The young man stood up from the ground, his mind working as sharp as a razor after the effects of the smoke had cleared and the panic set in. In the blink of an eye, he passed the training hall and grabbed his fiancée's shoulders with both of his hands, desperately wanting to make sure that she was not an illusion. He prayed to all the gods he knew and all of them he did not know, hoping that one of them would grant his wish, his last hope that Cologne had not satisfactorily performed the ritual, that she had made a mistake, because the one woman he had once cured of the effects of this dreadful technique was standing in front of him in the dimly light hall with her hands covering her cherry lips so that no sound would escape them and she remembered his name. She had uttered his name. His prayer, his hope.
"Do you know who I am?" he nearly yelled at her due to his agitated state of mind and shook her, disregarding the pain, the bruises, the cuts all over his body for the time being. "Do you know my name? Do you know me? Do you remember me? Do you remember?"
Akane could not speak nor move. She felt the pain of his fingers tearing into her skin as he shook her roughly, she saw the desperation in his blue eyes that had always longed for calm and peace even though he was constantly dragged into the most disturbing situations, she sensed his raging emotions that hovered between rage, sadness, hope, and many more and she knew why. She had come to the training hall in search of the raven-haired martial artist, who had been gone a rather long time, and snuck into the hall to find out about the seemingly manifold voices that appeared to chant a ritualistic song. Having overheard their conversation, she stood there in shock, her mind racing as she tried to process all the implications at once. And then she nodded, performed a simple and almost imperceptible movement of her head, and realized that this was all he needed, that it changed his life.
"How long?" he asked, remembering Cologne's words that the ritual was restricted to an enclosed sphere. "How long have you been here?"
His clear gaze pierced through her soul, fearing the worst. She wanted to meet his eyes, but she knew that she had to disappoint his hopes. She felt the crashing and corrosive waves of the unbridled ocean in his azure eyes washing away the fire in her soul and heart. They had always been like two opposing forces of nature. He was the ever-moving and unrestricted water of the ocean that subdued everything, drowned everyone in its way, but re-shaped the old and thus created a new world like a storm raging over the sea, a sea in which she could never hope to swim, in which she could never hope to reach the shore. She was the flickering flames of fire of the sun and stars, illuminating even the darkest corners of the world, but always staying where she belonged, always in danger of being extinguished. She looked away and he knew.
"Come," he demanded, took her hand and dragged her along with him.
He swiftly crossed the garden and entered the residence with Akane in tow. Then, however, he stopped dead in his tracks and let go of the young woman's hand. Soun, his father, and Nabiki were sitting at the table, and Kasumi was serving breakfast – as if nothing had happened, as if nothing had changed. Instead of the usual greeting, though, Akane's father, who had paged through the newspaper, put the paper aside and looked at them in surprise.
"Akane," he said, "we've wondered where you'd run off to so early in the morning without your usual training gear! But I see you've taken care of a visitor. I am Soun Tendo, head of his humble household and master of the training hall. And who might you be?"
Ranma immediately froze. He wanted to speak to his future father-in-law, wanted to make him remember who he was, the heir to his form of martial arts, formed the words in his mouth, tried to utter them, but they were stuck in his throat, threatening to choke him. He could not breathe. His last hope that Cologne had make some sort of mistake burst like a bubble, leaving him nothing but the cold, hard facts of his new reality, his future. Alone. No, he realized that he was not alone when Akane took his hand in hers and squeezed it encouragingly, calming him down.
"Ranma," he croaked. "Ranma. Nice to meet you."
"Sorry, dad, he's just a little shy," Akane assured her father, quick to invent a plausible tale that would cover for his real identity. "He's a challenger and an old acquaintance I've met while on a training trip way back. I've just let him in through the backdoor."
"Oh!" all of the inhabitants of the residence exclaimed simultaneously, each of them for their own reason.
"I'll go set the table for a new guest," Kasumi followed up her exclamation in delight.
"I wonder how she does it," Nabiki muttered under her breath, noticing her holding his hand, and instantly remembering all her younger sister's suitors.
"Let's see how good that boy is," Genma said to his old friend while he stood up and stretched, who still wondered on which training trip his baby daughter had met this young man, and whether he had behaved properly. "I haven't had a good workout in ages!"
