notes – I love these two too much. I went into withdrawal after the finale last year. That explains why I stopped writing because I COULDN'T WRITE ANYTHING. I wanted to write Shoma/Ringo but whenever I tried to I would be overwhelmed with sadness and hit with a block. I've mostly gotten over it now though.
What am I saying. I will never get over penguindrum and its characters.
Clumsy
Ringo is born incomplete.
She isn't born as the daughter who makes her parents smile. That is Momoka's claim. Ringo inherits her father's hair and her mother's eyes, but when she looks at the reflection in the mirror, it's as if there is a missing part. She doesn't have her sister's gentle chin or full lips, doesn't have the same brightness in her eyes. The photo of Momoka always sits on her desk, and Ringo can only imagine how much more captivating she must be if she was still alive.
Her parents don't stop fighting when she steps into the room on a school night. This continues the next week, and the week after that. The cycle rinses and repeats. Over time, Ringo wonders if she hasn't been installed with the ability to keep her family together. Momoka's diary is her manual and she strives to become something like her sister. But her father still marries another woman, her mother still works and works past ten p.m., and Tabuki still regards her as a little girl.
As a child, she remembers being clumsy with her feet and her hands. Dropping things on her toes and tripping over bumps on the ground. She falls hard on the floor many times when she is five, six, seven years old.
Maybe, Ringo thinks, she is broken somewhere.
Then, she meets Shoma Takakura and she realizes that he needs more fixing than her. She follows Momoka's fate religiously, from the time she gets up in the morning to the amount of soup she should leave in the bowl after dinner. Shoma Takakura isn't mentioned in the diary, but he remains next to her, waiting and watching.
He tries to lie to her, but this eventually gives way to the truth. He needs her diary, so she enlists him into helping her. He agrees, but doesn't do it willingly. The boy moves the contents of her room from an apartment complex to the sacred ground beneath Tabuki's house. Then, when all has been said and done, he moves all the things back again, never stopping with the complaints.
Ringo looks at the boy and thinks, how can he contradict himself so much? He doesn't want anything to do with her, but here he is again, sitting in the same train carriage. She wonders why he is so desperate for the diary, and when she says this – "Fine, I'll lend it to you." – Shoma is more surprised than overjoyed, as if he hadn't been expecting her to hand it over. Ringo doesn't mind the extra hand with Project M, so she tugs at her bangs and refocuses her thoughts.
It is one night that changes everything between them.
His eyes darken dangerously when Ringo says, "You're just putting on a façade of a family because it's convenient." And she should know because she's been chasing (and straggling) after the definition of a true family all this time.
Shoma's hands are hard and angry against her. When he releases her, she tells him she'll bear Tabuki's child, shrugging off his words. She doesn't expect him to stretch a hand out again. He clamps onto her wrist, and as Ringo fights against his grip, she notices that he isn't holding her the same way. There's a small touch of understanding and concern on his fingers now, but Ringo does not relent. This is for her family.
"AH!"
The diary falls off the side of the building, and her heart plummets along with it.
As she staggers down the staircase and the raindrops pelt against her, Ringo thinks only about herself, Momoka, and the bare bones still holding her family together. She doesn't hear the motorcycle's engine until it is too close. The diary is split at its spine, the loud rip of paper and peaches like a slash through her stomach. She's incomplete and inadequate enough as is. Now she has only half of her fate left soaked in her hands.
The headlights of the car blind her when she turns around, the rain a heavy curtain of the night. Ringo can count the chandelier of droplets stuck on the hood of the screeching vehicle. Maybe this is how it all ends. Maybe this is fate for tearing the diary.
"No!"
She feels a sharp push between her shoulder blades and her knees skid and tear open against the asphalt from the sudden force. The 'bang!' behind her deafens everything. She raises her eyes to see a boy's body contorting in the dark, torrential night. The pain is one she feels burst in her chest.
For the first time in sixteen years, Ringo thinks about something other than her family and Momoka and herself.
She gives the away the last thirty pages of her fate for a stupid, broken boy.
And Shoma still isn't satisfied.
