“Fucking fix this, Kanda!”
Ranko stalked furiously in a circle at center court of the otherwise empty gymnasium, glaring at the boy that the whole school thought was her fiance and - she wanted to puke just thinking about it - the father of her baby?
“Fix it?!” Eiji roared in frustration. “I’m not the idiot that showed up wearing an engagement ring you didn’t bother to tell me about so we could get our stories straight!”
Ranko sighed heavily. Yeah, I hate to admit it, but he’s right. That was kinda stupid.
“Well, what the hell are we gonna do? Because, I don’t know if you were planning on asking, but I’m not exactly in a hurry to pop out your kid to keep up your little sham.” Ranko seriously needed to pace closer to a trash can, because the thought of being with him that way – the countless graphic details of which were not remotely left to the imagination by the constant whispering on her periphery all day – was turning her stomach again. The last thing she needed was more people thinking her disgust was proof that she had … urk, there it was again.
“Of course not,” Eiji said, slumping onto the lowermost bleacher of the gymnasium.
“I think we have a big fight in the cafeteria and break up. In front of everybody. Tomorrow. Shut them all up and go our separate ways and pretend this whole shitty plan never happened.” Ranko held her head in her hands. How could she have been so stupid? And right after she’d promised to be more open about things with Akane, too. If she finds out about this… If she thinks for a second that this was real… she and I are done. She won’t stand for it. I promised her after Crash I would never make her worry like this again, and I doubt she’ll care that I did it for her.
“Yeah?” Eiji scoffed. “And I suppose you’ll be giving me back your engagement ring, then?”
Ranko gulped. There was no way she would part with that ring. That was proof she was Akane’s. It was all she’d wanted from the start. She could never. But she’d been lulled into saying it was proof she belonged to Eiji. She supposed she could stop wearing it, but then… she wouldn’t be wearing it, and she had promised Akane she always would. And she always wanted to. There were a hundred times a day where she had to look at it and remind herself that it was real, that it wasn’t a dream she would wake up from to find herself a miserable boy back in Nerima getting her head smashed in with the living room furniture by the woman she loved again.
“I could offer it and you could tell me to keep it. When we’re fighting.” Ranko wrapped her hand around her finger, as if she worried Eiji would snatch it off of her finger right then and throw it away.
“Even if you did, it doesn’t fix things. First, they’ll still think you’re pregnant. Second, it’ll just mean a flood of suitors for us both. Worse than before, because everyone will know we’re both single.” Eiji shrugged, rolling a basketball around on the floor with his foot.
“I am not single!” I will never be single again. I belong to Akane and she belongs to me and we are getting married and it’s probably going to be her, me, my sisters and mama in the bar fifteen minutes before we open and Yui will have a beer in her hand the whole time and it won’t be legal and it’ll be weird and I don’t give a single, solitary fuck because I belong to Akane and she belongs to me and nobody can take that away from me not ever. Her mind raced, and she held her head in her hands as she paced.
“You know that. I know that. Do you want them to know that?” Eiji sighed. “I know I don’t.”
Ranko groaned loudly. “I’m not sure I care anymore! For months now I’ve been putting up with this bullshit, and you’ve made me follow you around like a puppy dog while you showed me off to all your friends like I was a prize you won at the fucking arcade. I think you said maybe twenty words to me the whole time. I’m sick to death of it, Eiji. If I really was your girlfriend, I’d have dumped your ass weeks ago!”
The basketballer nodded, lolling his head back in exasperation to stare at the ceiling. “In retrospect, it might have been better if you had.”
“And even if we do break up, what am I supposed to do about the fact that you supposedly got me preg… mm-mm, nope, can’t say it.” Ranko swallowed hard, tasting bile at just the thought of the word.
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Eiji sighed, shaking his head. “That shouldn’t be as hard because you didn’t confirm it. Girls have scares like that all the time. Fumi’s had like four since she started college. Just, wait a week or two and then go in the bathroom and ask a few of the more popular girls if you can borrow some feminine… stuff. That’ll kill the rumor.”
