Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Dragon Bones and Phoenix Ashes ❯ Part Two: Metamorphosis ( Chapter 2 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

I first learned of them from Wei Hua-Shuhng.
The Wei family had come to Musk Mountain some fifty years or so ago, after the practice of using the Nyannichuan was ended. Therefore they had no animal power, nothing of their exterior appearance to distinguish them from the four millions of residents of Qinghai Province. But then again, that was in their favor. Blending in can be quite an advantage sometimes.
Hua-Shuhng was the only son of the Wei family in the current generation; his name meant China Victory, but everyone called him Hua-Seng, Peanut, because it sounded near exactly the same. I think the entire business of the common theme of our nicknames started with him. Hakka came after.
The Japanese would say I was thirteen. I say I was fourteen. The location was my room, during one of those meetings that could not exactly be called secret, because the adults knew perfectly well it was going on though they did nothing about it. They're a Musk tradition, I suppose. It was quite late, and sleep sounded good.
But Wei Hua-Shuhng- huh! He could and still can convince near anyone to sacrifice a minute that otherwise could have been devoted to a deep and dreamless sleep, and perhaps throw in a few fen, a jiao, maybe even a yuan, besides.
"Herb," he said, "Herb, guess what I know?" He was not much older than I-the Japanese would have considered him fifteen. But when you're that young, two years makes a lot of difference.
Before I could even open my mouth, Liang-Hu and Hakka had hurried over. "Yes, what is it?" Liang-Hu practically shouted.
Peanut grinned so wide I half-expected his mouth to pop out of his face. "Don't you know what a woman is?"
Hakka shrugged. "Not really. I know we get married to them."
"And do you know anything else?"
"I guess you do then?"
"You guess right."
Liang-Hu crawled over and positioned himself directly in front of Peanut. "C'mon now, then tell us! What is a-"
Hakka stuck his head over Liang-Hu's shoulder. "Lime, he's not going to tell us this for nothing, you know. I guess he'll charge us for the privilege or something."
"You guess right again."
By now several of the other boys were heading over.
"Tell us!" called Bai Ching-Ming.
Peanut smiled. "One yuan."
"You must be crazy!" Ching-Ming shouted back. "I have five jiao, will that do?"
"I have some fen," Liang-Hu put in, "in my treasure box. I'm not sure how many exactly. Could you wait just a minute and I'll go get it."
It was then that I began to get very, very annoyed. "Wei Hua-Shuhng," I shouted, yelling all the names to keep from excess anger, "Bai Ching-Ming, Fong Liang-Hu, Jia Hakka, shut up and get back to bed! Don't you know we have training in the morning?"
"We always have training, Herb," Hakka reminded me.
"Well, I heard we might be having an evaluation tomorrow…" I yawned- no fakery was needed to produce that. "Twice the penalty for falling asleep during evaluation, remember?"
Everyone was in bed in record time.
But the next night (I was right, there was an evaluation), it happened again, and this time Peanut accepted Ching-Ming's five jiao to tell us. This time, it was earlier, so I heard. It was rumors that were only a quarter true at the most, not even worth one jiao. But that was all we knew.

There's a legend that the dragon has nine children at a time, each different from the rest. According to this legend, the first has a voice like a bell, the second a voice like a harp, the third is always thirsty, the fourth loves to climb, the fifth is a fighter, the sixth is a scholar, the seventh has keen hearing, the eighth just sits around, and the ninth lifts weights.
I am the first and only child of a Water Dragon- that was the sign my father, Long Jin, was born under. But I don't have a voice like a bell, or a harp for that matter; also, I don't sing. I'm as thirsty as the average person is, and no more. Climbing is fine, but not the best of pastimes- it's monkeys that climb not dragons. So really I am not the first but the fifth, the fighter, the one that best fits my standing.
It's only a legend, anyway. I wasn't even born in the Year of the Dragon.

