Let's see. I could swear they said it was down this hallway. Prop storage? Nope. Janitor closet? Nope. Boys’ dressing room? Nope. Girls’ dressing room. That's me! Got it. Crap, could they have put this any freaking further from the stage?!
Ranko pushed open the third door on the right after having found the correct label, walking into a large, darkened room. She reached to the gray cinder block wall on the right of the door, throwing all three switches upward, and a series of fluorescent lights recessed into the ivory drop ceiling began to flicker to life.
Nice. First one here. I get a little privacy.
The room was structured not dissimilarly from the locker rooms provided at the All-Tokyo Cheerleading Invitational, but whereas that venue had been set up as half for athletics, half for performance, this one leaned fully toward the stage. Long beige counters lined the full length of the back wall and both sides of the long, narrow room, and twenty-some red vinyl chairs dotted the counter at intervals all the way around. In front of each, a large mirror surrounded by bright white round light bulbs was mounted to the wall. Each chair had a sign taped to the back of it with a performer's name, and next to every chair was a rolling aluminum clothes rack containing the outfits that the performer would wear throughout Yusue High Drama Club’s annual presentation of The Phantom of the Opera. Even without the benefit of the nameplates, she recognized her designated station just from the number, and the intricacy, of the costumes on its accompanying rack.
Just kill me now, she thought as she trudged the length of the room to her spot along the back wall. After setting the pink backpack containing her makeup on the countertop, she wheeled her chair out, gasping.
Resting in the chair was a bouquet of two dozen long-stemmed white roses, tied with a simple white satin ribbon. There was a card, but Ranko did not need it; less the colored flora representing her sisters, it looked exactly like her wedding bouquet had. Still, she picked up the card anyway, giggling to herself as she read it.
Ranko,
Break a leg. Wait, on second thought, please don't! Not again!
Good luck. Have a great show. I love you forever, flower girl.
You're my song.
~ Aki
Ranko blushed, first at the sentiment of the card, and then at Akane’s masculine pseudonym being the signatory. It makes sense. She didn't know who was gonna see these. They're beautiful.
Ranko scanned the room with her eyes, frowning a bit. Not a single one of the other girls got anything, she noted with a sigh. That would feel awful, seeing that somebody else got stuff and they didn’t. That would break my heart if it happened to me.
Nodding her head as she resolved herself to a decision, she picked up her bouquet, walking the few steps around her costume rack to Akira’s station. Loosening the ribbon around her flowers, she pulled one long rose loose from the bundle and laid it on Akira’s seat. She then moved to Tsukiko’s station and did the same, and on she went until all ten of the other female performers had a rose awaiting them as well. I'll still have a bouquet to bring home, and I doubt Akane will mind me not keeping them all if it means nobody has to feel left out.
Her redistribution of wealth concluded, Ranko re-tied the white satin ribbon around her remaining dozen flowers and rested them on the counter in front of her seat as she slid into the chair. Good thing I looked before I sat down, or nobody would have any flowers, and Akira would have to spend half of act one helping me pick thorns out of my ass.
She pulled the skirt of her white lace dress up past her thighs. Oh, this is gonna feel so, so, soooo good, she thought as she began unfastening the Velcro straps holding the metal immobilizer brace around her left knee. The loud thrrrip of the hook-and-loop straps separating echoed loudly in the mostly empty room. She moaned in relief when the brace clattered to the terrazzo floor, leaning back in her chair.
I promised Akane I'd put it back on after the show, but even just a couple hours of freedom…
She bent her knee back and forth, giving it the slightest of twists to very, very gently test it. Not too bad, considering. Stiff, a little bit sore, but more than manageable. She stood, taking a tentative test stroll around the narrow room. She beamed, her radiant smile almost hurting her cheeks, it was so broad.
Alright. Let’s really give this thing a try.
