Hi again -
Two words: "writing fool."
Er...that or I haven't been sleeping recently. You know, whatever.
Here we go:
=====
DISCLAIMER: Ranma 1/2 is property of Rumiko Takahashi, its use in this
original work of fiction generates no profit and no infringement is
intended. Definitions are taken from _Webster's Encyclopedic
Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language_.
ARCHIVE: Do not archive; draft form.
RATING: R
Previous parts can be requested from echonymph@msn.com, or, if you have the
patience, wait two or so weeks and look at http://ling.anifics.com
=====
CATHARSIS
- by ling
=====
=====
PART ONE: Hubris/Pride Above Power (d)
=====
"Mrs. Tsukishiro," Michi started softly, her dark eyes very placid, "we
apologize for having to bring up such painful memories again, but there
are just a few questions that we need to cover once more."
'Painful,' Ranma thought idly, 'is not the word that I'd use.'
Ranma was being remarkably perceptive that day, exploiting his
knowledge of ki to the maximum, reading the pale lines that criss-
crossed and circled Mrs. Tsukishiro with silent, knowing eyes. What
they told him belied far more than what Michi's simple external exam
could offer. It was the reason that he was such a respected officer;
he was the master of the interview. He always knew more and more
deeply about the subject than anyone else in the room. He'd never
revealed his secret, afraid to be ridiculed by his colleagues.
Mrs. Tsukishiro was anything but pained by her husband's death. There
wasn't even a shocked numbness, rather, her body all but sang with
relief, anticipation, joy. Ranma had heard about bad marriages, but
apparently the stress that Mrs. Tsukishiro had been under for the
twenty-seven years of legal binding her husband had resulted in this:
happiness at his demise.
The gray-haired woman sniffed softly, saying, "Well, I understand, Miss
Hirugashi, anything to help the investigation."
Ranma bit his lip, turning toward his partner slightly, seeing her
expression freeze in momentary annoyance, frustration. She'd told him
once a long time ago that she'd spent a good deal of her life trying to
be taken seriously by officers, administrators, and her parents alike,
and that even though she'd more than proven herself, everyone still
called her "Miss Hirugashi." "Goddamnit," she'd once muttered, "I'd
kill to get 'Detective'd one day." "You *do* get detectived," Ranma
had pointed out, "quite often, actually. It's just you never notice is
all." Shortly thereafter, Ranma had remembered very clearly why he
watched his words when he was around Michi: her Glare of Doom outshined
even that of Akane's.
Michi leaned back in the chair, a sure sign that she felt she had total
control of the scene: her face was relaxed, her smile was generous, and
she looked significantly taller positioned as she was. Ranma leaned
forward, resting his elbows on his knees, making himself seem shorter,
less intimidating. He and Michi had never assigned themselves Good
Cop/Bad Cop roles, nor did they specifically fill them; it just seemed
that on almost every occasion, Ranma was a less frightening person to
speak to, whereas his partner seemed to strike the fear of God into
whomsoever to which they were talking.
"Mrs. Tsukishiro," Michi started sympathetically, "this is a *very*
personal question, but I'm afraid that I have to ask it. You
understand, right?" The woman in question nodded. Michi, taking a
deep breath, pretending that whichever words would follow would be both
atrocious and horrifying to her (which Ranma was sure they weren't),
she asked, "Do you know if your husband had any affairs? Any
mistresses?"
Mrs. Tsukishiro paled noticeably.
Ranma smiled gently. "If you'd like, I can leave the room."
Michi glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, but did not comment.
"N-no, it's okay, really," Mrs. Tsukishiro said, panicking. Her eyes
darted nervously across the room, and then back at Ranma in a hurried,
grateful fashion. It was almost as if she was afraid to be left alone
with Michi. Ranma took this information in with some measure of
amusement: between the two of them, Michi had a vile temper, but it was
slow to manifest, and also the softer touch; being fearful of her was
always unwarranted.
The widow took a deep breath before answering, her voice shaking and
eyes wet with tears. "Kaneda had a...philandering streak in him."
Michi cocked an eyebrow at the woman, which drove Mrs. Tsukishiro to
immediately rise to her husband's defense. "Oh! Oh, don't think
*badly* of him! I knew about it and I married him anyway. It wasn't
his fault, you know."
'Bullshit,' Michi and Ranma thought in unison.
"Of course," they said together.
Mrs. Tsukishiro looked slightly perturbed by their tandem commentary,
but did little to reveal her nervousness. "A-anyway, Kaneda *did* have
several mistresses during our marriage but...but..." The woman looked
at her hands, seeing her own fingers shake. "But I never faulted
him...for it..."
Ranma drew his conclusion: Mrs. Tsukishiro was overjoyed that her
husband was dead, beyond mere elation, she was finally freed from her
bad marriage and social confinement. He was certain there was no
outright abuse, either physical or emotional, but there was a great
deal of neglect, and inordinate amounts of adultery. As a result of
her obvious happiness, she felt guilty, terrified, disgusted with
herself, and that was why her hands were shaking, that was why her
statements all seemed to drift away. Still, all this did not a suspect
make, and Ranma was now certain that Mrs. Tsukishiro didn't do it, but
he was also convinced that she probably knew who did.
Ranma cleared his throat. "Gosh, ma'am, I'd really love it if we could
have that cup of tea you were offering earlier." His partner shot him
a sharp glance, but the widow nodded, breathing a quiet sigh of relief
as she shot off into the kitchen, and they heard the sound of rattling
teacups and utensils.
Michi stared off after the woman for a while, her eyes clouded, her
thoughts - for the moment at least - veiled from Ranma's insight. He
regarded his partner as she regarded the widow, observers to another
life, voyeuristically fascinated by all the details, the dirty little
secrets. Michi with Mrs. Tsukishiro's maddening acceptance of her
husband's adultery; Ranma with his partner's conflicted expression, the
baby inside her, and the startling red ki-lines that had begun to
manifest themselves over her belly just recently, a soul building
itself, life begetting form.
"What are you thinking about?" Michi finally asked.
Ranma's gaze did not waver. "She didn't do it."
Michi nodded, distracted, turning back to him. Her eyes were very gray
as she said, "You think she knows who did?" Ranma shrugged, too
lethargic and too enchanted by the red lines over her stomach to make a
coherent reply. Michi frowned at him. "Ranma," she said firmly.
Shaken by her tone and the expression in her eyes, he finally snapped
out of his trancelike state, saying hurriedly, "Sorry, sorry."
She merely raised an eyebrow at him before returning to her original
question, never once elaborating whatever she must have been thinking
about his tendency to stare at her at all sorts of inappropriate times.
Not that, she rationalized later on, that there were *appropriate*
times, seeing as she *was* engaged. Still, she wondered what made him
so curious, what about her figure was so fascinating. Some more
pessimistic side of herself kept whispering evil thoughts about how he
was morbidly curious about her disgustingly lumpy, overweight figure,
and since he'd already seen it once, he was just imagining it
underneath all her tailored suits.
Ranma, of course, knew nothing of her feverish wonderings. "She might
know who did," he finally said. "I pulled up the criminal record on
her husband, Archive said that they'd have it for my by this
afternoon," he explained, seeing her skeptical appearance.
"You think the murder has something to do with the prostitution
charge?" Michi asked, her tone low as she watched Mrs. Tsukishiro
arrange the tea tray, laying down cups and saucers and doilies.
Suddenly and inexplicably, she had a flash of her own future: in a
lovely house, arranging teacups, waiting for Kazuaki to die.
Logically, she figured that she wouldn't have to wait that long:
Kazuaki had terrible eating and exercise habits, he might have looked
thin, but if he let her test his cholesterol, she would find with
morbid delight that he was probably doomed to die before he was fifty.
She let these thoughts linger for a few moments more before wiping them
from her happily-engaged mind.
Ranma nodded, not noticing her quiet turmoil.
