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“Aki,” Nabiki’s voice had an uncharacteristic lilt as she leaned forward perilously on the half-open screen door of the engawa. “You’re gonna want to hear this.” The corner of her mouth was quirked in what could only indicate her being unreasonably pleased with herself for having a morsel of information that nobody else was yet privy to.
In response, Akane merely raised an eyebrow as she was setting up a new tower of bricks to break. “So what has he done this time?”
Nabiki slid the rest of her body from out behind the screen door and leaned backwards against the doorframe as she responded. “Well, our dear old dad has evidently gotten it into his head that his children are getting a little long in the tooth to remain unwed at the geriatric ages of sixteen through nineteen, and are in dire need of a proper miai. So naturally, instead of giving us any kind of advanced warning or preparation for it, we’re about to get dragged in front of an Emergency Eligible Bachelor within the next…” Nabiki glanced down at her watch, “10 minutes or so.”
Akane slapped her face with her palm before laughing slightly. “Well, good luck with that. I’ll just be out here with these bricks. Knowing Dad, they’ll probably make for better company.”
“Oh-ho, don’t think you can get out of this one so easily.” Nabiki tutted quickly.
“Don’t look at me. I’m not getting married to anybody.”
“What, so you trust Daddy not to talk you up in front of an unfamiliar boy? I can just hear him now… ‘Well yes, she’s a fiery one, son, but I’m sure a strapping young man like you can—’”
As Nabiki spoke, Akane’s half-amused expression vanished. “Okay, okay! You can stop now, I get the picture.” A shiver ran down her spine as she abandoned the half-built tower of bricks and marched up to the lip of the engawa.
Upon seeing Akane’s visceral reaction, Nabiki’s expression softened. “Sorry. I know it’s a sore spot. If it helps, Kasumi’s definitely going to be running interference… whatever else she thinks, I know she doesn’t think it’s totally normal to get hitched before your coming of age day. And in case you couldn’t tell, I’m not exactly gunning to have a husband before I finish high school either.”
Akane rolled her shoulders inwards, looking back at Nabiki with a grim smile. “Is it terrible I’m relieved that I don’t have time to go ‘look presentable’?”
“Hell no,” Nabiki replied tartly. “As far as I’m concerned, if the guy’s first impression of you is to be worried that you could snap him in two if he makes one wrong move, then it’s better for us all.” She paused for a moment, tapping her chin in thought. “Including if he becomes part of the family, honestly.”
“Nabiki! Akane!” Kasumi’s voice, gentle as it was, could still carry across the Tendou home when it needed to.
Heaving a sigh, Akane marched up to the screen door, sliding it open and heaving a sigh. “I hate this, Nabiki.”
Nabiki shot her a sympathetic glance. “Sorry, Aki. With any luck, this will be over as quickly as his last caper. You were only engaged to the Dojo Destroyer for what? Three hours?”
“Ugh, I still have nightmares about that guy.” Akane mumbled tersely.
As the rest of the family tried to engage in amateur zookeeping upon learning that one of their surprise houseguests was a giant panda, Akane slipped away with the the other houseguest—a girl named Ranma—to try to retain a semblance of sanity amid the latest chaos her father’s attempt at an arranged marriage had introduced. To say nothing of the fact that the prospective husband appeared to be a girl about her own age, Ranma also seemed as perturbed as she did about the whole harebrained scheme, so Akane did not even attempt to hide the tremendous wave of relief accompanying the revelation.
It certainly didn’t hurt that Ranma was easy on the eyes. And while she’d spent the better part of a few years pressing down thoughts like that in her mind, the ridiculous thought she couldn’t dispel in her mind—that her father might ignore the obvious social, legal, and biological complications and go ahead and engage the two of them to each other—wasn’t entirely unwelcome.
“So you do martial arts, right?” While Akane hadn’t necessarily gone out of her way to seek out friendships with girls, there hadn’t been many that fit the criterion of sharing interests like martial arts with her without also having the unfortunate tendency to try to kill her at every opportunity they could.
“Sure, a little,” Ranma smiled slightly, one that left Akane wondering whether it was the kind of smile Kasumi put on for politeness’ sake, or the kind that Nabiki would sport when she was about to pull off some kind of hustle.
Well, Akane figured, only one way to find out. “What do you say to a little match?” She added hastily, “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you.”
“Why not,” Ranma nodded, still flashing that enigmatic smile, and without another word Akane led them to the dojo.
After they walked to the centre of the room, Akane assumed a neutral stance, before trying out a few punches and kicks to test Ranma’s defences. Rather than blocking or parrying, Ranma seemed content to dodge every single one, looking altogether too pleased with herself as she did so.
Akane quickly realized that Ranma was a stronger martial artist than she’d let on, a little annoyed to be so effortlessly avoided. While she wasn’t exactly trying to hide her intentions with each strike, she certainly didn’t feel like she was telegraphing them either. “‘A little’, huh?” Akane smirked a little and shifted her weight onto her left foot, trying out a few feints before throwing a jab.
Ranma was, once again, too quick by half, jumping over her entirely before twisting herself back to face Akane. “Okay, maybe more ‘n a little,” she grinned.
Akane, in turn, rolled with the miss to propel herself into an about-face of her own, throwing in a quick sweep kick to force Ranma backwards. “I’ve seen that move before,” and now Akane couldn’t help but grin. “You’ve been to China?”
“Here and there,” she replied simply, but not before finally responding with a lightning-fast kick of her own. “You too, huh?”
“Wouldn’t’ve been a proper training trip without it,” Akane exhaled sharply as she went on the defensive, dodging one—two—three attacks from Ranma in quick succession, and then spinning into an uppercut.
