Archive of Our Own

Nabiki hated that she had been the first to wake up and got saddled with going to the drugstore for Kasumi.

Usually, Ranma or Akane were the ones that Kasumi sent on errands, but lately that pair had been lazing around, barely getting up in time for school.

Going to cram school and studying for her college exams had left her with little time to meddle in the pair's affairs, but the whole thing was just too fishy in her opinion.

She greeted Mrs. Yamada, their neighbor and owner of the drugstore. "Hello, Kasumi sent me to pick up a package."

Mrs. Yamada smiled politely at her, "Oh, look at you Nabiki, you've grown so much. Your mom would be proud. Are you studying hard for your exams?"

Nabiki put a mask of a pleasant smile in her face, "sure, got no time for socials these days. But I think I'm going to ace it."

The old woman smiled, "that's good to know, good to know." She typed something in the ancient computer she used to keep track of her inventory and blinked. "Oh, I see Kasumi's order, I also have one for Akane. Are you picking up both?"

Nabiki arched an eyebrow. Why would Akane order something on her own? "Sure."

When the old woman went to the back, Nabiki eyed her surroundings, and saw a poster that claimed that they were looking for a part-timer to handle the cash register.

A moment later, Yamada came back and handed Nabiki two sealed brown bags.  "Such a shame about what those nasty girls did to your family's dojo."

Nabiki eyed the bags while nodding. "Yes, but at least the lunatics do have money for the repairs."

"Your sister should sue them," Yamada said in a harsh tone. "Her mother-in-law told me they also trashed her place, is that true?"

Nabiki carefully opened Akane's order, and blinked, seeing the contents. She closed the bag as quickly as possible, then she registered what Yamada had said. "Wait, her mother-in-law?"

Yamada blinked several times, "Ah, what's his name... Genryu's mother?"

"You mean Ranma."

"Yes, him," she said, nodding along. "His mom came last week and told me about those nasty girls and how they bombed her place and almost put her husband in the hospital because they were trying to steal from Akane a box that they thought was an engagement ring. if they're throwing bombs around, shouldn't the police get involved? Also, aren't they being... you know, stalkers?"

"Sure, I guess?" Nabiki said, "So... about her mother-in-law?"

Yamada blinked several times, clearly confused by Nabiki's confusion. "Yes? She told me that her son and your sister got married after the dojo got trashed."

After the dojo got trashed?

"Right. Silly me," Nabiki said, making a silly face and slapping her forehead, "guess I've been sleeping so little with all the cramming I've doing that I forgot."

Yamada smiled at her. "You should take it easy, studding is important, but so is having a good night of sleep."

Nabiki waved at the old woman as she walked to the exit. "I will do that, thank you."

"Goodbye!"

When she closed the door behind her she took a quick look at brown bag that contained Akane's order. Why would that girl need a pregnancy test of all things?

As she walked back home, she also decided that a little chat with Nodoka would probably give her some juicy gossip that she could milk for money. She was getting rusty with all the studying.

Nabiki did not bother to knock when she went to Akane’s room. Knocking gave people time to hide things, and Akane had been hiding enough lately to make politeness a bad investment.

The door slid open halfway before something hit the floor inside with a muffled thud.

Akane sat up in bed, hair loose around her face, one hand already smoothing the blanket as if she could iron guilt out of cotton. “Nabiki?” she said, too quickly.

“Morning,” Nabiki said. She stepped in far enough to see the desk, the floor, the suspiciously swaying curtain by the window, and Akane’s bare feet tucked under the sheet. “Kasumi sent me to Yamada’s.”

Akane’s yawn died halfway. Her eyes dropped to the brown bag in Nabiki’s hand, then snapped back up. “You didn’t open that.”

Not a question. Interesting.

Nabiki held the package out by two fingers. “Why? Planning to charge me admission?”

Akane snatched it close to her chest, then caught herself and lowered it to her lap. “It’s mine.”

“That was implied by the label.” Nabiki leaned against the doorframe. “What’s so important?”

For one breath, Akane looked toward the window. The curtain stopped moving.

Then Akane tore open the bag with all the confidence of a bad actress finding her mark. She reached inside, pulled out a tube of acne cream, and held it up between them. “See?”

Nabiki looked at the tube. Then at the bag. Then at Akane’s face, where there was not a single blemish worth monetizing.

“For your imaginary acne?”

Akane’s cheeks colored. She twisted the cap once, though it was still sealed. “It’s not for my face.”

Nabiki lifted one eyebrow and let the silence do the dirty work for her.

Akane looked away first. “Breakfast is ready, isn’t it?”

“Kasumi sent me as a delivery service, not a bell.” Nabiki pushed off the frame. “But yes.”

She turned to leave, then closed the door slower than necessary. The gap narrowed by inches. Akane held very still on the bed. The curtain shifted again.

Just before the latch met the frame, Nabiki caught the end of a black pigtail hanging outside her sister’s window.

She shut the door the rest of the way and rolled her eyes at the ceiling.

"Looks like the late bloomers have bloomed," she muttered wondering how she could make a profit out of that tidbit.

Ranma probably used one of his tricks to switch the contents of the bags. Or, maybe, he just moved so fast, that Nabiki had not been able to see him. Which was, admittedly, very scary when one stops to think about it.

Selling the information to the girls that lusted after Ranma was probably a bad idea. Last time, they blew up the dojo, and she didn’t want to take her chances with the house. Kuno would provide the cash, but he would scream so loud about it that the information would get back on the bimbos and... they would end up blowing up her house.

She blinked, turned around, and opened the door to Akane's room, finding Ranma and Akane in a make out session. "Oh, hey there little bro," she said to Ranma, "didn't see you earlier."

Ranma jumped off Akane's arms like a cat and stuck to the ceiling. "Nabiki!" Even his hair spiked like a cornered cat.

Akane face was all blushes. "Don't you ever knock!?"

"It's just that I just remembered to tell you that the neighbors are talking."

"About what?" Akane asked, blushing a deeper shade of scarlet.

"That you should sue Ukyo, Kodachi, and Shampoo," she replied, smiling like Cheshire cat at the look of relief on the pair. "They did bomb the dojo and hurt people that aren't martial artists. And they did also make your mom's house go boom, Ranma. If they catch you doing what you were just doing, our house might be next."

Ranma dropped from the ceiling. "I– ah. Would that even work?"

Nabiki was pleasantly surprised that the boy didn't even do an attempt to defend Ukyo at least. He didn't think it was ‘Nerima as usual’ what they did, he was worried that they would get worse.

"With Kodachi and Ukyo, sure, unless Ukyo sicks her personal kunoichi at us. With Shampoo, maybe? She has access to those weird mind manipulation shampoos, so even if the cops went knocking at her door, she could probably get them to forget they had to do anything to her."

Ranma's face fell. "We'll think about it."

Akane nodded. "I'll ask mother what she wants to do."

"Mother?"

She blushed. "I mean, auntie Nodoka."

Nabiki rolled her eyes and closed the door, this time for sure. She had no intentions on catching the pair doing anything raunchier than that.

What confused Nabiki was how did she not see it before. If Akane was buying pregnancy tests, they had to been going at it for a few weeks at least, but the failed wedding attempt had only just happened last week.

She looked back at the room. So... they started going below the belt around China? She frowned. No, even then it didn't add up. Earlier!?

She rushed to her room and began cross-examining everything she took note of to blackmail her little sister and boyfriend over the years.

She had nothing.

Then, she remembered that Yamada was looking for someone to help her with the cash register.

----

Mrs. Yamada hired Nabiki before the lunch rush, mostly because Nabiki could count change faster than the register could complain about it. By noon, she had learned where the receipt paper jammed, which drawer stuck unless kicked, and how often the old woman left her alone with the computer in the back room.

The answer was: often enough.

She waited until Yamada shuffled out front to help a customer choose cough syrup, then slid into the chair and woke the ancient machine with one tap of the spacebar. The screen blinked, hummed, and surrendered Akane’s name after three keystrokes.

Nabiki had expected bandages. Painkillers. Maybe something embarrassing enough to charge Akane a convenience fee for forgetting to pick it up herself.

Those were there. Rolls of athletic tape. Ointment for bruises. Gauze by the box. Orders that fit Akane so neatly Nabiki almost closed the file.

Then she saw the first test.

Her hand left the keyboard. The customer bell chimed out front. Yamada laughed at something. Nabiki did not move until the old woman’s slippers scraped away from the counter again.

She scrolled back. The entry stayed where it was. Pregnancy test. One month ago.

Nabiki clicked again.

Another test. Then another, older than the rest by enough months to make the room tilt slightly. A whole month after Ranma had arrived at the dojo.

The chair creaked under her before she realized she had leaned back.

Below those came a pattern she did not want to misread: monthly refills, consistent dates, the kind of boring regularity that made secrets harder to dismiss as accidents.

“Mrs. Yamada?” a customer called.

Nabiki snapped the screen back to the inventory page and stood so quickly the stool bumped the cabinet.

Have you to been laughing behind our backs all this time?

It didn’t make any sense to Nabiki. How did it happen? Why did it happen? And why did the two idiots pretend that it didn’t? How did the two idiots pretend that it didn’t happen?

Maybe they’re not as big of idiots as I thought?

Digging through more of Akane’s orders, she found out that her little sister ordered several boxes of condoms around the the time she had her 10-yen match with Kinnosuke Kashao. Nabiki realized that, while their intentions on her not wasting the whole family’s money were sincere, they also used the chance to get a free week-long vacation around the world. Nabiki practically served them an early honeymoon (not that she actually did pay for it, but still!)

They were fucking behind my back while I was battling with that idiot to pay for the trip!

Nabiki went looking for Nodoka first. Secrets moved faster when mothers were involved, and Nodoka Saotome had the particular weakness of saying too much whenever Ranma’s name came up.

Kasumi intercepted her in the hallway with a laundry basket balanced against one hip. “Auntie Nodoka went shopping,” she said, before Nabiki could ask.

Nabiki stopped one step too late. “Shopping?”

“For Ranma.” Kasumi adjusted the basket. A folded sleeve slid free and fell over her wrist. “He lost most of his spare clothes during their China vacation.”

“They weren’t on vacation, Kasumi. But of course, he did.” Nabiki smiled. “Violent tourism is hard on a wardrobe.”

Kasumi only smiled wider, which was never an answer and always a warning.

Nabiki waited until Kasumi disappeared toward the laundry room. Then she crossed to the back veranda and looked out at the yard. Genma’s panda form rolled across the grass with a wooden sign between his teeth. Ranma chased him, shouting something about cheap shots and fathers with no shame.