There was no time to say any more, as Mrs. Tsukishiro reemerged,
holding in her hands a silver tea tray, bone china cups, and custom-
designed silver - all this, Ranma noted, while her eyes twinkled with
unspoken joy at the loss of the provider of these things.
=====
To: rsaotome@police.go.jp
From: mhirugashi@police.go.jp
Subject: Re:[talk]
Sure. I'll be there at eight.
=====
The files hit the sofa with a loud flop, evicted from their original
home on the kitchen counter, and Ranma rubbed his free hand over his
face tiredly. He caught his expression in the hall mirror again, and
with a scowl, realized he was really starting to regret ever having
purchased it: he looked exhausted and wary.
Tonight was the night.
He'd made a grocery run earlier that day, after staying late at work to
print out the files that Archives had forwarded him. He was in such a
rush he hadn't even given them a second glance before rushing out the
door to the neighborhood market, picking out what he hoped were
appropriate foods for telling something of a great magnitude. In the
end, he'd decided that he'd need to spoil her as much as possible
without making her nauseous, which knocked eggs, broccoli ("But I
*love* broccoli," she'd wailed), and cake of any kind off of the dinner
menu. He'd made it halfway to the checkout with a bottle of whine
before his brain kicked in and he berated himself all the way to the
frozen foods aisle for some grape juice. He'd gone so far as to find
proper music. He wasn't really sure about much of what that She-ril
Cra-oh woman was singing about, but he'd heard the word "change" and
awful lot.
The sound of oil popping alerted his senses, and he rushed back to the
kitchen, noting with some marginal pleasure that dinner, at least, was
going wonderfully. He'd decided to make something western, since Michi
had mentioned having a predilection for fried chicken some weeks back,
and he wanted her as comfortable as possible for the revelation he had
in mind.
While he was plucking out the last chicken leg, there came a knock at
the door, and cursing softly, he turned on the ventilation fan, threw
down the dishrag, and headed quickly for the door. He opened it with
his left hand, only bothering to take a second to note that it *was*
Michi standing there before shifting his weight back to the right and
to the kitchen again, rushing back toward his now sizzling-out-of-
control pan. The oil was feeling vindictive.
When he turned back around, sucking his index finger with a puppy-dog
expression of injury on his face, she was smirking, her hand on her
hip. She was, at least wearing that blue dress, noticeably pregnant.
It was nothing drastic, just a curve that started in a gentle upward
slope directly beneath her breasts, and peaked above her naval, and
sloped down ago. If he had not been curiously memorizing her every
change every day, he might never have noticed it.
"Uh," he started dumbly, "hi."
Michi laughed and started toward him, pulling his finger out of his
mouth with one hand and dragging him toward the kitchen, turning off
the stove, and pushing him to the sink.
"Honestly, Ranma," she said, a tone of amusement in her soft voice.
"How have you survived for this many years on your own without knowing
how to take care of yourself at all?" She held his hand at the wrist,
positioning it under the tap, and turned on the cold water at a gentle
flow, just enough to cover his finger. At first he yelped in pain, but
she slowly massaged the skin around the burn, and he became so
distracted for her fluttering ki-lines and soft hands that he forgot
all about the fact that he'd hurt himself.
A few silent minutes later, she turned off the water and smiled at him.
"So," she said, "what did you want to talk about?"
Looking at her curious, warm expression, his mouth suddenly went dry.
Facts were facts. Some things can't be questioned. It's biology,
Ranma! Clouds are just condensation; who put that horrible idea into
your head? God, grow up, that's just a fairytale, you know. If wishes
were fishes, we'd all cast nets. Why? How? When? What exactly? And
what, if available, was its chemical structure?
All these and more came rushing to him. In there months of working
together, however brief their conversations had been, whether they'd
been arguing something animal, vegetable or mineral, these truths had
always risen to the surface of their banter.
Still, she trusted her intuition more than her science. There were
little things that, had he not had a vested interest in her faith, he
might have missed. He noted with some childish glee that she
sidestepped cracks on the concrete, never thinking twice about it. How
every time they passed a temple or a shrine, she always let her eyes
linger about it too long, as if she was giving silent prayer, not
letting him know of her faith in gods long ignored. And there was one
incident that he could not quite understand, but knew it to be
important: their one trip past a church. She'd paused at the front
steps, and he could have sworn that she'd crossed herself.
But his mind kept bringing up images of her rolling her eyes at Santa
Claus, smirking when he said something superstitious, reminding him of
the chemistries of life and telling him over and over that metal did
not become gold, figuratively speaking, of course. She liked to call
him Paracelcus, though he had no idea who that was. "Look it up
someday, Ranma," was all the elaboration he'd ever gotten on the
subject.
Even so, he reminded himself, he had an obligation to tell her.
He smiled weakly. "Dinner?"
=====
To: mhirugashi@police.go.jp
From: rsaotome@police.go.jp
Subject: Archives
Ranma -
Archives called, said something about *your name* being in the Kuno
file. Imagine my surprise. Anything you feel the urge to share?
- Michi
=====
Ranma was inexplicably fascinated with Michi Hirugashi's hands.
There was no reason for it, nor did it stem entirely from the
engagement ring and the engagement that he felt was his own fault. She
no longer wore that horrible, doomed expression, and he halfway
believed that the first night where she'd been miserable was just cold
feet, or some variation thereof. He remembered even before she was
engaged how he'd helped her during that autopsy, and how he'd stared at
her nimble fingers as they ran along the sinews of his own hands.
What was it about Michi's hands?
They were, at the moment, holding a wine glass, her fingers wrapped
around the delicate stem, and the pink flesh at the tip, near her
fingernails, drew his attention.
"Magic?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow.
He nodded. "Do you believe in magic, Michi?" he'd asked, terribly
frightened, nervous beyond words. In so many years of life, he'd lost
more than his fair share of friends and acquaintances, garnered more
hurtful words and taunts than he cared to remember over the magic that
had woven itself about an unwilling receiver.
Oh, he'd been back to Jusenkyo, long after the incidents at Phoenix
Mountain, after the wedding and after his divorce. He'd made the trek
only to find that there was no cure, that he had only himself upon
which to rely, and that foolhardy errors of youth would last until he
was dead. "There's *nothing* I can do?" he'd cried. A supernatural
feeling of coldness had spread from some indistinct point in his chest,
and the truth had settled in, making him feel weak and helpless in the
face of something over which he had no control. It was like the first
time he had understood the inevitability of death, before he'd made
peace with the prospect, how he'd lay in bed, tangled in sweat-soaked
sheets, his eyes darting from corner to corner, terrified to see the
glinting metal of a scythe or the velvet curve of a black hood. Only
Jusenkyo, the Spring of the Drowned Girl, they did not lurk, they did
not grant reprieve in the daylight, nothing could chase it away; Ranma
was half-convinced that sudden rain showers would find him in the
Sahara. There was nothing to be done about it and no way to ignore it.
Michi leaned back in her seat, the dim glow of the single-bulbed lamp
hanging above his table making the curve of her stomach all-the-more
noticeable. She looked thoughtful for a moment before leaning forward
again, resting her elbows on either side of her plate (the food
rearranged, but untouched, Ranma had noted with some displeasure),
cradling her chin in cupped hands, fingers framing her face. Her eyes
looked very, very gray, and Ranma had no idea what that meant.
"Did you know, Ranma," she started in a low tone, "that my parents
owned a shrine?" He looked startled, and she registered this with
little more than a self-deprecating smirk. "Yes, Michi Hirugashi,
scientist at large, was a shrine girl. For eighteen years of my life,
before I left for college, I believed in just about anything."
There was a long silence before Ranma asked, his voice low, "And now?"
She looked thoughtful, toying with her napkin. "I find it harder to."
He frowned. Was she being cryptic on purpose? Clearing his throat, he
pressed, "Is that a 'yes' or 'no,' Michi?"
