Kapitel 249: A Day at the Park
What I would give to hold her hand, Ranko thought with a mournful sigh as she walked alongside Akane through the crowded courtyards. Her fiancee was positively aglow, basking in every second of her experience at Tokyo Disneyland alongside Ranko in the princess attire Nabiki had bribed the cast to offer her. As they walked, the crowd parted for them, partly to stare and try to guess what show must be occurring for two people professionally costumed as princesses to parade through the park, and partly to avoid stepping on their gowns.
"Whatcha wanna do next?" The redhead gave a bright smile, stooping down and waving at a young girl who recognized her Ariel costume from the Little Mermaid advertising displayed throughout the park. The child and her parents boarded the large carousel Ranko and Akane had just disembarked from in the shadow of the great castle dominating the center of the park.
Akane reached into the long sleeve of the blue opera glove on her left hand, pulling out a trifold pamphlet that was molded to the shape of her arm and unfolding it to reveal a map. "Well, if we're here…" She pointed down at a small picture of the carousel. "I'm guessing you don't wanna do the Dumbo ride, huh?"
Ranko shrugged. "Not especially, but I will if you want. It's your birthday after all, princess."
With a blush, Akane shook her head, and pointed to a large reddish-brown building at the far top of the map with several tiers of bright blue roofing. "This looks interesting."
Akane's fiancee peered over her shoulder, nodding contemplatively. "The Haunted Mansion, huh? You sure you're up for it? Could be scary."
Nodding, Akane wrapped her arms around Ranko's forearm, just long enough to give it a quick squeeze. "You're here to protect me."
"Always!" Ranko smiled brightly. Somebody, anybody, find me a dark corner in this place somewhere. I am going to die if I don't get to kiss this girl.
Following the map, Akane led the pair around a spinning ride with four large resin elephants orbiting a central pole with a large golden orb atop it, turning right to enter the environs of what appeared to be a large, creepy Victorian mansion with an array of gravestones out front behind ominous black wrought-iron gates.
Akane started to take a place at the end of the line snaking through the courtyard, but Ranko shook her head and motioned her forward. "They said we're basically honorary employees today, so we don't gotta wait in the lines."
Akane was skeptical, but sure enough, as soon as they approached the twin turnstiles at the front of the line, the attendant gave them a deep bow. "Princesses, your Doom Buggy awaits." With a flourish of the green striped suit coat he wore, he motioned the girls around the turnstile after unclipping the red velvet barrier rope to allow them to pass without risking a snag on either of their borrowed dresses. The attendant clicked a walkie-talkie he produced from his pocket, warning his cohorts inside of a pair of VIPs approaching.
"Hey, I guess being a celebrity has its perks." Ranko giggled, not stopping until they had entered the building proper.
A woman dressed in what appeared to be a green Victorian maid uniform met them at the door and motioned the pair into a small, dimly-lit side room decorated with what appeared to be dated, dingy wallpaper in vertical green and maroon stripes. The room was devoid of furniture, and its walls were positively jammed with gaudy framed cartoonish portraits. "If you will wait here for just a moment, Your Highnesses, we'll get you all set." She gave a wave and closed the door, leaving the girls alone.
"What do you think this ride's ab…" Akane's question died in her throat as Ranko stepped forward and kissed her, sucking softly on Akane's bottom lip for just a moment before stepping back. Both girls flushed deeply. "Ranko! You know we can't do that here!"
The redhead in the Ariel costume shrugged. "Sorry. Couldn't help myself. You're just too damn beautiful, and I've been waiting all day."
Akane's cheeks burned as she fidgeted with her hair with the fingers of her gloved right hand. "Flattery will get you everywhere, Miss Tendo."
With a happy sigh, Ranko shrugged. "Why can't we get married right now? Right here? I can't wait anymore."
