CHAPTER THIRTEEN: 2004
Surprise...
“Pops!”
Genma caught her up in his arms and gave her a rough squeeze before pulling back to view her face with a critical eye. “Letting yourself go, eh, Ranma?”
Ranma frowned. “Hey, I’ve been...” The word ‘pregnant’ seemed to catch in her throat. ‘With child?’ ‘Bun in the oven?’ No easy way to put it, really, and euphemisms actually seemed to make it sound even worse. “Er...”
“You’ve been...” Genma prompted. He growled at her. “Never mind. There’s no excuse for abandoning what I’ve taught you! You should be able to practice in your sleep, after what I put you through!”
Ranma blinked. “Well... yeah, er...”
“Ranma, even for you, you’ve gone... monosyllabic,” Genma intoned. “Are you eating right? Have you been sleeping? Where’s Ryoga?”
The mention of Ryoga seemed to do something to the redhead, straightening her shoulders and loosening her tongue. She berated herself; obviously her father knew that she and Ryoga were married. He’d been on the video, after all! “Er, Ryoga’s at work, Pops. I’ve been eating and sleeping just fine... sort of,” she mumbled. It hadn’t been too easy to get to sleep the past week or so. “L-let me get you some tea.”
Genma’s brows quirked, but he nodded. “I’ll go get washed up.”
Once Genma had disappeared in the direction of the furo, Ranma scooted up the stairs like lightning, trying to find some clothing that her father would approve of. After a ransacking sort of search that resulted in a small new carpet of clean clothing on she and Ryoga’s bedroom floor, she selected a loose black shirt and a pair of jeans. She managed to fix her hair and splash her face, arriving in the kitchen to put the kettle on just as her father descended the stairs.
“So,” he said, after he’d been sitting at the table and watching her bustle in the kitchen. “Tea.”
“Tea?”
“Tea. You’ve really become a housewife after all, then?”
Ranma flushed. “I just thought that the both of us could use some tea.”
“You sound like Kasumi.”
The redhead wasn’t sure how to take this, although she knew how her father wanted her to. “In that I thought you might be thirsty and didn’t mind getting you a drink? After not seeing you for a year?”
Genma blinked, then started laughing loudly. “All right, all right; you’re not Kasumi.” He eyed her again. “Sorry. I’m still getting used to it. The idea of you as a mother and all.”
Ranma grinned in abject relief. She would not have to tell her father she’d been pregnant. Thank goodness for small miracles. “Yeah, well, me too,” she replied with a watery smile. She affected a perfect housewife demeanour for her father. “Would you care for some sugar with that? Or do you take it plain?”
He laughed good-naturedly, which relaxed Ranma another notch.
“How is the girl, anyway?”
“Sachiko is fine,” Ranma replied. “She’s asleep upstairs, and before you ask, I am not waking her up. She’ll probably be up in another fifteen minutes or so; best savour the silence.”
Genma nodded, sipping his hot tea. “Yeah, you were like that too. You’d never cool down! Poor Nodoka was ready to commit sepukku herself...”
Ranma couldn’t stop the smile that kept breaking out onto her face. Her father hadn’t ever spoken to her like this before. “Really? I was fussy?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe. Kept having nightmares, too, at around two or three years old... about dinosaurs of all things.”
“Dinosaurs!”
“Dinosaurs,” Genma confided, eyeing her over the tea. “It would have been funny if you weren’t so terrified...” His smile drooped very suddenly. “How’s the... the cat thing?”
Ranma blinked. “The...?”
“Yes, how’s it going? Did it work?”
“Work?”
Genma growled at her. “Yes, ‘work’, Ranma. The training you were doing for your ailurophobia.”
Ranma sighed. He was going to find out eventually. “Er... Pops...”
“No, eh?” Genma continued sipping his tea placidly. “Well, you win some, you lose some, I always say...”
Ranma examined him minutely as the older man sipped his tea. Genma hadn’t aged much at all in the six years that she’d missed. The only thing she noticed was that what hair he had left was slightly whiter – that and the fact that his attitude had relaxed slightly, much in the way that Ryoga’s had. She supposed that age mellowed a guy.
“Have you been back to see mom?” Ranma inquired.
“Hmm?” Genma was startled from his thoughts. “Oh, no, not yet. What, you think I’d wait to see my only son? No, it was you and the boy first.”
It took a moment for Ranma to realize that she was no longer ‘the boy’, and that Genma had to be referring to Ryoga. “Y-yeah. Uh, listen...” Ranma swallowed thickly, examining the tabletop and twirling a finger in a small circle of spilled tea. “Uhm... there’s been a little bit of excitement lately.”
Genma’s smile didn’t waver; if anything, it deepened. “Yeah? Need help defeating something big and scary? Heh.”
Ranma echoed her father’s laugh, very nervously. “Well... sort of. See... I can’t exactly remember the past six years or so.”
For a moment, the hulking man said nothing, merely sipping his tea quietly. “Does Ryoga know?”