"It's a 'depends,'" she countered. She cocked her head to one side,
looking for a moment like an overgrown child, a girl in a woman's body,
not knowing exactly what she was doing. "Why do you ask?"
"What if I could prove it?" Ranma asked in a rush.
Michi smiled. "Prove magic?"
"Yes," he answered.
She laughed out loud, the sound echoing in the mostly-quiet apartment.
"That's a dumb question, Ranma. You can't *prove* magic, it's like
faith, it exists only in belief." She ducked her head a little lower,
looking up at him with her misty gray eyes, slightly glazed from either
exhaustion from a day's work, or whatever held them in a quiet,
indefinable *something* in that moment. There was a pulse in the room,
and Ranma couldn't quite describe it. He could see the scarlet ribbons
of it floating in his own ki-lines, in hers, just across the table,
mingling with the lavender web that composed her emotional matrices.
He didn't know what it was, and wondered of its origin; was it simply
anticipation?
Everything outside the apartment had disappeared; everything that was
cloaked in the darkness, away from the orange circle of light that
bathed them had simply faded away into nothingness. It was just the
plates and the cups, the water and flickering shadows, and the sound of
Michi's breath, so close by. She had been his friend these months,
trusted him with a secret of her own, and she had let her hands shake
in front of him, he'd made her two meals now. Would she look at him
with disgust after he revealed himself? Would she accept him?
With a deep breath, he picked up his glass, filled halfway up with cold
water, untouched since the beginning of the meal. He held it up,
focusing on her confused expression.
"I can prove it," he whispered.
Her eyes grew wide, and fighting back her need to make light of the
situation (since her partner looked so terribly serious and sober), she
answered in a hush, "Show me."
Swallowing hard, he started to tip the glass over, stopping abruptly,
he asked, desperate, "Michi, do you *like* me?" She blinked at him,
the mood of the previous moments destroyed. "Do you like me?" he
continued, his eyes frantic. "Just tell me if you do."
After a pause, she sighed and said, "Of course I do, Ranma."
"Okay," he murmured, comforting himself. "Okay." He looked back up at
her, and in a soft tone, said, "Please remember that, okay?"
There was no time to question him before the glass was overturned.
=====
To: mhirugashi@police.go.jp
From: rsaotome@police.go.jp
Subject: Kuno is a nutjob
Yeah, I went to Furinkan. The guy spent like 90% of his time there
trying to give me a haircut (I had a pigtail back then) and attacked
just about everyone with long hair in the school. Crazy son of a
bitch, if you ask me.
- RS
=====
"Holy fuck," Michi said once more.
Ranma, in a mental tally, noted that it was at least the forty-fifth
time her partner had said the word 'fuck' in the last twenty-six and
one half minutes. Keeping time and obsessively counting was the only
way that she was keeping her sanity, as Michi had not made any remark
that seemed to betray how exactly she felt about her condition.
Ten more minutes, and she'd go crazy, she was sure of it.
Then again, she'd thought that ten minutes previous, too.
"That's - It's - God - That's - holy fuck," Michi announced once more.
Ranma had to give her due credit: Michi Hirugashi had not screamed, she
had not fainted, nor had she scrambled out of her seat and out the door
in terror. No, she'd done none of these undignified things. Rather,
immediately after the transformation, she had only sat and stared.
Of course, then she'd babbled: magic, illusion, a hologram. Anything,
everything that she could possibly think to explain away what she had
seen. Then she'd started talking about chemical reactions. Then came
theories about genetic mutation. All of this, Ranma took with good-
natured grace, smiling faintly as she watched her normally collected
partner tick off point after minutia on her fingertips, her eyes
looking frantically too the fro as she gutted her mental archives for
information, a fragment, anything to explain it away.
After that, Michi had gotten a frightening, disturbing expression on
her face, gotten out of her seat, and started toward him.
When most people saw the curse, they were scared, but after some
explanation and some mildly annoying poking, they usually believed him.
Ranma should have known better than to demonstrate it for a *doctor*.
So now, Michi was sitting on the floor opposite the couch where Ranma
was perched mostly-naked; they both looked disgruntled. Ranma now
fervently pitied the plight of women all over the world: doctors were
just as bad as manhandlers, and their cold, clammy fingers were
unappreciated. 'You would think,' she wondered silently, 'that being a
woman herself would make Michi more delicate about the whole thing!'
That, however, proved untrue, and her dark-haired partner had only
ordered her to strip off her shirt so that she could "check if those
[were] real."
"Holy fuck," she repeated once more, this time with feeling.
"Holy fucking God, Michi!" Ranma shouted, irate (though it did not have
the same impact as his male voice did). "Would you shut the fuck up
with that and just say something?!"
She threw a remote control at her, scowling. "I'm thinking, you
goddamned idiot! What the fuck am I supposed to say?!"
"It's magic!" she cried. "Just say if you believe or not!"
Here, she stared at Ranma, as if weighing the meaning of those words.
She knew this was a lot of ask of her. With the others who had learned
the truth, either it had been cold shock, and slow acceptance with
continual abuses (as with most of Nerima), or simple understanding that
there *was* magic, and there was nothing wrong with it. Michi was
stuck between her childhood world of gods and smoky offerings during
New Year's and her adulthood of cadavers and reason, etiologies of
diseases. There was always a reason, a way, or a diagnosis. In each
death that came down to her scalpel and logic, hidden deep down
somewhere in each body there was a cause. Things without reason always
ended badly: her love for her husband, her fight with her sister, her
frivolousness during her marriage.
So if it came down to belief or not...
Michi snorted in disgust, grabbed her purse, and stalked toward the
doorway, muttering, "Thanks for dinner. I'll see you at work."
=====
To: aoi120690@hotmail.co.jp
From: rsaotome@police.go.jp
Subject: Re:[[none]]
I'm on the eight o'clock from Tokyo.
Michi -
Mom is sick; she wants to see you.
She told me to leave her alone, to stop bothering her, and she wants to see
you. Darling-fucking-whore-Michi.
Fuck you, Michi.
=====
Michi was not at work that day.
With a little investigation, he found it that it was because her mother
was sick. "God - fuck - Yeah, sorry, Ranma. My mom is sick; I'm going
off to see her. She's in Osaka, so I'll be out for a while. My cell
phone will be on. Goddamn - ! This airport is a mess!" There'd been
a loud, static pause. She sounded harried, annoyed, and tired, all
three of these things had always led to bad occurrences during the
workday. Ranma could only assume that it would have the same effect
upon whatever she was trying to do by going to Osaka. "Don't they have
doctors there?" he'd whined, feeling shitty about it, but compelled to
ask anyhow; he wanted, needed to know how she felt about the curse.
"I'm sure they do, Ranma, but it's different, and you know it. I'll
talk to you later," she'd said politely, trying to end the
conversation.
Therefore, Michi was not at work that day.
"How bad is it?" he'd asked. She'd given no response other than, "I'm
not sure. Look, I've got to go. I'm going to miss my plane."
Thusly, Ranma had no idea how she felt about the curse.
"How come you're not sure?" he'd pressed. "Goddamnit, Ranma," she'd
said, annoyed. "I'm going to miss my fucking plane all right? If you
call me again, I'm going to twist your mouth off."
As a result, Ranma was driving himself nuts.
He'd rearranged his desk three times, and then Michi's. Following
this, he'd cleaned out his email inbox, replying to everything. He'd
tried to settle his nerves by working on the case (which failed
miserably). He ended up watching his computer defragment for most of
the morning, which he had feared would atrophy his brain. He was idly
skimming the archival files on their victims for something like the
eighth time when the name finally popped out of the page at him.
He threw the folder aside and grabbed the phone.
=====
Text Messaging:
To: m_Hirugashi (555-9080)
From: r_Saotome (555-6687)
MICHI PLEASE CALL ME - EMERGENCY!!
