CHAPTER ONE: THE BELIEVER

Don't you tell me what you think that I could be

I'm the one at the sail, I'm the master of my sea, oh-ooh

The master of my sea, oh-ooh…

Pain! You made me a, you made me a believer, believer.

Pain! You break me down and build me up, believer, believer

Pain! Oh, let the bullets fly, oh, let them rain.

My life, my love, my drive, it came from...

Pain!

— Darren Reynolds, "Believer"

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In the moment when Ranma saw Akane shyly looking up at him under the hood of her wedding kimono, he believed that maybe he could finally see a path to his own small share of happiness and that he was finally being afforded his fair look at the meaning of beauty and possibilities. It was a lie though – a cruel tease too good to be true. Very quickly, in the months between the failed wedding after Jusendo and graduation in the Spring, the world fell back into the familiar doldrum of pointlessly routine insanity.

Ryoga still wanted to kill kim.

Ucchan, Xian Pu, and crazy Kodachi still wanted to marry him.

Kuno still wanted to decapitate his boy side and f-#k his girl side.

Akane still called him undeserved names and malleted him just for breathing.

Everyone still thought he was stupid and that everything was his fault per usual.

He was unbearably tired. Even the Art itself no longer inspired or satisfied him; he no longer understood for what or why he had spent so long thinking so much about fighting. Everything he looked at and touched was imbued with a dull, suffocating molasses of tired, world-weary gray. More than once, he could not help wondering if he or a groundhog planted in front of a television stuck in a loop of B-rated late night syndicated reruns found more meaning in existing.

Then came the night of Graduation Day and when he heard her sing for the very first time. It was at the end of March about a week after the first cherry blossoms had appeared in Tokyo. They were in Roppongi at an open-stage karaoke hall a few blocks from the main district station.

That was when Ranma actually first noticed her and the real beginning of everything.

He went to the party with Akane of course, not having any real reason either way to go or stay home. Most everyone he knew from the school was there at that party. There was Ucchan. He also recognized Akane's girlfriends Yuka and Sayuri mingling with the guys Daisuke and Hiroshi. Some of Nabiki's bookie friends whose names he never bothered to remember were also there.

As he made his way deeper into the room, he caught sight of her on the stage appearing unexpectedly smart, polished and ladylike. He had not known that she could sing, but then he realised that should not necessarily have surprised him. The two of them had bickered and crossed paths more times than he could count. He had even lived in the same house as her now for a little over three years. Before that night though, the only thing he could recall with certainty was simply that she had been present.

She was strikingly adept at using the lighting above to her advantage, as if the knowledge was innate and instinctive for her. Streaks of blue, green, and red angling in from her right cut mysterious, intriguing shadows. These danced across the shiny bangs of her bob-cut hair, brushed against the delicate lines of her face, and teased between flashes at the elegant two-part fit-and-flare midi that she was wearing. The top was a black, long-sleeved turtleneck and the bottom a heavy, brilliant turquoise floral-print A-line skirt with white orchids accented by pink and violet hues. Her legs, long and shapely, were handsomely clad in black tights and accentuated by a pair of black patent leather stilettos.

He had no clue about the meaning of the lyrics. They were in English, and they blitzed relentlessly across the screen with blinding speed. It didn't matter though; he was mesmerized regardless. Her knees buckled visibly as she passionately belted out her soul seemingly from the very core of her being. The visceral power of her voice exploded in the darkness with a raw, unbridled fury that drove tsunami after tsunami of bone-chilling shivers down his spine.

A breathless, deafening silence fell across the room as she touched down on the final chord of the song. The sound of a shattering glass that must have slipped from someone's hand finally broke the spell. A thunderous roar of ecstatic howling and applause then tore through everything around him as the crowd began chanting her name.

He recalled little else about the party. Nothing about it interested him. He eventually found himself on the roof passing time by watching cars and people moving along the street at least 20 stories below.

"Not your kind of scene either, huh."