Ranma parried it this time, trying to establish a hold, but this time it was Akane who was too quick, pushing Ranma off balance as she was soon grasping at open air. Ranma recovered and immediately dashed behind Akane, trying to catch her off guard. “Weird place, right?” Ranma said, between heavy breaths as she rolled and threw another handful of jabs, “Great food, though.”
Akane, too, was beginning to be worn down by the onslaught of Ranma’s incredibly fast attacks, and between weaving and dodging she managed to grunt out an answer. “Not… my… favourite.”
After what seemed like forever, Ranma was finally able to grasp Akane’s arm and tried a throw, but Akane’s reaction was quick enough to deny her an easy victory. Instead, she resisted, planted her feet, and in doing so threw both of them off balance, leaving Ranma to hurtle back toward her, knocking the two of them over and leaving them splayed out against the mat.
“Haha, that was amazing!” Ranma was the first to clamber up to her feet, expression glowing with unconcealed joy. “I haven’t had a fight like that in ages.”
“Me neither.” Akane couldn’t help but flash a wide grin back in return, a fresh thrill of energy washing over her at the sheer novelty of the experience. Getting up, she stretched her arms behind her body. “You’re good. Where’d you learn all those moves? Some of them are pretty close to the style my dad practices.”
“Yeah? I mean I’ve picked up some moves here and there, but that’s kinda the point of it. It ain’t called ‘Anything Goes’ for no reason.” Ranma paused, training a critical eye on Akane. “That’s the basis of your style too, right? Though you got your own spin on it, for sure.”
Akane nodded as she opened the door to the dojo back up, gesturing for Ranma to join her outside. “I didn’t realize my dad wasn’t the only one. Sometimes, I thought he just made the whole thing up.” Pacing over to the engawa, she looked back towards Ranma. “So, are you staying here in town? I’d love to learn a thing or two from you about all those… moves you’ve learned.” Real smooth, Aki, she internally cringed as she patted the lip of the engawa beside her.
Ranma followed gamely and plopped herself down beside Akane, resting her chin on her hand. “I dunno about that. I guess I’ll haveta ask my old man. He never really says much about what he’s got planned… assuming he ever had a plan in the first place.”
“Where is he, anyway? My dad mentioned him briefly before you showed up.”
“That’s a long story…” Ranma groaned.
“If he’s like my dad, then I can only imagine,” Akane snorted and blew a lock of her hair out of her face. “Something to do with that trained circus panda you got out there?” she said, raising an eyebrow.
As Ranma was about to answer, the sliding door to the engawa opened from behind them and the two turned around.
“Oh, hello.” Kasumi smiled brightly down on the two.
“Hey, big sis.” Akane said, a distant feeling of dread wavering in the back of her mind like a distant flag waving on the horizon. “What’s going on?”
“I thought you might be all sweaty after your workout, so I drew a bath for you. Why don’t you two girls get cleaned up and then you can join us in the living room?”
Akane’s practiced attempt at hiding the wince on her face was somewhat successful. Sometimes she wondered why her sister had to be so nice. “Uhh… Ranma, why don’t you go on ahead. I need to get some things from my room, so don’t wait up for me.”
Without waiting for either Kasumi or Ranma to respond, Akane got up and swiftly navigated through the rest of the house, up the stairs and into her room.
There had always been something comforting to her about the idea of a room belonging only to you. The way it never changed—or, well, that’s not quite true, because of course a bedroom would have to change. You aren’t just born into the same room you’ll die in, after all. But the way a bedroom changed gently, exactly in tune with the million tiny changes you went through in a lifespan, so that it seemed to always be exactly the familiar place that you expected it to be in the moment.
Akane glanced around. The walls with their soft slate-grey paint, the yellow bed cover, the minimalist desk with a sleek modern lamp, the rows of light novels and martial arts manga, the red-and-chrome radio crowning the bookshelf. It was reassuring to see them all in their proper places, a home-within-a-home that comforted her, most of all when her routine was most disturbed. Not that a disruption had to be bad, in and of itself, but—
There was a knock at the door.
Well, that was predictable, Akane sighed to herself. “Come in.”
Sure enough, Kasumi had followed her here. Her smile had faded a little, no longer brilliant and beatific but mixed with an expression of slight concern. “It sounds like you were enjoying yourself with your new friend.”
“Yeah, she seems cool.” Seeing full well where Kasumi was going with this line of conversation, Akane tensed up a little, returning to terse answers.
Kasumi sighed a little. She approached Akane and took a seat on the bed beside her. “I know it’s easy to feel uncertainty and discomfort with your feelings, Akane. But it’s perfectly ordinary for two girls to share a bath. She won’t think anything of it.”
“I just don’t see why I have to,” Akane protested.
“Just think of it as another way to get yourself more comfortable with it. In the same way that it’s ordinary to change together for gym class,” Kasumi offered.
There were a million things Akane wanted to say to her. That just because something was familiar didn’t mean that it was easy. That Kasumi didn’t understand that the roiling in her gut wasn’t just the kind that could be dismissed with L-Pain and a hot compress. That Akane didn’t want to lose the one place she wasn’t beholden to the demands the world placed on her, for nothing more than the accident of circumstance.
But it was difficult to be upset with Kasumi’s earnestness, despite the equal measure of stubbornness it came with. And besides, Akane supposed it was true that there would be no reason for Ranma to think that anything was amiss, if Akane herself didn’t express it. Fake it till you make it, I guess.