Ranko took two big steps forward, throwing her arms gracefully up into the air with a wide swoop as her feet left the ground. She kicked her right leg forward, brushing it forward with her toes pointed outward as she twisted her upper body. Her legs met in mid-air ever so briefly, swishing together as they switched positions. The once-reluctant ballerina thrust her right leg backward, holding it parallel to the floor as she landed gently on her left foot, letting the extension of her foot and ankle cushion most of the landing rather than carry the shock up to her knee as her arms swished up over her head. It sent a little jolt of pain through her left leg when she landed the tour jeté, but she stayed upright.
Fuck yes! Ranko's back, baby!
She pumped her fist excitedly in the empty dressing room, whooping to herself. She blushed as her celebration echoed loudly back to her.
Okay, Ranko. Party’s over. She looked up at the clothing rack next to her station. Time to go get prettied up.
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Four rows back from the stage, on its right wing, a girl in a pastel yellow dress squirmed nervously in her seat. She looked up, smiling, as she felt arms being laid across her shoulders from both her left and right. She was simultaneously squeezed tight between the two elder women that bookended her.
“Akane, relax, honey. She’s gonna do great,” Hana said. She wore the same gray pantsuit she’d worn the day she officiated the young woman’s wedding to her youngest daughter, her salt-and-pepper hair held back with a simple silver headband.
“I’m not worried about that. I just… it’s her first time back on stage since her knee. I just don’t want her pushing herself too hard,” Akane said, fidgeting on her backside.
“Ranko knows her limits, honey. She’s going to be just fine. Relax.” Nodoka Shimizu smiled down at her daughter-in-not-quite-law, looking radiant in an off-white wrap dress covered with large blue floral print.
Ranko? Knows her limits? Have you met that girl, Ma Shimizu? Akane sighed heavily.
Hana nodded. “Nodoka’s right. You know the first thing she’s going to do when she comes out here is look for us, and if she sees you about ready to wiggle out of your skin, it’s just gonna make her nervous, too.”
“Am I late?”
Two seats to Hana’s right, Izumi looked up, flashing her elder sister a bright smile. “Just in time, Yui. I’m glad you’re here. Ran-chan’s gonna be thrilled to see you.”
Yui flopped heavily into the seat to Izumi’s right. She wore a black denim jacket over a greenish-yellow bodycon dress that came to the knees of her long legs. “Man, they made this place look legit. I feel like I’m going to see the fuckin’ queen of something.” She turned in her seat, waving to an elderly woman in the row behind her with a laugh. “You’re gonna have a hell of a show. My baby sister’s gonna sing the shit out of this thing.” There was something slightly off about her voice.
Izzi’s face steamed, and she leaned into her sister, lowering her voice despite the fury in it. “Yui, I can’t fucking believe you right now. You know how important this is to Ranko, and you fucking show up drunk?!”
“I’ll have you know,” Yui said with a glower at her sister, “I haven’t had a drink all fuckin’ day.”
“It’s two in the afternoon, Yui. You’re still fucking drunk from last night?!” Izumi shook her head, shaking in her anger despite her efforts to keep her voice down.
“That… is possible.” Yui shrugged.
“Just sit there, and for fuck’s sake, keep your gods-damned mouth shut, would you? I swear to you, Yui Fukawa, if you embarrass our sister, I will drag your scrawny ass out of here myself.” Izumi glared at her sister, leaving no doubt as to the seriousness of her threat. She spoke in a quiet voice, but Yui recognized her tone. She didn’t hear it much these days, but a few years back, Izumi had often used it when dealing with a misbehaving Hoshi.
“And I’ll help her,” offered Mei from her seat between Izumi and Hana.
The organ music playing through the array of speakers in the high school auditorium faded out, and as the audience settled, the red velvet curtain obscuring the stage began to recede to the wings.
A young freshman boy in a black suit with a wide black ascot hammered at a wooden podium with a little gavel, looking out over an assortment of students standing in a semicircle around him with their backs to the audience.
“Sold! Number, sir? Thank you. Showing here, lot six-six-three…”
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Ranko closed her eyes as six of her fellow actresses, all dressed in the same white dress and flowing organza ballet tutu as she was, pressed around her to shield her from view. Each added a piece of costume around her, attaching it with Velcro around her body in the interest of speed.