Ranma nodded. “Well, yeah. He kind of figured it out right away. When I ran from him screaming and all.”
“Hmm.”
The redhead examined her father in the light of early morning that was spilling into the house. He had his sage martial-artist face on. This meant one of two things: either he was about to drop a real pearl of wisdom in her lap, or he was about to say something that would get him slapped.
“The past six years, eh? So the last thing you’d remember is being engaged to Akane, with old Soun and his daughters all living in this house together? And fighting that Mousse boy and Tatewaki and Ryoga every day?”
Ranma nodded. “Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“I see. Well, in that case, you and the baby could always move in with me and your mother.”
Ranma flushed, then coughed. Oddly, her father’s suggestion fit into neither category. “Thanks. I’ll... consider it.”
Genma perked up. “You’ll consider it? Well, the fact that he’s still alive should have told me that the boy’s playing his cards right.”
Ranma twitched. She didn’t know why, but every time Genma called Ryoga ‘the boy’, she felt irritated. “He hasn’t got any cards, Pops, he just made me swear to stick around a little while, that’s all.” Ranma wondered just why it was that she was lying through her teeth. She’d already planned to stay with Ryoga a little bit longer, but she was angry, now. “Come on, you know me; do you actually think that I’d just decide to live with someone on a whim? Some guy no less? Some former enemy no less?”
Genma blinked at her. “Oh. I got it. Sorry.” The older man shrugged, taking a calm sip of his tea. “It’s just that, when a woman wakes up in a guys’ pyjama top, it usually means–”
Ranma spat her mouthful of tea on the table, flushed, and ran into the kitchen for a rag. As she scrubbed the table – more than a bit harder than necessary – she interspersed glares between her father and the offending liquid. “For your information, we just slept, is all, we’ve barely even kissed! What do you think I am, some kind of pervert?” Her cheeks literally felt hot, now, so she knew she must be bright red, her anger and embarrassment clear. “And ‘woman’! What is it with you people? What are you trying to do? Why do you all need me to be a woman! I’m not, all right! Not, not, not!”
Genma reached out to snag her scrubbing wrist in an iron grip, reminding Ranma very suddenly that he was her sensei as well as her father, and halting her decent into a temper. Her startled blue eyes met his and found them dark with pain. “Ranma... if you don’t want me calling you ‘woman’, then why do you look like one?”
Ranma sighed, the anger draining from her, helplessness taking its place in a rapid but wearying flood. For a moment the spark of fury sustained her – how dare he say things like that, when she was so obviously stuck? – but it dissipated rapidly. She was stuck, after all, and was a woman. The fact that she took it as an insult wasn’t too encouraging for her prospects of future happiness.
“No one’s trying to ‘make’ you a woman, Ranma. Me least of all,” Genma finished, releasing her. He shook his head. “Hmph. ‘Pervert’, and all this gender crap. You’re echoes of Akane Tendo, today.”
The redhead growled quietly under her breath as her father’s eyebrows twitched up.
“Well, Ranma, let me see if I’ve got this right. You’ve fallen for the boy all over again, first of all. It’s obvious. You’re even wearing his clothes!”
Ranma opened her mouth to protest, but Genma halted her with a glare.
“But you’re not certain. You’re saying to yourself, ‘is it really all right’?” The older man affected a high-pitched, uncertain and indubitably feminine tone of voice. “’Is it okay to leave things as they are?’”
“Listen, you– ”
“Wondering if your parents... and friends... and old beaus can actually deal with all of this.”
“That’s not it at all!”
“Oh, but I think it is,” Genma contradicted.
“Well. Fine,” Ranma conceded angrily. “Here goes, then: why the hell did you let me marry the jerk? Didn’t you try and talk me out of it? Didn’t you kick Ryoga’s ass? Didn’t you tell me you’d disown me if I ever kissed a guy? And what about that seppuku pledge, huh?”
“There it is,” Genma acknowledged with a small smile. “All right, I’ll take ‘em in order. Why did I let you marry the jerk? I didn’t exactly have a say. Didn’t I try to talk you out of it? Of course; I’m tolerant, not saintly. I’ll leave that to Kasumi. I told you it was a fool mistake. As for kicking Ryoga’s ass...” He coughed delicately. “Ryoga and I are actually pretty well-matched. It would be fair to say that the ass-kicking would be more or less mutual, unless I broke out some forbidden techniques...”
“And you didn’t, for your only daughter!”
Genma raised an eyebrow, and Ranma flushed.
“S-son. Son.”
“Well, I did, actually. Er... many times. Sort of got some respect for the boy that way. He sure can fight!”
Ranma’s irritation flared again at Ryoga’s new title. “So he just replaced me, is that it?”
Genma flinched. “What? No, of course not!”
“Then stop calling him ‘the boy’! I’m the boy!”
The old man stared at her blankly before beginning to guffaw. “If I’d known coming home would be this fun, I’d have done it ages ago!” He wiped a stray tear from his eye. “Where were we?”