This time it was Akane’s turn to sigh, finally worn down by her sister’s entreaties. “Alright, alright. Let me get my things.”
Akane tried to keep her thoughts elsewhere as she entered the small anteroom to the bathroom, which held a laundry hamper and a narrow storage closet with some linens and cleaning supplies. Removing her workout clothing methodically and steadily, she tossed them into the hamper and, with a deep breath, covered herself with a towel and slid the door to the bathroom open.
But when Akane stepped into the bathroom, she found someone else was already there soaking in the warm water of the tub. Not the girl she’d just made the acquaintance of, not the shy smiling face of her new friend Ranma, but a boy with uncannily familiar features.
Her heart stopped, her world spun, and her vision swam as the realization of who it was sitting in front of her crystallized in her mind. “What the hell.”
Silence reigned for a few moments. For his part, Ranma froze as well, not knowing how to respond, not least while the both of them were completely undressed. “Uh… little privacy here?”
Akane hardly registered Ranma’s protestations, her eyes continuing to bore into Ranma’s. “You have a curse. A Jusenkyou curse.”
Ranma’s eyes widened. “How did you…” he shook his head, and glanced down at himself again. “Never mind. Uhh… look, can I just get dressed before we talk?”
Akane didn’t respond, but neither did she press him further, as she stepped out and slid the door to the bathroom shut again.
As she stared back at the crumpled pile of her clothing in the laundry hamper, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but she found herself doing both nonetheless. It was just her luck, it seemed, that the world couldn’t see fit to even give her the opportunity to forget.
Well, there was no use in acting like anything was normal now. As sweaty and gross as she felt now, it seemed like a distant concern in comparison to the blaring knowledge that someone else knew about the accursed place. Heart hammering against her chest, Akane threw on her workout clothing again, and stood tensely just outside the door to the bathroom, where Ranma soon joined her with a look of confusion.
“So…” Ranma began. “You kinda got me at a disadvantage. I’m pretty used to havin’ to explain the whole thing from beginning to end every time my curse comes up, but it sounds like you know plenty about it already.”
“You could say that,” Akane replied tersely, shoulders shrinking inward and eyes flitting away, every attempt to force her eyes back into meeting his overwhelmed by the burning in her cheeks.
“Where’d you hear about it? When Pops dragged us all the way out to Xining after I got cursed, even most people there didn’t know anything about it, or they just thought it was an old wives’ tale from the sticks.”
“Like I said. Training trip to China.” Akane coughed. “Our dads know each other, apparently, so I guess they got the same old wild hair that they had to haul their kids out to the middle of nowhere to learn from the strongest martial artists around.”
Ranma’s eyes widened. “Wait, so didja actually train there too? Weird bamboo poles? Funny lookin’ pools?”
Akane shook her head a little sourly. “We were going to, but… some things came up at the last minute. Closest we ever got was Nujiezu, if that rings a bell to you.”
“Heh, I remember that place too. The food was great, but the hospitality, uh…” Ranma chuckled to himself and rubbed the back of his neck. “...Well, less said the better. Anyway, you sure dodged a bullet skippin’ out on Jusenkyou. The guide said there’s a buncha different springs, and they get way worse ‘n a girl curse. Panda, pig, duck, cat…”
Ranma kept on rambling on about all the different curses he’d been told about by the Jusenkyou guide, but Akane’s thoughts caught on the absurdity of being called lucky. There he was, utterly oblivious to how lucky he was to be able to stand in front of her, tall and fit and sharp-featured as any boy his age could be.
“Man,” Akane blurted out.
“Huh?”
“There’s a Spring of Drowned Man, too,” she said quietly.
This was a mistake. Curiosity gleamed in Ranma’s eyes, and Akane could feel the conversation stretching out before them was just moments from making a turn she wasn’t prepared to follow him down. All this dwelling on curses and all the ways they could and couldn’t warp your form into something else was going to invite questions about things best left unmentioned, and it was only going to get worse as long as Ranma kept treating it like a topic of everyday conversation.
So it was a small relief that Ranma was interrupted by a shout of surprise coming from the living room before he could say anything in response.
“Oh jeeze, looks like the jig’s finally up,” he said, shooting Akane a cryptic expression, and beginning to walk back towards the others.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Akane raised an eyebrow, jogging up to match Ranma’s pace just as they reached the corner of the hallway where the living room opened onto the engawa.
“Ranma, my boy!” was the first thing Akane heard being bellowed from the living room. The voice, as Akane quickly realized, came from an unfamiliar, stocky but well-built middle-aged man wearing a dougi and a tenugui wrapped around his head. Around him, Nabiki and Kasumi were staring in shock, and her father appeared to once again be on the verge of fainting, his eyes rolled back in his head and his back wavering.
“Who the hell is that,” Nabiki said while her eyes trained on Ranma, at the exact moment that Akane did the same with the man across the room, though Akane could see the first signs of recognition forming on her sister’s face even as she said it.
The man puffed up his chest a bit in pride. “I’m Genma Saotome,” he said, “and that’s my son Ranma. I sent a postcard ahead to let Tendou know we would be coming. Didn’t you receive it?”
Nabiki squinted skeptically. “Well, excuse me for not immediately cottoning onto the fact that a giant panda and a girl were a father and his son! You didn’t think of mentioning that in the postcard?”
“The Pools of Sorrow…” Soun suddenly snapped to attention. “You should have written to me about your plans, Saotome. if I’d known you were intending on training there, I could have warned you.”
“Sorry, that panda was your dad?” Akane was now the one drawn out of her daze as the puzzle pieces interlocked in her mind. If nothing else, it threw a bit of perspective on the fact that the curses could be worse than the more familiar ones she’d encountered.
