Chapter 12. Wednesday, July 13 – Friday, July 15
Over the next few days, Ranma’s dreams were their usual mix of manifested anxieties and subconscious explorations of things her waking mind preferred to avoid thinking about.
She had several variations of her confrontation with Cologne at the Nekohanten. In one, after her impassioned speech, Cologne was moved and offered her a different pill; one that would cause everyone else to think she had always been Ranma-chan, while she herself would retain the memory of her past. In another, she tried to give a different speech, about how much she desired the Phoenix Pill so she could return to being Ranma-kun, but Cologne didn’t believe her and the technique failed. Laughing, Cologne had said that no one would want to be a boy after living as a girl, but it was particularly unfathomable that Ranma would want that when she would make such a beautiful wife for Shampoo.
In another particularly vexing twist on the theme, it was Kuno who was applying the sincerity-cinch-up technique to her, using it to confess his everlasting love for Ranma-chan. In that one, as she searched his face for evidence of the sincerity of his feelings, she quickly found herself cinched up tightly by silk as he leaned in for a kiss. She woke up from that one with a shudder.
There were other anxiety dreams, like the one where she and Akane were attending a funeral and Akane was crying inconsolably. Ranma tried to comfort her, but Akane kept saying that she couldn’t believe Ranma-kun was really gone; that without a fiancé, she didn’t know how to cope. Ranma tried to explain that she was still here, but Akane coldly pointed out that she was merely a friend from school and didn’t even live in the same house, which her dream logic immediately turned into ground truth. Ranma woke up from that one feeling torn up in a variety of ways.
And there were more pleasant dreams, too, like the one where she and Mr. Bunny were exploring an enchanted forest together and they met a wood spirit who looked an awful lot like Akane. The spirit led them to a clearing where a picnic was laid out, and they all sat down to enjoy the food together. Ranma felt completely at peace in that dream, and woke up feeling warm and happy (and mostly glad the wood spirit hadn’t wanted to show her “the ways of the world” like in the script of her own clichéd little fantasy).
School that week was also good in some ways and stressful in others. Wednesday through Friday were exam days, and their schedule was different. She really hadn’t had as much time to study as she’d have liked, what with… everything, but without her waitressing job, she had her evenings back and used them to furiously review her notes before the following day’s exams. Focusing on school gave her a reprieve from her tangled personal thoughts. And she was very focused—she hoped she’d do okay in her exams this year, even if they ended up building him a good future rather than her.
On Friday, there was a special optional PE class at the end of the day to help burn off the stress from the exams, which almost everyone chose to attend. She refused to be team captain, insisting that someone else deserved the chance. She’d meant it as a way of trying to repay the support and kindness she’d received from her classmates who’d taken Akane’s request to heart, but she was also happy to step out of the spotlight for a while. She felt like she was getting a little better every day, but Monday’s wounds had been very deep.
She did her best to avoid Shampoo, partly out of fear of what she might blurt out about her confession in the Nekohanten incident, but Shampoo, as always, made some interaction unavoidable. Ranma felt conflicted between the desire to evade her, appease her, and somehow defeat her. She’d realized that you never exactly did battle with Shampoo in the traditional sense. It was more like a psychological game of cat and mouse, with Shampoo trying to convince Ranma that her Amazon tribe offered unique advantages to a future wife (or husband) while Ranma did her best to disengage without hurting Shampoo’s feelings too much.
There were also brief encounters with Kuno, Kodachi, and Mousse, but they were all navigated without serious incident. She also learned that Nabiki really was selling photos of some of her more physically demanding exploits. When she’d first heard about the photos, some time ago, she’d naïvely assumed that there were people who were into photos of martial arts in action, but after she’d actually seen some of them, she suspected that somehow Nabiki had tweaked them to create an impression of both power and femininity to appeal to more prurient tastes. Yuck.
Even with her commitment to studying, she’d found time for training. She was especially interested in exploring techniques that might take advantage of the enhanced proprioception she’d developed. Akane helped, of course, and it turned out that she, too, could precisely sense the position of her body in space. When they compared their experiences, Akane wasn’t quite at the level that Ranma had achieved, but she reminded Akane that practice was always the key to building skills and helped her figure out the best ways to do that. They also did balance exercises where they tried to hold difficult poses for longer and longer periods of time, and then moved on to target practice with hand-thrown weapons.