Ranma was running an exasperated hand down her face. “Don’t you take anything seriously?”
“Hmm, disowning you. No, it never really entered my mind,” the old martial artist admitted, scratching the back of his neck. “You’re an investment, Ranma, an investment that I spent eighteen years developing. Abandoning that would be a poor idea, don’t you think?”
Ranma was fuming. “Oh, I see, you just didn’t want raising me to be a waste of time!”
“In a manner of speaking.” He cleared his throat and finished his tea. “As for the sepukku, it didn’t really seem like anything I did was going to stop you two...” He chuckled. “Man, that brings back memories! The first time I thought you two were going at it, I–”
“Father!”
Genma paused, his small grin telling Ranma that he’d been joking.
“Can’t you tell I’m serious? I’m still trying to figure out what brought us together in the first place.” She paused. “I mean, sure, I can see it now. He’s so together and mature... and patient and understanding... aaand...” she drawled, her eyes catching her father’s. “Er. Well, anyway... but back then. I can’t see what would have made it happen back then.”
“Well, you and Ryoga had a lot in common.”
“Pops, me an’ Kodachi are both martial artists. That don’t mean I’d marry her.”
“Nah; there were other things.”
“Like?”
Genma’s playful expression dissipated. “Oh, you know. Loneliness in a crowd. Being angry all the time when you weren’t in the depths of despair. Dark cloud of depression constantly hanging over you...”
Ranma blinked. “Eh?” She worried her lower lip between her teeth. “Okay, I can get pissed off, I gotta admit... but it’s not a constant thing. And depressed? Maybe when I’m beaten, yeah, but then after that, I come back so strong that...” She trailed off, observing the faint line of worry that had appeared on her father’s forehead. “Pops...?”
“No one else told you the story?”
“Story? About what?” Frowning, she thought back. “Akane said something about my bein’ upset awhile back, and that Ryoga was the only one who could make me smile...”
“Something like that,” Genma replied quietly. “Son...”
“I didn’t... hurt myself... did I?”
Genma swallowed. “Well... you didn’t try to commit suicide, or anything. It was more of a constant, low-level sort of trouble, the kind I’m worst at dealing with. Once, you punched through the deck – wouldn’t tell us the reason. Banged your hand up pretty bad. Another time, you just left the house and didn’t come back for two days. When we asked where you’d been, you said, ‘walking’...” The balding man wiped at his brow, his gaze faraway. “But when you stopped caring when Akane cried, I really started to understand just how far you’d gone from the child you used to be.”
“I’m sorry, Pops.”
Genma laughed, suddenly and a bit out-of-place. “Hey now, hard to apologize for something you don’t even remember doing, isn’t it? Besides all that, it wasn’t your fault. Cologne told me it was the cumulation of all of the pressures that were constantly on you... but I always thought something had to have started you on that downward spiral. You wouldn’t talk about what it had been, even after you were feeling better.”
“So Ryoga and I had depression in common?”
“He understood you,” the older man clarified. “There was something new in you, something that he recognized and could speak to, that no one else could. That’s the answer, if there is any one answer for how two people fall for one another. There was a lot of mutual confusion between the two of you, a lot of embarrassment and denial and averted eyes, our own little daytime drama unfolding.”
Genma’s words went into her and filled the missing bits of the past like a key fitting into a lock. Ryoga had saved her in some way; and although she didn’t know how, she suspected she had also saved him. Their mutual rescue had turned into love somewhere along the way.
“Thanks, Pops,” she said.
A wail sounded from upstairs.
“Well, it looks like Sachiko is interested in meeting her grandfather...”
Genma smiled as he trailed Ranma up the stairs.
Watching Genma with Sachiko did a little to soothe Ranma’s nerves, especially when she saw how gently the older man treated Sachiko. Sachiko, for her part, was a remarkably friendly baby; after a couple of glances in her mother’s direction for reassurance, she was giggling at Genma’s attempts to entertain her.
“She certainly looks like you and Nodoka,” Genma conceded. “Guess that’s for the best all around, eh?”
“Pops...?”
“Mmm?” Genma swung the baby around in the air.
“You ain’t training her for nothing.”
Genma chuckled. “Mommy doesn’t mean it,” he told the baby.
That evening, trying to teach Sachiko new words as she cooked, Ranma ruminated over what she’d learned from her father. Although she now had a pretty complete picture of what had happened to her – except for the event that had started it all – much of the emotional reality was still missing. It was missing in the present, however, not the past. It was somehow linked to certain things she’d been doing, certain ways she’d been acting. Despite the fact that she felt that she might really come to like Ryoga... like that... her father’s behavior and Ryoga’s told her that there was still something ‘off’ about the way she was acting. Something Genma had said simply stuck in her mind, about perverts and ‘all this gender crap’, and she recalled Ryoga saying that he didn’t really mind she’d been a guy.
Was a guy?
