With a pained groan, Ranko sat up. Her head was throbbing something fierce, and she wasn’t quite sure where she was. Blinking the blurriness from her eyes, she slowly began to regain consciousness and recognized the bedroom in her little apartment. She rubbed her temples. “What the…” She heard glass strike glass, turning her body in her bed to face the source of the sound.
Sitting in one of her wooden dining chairs, Hana perked up as Ranko stirred, having set her half-full bottle of beer on her nightstand next to three empty ones. “Shhh. Take it easy, baby. Slowly.”
She stood, closing the gap and sitting on the edge of the bed. Ranko blinked at her. Her eyes didn’t seem to be working quite right, and there was this constant hum in the back of her head. “What happened?”
Hana frowned, gently brushing Ranko’s hair from her eyes with her fingers. “There was a fight in the bar.”
Ranko groggily revisited the various flashes in her mind, working to separate dream from memory. She was able to piece together parts of it - the choker, the slap, the white smoke. “I… I think I remember.”
She lifted the covers and looked herself over. Her body seemed mostly intact. She was wearing an oversized gray tee shirt and the pair of panties she’d been wearing the night of the attack. She remembered with horror that the man had torn her shirt. What else had he done to her? Sensing her fears, Hana answered. “You’re all right, honey. Yui and I changed you when we brought you upstairs.”
Ranko swiveled her legs off of the bed on the side opposite Hana, standing and heading toward the bathroom. She made it one step before her body leaned uncontrollably to the right side and she collapsed to the floor in a heap.
“Ranko!” Hana rushed around to the other side of the bed, helping her up and sitting her back in the bed with a surprising strength. “You need to take it easy, sweetheart. The doctor said you’ll be alright, but you got your bell rung pretty good.”
Ranko blinked slowly. “Doctor? I don’t remember.”
Hana nodded. “There was a doctor in the bar with his date. He checked you over before we ever got you off the floor.”
The apartment door flung open with a crash and Yui burst in. “I heard a loud noise, is she… Ranko! You’re awake!”
Ranko winced, covering her ears. Every sound echoed in her skull like a gong. “Hey, Yui.” She let her head fall gently back to her pillow, covering her eyes with her forearm. The afternoon sunlight from her lone window was awfully bright today for some reason. “I thought those guys were going to kill me… or worse. Why did they stop?”
Yui started to answer, but Hana hushed her with a quick gesture. “Don’t worry about that. You’re safe now, and that’s all that matters.”
Ranko started to get up again, and Hana made a scolding noise. “Uh-uh, young lady, I told you, you need to stay in bed.”
Too groggy to be embarrassed at being called a lady, she could only groan. “I gotta pee, though.”
Yui walked around to the side of the bed, offering her forearm. “Come on, I’ll walk with you.”
Ranko stood with her support, leaning on her until she made it into the bathroom. “I can use the counter from here. Thanks.” She shimmied carefully to the toilet, taking care of her business and standing again. As she passed the mirror, she stopped to look at herself. There was a large purple splotch on her cheek, and an angry red stripe around her neck from where the choker had cut off her airflow. Both were fading, no doubt due to the amount of time she’d spent unconscious.
She opened the door and Yui immediately braced her again, walking her back to the bed. “Is there anything else you need, sis?”
Ranko blinked up at her. “Aspirin? Like, all of it?”
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Yui smiled faintly. “I think we can manage that.” She scooted off to the kitchenette, starting to fill a glass of water from the sink.
“I saw smoke. White smoke. Just before I blacked out.”
Hana shook her head. “No, honey, it must have been the concussion.”
She gave Yui a look that, had Ranko seen it, she’d have recognized as a wordless go with me on this.
Yui handed her four round white pills, helping her support the glass of water in her hand until she could swallow them, and setting the rest of the water on the nightstand opposite Hana’s chair. “I need to get back downstairs and finish prep. Izzi and Mei will want to know you’re awake. Should I send them up?”
