Chapter 4. Tuesday, July 5

Ranma and Akane had been walking through a mountain park with a beautiful view of Tokyo in the distance. The two girls sat together on a bench, enjoying the scenery. Akane turned to Ranma. “You know, Ranma, I used to get so mad at you, but you were just doing the things that guys do. Now that you’re a girl, well, we’re on the same wavelength. And, well, my feelings for you have only grown stronger.”

Ranma smiled and tilted her head. “I feel the same way, Akane. I’ve always admired you for your strength and determination. And I’m drawn to you all the more as well. But can we really—”

“Shut up, Ranma,” Akane interrupted, leaning in to kiss her. Ranma felt a thrill run through her body as their lips met. She wrapped her arms around Akane, pulling her closer. And then the dream faded like the closing scene of a movie….

Still half asleep, Ranma tried to recapture the moment but it was gone. She lay in the bed, enjoying the afterglow of the dream, but also feeling a pang of sadness. That hadn’t been the real Akane, just some figment of her imagination. She sighed, snuggled more, and dozed a little longer.

* * *

When he awoke half an hour later, the dream and how he’d felt about it were far more distant, barely on the edge of memory. It still bugged him that his dreaming mind seemed to keep conjuring up scenarios that he really didn’t want to think about, but he needed to face the day, not dwell on dreams. The focus and resolve of Ranma Saotome was what he needed now, not some girlish romantic fantasy.

As he started to get up, he caught his reflection in the mirror. He hoped the young woman would have an expression of determined resolve, but instead she looked wistful, even a little sad. “I’ve gotten myself out of worse scrapes than this,” he told his reflection firmly. He smiled at the absurdity of trying to convince his own reflection, and she smiled back. She is… I am… pretty cute. The way my hair is mussed from sleeping, it looks kinda casual and carefree, he thought briefly, before shaking his head. Focus, Ranma! You have a mission to accomplish!

He got washed up and dressed, ready for another school day, his thoughts filled with ideas about training and strategy. Just as he made to leave his room, he found himself caught in a moment of indecision. He looked at his reflection in the mirror again. The young woman looking back at him had a thoughtful expression on her face. He opened a drawer in his dresser where he’d stuffed a number of items from times when he’d gone all out for a femme presentation for some scheme or other, and found some styling gel. Carefully, he used a little gel to recreate the slightly tousled look he’d seen when he’d woken up, creating a carefully manufactured untidiness. Satisfied, he left his room.

* * *

Meanwhile, Akane had been helping Kasumi in the kitchen when Ranma appeared in the doorway. He hasn’t even brushed his hair yet, she thought. He looks so cute when he’s not trying to be all perfect and put together.

Ranma surveyed the scene quickly. What had Akane actually prepared…? Kasumi was working on the tamagoyaki and the rice, and had given Akane all the ingredients for miso soup. But she hadn’t started doing anything with them yet. That was a relief, as Akane’s skill in the kitchen was diametrically opposed to her good intentions, and a mix of inedible food and hurt feelings wasn’t a good way to start anyone’s day.

“Morning, Akane-chan,” Ranma said cheerfully, trying to sound casual. “Hey, could we work on making breakfast together? I gotta learn, too. Not, y’know, cos it’s a girl thing, I mean, even guys need to know how to cook sometimes, right? You can tell me what to do and we’ll figure it out together.”

Once he was old enough, Genma had happily dumped most of the cooking for their training trips on Ranma. He could make tea and rice, cook eggs in a couple of different ways, and maybe a couple of other simple things, and that had been enough for them to get by, especially when they could occasionally obtain better food that someone else had prepared. But the food that normal people considered to be staples—meals that required a real kitchen, good pots and pans and knives and other tools, proper ingredients, and subtle spices or complex flavors—were still beyond him. And he was absolutely in awe of the amazing food that Kasumi-oneechan produced as if it was nothing.

Meanwhile, he knew from unfortunate experience that Akane’s biggest problems when cooking were not paying attention to details (like quantities), rushing through things, and making weird substitutions. Even with something as simple as miso soup, he’d seen Akane let the soup come to a full boil before adding the miso paste, ruining the flavor; plop the miso directly into the pot, skipping the step where you dissolve it in a bit of dashi first, resulting in lumps; and, in one of the worst-tasting examples, absentmindedly add some of the pickles to the soup. Her attempts at more complex recipes always resulted in even more inedible meals, so Akane was usually strongly encouraged by everyone but Kasumi to stay far away from the kitchen, no matter how much she wanted to help. (Kasumi, of course, wanted her to be happy and to learn how to cook properly, so Akane was still able to create an occasional disaster.)

