Ukyou Kuonji was just getting ready to close her restaurant when Ranma walked in, and as soon as she saw his face she wished he’d stayed away. Her heart congealed into an icy lump, like okonomiyaki batter left too long in the fridge; her stomach clenched into a hard, sour knot. He looked nervous, sad, determined… and she knew. This was It. The moment she’d seen coming for months, try as she might to pretend otherwise. The Talk. I’ll always care for you, we can still be friends… the whole sickening nine yards.
He’d made his choice, and it wasn’t her.
He dropped into one of the counter seats and just stared at the floor. “Ukyou, I…”
Ukyou. Not Ucchan. “I know, Ranchan. It’s Akane, isn’t it?” Say it first. Strike the first blow, maybe it’ll hurt less.
He nodded. “I never wanted to hurt you, Ucchan. Jeez, I feel like a bigger heel than my dad… you’re my best friend, you’re like the sister I never had… but Akane…” He shook his head. “If I were any good with words…”
A little rational corner of her mind could see the pain in his eyes (this is tearing him up inside…) but it went unheard in the roar of grief and rage in her ears, the cold dark sea that was life-without-him overwhelming her the way it had done when she was little and her tired legs gave out and she sat in the road crying as the yatai disappeared over the hill taking him away forever and leaving her to the whispers, the whispers that never stopped…
“Get out!” she screamed, and threw one of her razor-edged spatulas at him.
He ducked; it quivered in the floorboards. “Ucchan, I…”
“Just GO! If you like getting hit and poisoned so much, go back to her!” Sobbing, she flung a double handful of spatulas. The last one narrowly missed his head. He backed toward the door, watching her carefully, and then was through it and gone… that damnable Saotome Secret Technique again, running away… he always runs away from me… come back, Ranchan, don’t leave me alone… Wild ideas ran through her mind on fast-forward: seppuku… selling her shop and going back on the road… getting drunk and picking up some lowlife scum, or better yet half a dozen lowlife scum… killing Akane… anything, anything to keep the blackness away, anything to keep from drowning in the icy darkness that was life-without-Ranchan… I never thought I’d envy Kodachi. It would be such a relief to go completely mad…
Mechanically, she finished cleaning up, took down her shop curtain, pulled in her sign. She didn’t want to sleep, because without Ranchan to dream about the whispers would be waiting, and sake wouldn’t keep them away, not tonight, maybe not ever… They say blood washes out dishonor. Does it wash out pain too? Oh kami, I envy Kodachi…
She went upstairs, tied back her hair and bound her breasts. She put on a plain top instead of the one printed with kono that she usually wore in the shop, and filled her bandolier with throwing spatulas. I feel like a samurai in one of those old stories I used to read, putting on his best armor before he went out to die. Then she took her fighting spatula and went out into the night. Blood. Maybe somebody else’s, maybe mine. It doesn’t make much difference.
A discarded newspaper blew across her path. Serial Killer Stalking Tokyo. She picked it up and skimmed it in the light of a streetlamp. Then she dropped it into a trash can and walked toward the train station, her steps swift and purposeful, her lips pulled back in a grin sharper than the edges of her weapons.
Ryouga Hibiki crouched atop the garden wall, hidden in shadow. He watched Akane come out and sit on the engawa, staring at the moon-silvered pond. She looked sad and thoughtful. What has Ranma done to her this time?
A moment later, Ranma came out and dropped to a seat beside her. She looked at him and murmured something he couldn’t hear. He shook his head, looking dejected. She took his hand, then pulled him into an embrace, holding his head against her breast. They sat like that for a long time, as Ryouga’s heart shattered and the world became a colder, darker and lonelier place than ever. Finally, he could endure it no longer. He jumped from the wall and ran away into the night, not caring where he went, so lost in his own inner darkness than he barely noticed when a passing car sent up a spray of water, and a small black piglet wriggled out of a pile of clothes and continued to run.
Somewhere, a bedroom, and a window. A woman gazing at the glowing orb in the night sky. Her white kimono is tied with a red sash, closed only at the waist, barely concealing the glory of her body. Her dark hair is crowned by an ornament that hangs in a double crescent over her forehead. She cries out in sudden agony.
“What is it, Mistress?” asks her devoted manservant, a dour, bald little fellow with pointed ears and a wen over one eye.
“I hear souls crying out in anguish,” she says. “The misery of earth drives the moon farther away every day.” She steps onto her balcony, then out into the air. Her robes trail behind her as she soars toward the earth.
“Wait for me, Mistress!” the manservant calls, and steps off the balcony to follow her, tumbling over and over in his awkward attempt to catch up.
The white-robed woman and her companion landed near a small park. “I’m sure the agony I sensed came from here, Pipi,” she said. “But I can’t find anything except this.” Clothing and belongings lay discarded on the sidewalk. Dark pants, yellow-brown tunic, a backpack, a bamboo umbrella. A residue of aura clung to them, like a psychic odor of depression and loss.