"For starters, your mom would kill us both if she missed it." Akane smiled, but the radiance on her face dimmed when she saw Ranko's eyes fall to the floor. "Oh, baby, I didn't mean it like… I meant Hana. To hell with… her." Akane had even stopped using Nodoka's name in Ranko's presence. "She doesn't know perfection when she sees it, and she doesn't deserve you."
Ranko nodded. "I know. It's just…" She shook her head vigorously, as if trying to forcibly expel the ghosts in her head out through her ears. She had, for the briefest of moments a few weeks back, allowed herself the sliver of hope that she would have just one member of her own biological family at her wedding, but Nodoka's intransigence had rendered that impossible. "I don't wanna talk about this. We're having a great day and I don't wanna let her spoil it."
Akane grinned. Good. She's taken as much from you as she's ever gonna get to. "Deal. I'm proud of you, Ranko." It had been five days since Ranko's musical evisceration of Nodoka at the Phoenix, and she had done a fairly convincing job hiding her disappointment from Hana and her sisters. However, Akane knew the song's writer enough to understand that her bride-to-be was not as apathetic toward the dismissal of her mother as the lyrics to You Don't Know Me insisted she was, and there had been a sullen disappointment in Ranko's eyes for days that broke Akane's heart to see. Akane knew what Ranko was going through, but at least she had lost her mother due to illness, and not because her mother just… didn't want her.
As she spoke, the door opened and the maid-attired cast member returned. "Right this way, majesties."
"Thank you," Ranko said, some of the chipperness returning to her voice as she motioned for Akane to precede her through the narrow doorway. Ranko helped curtail the puffy skirt of Akane's Cinderella gown as she passed, ensuring it did not get caught on the doorknob, and then followed behind her as they were led to a boarding area for the ride. Each cart, a black bubble with a safety bar and a green plastic bench just big enough for two, was loaded in a constant stream as riders stepped first onto a conveyor belt that moved at the same speed as the ride itself and then stepped into the carts themselves.
Akane eyed the scene nervously, however, the maid pushed a glowing green button on the back of a podium near the track, and the ride ground to a halt to allow Ranko and Akane to board in their more restrictive outfits. Ranko offered Akane a hand up and then joined her, careful not to sit on her fiancee's dress as the safety bar automatically lowered over their laps and locked into place. The ride gave a slight jerk as its motion resumed, and the cart swiveled forward as it rose diagonally up an unseen track in the darkness.
"Welcome, foolish mortals, to the Haunted Mansion," came a booming male voice from a speaker embedded in the back wall of the cart. "It is I, your host. Your ghost host."
Ranko felt Akane squeeze her arm tightly as the voice behind them cackled darkly. You don't scare me, buddy. I hear Shinji laugh scarier than that behind me every set, Ranko thought with a winsome smirk.
"We find it delightfully unlivable here in this ghostly retreat. Every room has wall-to-wall creeps, and hot and cold running chills. Shhh, listen!"
The little black cart entered a small round room with various musical instruments strewn about a round table with a white tablecloth. The center of the dingy table was dominated by a large glass sphere, in which an older woman's head and neck were projected in green light that gave the otherwise dim room an otherworldly glow.
"Wizards and witches, wherever you dwell, give us a hint, by ringing a bell!"
A small brass bell on the table moved and began to ring, all on its own, as the cart moved through the room and around a corner.
"Whoa!" Akane pointed forward at a scene that looked like a disused old Victorian dining room sprawling out before them. The empty room suddenly sprung to life as what looked like dozens of ethereal blue and green couples floated around in what appeared to be a waltz, glowing in the dim as they floated above the floor.
"We have nine hundred and ninety-nine happy haunts here, but there's room for a thousand. Any volunteers?"
"Not it!" Akane giggled as Ranko gave her hand a little squeeze in her lap.
The cart turned a corner and swiveled to face forward, and as it curved around to the right, the girls found themselves in what appeared to be a cemetery full of tombstones, each with silly rhymes and poems etched into them. Several of them had large, cartoonish busts of the "deceased" mounted atop them.