Ringo feels her temper boil when Shoma, recuperated and restless, tells her that what she's made a mistake. She doesn't need this. What she needs is to be Momoka, to right the wheel of fate. She's spent far too long involved with Shoma and Himari and Kanba – sidetracked by their company, their lively dinners, and their notion of family.
Shoma's expression changes again when she tells him this, and he should stop doing that, because Ringo doesn't understand how he can act so nonchalant and then so worried. She slings her bag and leaves him on the train.
Tabuki is close enough for her to feel the heat radiating off his skin.
This- this is supposed to make her whole, isn't it?
Ringo wants to believe that this is her fate, that this is how she will be made unbroken. But then she remembers that she's given her diary away. It is no longer here to guide her step by step (has she memorized it correctly?) and Shoma – why is he here instead? – Shoma's words echo in her, filling up gaps she hasn't been aware of till now.
Tabuki brushes the hair out of her eyes, his hand deceptively cold to the touch. She shivers. The tears in her eyes are rolling down her cheeks before she can process what she is feeling. It's been a long time since she's bothered to notice her own feelings.
She raises her hand to press against Tabuki's arm.
And then, she pushes.
Shoma Takakura really is more broken then her.
He strains against the fingers she digs into his sleeve. "Why do we continue to hurt each other with superficial words? We shouldn't see each other anymore."
And the tears she cries are more for him than for her.
Ringo wakes up on a futon, the room unfamiliar and dark. It takes her a moment to remember that she's staying at an inn with Yuri. The two voices conversing outside confuse her, one male and the other female. As she rubs the sleep out of her eyes – shakes off a dull throb in her head – she pushes the door aside to see Shoma and Yuri talking over cups of green tea.
"Are you alright?" The boy glances over his shoulder, his brow creasing as he gives her a onceover.
He's talking to her again. After he just said he didn't want to.
Ringo feels the corners of her thin lips lift. She smiles and nods. She thinks she should be used to Shoma and his mannerisms by now.
The scarf Himari knits for Shoma suits him perfectly. The one Kanba gets is wonderful too, and he thanks Ringo, gruffly, for taking time to shop with Himari.
"Not at all," she says. She holds Himari's hand and exchanges a smile with her. "We had fun."
"Lots!" the girl chimes.
If only they can pass by the rest of their days this way, leave the past behind and focus on having a lovely home-cooked dinner every day. She hopes Tabuki and Yuri are able to do that now too.
Himari's hand is warm in hers under the table, and Ringo remembers that she's tied to this family now. Kanba, Shoma and Himari Takakura. Whatever happens, she wants to be here for them.
She leans against the hospital's walls, listening to the muffled voice through the door.
"She doesn't have much time left," says the doctor, reluctant and sympathetic.
Ringo feels the choke in her throat. Himari is the most complete person she knows apart from her big sister. Himari, with her wholesome smile and open hands and happy eyes. For Ringo to be able to know someone like her who has suffered so much yet remains so kind – it can't be simple coincidence. It's fate.
She shuts her eyes to will the tears away just as Shoma slides the door open and steps out of the office, a soft hand-knit scarf covering the lower half of his face. He doesn't say a word, and Ringo takes her place beside him as they walk out of the dark hallway and into the world outside.
But maybe that is what makes her so drawn to him. No matter how broken he is, Shoma shoulders on, grappling at his fate with bare knuckles and emotional eyes. He is someone who looks in a different direction than her, but walks the same path. She hopes for the day they can look to the same place. She remembers his words – so far away that they seem like a dream she's fallen in love with: 'you're you, nobody else'.
Ringo wonders if love can make her whole again and whether if that's the case, that it can be the same for Shoma. Or maybe he hasn't been broken all this time. Just… clumsy. Clumsy with his words and his feelings and his heart, the boy she's grown to understand. That would be nice.
Nothing in this world is pointless, so maybe if she and Shoma and Kanba love Himari hard enough, she'll make it through. That would be nice too. Then Ringo can make apple curry for the Takakura family and share curry night with them.
Under the gentle snowfall, Shoma lets her hold him close. She takes his hands in hers, and when he squeezes back softly, she closes her eyes. Ringo feels herself sink against him, a piece fitting into place. Finally.