Pipi moved to gather up the items. “Oof. Oww, oww,” he groaned as he tried to pick up the umbrella. He was completely unable to lift it. “Oh, Mistress, are you sure about this? Anyone who can carry something like this must be too strong to need our help.”
The woman ignored him, spreading her hands in a seeking gesture and facing into the darkness. "I am Kaguya," she said. "I seek the soul in pain."
“Bukiii?” A little black pig stepped out of the shadows to stand before her, looking up inquiringly.
“A pig, Mistress?” asked Pipi. “We came all this way for the agony of a… pig?”
Kaguya’s eyes narrowed. She knelt and extended her hand to the little creature, who approached with delicate steps and sniffed cautiously at her fingers. "Spirits of darkness, release this troubled soul," she prayed. Light gathered around her hand and expanded to engulf the pig, who shimmered, shifted, grew… and turned into a young man, absolutely naked except for the bandanna in his unruly black hair. Kaguya smiled with frank appreciation of the youth’s muscular build and the cute way he was blushing all over. The young man took one look at Kaguya and… his nose fountained crimson and he collapsed in a twitching heap on the sidewalk.
Kaguya took a closer look. “Oh, Pipi,” she mourned. “How could anyone get so lost? He’s going completely in the wrong direction!”
Moonlight shimmered in his eyes. No, not moonlight, a face. Black hair, dark eyes, smiling at him, smiling only at him…
“Akane-san,” he whispered.
“No, Ryouga-kun. I am Kaguya.”
“Ka-Kaguya?”
“I hold the position of Missionary here,” she said. “It is my duty to seek out souls in pain, such as yourself, and to clear misguided love from their hearts.”
“Like mine for Akane-san,” he said bleakly. For nearly three years his love for Akane had given his existence what little meaning it had. He had tried his best to protect her, to be her friend (if only as P-chan), to become the kind of man he thought she wanted him to be. And now… in his memory, he saw again the scene he had witnessed earlier. Ranma troubled and sad; Akane offering comfort. She had made her choice. There was no more room for a Lost Boy in her life, no more room even for P-chan. What’s my life worth without her? Attracted by his grief, the dark, heavy ki began to gather around him…
Kaguya stopped him with a touch. “Oh, Ryouga-kun… is Akane the one who always looks out for you? Is she the one you always protect and rescue? Does she fight by your side as if you and she were of one mind and one body?”
He blinked. “One mind and one body?”
She nodded. “Whenever she has been in danger… have you ever failed to rescue her? When she fights by your side, have you ever been defeated?”
Ryouga’s bafflement was growing minute by minute. He had never fought by Akane’s side, and never rescued her either. What could she… the ghost cave. Togenkyo. “Wait a minute, uh, Kaguya-san. There’s got to be a mistake. You can’t mean her! She’s mannish, bossy, scheming, in love with that jerk Ranma, always using me in her plots…”
“The ghosts couldn’t beat the two of you, could they?” She smiled at him, the self-satisfied smile of a woman who has just won an argument.
“Kaguya-san…” But she and Pipi were gone in a swirl of leaves.
Yomogi Valley… she looked after me. That onsen race. Masaka…
Ryouga stared into the darkness for a long moment. Then he shouldered his backpack, picked up his umbrella, and set off into the night, in no particular direction. He usually thought best when he was walking, and he had a lot of thinking to do.
Ukyou came out of the train station and looked up and down the street. Even though it was fairly late, there were still lots of people about: salarymen straggling out of the bars toward home, groups of young folk looking for a good time. Her chosen targets wouldn’t be on a main street like this, but in the shadows, close to their prey. She headed up the street toward a concentration of brightly-flashing neon lights.
People and music spilled out of open doors. Around here might be a good place to hunt. She turned up a darker side street.
“You wouldn’t be looking for trouble, would you, fellow?”
She whirled, hand on spatula. The man who had spoken was the most bizarre-looking human she had ever seen. He looked like major league trouble himself. He was very muscular, and at least as tall as Akane’s dad. Under his black cape, he wore what looked like a… baseball uniform? A baseball bat was slung at one hip, and on his other side a pouch of baseballs hung from his belt. Over his face he wore a mask that left only his mouth showing. Feathers stuck out stiffly from it, making a ruff around his neck and a crest down the middle of his head like a punker’s mohawk. The word “Strikeman” was emblazoned across his chest. And people say we have weirdos in Nerima?
“I’m not looking to make any, if that’s what you mean,” she said.
“You look to me like you’re lookin’ for trouble, sonny,” the apparition said. “You look like some kind of… vigilante.”
“Yeah, and what are you, freak?”