=====
She wasn't supposed to smoke or drink or do any of the things that used
to calm her down when she was upset. So, she chewed on the filter of
the cigarette and idly played with the beer can in her hands. There
was something distinctly wrong with the cigarette vending machine being
in the doctor's lounge, and something even worse about the beer being
available just around the corner from the hospital. It made her feel
worse that she looked really pregnant in her t-shirt, and no one had
stopped her from purchasing either.
"God," she murmured to herself. "I want a match."
It wouldn't help, naturally, but she missed being a chain-smoker.
So her mother had some sort of infection, nothing serious enough to
warrant any sleepless nights (unless her doctors were as incompetent as
they were young) and her little sister seemed to hate her more than
ever. Kazuaki had picked a fight with her earlier that day over her
still working despite edging ever closer to her third trimester.
"You're starting to show for God's sake, stay home!" he'd argued. "If
you were an office lady or something it'd be different - you're a
goddamed police officer!" Ranma had left a frantic, cryptic message
for her, and her head hurt, a lot. That and there were no fishsticks
to be had anywhere.
"Isn't that bad for the baby?" Michi looked up and saw Aoi perched
next to her on the bench, her eyes looking far away. "I thought you
quit years ago, before you even married Takashi."
Michi shrugged. "Stuff happens."
Aoi was a very beautiful girl. When asked by anyone who knew both
sisters, they were always at an impossible quagmire when asked to pick
which one was prettier. While Michi was buxom and bright, a loud, bold
type of beauty that made it impossible to ignore her, Aoi was delicate,
thin, and soft, like an orchid covered in frost. Their personalities
were polar opposites, and if you liked one better, you probably loathed
the other. There was no in between, and with such a dramatic age
difference between the two, they were lucky if they were apathetic of
one another, but it was always more likely to drift toward hatred.
Aoi sighed. "So you're not worried about Mom?"
Michi relaxed her shoulders, shaking her head. "I don't think it's
going to be a problem. You can tell dad to relax."
Aoi let out a sigh of relief. "Good. I couldn't trust that doctor."
Michi smirked. "What, because he wasn't family?" 'Dear God,' she
thought in shock, 'is she going to pay me a compliment?'
Aoi scowled. "Because he wasn't old."
The elder Hirugashi daughter had no compunctions regarding violence for
the most part, and Ranma had fallen victim to it upon several occasions
(the folder incident included). Yet when it came to Aoi... Michi
could never raise a hand to the girl, she could only manage to ball up
her fist, bite back her tears, and walk away.
Today, all she managed was a faint gasp.
Aoi closed her eyes tightly before pushing herself up from the seat and
turning back toward the hospital room. "I'm going to see Mom."
=====
Text Messaging:
To: r_Saotome (555-6687)
From: m_Hirugashi (555-9080)
WHATEVER HAPPENED, DON'T PANIC. I'LL CALL.
=====
The easternmost wing of the Kuno mansion was probably the most pleasant
of the meandering hallways and countless rooms and archways. It was
decorated in soft tones of lavender and green instead of the forbidding
crushed velvet and gothic theme from the main house. Usually, to the
view visitors that *did* venture so deep into the Kuno estate, it was a
warm, welcoming place. Kodachi kept it stocked with plenty of flowers
and had plenty of soft pillows and afghans tucked in the sofas.
The room was not welcoming that night.
"A prostitution charge?" Ranma whispered, deadly serious, choking on
the words and shaking the folder in front of him. "A *prostitution*
charge?!" he cried. There were tears welling up in his slate-blue
eyes, but he willed them away, reminding himself over and again that
she wasn't worth it, that she wasn't worth his pain.
"I was young, and stupid, and confused!" Kodachi wailed. "Ranma - "
"I trusted you!" he roared, throwing down the paperwork, watching the
white sheets of incriminating photographs and police files scatter and
fall slowly to the ground, papering the floor.
He couldn't believe it.
At nineteen years old, disaffected and disoriented from a year of total
immersion into a variety of barbiturates, Kodachi Kuno realized that
her daddy had stopped funding her drug habit in an attempt to clean her
up without having to make the family lose face. Without any other
method of obtaining her weekly fix, she'd turned to selling herself to
the highest bidder. Initially, it had been simply for the cash; later,
it became somewhat of a self-esteem issue. Regardless of what she'd
done to make herself appealing for Ranma, he'd never paid any attention
to her, yet these businessmen salivated every time she entered a room,
and were willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money to spend an evening
with her. She *did* clean up eventually, but didn't abandon her side
job. If nothing else, it helped her to forget The One That Got Away
when she was a kept woman.
Though Ranma couldn't believe it, the incidents were documented, filed,
and preserved on both hard and soft copies, probably in triplicate.
Finally, gathering himself, he managed, "Why'd you do it, Kodachi?"
She just stared back up at him, her violet eyes swimming in tears, her
throat dry, unable to reply, unable to give him the answer that she'd
been formulating in her head for as long as they'd been dating. She'd
always known that someday she'd have to tell him; she'd always just
hoped it would be later rather than sooner.
"I can't believe you, you - " he yelled, stumbling over the words in
his fury. The images would not leave him: Kodachi in a short, tight
skirt, stuffing money into her slutty bra as some disgusting, balding
man pushed her into a darkened alleyway and had his way with her. All
for what? So she could get her next fix? And when the hell had she
become a junkie, anyway? Why had she done it? What would drive her to
such extremes? She was pretty, she was rich, what did she *need* drugs
for? And why, *why* had she decided to...to *do* such a thing? He
couldn't wrap his mind around it.
Kodachi snapped.
"Why is it that *I* can accept you for what *you* did, but *you* can't
accept *me*?!" she cried, now angry as well as frightened. "You
*killed* four people that day, Ranma! You went *crazy*! If I can - "
As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized that she'd made a
fatal mistake: Ranma's blue eyes turned into the color of dishwater-
gray, his mouth hung slightly open, as if he wanted to say something
but couldn't get it out of his mouth. And written all over his face
was a sort of horrified shock, as if someone had released all of his
caged demons at once, and they were circling him before they pounced.
For as many years as he'd lived with what had happened in Kyoto, he'd
managed to repress it under a comfortable and forgiving blanket
statement: "I was doing it to save lives." As long as that stood, as
long as he *hadn't* gone crazy and overreacted, as long as he had been
justified, he could live with himself. As long as all of those were
true, he could deal with the faces of the widows he'd created. Oh,
their husbands had deserved their fates, Ranma had no doubt about that;
but those women had not deserved to be left alone...nor did they
deserve to die so abruptly, swallowed in an ocean of vengeful ki.
It was the cruelest thing she could have said.
And as always, since he couldn't deal with it, Ranma left.
=====
Text Messaging:
To: m_Hirugashi (555-9080)
From: r_Saotome (555-6687)
PLEASE CALL - V.BIG EMERGENCY.
HOW'S YOUR MOM?
=====
Michi couldn't help it, Ranma's message brought a smile to her face.
Her partner had admitted some time back that he was completely
incapable of using his cell phone properly. Even turning it on and off
was an issue with him, as he had to hold down the power button to turn
it off, and Ranma felt that was stupid and extraneous. "They ought to
just make an 'off' button like there is on calculators!" he'd said,
angry. Michi had pointed out that on her TI-83, she had to hit the
second key and *then* hit the on button to turn off her calculator;
this only led to having a pouting coworker all afternoon.
The fact that he had learned to use the text messaging option on his
cell phone was a sign of how bad the emergency situation must have
been, that he'd ask about her mother was sort of sweet.
With a soft sigh, she hit speed dial number eight, listened to the
phone ring three times before his voice mail came up. Frowning, she
dialed his home phone number, getting his answering machine. Narrowing
her eyes in annoyance, she tried his work number, only to get his voice
mail there, too.
'Bastard,' she thought, 'making it sound like something huge and
important, and then not even answering any of his phones.'