“I told ya it was a long story,” Ranma muttered. “Well… I guess not that long if you already knew about Jusenkyo.”
“Never mind that!” Soun shook his head. “Saotome, old friend, it’s good that you’re finally here. After so long, we can finally accomplish our dream of uniting the schools.”
Genma nodded, looking altogether too satisfied with himself. “As you can see, Ranma has grown into a fine young man, minor hiccups aside.”
Ranma charged up to his father, nostrils flared. “Oh, minor hiccups aside? Is that what you want to call it!?”
Just as it appeared that Genma was about to pitch Ranma headlong across the engawa and into the ornamental koi pond in the backyard, Soun extended a hand and placed it on Ranma’s shoulder. “It seems like you’ve gone through a difficult experience, Ranma.” Ranma’s expression softened slightly as he turned his head towards Soun, who continued speaking. “Fortunately, I know that my daughter Akane would be very understanding of your hardships. So how about it, son? Why don’t you marry her?”
Ranma was practically stunned into silence, clearly not having been looped into the memo on this particular wrinkle of the plan. “Marry…?”
On the other hand, Akane immediately erupted into an incandescent fury, stabbing an accusatory finger at her father. “And just who the hell said you could marry me off without my permission?”
“Akane…” Soun muttered darkly. “My child. I understand that thoughts of this nature are perhaps unwelcome. But it is for that reason exactly that I must consider your future as a father. What man would make a better match than one who understands exactly what you are going through?”
“I already told you I don’t want to get married,” she fumed. “Why does it have to be me, anyway? You know, Kasumi and Nabiki are right here!” she gestured at them dramatically, as they stood expressionless before the unfolding travesty.
Kasumi offered her a smile that Akane had a hard time reading as anything but condescending. “Don’t you think he has a good point, Akane?”
Akane shook her head, dismayed but not exactly surprised, and turned to Nabiki next. For better or for worse, Akane could usually count on her middle sibling to look out for her. But Nabiki offered no quarter either. “Sorry, Aki, he’s not really my type. But why not try? I mean, he’s even half-girl. You might as well at least give it a shot, right?”
With that final betrayal, Akane had heard everything she needed to hear, turning on her heel and storming out.
Not that there was anywhere to go, really. She couldn’t really leave the house dressed in a kempo uniform. Running up to her room and slamming the door was the safest way to make sure she’d be left alone for a while, but it was such a… teenaged girl thing to do. Now, of all times, it felt important to resist that urge to curl up and scream into a pillow, to channel her furious energy somewhere other than inwards, so she took a left at the kitchen and made for the dojo once more.
She’d gotten more than a warmup sparring against Ranma, back in that impossible moment less than an hour ago where Ranma was just a pretty girl Akane could see as her new friend instead of the pinnacle of her dad’s fumbled attempts to get her used to the future that awaited her as a woman, but that wasn’t going to stop her from taking out her feelings into a practice dummy.
Akane hauled out the punching bag from the dojo’s storage closet and set it in the middle of the room, letting go with a huff. It didn’t help that her sisters seemed to be more than willing to go along with the ridiculous charade, as long as they weren’t the ones being personally targeted. None of her classmates were off getting hitched in their first year of high school, so why was she, of all people, the one being introduced to her “future husband” at the grand old age of sixteen?
The worst part was that Akane had to admit that there was a maddening logic to Nabiki’s bluntness. If she was ever going to have a hope of not ending up alone, Akane thought as she unleashed a barrage of punches into the soft fabric of the dummy, could she really ask for anyone better than a boy who could turn into a girl on command? For now, she could enjoy soaking up attention from the girls in her class, while the boys were too crude and immature for all but the most boy-crazy of the girls to imagine dating. But sooner or later, they were going to outgrow those schoolgirl crushes, and then what?
She took a couple more whacks at the punching bag. What really took the cake about this whole situation was how much easier it would have been if Ranma were nothing more than the teenage boy he expressed himself to be. She could have shouted down every one her father’s protestations without a moment of hesitation, stood steadfast until he agreed to let his old friend down easily, or at least until one of her sisters was forced to step in and take the engagement upon her shoulders.
But it couldn’t be that simple, because it was undeniable that Ranma was also exactly the kind of girl Akane had grown up assuming that she would one day marry: fiercely strong, clever, a little tomboyish, and cute. Now Akane had to remind herself that the scenario her disloyal mind was conjuring up was wishful thinking: the truth was, Ranma would likely spend no more time in that form than he had to, because at the end of the day he was a man.
Behind her, Akane heard the door to the dojo slide open. Kasumi, probably. She tamped down the frustration and fury in her heart, and tried to find the words to buy herself a little more time before she had to face anyone else. “Can you give me a minute, Kasumi?” she said, biting her lip before she could say any more.
“Uh… sorry, it’s me.” Not Kasumi. Instead it was the voice of the girl she had freshly met, Ranma, with an emphasis on the girl.
When Akane looked up at Ranma, she—he—was holding his arm with one hand shyly, shoulders curled inward, and trying to avoid eye contact with her. It was obvious that he had been put up to the task of coming to coax her back, but she couldn’t for the life of her understand why, other than everyone else participating in the celebrated tradition of Anything-Goes Martial Arts Buckpassing. It was hard to be annoyed with him given that, but it was also hard not to be annoyed with him, being as he was the very reason she was in the dojo taking out her grievances on a practice dummy.
“What’s with the…” Akane started, before gesturing vaguely at Ranma’s height and his well-developed chest. “You know.” She glanced away and tried to arrest the blush on her cheeks, for whatever good that did.
