章 342: Someone I Used to Know
"What should I do next," Ranko asked, giggling as she leaned to her right and rested her temple on Akane's shoulder as she sat on the top of the Tendo dining room table.
"What about Self-Rescuing Princess," Tofu Ono asked hopefully, looking up at her.
"Tofu," Kasumi admonished from her seat on her fiance's lap, smiling softly as she hugged him about the neck. "Can't we pick someone else's songs? Don't make it work for her."
Ranko shook her head with a wide smile. The funeral service that afternoon, and her encounter with Genma there, had underscored for her how grateful she was to be a part of a family that loved and appreciated her. There was nothing she wouldn't do for them. "I really don't mind, big sister." She started tapping her foot on the floor to find the rhythm, wishing she'd thought to bring her acoustic guitar. "Hey there, Cinderella, get your…"
She trailed off as Soun emerged from his bedroom, carrying his brown leather attaché case. He had changed back into his brown gi, unlike the rest of his family that were still in their funeral attire.
"Dad? Are you going out?"
Soun nodded, giving his youngest daughter a thin smile. "Just for a little while, Ranko. I just… I have something I need to check on."
Ranko nodded. "Should we…" She motioned to the front door with her hand.
The Tendo patriarch shook his head with a smile. "Nonsense, Ranko. You girls aren't guests here. I would hope you know that." Besides, it was a bit late for Akane and Ranko to get a train back to Minato. Lance had left hours ago to return the rented SUV after using it to deliver fourteen black trash bags full of ladies' unmentionables to a local women's shelter at the mayor's request. Trying to track down their original owners would have been nigh impossible, and Soun felt that it was better to donate them and get his master's ill-gotten spoils out of his guest room at the earliest opportunity.
With a wave to his daughters, Soun slipped out the door, walking briskly in the direction of Furinkan High School.
* * *
"Kanpai!" Genma raised the little white porcelain cup in his hand above his head. Laughing, he lowered the cup to his lips, draining the sake into his mouth in one gulp.
He fumbled about in the dark for a moment before his mangled left hand found the glass bottle. He uncorked it, refilling his cup with the last of its contents and tossing the newly-emptied bottle aside in the grass with a mournful sigh.
"Well, here we are, Master. Just you and me, a couple of rejects nobody wants. But at least you didn't abandon me. You stuck with me to the end." He reached out, clinking his cup against its mate, which sat full of rice wine atop the obsidian slab covering the vault that he'd watched Happosai's ashes lowered into a few hours before. "Kanpai!"
"I thought I'd find you here," a voice called out mournfully, and Genma turned on his backside to face the newcomer in the darkness. He still wore his red dress shirt and black slacks, his tie discarded in the grass as he sat on his black sport coat like a picnic blanket.
"I was just leaving," Genma said, picking up the empty sake bottle again and shaking it upside down to illustrate his predicament.
Soun plopped down cross-legged next to his old friend, pulling his attaché case into his lap and popping it open. It contained a full bottle of sake, two plain wooden cups, and a large square book bound in green leather. He withdrew the bottle and uncorked it, pouring some of its contents into Genma's waiting cup before taking one of the wooden cups and filling it for himself.
"To the master," Soun said softly, lifting the cup in Genma's direction.
"Kanpai," the already-drunken martial artist shouted, tapping his cup against Soun's.
After both men drained their cups, Soun sighed, setting his still-open leather briefcase in the grass beside himself. "Saotome, what are you doing up here? You know this isn't doing anyone any good."
"Oh, now you're worried about me, Tendo?" Genma stretched his arm out for the bottle, but Soun held it out of his friend's reach. "Now that you've taken everything from me, even my son?"
Soun sighed heavily, his head dropping. "My friend, I wish you could see things clearly. You're doing this to yourself, and it's ruining you in everyone's eyes, especially Ranko's."
"Don't call him that," Genma slurred. "Not with me."
Soun winced. The rebuke was no less than he expected, but a part of him had at least been holding out some glimmer of hope for better. "Saotome… Genma…" He swallowed hard. He knew what was in his heart, but he was struggling to will the words past his lips. His shame was still too great.