Fortunately, in Osaka, with her family, distractions were many and
frequent. At that moment, Michi glanced down to hall to see her father
approaching her slowly, his footsteps measured, tired, dragging. When
she was a little girl, she'd believed that her father could do no
wrong, that he was a hero and that every problem in the world would
eventually be solved if only he could hear about it. As she'd grown
up, though logic and teenaged hormones had told her otherwise, some
small part of her had refused to believe it. Seeing her father so aged
was heartaching to her.
She should have rushed up and helped him down the hall, but her father,
like herself, was too proud for that sort of thing, and would have only
grown upset at her attempts.
"Aoi is mad at you," he said solemnly, easing himself down on the bench
next to her. "Is that why you've only been in Mother's room five whole
minutes since you arrived?"
Michi barely repressed a flippant desire to add that it was also the
reason she was staying in a hotel as opposed to her own home, her own
room. Instead, she said, "Aoi is always mad at me; that's not the
reason I haven't stayed in the hospital room."
Her father looked at her oddly. "You're acting strange, Michi."
She scowled at him. Daddy-dearest could always tell whenever there was
something wrong with her, whether or not she wanted to share.
"There's...there's something strange in my life now," she finally
admitted, thinking back to the puzzling, maddening mess that was the
truth about her partner's aquatransexual nature. As much as her mind
had been occupied with worry over her mother and her (albeit, minor)
illness, she could not stop mulling the events the night she'd been at
Ranma's apartment. She'd stopped herself short of taking samples of
skin and tissue; though, in retrospect, she figured that if he was
going to spring something like that upon her, it was her natural right
to question and poke and prod to her heart's content.
Her father smiled gently, and looked, in her mind, like a kindly old
angel. "Strange as in being engaged again, or strange otherwise?"
"Strange otherwise," she said firmly, noting with some distress that
her impending marriage had almost slipped completely from her mind.
"Dad," she started, "do you believe in magic?"
=====
To: rsaotome@police.go.jp
From: michi107@yahoo.co.jp
Subject: emergency
Ranma -
I'm emailing you from an internet cafe two blocks down from my Mom's
hospital; you'd better appreciate this, I opened a yahoo account for
you. You said there was an emergency - what is it? You're not
answering any of your phones, I've left messages at your house, at
work, on your cell phone.
I'm starting to get worried. Call me, okay?
- Michi
=====
Had Ranma still had friends of one sort or another, they would have
grown concerned over the course of the week.
He'd gone AWOL at work, which his colleagues wrote off as him going on
one of his wacko "moods," and they felt generally thankful that he
wasn't there to reenact any scenes from the Kyoto incident. They were
lucky that Michi was not there that day; out of either obligation or
inexplicable affection, she would have felt some primal urge to defend
her partner, to rend and tear when she heard the cruel words and harsh
jibes. Then again, if she *had* been there, she might have heard the
equally scandalous things that they were saying about her: her
pregnancy, however secret, was noted by several officers already, and
the rumors were flying. She would have blushed to the very roots of
her hair if she heard some of the things that were being said; that's
not even accounting for Ranma's reaction.
He hadn't answered any phone calls for nearly four days. Telemarketers
found an empty apartment; Kasumi's one communique had fallen upon deaf
ears; Nabiki's occasional buzzes were ignored. He hadn't checked his
email since that night at Kodachi's apartments.
If he had been a drinking man (and he had been, once long ago), he
would have probably drowned himself in Jack Daniels and screwdrivers.
If he still owned a dojo (and he had, once long ago), he would have
gone into it and worked through his anguish in long, sweeping katas.
If he had a wife, a girlfriend, a lover, someone (and he had, up until
she had been revealed and she'd said those horrible things), he would
have clung to her, kissed her feverishly, sought safety in her arms.
He supposed that he ought to reply to Michi; after all, he'd been the
one to request her help. It didn't seem polite of him to ignore her
attempts to reach him after he'd been to one to interrupt her family
emergency to prattle on about his own.
But he didn't trust himself to talk to her, not yet.
It wasn't proper for one to seize their work partner (an engaged work
partner, a *pregnant* work partner, at that) and cry and beg her to
listen to offer absolution where time and counseling had not helped.
He wondered if she knew all the nasty details, understood the whole
truth about what he had done in Kyoto. Or had she simply read the
newspaper articles, seen the fluffed, cleaned, and sugar-coated version
of what had gone down in those musty, decrepit warehouses that
afternoon when he was still young? Did Michi know that he had almost
forgotten that there were still children in the warehouse? Did Michi
know that it took six other officers to hold him back long enough to
gather up all those tiny victims and hurry them away from danger's
path? Did she know how those men had pleaded for their lives as they'd
see the murderous intent in his eyes? Did she know that in each of
those children, he had not seen someone to save, but rather a child
that could have been his own, if he were not broken inside? Did Michi
know that it was the last time he'd let his emotions rule on any case?
...Until now.
The repercussions of Kodachi's prostitution charge were more far-
reaching than his simple disgust with the notion. It made her a
suspect in their current investigation, it turned their relationship
into something taboo, a factoid that would get him suspended from the
case, his job, or sacked from his position entirely. It turned what he
felt for her, what he wanted with her, into an impossibility. It
turned him into a partisan that would be removed from the
investigation, and it meant that once again, people would whisper about
Crazy Old Ranma, and start chattering about Kyoto again.
He wanted someone to tell him it was okay.
And Michi... Michi had touched his face so gently once early on in
their partnership, after she'd thrown the file folder at him, her eyes
speaking of her regret. She knew about Kyoto, and she'd never said one
thing about it. Michi was all he had now in the way of friends.
Making a split-second decision, he grabbed his coat, his wallet, and
whispered a prayer under his breath. He'd been impulsive for his
entire youth, and somehow, he'd survived; he hoped that that luck would
hold now in his maturity.
=====
To: rsaotome@police.go.jp
From: michi107@yahoo.co.jp
Subject: Where are you?
What the hell are you doing? Are you okay? Where are you!? You're
not answering *anyone's* calls, according to our supervisor! I thought
you valued your job more than that! AWOL is BAD, Ranma! Where are
you?!
=====
Plantains, Michi discovered, were impossible to obtain in Osaka.
At least, no one seemed to know where she could find one. She'd combed
the local grocery stores, wandered down the crowded street-side
markets, eyes peeled in the dim hope that she might find some.
God, she really hated being pregnant.
Kazuaki had started reading some horrible, trashy baby book, and had
called her earlier that day to tell her that he still thought that she
ought to quit her job, and that at that point during her pregnancy
(seventeen weeks), she and the baby should have been 'bonding.' She
wanted to point out that the 'baby' was still some tiny little thing
buried in her womb, that though it had its fingers and toes and a
heartbeat, it had no sentient thought, that if it were to be told to
identify its mother at that point, it probably would have pointed to
whichever person or object most closely resembled her uterus.
As it was, Michi felt no bonding to the child, nor eager anticipation
of its arrival. Some maternal part of herself whispered of how wicked
those thoughts were; after all, she was going to be a mommy soon, and
what kind of person wanted to bring to the world a child who wouldn't
be properly loved. 'But,' a voice always protested, 'I never wanted
this child to begin with...' It seemed to horribly wrong to think
about such things. Married women, friends of hers, who had gotten
pregnant by accident had, after deciding to keep the baby, slowly
fallen in love with the tiny child growing inside them. They lavished
attention upon their future offspring.
They glowed.
Michi looked a sickly pale color, the result of too many days and
nights spent throwing up everything that she'd attempted to eat and
keep down. She was certain that if she was just able to find some
plantains, she'd be able to eat them, and keep them in her stomach as
opposed to in the toilet, hunched over and gagging.
God, she really, *really* hated being pregnant.