“One of your sisters spilled her water all over me,” Ranma said, shrugging his shoulders. “Didn’t look like much of an accident if ya ask me, though.”
Akane sighed. In retrospect, she should have known that it was Nabiki’s doing. “Of course she did. I should have known better than to think she wouldn’t just fold like a cheap suit if she got a better offer from Dad. ‘Running interference’, my ass…” Akane muttered, as much to herself as to Ranma.
Ranma cocked his head to the side. “So what, she’s tryin’ to set you up with me or something?”
“And everyone else in this stupid house, apparently.” Akane scoffed and turned to drag the practice dummy back into the closet, gesturing towards the sliding door. “Can you get that for me?”
“Uh, sure.” Ranma jogged over to the closet and opened the door, glancing back at Akane. “So why the hell are they all tryin’ so hard to get us hitched, anyway? I don’t know why, but your dad sure seemed like he was real set on it.”
Akane shoved the dummy through the closet door. “My dad and I have some… disagreements.”
Ranma slid the closet door shut again, and now it was just the two of them again, standing in the unadorned dojo space. Scarcely half an hour had passed between the time that Ranma had first set foot in here, shy and unsure of himself. Now it was obvious why, when he’d been thrust unceremoniously in front of a gaggle of strangers in a body that was surely strange and discomfiting.
“Disagreements, huh?” Ranma cocked his head slightly. “Yeah, I’ve been there. Hell, my old man didn’t even tell me that he was gonna spring a miai on me. I didn’t even know what this whole thing was about till the whole room started blabbin’ about marriage.”
The scales of her sympathy tipped a little further towards Ranma. She’d had her share of annoying boys trying to endear themselves to her, but she saw too much of herself in him, pouring everything into learning the family art from a father with his own ideas of how he wanted his heir to be. “It wasn’t always like this. I mean, we used to do this whole thing a lot, wandering from place to place, staying with friends, learning from other martial artists wherever we went, until…”
Akane bit her tongue. She was getting too comfortable with him already. It didn’t help that in this form, he was easy enough on the eyes that Akane kept forgetting that this was his curse; it made him feel less like someone out to prove his dominance over her, and more like someone on the same playing field as her. That was reassuring, but it was also dangerous if she wasn’t careful.
“What?” Ranma asked expectantly. “Something happen or something?”
Akane shook her head sharply. “Nothing, just… no, it’s nothing.” As she exhaled a breath, she realized her hands had balled into fists.
He looked down at her hands, then back at her face. He didn’t even need to say anything for the message to be clear, and she hated that she knew he wasn’t wrong.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped, regretting the hostile edge to her words as quickly she’d said them.
“I didn’t say nothin’!” Ranma shrugged his shoulders and took a few steps back, looking away before muttering more than loudly enough for Akane to hear every word. “Damn, why the hell do girls gotta be so touchy about everything?”
“I’m not a—” Once more, the words tumbled out of her before she could stop them, and this time she’d really said too much. She’d tried so hard to be this person she was supposed to be, to not think about her past or her future or the furious aching want she’d beaten back to a dull nostalgia she could fit into a box of old belongings, take out once a year and muse over the life she might have led.
And she’d fought it off so well, found a guidebook somewhere between Kasumi’s earnest lessons and Nabiki’s affectionate needling and her dad’s clumsy efforts at pretending nothing had changed between them. They were doing their best too, probably.
But then she’d walked in on Ranma in the bath and all of her hard work had unravelled in her gut, fraying at the edges like rotting twine until she’d found herself here, undone by a single backhanded comment about girls, the kind she weathered once a week and fended off with an uppercut to the chin that sent one of her pushier classmates flying into the next ward. Only now she’d fallen to her knees in front of Ranma, hiccuping as a few shimmering tears threatened the edges of her vision. “Dammit…”
She didn’t dare look up, but from the corner of her eyes she could see Ranma scrambling to apologize. It was almost a little funny, in a way, how boys could be weaker to a girl crying than the girl herself could be to crying in the first place. “S-sorry, ‘Kane, I didn’t mean it, honest!”
Akane couldn’t suppress a giggle now, because this boy who looked like a girl was throwing himself on the floor to make up for the fact that he’d been thoughtless about the emotions of a girl who looked like a boy. Their dads couldn’t have picked a more ridiculous marriage partner for her, and suddenly the tight-lipped resolve to zealously guard her secret dissipated into full-throated laughter.
Ranma joined in for a moment, nervously, and it cleared the air enough for Akane to look back up at him. “If it helps to hear, I didn’t sign up for the hair-trigger fuse either. It didn’t use to be this bad, but I guess all those… girly hormones just mess with your head a little, no matter how much practice you’ve got. Something you’ve got to look forward to, by the way,” she finished with the ghost of a smirk, prodding him in the chest.
Ranma flinched slightly and brought a hand up to the point on his chest where Akane’s finger had jabbed him. “W-whaddaya mean, I’m a guy.”
Belatedly, Akane realized she probably should have been a little more thoughtful about where she touched him, but despite the irony of the situation, at least the point was made. “Yeah, try convincing anybody that’s true while you’re smuggling those damn melons around.” Akane sat up again, pulling her legs to her chest and looking out the half-open sliding door of the dojo. “Take it from me, once you’ve got a rack, it’s like guys stop seeing you as anything but a piece of meat. Even guys you used to know don’t really look at you the same way.”
“Jealous or something?” Ranma smirked. “Heh, though I guess a flat-chested tomboy like you ain’t gotta worry about that comin’ up much.”