"You know, I sometimes think about the day Akane re-introduced me to her. I spoke to her much the same way you do. I called her a boy, a freak, and a disgrace. Hell, I accused her of taking her clothes off for men. Akane all but disowned me for it." Soun leaned back, supporting himself with his palms on the grass as he started up at the stars.
"But then you went soft," Genma said, again reaching for and missing the bottle of sake Soun had brought.
"Do you remember the time you won that trip to Ganawa Hot Springs, Saotome?" Soun reached down, brushing an ant off of his knee as effortlessly as he had brushed aside his friend's insult.
Genma laughed. "Do I! One of the best weekends of my life! They had this pork dish there that was…"
"She came to me that day," Soun interrupted. "Ranko did. To talk. I used her old name, I told her she was wrong to behave the way she was, and I told her she wasn't good enough for Akane. And that kid, that little girl, took every insult I threw at her with a stiff lip, and she begged me to forgive Akane even if I hated Ranko for it for the rest of my life. She didn't care how much she was hurt, as long as Akane was happy. In that moment, that girl demonstrated more strength and resolve than I ever saw out of her in a fight, and she showed me just how wrong I was."
Soun sighed, taking a moment to think of what he wanted to say next. "Saotome, she is completely different than she was as Ranma. It's undeniable. I know that's hard for you to accept. But… she's not worse. In a lot of ways, I think she's better. She's happier than I've ever seen her - Akane is, too. The school is secure. It's everything we wanted for our kids."
Genma scoffed, picking up the cup of sake from Happosai's grave and downing it. "Whatever that thing flouncing around in that dress was today, it was not my son."
Soun nodded, sitting up. He reached into his briefcase, pulling out the leatherbound photo album. He set it in his lap, not yet opening it, and reached for the sake bottle. Genma reached his cup out hopefully and Soun filled it, capping the bottle without pouring himself another cup.
"You're right, Saotome. It was not your son. Not anymore." He opened the album with the crinkle of celluloid, angling it so that the first page of photographs was illuminated by the lamps lighting the path through the park. "But I think you might come to feel differently about things if you got to know your daughter, like I did. Like Nodoka did. I mean, if Ranko could convince her…"
Genma growled as he winced through the burning of the alcohol coursing down his throat. "Don't you mean your daughter, Tendo? They told me that you adopted… her. My best friend, and you snatched my only child right out from under me."
Soun sighed, nodding slowly. "I did, and I won't apologize for it. She needed a father, Genma. Desperately. She was starving for someone to love and accept her that way, Saotome. And the saddest thing about it is…" He tapped a photo of Ranko in her Yusue cheerleading uniform, holding up the trophy from the 1991 All-Tokyo Cheerleading Invitational. "If the person in these pictures had been born a girl, you'd be the proudest father alive. I know that, because I know you. I know what you wanted for your children. We talked about it all the time when we were young."
Soun sighed wistfully, filling his cup with rice wine. "I didn't ask to raise three girls by myself after Rumiko died. I didn't expect Nabiki to turn away from the art and go to business school, to say nothing of… well, let's just say it wouldn't surprise me if she brings a girlfriend home one day, too. I had no idea what to do with Akane when she was little. She was the youngest, and I expected her to be a little princess, but I turned her into a tomboy because I didn't know how to deal with a girl without Rumiko's guidance. I asked way too much of Kasumi. I needed her to help me with her sisters, and I made her become a mother before she'd even been on her first date.
"None of us get everything we plan, Saotome, but it doesn't mean we can't love what we get. Do I wish Rumiko hadn't died? Of course I do. I miss her desperately, every single day, and I know the girls do, too. But I don't hate my daughters for the women they grew up to be because of it. I wouldn't trade away the lives they've made for themselves. They've found what works for them, and as their father, my job is to make sure they're making progress along a good path, even if it's not the one I might have chosen for them. You've got to stop hating Ranko because she made the best of the hand fate dealt her."
Genma grumbled, reaching across Soun's lap for the bottle. "Maybe you and I are just different then, Tendo, because I don't recognize the person in those pictures. That's no one I know."
With a nod, Soun turned the page in the photo album in his lap. "Then let me introduce you. Permit an old man, and an old friend, a moment to brag about his little girl."
The bald man to Soun's left nodded slowly, lifting the glass bottle in his hand. "You have until this runs out. So, talk fast, Tendo." With a trembling hand, he refilled his cup again and immediately knocked it back against his lips.