He chuckled nastily. “What am I?” He took a baseball from his pouch. “I am justice itself! I am vengeance! I am… STRIKEMAN!” He wound up and threw.
She had her spatula out and brought it around in a perfect swing. The ball whizzed back and hit the weirdo in the forehead. He fell backwards onto the sidewalk, arms spread wide.
“Sonny, he calls me,” Ukyou muttered. “I”m a girl, aho.” She looked at the baseball-shaped dent in her spatula, and began to laugh, genuine merriment under the razor edges. “Feh, that was kinda fun.”
A pretty girl, walking alone down a side street, spotted a body lying on the sidewalk, and took something from her purse. “Patrol, this is Futaba.” Her voice was unusually low-pitched for a woman. In fact, it sounded quite masculine.
“Whatcha got, Aoi?” a female voice replied.
“Oh, Natsumi! You didn’t have another run-in with Strikeman, did you?”
“Haven’t seen him in weeks. Why?”
“I just found him. It looks like he’s been beanballed.”
A gasp from the radio. “It’s not…”
“No, it’s not our pervert. But it didn’t happen very long ago. There’s an alley halfway up the next block; I’m going to check it out.”
“Aoi, wait for us, we’re about five minutes away. Aoi!”
Officer Aoi Futaba put his radio back into his purse and went on with his patrol.
Three figures stalked down the alley. The headlights of a passing car, shining across the alley’s entrance for a moment, threw up shadowy silhouettes. A huge bear of a man carrying a long staff. A smaller man in a rumpled raincoat. A shapely woman with long hair.
Rumpled-raincoat paused to light a cigarette. The flare from his lighter showed a handsome, stubble-chinned, sleepy-eyed man. His companions were a beautiful redhead and a big man with the beard and robes of a mountain priest. “Ayaka-san, are you sure you’ll be all right?”
The alley almost stank of menace. Ukyou grinned as she entered its shadows. She walked down the middle, at equal distance from the buildings, keeping a wary eye on doorways, corners, any darker place. Her hands were poised to either throw spatulas from her bandolier or draw her main weapon from its back-sheath; she could do either in an eyeblink. Come out come out wherever you are…
The shadow detached itself from a pool of darkness inside a deep doorway, and was on her with the speed of a thought. Inhumanly long arms wrapped around her, pinning her arms so she couldn’t reach her spatulas. She brought her knee up sharply and felt it connect, but a blow that would have had most men rolling on the ground in agony, and would have even caused serious pain to a woman, had no effect on this thing. Its bony fingers burned like dry ice as they tightened on her throat and dark stars danced across her vision. Things snaked into her clothing, it was touching her in places she’d never wanted anyone but Ranchan to touch, she wanted to scream but she had no breath, she wanted to throw up, but its rotting mouth came down on hers in an obscene parody of a kiss and it was sucking everything she was out of her…
“I’ve got it!” Aoi Futaba radioed. “Alley in go-chome! It’s got a victim, I need immediate backup!” She drew her gun. “Hold it! Police!”
The thing raised its head from its limp prey. “I’ll take you next, pretty one.” Its eyes glowed red.
Ara, I can’t fire without hitting the victim. Where’s the backup?
There was a metallic clash, sudden and loud, and a deep, masculine voice chanting, intoning the words of a sutra. The alley lit blue as a glowing mandala formed beneath the creature. Aoi numbly put his gun away. Bullets won’t hurt that thing. It looked like a naked man, one that had been dead for months, its flesh glowing a faint, leprous white. But its arms were inhumanly long, and several tentacles grew from its body to wrap around the victim, probing inside the girl’s clothing, immobilizing her.
A movement caught Aoi’s eye. He tore his eyes away from the thing as three figures advanced from the far end of the alley. There was a huge mountain-priest intoning sutras and holding up a strand of juzu beads. It was his ringed staff that had made the clashing sound. There was an untidy-looking man in a rumpled raincoat, who looked vaguely familiar. And between them…
Miko… no… The expensively-tailored white silk blouse, the tight, slit crimson skirt, were not the robes of a priestess. But the air around her hummed with power as she slowly advanced toward the creature, and she seemed to be in complete control. “Rampant parasitic monster of the world,” she intoned. “Walking dead who tortures the living, the president of Yuu-Gen-Kai-Sha, Ayaka Kisaragi, has just arrived!” She held something in her hands, and made a twisting motion. "Ko-Ryu-Rei-Fu-Sei-Ken!" A blade of crimson light sprang from the thing in her hands.
The thing dropped its victim and sprang at her. She seemed to disappear… and then Aoi spotted her, high up in the air over its head. She dropped like the vengeance of heaven, bringing that glowing blade down on the thing and splitting it in two. Pale light sprang from the wound, brighter and brighter, consuming its unnatural flesh, too bright to look at… Aoi averted his eyes, and when the glow faded and he looked back again the thing was gone and the alley was lit by the headlights of two patrol cars. Guess I’d better at least try to act like this is a normal case. He pulled out his police ID. “Aoi Futaba, Bokutou Precinct.”