Akane’s eye twitched. Despite how undeniably cute he looked, Ranma seemed like he could be just like a guy in all the worst ways. “And why the hell would I be jealous of that, idiot!?”
Though of course, that was a lie. Not that she was jealous of Ranma’s breasts—god knows they looked like a recipe for constant back pain, if nothing else—but even if Ranma’s body was unmistakably more feminine than hers, there was one thing that he had which she didn’t. Not that she cared to tell him that, or at least not so easily.
“Uh, cause…” Ranma started to say something, but before he could say any more, he foundered on the question. He opened his mouth again, then closed it.
Then he did something Akane didn’t expect at all: he kicked out his feet and sat down cross-legged beside her, and he looked at her. Really looked at her, the way she’d just been complaining that boys never did with her, like he was searching for some deeper truth hidden in her eyes.
More quietly this time, with a glint of recognition in his eye, Ranma started again. “So that’s what your dad meant by ‘understanding my hardships’. That we’re both, uh…”
She hadn’t said anything about her curse to him. There were a lot of reasons not to, after all: she had no way to prove it in the same way that Ranma did, and telling people always seemed like the kind of thing that would get her told that she was imagining things. Through years of hard work, she had found some semblance of normalcy in who she was now, and the thought of going back to being that scared, broken boy sent a shiver down her spine. But she surprised herself with the fact that her first reaction to him guessing about her curse was an exhilarating relief.
“Guys?” Akane finished.
Not that it was that simple. If Ranma didn’t know that now, she was sure he would soon. The shared understanding of the world that boys grew into was surprisingly fragile, and couldn’t hold the secret of the springs, the world of the Nujiezu, the glimpse through the iron wall between men and women. If anything, they were both in uncharted territory that no boy or girl could ever really understand.
“Ya mean like you got a guy curse, or like—” Ranma stopped, gulped a little, and looked away. “W-well, don’t take this the wrong way, but I wasn’t sure if maybe you fell in the guy spring and it messed with your head or somethin’.”
What the hell was his damage? Akane shoved Ranma’s shoulder and stood up, addressing him the way she used to when her temper flared against a rival, which felt strangely right for the moment. “Do you insult everyone you meet or what?”
“Well how was I supposed to know, you ain’t even changed since I’ve seen ya!” Ranma leapt to his feet and threw up his hands. “And besides, you said you didn’t even train at Jusenkyou! Excuse me for bein’ a little confused over what the hell your deal is.”
“Well I didn’t. It’s kinda complicated, but I got splashed with water from the Spring of Drowned Girl that somebody else was carrying around.”
Ranma took a step back and gave Akane another glance head to toe. “So, what. Yer a guy or something?”
Akane didn’t know how to answer. Because she was, and she wasn’t, and because she was a little frightened of what would come of wanting something she knew she couldn’t have. But Ranma had given her a taste of it, and her palate burned for more, so before she could stop herself, she gave him the answer that danced on the tip of her tongue: “Yeah. Or something.”
“W-wait. Wait a sec.” Ranma pressed his fingers into his temples. “But what about what your dad said? How we’re supposed to get married and all? Why’s he tryin’ to hitch me to you instead of one of yer sisters?”
And that was the rub: they weren’t quite two of a kind, were they? There was one thing that set them apart, and the knot in the pit of her stomach grew once more as she took a breath, steeled herself, and told Ranma the full truth, one Akane could count on one hand the number of people she’d revealed it to.
“When my dad and I went to China, we were headed for Jusenkyou, same as you. Before we could get to the training ground, we stumbled into a woman who called herself a ‘prince of the Musk Dynasty’, whatever that means. One thing led to another and I ended up in a fight with her, and she threw some water at me and I turned into a girl. Except…” Akane took a breath.
As simple as a splash of hot water, and the curse would be lifted: she’d learned that was the way her curse was supposed to work from the Nujiezu. But for all that her body tingled in anticipation of the transformation, no matter how much and no matter how hot the water, it couldn’t reverse whatever enchantment that Herb had placed upon the water she’d hit Akane with. “Except hot water didn’t work to change me back,” Akane finished.
“Hot water… didn’t work?” Ranma tilted his head in confusion. “So what did, then?”
Akane smiled thinly. “Nothing,” she said.
She wasn’t sure what she should expect from telling Ranma that she’d been cursed twice over. For him to stumble back in horror, maybe, or crack a lecherous joke to defuse the uncomfortable tension? That’s what her experience with boys had prepared her for, at least.
But the Ranma she’d just met had just come back from the highlands of Bayan Har; probably by train from Xining to Shanghai, and a combination of hikes, buses, and horseback rides from Nujiezu before that. It was a long trip, weeks if not months for a pair of martial artists roughing it in rural China, time enough for the hundred assorted humiliations of a body not your own to rear their ugly heads. Even if he seemed arrogant and vain, and even if he managed to obliviously slight her with every other word that came out of his mouth, he was still cursed, same as her, and there was something magnetic in the unspoken understanding between them.
It didn’t make it any easier to dwell on, though, and she took the first awkward silence in their conversation as an excuse to drag them back inside. Even if she didn’t exactly relish the thought of having to deal with whatever machinations her sisters would surely come up with now that they’d pinned a marriage partner to her that there was no way she was going to be able to effectively parry back onto them, it was better than the alternative.
“Hey so uh, I kinda worked up an appetite from earlier, I was gonna raid the kitchen and see if there’s any snacks in the pantry. You wanna come with?” Akane tried to keep a lightness to her voice, though it felt a bit forced.