Ranma wanted her to do better, too, so he was happy to have an opportunity to both help her and try to keep her from making mistakes. His constant questions (like, “How much soy sauce do we actually need?”—none!) forced Akane to slow down and think through each step. When they finished, they’d managed to prepare a simple—but edible!—miso soup, even if the wakame never quite made it in. Akane was delighted to have broken a long losing streak of culinary disasters (and everyone else was, too).

That was really nice of her, Akane thought as they were finishing up, wondering if she should thank Ranma for stepping in. Then she corrected herself, Nice of him, I mean. As she drew breath to thank him, Ranma spoke first.

“Thanks for helping me with breakfast, Akane! I really appreciate it. Hey, I’ve got some ideas for training today. Maybe we can chat about them on the way to school? But… uh… maybe you have ideas, too? Or, like, want to do your own thing? That’s fine, too.”

Akane nodded. “I do have some ideas; thanks for asking. We’d better get going though, or we’ll be late.”

As they gathered up their things, Akane couldn’t help thinking how this version of Ranma was different from the boy who drove her crazy so often, or his girl caricature who always seemed to trivialize the realities of being a woman in modern Japan. Maybe it was just circumstance; they’d had a couple of days without anyone bursting into their home to fight Ranma or confess their undying love and Ranma felt able to let his guard down more than usual. Or maybe it was something more fundamental. It wasn’t that she didn’t want the old Ranma back (she did find him attractive, even if she’d die before she admitted it), but she did rather wish that guy could have some of the sensitivity and thoughtfulness this version of him seemed to be showing.

* * *

Kasumi had been impressed with Ranma’s close collaboration with Akane in the kitchen that morning. Akane’s “cooking” was notoriously bad, despite the time she’d spent trying to teach her. But Ranma seemed to be able to be able to maintain a balance between encouraging Akane and stopping her from making her usual mistakes that kept Akane’s enthusiasm up while keeping her from getting frustrated or angry.

Her own approach of pure loving encouragement, which she’d learned from their mother, had never seemed to make Akane’s cooking any better. And certainly Ranma-kun’s previous approach to “helping” Akane in the kitchen had never worked out for anyone, any more than his mocking complaints about her cooking at the table had, least of all for himself.

Whatever was going on with Ranma, it seemed like it was making him a better person, and that made her smile.

And she wasn’t the only one smiling that morning. She’d spotted Akane stealing fond glances at Ranma over breakfast, and how Akane’s eyes had lingered on Ranma’s hair. Yes, there was definitely something going on with his hair. She’d seen Ranma go all out styling “her” hair in the past when play-acting femininity for some scheme or another, but this was different. What he’d done today was far more subtle, yet to her eye clearly deliberate—and actually quite fetching. That was… interesting.

* * *

When Ranma and Akane arrived at the school gates, they found not just Kuno waiting for them, but Shampoo as well. She leaned against a tree, arms crossed, looking displeased.

“Seems like my future husband wants to be my future wife, instead,” Shampoo said, glaring at Ranma. “You think I won’t like you if you stay girl? You forget, I part of Amazon tribe; we no care about silly things like that. If you do want to be boy again, great-grandmother has cure, you just have to marry me, which you want anyway, right?”

“I hardly know you,” Ranma replied, trying to sound firm but polite. “And anyway, I’m not thinking about marriage right now. I’ve got other things to focus on.”

“Well, if you want know me better, great-grandmother has opening at noodle house,” Shampoo said, smirking. “You can work there, earn some cash for pretty dresses, or be a proper man and marry me.”

Akane had only heard some of their conversation, as she had been dealing with Kuno and his usual romantic nonsense; she’d dealt with the matter in her traditional way and he was now sailing over the top of the school buildings thanks to a sudden influx of kinetic energy, courtesy of one of Akane’s special techniques. She turned to Ranma. “Ignore her,” she said firmly. “She’s just trying to get a rise out of you.”

“Actually, maybe there’s a germ of a plan there,” Ranma mused. “If I could get a job at the restaurant, I’d be able to get close to Cologne, and maybe I could find a way to snatch that Phoenix Pill from her.”

Akane rolled her eyes. She felt like Ranma would be walking into an obvious trap, but it wasn’t like she had any better ideas. “All right,” she said finally, “but be careful. Cologne is tricky, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

* * *

Ranma’s school day went better than yesterday. The morning’s classes had a similar flavor to the previous day, but it felt like his low profile was paying off in unexpected ways. Without an imminent confrontation looming with some adversary, his attention was more solidly focused on what he was supposed to be learning. And group exercises now provided a way for him to actually interact with his classmates rather than just using them as an excuse to slip away unnoticed for crisis management.