Ranma remained exactly where he was, torn between running away to escape this horrifying situation of being presented to people he had known for years and beating his father to a pulp in order to give vent to his feelings. He felt humiliated, desperate, and clueless. Seeking her advice, the young man turned to Akane.
"Wait," she interrupted the cacophony of voices that attempted to take a hold of the new situation regarding the two adolescents as badly as the two young martial artists themselves, realizing that her friend had once again found himself in a compromising situation, "just wait a second. Can't you see that he's hurt? I'll accept his challenge when his wounds are healed. Until then, he's a guest and a friend."
"Pain," Genma told them and crossed the distance to the pair in a mere second, ready to open the fight against his son by shoving him back with a strike of his right palm, "is no excuse for a martial artist!"
Before the young woman could react to the challenge and yank her fiancé out of harms way, the young man had blocked his father's attack with his left hand, grabbed his outstretched arm with his right, and catapulted the old man over his shoulder and into the garden. A short moment and a loud splash later, a fully grown and enraged panda emerged from the pond, attacking the young man, who had not moved a single inch, even more rigorously than before. This time well aware of what would happen, the young woman stepped in between the two fighters, and froze in mid-movement – just like the current animal. The overwhelmingly powerful presence of the raven-haired martial artist's fighting spirit had leashed out to them, making them, as fellow martial artists, aware of their position in the face of their master.
"That's enough," Ranma whispered, not even once looking at the panda or anyone else, while Soun, who had also noticed his power, frowned at the young man. "I'll be leaving now."
Akane jogged through the streets of the small suburb of Tokyo in order to find her elusive fiancé, who had left the Tendo residence without a single word while they were all still in shock due to his display of pure power. She passed every single place that had some sort of connection to Ranma, whether he liked a certain spot or tried to avoid it, without any success. Her heart pounded furiously because she feared that he had left her again. On her way, Akane cursed left and right, angry at the young man and simultaneously worried about him as he was all alone; just like her. She turned at a corner, and suddenly she saw him. He was sitting on a handrail at the entrance of a playground. Her heart skipped a beat, as she realized that it was the same playground in front of which he had waited for her on Christmas Eve. She smiled, as she approached him.
"Ranma," she whispered worriedly.
"What took you so long?" he asked, and Akane, who half-expected his usual cocky grin, was taken completely by surprise as she saw his pained smile that she realized he would not show to anyone except herself because she was the only person left on earth that knew him. Just a second later, leaving the young woman with the impression that she had but imagined his unusual expression, Ranma stood up from the handrail and walked closer to her. "You know I have to go."
"Why can't you just tell them what happened?" she asked. "All of us know how crazy Happossai can be at times."
"Yeah, that'll solve all my problems," he sneered at her. "Hey, old man, how're you doing? By the way, I'm your son. You just happened to forget all about me. And guess what? I've been living here for years; you've just all forgotten about it! What good did that do to you when you forgot about me?"
"Well, yeah, okay," she nodded determinedly, having already made up her mind to support him whichever way he was to go, "if you really want to chase those two, fine by me, but you won't be on your own."
"I will," he rejected her implied offer forcefully. "What do you think I meant when I said I have to go? It's way too dangerous for you!"
"So you think I can't compete with you? That I'll slow you down?" she asked heatedly, her temper gaining the upper hand once again. "I'm so sorry that I'm not as strong as Shampoo!"
"Shampoo!" he exclaimed, cutting her off, a glimmer of hope appearing in his eyes that had held but despair and sadness a second ago. "You're genius! I gotta go find Shampoo!"
Ranma felt elated. The devastation that was caused by the fact that he was sure that he had to leave what he considered to be his home for an extended period of time, the first time in his life that he considered a place to be actually his home, the devastation that filled his heart with pitch black shadows that not even the distant flames of emotions could erase, as they were the cause of the figures on the wall of his inmost desires, the devastation that had him nearly give up vanished into thin air when Akane mentioned the witch's great-granddaughter – a surefire way to find the old hag quickly, he assumed. His plan formed in his mind, he wanted to take the female martial artist with him to the Chinese restaurant when he suddenly felt a sharp pain on his left cheek.