The tiny revellation was enough to stop her in her tracks. “Uhm...” she whispered. Sachiko was beginning to fall asleep in her baby swing, so Ranma took her out and began to bounce her a bit. It was too close to the child’s bedtime for her to let Sachiko doze off. She wanted to get some sleep tonight, after all.
Now that Ranma thought about it, the Tendo girls and Ukyo had started talking about how Ranma had started to make gender nearly meaningless by her very presence. At the time, Ranma had thought that the girls must have been talking about how Ranma had changed her gender identity for good... that she was now a woman, where before, she’d been a man.
Could they have meant something entirely different? Could they have been talking about the fact that, even though Ranma was a man... was really, still a man... she was with Ryoga? Or even that, where Ranma was concerned, the line between genders simply blurred?
Ranma shook her head firmly, but more pieces began to slide into place. Ryoga hadn’t just said that he didn’t really mind about her being a guy in the past. He’d told her, ‘You’re a paragon of a lot of things, Ranma, but housewife isn’t one of them... You don’t cook or clean for me any more than I cook or clean for you. I don’t give you an allowance, or anything like that. You have a job. We waited to have children... Are you beginning to get a picture, here?’
At the time, Ranma had nodded begrudgingly, but she realized now that she hadn’t been getting the right picture at all.
Ranma swallowed past the lump in her throat, clutching Sachiko tightly as she paced the kitchen. Ukyo had told her that Ryoga loved every part of her. Taken literally, it caused that now-familiar churn of discomfort in her stomach.
Taken figuratively, it suddenly made a lot of sense.
It made so much sense it was scary. Thinking back, Ranma couldn’t recall exactly when she’d become familiar with her female form – it had just stopped being such a big deal. Annoying, but... oh, well. It was the price you paid for a strong education in martial arts. That was how Ranma had thought of it, on the surface.
Over the years, how many female mannerisms had she picked up? One: the ability to flirt, more complicated than it would appear at first glance. Two: wide, shimmering eyes, pouting lips, fists clutched under her chin – the pathetic lost-little-girl act. Three: summing up an outfit, its potential for Happousai entrapment, Ryoga-fooling or just going for a sundae. Four: sultry, lowered eyes – the combination of sex and innocence that men seemed to find intoxicating. It was a difficult balance, hard to achieve... Five: the ability to attract and keep a husband.
Damn.
Had her sense of masculine and feminine finally just bled together? Had that line blurred, as one by one the distinctions became unimportant?
Sachiko burbled in her sleep. Ranma looked down at her little daughter and sighed. “Sachiko, honey...”
She was Sachiko’s mother. That had exponentially increased her level of misunderstanding.
“Saki-chan...”
Sachiko blinked her eyes sleepily at her mother, her face screwing up and getting ready to cry.
“Aww, sweetie, don’t-”
The small child let out a yell that seemed to shake the rafters. It certainly seemed to shatter Ranma’s eardrums. “C’mon, kid, don’t do this to me...”
When Sachiko continued to wail lustily, Ranma bounced her around the kitchen with renewed agitation.
“Mou... Maybe it’s time for a bottle. What do you think?” she asked the child quietly. “Hmm?” She withdrew a bottle from the refridgerator and nuked a cup of hot water to set it in. “Is it milk time?”
When Ranma offered her the warmed bottle, Sachiko angrily shoved it away.
“C’mon, Saki-chan, you know you’re hungry.”
Sachiko almost certainly was hungry, but she was upset about having been woken, and wasn’t really all that interested in her mother’s attempts to placate her.
In desperation, Ranma began to hum the first song that came to mind. Sachiko’s sobs grew very suddenly less pronounced in response, her dark blue eyes going wide. Taking heart, the redhead began to sing: “yesterday the odds were stacked in favor of my expectations...”
Sachiko blinked at her mother in what looked like shock. Ranma had to wonder if she normally sang to the little girl.
“I’m caught up in all my doubt, trying to sort the whole thing out. Tell me that I’m smart enough to deal with all the information...”1
Sachiko clapped her hands.
“Well, lookie here. Seems I’ve got a fan,” Ranma replied. “Think I should go professional?” She swung the small girl through the air, and Sachiko giggled, her anger forgotten. The small redhead groped for her milk. “So now you want it, do you? Hmph.”
Ranma looked around the kitchen. “So I never transformed at all, Saki-chan?”
Sachiko, hearing her name, glanced up at her mother inquisitively. She said something around the nipple of the bottle that sounded suspiciously like, “baka”.
“I’m me. I was always me.” She bounced the baby on her hip as a wide, slow grin was crept across her features. Her eyes earnestly found Sachiko’s. “Ryoga-kun said I was a martial arts instructor before I had you. What do you say? Think it’s about time to start that up again?”
Sachiko burbled.
“I knew you would.”
When Ryoga came home, Ranma had given up on Sachiko and put her to bed. It was entirely likely that the little girl hadn’t slept all that well the night before because of the girls’ night in.
Ryoga sniffed the air. “Whoa. What are you making?”
