Disclaimer: Gekiranger and all characters belong to Toei Company and Bandai.
Jan is missing for an hour before Ran finds him on the SCRTC roof, sitting cross-legged behind the parapet with his chin resting on his fists, looking out over the city. At first she can't work out why it looks so strange, and then she realizes that it's because it's Jan being quiet and still, and Jan is very rarely either quiet or still, and never both at the same time, unless he's asleep.
She goes over and sits beside him.
"Is anything the matter?" she asks.
Jan shakes his head.
"Did something upset you today? Are you sick?"
Again, he shakes his head.
"Well," Ran says, letting out a breath, "Miki-san was worried when you went off on your own, and she wanted us to find out what's wrong."
"I smelled my forest."
"You smelled your forest? Up here on the roof?"
Jan grabs her arm with one hand, gesticulating vigorously with the other in the general direction of the horizon. "Out there! That way! The wind came from that way, and I smelled the trees. I smelled my forest. So I came up higher so I could smell it some more."
Ran puts her hand over the top of his, so he won't pull at her quite so much. "Did that make you happy?"
"It always makes me feel nikoniko." His brows pucker a little. "But then it makes me feel shioshio as well." He pauses, and turns to her, still frowning. "Why does that happen?"
Jan being homesick isn't something that's ever occurred to Ran before.
She thinks it over for a moment or two. Then she squeezes his hand. "Why don't you show me and let me see?"
The breeze is just this side of chilly up here, rolling in tall piles of cloud. Already there's that sweet, pungent smell of moisture in the air, reminiscent of damp bark and leaves; of the soft ground slowly exhaling.
"That's it?" Ran asks.
Jan nods, his nostrils flaring fractionally, drinking it in.
"It's nice," she says.
Jan nods again, smiling now, excited to be sharing a part of himself with one of his new friends. Ran can feel herself smiling as well.
Retsu tracks them down after a while, and the three of them sit there together, smelling Jan's forest, until the clouds get grayer and merge and the first of the rain starts to fall around them.