Capítulo 240: Show and Tell
Ranko walked down the unfamiliar corridor, adjusting the weight of the awkwardly-shaped case strapped over her right shoulder. The clacking of her black heeled boots echoed in the cavernous space. She checked the green note in her hand. Room 118. Where the hell is… Okay, there's 111, 113, 115… crap, the even numbers must be on the other side of the cafeteria.
She turned, heading back down the alien hallway. Everything seemed too empty, and too small. It had been ages since she'd been in a school like this, and if she were being honest with herself, about the only parts of it she remembered was getting into fights with the other boys. Just thinking of herself as a boy felt foreign and strange, as if she were remembering a dream that was fading from memory a little more with each second she was awake.
She was jostled from her nostalgia by the voice of a man in his late twenties, wearing a brown suit that was a bit too big for him. It was almost threadbare in places, and it was certainly too old for him to have been its original owner. "Can I help you? Visitors really aren't supposed to be wandering the halls like this."
Ranko looked down at the paper in her hand, giving him a disarming smile. "Yeah, please. I'm looking for room 118? Mrs. Gazawa's class?"
The young man shook his head with a smile. "Of course. I should have known. C'mon, I'll walk you." He motioned Ranko forward. "So, pardon me if I'm being impolite, but you seem a little… young to be one of our mothers."
The redhead's face flushed instantly, and she gave him an emphatic head shake in the negative. Mother? Yeah, no thanks. No babies for this girl, thankyouverymuch. I may be okay with being a girl now, but that's a bridge too far. Three bridges, a sailboat, and a jumbo jet too far. Maybe if Akane ever asked really nice, I could try to make her a mother, but… She cringed a bit at the thought with a flush the young man did not notice.
"Well, here you go." The young teacher gestured toward a pine door with the number 118 stenciled on it in white paint. "Have fun."
Ranko nodded her thanks with softly flushed cheeks. She turned the doorknob and pushed into the classroom, shooting a warm smile to the young black-haired teacher with a nervous bow toward her third-grade class. A murmur of excitement arose from the children as Ranko sat in the rolling office chair the instructor motioned to at the front of the class, smoothing the knee-length black skirt she wore and crossing her ankles.
Mrs. Gazawa stood, gesturing with her slender hands for her class to quiet down. "Friends, as you may have noticed, we have a very special guest joining us today for our Wednesday career profile! Hoshi, would you like to come up and introduce her?"
Ranko's nephew bounded out of his little desk toward the front of the room, diving into her with a tight hug. The force of his impact almost knocked the oblong black case she was opening out of her lap.
"Oof! Hey, buddy! Good to see you." Ranko kissed the top of Hoshi's head as he turned to face his classmates.
"Everybody," Hoshi said, blushing deeply. He definitely wasn't the extrovert in the family. "This is my Auntie Ranko. She's a really famous singer!" He motioned down to the black Ranko and the Dapper Dragons tee shirt he wore. "And she's a hero, too. She saved me last year when a carnival ride fell down on me, remember?" He smiled up adoringly at the redhead as the class clapped respectfully for their guest. "Thanks for coming, Auntie. I'm not sure anybody believed me that we're related."
Ranko shook her head with a smile, giving him a squeeze around his shoulders. "Go grab your seat, little man." As Hoshi headed for his desk, Ranko waved to the collection of children - and to the young teacher, who seemed to be losing the battle for professional decorum to triumph over her own desire to go full fangirl.
"Well, everybody, it's so good to meet you! Like Hoshi said, I'm Ranko Tendo. Hoshi's mom is my big sister. And I guess you've heard I like to sing?" She blushed. "Does anybody have any questions for me?" At least a dozen hands shot up.
"Oh, my goodness! I'll see if I can get to everybody. Let's start with you, honey." She motioned to a blonde girl in the front row, who stood with a smile.
"Hi!" The little girl waved. "Is it hard to be a singer?"
Ranko laughed. "Starting with the hard ones, huh? What's your name, sweetheart?"
"Chuko," she said with a little giggle.
"Well, it's nice to meet you, Chuko!" Ranko bowed her head slightly, still struggling with the zippers around her guitar case. "So, being a singer's not hard. I mean, I bet all of us in here like to sing, right? It's super fun! But doing it as a job? That can be hard, sure. Being on stage, signing autographs, all that stuff looks like it comes natural, but it doesn't. It takes lots and lots and lots of practice to get the songs just right, get the dance steps just right, things like that.
"Most singers start off singing other people's songs, like I did, but eventually, singers usually want to start writing their own, and that's a lot of work too. You've gotta know not just your part with the words, but everybody else's too, if you want to get the music to sound good. I'm really lucky; my best friend Crash helps me a lot with that part." She finally extracted her instrument from the black nylon case, setting it aside. "In fact, he bought me this guitar and taught me how to play it."