Good. Both distractions were accounted for.

She slid into the guest room and closed the door until only a finger-width of light remained. The room smelled faintly of soap and Ranma’s training clothes. Nabiki wrinkled her nose and crossed to the bags before conscience could get its shoes on.

Ranma’s backpack sat against the wall, overstuffed and badly tied. A strap had been sloppily repaired with red thread. Akane’s work, probably.

Nabiki crouched and lifted the flap.

The diary was not hidden well. That was the first suspicious thing about it. A plain notebook, tucked under a rolled shirt, with the corners soft from being opened too often. Ranma Saotome, apparently, had feelings and stored them next to spare socks.

Nabiki bit the inside of her cheek. Laughing would waste time.

She opened the first page just long enough to confirm the handwriting, then closed it again and slid it inside her blouse. A lucky break was still a break, even if it came wrapped in teenage melodrama.

The pack shifted when she set the shirt back. Something stiff caught beneath the lining.

Nabiki’s smile returned slowly.

She found the seam with her nail and worked it open. The hidden pocket gave with a soft rip. Inside lay an old, worn copy of Shonen Sunday, folded around something flatter and more carefully protected.

For a moment, disappointment won. If Ranma’s great secret was a battered manga, she was going to charge him for wasting her criminal instincts.

Then she saw the folded paper tucked inside the magazine, squared off with care that did not belong to either Saotome man.

Nabiki unfolded it with both hands.

It’s a marriage certificate between Ranma and Akane, dated one day after the wedding attempt.

“My little sister got married and I didn’t attend the ceremony,” she thought ruefully. Was she such a bad person that Akane couldn’t trust her?

Looking down, remembering she was snooping around, stealing Ranma’s diary and who knew what else, she realized that yes, she was that bad.

She did find it hilarious that Ranma had taken the Tendo name. But then again, the whole marriage agreement was created to inherit the Tendo Dojo in the first place.

Nabiki folded the marriage certificate along the same creases and slid it into her pocket. The magazine went into the hidden pocket, tucked flat beneath the lining as if it had never moved. She pressed the seam closed with her thumb until the torn threads behaved well enough to pass a lazy inspection.

Ranma’s diary was the problem. Returning it now would leave her with nothing but questions and no time to answer them. She pulled the empty notebook from her school bag, flipped it once to make sure the pages were blank, and slipped it under the rolled shirt where the real diary had been. Same size. Close enough color. Completely innocent, assuming Ranma did not suddenly develop study habits.

A shout cracked outside the window.

“That ain’t what I said!” Ranma’s voice carried from the yard, closer than Nabiki liked.

“You said exactly that.” Akane sounded half furious and half amused, which, for those two, counted as a private language. “Do you want me to quote you?”

Nabiki froze with one hand still inside Ranma’s pack. The doorway behind her stood open by a finger’s width. So did the hall beyond it. She eased the flap down, lifted her hand away, and listened.

Their footsteps moved along the veranda. Ranma grumbled something too low to catch. Akane answered with a soft thump that was probably a fist against his shoulder and definitely not meant to hurt.

Nabiki glanced at the pack. Shirt in place. Fake diary in place. Hidden pocket closed. Real diary warm against her blouse. Acceptable crime scene.

Ranma snorted. “You say that right before you hit me.”

“Then stop giving me reasons.”

A pause followed. Too long for a normal argument. Too short for either of them to have walked away.

Nabiki risked one eye through the crack. Ranma and Akane had stopped just beyond the veranda post, close enough that Akane’s sleeve brushed his wrist. Ranma stared at the garden like it had personally insulted him. Akane looked at him instead.

“You are impossible,” Akane said.

“Yeah,” Ranma said. His shoulder nudged hers. “But you figured that out already.”

Akane’s hand rose as if to shove him. It stopped halfway and landed on his sleeve instead.

Nabiki closed the door without a sound.

She slipped to the door and breathed through her nose until the wood stopped creaking under her fingers. Outside, Akane said, “You like that, don’t you?”

She left for her room and once she was safe inside, she began reading Ranma’s diary.

----

Its first entry was about complaining about Ryoga not showing up for their match, back when they went to the same all-boys school. It was six pages long detailing how good a friend he thought he was towards Ryoga, and how ungrateful he decided the lost boy being was over some bread.

She snorted, thinking for the first time that Ranma might have a leg to stand on in that regard. She had not known that her brother-in-law used to help Ryoga go to school and back to his own house every single day. How did the lost boy not realize that Ranma was his friend?

She shook her head and scanned the next few entries. Nothing interesting, save for the entry detailing how Ranma and Genma had managed to swim all the way to China. When he had made that claim, Nabiki thought she was exaggerating, but it appeared that it had been true.

Then came the curse, Shampoo wanting to kill him, getting a second curse thanks to the dragon’s whisker, and a few interesting fights with supernatural monsters in China that she had not heard Ranma talk about.

She flipped pages until she found the day he had arrived at the Tendo dojo. She wanted to laugh out loud at how corny Ranma described Akane’s smile, and how sad he was over the fact that she accused him of being a pervert, and how he lamented that she wasn’t keeping her promise of being his friend.

He was like a little kid in love, and not a teenager in lust.

She took note of the fact that he failed to write about why Akane had hit him with a table. It was almost as if, in his writings, he was making sure to make himself look as presentable as possible.

Then came the second day, he went on and on about how hurt he felt over Akane not wanting anything to do with him at school. About his first meeting with Dr. Tofu and how devastated he felt over the fact that Akane had a crush on him.

Is this the diary of a boy or a girl? Moron had it bad since the first day. I guess none of the other girls had a chance.

She flipped pages until she found the one that talked about the first time Ryoga arrived at the Tendo Dojo, how he was furious at Ryoga over the fact that he was using his curse to sneak into Akane’s bed, and how he hated that he had made solemn promise to not tell anyone about Ryoga’s curse.

Nabiki put the diary down for a moment. “Ryoga is P-Chan? And that moron decided to just… hide this fact from Akane?”

Seven pages about him complaining about Ryoga followed, intertwined with seven pages about how he hated seeing Akane being taken advantage of.

He did manage to, every single night that Ryoga went as a pig into Akane’s room to remove him from there once Akane had gone asleep. He had been caught at least three times. And with each time she would catch him sneaking into her room, Akane would trust him less.

Nabiki checked the date of that last entry she had read, and… it was remarkably close to that first pregnancy test.

She kept reading.

The next entry was mostly about Kodachi and how worried Ranma had been about Akane getting hurt when she slipped and hurt her ankle. But the P-chan complaints remained.

What surprised her was a large part of the entry talked about Ranma meeting with Nabiki’s father over the P-chan dilemma.

‘Mr. Tendo says we shouldn’t tell Akane.’ Ranma’s handwriting was a jagged mess, barely readable. He must have been livid. ‘He says that if Ryoga is just a pig, then he can’t really hurt her. That Akane should’ve figured it out on her own after seeing what Jusenkyo does. Like that made it fine. Like being tricked in your own room only counts for anything if you aren’t so pure and trusting as Akane to catch the trick.’

‘But the more I think about it, the worse it gets. Saying Akane should have figured it out is the same as saying it is her fault for trusting someone that doesn’t deserve that trust. How would she know if she didn’t trust that person at least once? Saying Ryoga is harmless as a pig ignores everything he has already taken from her. And saying we should stay quiet to keep peace means Akane’s peace does not count unless the rest of us are comfortable.’

‘I used to think Mr. Tendo was different from Pop. Softer, maybe. Better. At least he cried when he cared about something. And he seemed to love his daughters. But after that? It feel like he’s just another old man deciding that their child’s feelings don’t matter. I don’t know how much respect I had for him before, but whatever it was, most of it hit the floor right there.’

Ten pages followed of how Soun Tendo was as much a creep and a dishonorable cur as his own father.

One of the following nights, Ranma written that he went to Akane’s room again, determined to catch P-chan and end the whole mess before it got any uglier.

‘I know I promised I would not tell anyone about his curse. A promise is supposed to mean something. If I start breaking them whenever things get hard, then I am no better than Pop when he says whatever is convenient and calls it honor later. But I also promised to be Akane’s fiancée, and that is supposed to mean that I should be loyal to her, to protect her from harm, to walk besides her as partners, and hiding this feels wrong.’

‘Ryoga is doing something terrible. There is no soft way to write it. He is using his curse to be near her when she thinks he is only a cute little pig. She lets him sleep in her bed, holds him close, changes clothes with him in the room, and tells him things she would never tell another guy.’

‘If tonight I find him in her room again, I will make bacon out of him.’

Nabiki frowned, trying to recall those nights. It seemed like her dad figured out Ryoga’s secret right away. Did he not tell because it was making Ranma jealous? Either way, she couldn’t help but agree with Ranma.

“What kind of father keeps something like this from his daughter!?” she thought with no little amount of anger.

Ranma had not summarized the fight. He had written it down almost like a confession, each line too careful of a boy everyone thought only knew how to shout denials.

‘Akane thought I had come to her room because I “wanted to try her out before the wedding”. I deserved the look she gave me for letting things get that bad. Not because I would ever do something like that against her will, but because I had lied badly enough, and often enough, that she could believe it for even one second.’

‘I told her the truth. I told her she had gone to bed with P-chan beside her, same as before, and that I waited until she was asleep before I climbed in to take him away. She did not believe me. I do not blame her. From her side, I must have looked like the creep sneaking into her room, even though I was there to drag the real one out.’

She almost snorted at that. Almost. The sound caught somewhere behind her teeth and stayed there.

‘Then I told her what Mr. Tendo said. That he knew. That he told me not to tell her. That he said Ryoga was harmless if he was only a pig, and that Akane ought to have figured it out herself after seeing what Jusenkyo could do. I thought saying it out loud would make it sound less terrible than it had in my head. It did not. It sounded worse.’

Nabiki looked toward the hallway, though there was nothing there but the quiet house and the thin old door between her and her father’s room.

‘Akane tried to hit me with her shinai. I caught it. I did not mean to scare her, but I could not let her hit me and turn the truth into another fight. I insisted to her I was not lying. I told her I would not do that to her. Not then. Not ever. If she hated me after hearing the rest, I would take it, but I needed her to know I was not using her trust the way Ryoga would.’

The next line was different. The letters had stretched where tears had fallen, dragging the ink into thin, trembling shadows.

‘She believed me.’