Their work done, the girls split off from her, revealing her now in a long white ball gown covered with glitter and lace. The tutu she still wore under it served as a petticoat, flaring the dress out widely around her waist, and little glass beads had been clipped into her flame-red hair in various places to allow it to sparkle in the stage lighting.
She felt utterly ridiculous.
“Think of me. Think of me waking, silent and resigned. Imagine me, trying too hard to put you from my mind. Recall those days. Look back on all those times. Think of the things we’ll never do. There will never be a day when I don't think of you.”
A spotlight flickered to life, pointing up at a balcony seat on the right side of the stage, not far from directly above Akane and the rest of Ranko’s family. It highlighted Hasashi in a black smoking jacket over a puffy white shirt. He began to sing.
“Can it be? Can it be Christine?!” He stood, clapping his hands enthusiastically. “Brava!”
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“How the fuck did he get up there so quick,” Yui asked, craning her neck upward. “Ow!” She recoiled her leg back, seething through her teeth at Izumi having stomped on her foot.
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A haunting male singing voice seemed to come from everywhere in the theater at once, as Ranko’s eyes searched the building from the stage for its source.
“I am your angel of music. Come to me, angel of music…”
Yui leaned over to Izumi, whispering. “Well, that’s not suspicious at all.”
“Shut. Up.” Izumi’s eyes snapped back up to the stage as a pipe organ began reverberating through the auditorium’s antiquated speakers. Ranko held up her skirts and carefully stepped through what appeared to be the gilded frame of the large mirror in her character’s dressing room. The crowd sat up at attention, almost to a person, as if they seemed to know what was coming.
The redheaded firebrand walked carefully across the stage, led along by the hand by a boy with black hair, wearing a long black cloak over a black tuxedo. A white plaster mask covered the right half of his face. As they strode to stage left, other students, dressed in all black to minimize their visibility in the background, began hauling away the set dressings from the dressing room, revealing what appeared to be some sort of underground dungeon set behind it. The back wall was styled to appear as if it were constructed of dingy, damp, and mossy stone, and fake torches mounted into wall sconces gave off an orange glow every meter or so along it.
Ranko still wore the long, flowing white gown, slightly discolored in a few places. It might have been a wedding dress at one point before it had found its way into a secondhand shop, and from there into the costume closet of a high school drama club. Should have let me make her something, Izumi thought, grumbling to herself under her breath.
Ranko’s wavy, slightly curly hair was held back by the one addition she had personally made to her costume: an antique silver comb featuring a relief of four daisies.
“In sleep, he sang to me. In dreams, he came. That voice which calls to me, and speaks my name. And, do I dream again? For now, I find: the Phantom of the Opera is there, inside my mind…”
Yui’s jaw fell open as her youngest sister began to sing. “Holy crap, she doesn’t sound anything like she does at the Ph..”
Her hoarse whisper was cut off mid-word by Izumi’s elbow being sharply thrust into her ribs. The blonde rubbed them, wincing as she watched the boy help Ranko lower herself into a little gondola on the stage. Her skirts flowed over the sides of the craft, nearly dragging the floor. The boy playing the Opera Ghost picked up a long pole, beginning to push the little boat forward across the stage floor on hidden wheels as the stage began to flood with a thick white mist that made Ranko shiver in her seat in the rickety prop.
“Your spirit and my voice, in one combined. The Phantom of the Opera is there, inside my mind…” Ranko sang brightly, despite a look of terror in her eyes. Whether she was acting, or just thinking about the end of the song, her wife could not tell from her seat in the fourth row.
Come on, baby, Akane thought, sitting forward in her seat and fidgeting nervously.
“Sing, my angel of music!” The Phantom’s booming baritone commanded Ranko, and she replied, vocalizing in ever-higher tones.
You can do it. I believe in you. Akane’s foot bounced frantically on the floor. Despite the worry in her eyes, she smiled up to her left as Nodoka reached over into her lap, taking Akane’s hand and giving it a hopeful squeeze.
“Sing for me,” Yoshiro coaxed again.
Still higher Ranko’s voice climbed, and with every new note she reached, Akane’s spine tensed a little more. Come on, princess. You’ve got this.
“Sing, my angel!”