The conversation was extremely brief.
"Rude?" His eyes widened in a deliberate caricature of innocence. "Me, rude? I am never rude. Just ask Akane." He looked at her. "Isn't that right, Akane?"
"Ranma is an idiot," she replied.
He grinned lopsided and turned back to me. "You see?"
After Saotome Ranma departed, I instructed Hakka to stay with Liang-Hu (who used up all the ice in the hotel canister on the tremendous bump on his head, inflicted via bonbori) while I went out for a walk around Nerima. He objected at first, but I convinced him that in the light of what happened to Liang-Hu, perhaps he shouldn't go out while the Joketsuzoku were still angry. He asked why I was going out, then. I didn't answer him.
Now I'm gulping down a large ice cream sundae, as fast as possible to decrease the chances of people seeing me. I did it quickly, before I had time to think about it, and now I wish I had thought. How can I enjoy my small transgression if I'm neurotic about it?
Just as there's nothing left but brown streaks in the bowl, who should walk in but….
"Yo, dragon guy." He- or rather, she- looked at the bowl and grinned. "Guess you couldn't be bothered to find a garden hose or a blind old lady, huh?"
"If you're referring to the curse, that isn't and wasn't an option."
His eyes widened ever so slightly. "You got cured?"
"I should think that would be obvious."
"Yeah… but… cured? Didn't it get blown up or something? And that damn old pervert drank the Nannichuan water…"
"It wasn't blown up, Saotome Ranma. It was temporarily drained."
"And temporarily flooded?"
"Exactly."
Saotome Ranma slid into the seat opposite. "Glad to hear that. How about another one each? Maybe two? My treat."
How could I refuse?

He had obviously been to this place before. "One Caramel Cherry-Strawberry Cheesecake Special with extra toffee bits," he announced without even looking at either the menu before him or the one on the wall behind the counter.
This time I ordered a single scoop, whereupon he immediately added, "oh, mister, could you throw in another special? Please????" Whereupon he made tremendous sparkly eyes at the waiter.
I gagged and almost vomited.
He chortled as the waiter left. "Works every time."
I came even closer to vomiting. "You're shameless."
"Hey, I'm not tricking anyone, OK?" He grinned. "I just ask, and they get it. That's all."
The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the ice cream. Ranma snarfed his within five minutes. As he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, the ice cream in my dish was beginning to melt but still untouched. I hadn't had a drop of it, let alone the special. And he noticed. "Hey, what's up with you?"
"I've been watching you eat," I informed him. "I've never seen a more disgusting exhibition in my life. And that includes the time you attempted to fight in nothing but underwear."
"Hey, I was just tryin' to get my point across, okay? D'you really have to keep on giving me a hard time?"
"Yes."
He burst into laughter. "I should've known you'd say that. Oh and, are you going to eat that?"
What am I doing here watching Saotome Ranma devour ice cream with less decorum than some pigs? Why did I even accept the invitation in the first place? Why didn't I send a letter to the Tendou Dojo with an appropriately frigid reply?
The fifth child of the dragon does not try to squirm out of situations. The fifth child of the dragon is a fighter and confronts things head on.
I wasn't even born in the Year of the Dragon.