The man in the rumpled raincoat also produced a police ID. “Inspector Karino, U Division.”
I should have known U Division would be interested in that thing.
An ambulance siren came into earshot, coming closer.
Ukyou shivered, huddled in numb horror, naked and weaponless. Even though the thing was gone, she could still feel it surrounding her, invading her, leaving her filthy, defiled, worthless. Pathetic. Beaten so easily. Not good enough, never good enough. Not good enough for Tousan, not good enough for Ranchan… never good enough for anybody now. She felt numb, lost in icy darkness. I’ll never find my way out of here, it’s no good even trying, just stay lost…
“Oh my, first that cute boy and now you! It looks like everyone’s lost today!” A woman’s merry laughter chimed around her.
Ukyou looked up to see a woman standing on nothingness, gazing down at her. She wore a flowing white robe like a loose kimono, shimmering like moonlight, slipping off her shoulders to show her creamy bosom, open at the front to reveal slim, shapely legs. Accompanying her was the oddest-looking little man Ukyou had ever seen. He had a long, bald head and a dour expression, and looked for all the world like an overgrown… in formal clothes yet! And I thought that Strikeman yatsu was weird…
"Spirits of darkness, release this troubled soul!" the newcomer exclaimed. Light sprang from her hands to engulf Ukyou. Her body jerked away from what it read as a ki attack, but instead the light was gentle, warm, soothing… when it faded the awful numb emptiness was gone with it, and she was clothed again, her hair bound, her bandolier full, her battle-spatula’s comforting weight at her back.
She blinked. “Huh? How’d you do that?”
The strange woman laughed again, like bells. “I am Kaguya. And you are in my world, the world of the spirits, where you can be clothed or naked, armed or empty-handed, as you see yourself. You may even be a man or a woman, whichever is your truest nature. Which are you, little warrior-sister?”
“If this is the spirit world… I guess it doesn’t matter much, since I’m dead. So how do I get to, um, wherever I’m supposed to go?”
“There are two paths you can take from here,” Kaguya said, and with her words Ukyou saw two roads branching off from the place where she was standing. “One leads to the next world. The other leads back to your body.”
“My body?”
“It still lives, for the time being. But if you do not return to it soon it will die.” That was the funny-looking little man.
“Who’s the dressed-up oar-peg?”
The little man bowed. “Pipi, loyal manservant.”
Whatever. This is too weird… “So… what do you get out of this?”
Kaguya laughed again. “I am a Missionary. It is my task to seek out souls in pain and clear misguided love from their hearts. And it was partly through misguided love that you ended up here, thus I am permitted to help you.”
Ranchan… “That means you’re going to show me the way out?”
Kaguya shook her head. “You have to find your own way out, Ukyou. The next world, or back to your life… only the truth of your own heart can show you the way.”
“But how should I know …”
There was no answer. Wind swirled around her, and Kaguya and Pipi were gone. She was left alone in a featureless wasteland, only the two roads visible.
One way leads back to my body, the other to the next world. One way I live, the other I die. How do I pick… and which way do I really want to go?
She looked from one road to the other. This place is even creepier than the ghost cave. She remembered how she had gotten out of that place, she and Ryouga on that narrow stone bridge, surrounded by vengeful spirits, every step a battle. I wish that jackass would get himself lost here. If this place is like that cave, I could sure use somebody watching my back. Oh well, eeny-meeny-miney-mo… have I got a coin to flip? Huh? What’s on my hand?
There was a faint glow, a scarlet shimmer, extending from her left hand, disappearing into the featureless distance. A… red string…? She had seen a movie once about destined lovers being bound by invisible red strings, but… I always thought Ranchan and I…
If Ranchan’s really the one I’m meant to be with, then maybe this way I can still get him. If he’s not, then maybe… and if this is the way to the next world, then I hope I can be happier in my next life, ’cause I sure don’t want to go on like this any more.
Ukyou rubbed tears out of her eyes and set off down the path, following the red string.
“Where the hell am I now?” Ryouga Hibiki gazed around at the wide street and tall buildings, almost deserted now in the dark. The scene was completely unfamiliar. It was just a city like a hundred others. Only the bright electric signs, in familiar script, told him he was even still in Japan. It could be Tokyo… or Osaka… or Nagasaki…
Moonlight shimmered in his eyes, shaping itself into Akane’s image, then into the mysterious Kaguya, aloof and unreachable, her bare legs and bosom gleaming softly. As if she were made of moonlight… the image changed into a different woman, dark hair tied back with a white bow, a faint gleam of metal hinting at a blade…
Mannish. Bossy. Scheming.