“Baked chicken, green beans and yams,” Ranma replied with a small smile. It was strange, but, after no longer associating cooking with an encroaching tide of femininity, she’d had the sudden urge to make something elaborate.
“Smells great,” Ryoga replied. “How’s Sachiko?”
“Mmm, she’s fine. Sleeping.”
He glared at her. “You know that if she sleeps now, she won’t sleep through the night...”
Ranma chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. Where’d ya hear a stupid thing like that?”
Ryoga blinked. He leaned in to examine her.
“Well? What?”
The Lost Boy’s eyes slowly took her in. “...nothing,” he returned at length.
“Hmph. Well, anyway... I was busy today. I made up some flyers, wanna see?”
Ryoga nodded. “Flyers?”
“They’re on the table.” Ranma busied herself with the salad, vaguely aware of Ryoga moving towards the table, and hearing the rustling of papers.
Ryoga’s voice sounded slightly strange, choked. “You’re... you’re starting up classes again...?”
There was something plaintive in his tone, but Ranma brutally reigned in on her defensive desire to snap at him. She tried to be relaxed, tried to think of Ryoga as her friend instead of her husband.
Surprisingly, her blush cooled. “Yeah, I figured it was about time,” she replied easily. “I talked to Nabiki, Akane and Ukyo. Nabiki told me she could sit here on Thursday nights and watch Sachiko. Ukyo and Akane said they could come by on Wednesdays, and Akane said she could come alone to sit and do her homework and stuff all Tuesday.”
Ryoga’s face crumpled even further, but Ranma continued blithely on, despite beginning to believe that either she’d made some kind of awful mistake, or she’d been wrong about her personality not altering all that much over the years.
“So I figured that I’d do just two or three classes at first, ease back into it, you know? I’m sure I’m out of shape; even Pops said so.”
This seemed to jolt Ryoga from his daze. “Oh? Your father’s back?”
Ranma smiled crookedly. “Yup. And already on about taking our daughter on a training trip. You should listen to the guy. It’s like the first time wasn’t a complete and utter disaster.”
Ryoga’s lower lip trembled. He stood, taking her by the shoulders and staring at her face, his eyes darting over her features as though looking for an outward sign of her transformation. “Ranma...” he breathed quietly.
“W-what is it? What’d I do?”
“It’s... it’s you.”
Ranma drew back to watch him, concern in her eyes. “Damn it, Ryoga. I didn’t remember it all, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
He gave a small gasp, jolted slightly away from her. The pain was rapidly replaced with a wry bitterness, and he barked a laugh, rubbing fiercely at his eyes. “Sorry... but you’re acting... you’re acting like my wife...”
Ranma flushed. “Er...”
“And you’re starting classes here...”
“Well, yeah. I figured I’d had enough of sitting on my butt...”
“But that means you’re staying.”
Ranma frowned in thought. “Yeah. Guess it does.”
“You’re staying.”
“Well... yeah.”
“You’re staying!”
Ranma frowned at him. “I’m beginning to lose patience.”
“Oh, please lose patience! Yell at me for something stupid, or... or call her ‘our daughter’ again...”
The redhead smiled shyly. “Dumbass. You need to set a better example for our daughter.” She grinned. “Was that okay?”
Ryoga grinned and drew her into a hug. “Man... what happened to you?”
“What happened to you is more like it,” Ranma protested once Ryoga set her back down. “I mean, honestly. A flyer and a visit from Pops and you’re all aflutter.”
The expression on Ryoga’s face was well worth the moment it took to gently tease him. Her husband’s eyes filled very suddenly with tears; a large smile adorned his features. Rapidly wiping his eyes, he moved to check on the chicken.
Ranma felt a sudden and surprising rush of tenderness for him, and she realized that this was probably the first time she’d seen the real Ryoga since he’d opened the door and begged her not to hate him.
“Y’know, I can watch Sachiko sometimes, too. I am her father, you realize,” Ryoga said in a voice that sounded nearly normal again. “If I watch her some of the other nights, we can get that place going again.”
We, Ranma realized with what she saw as a juvenile leap of enthusiasm. “Mmm, probably,” she replied, trying not to let her joy spill over too much. “How much did I charge per lesson?”
“You didn’t, per lesson. It was more like per month, 8200 yen per month. But there were a couple of kids that got by free or on a discount by doing us some favors. There was that college kid, what’s-her-face, Aiko, who cleaned the dojo every day after practice and helped out some of the younger kids. She’ll probably be happy to get the same deal again.” He eyed her. “You look great, by the way.”
Ranma raised an eyebrow as she examined her outfit, which had been engineered to impress her father rather than Ryoga. She took in her loose dark tee shirt and jeans, then rolled her eyes at him. “Great for what, exactly? This ain’t fancy, or anything.”
Ryoga grinned at her shyly. “That’s why it’s great.”
“All right, all right. Too much sugar and you’ll spoil your appetite,” Ranma chided blandly. “I’ll be right back. Watch the beans, or they’ll burn.”