Disheartened, she tramped back into the hotel and into the elevator,
hungry as a lion, nauseated with the thought of ingesting anything
aside from plantains, and irate that the last, tattered remnants of her
years in the Christian faith disallowed her the comfortable out of an
abortion. As the elevator doors opened to the fourteenth floor of the
hotel, her eyes widened in shock.
=====
To: mhirugashi@police.go.jp
From: t_eda@police.go.jp
Subject: [blank]
Where the hell is your partner, Hirugashi? Or did he decide to take
sick leave with you without calling in first? You two are on a
priority one murder case. This is ridiculous! Report immediately, or
both of your asses are going to be reprimanded.
Eda
=====
When Michi had been very young, she had once found a kitten on the back
steps of their old, rickety house. It was very small, too young to be
away from its mother, and made sad, softly mewling noises. She'd
collected the tiny fluffball in her small, chubby hands and run all the
way down to her best friend's house; her father was a doctor. Though
he said he didn't specialize in animals, he'd told her some basics:
feed it warm milk with a handkerchief until it could fend for itself,
give it soft blankets to sleep it, and pray. She'd done it all
eagerly, nursing the kitten to adulthood. It had never gotten a proper
name, always to be called Cat by the entire family.
Ranma reminded her of that kitten.
He looked beaten, exhausted, and (heaven help her) fragile.
She'd ushered him into her hotel room after finding him half-asleep,
leaned against her door, and made him take a hot bath. He looked like
hell: unshaven and sallow-skinned with dark circles under his eyes.
The maternal instinct that refused to glorify what was growing inside
her urged her to baby her partner, to gather him into her arms and
stroke his hair and kiss his forehead.
She could not begin to guess what was wrong.
He was now dressed in her largest t-shirt (which was a soft lavender
color) and his boxers, and was sitting cross-legged upon the double bed
that took up most of the space in the tiny room. He was staring off at
the wall opposite the bed blankly, as if he wasn't AWOL in his
partner's hotel room in Osaka, hours away from home and his job, having
called her saying there was an emergency, the details of which were
still a mystery.
'Good thing I suck at dealing with people,' Michi cursed herself.
'That makes this so much *easier*.' For the first time in years, she
was regretting that she hadn't paid attention during sociology classes
at Quantico, that she'd ignored her mother's lectures on politeness.
It was only then that Michi realized that every time that she had
interviewed a witness or a family member in relation to the case they
were working on, it had almost always been Ranma who had opened up the
conversation. People liked him better; he seemed nicer, they responded
to nice. She almost pouted.
"Detective Eda is worried about you," she said softly, thinking at last
of something that would not cause either of them great discomfort. No
one really cared what Eda thought; they weren't about to be fired, and
he wasn't about to take drastic action toward them, regardless of how
he threatened to hang them up by their thumbs.
Ranma nodded. "So are Nabiki and Kasumi."
Michi decided not to ask, but idly remembered that Ranma once said that
he did not have any siblings. "Oh," she responded intelligently.
'This is no good,' Michi thought petulantly. Her partner wasn't
speaking, and probably hoping vaguely that she would provoke him into
conversation, but that had never been her style. She'd read loads of
books as a child, not made loads of friends. Even now, she clung to
her best friend and a few trusted acquaintances; the fact that she and
Kazuaki had ever found each other was still a minor miracle in her
mind. Still, she felt obligated to make him feel better. It mattered
very little if she sounded like a complete idiot that night, as long as
her partner stopped staring past her as if she wasn't alive. Even if
she *was* quiet and somewhat withdrawn, Michi was not someone to settle
for being ignored.
With a grunt of exertion, and with somewhat shy motions, she pulled
herself up on the bed in front of him, their knees touching. She had
not been this close to a man that was not her husband or lover for a
very long time. However platonic she could call the action, she did
not deny that touch was touch, that friction still caused heat.
"Do you want to tell me about it?" she asked.
He shook his head, his eyes now drawn to his lap.
"Then why did you come here?" she demanded.
He looked back up at her very quickly, his eyes swimming with liquid.
In a croaking voice, he finally said, "Kyoto."
And suddenly, it didn't seem so terribly cryptic any longer.
=====
To: t_eda@police.go.jp
From: michi107@yahoo.co.jp
Subject: Re:[blank]
Detective Eda:
I assure you that my partner did not intend upon leaving so hastily.
As much as I doubt that you will believe me, I feel compelled to tell
you that Detective Saotome has suffered an emergency as well, one
probably more pressing than my own. Accept my apology as his own; I
take full responsibility for his not calling in. As for the case, I
will be returning at the end of the week, and I assure you that any
unpaid overtime I might dedicate to the cause will not be met with
bitterness for howsoever long it might take to make up for this
incident.
Respectfully, M. Hirugashi
=====
She'd passed out sometime after two in the morning, slumped over in a
wildly uncomfortable position on the bed, one that would leave her
waking to aches and pains had her partner not decided to be altruistic.
Ranma had simply stared, noting with some surprise that she'd never
lost her temper with his stony expression and attitude. Rather, after
he'd given her the only word he'd been able to speak, she'd lapsed into
silence, and stared past him to the windows on the other side of the
room. They did not speak for the rest of the night. It had not been
awkward, per se, but rather it was new, unfamiliar. He'd never been
with a woman for the entire night without having been related to her or
married or naked between the sheets. This was something...different.
Something that he suspected would confuse him.
After her gray eyes had finally drooped closed and she'd fallen asleep
in an undignified pile near the foot of her bed, Ranma had simply sat
back and observed the woman with whom he had worked for nearly five
months already. She was, as he had first noticed, very pretty, similar
in coloring to his ex-wife, but kinder in every respect of the word.
She was pleasant company. Michi's hands fascinated him for some
indiscernible reason. Blushing horribly, he had remembered seeing her
nude and shaking, and though the details of the situation had made it
less than arousing, he still remembered with some shame how he had let
his eyes dance over her pale breasts, and how he had been enchanted by
soft, coral-colored nipples. Before Michi, all the women he had been
with had large, thick, dark nipples; he had never seen such a thing
before, and it had electrified him. He reminded himself that he was
not supposed to remember things like that about his work partners.
After twenty minutes of uninterrupted staring, he'd picked her up
gently and laid her in bed, tucking the sheets all about her and going
to sleep on the narrow, uncomfortable couch opposite the bed.
Even with the confusing intoxication of inappropriate closeness, Ranma
could not stop the questions and the memories from flooding his mind:
What did she think of his curse? Why was she allowing him to stay?
Why had Kodachi done it? Why did she say those things?
And he had dreamed.
God, how he hated the dreams. There was no escaping them. Every
morning, he would wake up gasping, fighting to stay alive, afloat, and
then stare down at his hands, waiting for the tell-tale red stains to
taunt him, to remind him once more of what he had done, how he had
disgraced himself and his family's school of martial arts.
Good thing that Michi slept like a stone and did not come awake with
his strangled yells, the muttered curses, and the breathy pleas.
"Do you want to talk about it now?" came a lilting, sleepy voice.
...Or not. When had she woken up?
Ranma winced, turning from his study of Osaka through her hotel room
window to where his partner was tousled by awake and staring at him
with questioning eyes. She'd been put to bed while still dressed in a
long-sleeved shirt and some black leggings. He suspected that her
jeans no longer fit, but valued his appendages far too much to suggest
such a thing. He thought that she looked very beautiful like that,
eyes still soft and glazed from her slumber, her cheeks flushed.
"I'm sort of hungry," he admitted. He was sort of hungry like the
desert was sort of dry most of the year; Michi did not know it, but she
was in dire danger of being cannibalized if she were to say that she
didn't feel like taking him down to breakfast very soon.
She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Okay."
Ranma noticed that she looked very gray, as if she hadn't had a square
meal or a good rest in a very long time.
And with little ceremony, she rolled out of bed, ran her fingers
through her messy hair, pulled on some shoes, and stumbled out of the
room, scratching her left shoulder, reminding him to shut the door
behind him.