In a similar vein, lunch began the same way as the day before. Once again, he had wanted to be near Akane only to end up on the periphery, pushed aside by Akane’s friend group. They still didn’t know quite what to make of him given all the tales Akane had told them about Ranma-kun, and seemed to be, at best, cautious around him and, at worst, actively ignoring him. But today he was taken by surprise when Yumi slid into the seat next to him and several other girls came along in her wake, sitting down, introducing themselves, and chatting with him as if he were no different from anyone else.

Yumi seemed to create a powerful sense of tolerance, inclusivity, and amiability around her that encouraged people to connect with each other. Ranma was amused when she realized that Hiroko, one of Akane’s friends who had barely had a word to say to her, got drawn into a conversation Yumi had started about trends for girls’ jeans and vigorously agreed with Ranma when she said it was so unfair that boys’ jeans had decent pockets while girls’ jeans had tiny ones that could barely hold a lip balm. He couldn’t help smiling inwardly when Akane looked a little bit put out by the sudden change in lunch-table dynamics.

As the day continued, a few other students also made efforts to get to know him, and it seemed like even the warier teachers were taking “Saotome-san” seriously. By the time the bell rang to signal the end of the day, he felt like he was really starting to find his place as “just another one of the girls” at Furinkan High School.

* * *

On the way home from school, Akane and Ranma stopped by the Nekohanten. Ranma explained that he was looking for a job, and Cologne, recognizing him immediately, was delighted to offer him a position. It came with a waitress uniform that was clearly on the skimpy side, and also with some snide remarks from Cologne about how Ranma needed to learn how to be pretty and alluring while doing domestic chores if she wanted to be a proper wife for Shampoo. Ranma gritted his teeth and accepted the job anyway, starting the next day.

“That outfit is demeaning,” Akane said as they walked away from the noodle house, “You shouldn’t have to wear that.”

“Ah, I’ve worn worse,” Ranma replied with a wry smile. “I know the drill.”

He stopped her, and then, as she watched, he subtly changed his posture, batting his eyelashes slightly. “Why, sir, what a big portion you’ve ordered today,” he said in a coquettish voice. “I do hope you can finish it all, or else this waitress might have to help you with that later….” He winked at Akane, who rolled her eyes but couldn’t help smiling.

“It’s so weird that that comes so easily to you,” Akane said, shaking her head. “You do know that you kinda drive me crazy when you do that, right?”

“It’s just an act, Akane,” Ranma replied, looking at her more seriously. “I don’t really mean any of it.” He paused, and decided to try his luck, shifting back into that hyperfeminine persona for a moment. “But if it gets you riled up, maybe I should do it more often?” he asked as he batted his eyelashes ferociously.

“Stop it! Baka!” Akane said, laughing and hitting him on the head. “Just focus on your training, okay?”

As they continued walking home a sunbeam lit up Ranma’s hair as they crossed a street. Akane suddenly realized that it was exactly as out of place as it had been that morning. He had to have done it on purpose. What was going on with him?

* * *

After dinner, they headed to the dojo for another training session. Akane had come up with an excellent idea. By using the mirror from her compact and a small flashlight, she could make a spot of light that moved suddenly and unpredictably, simulating Cologne’s evasive maneuvers. Ranma found it challenging, but with Akane’s coaching, he was able to improve his reaction time and accuracy. By the end of the session, he was feeling more confident about his chances against Cologne.

Afterwards, they worked together on an optional practice test for their upcoming exam in mathematics, finding that their strengths complemented each other well. Ranma was excellent at recall and quick calculation, while Akane excelled at understanding concepts and applying them to problems. As he headed up to bed, Ranma touched Akane’s arm lightly to get her attention and said, “Thanks for everything today, Akane-chan. I think together we’re an unstoppable team.”

Akane smiled back and nodded in acknowledgment; feeling a warm glow at Ranma’s words. But her pleasure was tempered by a pang of sadness, as their goal was to get rid of this version of Ranma and restore normality. That was what everyone wanted, right? She was sure that was what Ranma wanted, to get back to his old self. And, obviously, that was what she wanted, too—to restore the man she had grown attracted to. Right? She felt overwhelmed by the complex mix of conflicting emotions. She had no idea how to sort them out.

* * *

Back in his own room, Ranma’s emotional state was one of contentment. He’d managed another low-drama day, made some new friends at school, made progress in his training, and had the beginnings of a plan to get the Phoenix Pill from Cologne. He felt like he was finally starting to get a handle on this whole situation. As he moved to get into bed, he saw his reflection in the mirror again. The young woman looking back at him had a serene expression on her face. Ranma smiled at her. “We’re getting there,” he said softly. “We’ll beat Cologne yet.” He easily found a comfortable position on his futon and quickly drifted off to sleep.