With a nod, Soun smiled down at the next full-page photo in the book, turning it to show his friend. The photo featured Ranko, in her red-and-white Yusue High pinafore, surrounded by five other girls similarly dressed. Each of the six girls held a red leather folio in their hand. One of them, a short girl wearing thick glasses with silver hair that was turning dark brown at its roots, was hugging Ranko around the waist. "Her high school graduation. Nobody thought she could do it, given how far behind she was, but she worked her backside off and made it happen. Even earned herself a scholarship to college. She just started her first classes last week."
"Not sure what he needs that for," Genma mumbled pointedly, "if he's going to make a living shaking his ass in short skirts."
Soun sighed, his head drooping. If any other man had said that about his youngest daughter, he would have flattened them with his fist, but if he had any hope of reaching his friend, he had to let him get the poison out of his heart and into the air. Better that I hear it than she does, he thought to himself. I owe her that much at least, after everything. "She wants it. She wants to succeed. She wants to feel like she's accomplished something, and prove to herself and others that she is more than… what you just said."
"Who are the other girls," Genma asked, taking a sincere look at the photo for the first time.
"Her friends," Soun replied, his pride evident in his voice. "Everyone loved her at school. Her classmates, her teachers… She was extraordinarily popular, and I'm sure she will be in college, too." He tapped the face of the silver-haired girl hugging Ranko in the photo. "This is Kumiko, her best friend. She wasn't very athletic, but Ranko trained her in gymnastics and made her a champion. She stood up to more than one bully for her, and did the same for other girls, too."
Genma rubbed his chin. "I thought he didn't fight anymore."
Soun nodded. "She's still got every bit of the talent and training we gave her. She relies more on speed than strength now, but she holds her own." He flipped to the next page, which featured Ranko, wearing her purple student instructor's gi, in the middle of a high kick to the face of a boy twice her size. Her left foot was planted on a blue vinyl gym mat printed with the logo of the Honshu Mixed-Style Martial Arts Tournament. "In fact, she won a master-level tournament just a few months ago. Another of Akane's students won at the intermediate level, too, with Ranko helping train him."
The older man scoffed, shaking his head with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Nonsense. Those big tournaments don't even let our art compete."
Soun smirked at the opportunity to again speak up for Ranko's achievements. "Actually, they do now. Ranko took it upon herself to go through the whole procedure to get Anything-Goes Martial Arts formally recognized, including winning a challenge against one of the senseis on their board of directors to do it. She literally put our school - our art - on the map."
"... Huh." Genma nodded, pursing his lips thoughtfully before raising another cup of sake to them.
The mustachioed man flipped to the next page, on which there was a picture of Ranko and Akane in their gi, standing surrounded by six young men in white gi. The two Tendo girls were each holding one side of a two-meter wooden sign carved from half of a cherry wood tabletop, declaring the little park in which they stood as the Minato chapter of the School of Anything-Goes Martial Arts under Master Akane Tendo. "See? One school, just like we always wanted."
"Maybe not just like," Genma said dismissively. "Ranma should have been the one with his name on the sign. He's the true master."
"Ranko made a different choice," Soun said, turning the page again. The next spread featured several smaller, square Polaroid photos of Ranko dressed in a green velvet dress and matching winter hat, her hands adorned with a pair of lacy white gloves wrapped around a dynamic microphone. Her red hair was braided with a white ribbon, making her ponytail look like a long candy cane. In the upper right corner was the photo Nabiki had taken of the poster advertising the first Christmas concert at the Phoenix, and at the lower left was a Polaroid of Ranko and Akane on stage singing Baby, It's Cold Outside together.
"You haven't actually heard her music, have you, Saotome?" Soun leaned back on his elbows in the grass, wishing he'd thought to borrow Akane's portable compact disc player before leaving the house.
The old man shrugged. "Maybe part of a song here or there on the radio. Honestly, I've probably heard it and not even known it was Ranma. But, he sings in a karaoke bar. How impressive could it be?"
"You should listen to it," the Tendo patriarch replied, "because it is impressive. Far more so than you realize. She talks a lot about how she feels about things in her songs. It would be a good way to get to know her. The person she is now, anyway."