“Uh, sure.” Ranma blinked slowly and followed behind her, his eyes not meeting her gaze, though she couldn’t tell if it was because she had made it weird or just because he was easily distractible.
Either way, she would take it. It made it a little easier to focus on something practical for the moment, pushing open the door to the dojo and then to the house, peeling away from the main hallway to head towards the kitchen.
Sure enough, it didn’t take long before the two of them came back inside that one of her sisters smelled blood. Nabiki’s fingerprints were all over the ‘accident’ of spilling a glass of water on Ranma, so Akane shouldn’t have been surprised that she would be the first one to pounce again when they came back inside. “My, my, looks like it didn’t take very long for the happy couple to kiss and make up.”
Nabiki was leaning against the doorway to the kitchen, one hand supporting her while she rubbed a nail absentmindedly on her other hand. Akane just rolled her eyes and brushed past her. “Just ‘cause this whole stupid idea isn’t Ranma’s fault doesn’t mean I’m not still pissed at you, Nabiki.”
“Oh, come on, Aki, you know how hardheaded Daddy can get when he gets an idea in his head.” Nabiki scoffed. “Really, you should be thanking me for pulling the strings to make sure you’d get first dibs on him.”
Akane shot her a death glare. “I should have known you didn’t mean it when you said you and Kasumi were going to break it up.”
“Yeah, that was before your future husband showed up looking like he walked straight out of a gravure shoot.” Nabiki rolled her eyes as if she was saying the most obvious thing in the world.
That seemed to get Ranma’s attention. “I’m right here, ya know,” he said, although he didn’t seem particularly bothered by the way Nabiki had just described him, either.
“And how.” If Nabiki felt any shame at all over how she described Ranma, she didn’t show it. Instead, she turned her attention to Ranma more fully and tapped her chin with a finger. “Well, what about the man of the hour himself? Any first thoughts about your new engagement to Furinkan’s most eligible martial artist?”
Ranma’s eyes narrowed. “What’s it to ya? I mean, you sure didn’t seem to care when you fobbed me off on your little brother without tellin’ me.”
Nabiki raised her eyebrows slightly; that and the subtle adjustment of her posture were the only signs she gave that she was genuinely surprised. “So he told you, huh?”
“What, ya mean about the curse?” Ranma replied, and when Nabiki nodded, he continued. “Yeah.”
“Lucky you. You know he barely tells anybody, these days. The only folks who know at school are the ones who knew him before he and Daddy ran off to China.”
Akane’s grip on the door of the cupboard tightened, and she could hear the slight creak of the wood as it strained under the pressure. “Alright, Nabiki, are you done airing my dirty laundry to him? Honestly, all I really wanted was to get something to eat after working out before Dad decided to blow up our afternoons.” Akane rummaged through the pantry and pulled out a bag of rice crackers. “Here, we got some senbei,” she said, turning to Ranma and stuffing it into his hands.
“Thanks.” Ranma nodded, then peered into the larger bag and pulled out one of the individually wrapped crackers.
Akane’s gaze caught on Ranma’s body for just a second, long enough for her to chide herself for staring, and for forgetting again that he’d been turned back into a girl, that he could probably use the opportunity to change back right around now. “R-right. Oh hey, if you want to take a load off, the living room’s right over there. I can put on a kettle to make us some tea, you can use the rest of the hot water to change back if you want.”
She wasn’t sure why she specified that, but in truth it was a difference in their lives she couldn’t quite divine from where she stood. She could only assume that he would want it, letting everyone else see him as he truly was, but she had no idea what it was like to change back.
She couldn’t really remember the moment she was changed, her entire time in Qinghai a whirlwind being passed around Nujiezu elders and healers who gave her nothing but platitudes and increasingly vain hopes at reversing what had happened to her. But maybe it hurt, or got under your skin, or messed with your mind, shifting back and forth as often as would have to be the case if something as common as water were the trigger to a change like that.
But he just nodded, muttering “Uh, yeah, some tea’d be great,” then glancing back at her for just a moment before stepping out of the kitchen and out of sight.
It was a stupid question. Of course he wanted to change back. But that didn’t stop a selfish part of her admiring the gentle slope of Ranma’s slim but fit shoulders, the nape of her neck hidden behind a snaking braid of glossy rust-black hair, and thinking what a waste it was.
Ranma was hardly out of earshot before Nabiki was already back to needling her. “Well, well, well. I guess I wasn’t wrong thinking you two were going to get along like bread and butter.”
“Ugh, why are you like this, Nabiki.” Akane heaved a sigh and took the kettle from the stovetop and began filling it with water. “I know why you think you’re doing me a favour trying to set me up with him, but you know he’s still a guy, right? How many times do you need me to tell you that I don’t want to marry anybody?”
Nabiki flicked her hand dismissively as if Akane’s concerns were utterly immaterial. “Only if you pour hot water on him. From where I’m standing now, he seems like exactly the kind of girl my little brother ought to go crazy for. But what do I know?”
Her logic was completely hypocritical, but it was just as clear that she had no qualms with that. “So what, you think I can just play keep-away from the tea kettle and make him play-act as my ‘wife’ unless he can fight me for the right to his manhood?” Akane stared down at the container of tea in her hands, trying desperately not to think about how much she didn’t hate the thought of it. But she really didn’t need Nabiki getting any more ideas, so she pressed down her imagination and focused intently on measuring out the tea for the pot.
“Why not? You jocks seem to enjoy that kind of thing.”