Nabiki stared at those three words longer than she meant to. Her first instinct was to look for the angle: what Ranma had gained, what Akane had lost, what could be sold. Nothing added up cleanly. That irritated her more than it should have.

‘She cried after that. Not loud. Not like when we fight. She just folded forward like something inside her had finally broken, and I caught her because there was nowhere else for her to fall. I kept saying I was sorry. She kept holding on. Maybe that was worse.’

Nabiki turned the page too quickly and had to smooth it flat again. The crease she left across the corner did not come out.

‘I do not know when she fell asleep. I only know that, for once, she did not push me away. I sat there until morning started turning the room gray and promised myself that if Akane ever trusted me with something again, I would earn it first.’

Akane believed him, and she cried on his shoulders until she fell asleep.

Nabiki frowned. Surely there was more, right?

The next entry was already two weeks later. Shampoo’s name sat at the top of the page like a warning.

‘The Chinese girl found us today. Shampoo. She came to murder me because I beat her at her own turf, like that was enough of an offense to track me down all the way to Tokyo. I could understand a challenge. I could even understand revenge. What I could not understand was how fast the whole thing stopped being about a fight once Akane was standing close enough to be used against me.’

Nabiki’s smile thinned. She had remembered that during her first visit, Shampoo had been particularly loud like a pretty disaster orbiting Ranma. The diary made her sound less like a rival and more like a blade someone had tossed into their house.

‘Then I beat her as a guy, and everything changed. Suddenly I was not prey. I was something she wanted. She called it marriage like that made any of it less crazy. One minute she was trying to kill me and the next she was smiling like I belonged to her. Akane looked furious, of course, but there was hurt under it. I know because I put it there by not knowing what to say fast enough.’

‘I tried to laugh it off because that is what I do when I am cornered. It did not work. Shampoo kept pushing closer. Akane kept stepping between anger and silence. All I could think was that if Shampoo decided Akane was in the way, Akane would be the one paying for my crimes.’

Nabiki stopped there, her finger stayed on the page, holding her place. She wondered what Akane’s diary said about this event.

‘I could not leave Akane alone after that. Not because she is weak. She is not. But Shampoo had already decided that rules mattered only when they helped her. If she thought Akane stood between us, there was no telling what she would do. I kept thinking of them, too. I do not even know if there is a “them” yet. We are not saying it out loud. Maybe we are both scared that saying it will make the world notice.’

“Them?” Nabiki whispered before she could stop herself. She turned back two pages, then three, searching for a sentence she might have missed. There was nothing. Only Ranma’s careful handwriting and all the empty space he had left around that word.

‘If Shampoo had only come after me, I could handle it. I have handled worse. But Akane is not a thing Shampoo gets to remove so the path is clear. If anything happens to Akane because of me, if anything happens to them because I let Shampoo get too close, I do not know how I am supposed to keep being me afterward. And I know I will kill Shampoo if she does anything to them.’

Nabiki read the last line twice. The second time, the neat little columns of dates and possibilities she had been building in her head stopped lining up.

Nabiki put the diary down. It was missing information.

She made a mental note about everything that she knew. Around the time Ranma had his match against Kodachi, he and Akane became a couple for real, fooling everyone into believing that they hated being forced to marry each other.

Some weeks later, Akane had bought a pregnancy test, and Ranma kept thinking that Shampoo might hurt ‘them’, to the point that he was willing to kill Shampoo if things got out of hand.

Akane obviously wasn’t pregnant. Or was she? Nabiki wondered. Maybe when she fought Shampoo, she had a miscarriage?

She shook her head. If that had happened, she doubted Ranma would have allowed Shampoo anywhere close once she came back.

The front door slid open downstairs. “I’m home,” Nodoka called out, bright and breathless, the rustle of shopping bags following her into the house.

Nabiki slipped a bookmark between the pages, hid the diary, and went down to meet her.

She found Nodoka kneeling beside a neat battlefield of shopping bags in the sitting room. Tissue paper spilled over the tatami in soft white drifts. Nodoka had already folded three shirts into a stack so perfect it looked measured.

“Kasumi said you were studying,” Nodoka said, smoothing a sleeve flat with both hands. “Worried about your exams?” she asked as she lifted a red shirt, held it against the light, and frowned at a loose thread as if it had insulted the Saotome clan.

Nabiki chuckled. “I was ready a few months ago,” she said as she sat down across from Nodoka and reached for the closest bag. “Ranma loses shirts the way other people lose pocket change, you should probably only care to get him cheap clothes that can dry fast and will fit both genders.”

“Is that why he wears those Tang shirts? I… I hadn’t realized” Nodoka’s mouth curved, but her fingers paused on the fold. “He has had so few proper things of his own. I may have overdone it.”

Nabiki pulled out another bundle. Two shirts for Ranma. Socks. A belt. A sturdy jacket that had probably cost more than Nodoka wanted anyone to guess. Beneath them lay a blouse in Akane’s favorite shade of yellow and a folded men’s yukata, dark and plain.

“For Akane?” Nabiki asked, touching the blouse with one finger.

“She looked so tired the other day.” Nodoka folded the blouse with a care that did not match the casual words. “A little color might cheer her up.”

Nabiki kept her face still.

Nodoka reached into the last bag and drew out a thick book wrapped in brown paper. The corners were worn, but someone had cleaned the cover until the title shone.

“I saw this and thought of you.” Nodoka offered it with both hands.

Nabiki read the title. Her fingers tightened before she could stop them. It was the economics text she had circled twice in her college shopping list, then crossed out because the price had made even her wince.

For once, no useful line came to her. No joke. No discount calculation. No way to turn surprise into leverage.

“You shouldn’t have,” she said, settling for a mediocre cliché.

“I found it in a second-hand store, dear.”

Nabiki smiled. “I guess it’s fine, since we’re now family.”

Nodoka tilted her head, visibly alerted.

Nabiki winked, “people talk.”

She wanted to go find the pair of morons and scold them for thinking their stupid plan of getting married in secret was going to… stay secret.

“Ah, they sure do,” Nodoka said, looking like she wanted to leave the room.

She reminds me of mom.

She could make a buck out of this mess. She could make a ton of money. But she hated seeing Nodoka Saotome like that.  So, she fished the marriage certificate from her pocket and handed it to her.

“What’s this?”

“Evidence that you now have a daughter-in-law,” Nabiki supplied. “Evidence that I know, so you don’t need to pretend.”

“I, huh, I hadn’t seen this,” she assured her, “I knew of their plans but…” She paused when she noticed something in the document. She breathed in and read, “Ranma Tendo” Her voice was so little it was almost a whisper.

She handed the document back to Nabiki. The look on her face worried Nabiki. “Does it displease you that Akane didn’t take the Saotome name?”

Nodoka smiled. “It displeases me that they had to go behind everyone’s backs to do this. They should’ve known I would have understood. They’re inheriting the Tendo Dojo, after all. We Saotomes are of lower class than your family, it’s expected that he’d take the Tendo name. Where was the ceremony?”

Nabiki shrugged her shoulders, “I’m still figuring it out, but I think that after the dojo was bombed, they just went on their own, shotgun style.”

 “Oh,” Nodoka said simply. Then she smiled. “Well, I guess it hurts less. They told me they did it, but… they didn’t say anything about the particulars, asked me to stay quiet for a while.”  

“They love you,” Nabiki assured her, and she didn’t know why she wanted to console this woman so much.

“So…” Nodoka said, “you’re looking into it?”

Nabiki grimaced. “It’s just…” she couldn’t tell Nodoka that her son and Akane were having sex while everyone thought they were prude late-bloomers. “I think they’ve been together for a lot longer than I thought.”

“Oh, secret lovers.” Nodoka said in a sing-song tone, nodding in approval. “So manly for my son, to act like that. Do you think he has other girlfriends?”

“Auntie, you’ve met them.”

She scowled. “I don’t mean the stalkers.”

So, she didn’t take it kindly that Ukyo and the rest bombed her place. Good to know she’s not as dumb as her son.

“I’m sure they’re faithful to each other,” Nabiki managed to say.

She smiled and nodded, clearly pleased. “That brings me such joy, being a womanizer is not manly at all.”

“I thought you enjoyed the other fiancés being a thing?”

Nodoka scowled. “Do I give that impression?” She slapped her head. “Oh, that’s why I wasn’t invited.” She sighed. “No, I liked that other girls showed interest in Ranma, but I also liked that Ranma is ever so faithful to Akane.”

“Half of the people we meet want to get into Ranma’s pants, auntie,” Nabiki told her, and she smiled. “And the other half wants to get into Akane’s.”

Nodoka snorted, spitting a bit of tea. “Oh, yes, I have noticed that. She’s quite voluptuous.”

Voluptuous? Now, that’s a new one.

“So… I’m working part time for Mrs. Yamada, and she told me that you were thinking on suing Kuonji and the rest?”

“Kuonji?”

“Ukyo Kuonji, Ranma’s… ah, ‘cute’ fiancée.”

“Oh. That one.” Her smile finned into a line. “No, I don’t have the funds to hire a lawyer,” she said. “Besides, if those girls go to jail, Ranma would not be pleased with me. He dislikes their attentions, but he thinks of them as his friends.” She took a sip of her tea, and added, “except for the Kuno girl, that one, he hates with all his guts.”

“So he doesn’t hate Shampoo?”

No way Akane was pregnant back then if that’s the case.

“He has never told me that with as many words. He was pissed off at her for something she did in China when Akane got kidnapped, but he refuses to elaborate.”

Nabiki frowned. What did Shampoo do?

She kept piling more questions and got barely any answers. Her backlog was getting too large for her to solve the situation before she had to go back to study for her exams.

“I am worried about Kuonji, however,” Nodoka admitted, “my beloved did take her dowry, and this thing,” she said, eyeing the marriage certificate, “complicates things.”

Nabiki frowned, having completely forgotten about that.

“There’s the fact that the Tendo Dojo is currently destroyed,” Nodoka went on, “I have my son married to a girl who lost her dowry before they got married, and engaged to a girl who gave her dowry, but didn’t get a husband.”

“We will fix the dojo in no time,” Nabiki promised. “And I think I have something that could help with Ukyo’s dowry situation.”

Nodoka’s face lit at that.

Usually, Nabiki would demand hundred thousands of yens for this, but Nodoka Saotome reminded her too much of her mom to ask her for anything. Besides, the woman had just gotten her an extremely expensive book and probably spent all the rest of her money on clothes for her family, including Akane among them.

“What if I told you that Ukyo’s dowry is invalid?”

“Invalid how?”