Once in the furo, Ranma leaned against the door for a moment to gather herself. Ryoga liked her, Ranma, not some girlish figment. And although that should have been strange, or scary, or maybe even disgusting, Ranma found herself humming instead, humming the same song as before, and grinning confidently at herself in the mirror.
Girl or no, there was something special about watching somebody enjoy food she’d cooked, especially if she had worked hard enough. Ranma spontaneously forgave Akane for all the times she’d tried to cook. It wasn’t just feminine, that nurturing impulse, it was a very human gesture of affection. Ryoga’s exclamations of happy surprise warmed her, although she kept quiet about it.
Their talk was surprisingly devoid of matters of the heart. Ranma spoke about her ideas concerning the classes, what levels she would offer and at what times they would attract the most students. They talked about where Ranma could post her flyers, where they would garner the most attention. Ryoga told a funny story from work that Ranma actually found funny.
Ranma, looking at him really enjoy himself with her, realized that she had started to like a shadow of the real Ryoga: he was a lot more than the stoicism and patience he’d been showing her. She’d seen hints of his humor all along, but now she was realizing that it was his general demeanor to crack the occasional wry joke. His sense of humor seemed to be rooted in observing human nature and making fun of it, a lot like Nabiki’s. Ranma wondered if this was the other side of his deep depression; he still saw what he saw, but was able to take it a lot less seriously.
Yet there was always that element of the serious about him, as though everything were of grave importance, especially when she was speaking. Even when she was teasing him, his head was cocked to one side, listening to the words and sorting the meaning behind them.
As Ryoga began to clear up, Ranma gazed at the flyers. She had to have realized that they meant she was sticking around. And it wasn’t because it was convenient, or because Ryoga was guilible, or because she didn’t know what she would do if she left.
“So you’re really staying?”
Ranma’s head snapped up in surprise. “You read thoughts, now?”
He chuckled. “Er... no. I’m sorry if I sound like a broken record.”
Ranma leveled him an I’m-Very-Serious stare. “You’d better believe it. Hand me a dish, okay?”
Ryoga complied, grabbing a clean towel from under the cabinet. “You won’t remember this,” he began.
“Story of my brand-new life,” Ranma sighed.
“...but dishwashing has a special meaning for us.”
Ranma stared at him blankly. “You aren’t serious. You’re telling me you somehow made dishwashing romantic.”
He laughed, drying the dish Ranma had handed him. “Romantic, no. More like practical. You and I both have some... er... anger-management issues.”
“That so? I haven’t seen any so far.”
“Because the gods have smiled down on me this past week,” Ryoga replied flatly. “There have been many times I wanted to yell...”
“So what do dishes have to do with tempers? Did we throw them at one another?”
“Of course not. But if we were having a stupid, meaningless arguement at dinner, once of us would signal and we’d both have to shut up. We washed the dishes together – silently – and once it was over, we both had the ability to be civil again.”
Ranma blinked. “Weird.”
“Worked every time, though,” Ryoga countered with a shrug. “With most silly arguments, it’s not like you can even remember why you were so upset after the first ten minutes.” He dried one of the dishes, taking it from her hands and stacking it beside the growing pile. “Housework is also very Zen.”
“Did Kasumi think this one up?”
Ryoga feigned surprise. “Wow. How’d you guess?”
“The words ‘housework’ and ‘Zen’ were in the same sentence.”
“Mmm.”
“Do you think we can spar some, later?” Ranma inquired.
Ryoga gazed at her in surprise before rapidly covering that with a cough. “Well... yeah, I have Mondays off. If you want to spar then, that’d be great. It’s been awhile.”
Ranma sensed that once again she’d done something pretty unexpected from Ryoga’s point of view, but she didn’t care. She was going to be herself, and if Ryoga didn’t like that, he could just... well... She frowned in sudden confusion. Well, okay, so I care if he likes me... but I’m not willing to pretend to be somebody else so he does. It was a faint distinction, but one that mattered to her.
They fell into a companionable silence, Ranma occasionally plunging her hands into the steamy water to retrieve a chopstick or small tasting-spoon.
“I’ve had this question on my mind for the past couple of days,” Ryoga suddenly said, running a cloth over a dish that was long since dry. “You seem like you’re in a good mood right now, so maybe it’s the best time.”
Ranma arched an eyebrow at him. “Uh oh.”
“When you first came here, you were...”
“Obnoxious?” Ranma cut in, already beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable.
“Upset,” Ryoga countered, finally putting the plate to the side. “And feeling... threatened.”
Ranma nodded silently, tucking a strand of red hair behind one ear in a slightly nervous gesture. “’M sorry, Ryoga, I was really mean– ”
Ryoga held up one hand. “Just for a second, imagine if our positions had been reversed.”
Ranma’s blue eyes widened. “Erk.”
