megumin admitted, softening her expression. "Okay, let's do this: if you don't want to go home, stay in the back and help us out in the kitchen. I'll tell Shimizu-san to cover for you downstairs so you don't have to face anyone else. Does that sound good?"
Ranko felt an immense weight lift off her shoulders and nodded weakly, flashing a look packed with sincere gratitude.
"Yeah... thanks, Boss. That would be a lifesaver, seriously."
The rest of the shift went by mechanically and silently. Sheltered in the warmth of the kitchen, Ranko dedicated herself to washing dishes, organizing glasses and ingredients, keeping her hands busy to prevent her mind from returning over and over to her mother's painful, broken gaze and her own confession.
Finally, after a few long hours, it was time to close the establishment. The pink and purple neon lights were turned off completely, plunging the bar into a peaceful twilight. While changing clothes in the back locker room and putting away her barwoman uniform, Ranko began to turn over an inevitable question she had been putting off: where on earth was she going to sleep tonight? Going back to the dojo was out of the question; the mere thought of climbing the roof and risking running into Nodoka made her stomach churn from pure discomfort.
As she finished fixing her red braid in front of the mirror, Megumin approached her, already wearing her elegant coat.
"Ranko..." the owner called out in a soft, maternal tone, stopping by her side. "I've been thinking about your situation... where are you spending the night? You can't just go wandering around the streets of Nerima at this hour. If you want... you are more than welcome to stay at my place tonight. I have plenty of space, and you can rest without any pressure."
Ranko looked at her boss, deeply moved by the immense generosity and the unconditional refuge she was offering her once again. However, after thinking about it for a moment, she cracked a small but sincere smile, shaking her head lightly with kindness.
"Thank you so much for the offer, Boss. It really means everything to me at a time like this... But don't worry. I already have a pretty clear idea of where I can crash tonight."
Megumin observed her with a certain worry, but noticing the subtle spark of determination in the redhead's eyes, she nodded, respecting her space and her decision.
"Okay. But if you change your mind or need anything, remember my phone is always on," the owner insisted, giving her a warm handshake before leaving. "Take good care of yourself, dear."
"I will, Boss. Good night."