She motioned the older woman to follow her to her room. They hurried upstairs and once inside, she closed the door behind them.

“I was keeping this, waiting the time your son would come asking for help to fix his ‘cute’ fiancée problem. Imagine my surprise when he decided to just marry my sister and screw family honor.”

Nodoka frowned and accepted Nabiki’s invitation to sit on her bed. “I do not think Akane and my son were thinking about that when the decided to get married.”

Nabiki smiled. “Yes, you’re probably right. Family honor was just collateral damage.” She went to her desk and opened a drawer. She fished through several folders, and once she found the one she was looking for, she took a piece of paper from it and handed it to Nodoka.

The older woman read the document in confusion, “who is the Gambling King?”

“Back when Ranma and Ukyo were kids, they faced this guy who scammed children out of their belongings. Ranma was dumb enough to wager the Tendo dojo, which wasn’t even his or his family’s to give, and Ukyo proved to be even dumber by wagering her own Okonomiyaki cart.”

Nodoka blinked several times. “And are you sure this happened before my beloved stole the cart?”

“Yes, the old thief took the Gambling King’s Oknomiyaki cart, not Ukyo’s. Ukyo’s dowry is a sham because she knew it wasn’t hers to give in the first place.”

Nodoka read the paper one more time before asking Nabiki, “can I keep this?”

“If you’re going to use it to remove Kuonji from the board, yes.”

Nodoka smiled at Nabiki as she stood up. “You’re such a nice girl, I do not know why dear Akane complains about you so much.”

“I know, right!?” Nabiki’s said in a sing-song tone, imitating the way Nodoka spoke. “I’m adorkable.”

Once Nodoka left her room, Nabiki wanted to kick herself. Ranma would have paid a lot for that piece of paper. She sighed and guessed that she could tell Akane that it was her wedding gift.

She took out Ranma’s diary and resumed reading.

The next entry was about the Neko-ken. Oh boy.

Ranma’s handwriting had gone small and cramped, as if he had been trying to make the words take up less space on the page.

‘I stayed away from Akane for almost a week after the cat came out again. I told everyone I was training. I told her she was too slow. I told myself I was being careful. None of that was true enough to count. The truth is that I feared what I might do if I stopped being me while she was close. I could trust myself to not force myself on Akane, but I could not trust the cat. I will never trust the cat.’

Nabiki’s hand hovered over the page. The joke she had been preparing died before it reached her mouth.

‘Akane found me on the roof and demanded to know why I was avoiding her and even insinuated that I had found someone else. I tried to brush it off. She did not let me. She never does when it matters. So, I told her the ugly part, that if the cat curled against her, if it kissed her because it remembered safety and warmth, maybe that was one thing that I could accept, welcome even. But if it ever forced itself on her, that if… did *that*, then I would hate myself for the rest of my life, even if I woke up not remembering it.’

Nabiki shifted on the floorboards. Somewhere below, a dish clinked in the kitchen. She did not turn the page. Was Ranma talking about…?

‘Akane said that I was being ridiculous, that I was even more gentle as a cat than I am as a guy. She said it too quickly, like she had already decided which answer would hurt me less. Then she explained. There had been nights when I came to her as the cat, and how she she thought it was fine because it was still me underneath. And she insisted, the cat is… gentle.’

Nabiki pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose. Where were they having these lovers’ spats? Usually, when those two fought, the neighbors got a free show and at least one wall learned a new lesson about martial arts.

‘When I told her that the cat wasn’t me, she decided that then the cat would’ve done it with anyone, that she was just the closest pair of open legs around. I don’t know why she was being so angry and foulmouthed. I don’t know why I was, either. I insisted the cat wasn’t me but told her that since she liked the cat so much more, I’d not avoid her anymore. But she’d have to kiss the cat, because I was not letting kiss me until she apologized.’

Nabiki looked toward Akane’s room again. The hallway between them seemed longer than it had a minute before.

‘She became frustrated, telling me that I was being a baby. That she thought we were only having fun, that we were fooling around and I was now acting like a drama queen. She said it was not like we were in love. I think she meant to make it insignificant.’

‘I left her in tears. Yes, I cried, Okay? Big macho guy can cry if the girl he loves tells him she only allows him in her bed because it’s fun. I wanted to be angry, but I couldn’t, not at her. Instead, I felt hollow, like someone had opened my ribs and taken out the part that had been stupid enough to believe she loved me back.’

Nabiki read the last passage several times. It didn’t sound like Akane. But then again, it also didn’t sound like Akane to allow a boy she barely knew to touch her where the sun doesn’t shine and keep it from her family for a year and change.

The next few entries were fairly short, like Ranma barely had any interest in describing them. He explained Shampoo’s return, Mousse’s first challenge (which featured painfully boring details of all his martial art moves, how fast and how hard he could hit, and all technical stuff that Nabiki didn’t care about), and, of course, Cologne locking his curse with the cat tongue thing.

“So… They stopped being close during that time?” Ranma’s next entries were even shorter, each one neater than the last, as if writing carefully could keep him from saying too much.

That is, until…

‘Akane apologized today. Not for everything. I do not think either of us knows where everything starts or ends anymore. She said she should not have made what happened between us sound insignificant. She said she had only called it fooling around because she thought that was what I wanted to hear. She really though I was avoiding her because I had replaced her with someone else, like Shampoo.’

‘I wanted to accept that. I wanted to be relieved. Instead, I kept hearing the words again. “Fooling around”. Like none of it had weight unless I was the one making a fool of myself over it. Like all those nights meant less to her because she could explain them away if she had to.’

‘Then she got angry again. I told her I did not know how much of me was there when the cat took over, and she looked at me like I had struck her. She said that if it was not really me, then maybe she had never mattered at all. Maybe she had only been the nearest person who was kind enough, or foolish enough, to stay.’

‘I told her that was not true. I know I did. I remember saying it more than once. But she kept waiting like there was some other answer I was supposed to find, and the longer I stood there, the worse her face got. I did not know what she wanted from me. I only knew I was failing to give it to her.’

‘I got angry because she had decided for both of us that the cat counted as me when it made her feel safe, but not enough to ask me what I remembered, what I wanted, or what it meant to wake up afterward with pieces missing. She told me that I made her feel replaceable. We both kept swinging at the wrong target until there was nothing left but silence.’

‘Then, she angrily kissed me, I had hungered for those lips for almost a week and she—'

Nabiki avoided reading the details of the next few paragraphs, which were the first that detailed sex between her little sister and the moron she fell for. She wanted information, but there was such a thing as too much information. Especially considering that Ranma had been locked as a girl at the time!

She noticed, however, that not once had the couple said that they loved each other. Sure, Ranma wrote about it, but he clearly never told her those words, and Akane wasn’t any better.

They had agreed that it wasn’t just ‘horny sex that they would do with anyone’, but they seemed to have done some sort of silent pact to never tell the other that they loved them. Why? Nabiki had some idea, but jumping to conclusions would be useless to her.

She flipped through the next few pages and found another P-chan entry. Ranma had written the date twice, crossed one out, then left the mistake there.

‘Ryoga is back, but for some reason Akane refuses to do anything about the P-chan mess. She knows everything, and somehow that has not made it simple to her. I thought the truth would hit and the whole thing would be over. Ryoga would be gone, Akane would be furious, and at least I would not have to go around her room with her thinking I was some pervert. Well, maybe I am? I don’t know. But certainly not that way.’

‘Instead, she looked at me like I had handed her a katana and asked her to decide where to put it. She said that if Ryoga knew she knew, he might do something stupid. Not the usual goofy stupid. The kind nobody gets to take back. I asked her how she could know that, and she only looked away. I hate when she does that. It means she has already forgiven someone before they have even earned the right to ask.’

Nabiki’s mouth twisted. She could see Akane doing it: jaw set, fists clenched, deciding that someone else’s pain mattered more than her own humiliation. It was almost noble. It was also extremely infuriating.

‘So, P-chan stays. Not in her bed, of course. Not where he can watch her change. Not where he can pretend nothing has happened. Akane made those rules clear. I made sure that Ryoga understood that I would not tolerate him waltzing into the room and launch himself at her breasts, I had been very clear that he was being a dirty pervert and that… sorta seemed to work, I think. He doesn’t know that she knows. He seemed hurt when she would refuse to carry him to bed, but later I think he was content that at least she still lets him curl near her feet sometimes. Still speaks to him softly when she thinks nobody is listening.’

‘Akane is too much of an angel for her own good. She is not gentle all the time, of course. She is not soft. She can swing a mallet hard enough to make my ancestors apologize. But when someone is broken in a way she recognizes, she keeps trying to hold the pieces together, even when the sharp edges cut her first.’

‘She worries about Ryoga starving, Ryoga getting eaten by a larger animal, Ryoga getting lost, Ryoga doing something that cannot be fixed. She worries about her father crying, Kasumi carrying too much on her back, Nabiki seeing too much, and the whole stupid household falling apart if she stops being the strong one for five minutes. I wish she would worry about Akane Tendo for once. I wish she would put herself first before somebody teaches her that being kind means letting them take another piece.’

Nabiki wanted to argue with Ranma’s views. Akane was not an angel. Akane yelled, sulked, overtrained, burned curry, broke walls, and hit first when embarrassed. But the longer Nabiki stared at the words, the less truthful the objections became.

Maybe Ranma had seen something the rest of them only stepped around.

It made Nabiki think that Akane might be as much of a saint than Kasumi. Sure, she was a violent maniac, but she also had this unique kindness about her. They were both so quick to forgive, even the unforgivable. Nabiki had never understood this way of thinking. If someone did her wrong, she would ruin them and not care if they ended up doing the worst after the fact.

The next several entries detailed all of Ranma’s adventures that followed, most of them Nabiki knew about, but they had the added context of Ranma and Akane leaving while everyone was busy fighting with each other or otherwise entertained to fool around. Of course, she skipped the raunchy parts like the plague.

It was not until Ryoga showed up with a magical fishing rod that forced people to fall in love that Ranma’s diary became hard to read again. The first thing Nabiki noticed was the tear in the paper: almost ten pages were missing, ripped so cleanly that the remaining edges looked deliberate.

‘I burned what I wrote before. Whatever those pages said, they were written by someone wearing my handwriting and using my memories, but they were not me. I do not care if that sounds weak. I do not care if someone says a real martial artist should have fought it off. I remember wanting things I should never have wanted, and I remember trying to make those wants sound reasonable. That is enough to make me sick.’