His head snapped up, searching in the direction of the voice. She was standing a few steps off to his right, also leaning against the rail. Her affect was just as cool and disinterested as his own had been just the moment before. The nearness of her, though, somehow, made him suddenly aware of his own heart now pounding in his ears. A waft of sweet peach blossoms suddenly filled the cool, crisp air around him. He felt dizzy and lightheaded.

Outwardly, though, he acknowledged her merely with a grunt to buy himself a moment. An awkward silence then settled in between them as he scrambled to arrange his thoughts into something coherent.

"Congratulations, by the way," he eventually remembered to say. Sheepishly, he realised that he somehow had not yet managed to tell her that at any point in the day that was now nearly over.

She laughed. "For what?"

"Graduation."

"Oh come on," she scoffed. "That's just a matter of doing your time. Everyone graduates from high school."

Ranma scowled. False modesty did not seem to suit her – or at least who he thought she was. "Ya didn't give a speech this morning," he noted. "Doesn't the person who graduates First usually get to say a thing or two?"

She laughed again. "Of course I didn't bother. You couldn't even pay me to do it. It would just be a bunch of empty platitudes that no one would even remember tomorrow. I'll save my breath as I make my exit."

"Wow. Ya really hate it here, don't you," he realised for the first time.

She was silent for a while. He thought she was going to ignore him before the impression of some softly spoken words drifted between them.

"Huh?"

"I said that you're the first person to notice."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Why is that? Why're ya so angry about being here?" he asked, genuinely intrigued.

She shrugged in a way that made it clear that no further answer would be forthcoming. He could understand and respect that. It was a lot better than being berated for asking what was apparently an unwanted question.

"It's about finding meaning in the pain of living," she suddenly said, knocking him out of his aimless reverie.

"Huh?"

"The song. You were going to ask me about the song, weren't you?"

"Uh, yeah."

"It's called 'Believer.' The lead singer of this American group called 'Imagine Dragons' wrote it. The guy has a disease that causes a crippling arthritis of the spine, hands and feet (1). He also has these painful episodes of eye inflammation that cause blindness from time to time."

"Old guy?"

She shook her head. "Late 20s. He started having symptoms when he was about our age. It made him extremely self-conscious. He hated crowds because of it."

Ranma shuddered involuntarily at the thought. "Ouch," he muttered.

"Oh come on. Don't be so squeamish," she chided, clearly picking up on his body language. "I'd think you of all people know a thing or two about pain. Are you not the great Ranma Saotome, forged in the crucible of a lifetime of training in Anything Goes?"

He felt anger bubbling within him at her mocking challenge. "And what would you, of all people, know about pain?"

As soon as Ranma heard the words leave his mouth, though, he braced himself, expecting she would come back with something chilling and venomous. It was what she usually did. He had grown rather numb to it by now.

Instead, however, something different happened this time. He was shocked to find his own righteous indignation reflected in her eyes as she glared back hotly at him. Her fists were unconsciously balled up at her sides.

Somehow, she did know; that much was suddenly clear as day to him. The memory of seeing her knees buckle as she passionately belted out her soul seemingly from the very core of her being, the power and fury of her voice exploding in the darkness, and the tsunami of bone-chilling shivers shooting down his spine washed over him anew.

As he looked into the fiery, soul-piercing eyes boring into him, he found he no longer had it in himself to stay angry. Two things occurred to Ranma as he studied those eyes. The first was that they were bold and brown. If he were willing to be honest, he would even perhaps have considered them pretty, but this, of course, was not an appropriate consideration given who she was and who he was. The second was that he actually felt remorse — and not just because of the tacitly forbidden line of his previous thought.

Ranma wondered if the nerve he had touched was the death of her mother when she was young. He recalled someone telling him that she had been 7 at the time and that she was home alone with her mother when it happened. He couldn't imagine how much that would f-#k with a person's head. Other than that, though, he couldn't think of anything. With envy, he noted to himself that her life was filled with many of the things that he yearned for in his own: stability, order, simplicity, normalcy.

"I'm sorry," he eventually relented. A breath that he had not realized he had been holding escaped from his chest. "What I meant to say is that ya sing really well. I didn't know either that ya spoke English."

She also visibly relaxed. "Thanks. Sometimes, that's the only way I can get out what I want to say. That and I can be heard without getting too many questions for it."