In their third short session, Ranma adopted the role of sensei, coaching Akane on more ways to focus her mind and body to achieve the best results. It was fun for both of them, and they both made good progress.
Possibly inspired by all the other reading she’d been doing for school, Ranma explored the materials Dr. Tofu had given her. Although she still couldn’t relate to some aspects of the transgender experience they described, she did find some pieces that resonated with her own feelings. She was a little more willing to believe that you could have some sort of internal compass that told what you were meant to be, even if she’d barely felt its tug until recently and was still a bit skeptical of the idea. Buried in one article, she found someone saying that when they transitioned, it was like they’d always been walking in shoes that didn’t quite fit and they’d never realized because they could walk for miles and not get blisters, but once they found shoes that were actually comfortable, everything felt so much better. Ranma felt like that analogy summed up a lot of what she was feeling these days. That said, she still couldn’t quite grasp how transgender people figured things out; in her case, it was only being forced to inhabit this form, to live in it, that had made her realize how right it felt. However they managed it, she was glad that other people got to finally experience that sense of comfort and rightness, too.
Although she did some studying on her own, she also reviewed material with Akane and with her friends at school. At home, she and Akane also took their breaks together, even finding time for a little TV. Across the days, they watched a mix of different shows, from an episode of a romantic comedy to a silly martial-arts cartoon. Ranma couldn’t stop herself from mercilessly critiquing the cartoon for its lack of realism. Akane, whose own skills were more than good enough to play critic herself, might have preferred to just enjoy the shows without the running commentary, but she enjoyed watching Ranma delivering her passionate tirades.
Underneath all these positive things, there were, of course, some darker undercurrents….
The Phoenix Pill situation was in a holding pattern, waiting for Cologne’s next move, which might come the next day or the next month. That was fine with Ranma, but Genma and Soun kept grumbling about it. At least they mostly just complained to each other and only let a few snide remarks slip out where others could hear.
She did have to deal with Genma wanting to start sparring again, but their battles turned out to be even more one-sided than they had been in the past, and she would inevitably leave him drenched and in his panda form, sitting in the pond in the garden, thoroughly trounced. Of course, Genma claimed that he couldn’t help but go easy on her, saying things like, “The boy looks too much like a girl now, and that makes me pull my punches,” but she knew better. She was on the best form of her life, and her father simply wasn’t up to the task of beating her anymore.
Akane had her own issues to deal with. She couldn’t help continuing to grow more and more attached to Ranma-chan as they spent more time together, and those feelings made it all the more important for her to constantly remind herself that she had to avoid being taken in by appearances. Yes, Ranma had asked to be called Ranma-chan, and, yes, she wanted to dress and behave and be treated just like any other girl, and yes, those things seemed to make her happy. But she knew Ranma’s secret truth: that inside, Ranma still very much yearned to be Ranma-kun again. Akane had to keep reminding herself that having Ranma-chan around was temporary, and that the real Ranma was still there, waiting for an opportunity to come back. It made her feel sad sometimes, but she pushed the sadness away and reminded herself that she had had feelings for Ranma-kun before, and that those feelings were still there, just dormant for now.
* * *
As Ranma climbed into bed on Friday night, she felt content. The start of the week had resulted in some of the worst emotional pain she’d ever experienced, but she thought she’d bounced back pretty well. Not only that, but her coping strategy of throwing herself into studying had been successful in two significant ways. The most direct was that she was feeling really hopeful about her exam results; she’d felt pretty confident when taking them, and she thought she’d done at least as well as anyone could reasonably ask.
The other win was all the time she’d had with Akane; studying, yes, lots, but also just being with each other. They’d made some good progress in training, too, and it felt like they were more in sync than ever.
With her exams done, she’d made it through the biggest challenge of the school term, and the sense of closure that gave her also gave her a sense of forward progress. Summer was coming. She was still in limbo, but she was making the most of things as best she could. She closed her eyes and let herself drift off to sleep, ready to face whatever the next day might bring.