Ranko blushed furiously. Here we go, Akane.
Her eyes were panicked, searching in every corner of her mind to find the right words. She knew if she said the wrong thing right now, she’d destroy Akane’s family, and it was in no way her place. She inhaled to stammer something, but Akane walked into the room from the kitchen and took her hand gently. We’ve got this, baby, she wordlessly willed her lover to believe.
“Actually, Kasumi…” Akane blushed as well. “That’s her bedroom, too.”
The eldest Tendo girl sighed. “Oh, that’s sad. Everything else that’s gotten better for you, sweetheart, and you’re still sleeping on a bedroll on the floor?”
Ranko flushed even redder, shaking her head.
“But… there’s only one bed in there.”
Akane was watching the pieces fall into place in her sister’s eyes in real-time, and she was running out of time to get ahead of it. She squeezed Ranko’s hand tight. Whatever happens next, we do it together. “And we share it.”
Soun blinked. “You what?!”
Akane nodded, sighing at her father’s reaction. “Dad, Ranko isn’t just my roommate. She’s my girlfriend.”
Ranko lowered her head, holding her breath. Just his initial reaction was enough to flood her heart with shame.
Nabiki smirked, trying to inject a little levity into her sister’s situation. “I ask again. Why could this not have happened when I was selling pictures, sister dear?”
Soun glowered at Ranko. “So, let me make sure I understand this. You run out of my house in the middle of the night because you can’t be with Akane as a girl. You, Akane, just about break Saotome’s spirit to fight for the right to break your engagement. And now - now?! - you want to be together… as two girls?” He growled angrily. “What have you done to my baby girl, Ranma?!”
Akane stomped her foot, her right hand in a fist at her hip even as her left squeezed Ranko’s hand supportively. “Her name is Ranko! And I love her!”
Ranko bit her lip hard. She spoke with a hollow sadness. I can’t fight back against Akane’s father. It’ll only make things worse. “Akane, I, um… I need to check on something. I’ll be right back.” She slipped her hand out of Akane’s, walking to the bathroom door and entering it. Akane heard a second click after the door closed, confirming to her that Ranko had locked the door behind her.
Akane glared at her father. “How dare you, Dad?”
The Tendo patriarch growled. “How dare I? You’re away at college living a lie, hiding things from me, doing gods know what with that… that girl… and I’m supposed to just take it with a smile?!”
“That girl? That girl? I’ll have you know, that girl is stronger than you’ll ever know, Dad! She had to rebuild her whole life, all the way down to her name. She didn’t ask for any of this. Did you know she lived on the street alone for two months?! You didn’t, because you didn’t care enough to ask. Do you know how much shame she’s endured? How much stuff she’s had to relearn just to survive? How hard every single thing has been for her since she’s been out here? How alone she was? She’s pushed herself to the brink of unspeakable things to try and become a person she could be proud of, and…”
Akane sighed. “... and a person she hoped you could be proud of. I promised her this would be okay, Dad! I told her that if she was herself, you’d find a way to accept all of this. I gave her my word that she didn’t have to hide her from the people we care about anymore. Hiding our relationship almost broke us. She doesn’t want me to have to choose you or her. She wants me to have my family back, and she was willing to subject herself to whatever shame you threw at her to make it happen for me. But I’m not willing to put her through that. Not after everything else she’s had to deal with! All the times she fought for our family, for our dojo, for me, and this is how you treat her? I trusted you to be better than this! So I’m telling you right now. You are going to respect that resilient, caring, sweet, wonderful woman in there, or I am going to ask you to leave our home and not come back. Have I made myself clear?!”
Soun roared loudly enough that Ranko could hear him in the bedroom even through the closed doors and over her quiet crying. “We tried to support him, when everything happened, and he ran away like a coward! A few months of hardship, and it broke him!”
Akane stomped forward, her face red with anger. Her fingernails dug into her palms in tight fists at her waist. “AND YOU’VE BEEN RUNNING EVER SINCE MOM DIED!”
Kasumi gasped, covering her mouth. “Akane…”
“You just sit there in your gi everyday like you actually run classes anymore. You know I taught a class yesterday, Dad? Yeah. When’s the last time you did? Huh? 1985? You hide from the world in that dojo all day playing shogi with that son of a bitch who ruined Ranko’s life, and you were never there for us girls! If it hadn’t been for Kasumi, we’d all have ended up in the nuthouse! So yeah, Ranko ran. But she ran to something. She ran for something. You? You just run.” She pointed to the locked bedroom door. “That girl in there is a warrior. And you’re just a coward!”
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Soun staggered back. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing from his youngest daughter. “But, Akane, how am I supposed to accept that he can take care of you? He certainly can’t marry you like that! He’s already run away once! If he wanted to be with you, he had responsibilities as a man to consider!”
Akane snatched up an empty skillet from the kitchen counter, throwing it across the room at her father with a loud kiai. He barely ducked under it in time, and it bounced harmlessly off the back cushion of the threadbare gray couch. “SHE is twice the man you’ll EVER be!”
Kasumi walked closer carefully, watching for further flying kitchen implements. She took Soun’s hand gently. “Father, perhaps we…”
Soun’s chest heaved with anger. With shame. I should have seen the signs. She was always a tomboy. Maybe I pushed her too hard into martial arts, and not enough into things like ballet. Maybe I could have done something before it came to this.