Mannish? Heat washed through him, remembering Togenkyo, that pink gown she had worn, or maybe almost fallen out of… She sure didn’t look like a guy then. His nose felt hot and tight, even the memory made him dizzy…
He didn’t hear the engine’s growl until it was too late. A bright blue sportscar with a wide white stripe up the middle whipped around the corner. With superb control the driver swerved slightly, missing him by scant centimeters. Then the pursuit was on him, a huge white police motorcycle, lights flashing and siren wailing. Kuso! The bike struck him, the impact flinging him into the air, slamming the breath from his lungs. He tried to twist on his descent and land with some control, but he was moving too fast, he crashed into the sidewalk as gracelessly as a discarded doll. Ribs and skull exploded in red-edged white agony that swiftly faded to black, taking him with it…
Ukyou plodded through featureless darkness, relieved only by the faint glimmer of the path she was on and the even fainter glimmer of the red string attached to her hand. Follow the yellow brick road, she thought wryly, remembering a junior-high English teacher who had supplemented the set lessons with dictation from some silly American story about a little girl who got picked up by a tatsumaki and set down in some strange fantasy country. The boys had thought it was really stupid; no one had believed a tatsumaki could pick up a person. They never saw a hiryuu shouten ha, she thought, remembering how she had watched the funnel coiling into the sky like a rising dragon, seeing the tiny shape fall from it, finding Ryouga’s broken body… Ryouga. I always gotta take care of that jackass…
She saw someone, the first person she had seen in this wasteland. A pretty girl, kawaii and feminine, in a pink dress. I wonder what she s doing here. Am I supposed to help her? Did I mess up my life by not being like that? I never liked frills-and-ruffles girls, I never wanted to be one, even when I was little… wait a minute, that’s no girl, that’s Tsubasa Kurenai! Don’t tell me HE’s part of my destiny…?! Tsubasa skipped along merrily, some distance away, and gave no sign of having even seen her. The path she was following seemed to lead in a different direction. Thank all the gods. I don’t know which would be worse, being stuck here for eternity or being tied to that idiot. Ukyou went on, following the path and the red string, which seemed to be glowing a little brighter now.
“Her soul is definitely still present,” Madame Suimei reported. “But it seems to be elsewhere, and I can’t precisely locate it. Nor do I have any idea how to return it to her body. In the only similar cases I know about, the departed soul was called back by… by someone who truly loved the person. If she doesn’t have anyone like that, I don’t know what we can do.”
“She’s engaged,” Mamoru reported.
“Nani?! A girl like that, all bound up and dressed like a man… and so much younger than me? Engaged?” Ayaka Kisaragi was amazed… and more than a little offended.
“At least her emergency notification lists a fiancé. Ranma Saotome, the Tendou Dojo, Nerima.”
A kimono-clad woman moved through the figures of a traditional dance. As she approached, she recognized the dancer. That’s not a girl, it’s Konatsu! The red string tied to her hand did not lead to the cross-dressing ninja, but she watched him anyway, entranced by his fluid movements and the sense of leashed power under the mask of feminine delicacy. He turned and spun as lightly as maple leaves on the wind, and she realized that the fans in his hands were deadly blades and his dance was in fact a kata. She could almost see the sprays of blood from the throats of imaginary opponents.
I always thought I wanted a guy who was more of a man than me, but… gods, he’s gorgeous. And he’s so… I always forget how good a ninja he is. Even if he’s no Ranchan… I guess I could do a lot worse…
But he danced away, faded back into the featureless darkness like Tsubasa, and she was alone except for the path and that glowing red string, that if anything was glowing a little brighter than before.
“You ain’t mad?” Ranma, in the back seat of Kisaragi-san’s car, risked a sidelong glance at Akane.
“How can I be? Ukyou’s my friend too, remember?”
“It’s my fault,” he went on. “She was hurt, I hurt her, so she went out lookin’ for trouble and found that… that thing. And now…”
Akane squeezed his hand. “You’ve done it before, Ranma.”
“Yeah, but… that was you. Ucchan’s my best friend and that means way more to me than her bein’ a fiancée, but I don’t think that’s enough.”
“I believe in you, Ranma. You’ll think of something. You’ll keep trying till you win, just like you always do.”
Ayaka Kisaragi wondered if she was doing the right thing. Apparently the “engagement” between this boy and the injured girl wasn’t what she had thought it was. But her senses told her the boy had power, and what was that about you’ve done it before? Anyway, she simply didn’t have any better ideas.
There was another figure moving through the featureless darkness. Not one figure, two. A couple. Ranma and Akane. Hand in hand, they gazed into each other’s eyes, the cord linking their wrists very thick and glowing so bright it was like looking at a piece of the sun.