Nabiki rubbed the torn edge with her index finger. Ranma destroyed things when he was angry. These pages had not been destroyed in anger. They had been erased with care. He absolutely despised what Ryoga had done.

‘Ryoga brought a magical fishing rod because he thought it would make Akane love him. Maybe he told himself it was a joke. Maybe he told himself it was only a tug, only a little magic, only a chance to be seen. I do not care what lie he uses to sleep at night. You do not get to put a spell on someone’s heart and call it romance.’

‘The worst part is that it worked on me. I can still remember the shape of it. The feeling that the wrong thought was mine because it came from inside my own head. The certainty. The warmth. The part of me that wanted to move closer and call it a choice. If Akane had been the one standing there, if she had looked frightened and I had kept moving, I do not know how I would have lived with myself afterward.’

Nabiki sat back. The room did not change, but the air in it seemed to have less space.

‘Akane said nothing happened. She said Ryoga did not understand how bad it could have been. She said he was lonely, and stupid, and in love, and that I was making it uglier than it needed to be. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to ask why everyone else gets to be lonely at our expense, why must she forgive them, even when they hurt me.’

‘I told her Ryoga is not in love with me. She didn’t believe me. She still doesn’t understand that she was the target. His obsession still points at Akane. It has always pointed at Akane. He wants her forgiveness, her attention, her hands on P-chan’s head, her voice saying he is not a bad person. He wants all of that and still demands more.’

Nabiki’s mouth tightened. She could hear Akane’s answer before Ranma wrote it: the stubborn softness, the unflappable mercy.

‘She said if we corner him about this, he might not just run this time. Since the Shishi Hokodan, Ryoga does not fall apart. He explodes. Akane said it calmly, like she was discussing the weather, but her hands were folded so tightly that her knuckles went white. Was she not defending him because she thought he was innocent? Did she fear for me? For everyone standing too close to the blast?’

‘So we agreed to new rules. P-chan leaves as soon as he appears. He does not get carried. He does not get comforted. He does not get to be her pet anymore. But Akane still will not tell him she knows, never will. She says it is safer this way. I think safer should include her, but every time I say that she looks at me like I am asking her to push someone off a roof.’

‘Akane forgives like it costs her nothing. Even when she could have been the victim. Even when I was the victim. It costs her sleep. It costs her pride. It costs her the right to be angry without worrying what her anger will do to someone else. She is too much of an angel for her own good, and angels are supposed to look down from somewhere safe. Akane keeps walking into the fire and calling it kindness.’

Nabiki closed the diary for a count of three, then opened it again to the same page. The words were still there. Ryoga was probably lost somewhere, innocent by geography if nothing else, and Nabiki hated that she understood why Akane had not lit the fuse.

She wanted to cook the piglet. That way, no one would be afraid of him being too sad and blowing up an entire neighborhood. That way, her sister wouldn’t have to deal with him.

The Musk Dynasty entry sprawled across the next handful of pages. Nabiki skimmed several diagrams featuring, arrows, pressure points, notes about Ki flow, even some physics notes that seemed, at a glance, to make some sort of sense. I immediately regretted having eyes.

‘Ryoga and Mousse said they wanted to help after Herb locked me in my girl body with the Pail of Preservation. I did not trust them. I could not. The morons are up to something and are going to do something stupid eventually.’

Nabiki skimmed several days’ worth of entries.

‘When we found our way to Treasure Mountain where the Pot was, Ryoga and Mousse turned on me like the traitors I knew they were. They wanted the Pail, not the Pot, still thinking it would make them human for good. They left me there with Herb’s people coming down on me and ran after the wrong artifact.’

Nabiki stopped tapping.

‘Of course, the Pail did not cure the morons when they splashed themselves. THEY DIDN’T EVEN TRY TO USE HOT WATER. What were they thinking!? They got locked like I was, except Ryoga as a pig can do jack shit. Mousse as a duck is barely a tactical advantage. The morons didn’t pay attention when the old Ghoul explained what the Pail of PRESERVATION was, she was ever so clear that it locks the cursed form. The idiots thought that I was locked as a girl only because Herb had used it on me when I had already turned into a girl with cold water!’

Nabiki tapped the edge of the page, looking at the diagrams Ranma had drawn. He even had some formulas that looked like they made sense.  How smart was Ranma? Nabiki guessed that it only mattered to him if the subject was martial arts. She skimmed several paragraphs.

‘I should have walked away. I wanted to. I wanted to tell them that they deserved whatever happened to them. But I could not leave them behind. What would Akane have done if she was in my place? We all know. I needed to help the idiots and hoped that they would learn their lesson. They were my only friends.’

By the time Nabiki reached the end of the entry, she had forgotten to make fun of the diagrams. Ranma had called Ryoga and Mousse morons, idiots, traitors, friends, and people worth saving, sometimes in the same paragraph. It should have been impossible to reconcile. Somehow, on the page, it sounded exactly like him.

She went on to the final entry in the Musk Dynasty debacle.

‘There was a moment when getting them to the Water Pot meant I might not get out myself. I wish I could write that I was noble about it. I was not. I was furious. I was terrified. I kept thinking that if I died in that place, Akane would never know why I had chosen to save the two idiots who betrayed me. Then I thought of coming home after leaving them trapped forever, and that was even worse.’

‘So I chose the stupid thing. I chose to save them. I chose to risk dying for Ryoga and Mousse of all people. So, I tried my luck against the Dragon Man.’

More diagrams showed how cold and hot ki interacted, how he had noticed that Herb’s ki remained in the sky after he used it, how he deviced a modification of his Hiryu Shoten Ha in a manner of seconds and created what he described the largest Ki blast the world had ever seen. He backed up his claims with even more physics formulae and weather analysis of all things! She even found that she understood some of what he had written down.

She made the mistake of reading the next entry, which wasn’t technically part of the fight against the Musk, but the first morning when they came back at the Tendo Dojo. ‘Akane received me with a hug full of want, I didn’t care at that moment if anyone saw us, I let her drag me to her bed and—’

Nabiki shuddered and flipped several pages of smut. Her sister had apparently missed the pigtail boy too much that week. Nabiki would need brain bleach once she was done reading the damn diary.

She eyed the next few entries, Ranma and Akane had a small argument regarding Miss. Ninomiya, with Akane insisting that Ranma was trying to replace her for a more mature woman.  Nothing too important except…

Ryugenzawa was next. Ranma had written the place name in the margin, underlined it twice, then scratched so hard through the second line that the paper had thinned.

‘Akane left without telling anyone. One moment she was there, the next her room was empty, her bag was gone. She had left me. I needed to tell me why at least, I thought I had been a better boyfriend the last few months, that we had grown so much closer, that only we understood the other. Why did she leave? Of course, I know. I keep making fun of her cooking. I don’t even know why I do it anymore, at this point even if she fed me actual poison, I could probably tank it.’

Nabiki rolled her eyes. While she agreed with Ranma, she sure hoped the boy hadn’t decided it was a clever idea to tell Akane that to her face. Then again, he probably said worse. Or not? She couldn’t tell with them anymore what was real and what was them play acting so the fathers wouldn’t marry them.

‘I need her to tell me why. Once she does, I will leave for good. I hear the forests of Siberia are nice and quiet. Good place for me to go and die in peace.’

She kind of felt sorry for the idiot, especially knowing that once Akane came back, she explained that she had left a note detailing where she was going and that it was as a representative of the Tendo Dojo. It was one more of her ‘I’m a martial artist too’ childish tantrum than a ‘I’m leaving you for the first guy who looks my way’.

‘While I followed her tracks, I couldn’t help but think that she had left because of me. That she thought I hated her cooking. That she thought I only cared about her when she was in the mood to have sex behind everyone’s backs. Because of everything I said and everything I did not say. Because every time she looked at me and waited, I gave her a joke, an insult, a challenge, or started touched her like a pervert in lust instead of telling her the truth. I thought maybe she had finally gotten tired of waiting for a coward.’

‘I just found her, and she’s with a new guy. Shinnosuke. And this guy is not scared of telling her that he loves her. I wanted to wipe the floor with him. I went hard, harder than when I fight Ryoga, maybe as hard as I was fighting Herb. But then… she slapped me. She doesn’t love me. She loves this new guy. I wanted to think that this Shinnosuke had used another of those magical fishing rods on her or something but… The way she cried, I knew she still felts something for me, just… not as much as whatever she felt for him. So, I left her there with him.’

‘I want to leave this forest and never come back. Siberia sounds better every time I think about it. Nice and tidy place where I can just… Perfect Shishi Hokodan away all my despair. It’s not fair. I thought she was going to marry me. I thought I was her home, like she is mine.’

The page was filled with tear marks. Ranma had probably read and re-read those lines until he seethed.

‘I decided to set up camp, just in case Akane might need me. I could… I don’t know, die for her, and at least I would have achieved something with my life. Then came Ryoga, accusing me of mistreating Akane and being the reason why she left me for this new guy. Can’t blame him, he’s not wrong. I always found hilarious how in books and movies, every time the main character suffers a breakup, they get all sad and lonely. I didn’t get to be like that. I got worse.’

‘When I saw them holding hands, I felt something in me go cold. Not jealousy. Jealousy is hot. This was worse. This was the part of me that had believed she chose me to start to die quietly, because maybe she had never chosen me at all. Maybe I had only been the boy who happened to be there first, the boy she decided to fool around with until, Mr. GoodEnoughForNow. I’m going to sleep but tomorrow I will definitively tell her. Even if she breaks my heart and tells me that whatever we had was fun, but it wasn’t real.’

Nabiki dreaded the entry for the next day, but once she saw the first few words, she sighed in relief. She frowned, was she cheering for the idiot? It didn’t even matter, because she knew he’d won!

‘I finally told her. Not well. Not like a man in a story. I think I sounded angry. I know I sounded scared. I told her I loved her, and then I hated myself for saying it like a challenge instead of a gift. I said it again with tears in my eyes, and Akane heard me, she saw me. Even though she often hears only the parts that might hurt, this time she heard me properly, she understood what I meant.’

‘She said she loved me too. Me. Only me. She did kick me in the sheens when she realized that I thought she was leaving me for Shinnosuke. She became furious that I had ever doubted her, and I almost laughed because that sounded so like us. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a ring. I thought I had hit my head during the fight. I asked her what she was doing. She told me to shut up before I would ruin it.’

‘Then Akane Tendo, hero of the day, got down on one knee and asked one humble Ranma Saotome to marry her. I squealed and said yes before she even finished. Yes, not going to be ashamed of it. I squealed. Ok? Maybe before she started. I do not remember. I remember her hand shaking when she put the ring on me. I remember mine shaking worse when I touched her face. I remember thinking that if anyone laughed, I would not care at all, I had her.’