Hana shook her head. “She needs rest. We all want to see her, but let’s put her needs first for now.”
Yui nodded. “Of course, mama.” She exited the apartment, closing the door carefully to minimize the sound.
Hana moved back over to sitting on the bed, stroking Ranko’s hair gently, careful to avoid the lumps where her head had struck the bar. “Mm. That feels nice, mama.” Ranko still couldn’t believe that she was using that term for anyone, but at the moment, she was feeling pretty pathetic. “I’m sorry I lost the fight.”
Hana gave her a little tsk. “Don’t you dare apologize, Ranko. Don’t you dare. Just you rest.”
Ranko rolled over slightly, looking up at her. “Mama, why do you do it? Look after us all like you do?”
Hana smiled, sighing a little distantly. “It’s a long story.”
The teen tried her best to smile. “I ain’t going anywhere.”
Hana looked at her contemplatively for a long few moments. “I’ve never talked about it with anyone before.”
Ranko looked up at her with a goofy smile, her eyes not exactly pointing in the same direction. “Lucky for you, I’m not sure I’ll remember this conversation tomorrow.”
Hana chuckled. “Fair enough, but if you do, it stays between us. None of your sisters even know.” Ranko nodded as gently as she could, her head still not especially fond of moving.
“Well, when I was… well, not much older than you, I started working here. Back then, the bar was owned by this nice old guy named Ito. He taught me everything he could about the industry, but I was something of a wild child. I got in the bad habit of taking guys home from the bar, and one thing led to another. I got pregnant when I was twenty. Luckily, my parents didn’t disown me like Izumi’s did, but it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to take care of a baby on my own. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but I put my daughter up for adoption.
“Some sixteen years later, Ito was talking about retiring, and about that time, my father died. He left me a little bit of money – not anything crazy, but enough that I was able to buy the bar. I was doing a little better for myself, and I thought I might try to look up my daughter and see what happened to her. I contacted the adoption agency, and they gave me the name of her new family. I was surprised to find out that they lived just a few blocks from here. I gave some cheerleader a couple hundred yen to borrow her yearbook, and I was able to see a picture of her. It turned out I recognized her. She used to walk by the bar every day on her way to and from school. She always looked so sad and distant, and it broke my heart.
“For months I waited for her to walk by every afternoon, trying to find the courage to go talk to her. I followed her a couple of times, and learned that she liked this little cafe that used to be down on the corner, and she’d go there on Thursdays with some friends. I finally decided I would try to meet her there and introduce myself.
“I got dressed up, opened the front door, and as I did, she came running out of a little anime shop across the street. I saw that she was being chased by a couple of guys - police, it turns out. I didn’t even think. I just grabbed her arm and yanked her inside, and hid her from them. She’d apparently stolen a couple of wall scrolls or something, but I didn’t care. For the first time in her life, I was able to protect my little girl.”
Ranko blinked. This story was starting to sound familiar. “Ayako?”
Hana nodded. “We sat and talked, and I asked her about her family. She said she was unhappy there, and I could tell she was basically acting out to get attention. I offered her a job and told her she could stay here. I didn’t really need the help, but I was so happy that she decided to stay with me.” She sighed remorsefully. “To this day, I still haven’t told her the truth.”
Ranko nodded slowly. “So, you didn’t set out to take in girls like us.” Another phrase that felt strange crossing her lips. “But then Ayako found Yui.”
Hana smiled. It was good that Yui had confided that story to her. “Exactly. And I couldn’t explain to Ayako why I’d take in one teenage girl I’d just met and not another, so Yui stayed. And then in time, Yui found Izumi, and Izumi found Mei.”
Ranko cracked a little smile. “And that means, I’m the only one you actually ever chose all by yourself.”
Hana laughed a little. “I suppose you are, but we decided as a family before we invited you to stay.”
Ranko purred quietly into Hana’s gentle brushing of her hair. “I’m so glad you did.”
Hana leaned down, giving Ranko a gentle kiss on her forehead. “So am I, baby girl. So am I.”