Please. Please, gods. She’s worked so hard. She needs this win so bad right now. She’s so scared. I’m watching her shake from here. Please.
“SING FOR ME!”
Here goes nothing, Ranko thought, closing her eyes. Just like this morning in the shower, Ranko. Relax. No pressure. If you can't see them, they can't see you.
She threw her head back, opening her mouth as wide as it would go and unleashing an E in the sixth octave that she maintained for a full second and a half at her full-volume voice.
A quiet murmur rose from the crowd behind Akane. Never before, in the four previous years Yusue High had performed Phantom of the Opera, had the actress portraying Christine Daae ever hit that note. Or, for that matter, even tried.
Then again, they’d never cast a star like Ranko Tendo before.
“I have brought you to the seat of sweet music’s throne. To this kingdom, where all must pay homage to music.”
Akane bounced in her seat, looking gleefully up at Hana as Nodoka squeezed her hands in jubilation. Ranko, meanwhile, broke character for just a moment; while her character should have been terrified at being hauled into an underground crypt by a murderer, the redhead beamed in the little wheeled boat on the stage. To Akane’s eye, it looked as if her wife had even shocked herself with the sound that had indeed come out of her as she’d intended it to. Shut the fuck up, Phantom. She’s my angel, not yours, and until you stop singing, I can’t jump out of this chair and cheer for her.
In the second-to-last row on the upper left mezzanine of the school’s aging theater, Kumiko Iwata’s mouth fell open. She turned to her mother on her right, beaming with joy for her best friend. “She did it,” she silently mouthed, bouncing excitedly in her seat as Rin Matsubara hugged her from behind.
Akane watched as Yoshiro ripped a brown curtain to the side, revealing a mannequin with a bright red wig, wearing sheer white veil and a white wedding gown not dissimilar from what Ranko currently wore. The songstress collapsed into Yoshiro’s arms in a faux faint, and he scooped her up, carrying her limp form to a mattress with a red canopy over it and laying her gently stop it.
“Help me make the music of the night…”
His voice trailed off, the stage lighting went dark, and every soul in the packed auditorium rocketed to their feet in applause.
None did so faster than Akane Tendo.
“Brava, Ranko!”
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“Miss Daae will be playing the pageboy. The silent role. Carlotta will be playing the lead!”
Noboyuki Matsuyama could not restrain a quiet chuckle under his breath. Yeah, you think you're gonna keep Ranko quiet? Fat chance of that, buddy, Crash thought with a smirk as he adjusted himself in his seat halfway back on the right side of the upper balcony.
As Masaru and Hando sang onstage with Akira and Hisashi, Ranko quaked with the release of nervous energy in Ms. Zaito’s arms behind the curtain.
“I am so proud of you, Ranko! That was incredible,” the teacher and director enthused. “I told you that you could do it!”
“Prima donna, first lady of the stage! Your devotees are on their knees to implore you…”
Thank the gods I didn't get cast as Carlotta. All that fawning would just freak me out. Ranko beamed. “I was so friggin’ scared. But I tried to relax, just like you said.”
The stumpy teacher grinned. “And you did wonderfully. No one can ever take away what you just did, honey. You're a legend. You'll always know you can do it now.”
The redhead blushed, recalling a similar statement her mother had made a few weeks before about her upcoming tour. “I… gotta go get changed.” She motioned over her shoulder with her thumb, back toward the girls’ dressing room that might as well have been in Kyoto for as far from the stage proper as it was.
I gotta go pretend to be a boy for a minute.
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Ranko blushed, wearing her pageboy costume consisting of a frilly white shirt, gold lame pants and a lacy white cravat, coupled with a blonde bouffant wig and a face full of stark white makeup.
This boy outfit is about as ridiculous as I feel in it, she thought. I can't even pretend to be a dude anymore without feeling weirded out. I guess I really am just your princess now, Akane. And ya know what? I got no complaints. She covered her cheeks with her hands, exaggerating a wide gasp with her mouth.