Soun turned the page, spinning the book sideways to reveal a full-page landscape photo. It was taken from behind Ranko, who crouched at the center of the frame with her back to the camera in a red leather jacket and matching tight leather pants. She held her left fist aloft above her head as if she were in the middle of punching the floorboards under her. On either side of her were two three-meter high jets of orange flame belching skyward from the stage floor, illuminating the two young men with guitars strapped to their chests on the left and right side of the image. Two slender girls flanked the redhead, each wearing shimmery red dresses with leathery maroon wings strapped to their backs. The top half of the photo showed the darkened arena seating of the Tokyo Budokan, dotted with thousands of faces and camera flashes.
"It's like this everywhere she goes. People love her."
Genma rolled his eyes. "Dressing like that, I can see why."
"If it were just her costumes, and not her music, I doubt this would have happened." Soun skipped a few pages in the celluloid book, pointing to a photograph that featured Ranko sitting on the top of the bar counter in the Phoenix with her ankles crossed in a yellow sweater dress. She had an orange plaque in her lap, propped up against her torso, and held another in each arm, holding them up across each of her thighs so that the three plaques were all in a row.
"What are those," Genma asked, setting down his cup of sake. He adjusted his wire-framed glasses, squinting to read the plaques in the dim lighting of the shadowed park.
"Japan Record Awards. The most prestigious recognition you can get in the music industry, Saotome." Soun turned the page, showing Genma another photo with a closer view of the center plaque so he could read it more clearly.
The bald man picked up the book, tilting it this way and that to catch light from the park's lamp posts on the parts of the picture he was trying to read. "Once Upon a Rhyme?"
"It's one of her more popular songs, and one of my favorites. The whole song is just Ranko expressing her gratitude for how much better her life is since she's changed things. Since she's become who she is now. It talks about how blessed she feels because destiny gave her a second chance to build a life for herself. That's actually my favorite line in the song: Sure, it seems just like a fantasy that fate would reach backward for a girl like me, but now, my happy ever after happens all the time," Soun said, not daring to try and actually sing the lyrics. Nowhere near drunk enough for that, he thought, allowing himself a small smirk.
"That's what I'm trying to get you to understand, Saotome. I know it's so much different than you planned for Ranma, but for the first time in her life, Ranko is happy. She knows joy. She's living a life she wants, on her own terms. We didn't give her that, like we should have. We failed her, and she went and made a whole life - a whole identity - for herself, by herself, on her own. She's earned every smile in these pictures and more."
Genma blinked thoughtfully as he read the plaque in the photo. "And you say he won three of these awards?"
Soun laughed. "No, old friend. She won four." He turned the page again, past a few pages of candid and casual photos of his four daughters, stopping only when Genma bristled at another large photo of Ranko in her cheerleading uniform for Yusue, twisting in mid-air.
"See, that, I don't understand. Could he possibly have picked a more ridiculous thing to do? Flouncing around half-naked with bows in his hair, cheering on boys rather than doing something himself? How does someone with the skills he has lower himself to that?"
Growling under his breath, Soun shook his head. His friend's continued dismissal of his youngest daughter's achievements was really beginning to wear on his patience, and the more inebriated Genma became, the more Soun worried it would become intolerable. Still, knowing that confrontation would only hasten an argument and further close Genma's mind, he maintained his composure for the time being. "You'd be surprised at the athleticism required. Her martial arts skill played directly into her gymnastics; she actually gave lessons to her teammates based on your training. And all she did from there was perform a gymnastic technique that had never been done successfully in the history of the competition and earned herself a free college education by doing so. And besides, she tried to do martial arts at her school, and they wouldn't let her."
"Because they don't take girls," Genma supposed.
Soun nodded in confirmation. "So she did the next best thing they would let her do, and excelled at it. Genma, she really is incredible. I wish you'd let yourself see it." He sighed heavily. "It is possible to be formidable and be a woman at the same time. Sometimes, I think you don't realize that. I would think losing to Akane twice would have made the point clear for you." He laughed wistfully, holding out his cup for Genma to fill from the bottle in his hand. "Without knowing it, Ranko absolutely inherited her headstrong nature and unwillingness to back down or give up from her mother. I remember how Nodoka was when you two first met. She was a force of nature, old friend."
"Don't remind me, Tendo," Genma implored, filling his own cup as well as Soun's. "But Ranma did give up. He stopped looking for a cure, and he ran away."
