Well, you have my brother to thank for this one.  He woke me up Saturday 
morning to take him to some rehearsal or other; I rolled out of bed, put 
on the scummiest clothes I could find, grabbed my keys, and started 
driving.  halfway there, he said that it was only going to take 5 
minutes, so I should wait for him.  Okay, I walked to the nearby 
coffeeshop, bought myself a coffee, and waited.  I had nothing with me 
but a pen and an endless supply of napkins; all my fanfics-in-progress, 
homework, etc. were at home.  The result was this fanfic.  By the time I 
*finally* got home an hour and a half later, I was into it enough that I 
leapt for the computer, typed, and revised it in a fit of madness.  My 
brother was a bit worried about me.

Anyhow, without further ado:

Hitting the Nail on the Head
a Ranma 1/2 fanfiction
by bengman

     My father gave me my first camera when I was six years
old.  It was just a snapshot camera he had gotten free in the
mail, but to me it was a piece of magic.  I could look at the
world through my little black box, and what I saw through my
viewfinder would later mystically appear on paper.  Before
long I was saving my allowance to buy better and better
cameras.  Photography magazines.  Special camera accessories. 
My father didn't seem to mind; maybe he had noticed that I
was not exactly Mr. Popularity at school, or maybe he just
liked having me out of his hair for a while.  It doesn't
really matter; with that single, offhanded gift my world came
into focus.  My life was a chronicle of photographs, mapping
out the world around me.  That world, the world through my
viewfinder, became my life; my photo albums became my
memories.  That was enough for me.
     Until high school, that is.
     My high school photo album is worn and tattered from
constant rereading.  I keep it on my bedside table so that I
can look at it every night before I go to bed, and every
morning when I wake up.  I usually turn the pages with slow
reverence, sparing a glance for each photo, gazing longest at
the most important ones.   But tonight is not a time to
linger, so I move quickly.  In any case, I know each picture
by heart.  By heart.  More like each picture is printed on my
heart, until all the photos together make a movie of my life
and my love, a movie only I can see.
     Which is just as well.  Nobody else would ever pay 1800
yen to see it.
     Flipping the pages quickly puts my love in fast-forward. 
The first photo was snapped by accident.  It was the first
day of high school, and I was taking aim at the school
building; I had always loved to photograph buildings, and
this one seemed to me to hold so much promise for the future. 
Then, just as I pressed the button, she walked in front of
me.  She appeared like a vision in my viewfinder, and I was
lost.  Photography was nothing, then, nothing compared to
her.  I began to live for those moments she was poised in the
eye of my camera.
     Seven pages into the album, I bought an auto-focus
camera.  I hated not being able to see her clearly, even for
a moment.  The quality of my photos decreased slightly, I
suppose, but I could take pictures faster, so I didn't mind. 
It was with this camera that I first photographed her
fighting every morning, battling her way into the school
building like a Valkyrie.  I had known better than to try and
fight her myself.  Goddesses could not be captured by normal
means; I had her on film, and that was as close to captivity
as she should ever come.
     Another eight pages, another camera.  I had come to hate
my single-lens reflex model.  Whenever I took a photo, I lost
sight of her for the duration of the shutter movement.  It
disturbed me, that moment of absence, as if my life were
being switched off for a moment.  Once again, the quality of
my photos decreased, as I could no longer center accurately. 
But I gradually adjusted, at least enough to keep her in the
center of each shot, where she belonged.
     A few pages further on, and there he is.  Anger wells up
inside me as I gaze at those first photos.  I had always
known that I would never gain her love, not in any real
sense.  But Saotome encroached upon my goddess in a way even
less forgivable.
     He invaded my viewfinder.
     There he is in almost every shot, his face always
alongside hers.  On every page, I see his features.  His
face, in my life.  And the goddess is angry.
     She is even more beautiful in anger, but somehow that
beauty has been stolen from me.  Once I had a claim to that
beauty, with my camera.  But now Saotome is everywhere.  And
photography has lost much of its joy.  Now it is war.
     I reach the last of the photos, and the first of the
blank white pages.  Here I stop.  Tonight's purpose is not,
after all, to look at what has come before.  I picked up my
latest batch of photos at the shop just today, and I have
been quivering in anticipation of this moment.  I never look
at my photos before I put them in my album; it makes the
actual experience that much more fulfilling.
     The first few are fairly commonplace.  Smiling on her
way to class.  Angry at Saotome.  Sad beside the swimming
pool.   A few more of her angry at Saotome.  Then he
vanishes.  He had left school for some time; it was rumored
that he had gone to China, but nobody knew just what was
happening.  It didn't matter to me.  She stayed behind, and
so for a few more pages I am able to fill my album with her
face.  Though she is not smiling, not in a single shot.  
     Then there is a jump in time.  I feel my hand clench the
edge of the book hard enough to bend it.  She was gone for a
few days.  I remember the emptiness I felt as my viewfinder
remained empty.  I stopped bringing my camera to school. 
Then, when she returned...
     Like all the other students, I received an invitation to
the wedding.  I was miserable, but it was nothing more than
the culmination of my fears, so I was resigned to it.  I
thought that I could at least take a few more photos of her
before she was forever lost to me, and so I took my camera to
her house and climbed a tree outside her window.  I felt
guilty about peeking, so I didn't watch at all while she was
getting dressed, but once her gown was on I began to
photograph.  She was radiant in her gown.  A goddess indeed. 
Even now, looking at these photographs, I am awed.  I place
them reverently in their places, until I come to the last
one.
     I had used up almost my entire roll of film, and I was
aiming for my final shot when the door opened, and Saotome
came in.  My finger automatically pressed the button, but I
stared through the viewfinder for a few more moments before
climbing down the tree and leaving.  I didn't go to the
wedding; I heard later that it had been a disaster, and so my
goddess was still free.  But it no longer matters.
     I stare at that last photo.  Of all the photos in the
album, this is probably the best shot of her.  She is turning
towards the door, where Saotome stands in shock.  Her cheeks
are flushed slightly, and her eyes sparkle.  All that I love
about her is in this photograph.  Ranma seems to feel the way
I do.  His eyes are wide, and there is something in them that
seems familiar, as if I have worn that expression myself. 
But it is Akane's expression that moves me the most.  That
expression, I have never seen on her face before.  I had
always hoped I would, that she would turn in my viewfinder
and direct it at me.  But at the same time I knew she never
would.  
     Saotome is not worthy of the love of a goddess.  I know
that, and I suspect he does as well.  But she does love him. 
And that is why the photo I hold in my hands is so beautiful. 
My goddess is no goddess at all, but a woman.  And somehow I
know now that the love of a woman is not a matter of worth. 
It is simply a matter of love.
     I place the photograph in its place and close the album,
placing it on the shelf where it belongs.  Then I open my
closet.  The box I am looking for is shoved in the back; I
open it and take out my camera.  The one I once used, before
I met her.  The one that took the first photograph of her. 
The one that gave me my life.  There is a temple on the
corner with a falling-down roof that always drew my eye. 
It's time to find a new focus. 

owari

C+C welcome, as always!


bengman           *"Nanika kuwasero, tonikaku kuwasero, zenbu kuwasero! 
Bridget E. Engman * Demae mo ii ze! Henshin shichau to yubi ga futosugite,
b-engma@students. * Pizza no chuumon sae mo denwa dekinai!"
   uiuc.edu       *   ---Wan Dabada, "Can't Stop Eatin'"