“Poor fool, he makes me laugh! Ha-ha-ha-ha aaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Akira, as Carlotta, shrieked and jumped backwards as a dummy made of a Halloween mask and an old men’s brown suit stuffed with straw fell from the rafters, snapping on a noose a meter from the stage floor and swaying on the end of the rope.
“What the…?!” Yui jumped back in her seat.
“It’s part of the show, Yui. Shut up.” Izumi glared as the curtain abruptly slammed shut.
Masaru grabbed Ranko by the shoulders, pulling her through the slit between the curtains and back in front of them. ”Uh, we are terribly sorry! The show will resume in ten minutes’ time, when the role of the Countess will be played by Miss Christine Daae.” He thrust Ranko forward, and she looked back at him, summoning a shocked expression before she was physically hauled back behind the curtain.
Okay, Ranko thought as she jogged back to the dressing room, grunting slightly with the exertion on her sore left knee. Gotta go throw another friggin’ corset on. No big deal. This is just my life now.
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Ranko shivered despite the red velvet cloak she wore over her light pink dress and ivory boned corset, the beginnings of the Countess costume Akira had worn in the previous scene. The snow raining down on her was fake, generated from a blower in the rafters above the stage, but it was cold nonetheless. There was one other source of warmth available to her, but she did not especially want it.
“Say you need me with you here, beside you. Anywhere you go, let me go, too. Christine, that’s all I ask of you.”
The redhead quivered at Hisashi’s left hand moving gently across the side of her neck as he sang. His other arm was around her waist, holding her tightly against himself from behind. No, Cat’s Tongue. Don’t you dare. He’s a boy. And he’s a jerk. And, most importantly, he’s not Akane. Biting her tongue hard behind her stage smile in an attempt to override the unwelcome pleasure sensation with one of pain, she reached up, taking his hand in hers and moving it from her neck. She dragged it downward, resting it on her ribcage where the firm boning of the corset she wore protected her nearly entirely from the sensation of his touch. She hoped it looked like she was being sensual, and not just that she wanted his hands off of her goosebump-pocked skin.
“Share each day with me. Each night, each morning,” the pair sang together, as Hisashi released her and she whirled around a large styrofoam statue of an angel playing a trumpet to face him.
“Say you love me,” Ranko implored in her singing voice, much though she really would have preferred if he wouldn’t.
“You know I do,” he replied in song.
“Love me. That’s all I ask of you,” the two harmonized together.
Okay, lunch. What I ask of you is that you do me a favor and stay where I put you, Ranko thought as she flashed her arm forward with the speed of the Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire technique. She took Hisashi’s cheek in her hand, thrusting herself toward him on her tiptoes until she was centimeters from his face. Just the smell of him that close made her shudder in disgust, but she swallowed hard, doing her best to put on a pretty face. Just like Eiji. Just pretend.
Slipping her thumb over his lips, Ranko lowered her head, sucking on her knuckle as her slightly curled hair cascaded over her shoulder, hiding both actors’ faces from the view of the crowd. She felt his hands slide slowly down her back, reaching, and then starting to pass, her waistline.
Oh, no you don’t, ya little perv.
Still selling the stage kiss, Ranko backed him up one step until his back was pressed against the set wall, painted to look like the outside of a stone tower on the roof of the Opera Populaire. She popped her right leg up at the knee to enjoin him. To the audience, it appeared as if she had thrown herself passionately into his embrace. Ranko’s thumb, meanwhile, muffled Hisashi’s groan of pain as her knee applied firm pressure, crushing his groin hard against the plywood wall. Shouldn't be putting all my weight on my left leg, she thought as she increased the force with which she drove her right knee forward. But, worth it.
Well, you sold it, babe, Akane thought from her seat. I know you’re faking, and I still wanna fucking kill him.
“YOU WILL CURSE THE DAY YOU DID NOT DO… ALL THAT THE PHANTOM ASKED OF YOU!”
The curtain slammed shut to the urgent blaring of a pipe organ, signaling the end of the first act and the beginning of intermission.
“Is it over,” Yui asked incredulously as she and everyone else in the theater began to applaud. She leaned closer to her very irritated little sister, lowering her voice.
“But she didn't even smooch the second dude yet!”