=====
To: michi107@yahoo.co.jp
From: t_eda@police.go.jp
Subject: Re:[Re:[blank]]
You're lucky that you do good work for me, Hirugashi.
=====
The sky was blase and Ranma was going through his fourth plate of
Western breakfast food. Everyone in the hotel restaurant was staring
at him for some odd reason, as if he didn't belong there. Naturally,
his partner would dismiss him offhand when he mentioned it, saying that
no one was looking and that his concern was caused by paranoia,
undoubtedly induced by sleep-deprivation.
That had been twenty minutes ago. Since then, Michi had taken to
making her scrambled eggs into different shapes, using all her cutlery
to create faces and landscapes. Still, Ranma thought unhappily, she
didn't eat any of it. Briefly, he tried to remember when he'd last
seen her eat. She'd bought those candy bars a few days ago, and he'd
seen her wolf down several before turning very green and running to the
bathrooms. The days after, they'd both been too busy: Michi trying to
decipher mucked-up lab results, and he with arranging convenient times
to interview family members, doing background checks, contacting
various peoples. As a result, he'd ended up eating vending machine
ramen, and forgotten to ask whether she'd had lunch at all. The last
time that they'd shared a meal together, his specially made fried
chicken had been untouched, but very prettily arranged.
Remembering that meal made him remember what the entire purpose of it
had been, and he found himself painfully curious again.
"What do you think of my curse?" he finally blurted out, unable to
repress the first of many urgent questions any longer.
His partner only blinked at him in surprise. Silent for a few moments
more, she sighed softly and pushed away her breakfast/painting before
attempting to formulate an answer. "I...I can't say that I believe you
entirely, Ranma," she said, sounding sheepish.
He gaped at her.
"Look, before you get upset," she said quickly, "think about it from my
perspective, all right?"
This request took a great deal of restraint on Ranma's part.
"I just saw that...*change* once," she murmured, not meeting his eye,
"and under controlled conditions. I can't accept that as truth." She
fiddled with her plate a little, looking increasingly green in the
face, and her next words came out in a hush. "I can't operate like
that, Ranma. I mean...for all I know, you've just been pulling a huge
prank on me and - " Her voice suddenly left her, and she slapped her
hands to her face and rushed from the table toward the bathrooms.
For someone who had been building a head full of steam to unleash it on
his partner for her words, Ranma certain did act concerned when she
returned looking paler and thinner than she had in all the months that
he had known her.
"A-Are you okay, Michi?" he asked tentatively, his earlier fury muted.
She didn't nod but said very quietly, "No."
He stared at her. "Is there something I can do to help?"
She stared at him hard, as if trying to gather the strength to reply.
Twenty minutes later, he was sitting in the Osaka General Hospital's
maternity ward, cursing the stupidity of obstinate women, and tapping
his foot in annoyance at himself.
=====
To: t_eda@police.go.jp
From: wild_horse@yahoo.co.jp
Subject: AWOL
Sir, I'm really sorry about all of this, I know that Michi already
wrote you an email sucking up and telling you that she would work
overtime to bail me out of trouble, I'm writing to tell you that she
can't. On doctor's orders, she can't. I'll do the overtime, I'll take
my suspension or whatever, okay? Just, just don't do anything else to
her.
Ranma Saotome
=====
Michi had actually volunteered at a hospital during her years in
college. She'd never been put on rotation like actual interns; as a
candy striper, her jobs were to comfort where doctors didn't have time
to soften the blows, and to clean up the messes that no one wanted to
touch. That, she decided early on, was probably why they were called
'candy striper's, no technical usage, but pretty, decorative. And
later, after she'd graduated college and gone to medical school, she'd
seen worse cases, cadavers, and unborn children in jars after having
been aborted by women of varying social stratums. She, out of some
morbid stupidity, had actually named two of the tiny babies in the
yellowish chemical baths: Mio and Maya, both girls because they were
too young to have been affected by male hormones invading the womb. At
that age, she'd wanted children, been thrilled by the thought of a
little Mio or Maya of her own, laughing and alive; she vouched never to
get an abortion, and Takashi, as they had been stupid, young, in love,
and very deeply in lust, had agreed: children were wonderful.
Now, at the ripe old age of 32, pregnant, and being yelled at by her
mother, her father, her partner, *and* her doctor, she decided that she
would have a tubal ligation as soon as humanly possible. Her ob-gyn
had commented on her tiny birth canal some days ago and suggested she
give serious consideration to a C-section; she'd get back to him on
that soon, and ask for to get her tubes tied while he was at it. If he
was already going to be digging around in there, between floating
ovaries and her stupid uterus, he might as well do something about
those damnable fallopian tubes.
"I can't *believe* that you'd be so irresponsible!" a shrill tone
announced with the utmost disgust. "To - to get pregnant out of
wedlock is bad enough, but then to do *this* to yourself - "
"Accidents happen!" Michi said.
"I'll kill that boy with my own two hands! What on *Earth* were you
thinking, or were you at all? Pregnant! Unmarried!" someone else
fussed busily, still trying to wrap his or her mind about the truth.
"I helped, you know," she drawled sarcastically, with rising irritation
that no one seemed to want to listen to her side of the story.
"Really, Miss Hirugashi - "
"*Detective*!" she cried out feverishly, not knowing who she was
correcting, only understanding that however minor the victory in such a
situation, a victory it remained to be.
" - Detective Hirugashi, if you were having such a horrible experience,
if you couldn't eat *anything*, I can't imagine why you would continue
on without seeking proper medical attention - "
"I ate!" she yelled defensively, though not as loudly as she might have
if she was at full strength.
"You didn't eat in *five days* - " cried a familiar male voice.
"I did eat! I ate lots of stuff!" She wasn't lying; she'd cleared her
refrigerator.
"Well, fine," retorted the same someone (Michi had long since lost
track of who specifically was yelling at her, and in what order),
"*five days* since you kept anything down! Why didn't you tell anybody
that you were having such a rough time?"
Michi started to outline the plantain fiasco before four pairs of
glowering eyes made her voice die in her throat. Suddenly, her
argument that she *would* have kept something on the inside of her
stomach as opposed to her toilet during those five days if the Japanese
people were more conscientious about obtaining exotic fruits seemed
very, very weak. She looked from unforgiving face to expression in the
room, searching for even *one person* who had some pity, who would shoo
the rest of them out and let her clear the fog from her brain.
And finally, after nearly five minutes of awkward, mind-numbing
silence, the male voice that had demanded her to explain herself said,
"Maybe she wants to be alone for a while," very hesitantly. "To
think," the person quickly amended.
"Damn right she needs to think - !"
"Oh, don't curse at her! She's already under so much stress and - "
"I assume that *you* want to stay in the room?" came a cold question.
There was another silence before she heard the slow shuffling of feet
and cloth, and vaguely, Michi thought she heard her mother crying. 'Oh
for God's sake!' she thought to herself in discontent. 'There's
nothing to cry over! I just felt dizzy! Low blood-sugar! They've got
me on a nutrient-drip now or whatever the hell, there's no reason to
cry!' Naturally, the voice was overshadowed by all-consuming guilt:
she'd made her mother cry.
There as a brief, comfortable pause where she took a breath, blinked
several times, and managed through pure force of will to make the room
stop spinning around herself. With another few blinks, her vision
cleared enough so that she could tell that whoever was in the room with
her was tall, well-defined, and had lots of messy black hair.
Smirking, she managed a croaking, "My hero."
"The doctor thinks I knocked you up, I'll have you know," he said,
blushing bright red and sounding rather upset about it.
She started laughing. "I'm sorry. Character assassination."
Ranma scowled. "It's not funny, Michi. He checked me *five* times for
a wedding ring before asking if we were married."
Biting back giggles, his partner settled back into her pillows,
momentarily forgetting that they were both middle-aged adults with
serious problems waiting for them in Tokyo. "And?"