I stop at various places on the way back to the Ryuujin Gokuraku Hotel. It's apparently named after a dragon king of Japanese myth. I don't know very much of the myth, something involving monkey livers and smashing jellyfish.
Hakka made curry (with tea of course) for dinner. To this I add my impromptu acquisitions- two cartons of ice cream, a small jar of cherries in syrup (maraschino, I think they're called) and a boxed pie. It just doesn't look right somehow.
Just as we're about to start, someone knocks.
Hakka goes up to the door. "Who's there?"
"Is the Young Emperor of the Musk in?" The voice is high, that of a child. Who's there?
"Um. You aren't Joketsuzoku, are you?"
Somewhat insulted this time. "No. My name is Saffron, Emperor of Phoenix Mountain. I request an audience." Large words for a child, even a reincarnated emperor. Probably others with him- I doubt those Phoenix People would let him go off alone.
Hakka turns to me. I gesture him closer, then whisper (I have no idea how good the hearing of the Phoenix People is, and have no desire to experiment) "You didn't put any bird in the curry, did you?"
"No. It cost too much."
"All right, then. Let them in."
He is obviously unsurprised by my use of the plural. "All right." He promptly does so.
True to my theory, there are four of them standing outside. There's the Phoenix Mountain Emperor- Young Emperor I think fits him more- with a flame-colored jewel matching his hair in the center of his shirt, golden tassels dangling from the setting. The white silk of his sleeves succumbs to bright yellow cuffs five or so centimeters from his wrists, after which comes the telltale bird's talons. One grasps the Kinjakan, which gleams an even brighter gold under the light emitted by the red lanterns grasped by the two flanking him. They remind me of Liang-Hu and Hakka. This effect is heightened by the fact that they lack wings and talons. Logic kicks in and asserts it's just Nannichuan, but still.
And then, the fourth one…
I hear a choking noise and turn to see Liang-Hu clamping a convenient tissue over his face. Despite this I can see blood, most likely from the nose. Hakka has his hands clamped over the bottom half of his own face. For a moment I believe he has blood all over the part I can see, then I realize he's reddening with embarrassment, just as he ducks beneath the table.
I turn back to see the cause of this. I frown with what I hope is the right degree of displeasure. "Really."
She stares right back. "Really. You'd think they'd be better trained in the mind. How you Musk ever defeated the Joketsuzoku is beyond me."
Take door. Shut in face.
As I secure the locks, Hakka emerges from under the table. "How come she talked to you that way?"
"Yeah!" Liang-Hu adds, throwing the now totally sanguine tissue into a convenient trash basket. "And how come she had on nothing but that thing? Do all the women on Phoenix Mountain go around like that?"
"I wouldn't know, Liang-Hu."
He frowns. "If they do I don't know how the men over there get anything done."
Five minutes afterward, I thank Fong Liang-Hu for the first really good laugh I had in some time.

Liang-Hu's prodigious appetite accounts for all of the curry left in the pot, a third of the pie and half of each ice cream carton. Not that I mind.
Afterward, Hakka and Liang-Hu start to busy themselves with cleanup. I insist on joining in, out of some emotion I can't name- it's not guilt, I know. I think. Several times I detect a shade of a smile on Jia Hakka's face at one of my mishaps. Not that I mind.
An hour after the task is done, all the dishes are where they should be-miraculously, each is all in one piece. Hakka and Liang-Hu immediately fling themselves onto their beds and plunge into sleep. I sit at the desk and think.
Why don't I just go back now? Not attend the celebration, which is bound to be totally inane knowing Saotome Ranma? And plus, all clues point to the conclusion that the Phoenix People will be there too. Including that one. I have no desire to see Hakka and Liang-Hu in the hospital needing immediate blood transfusions due to unduly revealing clothing.
Besides what has Saotome Ranma ever done for me?
Saved your life? Bought you ice cream?
Which he ate.
Hey, it's not his fault you didn't want it. And besides, what's ice cream to a life? Zilch in case you were wondering, Herbert Long.
I flush. Nobody ever calls me Herbert now. They're too busy calling me Herb. But then again what's the difference? I've lost my name, either way.
I need to take a stand of some kind. The fifth child of the dragon does not passively submit to bad fate. The fifth child of the dragon makes his own, good destiny.
And I know this is what I should be, what I have to be, the fifth child, even though I'm the first and only child.
After all, I don't sing.
So I must be the fifth child of the Water Dragon, the fighter, the one that will take a stand, the one that people expect, the one I must be.

For a while I wondered if Kiima had done this deliberately.
"But Captain," Shanghai put in as we headed back to our room, "I thought there was going to be a diplomatic audience with them."
"There was going to be. He was the one that shut the door."
"But Captain," Shanghai kept at it, "If it was going to be a diplomatic audience, shouldn't you ought to have… um, been diplomatic?" No reply. "Captain?"
She might as well have been in his namesake right then. Either way she didn't hear him. Or maybe pretended not to.
"Biao-Jie-ah?" Lhasa chimed in. No audible reaction- presumably no visible one either.
Shanghai sighed. "Ah-Yi?"
It was effective. It was quite obvious she'd taken notice of them, though it was not for the better. For them at any rate.
"WHO is middle-aged?!" WHAM!