Nabiki read that sentence three times. The first time, she waited for the joke. The second, she checked whether Ranma had mixed anything up. The third, she rested the diary against her knees and stared at the wall.

She allowed herself a chuckle.

Nabiki kept reading the proposal over and over, looking for the trick. There was no hidden witness, no practical reason, no inheritance clause sneaking between the lines. Just two stubborn idiots choosing each other in the middle of a monster-haunted forest.

They were not just in love. They were complete morons. Tender, reckless, hopelessly sincere morons.

Give it to Akane to be the one to drop on her knee and ask the boy who turns girl to marry her. Nabiki could do something with that information, but without a picture, it would be meaning—

Nabiki noticed for the first time that the next page had a picture of the moment. Who had taken the picture? Certainly not Ryoga or that Shinnosuke guy. But it didn’t matter. She pocketed the photograph with glee.

She scanned the next few entries, trying to see if they had planned how to break their decision to marry each other to the family. There was nothing. Not even a mention about eloping plans or anything like that.

Then, the entries detailing Ranma’s adventures resumed.

Ryu Kumon had been another long entry. But more of the boring technical part instead of the telenovela-like moments she had come to enjoy reading.

Twelve pages detailing every single combat move used by one “Fake Ranma”, a detailed analysis about how fast he could dodge, how brutal his fighting style was, and what were his tells. Following that came a back-and-forth dialogue with himself about the theory on what Fake Ranma’s school of martial arts was designed for. Ranma had scratched several possible principles she had figured, but the only one that remained was…

Assasination? I guess Uncle Saotome has a dark past.

Following that, another boring section of several pages detailing the secrets of the Umisen-ken, and a correction on the Yamasen-ken’s principles now that he understood its opposite art.

Nabiki was sure that, if an actual martial artist read these passages, they would probably be able to learn these supposed ultimate techniques. Ranma had been a bit of a moron, writing those down on his personal diary.

She wanted to facepalm. Uncle Saotome’s dark past was… that he was a thief and a robber.

But then came the juicy bits.

A part Ranma had underlined so hard that the page had been cut. Ryu had not merely pretended to be Ranma. Nodoka, desperate to see her son act properly devoted to his fiancée, had encouraged “Ranma” to kiss Akane, and Ryu had taken the opening like a thief spotting an unlocked door.

‘Akane said that the creep smiled at Mom like he had earned the right to be there. Like wearing name was enough to make Akane his. Mom did not know. She thought she was nudging her shy son toward his bride. Kumon knew exactly what he was doing. That is what made me want to break his teeth.’

Nabiki stopped grinning. There were jokes she could make about Ranma’s life turning into theater. This was not one of them.

‘Akane says she put him in his place. Quietly, because my mom was watching, and Akane is better at protecting other people’s feelings than anyone has a right to be. I hope she’s not lying to me, not about this. If he did anything, I will kill him. I choose to believe what she told me, that a single glare from her, and even Kumon understood he had stepped somewhere he did not belong.’

‘That made me angrier, not less. Akane should not have had to manage my mom, a fake fiancé, and my mess all at once. She should not have had to reject a creep politely because the creep was usurping my name.’

Ranma’s next list was novel in his diary, filled with battle analyses. Instead, this was a list of every lie Kumon told. Every time he leaned on Nodoka’s hopes. Every moment Akane had been forced to swallow her anger so the wrong person would not be hurt by the truth.

‘Before Akane told me that he tried to get handsy with her, I might have taught him the Umisen-ken, and befriended him, just like with Ryoga and Mousse. Maybe. If he had asked it straight, if he had shown even half a spine without stealing my life first, I might have believed he deserved another path. After what he tried to do to Akane, no. Hell no. No way. If Akane is an Angel, well, I can be a Demon. I forced him to seal Yamasen-ken and told him that it was an art made for cowards who take what is not theirs and call it survival. I just wanted him to wither and die.’

She skipped the next few short entries that were followed by multiple paragraphs of a detailed description of her little’s sister sex life and resumed actually reading when she found the entry that detailed her own battle with Kinnosuke Kashao over who would be the first one to spend 10 yen in a date. Said date went on for a week, and they went on a small adventure all over the world, going on the most expensive suits Nabiki could book.

Of course, Ranma and Akane were horrified that Nabiki had been willing to put the Tendos and Saotomes in the streets over a challenge, but as expected, they did indulge in the suites that Nabiki had booked for them. Even though they had brought with them several boxes of condoms, Akane had tasked Ranma to buy more on each city they visited.

Nabiki re-read the entries from that week without letting herself linger on the parts she did not want in her head. She focused on the numbers instead. Numbers behaved. Numbers did not blush, lie, sneak out windows, or write awful little smuty poems. Hotels, meals, train tickets, room service, ruined deposits, emergency clothing, replacement luggage, sightseeing fees disguised as necessary expenses, and more. She lined them up in her own notebook until the page looked respectable.

Fifteen million yen was a generous number. Charitable, even. If anything, she was showing restraint. Ranma and Akane had turned her challenge with Kinnosuke into a week-long private honeymoon and somehow walked away thinking nobody had noticed. Worse, they had been right.

Her pencil stopped above the final total. For a second, Akane’s face came to mind, not the angry one or the stupidly brave one, but the tired one that lately showed up during breakfasts, trying to look normal while carrying secrets big enough to bend her shoulders. Nabiki pressed the pencil down until the lead snapped.

She stared at the broken point, then sharpened it with short, vicious twists. Sympathy was expensive. Worse, it had no clear resale value.

So, she wrote the fee anyway, smaller than she wanted and larger than mercy deserved. Twenty million should do. Under it, she began drafting payment plans in neat columns: cash, chores, favors, maybe a modest interest rate if Ranma opened his mouth wrong. The work steadied her. It gave her hands something useful to do while the rest of her tried to decide whether she was furious at them for hiding so much or furious at herself for missing it.

She skimmed the next several entries, until she found an amusing one where Ryoga had been trying to two-time Akari with Akane. Apparently, Ranma and Akane ended up having sex on Ryoga’s bed and managed to keep it a secret from him.

She blinked several times and allowed herself a big hearty laugh. Her little sister was kinda kinky.

Then came the cursed doll incident. Nabiki expected the usual pattern by then: impossible magic, property damage, Ranma insisting he had everything under control until the page proved otherwise. What she found instead was Ranma circling the same point over and over, blaming himself in every possible direction without ever writing the worst parts down.

‘I should have noticed sooner. I can dress it up with excuses, but I really should have. I can say Akane was acting close enough to herself when she was angry, that we fight all the time, and then have make up sex, that strange moods are normal in this house, that I have seen curses do less obvious things and still missed them. None of that changes the truth. I should have noticed sooner.’

‘I kept thinking she was testing me, or teasing me, or trying to start one of our stupid arguments in a new way. I kept trying to answer the Akane I thought was there. Every time something felt wrong, I explained it away because I wanted it to be her. Because believing it was her was easier than asking why the girl in front of me smiled with the wrong shape.’

Nabiki did not skim the next lines, but she did not read them closely either. She let her eyes pass over the ink the way someone might walk past a closed door after hearing a sound they had no right to investigate. The cursed doll was much more of a prude than the real thing, that’s for sure.

‘When I finally understood, it was too late to be clean about it. Akane was not Akane. Not all the way. Maybe some part of her was still trapped inside, maybe she was fighting from somewhere I could not reach, but the person looking out through her eyes was not the girl who trusted me. I had been talking to a mask and calling it love because I was too stupid and too scared to look closer.’

‘She was furious afterward. She had every right to be. I wanted her to hit me. I wanted something simple, something I understood. Instead, she asked me how I could not tell it wasn’t her. I did not have an answer. I still do not.’

‘I promised to be better. I don’t think she believed me.’

The battle dogi entry started like another stupid martial-arts disaster. Nabiki expected diagrams, formulae detailing how Akane’s muscles moved, and notes explaining the aura of power that Akane had displayed in that fight. Weirdly enough, there were no martial arts notes to be found.

‘The stupid thing is trying to get between us. Every time I reach for her, it shows up like some lost pet. She either goes with the suit baby talking at it, or the thing comes for my head. A slap, a kick, a throw, whatever it thinks “protecting” Akane means. The problem is that Akane now thinks that I’m jealous of her newfound strength, that I’m bullying her adorable ‘do-chan’ because I’m a tiny little man.’

Nabiki vaguely recalled the argument. Not the words exactly, but the rhythm. So… that one was real? How was that different from any of their fake arguments?

‘So… She just told me, that maybe we should call off our engagement. Not the stupid one our fathers keep try to force on us. The real one. Ours. The one from Ryugenzawa. I laughed like an idiot because I did not know what else to do, and she looked at me like I had proven her point.’

‘I hated that she thought so little of me. Then I remembered that I had failed her during the Cursed Doll debacle, and I hated myself thinking that maybe she was right. Maybe I had made it look like I only wanted her when I could win, when she would need my protection, when I was all that she could hope for. The ugly truth is that I was afraid. If Akane became strong enough that she did not need me beside her, would she still choose me anyway?’

‘The thing about Akane is that she does not know how to be small. Even when she is trying to hide, she leaves marks everywhere. A bruise on a training post. A meal nobody should survive but I eat anyway because she made it herself. A quiet word of encouraging to someone who does not deserve it. She thinks she needs the stupid battle suit, she doesn’t.’

‘I used to think protecting her meant getting between her and whatever was coming. That was easy. Stand in front. Take the hit. Hit back harder. But Akane does not want a wall. She wants someone who trusts her enough to stand beside her, even when every stupid bone in my body wants to shove her behind me and call it love.’

‘Maybe that is what scared me about the dogi. Not that she had become so strong, because Akane has always been strong. And not because it was a jealous little freak that detested whenever we kissed, because Akane didn’t care what others thought if I was hers and she was mine. The dogi only made it impossible for me to pretend I was the only one who could save her.’

‘For once, we saved our engagement not with make-up sex, but through talking. We agreed we would train together from now on. No more going easy on her. I think that is important to write, because I say stupid things when I am hurt, and maybe someday I will need proof that I knew the truth. I want her safe. I want her proud. I want her to look at me and know I see all of her, not just the parts that need rescuing. If she ever becomes the strongest person in the world, I still want to be the one she comes home to.’

