Time moves on, inexorable, and Ranko finds herself moving towards home quickly as it's starting to get dark and cold. The dark is more welcome, hurting her eyes less, but the cold is less so.
Still, she makes it to the gate of the property of her cousins' home and then just… stops. She looks up and down the street, wondering whether she really should stay here. She could move on. Keep walking. Never bother with them again.
Thinking of Nabiki's insistence that she isn't their cousin causes an emptiness inside of her, a yawning void that makes her think that perhaps it is better if she simply vanished, so she is less trouble to them. After all, if she is such a drain on finances and no one wants to hire her, surely that is an answer?
Then again, leaving Shampoo here to Akane's tender mercies feels like a poorly thought out idea. Akane doesn't like Ranko's cat. She promised to look after her, after all, and she always tries to keep her promises.
Wait… Promised to who? A flash of glasses, long black hair assails her before it's gone. She blinks, shaking her head.
Sighing, she enters through the gate and peers to the right, hearing noises from the dojo that sound like Akane is breaking bricks again. She doesn't really see the point in all that but perhaps it makes her cousin feel better.
She tried it once. All she did was hurt her hand and earn a scolding from Akane about her poor technique.
Ranko shakes her head and opens the door, stepping onto the genkan and changing out of her outdoor trainers, bare feet padding on the mats as she makes her way to the family room. En route she picks up a spray bottle from a shelf and starts watering the various plants along the way.
Putting the spray bottle down, she trudges into the family room to find Uncle Soun reading the evening newspaper and playing shougi with a large man in a bandanna.
"Hello Uncle Genma, Uncle Soun." Ranko says quietly, looking down. Genma jumps, looking around, and his eyes narrow as he sees her. Some life leaves his face as he looks at her closely.
"Ranko." He says gravely, his eyes returning to the board.
"Is Auntie Nodoka here?"
"No." The response is sharp, cold. Ranko winces.
"Oh, OK." She mumbles, heading towards the furoba and out of the family room. She knows when she's not welcome.
A treacherous part of her sputters indignantly at not being welcome in a room in her own home, but another part reminds her that she's not welcome anyway, not according to what she's overheard.
Undressing, she sits on a stool and washes herself down, untying her hair from the ponytail she had it in and making sure to wash it properly and then condition it. Kasumi-nee-chan has always given her explicit instructions to care for her hair.
"You have such lovely coloured hair, Ranko-chan." She always says. "It's a shame to not take care of it."
So she does. No one can say that Ranko isn't a dutiful child, at least for her eldest cousin.
Sighing happily as she steps into the bath and sinks up to her neck, glad for her short stature so she can do this, she closes her eyes. She tries not to, but a few tears plip into the water before she gets herself under control.
The bathroom door slides open after a few minutes of soaking and she curses to herself softly as Nabiki walks in, towel held at her front. Ranko looks down as the older girl stops, seeing her there, then shrugs and starts washing herself down.
Ranko doesn't speak, can't speak, her mouth feels like it's been stoppered with clay. She can normally exchange frosty words with her middle cousin, if nothing else, but right now after what she heard earlier she can't bring herself to do even that little.
It shames her a bit, but at the same time she feels like if she started, she'd never stop yelling and she wants to avoid that. It hurts her throat and gives her migraines.
She wonders again what she must have done to annoy so many people. It must have been bad.
She can't understand how she could have done anything on purpose – she just wants to carry on. Go to school, look after her garden. Grow flowers, maybe sell them.
Ranko doesn't have much in the way of goals, and she realises it's probably because she doesn't have much in the way of a life. Just get up, help Kasumi-nee-chan with the house, tend to the garden.
Maybe she should change that, find another hobby?
Nabiki's cold gaze washes over her as she finishes washing her bob-cut brown hair and slips into the tub.
At least it's Nabiki, and all Nabiki treats her with in the bathroom is cold indifference. Kasumi-nee-chan tries some conversation, and Akane just mutters about her being perverted when she looks over.
It confuses Ranko, because she's never told her youngest cousin she likes girls. Nor anyone but Kasumi-nee-chan, and she knows that her eldest cousin would never tell on her.
And it isn't like she'd peep on her cousins anyway, they're her cousins. It's a gruesome thought, to her. She loves them, even if that love is a slowly dwindling thing in her heart for the younger pair. But she doesn't love them like that.