He nodded, recognising something familiar in what she was describing. "I know how that feels, needing to vent but not wanting to get smacked down for it. Happens to me a lot."

She was suddenly regarding him with a strange expression, as if she was noticing something about him too for the first time. "It makes you feel small and unimportant, doesn't it. What you want, what you think, what you feel – it's all so inconsequential that no one notices or even imagines that you have the capacity for those things inside of you. Even if anyone does notice, no matter what you try or how hard you try to be heard, no one gives a f-#k. Everyone around just goes milling about back and forth over and over in the straight lines of those little silos and lanes in which they live. They've got too many of their own selfish f-#king needs and problems to care or do anything else."

His eyes flew wide open as he heard her. She was suddenly smiling at him in the darkness, leaving something stuck in his chest that he could not describe.

"Now you have your answer."

"Huh?"

"You asked me why I hate it here. Now you have your answer."

"Oh," he said as he mulled over her words. He was genuinely engaged now. "What exactly does the song say anyway? How does the dude find his purpose and meaning in the pain of living?"

She laughed chidingly. "In for a penny, in for a pound, huh."

Despite himself, he also laughed as he stuck his hand in his pocket and began to fish around for whatever might have been on his person. To his surprise, though, her hand was suddenly there tugging his wrist away. "Tell you what. How about we let this one be on the House? I think that you of all people would appreciate the words," she said with a coy smile.

She began to tell him about the four points around which the lyrics were constructed.

First, the narrator demands that the world take notice of his resolve to deliver his message. He is fired up and tired of the way that things have been.

Second, no one can impose on him any more what they think he should be; he alone is now at his sail and the master of his sea. He has suffered for a long time.

Third, whoever calls him out and tries to shout him back down into silence, they no longer matter. He has tried to vent about it in poems that no one has really noticed or cared to understand, but that no longer matters to him. He will draw his message from his very blood and speak of it with his brain as he finally sees beauty through his pain.

Now he believes. By the grace of the crucible of hellacious fire and flame, he will draw a unicorn out of a zebra and proudly wear his skin like a tuxedo. The world does not bloom without rain. Losing does not come without shame. Most important of all, though, beauty does not exist without pain.

Ranma smiled. She was right. He liked the words very much. The power and fury of her voice was suddenly there again reverberating in the ears of his mind. Yet again, the tsunamis of bone-chilling shivers shooting down his spine washed over him anew, but somehow beckoning this time toward some previously unseen shore in the distance lined with the sense of unexpected possibilities.

Time seemed to stop as he finally sensed in himself a strange new courage to finally say what he realised he had wanted to say all along.

"I'm not living the life that I want…."

Her wide, astonished eyes held up another bizarre revelation for him in the darkness: the words were his own.

"What is it that you want, Ranma?" she asked.

He opened his mouth to respond, but stopped as another interesting idea exploded in his brain. He felt his lips come together in a smirk of his own that reached pleasantly to the corners of his eyes. "In for a penny, in for a pound," he gleefully tossed back at her. "That kinda info would be worth more than gold in Nerima, wouldn't it."

"Touche," she acknowledged, her eyes twinkling now with genuine amusement. "Tell me this much, yeah? Do you at least like girls…?"

"H– H– HEY…!" he sputtered in mortified indignation. He felt dizzy as the blood drained out of his head.

"Okay, okay!" she managed between peals of uncontrollable laughter. "Let's come back to that."

"WE WILL NOT COME BACK TO THAT! WE WILL – "

"Do you like coffee…?"

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CHAPTER NOTES

(1) Darren Reynolds, the lead singer for the American band "Imagine Dragons," has an autoimmune condition called ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Classic symptoms include inflammatory axial arthritis (usually focused in the lumbar spine and sacroiliac joints in the hips) and arthritis of the peripheral joints in the arms and legs. Age of onset is typically in between the late teenage years and early 30s. Extra-articular features can include episodes of eye inflammation (uveitis), inflammatory bowel involvement, psoriasis, and rarely aortic root involvement. AS is not curable; treatment is focused on preserving function and achieving long-term remission.