Nabiki was annoyed at how easily that made sense. Ranma had not resented Akane’s strength because he wanted her weak. He feared becoming useless. There was a difference, and the difference was barely there.

She skipped the several pages of detailing their make-up session that followed.

‘But besides that, we both realized that we could not allow anything get between us, be it fiancées, monsters, creepy dolls, boy-crazy copies, or super suites. So, we created a code that only we knew about. If either of us says the word, everything stops. No arguing, no pride, no buts, no pretending we did not hear. We both repeat it back and go on to the next word exchange we agreed on. We both check. If something feels wrong, we say so before the world gets another chance to make fools of us.’

Nabiki wondered how silly it was to need code phrases with your boyfriend, not as a safe word, but just… to make sure that they were them and to make sure that nothing was affecting them in some way.  It was crazy, but also probably a clever idea to have a password system, especially when they had clones running around, crazy amazons that could alter your mind, creepy dolls who could possess you, and battle suites who could show you that you could be more.

There were several adventures that followed, each one Nabiki could hire some two-bit writer to turn into a tv-show that could make her a buck or two. But the most noteworthy addition to Ranma and Akane’s cast of friends and rivals came in Konatsu. Not because Akane had been the one to save Ukyo from Konatsu’s evil stepmother and stepsisters, or because Konatsu, while being mind-controlled, proved to be more powerful foe than anyone Ranma had ever faced, save for Herb, to the point of them ending their duel in a draw. It was because when the kunoichi had told them that he (or was it she? Nabiki wasn’t sure) would do anything to repay their kindness, Ranma had asked him to train them on the legendary split-body technique.

Nabiki frowned. Why was that so important for Ranma? She had seen Ranma, and Akane for that matter, do something like that, months before they met Konatsu.

She flipped the page where Ranma explained how he understood the technique worked, and… while the how escaped her, the what, didn’t.

Apparently what Ranma, Akane, and pretty much any other martial artist with some amount of skill could do, was move extremely fast to appear to be at two separate places at the same time.

The “legendary split-body technique” on the other hand, created an actual body replica.

“Why would they want something like…” her own question died in her lips.

If they could leave a copy of themselves to deal with the usual shenanigans of the Nerima martial artist, they could go on dates without anyone realizing.

She massaged her eyes. “Not that anyone did notice before.”

The star festival entry was mostly empty, save for a love poem.

The Milky way stretches wide,
and still I’d cross it for you.
Not with pretty words,
I ain’t good at those,
but with my hands,
my feet, and
every silly trick I know.

If the stars get between us,
I’ll kick a bridge across the sky.
If the night says wait another year,
I’ll tell it to move.
Because Vega found Altair,
and somehow, Akane,
I found you.

Nabiki wanted to gag. She was definetively using that as muniton for a later date. No way Ranma would want anyone except Akane to see this.

Nabiki was about to go skip to the Pill Box entry, when she heard commotion downstairs. She looked at her clock and frowned, realizing that it was already dinnertime. Had she wasted all her time reading Ranma’s sappy thoughts? She groaned, realizing that she didn’t get any studying done.

A mischief thought came unbidden. Maybe she wouldn’t wait for a later time. Maybe blackmailing Ranma with the poem would not give her much money, but she did know what could give her much more entertainment. She turned on her PC-9821 and began typing, soon enough she sent an e-mail to one of her old underlings at Furinkan and printed a sheet of paper with some decorations.

With that done, she hid the diary and went downstairs to have lunch, before someone came looking for her and caught her looking at what she shouldn’t.

Already at the table were Ranma and Akane, sitting close together as always while discussing something that had happened at school. How did I not see that they’re barely managing to not keep their hands to themselves? The good for nothing panda was setting the plates, while her own father read a newspaper.

Kasumi and Ranma’s mom came from the kitchen with the food.

Akane thanked them for their hard work.

“Tomorrow, can I give you a hand? I promise I will follow all your instructions!” Akane said, jumping up and down from her spot like a little child.

Ranma sniggered, “you will need at least five other people making sure you properly follow the instructions, tomboy.”

“Are you calling me stupid!?” She asked, a mallet already in hand.

“I’m just calling it like I see it!” he replied, raising his hands as if expecting a fight.

Nabiki narrowed her eyes at them. They were acting like usual but… had they been acting all along?

Akane made a face, and Nabiki saw an imperceptible nod between them, and they both dropped the matter, and resumed eating.

If I can see that, surely daddy… she thought as she turned to her dad and saw that his face was completely obscured by the newspaper. Or maybe uncle Saotome… the dumb panda was too busy devouring his food to even care what his son and ‘fiancée’ were doing.

Kasumi winked at Nabiki.

She knows? Oh, am I the only moron here? The dads don’t know because they’re busy staring somewhere else, but Kasumi and Autie Saotome are aware of their little coded words and cute puppy eyes they send each other?

“So, Vega and Altair, huh?” Nabiki said as she sat down. “Gotta say, didn’t know you had it in you.”

Ranma’s pigtail puffed like a startled cat. “What… what are you talking about?”

“You didn’t get it?” She said, handing him the printout. “This got home earlier,” she lied through her teeth, “I thought you had ordered it. Gotta say the graphic designer you hired is probably an amateur.”

Ranma snatched the paper from her. “I don’t know what ya’ talkin’ about!”

He read the thing and his face went redder than his Tang shirt.

Akane took the paper and read it, when she was done, she frowned slightly. “Who wrote this?”

Nabiki inclined her head. He didn’t give it to her?

“I didn’t do it, and I got no idea what Nabiki is bullshiting about!” Ranma said with his face still red, steam coming out from his ears.

Akane read the thing a second time. “But… this says that you wrote it.”

Genma snatched the poem from Akane’s hand so he and Nodoka could see it, Soun and Kasumi peered at it from further back.

Ranma sent Nabiki a warning glare. She replied by showing him her tongue.

“I heard that these are all over town, but you didn’t write it, little brother?” Nabiki asked, batting her eyes innocently. She proceeded to open her eyes wide in mock surprise. “Or did you?”

Ranma seemed to be ready to announce that he had nothing to do with that, and that he would never write a poem, and even if he did, he would not write one for an uncute macho girl like Akane.

Yes, Nabiki could tell that this is what Ranma was going to say, but Akane murmured something in Ranma’s ears, and he deflated.

Soun, Genma, were making a happy dance celebrating the love of their children and how as soon as they solved their financial problems, the pair would be married. Soon, they included Nodoka. She looked like she found it awkward, but began dancing just as much as her husband and friend.

Akane gave Nabiki a look. “We will talk about this later.” She stood up, and grabbed Ranma’s pigtail and dragged him to the dojo ruins. The boy kept almost saying that he had nothing to do with it. But Nabiki had to give him some credit, he managed to keep his mouth shut.

Nabiki rushed back to her room, and turned on one of the spybugs that she had set all over the household. She began recording as she approached her window and took out her binaculars to see the pair better. She lowered her head when they turned in her direction.

“Did you write that?” Akane asked him after seemingly deciding that Nabiki wasn’t staring.

Ranma gulped.

“Did you?”

He fidgeted. “Yes? I… I was going to recite it at our wedding.”

But aren’t you two already married, bozos?

“You didn’t get the chance.” Akane lowered her head so they toeached each other’s foreheads. “Sorry, I should’ve waited.”

He shook his head. “We waited enough.”

“I liked it, thank you,” she said with a smile, and kissed his lips. “Should we tell them?”

“No. They will want a proper ceremony that they can’t pay, and babies, your dad once told me that he wants at least two grandsons so he can cuddle them.”

Akane frowned. “When did he say this?”

He scratched the back of his ehad. “Eh, back when Ryoga and I got turned into kids.”

She snorted. “Oh, you mean when Ryoga’s son and his cute pigtailed friend visited our house?”

He scowled and looked away in shame. “That was a joke!”

She smiled him, and caressed his pigtail. “You don’t have to be mean to him, to any other boy really, you know I’m not leaving you for anyone.”

“I know,” he replied. “But I can’t help it. I like to joke around.” He saw the way she was staring at him, and added, “I’m not a bully!” She rolled her eyes and nodded.

“So,” she said between kisses, “you don’t want kids?”

“It’s not that!” He said, his face already getting the same red tint as before, “we’re too young and…”

She revealed something from her pocket. Nabiki couldn’t tell what it was, but by the pair of idiots’ reactions, she knew.

“Ah, but… we… used condoms?”

“Not always,” Akane said, pocketing the incriminating evidence. “And considering how much we’ve… you know, even with all the protection in the world, sooner or later this could have happened. Maybe magic was involved? Who knows!”

Akane seemed sad.

Ranma took her into his arms and hugged her like there was no tomorrow. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“You will be a great mom,” he told her, “the best.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “I thought we weren’t ready?”

“Doesn’t matter, you’ll be the best mom ever.”

“Better than your mom?”

“She let that oaf take me from her for more than a decade, what do you think?”  He grinned. “Unless you want me to take the little one on a ten-year-long trip?”

Akane hugged Ranma, pretending he hadn’t said the last part. “Should we tell them?”

“They will make a mess and…” He took a seat on top of what looked to be one of the dojo’s walls. “look, after the last scare, you know, when we thought you might be pre—pre— I mean, with child, and Shampoo did that, I was so scared.” He clutched his knees. “If they know, someone will try to… to…” he began to cry.

Akane hugged him so his face was hidden under her breasts. “No one will take us from you.”

“Saffron almost did.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding at that and her eyes widened with realizaton, “I will have to see a doctor as soon as possible,” she gulped. “Now that you mention Saffron, I’m pretty sure that this happened on the day before you left for China. Getting calcinated and turned into a miniature doll is probably not good for the child.”

Ranma’s eyes widened, and he immediately took Akane in his arms. “Now you tell me!? Let’s go, NOW.”

Akane seemed like she wanted to tell him that she could move on her own, but instead  she gave him directions for the hospital.

For a fraction of a moment, Nabiki forgot to think about money and instead hoped that her nephew or niece were all right.

She stopped the recording and ejected the cassette. She stared at it with disgust. “What the hell did she mean by calcinated? What happened in China?” Then she hurled the cassette at the floor and stomped on it until only jagged pieces remained.

She skipped the stupid pillbox debacle, almost ripped out the bit where Akane and Ranma helped Ukyo while she was sick (less than a week after she had decided to bomb Nodoka’s home!), and went straigth to China.

It was longer than any other collection of entries. It had everything, from the weird formulae that Ranma thought explained his martial arts, to his thoughts between fights, to an almost make out session with Akane, that ended with Ranma savagely punching Akane.