Akane shook her head and scoffed. “Anyway, even if you found some ridiculous crooked ward office clerk to look the other way in letting two girls get married, it’s not like it would make a difference to Dad’s delusions of grandchildren.” She tried not to think about the implication of who would have to carry the children in the event of her getting married. No matter how accustomed to her body she became, there were limits she didn’t want to have to cross.
“Didn’t you say you weren’t going to give up on a cure just because you didn’t find anything in China?” Nabiki looked down at her hand and worried idly on one of her nails.
“Nabiki, that was three years ago. How long do you expect me to sit around waiting for something to change? At some point I’ve gotta live my life, whatever I’ve got to live it with.”
Nabiki just smirked. “Well, I do love a good comeback story, you know. At least as long as I’ve got good money on the underdog,” she added with a hungry grin.
It was typical of Nabiki to be cutting at the same time she showed any sympathy. But Akane didn’t mind it entirely, either. So she just shot back a bemused look to Nabiki and let her sister’s words settle into the dead air until the kettle rattled, then whistled, and then finally poured out the boiling water into a teapot.
After arranging a tray with the teapot, some cups, and the kettle with the dregs of the hot water to let Ranma change back, Akane brought it over to the living room. There, Ranma was sitting on one of the cushions, gazing out through the half-open screen door at the backyard scenery. From her vantage point, Akane could see that their dads had gotten into a mess of their own; Ranma’s dad had fallen into the koi pond, and her own dad appeared to be yelling something, although they weren’t quite close enough for her to make out any of the details.
“Do I even want to know what’s going on out there?” Akane cocked her head out at the unfolding chaos, before setting down the tray on the low table and taking a seat herself. “Here’s the kettle, by the way.”
“I don’t think anyone knows what’s goin’ on out there, least of all them. My old man figured out how to write on signs as a panda and ever since then, I feel like he’s just lookin’ for excuses to pull out this stupid party trick on everyone.” He glanced back at the table and took one of the cups before his gaze seemed to catch on the kettle. “Thanks, but uh… do you want me to change back?”
Akane blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Well, don’t hate me,” Ranma flinched a little, as if in anticipation of getting punched, “but you ‘n yer sister weren’t that quiet.”
“Goddamnit,” Akane hissed. “Look, I’m sorry about my sister. She… means well, I promise, but sometimes she takes her self-appointed role of trying to look out for my interests a little too far. You don’t have to listen to anything she says.”
Ranma’s fingers rapped against his cup, and he let the silence go a little longer than Akane found strictly comfortable. “...Was she right? Am I yer type?”
Just as quickly, Akane was reminded of just how conceited this idiot was. She was about to raise her voice, throw the tea in his stupid face out of spite, but he didn’t look ready to laugh at Akane’s expense; if anything, he looked dead serious. “...Why’re you asking?”
“Look, we’re both lookin’ for a way outta this dumb engagement, right?” Ranma asked, and Akane nodded hesitantly, unsure of where he was going with this line of thought. “Don’t get me wrong, my old man can be a stubborn bastard when he gets an idea in his head, but even he ain’t gonna make us get hitched if we get a cure. And I figure we stand a better shot of findin’ one if we stick together.”
Akane didn’t know whether to be offended by his baseless confidence that he could so easily find the cure that eluded her, or touched that he was offering to help, but it was enough that she was at least willing to listen. “And in the meantime…what? I have to play-act like your fiancée everywhere and hope that’s enough to keep them off our backs?”
“Well, they can try, but long as I’m in this form, they’re gonna look pretty dumb tryin’ to act like we’re engaged. And if they try anyway, well…” Ranma cracks a puckish grin. “Are you really tellin’ me you’d hate havin’ a piece of arm candy like me danglin’ off your shoulder?”
She should have known better than to let Ranma’s conceitedness get the better of her, because it will only feed his ego further for her to tell him the truth, that she doesn’t hate the thought nearly as much as she feels like she ought to. Instead, she focuses on another lingering question. “You know, my dad and I were in China for months, and we didn’t find a cure for my curse. It might take even longer to go looking for it again,” Akane sighed. “Are you really okay with that? It’s a lot to sign up for, I wouldn’t blame you for passing on it.”
Ranma shrugged nonchalantly, hand diving into the bag of senbei and taking out another. “Hey, from where I’m sittin’, sounds like it’s mostly bad luck things shook out like they did for you. Coulda been me just as easy.” He crunched down on the cracker, and washed it down with a sip of tea. “Besides, we’re buddies, right? I’d feel like a real heel if I didn’t help ya out with your side of the deal.”
Buddies. Ranma said the word with an effortless ease, and though Akane had let herself hope that she could be friends with the girl who strode into her life a few hours ago, now it’s her on the back foot, as Ranma casually offered her not just a commitment to an undertaking that could take them months, but also a well of hope that she didn’t know was there for her to draw from.
“Alright, deal.” Ranma smiled immediately at Akane’s response, and it was a strange catching thing, because Akane couldn’t imagine a world where she didn’t smile back. She wasn’t sure yet if the ending Ranma promised them—a cure, an escape to the engagement their parents had hung around their necks—was really all that likely to come to pass, but for the first time in years, she was ready to try. “Just warning you, though. Nabiki’s gonna be insufferable about this. Just try to ignore her whenever she goads you. And whatever you do, don’t take any bet that she offers.” Akane glanced back in the direction of the kitchen, but thankfully it seemed that Nabiki had lost interest in tormenting them and gone back upstairs, at least for the moment.
Ranma chuckled slightly. “Thanks for the advice, Tendou.”
A pause, a deep breath, and then: “Aki.”
“Huh?” Ranma looked back with a slightly furrowed brow.
“Call me Aki.”