She couldn’t deny it any more, not even in the deepest corner of her being. Ranchan didn’t love her. It had always been Akane. With a red string that bright, it had been Akane even when they were children, maybe even before they were born. The last of her secret hopes withered and died. Nothing. Life-without-Ranchan, forever and ever. Empty as this place…
As she bowed her head in despair, she saw the red string she had been following. Its glow wasn’t faint any more. While it wasn’t as bright as the one linking Ranma and Akane, it was still bright enough to cast a red glow onto her hand. It stretched into the distance.
It keeps getting brighter. Maybe… I guess I can at least find out what’s at the other end. One last adventure. She loosened her spatula in its back-sheath and quickened her pace, following the glowing red string.
Ryouga was lost. Really lost. More lost than he had ever been in his life. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel anything. But he could hear. Oh yes, he could hear the whispers around him only too well.
Even your mama hates you, that’s why she went away.
Can’t find your way to the bathroom without getting lost.
Akane could never love a pig like you.
Pig pig pig pigpig pig PIG PIG…
“Show yourselves!” he roared. “Come on out and fight me!”
And they came…
There was something ahead. A structure. A bridge. The path she was following led over it. So did the red string. But standing in the way was the funny-looking little manservant Pipi.
A bridge… guess now I know which way I was headed after all. “So what happens now? I gotta get past you?”
“This is the bridge to your dreams,” he replied. “You have to cross it without looking back.”
“Or what happens? The thunder spirits chase me?”
“Something like that.”
The bridge to my dreams. Well, all the dreams I’ve ever had were about Ranchan, and I don’t have those any more. So I guess this just leads to the next world, like Kaguya-san said. It would have been nice to find out who’s on the other end of this thing… maybe I will in my next life. “Guess I’ll get going then.” She started across the bridge. The next world… I don’t want to die… At the center she stopped, hesitated. The next step would be irrevocable…
She heard an anguished, furious cry, and the red string tugged at her hand. Ahead…
Amorphous ghosts like the ones in the cave, distorted, rotting figures like the thing that had attacked her in the alley, hulking blue ogres with piggish faces, dozens of them, attacking…
He ducked under one demon’s punch, put his fist into another’s middle and snapped the neck of a third with a kick. Their blows could not immediately overcome his phenomenal strength and endurance, but still… he was one and they were many, and little by little they were wearing him down. They overwhelmed him by sheer force of numbers, clinging to his arms and legs and preventing him from attacking. Again and again he would manage to break a single limb free, but then they captured it again. And the glowing red cord around her own wrist was linked to his…
She was already running, shrieking a battle cry. Four razor-edged spatulas quivered in four demon bodies. No sooner were they out of her hands than she launched herself into the air, whipping out her battle-spatula as she did so. Two more fell to her blade on the way down.
Several of the attackers turned aside to deal with this new threat. That gave the beset warrior the advantage he needed. He broke free, cleared the area around him with a flurry of punches and kicks, and then stood motionless, head bowed, shoulders slumped.
Without a word or a thought, she took up a defensive position. Anything that wanted him would have to get through her first. And a little ball of pale greenish light slipped into his fingers, grew larger and brighter…
"SHISHI HOKOUDAN!!"
It swept through the demons, blinding white, sweeping them away. Ukyou sheathed her spatula and turned to face the warrior she had rescued. In the sunbright glow of the red string linking their wrists, she seemed to see him for the first time…
He glanced from the glowing cord to her face. “It was you,” he whispered, amazed.
She couldn’t tear her eyes from his. “You okay, sugar?”
He nodded. Wordlessly he pulled a bandanna from his hair. He took her left hand and wrapped the cloth around it, looping one end around her fourth finger like a ring.
She pulled a spatula from her bandolier and handed it to him in silence, her eyes still on his. The light from the cord linking their hands seemed to glow even brighter.
Then he bent and kissed her and there was nothing but the light…
That was weird, even for one of my nightmares. Ryouga blinked at his unfamiliar surroundings. Gleaming white tile, glaring lights, people bustling back and forth… I think I’m in a hospital. What happened? He remembered a street, a speeding car, and then… then lost in darkness, sensing eyes on him, hearing the whispers, rustling accusations, mockery… the demons attacking… her. The hopelessness of being brought down, not by some mighty enemy, but by hundreds of mocking demons, and then she was there, blade flashing, buying him the space he needed… and that glowing cord linking them…
There was something in his hand. Moving with difficulty against the restraining straps, he twisted his head to look at it. It was a small spatula, such as okonomiyaki-sellers use. He remembered winding his bandanna around her hand, remembered her handing him the spatula… but that was a dream. Wasn’t it?
I always gotta take care of you. Fingering the spatula, he could almost hear her voice. Exasperated, amused, bracing as sea-wind.