She could not help it, she could not think it through properly because she was furious. The raging fire in her breast ate away at her senses as she heard him speak of Shampoo in exhilaration, fuelling the same dark shadows of rage in her heart that danced along its walls and taunted her, daring to extinguish the fire, so that they would vanish, along with her emotions, into the darkness of hatred. She reacted instinctively, thinking that he had chosen his other fiancée over her, because she was stronger, more reliable, cuter. She slapped him across his face and turned around, stomping away from him and towards her home.
"And there I was actually worried about you," she yelled furiously. "Go see Shampoo if she's that important to you!"
"It's not like that!" he argued, hesitantly following her because he was torn between letting her storm off, as his pride demanded of him, and wanting to clear up this misunderstanding. "Shampoo can help me find the old hag!"
"Yeah, and I can't," she answered, stopping for a second and turning around to face him.
"How would you help me?" he asked her and was met with her cold glare that sent shivers down his spine.
"How could the only person who knows you in this world possibly be of any help to you?" she sneered at him, cutting off his attempt at an explanation immediately. "Leave. Go! Go to Shampoo! See if she's still there with her great-grandmother gone and you not on her mind anymore. Leave, for Pete's sake, and don't come back. Find Shampoo, be happy with her for all I care. I hate you!"
Ranma sat down on a trunk amidst the thicket of the woods close to his former home and placed his huge backpack next to him on the ground. He was still fuming. After everything that had happened, after all the tragedy that had befallen them, after he had almost married her, she went and said the words that she knew would hurt him the most. I hate you. The words still rung in his ears, and had clouded his judgment: He had let her go home, had followed her in a safe distance, had packed his belongings, and had taken off to find the blue-haired Amazon without a further word to Akane, without even acknowledging her presence in the household that he had felt flaring. He had searched for Shampoo at her restaurant, but it had already been abandoned. So he had left, gone towards the ocean, towards travelling to China because that was his only clue, his only choice to regain everything that he had lost, his only chance to make them remember him, to make them remember their promises.
"You idiot," he cursed, hitting the ground with his bare fist. "You damn idiot!"
"Hitting ground no make things better."
Ranma jerked his head around at the sound of the all too familiar voice. He was surprised and partly started because he had not noticed her presence, even though her fighting spirit was a force to be reckoned. Mentally scolding himself, he watched her approaching him from the exact way he had taken. The blue-haired Amazon winded her well-formed body, which was covered by a simple, red Chinese dress that further accentuated her alluring curves and stood in stark contrast to her voluminous, luxurious hair, smoothly through the undergrowth without touching any branch or twisting any twig beneath her feet. Her movements, just like her whole being, displayed pure grace, ease and radiant beauty. He had never seen her like that. In fact, he had never noticed just how good of a martial artist she really was, just how much of a woman she really was because he had always tried to avoid her glompy self. Taking two quick and light steps, she crossed the distance between the two and bowed slightly as a form of greeting the stranger. Ranma hastily stood up from the trunk and followed suit.
"I Shampoo," she told him, sat down on the ground elegantly, and beckoned him to do the same. "Who you are? What you doing here?"
The young man abided by her unspoken wish for him to sit down next to her, repeating her movements mechanically, as he was still completely surprised by the curious turn his fate had taken. He thought that something was fishy, that Cologne and Shampoo had set him up, but he knew that girl, had known her for a long time, and yet he had never seen her so happy, so at ease, so carefree. He looked into her eyes. They were kind and dancing with mirth. She seemed to be free, freed, and she had definitely forgotten all about him. Questions started to form in his head, as he was looking at her: Did he really want to change everything back to normal? Wasn't he glad that the daily madness had eased? Why not turn around and leave it be, start a new life?
"Hello?" Shampoo waved her hand in front of his face to gain his attention. "You understand Shampoo?"
"Yeah, sorry," he laughed nervously, not sure whether to be delighted or sceptical. "I was just surprised to meet someone so deep in the woods this late. What are you doing here, Shampoo?"
"Me ask first," she said, smiling at him coyly and simultaneously sizing him up, as she noticed the muscles under his red shirt as well as his handsome features.