"Wow, check out the statu…" Ranko pointed, but she trailed off as the busts began to… sing.
"When the crypt goes creak and the tombstones quake, spooks come out for a swinging wake! Happy haunts materialize, and begin to vocalize! Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize!"
Ranko bopped in her seat with the a cappella quintet, bouncing Akane's hand in her lap with her own.
The song continued emitting from the speaker behind the girls' heads even as their cart left the cemetery, but eventually faded as the darkness broke to reveal the loading platform. Again, the speaker behind them crackled to life with the deep bass voice of the narration.
"Ah, there you are, and just in time! There's a little matter I forgot to mention. Beware of hitchhiking ghosts! They have selected you to fill our quota, and they'll haunt you until you return! Now, I will raise the safety bar, and a ghost will follow you home!"
The conveyor belt stopped again to allow the two formally-clad young women to disembark. Ranko stepped off first, offering her hand up to Akane to help her down the two steps to the floor.
"That was really cool!" Ranko laughed, walking alongside her love as they exited back out of the darkness into the June afternoon sun.
"Now, don't close your eyes and don't try to hide, or a silly spook may sit by your side!" With a giggle and a blush, Ranko shrugged. "Sorry. It's catchy as hell."
Akane rolled her eyes, flashing her lover an amused smirk. "Oh no, having to listen to you sing? Whatever will I do?"
Blushing brightly, Ranko motioned to a set of wooden buildings that looked straight out of the old American West. "Any of this look interesting to you? Looks like they've got a shooting gallery and stuff."
Akane shrugged. "Honestly, baby, I really don't care. I just wanna be with you."
"This looks neat," Ranko said, motioning to a large round building with a thatched roof. There was no wait, so upon receiving Akane's nod of assent, the redhead led her lover through the empty rows of metal railings under a straw awning and into the room through one of three double doors that opened automagically. There was a tiny round stage in the middle of the room, but there didn't seem to be enough room on it for even a single performer, as it was jam-packed with plastic foliage and other decorations. Three concentric octagons of benches surrounded the tall central pillar, and Ranko slid into a spot on the frontmost of them.
Akane had barely lowered herself down to the bench beside her betrothed in her fluffy blue skirts and petticoats before the lights dimmed. "What's gonna…" She trailed off as the ambient lights dropped and an unseen spotlight pointed to a wooden bird sitting on a perch high in the rafters.
To Akane's amazement, the highlighted parrot opened its beak and began to speak in a thick Mexican accent. "Ay, my siestas are getting shorter and shorter! Oh! Look at all the people! Hey, Michael, mi amigo! Pay attention! It's 'cho time!"
Gasping, Akane laughed and leaned into Ranko's shoulder as another bird in the rafters spoke. "So it is! And what darlin' people I have sittin' under me! Pierre, you rascal, you! Let's put on the show!"
Ranko searched the rafters, pointing to a red, white and blue bird on a high perch as it began to speak. "Mon ami, I am always ready, as you say, to put on 'ze show." It emitted a high whistle before stopping and turning, gazing directly down at Akane, who looked up at Ranko with a giggle and a blush as she was singled out. "Oh, pardon, madam. That whistle was for my good friend, Fritz."
Akane's eyes lifted again as a red, black, and white bird situated directly over Ranko's head answered. "Ach du liebe! I almost fell out of my perch! Glad to see you all aboa… uh, ashow, or… ha! Wherever you are! Mien goodness, you're all sch-taring at us! We'd better start the show rolling!"
Ranko giggled as the second bird spoke again. "Wait! Wait! We forgot to wake up the glee club!" It gave a loud, shrill whistle, and the lighting in the room came up to reveal dozens of wooden birds in the rafters, and as one, they began to sing in harmony.
"In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room! In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room! All the birds sing words, and the flowers croon, in the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room! Welcome to our tropical hideaway, you lucky people, you! If we weren't in the show starting right away, we'd be in the audience, too!"
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