I have to find her. They were apparently waiting to take him somewhere; he was lying on one of those wheeled carts, carefully strapped down. The straps were designed to restrain an ordinary man, or maybe a man with the wild strength of madness. When Ryouga focused his power and tensed his ki-enhanced muscles, they snapped like thread.
Ukyou-san…
Ranma gripped the bed rail almost hard enough to leave dents in the metal. This pale, wasted, motionless shell… was Ucchan? Ucchan who was always in motion, who sparkled with enjoyment even when she was angry?
It’s all my fault she’s like this. I gotta do somethin’… but I dunno what. “I’m sorry, Ucchan,” he murmured. “I never wanted you to get hurt. Please… please… you gotta wake up. You’re my best friend, Ucchan, I don’t want to lose you.”
’You’re my friend too, Ukyou.” Akane joined in. “We all care about you so much. Ranma, me, Ryouga…”
“Huh?” Ranma blinked.
“Look.” Akane pointed to a strip of yellow and black wound around Ukyou’s hand. Ryouga’s been to see her, he left one of his bandannas.”
“You’re the only visitors she’s had,” the nurse contradicted.
“Then how’d this get here?” Ranma wondered, fingering the bandanna. “Che, it’s like charged with his ki or somethin’… huh?” Kisaragi-san had produced a small wand, whose gohei streamers stuck straight out as she brought it close to the bandanna.
“There is certainly a strong spiritual energy here,” the red-haired woman said. She touched the bandanna with a fingertip. “Strength… strength like the roots of a mountain…”
“That’s Ryouga, all right,” Ranma shrugged. “Dunno what it’s doin’ here, though.”
“Ryo…” The whisper was so faint he could hardly hear it.
“Huh? Ucchan? You say somethin’?”
Her long eyelashes fluttered; her eyes opened. Yokatta… they were the eyes of the girl he knew. From what Kisaragi-san was saying about souls, he’d been so afraid…
“Ran…chan?”
“Ssh, don’t talk now.”
“Gotta find… Ryouga…”
Huh? “Don’t worry about him, Ucchan. If he’s anyplace around I’ll bring him. Okay? You just get better.”
“That’s right, Ukyou,” Akane joined in. “He’s been to see you; he gave you one of his bandannas. See?” She held up Ukyou’s wrapped hand.
A faint smile lit Ukyou’s eyes before they closed.
Several weeks went by. True to his word, Ranma all but tore Nerima apart looking for Ryouga, but the lost boy was nowhere to be found. Ukyou was discharged from the hospital and returned to school and her restaurant. To the great surprise of the Furinkan student body, she seemed to have lost romantic interest in Ranma. She no longer referred to herself as his fiancée and seemed perfectly happy about his new closeness with Akane. She also stopped binding herself, though she still wore a boy’s uniform to school, and had taken to tying her hair back with a yellow-and-black bandanna that perched on her ponytail like some exotic bird. The Furinkan rumor mill, denied facts, went into overtime cranking out speculations. Ranma had dumped her. She had dumped Ranma. She had tried to commit suicide and been rescued by a handsome policeman, who was now her lover. She had joined a secret society of monster-hunters. Asking her directly, however, was likely to get you a spatula across the head. Asking Akane or Ranma was courting even worse mayhem.
Her customers noticed another change. Every time someone entered the shop, she would look up as though expecting someone… and even though she greeted the customer with what sounded like her old cheery enthusiasm, something in her eyes died and her hand went up to the bow in her hair. And in the afternoon, sweeping her sidewalk, and in the evening, taking in her shop sign, she gazed up and down the street, looking for someone…
Ryouga Hibiki trudged wearily through unfamiliar streets. It was dark; shops were closing. He needed to find someplace to camp for the night. At least it didn’t look like rain. And in the morning he would resume his search for Ucchan’s. He fingered the spatula in his pocket. Touching it, he could feel the confident happiness she always exuded. I’ll find you again, Ukyou-san… Lost in his own thoughts, he bumped into something…
“Hey, watch it, jackass!” Something smashed into the side of his head and knocked him down. He blinked at the furious shopkeeper, standing over him with a shop sign in her hands.
“Suman,” he murmured, one hand to his head in embarrassment. Then his mind registered… her Kansai accent… the spatula at her back…
“Ukyou-san?”
“Ryo… Ryouga?” She extended a hand to help him up. “Where’ve you been, sugar?”
He poked his fingers together. “Looking for you.”
“Well, you found me. Come on in and let’s get you fed. I bet you’re hungry.”
