Bab 118: Bleeding Ink
"Miss Tendo?"
Ranko looked up from her green notebook, fidgeting a bit in her plastic chair with a loud squeak as the aluminum legs of the attached desk scraped the floor. "Huh?"
Her science teacher put his hands on his khaki-clad hips. "We're still waiting for your answer."
Blushing, Ranko shrugged. "Uh… Six?"
Mr. Iwato sighed, shaking his head. "It was a yes or no question, Miss Tendo. Clearly, you aren't paying attention. Go stand in the hall, please."
"I… yes, sir." Sighing dejectedly as the rest of the class laughed at her, Ranko closed her notebook, stuffed it into her black satchel frustratedly, and departed the classroom.
Ranko sighed, taking her place in the hallway next to the door. Mr. Iwato was right, she hadn't been paying attention, but in her defense, she spent most of her time with people familiar to her. She hadn't had too many chances to get used to answering to Miss Tendo as opposed to just Ranko; the last time she was in school, Miss Tendo meant Akane.
She didn't feel much like a Tendo after last night. Ranko understood how hard of a situation Akane was in, but did she have to be so cold about it? Couldn't she at least acknowledge they were roommates? Friends, even? Hell, she'd settle for cousins, like Kuno believed. When they were behind closed doors, Akane made her want to curl up inside her for warmth with the way she made Ranko feel. She was desperately in love with that girl, and the harder she fell for her, the harder it had become to hide it when they were out of the house, especially when Akane treated her like a complete stranger. That, at least, was new.
She'd narrowly avoided a fight when Akane got home by telling her that it had been a headache that caused her to leave early, and that she hadn't been able to find Akane in the crowd to tell her. She strongly doubted Akane believed her. It wasn't as if Akane didn't know how she'd behaved, and she had to have known how likely it would be to hurt her. But, at the least, she acknowledged that Ranko didn't want the fight, and the pair had gone to bed, back-to-back, in relative silence.
She had to do something with the feelings. She'd been biting her tongue for weeks, and it was breaking her. She was hesitant to go to her sisters for advice; lately, she'd been careful not to air the couple's dirty laundry around them. She may not have been welcome with the Tendos, but at least Ranko could try not to get her own family at the Phoenix mad at Akane. She had to have somewhere that everyone she loved could be together in peace.
At least she had Fred to talk to about things. She was grateful to Hana for having forced her to go, after the incident with Kuno and the overdose. She hated it at first; it felt invasive and punitive, but after the third session, Ranko had to come to begrudgingly accept that he really was just a nice guy that wanted to help, and he hadn't betrayed any of the secrets she'd told him to Hana or anyone else as far as she could tell.
Eventually Ranko had dropped discussion of the curse with him and just started calling herself a tomboy; the whole Jusenkyo thing was a fantasy she'd made up as a coping mechanism, he had said at the time. At least he understood that being a girl was still hard for her sometimes. More pressingly, he knew how much it was breaking her heart that Akane hid her away like a skeleton in the closet. Fred had tried to make her feel better; he told her it might be more like Akane was hiding a treasure she was afraid to lose, but Ranko was living it, and she hadn't felt especially treasured last night.
Her thoughts were interrupted as the bell signaling the end of class rang, and her classmates exited the room through the pine door to her right. Ranko waited, enduring the faceless jeers of the other students, waiting for the other girl that sat in the back row of the classroom to leave. Kumiko finally did emerge, and stopped to stand with her. "Hey, Ran-chan. Are you okay? You were like, really out of it in there. Just nodding off again?"
Ranko nodded sadly. "Yeah, I guess I must've." She shouldered her bag with a sigh, walking in the direction of Kumiko's next class. Ranko herself had tenth-grade math as her last class of the day, and it was on the other end of the campus, but she could move quickly when she needed to.
Stepping out of the main flow of traffic, Kumiko spun her backpack off of one of her shoulders onto her hip, unzipping it and withdrawing an apple from it. She bit into it with a loud crunch as she pulled the zipper closed.