She blushed again, fidgeting with her hair to help hide it. Why am I more nervous in front of thirty kids than ten thousand Firebirds?
"Really, though – just about everything you could do for a job is hard somehow. It either takes a lot of practice, or a lot of school, or a lot of working to get really strong. Like, Mrs. Gazawa back there. She has to think up what she's gonna teach every day, get the homework ready, check everybody's work, stuff like that. My sister, Hoshi's mom, makes amazing dresses that take days and days to get perfect, and my other sister Yui has to know hundreds of recipes for different things people like to drink, so she can make them right there on the spot if they want something special. There's a lot of behind the scenes work in any job if you wanna really do it well. The important thing is to pick something you love to do so much that you don't mind doing all that work, or messing up a thousand times, because of how good it feels that thousand-and-first time when you finally get it right. That's how you figure out what you wanna do for the rest of your life."
As the class sensed she was finishing with her answer, several hands shot up again, and she called on a little boy sitting to Hoshi's left. He stood with a nervous, meek smile. "How did you save Hoshi, when the ride fell down?"
Ranko rubbed her chin. I really don't remember most of it, after I hit my head, but I'll try, kid.
"Well, there's not really a lot to tell. I heard the ride making all kinds of noise, and then I looked up and I saw it was starting to fall down. There wasn't really time to get out from under it, so I just sort of grabbed Hoshi and jumped in a hole, and covered him up so nothing hit him. Then we just had to wait for the firefighters to come get us."
"Whoa! Did it hurt?" The young boy's eyes widened like he'd just met Spider-man.
"Honestly?" Ranko smiled. "Probably, but I don't remember." She made a fist and knocked gently on the side of her head. "I broke my head. I was dizzy for almost a month! But my mom and my sisters, and even Hoshi, helped take care of me until I felt better."
A really shy-looking girl in the back row was called on next, and as she stood, Ranko watched in real time as every drop of blood in her body pooled in her cheeks. She did not immediately speak.
Ranko smiled disarmingly, even as some of the girl's classmates snickered at her nerves. "Hey, it's okay. We all get shy sometimes. Take your time, honey. Let's be cool, everybody, okay?"
Eventually, the girl spoke, and when she did, it was Ranko's turn to squirm and want to hide. "As a singer, do you get a lot of attention from boys?"
Ranko's head dropped into her hand. "Whoa boy. Wasn't expecting that one." She laughed nervously. "But, um, yeah. All the time. It can be fun sometimes, but it can be annoying sometimes, too. Like, I had to write a whole song one time to get this one guy to stop chasing me around." And now everybody knows his name, just like he wanted.
The little girl giggled. "Do you have a boyfriend now?"
Ranko looked around the classroom for something to hide behind. Hoshi started to turn in his chair, but his aunt shot him a glare, reminding him with her eyes what they'd talked about last night – that Hoshi's soon-to-be-Auntie Akane was a secret that his classmates didn't need to know about, because not everyone understood how two girls could love each other as much as she and Akane did. Hell, Ranko was still shocked sometimes by how effectively they'd made it work so far, especially given how much more difficult her burgeoning fame was making things of late.
You told the world you were engaged, Ranko. There was a reason everybody said not to. You gotta live with the consequences now.
"I, um… Yeah, I do. His name is Aki, and he's, like, really handsome, and so sweet. He loves me so much, I can barely stand it! We're getting married really soon!" Gods help me.
Most of the girls in the room giggled in excitement at her answer. Better pick on a boy, and change the subject, quick. She motioned to a young man with bright orange hair in the second row, who stood with a smile.
"Who's your favorite singer? That isn't you, I mean?"
The redhead grinned. An easy one. Thank you, gods.
"Oh, that's gotta be Paula Abdul. I try really hard to learn from her! She does amazing choreog – she makes up really cool dance moves. I used to sing her stuff all the time before I had more of my own."
The still-standing boy nodded. "Do you think she's heard your music?"
Ranko blushed, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Oh my gods, if she listened to my stuff? I'd probably just die." She glanced up at the clock on the wall. Only a few minutes left in the period.
"Hey, would you guys like it if I sang you a song? And after that, I've got thirty autographed CDs in my bag there, if anyone would like one!" She smiled warmly at the cheering class, and gave a knowing grin to the disappointed-looking teacher in the back of the room. "Hoshi already has one, of course, so there's one extra, just in case." The young woman in the back of the room clapped her hands quietly in excitement and beamed as if Ranko had just made her week.
As she adjusted her guitar in her lap, the children settled quietly, and not another breath could be heard as she started plucking at the strings.
"Did you know the way time stops when our eyes meet? The way that everything else fades out of my mind?"
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