He shrugged off his pack and dropped into a seat at the counter. An okonomiyaki flipped itself onto the plate that appeared in front of him as if by magic. There was something written on it, but he noticed it too late; he had already inhaled the treat. I’m hungrier than I thought. He watched Ukyou as she cooked a second one, her movements graceful and precise. There was something different about her. She seems more… feminine. Was she always this beautiful, or has the way I see her changed? He ate slowly and watched her as she wiped down the grill, washed the remaining dishes, put containers of toppings into the refrigerator. That’s my bandanna in her hair. Does that mean it was real, what we…
She finished her work and perched on the stool next to him. “So, sugar. How come you were lookin’ for me? I mean, you and Akane-chan…”
“That’s over,” he said, too quickly. “Akane-san has …”
“Yeah. I know.” Her hand went to the bow in her hair. “But somethin’ kinda weird happened, and…”
He pulled the spatula out of his pocket. “I wasn’t sure if it really happened or not. That’s why I was looking for you.”
She took the spatula from him. Her fingers brushed his hand. “I guess it really did happen then.” She handed it back. Her fingers lingered on his.
He slipped from the stool and pulled slightly on her hand so she stood facing him. “So… what happens now?”
“I dunno, sugar. I guess it depends on if you bleed all over me and pass out.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t before.” And he didn’t this time either. No, she doesn’t feel the least bit like a guy. His nose wasn’t giving him any trouble at all.
Eventually he picked up his discarded pack and allowed her to lead him upstairs.
Kaguya and Pipi turned away. Then they leaped for cover as they were nearly run down by a lavender-haired fury on a bicycle. As they were picking themselves up, a squawking duck flapped by in pursuit of the girl. The waves of agony emanating from the duck made Kaguya drop to her knees.
“First a pig and now a duck,” Pipi complained. “What is this place, Mistress?”
“A place where people need our help, Pipi.” The Missionary and her servant followed the girl and the duck into the Nerima night.
Everyone is alone
everyone goes to her own adventure
I have been thinking about it for a long time
But I travel with you
I feel like I can finally cross over that bridge
it's so mysterious and it feels like the first time
touch my heart.
— Keiko Kimoto, “Touch My Heart”
from Devil Hunter Yohko 6
NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC.
Oh my, and she still doesn’t know he’s P-chan!
I’d wanted to write a red string story ever since I saw Remember My Love. None of the ideas I tried for Ranma and Akane worked, and then I turned up the Moonchild story in Daigakusei no Ukyo. In the original legend the Moonchild’s name was Kaguya, and that led to ReiRei. Next I needed a reason Ukyou’s soul was out of her body, so I invented a monster, and that brought in Yuu-Gen-Kai-Sha and its Honorable President. I figured Ukyou would go mugger-hunting in a place that had some night life, so I moved the action out of residential Nerima into one of the trendy districts of downtown Tokyo, and added the officers of Bokutou Precinct. When I wrote this, I knew of Aoi’s background in undercover work but hadn’t seen the episode that introduced him, in either manga or anime. That’s why he comes off as a more assertive cop than he really is. Strikeman-meets-spatula was just too good to pass up… For the rest, it owes a lot to “Sweet Dreams,” one of my favorite Ryouga-and-Ukyou stories.
And now for the explanations and language notes.
Engawa:the name for that little veranda that runs around the garden.
In ReiRei, Kaguya turns a guy into a girl, so I figure she’s perfectly capable of changing P-chan back into Ryouga even without hot water.
Aho: dumb, stupid. Equivalent to baka, but used more by people from Kansai, which Ukyou is.
Yatsu: guy, fellow, less printable epithets
Oar-peg: this is a literal translation of roten, which is a very rough Osaka-port slang word for what Pipi looks like. If you’re not old enough to watch ReiRei, you really don’t need to know this one.
Tatsumaki: In the moxibustion arc, Ukyou uses the this word to describe the tornado created by Ranma’s hiryuu shouten ha. My dictionary defines tatsumaki as waterspout. I have no idea how common tornadoes are in Japan, but given how much of it is hills and mountains, probably not very, so the boys’ reaction isn’t that far-fetched.
I know absolutely nothing about Konatsu except that he’s a cross-dressing ninja. The manga he’s in hadn’t hit my comics dealer yet when I wrote this, and I don’t think he’s in the anime at all. I wanted to show him as feminine but deadly, so I gave him Keno’s dance from The Hakkenden.
Thunder spirits: When the creator-god Izanagi went to the Land of the Dead to bring back his wife Izanami, he broke a taboo against looking at her, and saw her rotting body. This enraged her and she sent the Eight Spirit Thunders to pursue him.
Kaguya and Pipi are the invention of Toshimitsu Shimizu and can be found on a delightful H-tape called ReiRei.
Pioneer owns Yuu-Gen-Kai-Sha, its employees and its Honorable President. Kosuke Fujishima is the creator of Aoi Futaba, Natsumi, Miyuki, and Ken Nakajima (the officer who hit Ryouga), not to mention Strike-man. And if you recognize the driver Ken-chan was chasing, you know she’s not mine either.