“Yeah. Like... the whole koi rod thing. I probably would have tried to defeat you on the spot. Not that the modern Hibiki Ranma would have ever let me get away with that; she’d be far better than the old me.” He flashed a quiet grin, his head still lowered slightly over the washcloth he was holding. “She probably would have tied me up and lectured me on my duty as a husband.”
Ranma snerked. “You mean she wouldn’t have tried to prove her love and loyalty by washing your clothes and making you breakfast?”
“Now you’re just teasing.”
Ranma shrugged. “Well, yeah, okay. Maybe it was only natural for me to freak out. So what did you want to ask?”
Ryoga paled. “Well... it’s just... I’d think that someone in your position would automatically want to turn back into a guy, you know? Why have you been using the soap?”
Ranma froze, then turned slowly to look at him. “W-what?” She looked down into the hot water in the sink, trembling slightly, a head-to-toe tremble that made her set the final dish down into the water with exaggerated care. At the feel of hands on her shoulders she flinched.
“Ranma. Ranma?”
“It’s the soap, then?”
“Well sure, I use it every morning. It would kind of be the end if I were at work holding something heavy, and some cold water got... well, you get the idea...”
Ranma nodded mutely.
“Are you telling me you didn’t realize that you were using that weird soap? The white soap is yours. Okay?”
Ranma shook her head. “But... Sachiko.”
“Well, sure, when you were pregnant, you used it, too.” He gazed at Ranma’s slack features for a moment before adding, “this complicates it for you, doesn’t it?”
“So who wore the wedding dress, huh?”
Ryoga looked slightly irritated. “You, obviously, having a girls’ body half the time. I’d have looked pretty silly in one.”
“Me, obviously? So I was playing the girl this whole time, for you?”
Ryoga’s expression was stormy. “I guess I don’t understand.”
“I married you even though I was never stuck...”
“That’s right. Wanna ask again?” Ryoga’s expression had slipped from upset to combatative, but Ranma didn’t mind. In fact, it felt kind of good; she was back on very familiar ground.
“Don’t you realize how perverted that is?”
For thirty seconds or so, Ryoga was silent. Watching his face, Ranma wondered if she’d gone a little bit too far, calling him a pervert for... for marrying her? Ranma was filled with a sudden confusion.
And after a moment of internal silence, all the voices not-her-father rose in an overwhelming chorus: ‘does that even make sense?’, ‘who says?’ and ‘You like him.’ ‘If you’re a pervert, then so are Ukyo and Akane and Ryoga, too.’
And she liked him. She really did. And she didn’t really care what anyone else thought or said about it, or did to try and make her feel bad for liking him. He was... patient and sweet and good and great at martial arts and he held her like he never wanted to let her go... He was everything she wanted in a...
Something within her firmed and steadied.
He was everything she’d ever wanted in a person.
Ranma opened her eyes to view something she hadn’t seen in a long time: Ryoga at boiling point. “Erk,” Ranma said quietly.
“Fine!” Ryoga exploded. “So you suppose that all of this was my doing, right? You think that I just decided one day, ‘right! I’m going to fall for Saotome Ranma!’? No! This was hard for me! Don’t you think I struggled with this, too? I was in love with Akane, for the sake of kami-sama! And then all of a sudden, I start looking at you, YOU, and I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with me, I know you’re not a girl, but...” He seemed to relax slowly, his rage coming undone, falling away from him. “But I loved you anyway. I didn’t care if you were stuck or unstuck, even though...” He coughed. “Even though your guy form freaked me out sometimes, especially at first.”
Ranma swallowed around the lump in her throat, wanting to stop him from being angry, and yet needing to understand this. She could not just let things sit.
“I mean, you spent most of the time as a girl when you were around me, but after we got married, it’s not like I could help stumbling across you in your guy form once in awhile. It drove the both of us crazy. Finally one day you’d had enough, and you wouldn’t change anymore.”
“I stayed a girl?” Ranma whispered.
“No! You wouldn’t change back from a guy!”
Ranma frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“It pissed you off, the way I acted when you changed. We argued, and you made it very clear that if I couldn’t deal with your guy form, I was a no-good lousy jerk who didn’t deserve you.”
Ranma coughed into her hand, surprised when the cough turned into choked laughter.
“Well, yeah, we laugh about it now,” Ryoga murmured.
Ranma frowned. “Weird. ‘We’ laugh about it ‘now’... when I don’t even recall having this fight.”
“We’re having it now, aren’t we?”
“Hmm.” Ranma kept her reply neutral, but it was obviously true; and she couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that they were running down a well-worn road in their dealings with one another. It was as though they were playing out their entire relationship in fast-forward. “So what happened?”
“I... dealt. And you compromised. I learned to stop overreacting to your male form, and you just stayed a girl three-quarters of the time. The Tendo sisters made the worst fun of us, especially Nabiki – they all assumed we’d dealt with that all-too-obvious issue way before we got married.” He snorted. “We... er... kind of pretended it wasn’t an issue until it was almost too late.”