"And I was stupid enough to say that we weren't married, and that I'd
only known you for something like five months," Ranma cried, enraged.
"D'you have any *idea* the sort of things that came out of that man's
mouth after I told him that?" Ranma grabbed one of the plastic chairs
and pulled it up to her bed so that he wouldn't have to yell quite so
loud to make sure she understood exactly how insulted he felt. "I
mean, do I *look* like the kind of man to do that sort of thing? Sleep
with a woman he barely knows and get her - her - and get her in a
family way?"
If she was laughing hard before, Michi almost exploded at his last
words. "In a *family* way?" she cried, gasping for breaths as her body
shook from the force of her giggles. "*In a family way*?! Who *says*
that? Oh, my God, I think my lungs are going to blow - "
"Oh shut *up*!" Ranma cried, his face the color of a beefsteak tomato.
Michi, wiping away tears, said hoarsely, "It's your own fault! You
should have just told him that you had a girlfrie - "
The words died on her lips as she saw Ranma's expression.
'Kyoto my ass,' she thought darkly.
=====
To: wild_horse@yahoo.co.jp
From: t_eda@police.go.jp
Subject: Re:[AWOL]
You're lucky your partner does good work for me.
We'll work out the details of your punishment when you get back to
Tokyo (which had better be soon, for your own good).
Give my regards to Detective Hirugashi.
Eda
=====
Ranma the damned butterflies in China and fidgeted.
Michi was still in her hospital bed, but now, she was wearing a black
sweatshirt two sizes too large for her small, plump frame, and sporting
reading glasses that Ranma had not known that she had. Her face was a
mask of concentration, and her hands were busy has she flipped through
pages and pages of police reports from three different files.
When he'd decided to go to Osaka, in between calling the major hotels
and hinting of police retribution if efforts were not made to locate
his partner, he'd had the presence of mind to grab the files, fold them
into messy, rumpled quarters, and stick them in his jacket. After
moderate amounts of feeble scolding from Michi (as neither of them
really the right nor energy to berate the other), she'd spread them as
flat as possible with her small, white hands, and gotten busy looking
through them.
He'd told her everything: about requesting the files, and then about
driving himself nuts over his curse and how she felt, and how Kodachi's
name had just jumped at him. Then, in achingly slow, stuttering words,
he'd told her how he'd gone over to her house, and...overreacted.
Michi had said nothing, just kept her mouth in a fine, tight line;
whether she was angry with him or the situation, Ranma was uncertain.
Without having to elaborate, his partner had seen the conflict of
interest that lay in Kodachi's past and her present relationship, and
she made certain not to let her pity show through; Ranma was not one to
accept that sort of thing graciously.
"What do you think?" he'd asked, his voice weak.
Goodness, Ranma, he wished that she would say, you're off your rocker!
Why on Earth would you even be concerned? Kodachi is far too stable
and without any motive at all to be even considered in these murders!
You horrible, horrible man! Go back and apologize to your girlfriend,
tell her that you're crazy about her, and beg for forgiveness.
Meanwhile, I'll start eating properly and call my fiance instead of
pretending that I don't need him to be here. We'll all live happily
ever after once our murderer presents himself to us in golden cuffs and
suitably regretful. Why, what's that knocking at the door? It must be
him! And right on time! The narrator in this sick play called our
lives must be getting carpal tunnel syndrome!
Instead, Michi flipped a few more pages, frowning. "I see motive."
Ranma groaned. "Fuck," he murmured.
His partner looked up at him sharply. "You're off the case, Ranma."
As a reflex, he opened his mouth to shout at her. Then he paused, took
stock of the situation, and stared in awe instead, had she just solved
all his problems so quickly? Impossible, his life was a long,
convoluted tangle of badly-ended love affairs and stupid mistakes, no
one woman could find the metaphorical scissors and loose him so quickly
without any warning.
"Can't do that," he muttered. He couldn't; she didn't have the
authority. Theoretically, he could ask his supervising detective to be
released from a case, but Eda'd want an explanation. The explanation
would most probably lead to the nasty, public dissection of his love
life as opposed to whatever furtive investigation Michi could
orchestrate if he didn't behave so foolishly. He could lie, but he had
always been wretched at it.
Michi frowned more deeply this time. "Then what else do you suggest?"
"I don't know," he said grumpily.
His partner rolled her eyes, as if dealing with a petulant child as
opposed to a fully-grown man nursing a heartache and warring with his
ethics. He had half a mind to tell her exactly how wicked she was
being when she opened her mouth again:
"Do you love her?"
He was silent, unwilling to meet her gaze.
She sighed softly, and decided that she didn't like her job anymore.
=====
To: k_t_890@hotmail.co.jp
From: wild_horse@yahoo.co.jp
Subject: Michi
Hi, my name's Ranma Saotome, I work with your fiancee? She asked me to
write this for her since she can't really get to a computer right now.
She says that she's fine, and that she'll be back in Tokyo by Monday,
there was just a little more trouble than she'd anticipated.
=====
"I'm going to hell for the lies I told to that poor man for you," Ranma
warned, peeling off his jacket and watching his partner stuff clothing
into her suitcase busily. "Straight to hell," he added.
"Oh, grow up, Ranma," Michi replied. "Would it have been better if you
made him panic and worry? No. So he might as well not know. Nothing
harmful came of it, my baby is fine, and no one is the wiser."
Michi's mind was a thousand places at once, being as industrious as
possible without shifting into overload. Silently, she was listing the
things that she needed to take home with her, last words she wanted to
share with her mother and father before going back to work, things
she'd tell her fianc� once he got upset with her over her recent
absence.
If nothing else, she and her partner had reached an agreement.
She'd considered Ranma's predicament from all angles and come to one
and only one solution: that they must be careful, and that he must have
nothing to do with investigating the Kunos. "I don't see why you can't
stay on the case, and maintain your privacy," she'd said quietly, "if
you don't have any say-so over what *I* investigate when I investigate
the Kunos." He'd smiled awkwardly, asking if that was okay, would it
work? "Sure it will," Michi had said, soothing his ruffled feathers.
=====
The problem with long-term exposure to anything is that it dulls the
senses, and slowly, bit by aching bit, digs away the shock and surprise
felt toward such an event. "Rape" became "molestation," and people
stopped wincing so hard when they saw war photos. Yet something that
no one ever realizes is that becoming desensitized is one of the most
harmful things to ever occur.
Michi possessed habitual bad driving and illegal parking practices, a
tendency to disregard ethical demands when it came to her autopsies,
and a self-forgiving manner of going toward an investigation. After
all, she'd rationalize, as long as the criminal went to jail, what was
the harm? She knew that he was guilty, *he* knew that he was guilty,
and after having drinks with the defense attorney the night previous,
she understood that even the alleged criminal's own council thought he
was guilty. She wanted the offenders to be punished, and if those
costs were high, so be it.
And also, though she'd never admit it to herself, she didn't want Ranma
to be unhappy, didn't want him disappointed and bereaved as she had
been after Takashi had killed himself. She had aged years overnight,
and she didn't wish that fate upon anyone. If this plan, this *idea*
could spare him what she'd suffered, then she was glad for it, and
hoped no one else saw through their ruse.
Ranma, in his haste and eagerness to find a way for his relationship
with Kodachi to work, had agreed to something he hadn't quite thought
through. It couldn't be considered entirely his fault; as he'd never
before done anything unethical when he was in full control of his
mental faculties (Kyoto notwithstanding), he didn't recognize the
beginnings of a quiet sort of crime.
Michi's words had soothed him, lulled him into comfort with his own
connections to the case, deluded him into thinking that the distance
between two people would be distance enough not to affect the outcomes
of their choices in investigation.
They believed they could walk the line.
=====
/PART ONE: Hubris/Pride Above Power
====
All feedback welcomed!
- ling
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