บท 306: What's Your Name?
"I should've worn my uniform," Ranko lamented with a sigh, grunting as she swung her immobilized left leg forward between her crutches.
Akane sighed softly, rubbing her wife's back through the shiny silver polyester warmup suit she wore and playing gently with the loose red ponytail draped over her shoulder and secured with a large, glittery silver bow. The words YUSUE LIONS CHEER were embroidered in bright, bold red English lettering down the right side of Ranko's body, starting just under her armpit and continuing all the way down to her knee on her warmup pants. Along with all of the many other things that sucked about Ranko being on crutches, it meant she couldn't hold her lover's hand when they walked, not that she could do that much in public anyway. "Hey. It's not like they don't know you're part of the squad. Besides, you'd have frozen out here in it, and there's no way you could have hidden your brace under that skirt."
Plus, if you're not in uniform, I don't have to worry about you trying to sneak out there and perform on one leg. I wouldn't put it past you otherwise, Ranko.
Ranko blushed deeply. "I can barely hide my freakin' panties under that skirt, Akane."
The raven-haired girl giggled, leaning in closer to her wife, careful not to disrupt the path of her aluminum crutches. "Why do you think I like it on you so much? And your Minato uniform's gonna be even smaller."
The gimpy girl to Akane's right paused on her crutches, turning to face her with a smicker. "And you thought I was doing it for the scholarship? I just wanted to watch you squirm at the thought of me in the outfit."
With a giggle, Akane held open the door to the massive auditorium that, as last year, hosted the All-Tokyo Cheerleading Invitational. "Well, mission accomplished, princess."
Ranko's face warmed further. You'd think I'd be used to her calling me that by now, but it still gets me every damn time.
She looked around the campus, at the hundreds of cheerleaders, families, fans and press bustling this way and that, and sighing quietly to herself. Things were so much different than last year. She hadn't come on the bus with the other girls, she wasn't in her uniform, and she knew she wasn't going to compete. Depending on what her orthopedic specialist said in a few days, she might not ever get the chance to perform with her high school squad again. In a lot of ways, it felt like even though she was still two months from graduation, she had already been… moved on from in a way that hurt far more than she cared to admit. Shiori had to beg her to join the cheerleaders last year, and now, even though she knew she would have a new squad waiting for her in just a few months' time, the thought of leaving her Yusue squad behind gave her a sense of impending loss that she simply couldn't shake.
Maybe it won't feel so… unfinished… if they win today. If we win. I'm not gone yet. I might be on one freaking leg, but I'm still one of them for a little while longer.
Stopping at the doorway to the main auditorium, Akane slipped Ranko's pink backpack off of the shoulders of the red Yusue High Athletics sweatshirt she'd borrowed from her wife in order to support her squad, holding the straps open for Ranko to slip her arms into. "You gotta take this now. This is my stop, love."
The redhead nodded, adjusting the weight of her bag on her back and tightening the straps slightly to account for her smaller arms and keep its swaying from impeding her crutches. She sighed with a heavy resignation, nodding and looking up at the double doors leading back to the dressing rooms with an air of dread about her.
"Hey, Ranko?"
Ranko looked up to Akane. "Mm?"
"I'm proud of you. No matter what. Your girls have got this." Akane flashed her lover a bright smile of reassurance, clawing at the air with stiff, bent fingers in what Shiori Nagata had minted as the de facto secret handshake of the Yusue High cheerleading squad last year.
Ranko returned the catlike gesture with her left hand, but let the claw collapse into a loose fist at the end of it, which she then rubbed in a circular motion at waist height with her right hand.
I love you too, Ranko. Go get 'em, baby. Akane nodded in acknowledgement, turning for the general admission seating as a tall, slightly pudgy security guard in a black uniform with a bright yellow vest held the pine double door to the dressing rooms open for Ranko to pass on her crutches.
Ranko trudged down the narrow hallway, stopping at the third door on the right. A sheet of white paper in a plastic page protector was taped to the door, displaying the logo for the Yusue Vocational High School Fighting Lions in red. She tapped twice on the door with the foot of her right crutch, and a moment later, the door swung inward, where the squad's captain was greeted by its youngest member.
"Hey, Ranko! You ready to do this thing?" Kayo smiled nervously, walking alongside her friend as Momoe and Etsuko both waved to her in the doorway.
The redhead smirked, lifting up the aluminum sticks under her armpits for emphasis. "Well, I left this place on crutches last year, and we won, so, I guess we'll call it a good omen." She moved forward a bit in the room, but in the bustle of thirteen nervous cheerleaders, there was nearly no space to maneuver.
At least, not until a shrill whistle split the air, drawing the attention of all thirteen other girls in the locker room. All motion and conversation ceased, and the cheerleaders' focus all turned to Shika Fukita. The silver-haired sophomore had hopped up onto the long bench running through the middle of the room, already in her full uniform, and only once she noticed that she had everyone's attention did she remove her two fingers from her mouth.
"Everybody! Make way for the captain!"
The crowd of girls parted, the young women congregating against the two rows of long mirrors and vacating a wide aisle running from the door to the back of the room. Ranko blushed as she trudged between the two rows of cheerleaders in silence, but her cheeks darkened far further when Kumiko began cheering and clapping her hands. She was joined by Rin and Moriko, and then by Yori and Mizuki, and soon, all thirteen of the active Lions cheerleaders were clapping for her.
Ranko found an empty spot on the long bench, letting herself flop to her backside heavily. She started to set her crutches aside, but stopped when she realized the activity in the room had not resumed. Every eye in the dressing room was still laser-focused on her.