‘Ryoga and Mousse came in at the worst possible second, because of course they did. They did not see her kiss me wrong. They did not hear her fail all our code words. They did not see her fake smile, or how she lacked Akane's warmth, or how she would change topics when it was obvious she was hiding something. They only saw my fist, Akane’s face, and the space between them.’

‘Ryoga moved like he had been waiting his whole life for proof that I was the villain. Maybe he had. Mousse was worse in a different way. He did not even ask why I had hit her. Apparently, he considered Akane his only friend in Japan, so he took it personal when he thought I was beating the shit out of her.’

‘I tried to tell them. I really did. I yelled our code words, because if the real Akane was anywhere close she would have understood. To Ryoga and Mousse, it must have sounded like I had finally broken and started screaming nonsense. Ryoga pinned my shoulder. Mousse caught my wrist. Between them, they held me still long enough for the fake Akane to breathe.’

‘The fake used that second. She staggered back, one hand to her mouth, the other with the Kinjakan and still wearing Akane’s face badly enough that I wanted to tear my own eyes out. I could not reach her. Ryoga thought I was trying to finish what I had started, which I was, but not to Akane! Mousse thought that I had gone insane and couldn't understand why I would do something like that. Neither of them understood they were protecting the wrong girl.’

‘Then, she stepped into the furo. Akane’s shape broke apart in front of them. Feathers. Wings. Kiima’s eyes. Mousse grip went quiet so fast it was almost funny. Almost. Ryoga’s dissolved a moment later.’

‘I wanted to smash their skulls to the ground. Both of them. They let her go as she told us that she had captured Akane. But… I couldn’t really blame the idiots, they… they had grown since we fought the Musk. I had reacted like a lunatic. It was my fault.’

Nabiki blinked several times, and then read the next few paragraphs where Ranma explained how the Akanenichuan had been crated.

It seemed stupid and dangerous, knowing that someone could just throw themselves at a spring, and become a perfect copy of Akane.

Nabiki flipped through the next few pages filled with ‘woe is me’ from Ranma for not being there to protect Akane.

Then… came the entry that explained the ‘calcination’ thing Akane had mentioned.

‘I’m writing this several days after the fact. Couldn’t bring myself to write anything until I had saved Akane. But she almost died three times. I felt her die in my arms. First she died saving my life when she saved me from Saffron, who was feeding himself my life energy, then she almost died when Shampoo took us hostage and threatened me to kill her if I didn’t kiss her, then she almost died because I had been too slow to get her the Jusen water.’

‘I… probably need to do a battle analysis like usual. I don’t want to. We beat the crap out of the Phoenix Tribe, then I almost killed Shampoo, but Mousse managed to save her from the enslavement spell, guy actually used a mirror so Shampoo would be her own master. Part of me respects him, part of me thinks that Shampoo shouldn’t be her own master, she’s shown time and again that she doesn’t care what obstacle is in her way, she will eliminate them. But… yeah, Mousse is a good guy. Better than Ryoga, at least. Who knew?’

Nabiki felt the need to kick off a few dozens of her pre-prepared plans to get the Amazons out of their hairs. She would wait until Akane and Ranma were back, but… if Shampoo had actually done that, there was no way she could wait until one of those plans made her money. She needed the crazy bitch out of Japan.

‘I still have not written the fight properly. I know I should. There are things I noticed about Saffron’s wings, the shape of his fire, the way the heat bent before it struck. Later. Maybe. Right now, the only part that matters is Akane sleeping by my side.’

‘When he turned her into a doll, she somehow kept herself alive by sheer force of will. Barely. Still aware enough to move when Saffron raised his hand. I saw the light gather. I remember convincing myself thatI could take it. Akane did not give me the chance. She moved first.’

Nabiki’s fingers flattened against the page.

‘Saffron said her body had become resistant to heat, like that explained anything. Like knowing why she survived the first blast made it fine that she had been used as my shield. He… he even sounded like he respected her, that he felt sorry for her. So why didn’t he just let me get the water? Why did he have to be such an asshole? Once Akane was safe, I would have let him finish whatever transformation he needed. But he didn’t let me get the Jusen water, he was too petty for that.’

‘Akane threw herself at him again, the fool. She was saving me, again. And worse of all, when I was the one trying to save her. That is the thing nobody understands about her. She does not rush in because she thinks she cannot be hurt. She rushes in because she sees someone else about to be hurt first. We’re the same, I guess. I do not want her hurt.’

‘After that, I stopped thinking like usual. I stopped escalating to the threat level. Saffron wanted to stand there and call himself a god while Akane fell apart in my arms. Fine. I gave him a human answer. Except, I couldn’t even see where he was in the fiery inferno, not until Akane threw herself one more time. I understood there, while I am her protector, she is also mine. We are a team. We did it together. We killed him. It was him or us.’

Nabiki wasn’t sure if Ranma felt remorse for killing that guy, or if he felt remorse for not feeling remorse. It didn’t matter, if this Saffron person was dead.

‘Once I got the Jusen water, she became normal sized, but… she didn’t breathe. She was dead in my arms for five minutes. I cried her name, told her I loved her, filled her with kisses and… then she was brought back to me, good as new. She smiled, and we kissed in front of our friends for the first time. We promised we would marry each other as soon as we got to Japan. We were both scared to miss our chance before something killed us for real.’

‘I asked Mousse to be my best man. I think I hurt Ryoga, but I didn’t care. I hugged everyone, except Shampoo. At least she had the decency to free pops from the magical enslavement she had put on him. I danced with little Plum, who laughed, and laughed.’

‘Jusenkyo is lost now, Plum and her dad say it will take months, maybe years for it to be restored. I don’t care about the cure, only about the woman I’m holding hands with.’

She closed her eyes, and stood up, kicked her door open and stomped her way back to the guest room. No one was around. She put the diary back in its place, and the marriage certificate as well.

The photo of their engagement, she’d keep.

“Found it enlightening?” A ghostly voice asked.

Nabiki jumped startled, and turned around, finding Genma Saotome standing in the weirdest martial arts pose she had ever seen. Half of his body was transparent.

“What do you want?”

“Your help,” he replied as he sat on the floor, “you finished the diary, right? So you know.”

Nabiki’s gaze drifted back to Ranma’s backpack. “You read that?”

Genma frowned, “I read the last chapter, yes.”

She sighed. Thankful that the old man had read the one section that was rated M for mature not for the perverted stuff, but for all the gore. “But… you were there.”

He nodded, “I was, but I…” he frowned. “They’re going to get married, but I don’t know if it’s for the best.”

“What do you mean?”

“On our way back to Japan, they wouldn’t leave each other’s side. They became the other’s shadow. Do you understand?”

“They’ve always been that, I think, we just didn’t see it.”

He rubbed his chin. “Perhaps they were.” He sighed. “I should have gone to Nodoka, she— she would have allowed Ranma to live, even if he had that curse. Then, my boy wouldn’t be so attached to your sister.”

She gritted her teeth. “And why is that a problem now? Weren’t you just celebrating that the schools will be joined?”

“I’m delighted that the schools will be joined,” he assured her. “But… after I have a grandkid or two, what will happen? Ranma and Akane have a fire too bright in them, to untamable, except by the other. I fear that their fire will run out before their time.”

She looked down, she did not disagree.

“So, you’re thinking about your kid for once in your life?”

Genma looked like he had aged many decades. “I always think about Ranma, not always in the way a good father should, but I do. I love him.”

“If you conspire to get him to leave Akane, you will kill them both,” she said as a warning. What other thing could she want to ‘team-up’ with her for?

“I have some money,” he began, and her eyes perked at that. “From the insurance after, you know, the girls blew up our house.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t your wife have that money?” While she loved to scam people, she drew the line at actually stealing from someone, especially someone as nice as Nodoka Saotome.

“She agrees to this,” he said in a tone that assured that she would have to talk with his wife later on, “I… can you get them all to leave my boy alone? The fiancées, the suitors, the rivals.”

She frowned. “Don’t they make him stronger?”

“They keep dragging him to more and more dangerous enemies.”

“From what I read, Ryoga and Mousse were pivotal in your little war with the Phoenix Tribe. More so than you.”

He nodded at that. “Which is why I have decided to unseal certain techniques,” he smiled a bit. “The Hibiki boy saved Ranma when he first thought Akane had died.”

“He did?” Nabiki asked, surprised because that had not been part of Ranma’s accountings of the events.

“Ranma just… died on the inside. Ryoga… and Mousse, now that I think about it, they saved him. My boy was dying and I was enslaved to the enemy, I was powerless.” He sagged. “He needed the help of two people who have countless times tried to kill him. Do you know what does tell me?”

“That your son and his wife are able to turn even the worst of us into good people?”

He blinked. “His what?” He shook his head, seemingly not caring about her word choice. “No, it tells me that they are too quick to trust. That sooner or later they will trust someone who will betray them. They will not die by the hands of a powerful god, but by a treacherous knife in the back.”

“If that ever happens, the traitor will be dealt with, don’t you agree?”

He nodded, but he didn’t care for her words.

“I mean, your son has trusted Pantyhouse Taro in the past, even though that guy has proven time and again not to be trustworthy.”

He smiled a bit at duck and chuckled. “He did, didn’t he? Last time was one weird fight, first trying to help Rogue, then Taro, and back to Rogue. Turned out that they’re both... difficult people.”

“More like they’re both assholes,” Nabiki said with a small nod. While Rogue looked and sounded like a good girl, she did destroy half of their house and didn’t lift a single finger to help them fix it up. No, she did not count Rogue in the ‘good guy’ camp.

“I can promise you that I will help the lovebirds if they ever decide to trust Taro, Rogue, or someone like them again.”

He nodded, seemingly satisfied with that.

He began to stand up when he seemed to remember something. “One more thing.”

“Yes? She asked, dreading whatever he was going to say next.

“During our trip back to Japan… Akane forgave Shampoo. I was Shampoo’s slave for days and I can tell you that Akane should never trust Shampoo again. The next time she shows her back, Shampoo will stab her. And if she kills your sister, my boy is done for. Understood?”

She didn’t need further encouragement, but she agreed. “I will do whatever it takes to kick the amazons from Japan.”

He nodded and opened the door for her. “Very well, you will let me know later how much you’re scamming me for this service that we both want.”

“Scam is such an ugly word uncle, I think we can come with a mutual agreement that will not only ensure those lovebirds keep their heads, but that we both make a ton of money. I mean, you are a master scammer yourself, are you not?”