I left when Kiima was busy writing back to Phoenix Mountain and Korma and Masala were gone. I didn't want them there after last time. I remembered the room number. 404. I used the dragon's-head knocker. It was a long while before he opened the door. Or maybe I'm exaggerating.
"Hello. I am Long Jing-Swei, Young Emperor of the Musk." A necessary inanity.
I took a deep breath. I took another deep breath. I took a third deep breath. Just when he was beginning to look impatient…
"My name is Saffron, Emperor of Phoenix Mountain." Yet another necessary inanity. But what came next wasn't inane at all. "I apologize for the… incident the previous night." It came out all in a rush, the words tripping over each other. I'm not very good at apologizing. It's not necessary for me to do it often.
"I accept your apology."

"They're out for the day. I just told them not to be idiots." He looks out the window, runs fingers through his hair. It's strange hair even compared to my own. At least mine, though strange for China in general, isn't kaleidoscopic. It's hard to say which of us is older- he's older than ten surely, but looked at otherwise I'm his senior by over a thousand years. "I don't know what their definition of idiot is, though. Anyone but them, I suppose." He turns to me. "How old are they?"
I think for a moment. "Eighteen," I said at last, "just this spring."
"Our standards or theirs?"
"Theirs."
"Ah. You know, I have a feeling I've known them before. Someplace."
I take a moment to thoroughly examine the room. Richly decorated in red and gold, though whether it's their ornamentation or the hotel's I can't be sure. "Maybe," I reply, "from those deranged rumors concerning my people."
He smiles. "Yes, maybe from there. How old might you be?"
"Ten years the previous summer. By their standards," I quickly add.
He nods, slowly, apparently using the time to contemplate his next words. "Eleven then. Do you remember previous incarnations?"
"Some of them. Why do you ask?" I pull at a strand of my hair. It isn't good decorum, but I felt like doing it.
"Because you speak like my father."
I nearly laugh. "Is that true?"
He nods. "Or are you just precocious?"
I don't answer. Who am I to answer that question?
"Should I change the subject?"
"I wouldn't mind."
"Saotome Ranma."
That's all he says, "Saotome Ranma." And I- I am struck dumb.
"Do you want to kill him?" He says this quite slowly, so I can't evade the question. "Do you wish he'd never lived? Do you think the world would instantly become a better place if he died right now? Do you?"
I take a deep breath. Mustn't panic. Mustn't panic.
Why should I not hate him? I have plenty of justification if I did in fact hate him. From the very beginning of the incident of the aborted maturation rite, he was causing problems. He attempted to keep Kiima and the others from getting the map. He caused my premature transformation.
And of course, he killed me.
So why don't I hate him?
I am immortal. Death does not have the same importance it holds to most people.
Besides, the best transformation is in the Year of the Phoenix. Not the Year of the Sheep.
Besides, misunderstandings happen.
"No. I don't."
He smiles. "That's good. I don't, either."

Maybe the Joketsuzoku should try this method of contact with the Musk- simply walk up and ask- maybe then there would be peace.
Then again, maybe not.
Nothing in life is certain, except that everyone dies, even if temporarily. Even the smallest thing can be undone by nature. There are even some who believe that after the thousandth incarnation, I will cease to exist. I don't care- the thousandth incarnation is a long ways off.
Long Jing-Swei ("Everyone calls me Herb," he says, "except for you, and please keep it that way." I don't mind obliging him) and I might hate Saotome Ranma in the future, when there is a cause for it.
But we don't hate him now.
Yes, we certainly don't hate him now. We can't hate him.
Otherwise why did we come here in the first place?
It certainly isn't polite to travel to someone's birthday celebration if one hates him.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
I learned that line in English class. It went something like that anyway. Some dead guy wrote it a long long time ago. I wonder if Jusenkyou was around back then. Anyhow I don't think they knew about it in England, even if it was around back then.
It makes a lot of sense. Sometimes I feel I'm just a puppet on a stage, a puppet because an actor has the ability to cut and run, to resist the script, even though the audience may be totally mystified when it happens. Plus actors get paid. Puppets get zero compensation for getting pulled about for the pleasure of the audience, zero yen for having their lives totally screwed up.
Zone where One in a Million Coincidences become Nine in Ten = Wherever I happen to be.