Oh, gods. They're waiting for a fucking speech.
The redhead stood again, resting the knee of her uninjured right leg on the long wooden bench bisecting the room and distributing most of her weight to it, using the crutch under her left arm for balance only.
Here goes nothing.
"Hey, girls," Ranko began nervously, licking lips dried from nerves and the January chill both. "Fuck, I wish I could compete with you all today. You all look so freakin' ready. Well, except you, Tami. Put your damn shirt on, girl," she said through a nervous giggle. The spate of laughter that rose from her squadmates gave her a welcome moment to think of what to say next.
"Today," Ranko continued, "the people on the radio, and everybody else that thinks they know anything about this competition out there, are talking about me. I was listening on the train on the way in. Oh, they don't stand a chance without Ranko, Ranko won all these music awards, quadruple twist, yadda, yadda, yadda." She nodded in understanding as a quiet, defeated collective murmur arose from the assembled young women.
"Ya know, when I joined this squad halfway through last year, nobody gave us a chance at this thing. And I mean nobody. Yusue hadn't won an Invitational in thirty-some years. No one knew who I was, not really, or who any of us were. We weren't the returning champs. We were the returning nobodies. But you know what? We left our hearts out there on that mat, and we made them respect us."
Etsuko whooped loudly. "Hell yeah, we did!"
Ranko swung gingerly forward on her crutches, taking a step closer to the girl who had silenced the cheerleaders for her as she hopped down from the bench to the floor. "Hey. Tell me something. What's your name?"
"Shika Fukita, captain!" The silver-haired girl stood almost at militaristic attention in her red-and-silver cheerleading uniform. The seriousness of her expression was somewhat undermined by the streaks of sparkly silver puff paint under her eyes.
Ranko nodded. "Then I guess you'd better go out there and show that crowd, those judges, your family, and everybody else who Shika Fukita is."
She hobbled a few steps to her left, looking up into the nervous blue eyes of a girl with bright lime-green hair tied back in a pair of high pigtails with silver bows in them. "What's your name?"
"R… Rin. Rin Mats… subara." The junior brushed her twintails behind her ears with trembling fingers.
Ranko bobbed her head again. "You were new to the squad this year, so none of these girls knew you. They were champions, and you were just some transfer student from Kobe that had never cheered before. Let me ask you: who is this, Lions?"
"RIN MATSUBARA!"
The captain smiled warmly at the young dancer as their squadmates shouted her name. "You see? You made champions respect you, and now, you're about to go out there and lead them." Ranko lifted her right crutch, pointing at the double door leading to the arena with it. "Now, you need to make everybody out there respect you, too. Can you do that, Rin Matsubara? Are you ready to do that?"
Rin nodded resolutely, blushing. "Yes, captain."
Ranko grinned, her sparkling blue eyes turning a half-meter to Rin's left. "What's your name?"
The squad's other silver-haired cheerleader blushed at being asked the question by her best friend, and further still at participating in the somewhat contrived motivational exercise. Still, she straightened her posture, answering in a bright voice that sought to minimize its nervous wavering.
"Kumiko Iwata, captain."
Ranko smiled warmly, addressing the room rather than Kumiko herself. "You know, I had to talk Kumiko into trying out for this squad last summer. I begged her. She said she wasn't ready. She couldn't dance her way out of a paper bag. She'd never had any gymnastics training at all. This girl thought she was too much of a nerd to even buy a ticket to an event like this, let alone compete in it. She was scared shitless."
"She still is," Kumiko offered quietly, looking down at her silver cheer sneakers.
Ranko nodded softly. "Well, then, let's ask the top squad in Tokyo what they think. Hey, Lions? Does Kumiko Iwata deserve to fly with you today?"
"KU-MI! KU-MI!" The girls chanted loudly, Aoi and Tanda pounding on the aluminum lockers in time with the cheer.
"Sounds like a pretty strong endorsement to me. I'm convinced. They're convinced. What about you? Are you convinced, Kumi?" Ranko smiled, putting her hand on her friend's shoulder and giving it a firm squeeze of assurance.
Blushing, Kumiko hesitated for just a moment before giving a sharp nod, cracking a more confident smile of her own. "Yes, captain."
"Good! Now, go out there and convince them, too." Ranko raised her crutch to shoulder level, parallel with the ground, pointing it at a girl with a bright orange ponytail in the far corner. "What's your name?"
"Tanda Yoshida, captain!"
Ranko swiveled slightly at the waist, leveling her crutch in the direction of the mousey brunette standing next to Tanda. "What's your name?"
"Mizuki Kajiwara!"
On Ranko went, singling out each cheerleader in turn with a wordless point.
"Etsuko Araya!"
"I am Yoriko Shoda!"
"Aoi Tabata!"
"My name is Momoe Sada!"
"Moriko Ishihara!"
"Ayame Makino!"
"Kayo Morimoto, captain!"
"Tamiko Horiuchi!"
Ranko smiled brightly at her charges despite her wistful sadness, recognizing a glimmer of hope in their eyes that had not been there a few moments before as she made eye contact with each in turn. "I'm graduating in two months. I'm never going to compete in this thing again. So, I don't want you to listen to anybody out there talking about Ranko Tendo. She's a has-been around here anyway. I want you to go make that crowd out there forget my name."
Ranko reached her hand forward, fingers outstretched with her palm pointed to the floor, inviting her squadmates to huddle around her and join hands.
"I want every single one of you to go out there and make them remember yours."
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