"Sorry," he apologized. "My name's Ranma, Ranma Saotome. I'm on a trip to China."
"Yes?" she asked surprised. "Shampoo, too! Spent long time here in Japan, away from home and friends, and finally great-grandmother allowed Shampoo to go back."
"Oh," the young man exhaled and looked up at the stars in order to keep him calm – he liked gazing into the night sky, and count the twinkling stars above his head that seemed to small and fragile and far away. "Why were you here in the first place? And where's that grandma of yours?"
"Strange, Shampoo no remember. It order from elder, but Shampoo never ask why. Great-grandmother gone, had to take care of business, but will one day come to village, she promised," the Amazon pondered about the past and looked into the vast depth of the sky as well, adding after a short pause: "Beautiful, no? Why you go to China?"
"Hm," Ranma nodded, knowing that the young girl meant the stars shining above them. "I'm looking for someone."
"Lucky someone," the woman pouted playfully.
"How'd you know?" he asked her sadly. "You don't know me. I could be an assassin."
"Shampoo no look like it, but great fighter, proud Amazon," she argued and eyed him thoroughly. "Shampoo feel fighting spirit, no feel you. You no assassin, you not strong."
For the first time, Ranma's gaze left the stars, of which he wished to be a part, because they were the only ones who had not forgotten about him, they always remained the same, they did not judge him, and he did not have to deceive them, and he looked at the blue-haired martial artist, shaking his head in utter disbelief. In response, the young woman simply raised an eyebrow and shrugged her shoulders, so that the master of his school was forced to summon his enormous spirit. Shampoo did not flinch even in the slightest, until he let his fighting aura flare uncontrollably and dangerously.
"What?" the Amazon suddenly shouted and jumped up, facing him in a defensive stance, ready to fend off his attack. "Who you are? Shampoo never feel no presence and then this strong! How come? Who you looking for?"
The young man relaxed, which caused his spirit to recede to a degree that Shampoo, too, could relax a little bit, as she could no longer feel him or his presence at all; however, the young woman remained standing in her defensive position, still ready to take an attack from the unknown but powerful enemy. She eyed him carefully, weighing her options, and finally sat back down next to him. Again, Ranma was left staring at her in disbelief, because he assumed she would at least try to force him to answer her questions.
"If I knew, Shampoo," he spoke to her, "I'd be one step closer to understanding what is happening. I don't know why you couldn't sense my presence. Why didn't you run away or fight me?"
"Shampoo learn many things in Japan and know when outclassed," she told him sincerely, looking back up at the stars. "You search for Cologne, no?"
"How'd you?"
"Shampoo no idiot," she interrupted his stumbling with a smile. "Shampoo able to put two and two together. Great-grandmother leave in a hurry, tell Shampoo to go back to village by foot; now Shampoo meet powerful man travel to China on foot. Shampoo think Cologne know we meet."
"That cunning old hag," Ranma cursed.
"Good thing," Shampoo assured him, placing her hand on his shoulder as she stood up, thus making him look at her. "Shampoo lead you to village, yes? Cologne be there someday."
"Why'd you do that?" he asked her, suspicious of her offer.
"You strong, you teach Shampoo," she said, "to be strong to beat stupid conceited elders at village. Shampoo hate them, but not strong enough to beat them. Win-win, no?"
"Hm," Ranma grunted.
At the outskirts of one of the many suburbs of Tokyo, a small and old wooden bridge upheld the traditions of Japan, fending off the bright lights and deafening noise of the lively metropolis which grasp did not yet reach into every corner of the people's lives. Instead, every single person walking on this bridge that connected the old and the new, combined the natural with the artificial, could hear the soft sighs of the rustlings trees in the breeze of a warm summer's night that frightened the wild animals taking shelter in the woods just like the headlights of a single car crossing the bridge and illuminating the outlines of a young woman for a second.