Ranko stares morosely into the water.
"I don't bite, you know." Nabiki's voice is cold and hard, still, but her eyes soften slightly when she sees Ranko cringe. "I'm sorry, Ranko. About grilling you about a job earlier. It's just… money's tight, and it's hard enough feeding just us without you having come on the scene."
If she expects this to comfort Ranko, she's got another thing coming. "'Kay." Ranko mumbles, still looking at the water. Her love for her cousins dies just that little bit more.
Maybe she should have a funeral for it soon at this rate.
"I just… maybe you should look a bit further out?"
Ranko shakes her head. "Kasumi-nee-chan says I can't because it's dangerous."
Nabiki sighs, leaning back. "Mmm. It is, a bit. Maybe take Shampoo with you?"
"My cat?" Ranko asks, puzzled. Nabiki nods.
"She'll probably defend you, though I don't know anywhere that would take you in with a cat along. Damn."
Ranko looks down. "Sorry, Nabiki-nee-san."
She doesn't see Nabiki's wince at her form of address, compared to Kasumi's. Instead she stands up and steps out of the furo, wrapping herself in a towel and leaving the furoba, slipping into her clothes and leaving without another word.
Uncle Genma is gone by the time she returns to the family room, Shampoo jumps into her arms, purring happily. She feels the usual twinge of fear she gets when she sees a cat, but when her brain registers it's Shampoo she calms down and cuddles the affectionate cat.
Sitting at the table, she mindlessly watches TV with Soun sitting nearby with his newspaper.
"Was Uncle Genma fine?" She asks.
Soun chokes on his tea a moment. "You rem- I mean, yes. He's still hurting over the loss of his son, but he'll get there, Ranko-chan."
"Mmm." She says. "Still doesn't like me. Did I do something?"
"What? N-no, of course not, Ranko-chan!" Soun stammers and lets out a fake-sounding laugh.
Ranko stands, cuddling her cat. "Oh." She says. She moves out of the room and pads slowly upstairs, stepping into her room. It's far too big for her. She always feels dwarfed in it. There's nothing in it of her, even.
She doesn't know how long she's been here but-
She freezes halfway across the room. Shampoo lets out a curious meow, the bells on her fur tinkling.
She doesn't know how long she's been here.
No one tells her anything, but you'd think she'd remember not being here. Another home, but no matter how hard she tries she can't imagine any place other than this house. Yes, she has memory problems, yes, her mind isn't fully healed from whatever 'was done to her' in Akane's words, but even so… Amnesia isn't that clear-cut. She gets flashes of other things, but not this.
She frowns, focusing and ignoring the quickly building headache as she desperately pushes at her memories, trying to find anything outside of this place.
She doesn't notice the blood dripping from her nose, only the blinding burning pain in her head that feels like someone's taken a hammer to an egg. Migraine pain burns through her brain, and she can't breathe, can't see. It's like a wall, a wall blocking her from seeing what happened in her life – it's not amnesia, is it, this seems constructed, not naturally made. Not fog, but a wall, a wall keeping her memories at bay. Anything she gets is whispered, wispy, fogged up and scratchy, like an old record poorly kept.
Shampoo leaps out of her arms with a desperate meow and slides out the door, running downstairs, but she can't focus on her when her mind is burning, fire running through it like she's touched a live wire.
Ranko drops to the floor with a loud thump, twitching, blood pouring from her nose and her awareness fading, but at the last second of consciousness grasping a vision of stars in the sky, a rumbling burr in her chest as she speaks rather than the ringing resonance in her head she normally has, a crackle of campfire and Po- Uncle Genma's face.
It changes to a valley with poles sticking out of pools, a man yelling, Uncle Genma and a panda and then a kaleidoscope of images whirling. Auntie Nodoka with a sword, Auntie Nodoka drenched.
A mirror, a mirror she stares at herself in as if unused to seeing her reflection and in that reflection hair the colour of arterial blood, fresh and ruby-red, deep blue eyes and a heart-shaped face devoid of any of Akane's features. And somehow, she knows this is her true face, not the simulacrum that she stares into daily.
As consciousness deserts her and the running thump of Kasumi slamming the door open, gasping at her form on the floor twitching sounds, she hears an echo of Akane's voice yelling about a pervert in the bathroom.