“Um, ew? What good will that do, ya sicko?” Ranko still hadn’t quite come to terms with the fact that her body now behaved more or less like those of other women, and the fact that it made her vulnerable to exactly what her classmates had thought had happened to her was in no way lost upon her at the moment.
She’s too stressed to even think. “Well, I should think it would be obvious,” Eiji said. “When you’re pregnant, your body usually doesn’t do… that. So if you let people think you’ve got that going on, they’ll know you’re not.”
Huh, Ranko thought. Learn something new every day.
“Hey, Ranko? I know this didn’t work out, and I’m really sorry. I know it’s gonna be hard for a while. I just want to say, I appreciate it. It really means a lot to me that you did this.”
Ranko glowered. “Yeah, yeah, I’m happy you’re happy. Now, where’s my payment? You’ve been saying you could get Akane back on the volleyball team since October. It’s January. She’s not. What gives, dude?”
Eiji grimaced harshly. He already knew she wasn’t going to like what he had to say, and that was before all hell broke loose this morning epicentered on Ranko’s English class. “Um, well, about that…”
“Kanda, I know you’re not about to tell me that you ruined my life with this bullshit scheme of yours and you can’t even come through on your promise and get Akane reinstated on the team. I know you won’t do something like that, because you’re a good, sweet and decent guy who is really, really happy with the current configuration of his testicles.” Ranko fumed, glaring at him darkly.
Eiji looked down. “Ranko, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I can’t undo your girlfriend getting kicked off the squad, because she never was.”
“Are you serious with this right now?! You mean to tell me that I’m supposed to believe that the love of my life has been moping around pretending to be off the team for months when secretly she’s still on it? Are you high? And you’re screwing with me about this now?!”
Ranko cocked her fist, but Eiji covered his face with her hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” He sighed. “I spoke to Fumi over break about it. And yeah, after the team found out about you and her, she left the team. But Ranko… she quit.”
Blinking, Ranko pulled her fist back. “Come again?!” She looked up at him incredulously.
With a nod, Eiji stood. Yes, Ranko was his soon-to-be-ex-fake-fiance, but she really looked like she could use a hug. He felt it safer not to approach for one while she still had her triphammer fist cocked in his direction.
“Fumi said the team discussed it, and they gave her two conditions to stay on the team, and she refused and walked out.” Eiji shrugged. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Ranko’s mind raced. Akane lied to her? All this time? Ranko thought back to the conversations, all the nights Akane had spent broken-hearted about it. “I’m not on the team anymore.” she’d say. “It wasn’t going to work out,” or “it’s for the best,” sure. But Ranko could not remember a time that she actually said “they kicked me off the team for being a lesbian.” Ranko had just assumed.
It had all been for nothing. Months without Kumiko. Months of constant fear Akane would find out. Months of being paraded around by a guy with the personality of a wet dish rag. Months of being eye candy for basically every jock in the school. For nothing.
“It… it’s okay. Let’s just end this tomorrow and we’ll move on from there.” She sighed dejectedly. “Thanks for trying, I guess.”
Eiji nodded, putting his hand gently on her shoulder. “I gave my word. I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”
Ranko nodded, turning and starting to walk toward the door. When she reached the outer boundary of the court, she turned back to face Eiji.
“Hey, Eiji? Did Fumiko happen to tell you what the conditions they gave her were?” Ranko dreaded imagining what sorts of humiliating things they tried to threaten Akane with to make her walk away from something she loved so much. Her voice was barely a dejected whimper. What kinds of things would those bigots have come up with? Iron chastity belts and shit, with as medieval as their thinking was?
Eiji winced. I’ll tell you, but you’re gonna wish I didn’t. “The first was that she shower and change separately from the other girls. That one, she agreed to.”
Ranko grimaced, putting her hands on her hips. And the other was more degrading than that somehow? “Yeah, and the one she didn’t?”
Eiji sighed, looking down at his hands to avoid having to see the expression on her face. “They told her you couldn’t come to the games anymore.”