Hana stopped walking, pointing to a frosted glass door. “It’s right there, honey.”

Ranko looked up at her. She wore her blue pastel dress, but she felt positively naked. “You’re sure I have to do this?”

Hana nodded. “I am. I’ll be right here when you’re done. I love you, baby.”

“I love you too, mama,” Ranko said, gulping as she looked at the door. After taking a moment to gather her courage, she pulled it open and entered alone. “Hello?”

She was waved past the reception desk into a small office. There, a caucasian man in his late thirties, with black hair and thick glasses, turned in his chair. “Hello there, miss…” He looked down at the file in his hand. “Tendo. I’m Dr. Yaro, but you can call me Fred.”

She blushed, giving him a shallow bow. “Good to meet you. You can call me Ranko. Everybody else does.” At least, all the people I like.

“Well, it’s wonderful to meet you, Ranko. Sit down, please. Can I offer you something to drink? Candy or something?”

Ranko shook her head. “No, thank you, I…” She blushed, frowning. “Sorry. I’m really nervous about this.”

Fred smiled disarmingly. “There’s absolutely no reason to be nervous. I promise, everything you say here is between you, me, and this piece of paper right here. Nobody can get this information unless you say I can give it to them, not even your mom or the police. Our conversations are entirely for you, sweetheart.”

She nodded quietly. “Okay.”

He sat back in his chair. “I understand you had a bit of an incident this weekend. Do you want to talk about it?”

Ranko crossed her arms. “No.”

Fred sighed. “Suit yourself, but things don’t get better that way.”

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Ranko shrugged dismissively. “Some things don’t get better whether you talk about them or not, so what’s the point?”

The therapist nodded. “I get that a lot. You’d be surprised how much better it can get just by letting it off of your chest and telling it to somebody who won’t judge you for it no matter what.

She sighed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

He smirked. “I’ve been doing this for twelve years. Try me.”

She shook her head. What the hell. Just between us, right? Hold onto your butt, buddy.

“Well, let’s see. Three years ago I was a boy, and my father dragged me around most of Asia torturing me to force me to learn martial arts. He tried to feed me to feral cats once; that was fun. Anyway, I fell into a magic pool of water and now I’m a girl. My father sold me to three… or was it four? girls to get married to, one of them for a bowl of rice and two whole pickles! The one of them I lived with when I was a guy beat the snot out of me all the time, so I broke up with her and left. Spent a month or two on the street, fighting off dudes trying to grab at me every night, and then I got adopted by my boss, so now I live in a bar and I sing karaoke for money six nights a week. That girl I broke up with when I was a guy is my girlfriend now, but she won’t touch me because it weirds her out that I’m a girl. She took the family business from my pop in a fight. Oh, and I’ve got this funky curse thing where if you so much as touch me it feels like my brain is going to explode. I had to fight this crazy guy last week, because he was gonna marry my girlfriend and the only way I could stop him was to offer to let him marry me, if I couldn’t beat him, but because I can’t take a hit anymore I had to eat a bunch of painkillers to win and apparently that was bad, and so now I’m here. There’s more, but that’s the general idea.”

Fred sighed, sitting up. “Suit yourself, Ranko. If you want to blow smoke, It’s your time. But the sooner you take this seriously and start opening up, the better you’ll feel, I promise.”

With a dark chuckle, Ranko smiled. “Told ya.”

“I mean, you’re obviously being ridiculous. Listen to yourself. Magic water? Curses?”

Ranko looked around the room. If he’d had a cup of hot tea on his desk, it might have been worth the agony just to watch his brain melt when the pretty girl in his office transformed before his eyes.

Fred rubbed his chin. “I’ll tell you what. I get it, even for someone your age, tell me your life story can be a lot to deal with. Let’s start off simple. What’s your relationship like with your biological parents?”

Ranko chortled. “Just checking, you’ve only got an hour, right?”