I'm waiting for something to Go Majorly Wrong with the birthday party. Knowing me it won't be long. Maybe some nut will kidnap Akane (again!), maybe Nabiki will invite every lunatic in Japan and China put together (I wouldn't put it past her to get some duplicate invitations from the shop), maybe Kunou won't bother with invitations and just barge in. And it could just be that the Ryuujin double-booked us with the Emperor (not necessarily the one of Japan) or something like that.
But so far everything's according to plan. So far.
Maybe it's because Aunt Akiko's involved. She isn't part of this insane insane life of mine. Sooner or later though, she'll be drawn into our insanity. Or she'll just leave. Her life is what I wish mine could be like, which is really too bad because I know my life will never be really normal.
But right now, this is the closest to their normal it can be.
School's out. I jump into the path of the blind old lady, and five minutes later I stroll into one of my favorite ice cream places and order a Caramel Cherry- Strawberry Cheesecake Special with extra toffee bits. I eat slowly, enjoying each bite to the max, and tell myself off at the same time. I'll have to work out extra extra hard if I don't want to be mistaken for a blimp.
Then again, blimps probably have easier lives. All they have to do is go where they're told to go and try not to crash into things or get set on fire. No sweat.
But whatever god is yanking my puppet strings doesn't see fit to give me instructions. For example: cue to insult Akane, walk into an automatic sprinkler, fight Ryouga or Kunou or Mousse, run away from Shampoo, run away from Akane, run away from everyone and end by falling into a lake, and then get kidnapped by some nut, and then come back out of instinct to start the cycle all over again. I just have to wing it, and hope I don't get too beaten up trying dead ends.
Whatever god is out there, please, if you're going to make my life a stage, at least give me some cues.

I finish the special and ask for some ice water (with appropriately tremendous sparkly cutie cute cute eyes of course). I drink slowly, watching the door. Just in case.
I remember the face Herb made when I did that only the day before yesterday. "It's not what it looks like," I almost assured him, but then again when has that ever worked with my situations? For my first witness I call Tendou Akane. I now rest my case.
What was he doing there anyhow?
He's cured so he couldn't have made cutesy eyes at the waiter unless… ugh. He can't have been trying to get compensation for pain and suffering by taking advantage of the little perks of his cursed form- because he's cured, after all. He's cured.
When I first started doing it, I did it because I like ice cream. Then later, to justify myself to Akane (who has little tolerance for answers such as "Because I like ice cream") I was compelled to craft a more sympathetic argument (not that she really sympathized). And it really is a reasonable reason. I'm cursed with something that the gods, control-freak puppet masters that they are, will do anything to prevent me from curing. Therefore I should take my revenge by having fun with this curse, so the gods will regret it and cure me.
At least that's the theory.
In his letter Herb said he's bringing Nannichuan water. A kind of a birthday present, I suppose. Hope springs eternal (I learned that in English class, too. Writing practice).
But then again, by accident or on purpose, maybe it's Nyannichuan water, or just plain water. Maybe that shriveled old pervert Happosai'll drink it again. Maybe Akane'll smash it in a fit or something. Maybe Mr. Tendou'll grab it and not let me have it until Akane and me get married. Maybe Pop'll grab it and use it on himself.
Maybe a UFO will land on the roof of the Dojo and beam it up because the aliens want to look at Terran water samples. What is the universe going to throw out at me this time?
Seize the day. Seize it and strangle the life out of it. Shoot for the moon and land among the stars. Shoot for the stars- and land flat on your face.
Who knows what the next few days will bring into this crazy crazy life of mine?

I head for Ucchan's before I start for the Dojo. Akane may squawk, but a friend's a friend.
"Hey, Ucchan."
She looks up. "Hi, Ran-chan. Take a seat. I'll be just a minute."
Fifty seconds later, I'm devouring an okonomiyaki (she insisted on making it on the house) while she putters about- there isn't anyone else in here, there hasn't been, she informs me, since the lunch rush. I finish it, and the second I get up another one's in front of me.
Resist the temptation. "Sorry, but I really need to go. And I had a lot of ice cream." She looks at me with eyes that are just a little bit bigger than before. "Homework to do," I blatantly lie. I did it when I was waiting for the ice cream- just dashed it off.
She gives me a look.
"Okay, if you REALLY want to know…"
"Yes, Ran-chan, what?"
"I'm going to get out of this rut."
She blinks. "What do you mean?"
"I'm going to change." I shout this. "I'm going to train and train and someday kick that old pervert to kingdom come. I'm going to make Pop and Mr. Tendou very, very sorry they ever thought of messing with my life. I'm going to…" I lower my voice in a futile effort to appease the gods. "I'm going to get cured, Ucchan. I'm going to get cured."
And then it's all bubbling up inside me, no use holding it back. "I'm going to get CURED!" I shout, and run off in the general direction of the Nekohanten. I'll find it sooner or later. I'm not Ryouga after all.