Ranma snorted. “Okay. Hey, I mean, why not? I’m still a guy. I kind of realized that I was on the inside... why not the outside, too?”
Ryoga placed his hands on her shoulders. “You okay with this?”
“Well... I mean, yeah, I guess. I’ve always thought of myself as a guy. If you can deal with being married to a guy... then I sure can deal with being one. I mean I’ve always been one... but...” She blinked. “I’m babbling, aren’t I?”
Ryoga leaned in close and kissed her gently on the lips. Pulling back a couple of centimeters, he whispered, “does that help?”
Ranma smiled. “Mmm. Well, maybe.” She leaned forward slightly and Ryoga caught her lips in his again. “Was that our first fight?”
“No.” Ryoga kissed her again. “Our first fight was... depending on how you look at it... either in junior high... or when you first... ‘arrived’ here and ran off...”
“Mmm.” Ranma wrapped her arms around his waist. “But this may be the first time we’ve made up,” she murmured. Inside, her heart was singing. She had both of her bodies! If she splashed herself enough, she could remove the soap and change back for awhile. For as long as she liked!
“Maybe,” Ryoga drawled, pulling her slightly closer. He examined her features closely, smiling at her. “You know, maybe it’s your memories, but you look... different.”
Ranma tilted her head to one side. “Different how? I thought you said I was always the same.”
He grinned apologetically. “You are, personality-wise. But somehow, lately...”
“What? Cuter? Sexier?” She frowned. “Flabbier? Pops said I looked out of practice.”
Ryoga shrugged. “Oh, well.” He leaned in and kissed her again, slow and soft. “Maybe it’s your attitude. But you almost look... younger.”
The redhead blinked at him, then began to laugh. “Oh, please. That’s some kind of pick-up line, huh? Better brush up on it, hadn’t you? You’ll never catch a wife with that.”
Ryoga barked a laugh. “Oh, really? I think I have certain skills that compensate for my lack of flattery.”
“Put your money where your – mmph!” she exclaimed, as Ryoga pressed his mouth to hers, much more demandingly this time. His hands roamed her stomach beneath her tee shirt, playfully tracing her navel.
Kami-sama... Ranma thought, arching her head back. Ryoga took her hint and nuzzled her neck. ...are we... are we going to do ‘it’ right here... in the middle of the kitchen floor? K-Kasumi’s kitchen? It was an idle thought, maybe funny, maybe serious.
Then Ryoga froze in his attentions.
Ranma made a small noise of querying protest, opening her eyes, not quite sure when she’d closed them.
Ryoga’s fingers moved along her abdomen again, more carefully this time.
“That tickles,” she replied, her eyes locked to his. “What’s the matter?” All of a sudden, she found that she had fallen back to land on her butt.
“Ryoga...?” Ranma was not certain how she’d ended up on the floor. He... couldn’t have pushed her, could he?
“W-who t-the hell...!” he hissed, backing away from her.
“What!” She saw the panic in his eyes. “What are you talking about!”
“You’re not Ranma,” he moaned, covering his hands with his eyes. “Oh, God, what have I done!”
“What!” Ranma found her feet faster than she would have thought possible. “That some kind of joke?” She stumbled towards him. “What are you saying?”
His eyes were on her again, bleak and grey as a winter storm. “You’re not my wife,” he repeated softly. “I t-told you h-how... how Sachiko took her own sweet time coming into the world...”
Ranma nodded, feeling like she couldn’t look away from his empty eyes, despite a sudden premonition of a very dark danger.
“E-eventually, m-my wife’s... doctor... g-gave her a C-section.”
“A what?”
Ryoga buried his face in his hands again. “They cut open her stomach to get Sachiko...”
Ranma frowned. “I don’t understand. So?”
Ryoga took her wrist in his hand and led it to Ranma’s own, smooth abdomen – her hands then immediately flew to cover every familiar line of the skin under her breasts and down to just above her privates. “No...” she whispered.
“There’s no scar,” Ryoga finished.
Upstairs, the baby that wasn’t Ranma’s began wailing again, shrill and plaintive.
Author’s Notes:
I know what some of you are thinking, but yes, it is possible. I myself am an example, and I know several others in the real world, much less an anime one. Sorry for revealing this plot point early in chapter nine by mistake... but there are a couple of comments I feel I ought to reply to. One is the 'mistake' about where the C-section scar would be - but there are at least two popular incision-types for C-sections, one longitudinal, the other latitudinal; these days it's the longitudinal one that is most common. Therefore Ryoga would be perfectly justified in his panic if he were feeling Ranma's lower stomach/upper abdomen and found nothing there. I also guarantee you that it is not a mistake that Ranma has the scar at all. A handful of reviewers already caught on...
For those of you who aren’t sure what I’m saying yet, you’ll find out in chapter fifteen.
Keep reading, keep writing, and I’ll see you next time!
1 Allison Kraus and Union Station is the group. I thought the songdid pretty well at explaining parts of Ranma's story in this timeline.
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