"Did you skip lunch again? You got an alien baby in there or something?" Ranko looked up at her with a smile, shaking her head amusedly. She was grateful to have something to talk about other than her own feelings. "I never see you without a snack in your hand anymore."
"Uh…" Kumiko swallowed the bit of fruit in her mouth. "Something like that, yeah." She frowned.
"Kumi, hey. What's the matter? I'm sorry; I didn't mean to upset you." Ranko turned to her, putting her hand on her friend's shoulder. Dammit. Eating isn't a thing girls like to talk about. I've gotta remember that, she mentally admonished herself.
"It's nothin'." Kumiko sighed, trying to step past her, but Ranko planted her feet and locked her elbow, preventing her from making forward progress.
"Nuh-uh. Try again." Ranko managed a reassuring smile, her stiff arm unyielding.
Kumiko cringed, slumping her shoulders in defeat. "It's just, there's this girl, she has a locker a few down from mine. And…" She swallowed hard, a bit of shame crossing her face. "She's freaking huge, okay? And she… she keeps taking my lunch money. It's stupid, I know."
Ranko bobbed her head with a confident grin. At least that was a problem she knew how to fix. Why didn't she ever get the easy ones? "Tell you what. Tomorrow, I'll walk you to your locker, and we'll take care of this."
Kumiko waved her hands frantically. "Oh, no, you can't! She's three times your size! She'll crush you! The last thing my social status needs is to be the girl who got the new cheerleader killed. Besides, it's not so bad; I just bring stuff to munch on from home, and I don't get my face pounded in."
Giving a confident smirk, Ranko put her arm around her friend's shoulders. "Uh, excuse me? Resident school princess here, remember? Don't tell me what I can't handle."
Kumiko's frown gave way to a giggle, and she squeezed Ranko back, around her hips. "Yes, ma'am!"
Kumiko stretched her arms and back as they resumed walking. "Hey, I saw you writing something in there. What was it?"
Ranko shrugged, slumping a bit. So much for the welcome distraction from her own problems. "Oh, ya know, tectonic plates and shit. Whatever Iwato was going on about."
The bespectacled girl to her left let out another little giggle. "If it had been notes about the lecture, you would probably have known what the lecture was about." She thought for a moment, perking up excitedly as an idea crossed her mind. "You're writing another song, aren't you? Can I see?!"
The redhead shook her head vigorously. "No, no, nothing like that. Just… putting some feelings on paper to get them out of my head, that's all."
Kumiko nodded. "So, like a diary?"
Shrugging, Ranko nodded. "I guess?" The very idea of keeping a diary was such a girl thing, and she didn't know that she'd ever be able to do it. She'd told Fred as much, too, when her therapist had suggested she do it in their session last week. Plus, it created a vulnerability. If you didn't want people to find out what you were thinking, you shouldn't write it down somewhere for people to find. That just seemed dumb.
Akane still kept a diary, as far as she knew, but however angry she was at her girlfriend, however much she was desperate to know what was going on in her head, she'd refused to go looking for it. In their shoebox of an apartment, there weren't too many places it could be hidden, but even now, she respected Akane too much to do that to her.
In reality, she was writing another song, but it was one she knew she'd never sing. She could never get on stage and say the things she was writing. She could never hurt Akane like that, especially not publicly. She was just so angry, and she didn't know where to put it. She understood where Akane was coming from. It just hurt, knowing that she would never be welcome with Akane's family - a family that had been hers too, once - like Akane was with Hana and her sisters. Knowing that she'd always have to listen to Akane's friends try to set her up with dates and bite her tongue. Knowing she'd always have to skulk out of her own home via the fire escape like a cheating boyfriend whenever someone Akane knew came by. It made her feel dirty and cheap.
She had worked so hard to get to a place where she didn't feel like being a girl, being with Akane, and then being both of those things at the same time was wrong anymore. She was so very tired of feeling like her life was wrong, especially the parts of it she loved the most. Most days, she was almost there. It was killing her that Akane couldn't get there too, especially since it felt like she had the easier path to get there. Ranko would have sung that girl a sweet love song from the stage every night if Akane would only allow it.
The lyrics on the page in her bag were not a sweet love song, though.
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