Her feet crossed and the weight of her body balanced on the ball of her left foot solely, she leaned her arms against the railing and stared into the pitch-black sky, counting the stars that seemed to mirror the distant lights of Japan's capital. The quiet river that passed beneath her feet under the bridge was an oasis of calm, soothing the raging emotions in her heart in the solitude of the night. She paid no attention to her hair that was caught in the breeze and seemed to flicker like a candle in the wind. A single, woebegone sigh escaped her lips and joined the sound of the trees that the wind carried away to distant shores. She closed her eyes, and a single pearl hit the surface of the river, caused an insignificant ripple that would soon be lost in the stream of time. The young woman turned around and sat down on the bridge, her back leaning against the railing for support. She stifled a sob, and buried her head in her arms.
"Akane?"
The cautiously, quietly uttered word seemed to be nothing more but a further sigh in the wind, carried to her ears as a response to her silent suffering, but caused her to look up nevertheless. Her oldest sister kneeled beside her, taking her tear-streaked face into her palm and embracing her baby sister, who shook with suppressed sobs, tenderly. Akane buried her face into her sister's shoulder, one hot diamond pearling from her cheek into her sister's white blouse after another. She wanted to forget him, wanted to erase him from his memories like all the other people had been forced to do, but even the thought of forgetting him caused her to remember every single thing she knew about him. A thousand memories flourished in her heart, a thousand new thoughts that all centered on him, like a rose in full bloom that seemed to grow wildly until it reached the stars – and with every inch it grew, a new thorn pierced into her heart. She cried, and her sister let her cry.
"What happened?" Kasumi asked after a few moments, when she realized that Akane had calmed down a little. "We were worried about you."
"He's gone," she whispered, repeating the sentence over and over again. "He's gone. He's gone."
"Ranma?" the brown-haired woman asked cautiously, and rubbed her sister's back as she nodded, having anticipated her answer as she had never seen her sister this casual with a boy before. "Don't worry, Akane, dear. You've just met him again today and I'm sure you'll see him again sometime soon."
"No," she winced and separated from the loving embrace for the first time, looking directly into her sister's eyes. "No, I haven't and I won't. He's gone, for good."
For a second that seemed to last forever, Kasumi tore her gaze away from Akane's eyes and diverted it towards the stars that seemed to be twinkling back in return to her unspoken question. She smiled sadly, tears welling up in her eyes. It was time. She knew, but Akane did not know yet. Her hands found Akane's shoulders and she grasped them determinedly, smiling at her sister. Her heart ached at the thought of what she was about to say, what she was about the cause, what she knew was the right thing to do, yet the worst thing to do with regard to what she considered to be her family.
"Akane," she said softly, "I want you to be happy. I know you, I've known you for so long now. You deserve to be happy, and I know what you will have to do to find your own happiness. Please don't forget that we will always be waiting for you right here. This will always be your home."
"What are you talking about?" the young girl asked confusedly.
"I have never seen you be so at ease with a boy," she told her. "I have never seen you so behave so passionately, I have never seen you so feel so devastated in my life. You love him."
"No!" she yelled, blushing crimson but involuntarily remembering all the sunny days she had spent with him, all the days on which they had run to school together, he on the fence and she on the ground, two separate beings yet inseparable, she remembered their everyday-struggle to fend off Happossai and his craziness, she remembered how angry she was at Ukyo and Shampoo because they were able to show their affection for her fiancé so openly, she could see him before her inner eye, standing beside her in his suit, crying for her in China. She felt her heart beating for him and for him alone, a feeling she had always felt when they had been together but which she had never dared to realize.
"No?" her sister asked her with a smile. "No, you are right, Akane. We are sitting here on a bridge, you've been crying and I've been comforting you because of an old acquaintance, whom you had not seen in years and who has now left."
"No," Akane smiled. For the first time since he had left, she smiled and felt her heart beating more quickly than ever before in her life when she gave her sister a quick peck on the cheek. "No, you're right. I know this is my home, that you will always be my home and I promise that I'll be back someday. Tell them that I love them and that I'll miss them. Thank you."
Kasumi watched her younger sister jump up and run towards their home; she, however, remained sitting on the bridge for some minutes, looking up at the sky and the stars. She thought about what to tell her dad, until she felt a rather cold breeze washing away over her. She stood up quickly and hurried home.
"This should have given her enough time to sneak out," she talked to herself, staring at the stars one last time. "And you'd better guide her on her search. You owe her! She's done so much for you."