I was named Shiang-Pu after my grandmother, Great-grandmother's daughter, Lin Shiang-Yui. Shiang-Yui- that means "Fragrant Jade." I am named Shiang-Pu, "Fragrant Spread." My mother didn't want to name me Fragrant Jade because my grandmother is dead.
She looked a lot like me, as far as I can tell with the photograph- I don't think color pictures were invented back then. Her hair's the exact same style; she's wearing the same silk battle attire with the chrysanthemums, as far as I can see she looks like my long-lost elder sister.
She married Hua Dan-Ru, the top male fighter in the village.
And then she died.
She died in the Year of the Fire Sheep, days after my uncle Kang was born. She died with thirty other members of Joketsuzoku, fighting the Communists. They'd wanted to take us all up north to a prison of some kind. That idea had not seemed attractive to us. This is what Great-grandmother tells me.
Joketsuzoku fought, of course. The Phoenix People fought. The Musk fought- there was an alliance between us for the duration of the war, according to Great-grandmother. For the first time in five hundred years the three Silk Tribes of Jusenkyou (the others around here call us this because we are the ones that battle in silk) fought together, not against one another. Too bad it only lasted as long as the war, and that wasn't so long either.
And besides this display was all those pitiful hamlets of fifty to a hundred people- the Village of Bath Names, the Village of Red Silk Ribbons, the Village of the Phoenix's Heart, so many others- all of those people fought, too. All in all perhaps a thousand, two thousand went against the Communist army, and a fourth of those people were killed- a third of ours. Our death rate was the highest, probably because the Musk hid behind us.
And, of course, we won.
It makes me sad sometimes, incredibly sad. I wonder if I would have cared for her like I did Great-grandfather and Grandfather, like I do for Great-grandmother. It's such an awful feeling, thinking about someone who died before you were born, someone who looked a lot like you, someone who might have come back as her granddaughter (you, or in this case me) to have a second chance at life.
It's such an awful feeling, carrying your grandmother's karma wherever you go.

We Joketsuzoku warriors don't believe in marriage arranged by parents- not because we actually listen to the stupid Communists, but because it's demeaning to the woman involved. It's only practiced by fools.
However, when selecting a potential husband, factors much like those in the above practice do come into play.
I think. I think some more.
Statistic-wise, there's nothing wrong with Shueh Mu-Tz. If Ranma had never appeared in Joketsuzoku, I would have wound up with him sooner or later. He's the second-best male fighter in the village, beat out only by my cousin Musk (my late Lio Ah-Yi neglected to remember that musk is more than a perfume ingredient), whom the Jiang twins persist in calling Enemy Filth. I don't want to be forever known as the wife of Enemy Filth. And anyhow he's my first cousin, so I couldn't marry him even if I wanted to.
The Shueh family has a reasonably good reputation; they used to be the most prominent in Joketsuzoku, according to Great-grandmother. But now that there's only Mu-Tz and his sister … well, they're just okay.
Still, there's that fighting record.
And if Saotome Ranma had never entered Joketsuzoku, if his appetite had been less, I would sooner or later have married him. I admit this.
But Saotome Ranma did enter Joketsuzoku.
But Saotome Ranma did take his prodigious appetite with him.
But I was obliged to chase Saotome Ranma all the way to Japan and give him a Kiss of Marriage.
So really the chances aren't so good now.