“Well, I’m not going to stand here and listen to this anymore. I’m leaving. Come on, girls.” He stalked to the door, and as he opened it, he turned around to realize that none of his daughters had moved from their places. “Kasumi? Nabiki?”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Nabiki said. “But if you’re going to reject them like this, you’re going to do it on your own. We sisters have had to stand together without you for years, and we aren’t about to stop now.”
Kasumi sighed. “Father, I would never disrespect you. But this is their home, and Ranko has tried so hard to impress you. She really has grown, Father. You have to be able to see that, if you let yourself. If Akane is happy, I don’t think it’s any of our business whether the person she loves is a boy or a girl. We’ve known Ranko for years. We’ve always known she’s good and kind and decent. She has been a part of our family for a long time now. She was immature when she lived with us, but she’s come so far since then. I don’t think we should be pushing Ranko away. I think we should be incredibly proud of her. And of Akane, for supporting and protecting Ranko when none of us did, including Ranko’s own father.”
Soun growled. “Fine. If that’s the way you girls want it. I’ll go home alone, then.” He stormed out the door, slamming it behind himself.
By the time Akane could turn her back to the door, both of her sisters had their arms around her. “Akane, honey, we’re so sorry,” Kasumi stroked her hair. “You did the right thing.”
Nabiki squeezed tighter. “I give you credit, little sister. We’ve said that stuff between us for years, but that’s the first time any of us had the stones to say it to him.”
Akane squeezed back briefly, but then took a step out of the embrace. “I need to go check on Ranko. She had to have heard some of that.”
Kasumi nodded. “Go. We’ll be right here.”
Akane reached above the door jamb, retrieving a straightened paper clip which she used to push open the lock through the little hole in the center of the doorknob. Slowly, she opened the bedroom door. “Baby, I’m so sorry. I don’t understand why he’s such a j…”
The bedroom window was open, and there was no one in the room.
“Damn it! Ranko?” Akane stuck her head out the window, searching the ground around the foot of the fire escape. She saw no one but the stray orange tomcat that liked to hang out in the alley by the dumpsters. She knew Ranko couldn’t have gone that way, or there would have been a hissing, feral martial artist in the alley as well. But then Akane turned her head, looking at the other direction the fire escape went, and nodding.
A moment later, Akane stepped onto the roof of the little apartment building. There, amid a few confused pigeons and a crate of air conditioner spare parts, she found the love of her life, lying in the gravel of the rooftop, bawling in her brand-new mint dress.
“Ranko? Baby, it’s okay…” Akane approached slowly.
A weak reply came between the racking sobs coming from the red-headed girl on the rooftop. “I should have pushed you away when I had the chance.” Sometimes, Ranko still hated being a girl. She didn’t know if it was something biological, or just that she’d learned to deal with her feelings more, but it seemed like all she did anymore was blush and cry.
Akane gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. “What?! Ranko, why would you even say that?!”
“I’ve ruined your life because I was selfish enough to want you for myself. And I knew it was going to happen. I knew if I let myself get close to you, I would tear your world apart again, and I did it anyway because I was too weak to resist. I’m sorry. I should have been stronger, and spared you all of this. You deserve so much better.” Ranko sniffled, not looking up. She couldn’t. It hurt too damn much.
“Look at me, Ranko.” Akane knelt on the gravel, wincing. The little rocks were sharp. She couldn’t fathom how much it must have hurt Ranko to lay on them, or how great her internal agony was to have been able to drown out the physical discomfort she must be in. “Hey. Please?”
Ranko slowly rolled over to squint up at Akane against the backdrop of the setting sun.
Akane reached down, brushing a wisp of hair out of her love’s face. “I need you to understand something, Ranko, so you listen good. I don’t deserve better than you. You know how I know that? Because there is no one better than you. Nobody. You are the best person I’ve ever met. And I don’t want to spend one more second around one more person who cares so little about me that they can’t see how much better my world is with you in it. Not even if it’s my father.”
Akane wiped a tear from Ranko’s cheek, but there was little point; her whole face was soaked and her makeup was ruined. “You could have tried to push me away, but you wouldn’t have been able to. You know me. I don’t like to lose, Ranko. I decide what I want and I go for it until I get it, no matter what. And I want you. I am absolutely, positively, insanely in love with you, and you could never have convinced me otherwise.”
She reached down, burrowing her wrist into the tight ball Ranko had pulled herself into and finding her hand, giving it a squeeze. “I’m sorry he hurt you. I’m so, so sorry I trusted him not to. You were so scared, and I pushed you. My sisters are downstairs still; at least they’re on our side. Why don’t you come back down with me, and let’s have a nice visit with the part of my family that decided not to be total jerks? I’m sure they’d love to catch up.”
Ranko sighed, nodding emptily. “I’m so sorry, Akane. I’ve cost you everything.”
Akane shook her head, wrapping her arms around Ranko as she sat up, holding on to her for dear life. “Don’t you even think about apologizing to me, Ranko. You did everything right. Please don’t blame yourself for this. He did it. He’s the only one doing anything wrong.”
Akane stood up in her house slippers, gritting her teeth as the thin padding provided nearly no protection against the gravel of the rooftop on which she stood. She reached down, offering a hand and a reassuring smile to her beloved.
“Come on, little phoenix. Time to rise.”