Soun nodded, smirking a bit. "I think it's one thing to give up on something because you don't think you can achieve it, and something else entirely to decide to stop fighting for something because you realize you don't want it anymore. You think these awful things about her, about how she is somehow inferior because she's a woman. By nearly every measure, it's the opposite. She does better in school, and in relationships. She has friends and family and a career. She's happier. She makes Akane happy. She smiles. She laughs. She gets out of bed in the morning with a purpose. She has a life she's proud of, and all she wants is for the people in her life to be proud of her, too. I know I am, for my part." As her father.
He turned the page, smiling at a picture of Ranko in a white Tendo for Mayor tee shirt that was tied in a knot at her hip, hugging him on a temporary stage at an outdoor campaign rally held just a few hundred meters from where he now sat. "And she's proud of what she's a part of - be it my family, the bar she works at and the family there, her band, all of it - because it's all things she's chosen and made for herself. She's been given next to nothing in this life. Everything she has, she has earned."
He turned the page to a photo of Ranko and Akane alongside Hana and all four of Ranko's sisters, in front of the temporary stage that had been erected in the street in front of the Phoenix the night of the Phoenix Rising release party. "And she has people willing to fight for her, too."
Genma rubbed his jaw, which popped as he touched it, glowering at Hana's face in the photo. "Oh, believe me, I know."
Soun smiled softly. "I know we as parents always have dreams for our kids, and they don't always align with what they end up doing. That's the problem with having to watch them grow up; eventually, they start thinking for themselves and making their own decisions. But honestly, Saotome, what more could we ask for than our children being happy and feeling fulfilled in their lives? What more could we want for our girls?"
He sighed quietly, reaching out and clapping Genma on the thigh with his hand. "You know, I remember the day I told you Rumiko was pregnant with Kasumi. We were so excited, and we sat and drank and talked for hours, you and me." He tipped his cup to the black obsidian obelisk in front of him. "The master was so furious at us the next day when we were both too hungover to train that he made us run in place all day long. Do you remember, Saotome?"
Genma nodded, also dipping his cup toward the grave in respect. "Like it was yesterday," he said reverently.
"I remember talking about what we hoped for, for our children. Hell, you hadn't even met Nodoka yet, and you already had all these big plans for yours. And I'll never forget what you said. If you had a son, you wanted him to be strong and brave. You wanted him to be a master martial artist and the awe of everyone around him. Someone the people he loved could count on."
Genma bobbed his head again. "And I did my best with Ranma. I made some mistakes, to be sure, but I thought I could make him into all of those things. I really thought I'd done it, Tendo, and then Jusenkyo happened."
The slender man in the brown gi nodded sagely. "But here's the real question: do you remember what you said you wanted if your child was a girl?"
Genma winced, looking down at the bottom of his cup as if he expected to find some wisdom there. His response was quiet, and there was almost a shame in it as his shoulders slumped. "I wanted her to be smart and beautiful. I wanted her to be well-loved and to take care of the people she loved. And ultimately, to marry well and be happy."
His friend clapped him on the shoulder, pulling him tight against his ribs. "Genma, you got everything you wanted in a son, and you got everything you wanted in a daughter. You just got it all in the same person, which is arguably even more impressive." Soun turned to the last page in the photo album, a full-page portrait showing Akane's glowingly excited face as Ranko approached her on the stage at the Phoenix in her wedding dress, clutching Nodoka's arm.
Genma's eyes widened as his eyes took in the photo. The faintest hint of a smile began to cross his face. "Nodoka… gave her away?"
Soun nodded, smiling in quiet acknowledgment. "An honor that should have been yours, old friend. But instead, you attacked her that morning. She was in so much pain from that fight with you that she could barely stand, but she smiled and put on that beautiful dress and married the love of her life, because she refused to be told she couldn't. What more strength do you want than that? What more conviction could you ask for from your child?"
"It's just…" Genma pursed his lips, exhaling heavily as he shook his head. "I had a son, and now, I don't. And it makes me angry."
"Saotome, you haven't been listening. That's what I've been trying to tell you." Soun Tendo shook his head, groaning as he stood from the grass and stretched his back. "You and Nodoka always had a daughter. You just didn't know it yet."
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