He's quit bothering me, instead walking around in what appears to be a state of euphoria while washing the last dishes of the day. I haven't seen him so happy for years. All through the day he's heard enough to do what he's told and nothing more. I can guess what's going on in his mind.
He thinks I love him.
He thinks he has new proof that I love him. I shouldn't have been so nice though it was what my heart told me to do- because it was what my heart told me to do I shouldn't have done it. In matters such as this it is easy to step off a cliff and fall to one's death when following the directions of one's heart.
If I continually followed the direction my heart pointed I would be more lost than the Lost Boy himself.
But all this means nothing to him. He's made a tremendous bubble like one of soap but so much thinner out of his dreams and is mounted on it, rising up toward the sky (which holds not paradise but only the sun and moon and stars, which are beautiful but not especially kind) and sticking down an arm, wanting me to follow him.
Now I wonder how to bring him down from this bubble before it bursts on its own and sends him falling to the ground, striking it and at once breaking into a thousand, no ten thousand, pieces.
Whatever I do, I have to do it quickly.
I look at the clock mounted above the cabinet. 8:30 PM, it proclaims. Round numbers. Perfect.
"Shueh Mu-Tz."
He turns. "Shiang-Pu!"
"Shueh Mu-Tz…" I stop. Why can't I say it? I've said it so many times before. "Shueh Mu-Tz, I…" I don't love you! I love Saotome Ranma! It's true!
And it's then that I choke on my words.
That's just what happens. They refuse to come out. My head has placed a moratorium on those words and any variations. I ask it why, and the reply is because it isn't true.
Once you follow your heart's direction in a matter, there's absolutely no turning back.
I can never go back again, that much is certain. I can never go back to Saotome Ranma; I can never be the way I was before. I can never go back to where the past is waiting. I can never ever follow my head in this matter again. It would never ever be quite right, ever again.
Nevertheless, I try.
"Shueh Mu-Tz, I d-… Shueh Mu-Tz, I… Mu-Tz…"
"Is something the matter, Shiang-Pu?"
"Shueh Mu-Tz, I… don't… I love you."
I grab at my neck, wishing that my words would obediently jump back down my throat and never come up again. But it's far too late.
I can never go back. That much is certain.
He's silent for a good long while, waiting for me to take it back. Then his eyes widen. "Shiang-Pu… you mean it? Please say you mean it!"
I try to issue a denial but drop the issue when my voice again refuses to obey. I can't answer yes either, as my voice has completely frozen. I settle for nodding.
"Shiang-Pu!"
I feel his hands clasping together on my back, the weapons stuffed down his sleeves rubbing pleasantly against my jacket. I take my own arms and return the hug, accidentally sticking my fingers into his hair. I keep them there, combing idly. It's just a hug, nothing more, for now.
I feel just like my grandmother must have felt whenever she hugged Hua Dan-Ru.
And then I hear the tinkling of the door chimes.
And then we both turn and see Saotome Ranma standing there.

Of all the times for him to walk in, he has to do it NOW! Why does my life always seem to be like this?
I disengage myself from her, letting my arms fall to my sides, my sleeves flapping in the wind coming through the door.
A single hair worked loose from his pigtail wavers in the wind like a very small flag. There's not a visible movement otherwise.
Shiang-Pu lets out a small shrieking cry like a dying bird's.
He smiles.
He smiles.
He gives us a thumbs-up. "Way to go, Shampoo. Way to go, Mousse. Invite me to the wedding."
Shiang-Pu lets out another cry like the last one but louder, and grabs Ranma by the shoulders. "How can you say such a thing? The engagement is still valid, Great-grandmother will never agree to my marrying Mu-Tz, and- a-and i-it's J-Joketsuzoku l-l-law…" Tears bubble up and spurt out of those large brown eyes reminiscent of dark chocolate, though I would gladly forsake all sweet things to have those eyes looking into mine forever.
"Hey, Shampoo, it's all right. You see, I'm turning my life around. I'm not going to pay attention to any stupid engagements anymore. So you see, it doesn't really matter."
"It does matter! It does! You may say you won't listen, but Great-grandmother still listens! Great-grandmother… what will Great-grandmother say?"
"I'll take care of it, Shampoo. I'll take care of it. I promise I'll take care of everything."

And now all I can do is hope he "takes care of" this better than Saotome Ranma usually takes care of things.
But better to trust everything to a fool (Is he a fool, really?) than to lose everything.