Same Time Next Year
By M. Zephyr

Disclaimer: Ranma 1/2 is a trademark of Rumiko Takahashi and VIZ Communications, and its characters have been borrowed without permission. This story was written for non-commercial purposes only.

Ranma x Akane. What if the old woman was not outdoors on the day that Ranma learned the neko-ken? Akane and Ranma first meet at age ten just after Ranma undergoes the neko-ken training and Akane's mother has died.

Chapter 2. Eleven and Twelve

On a bitterly cold day in February, with temperatures well below freezing, Akane Tendo, now eleven, was feeling very sorry for herself. The anniversary of her mother's death had taken place two days ago, and the whole family had come out to the cemetery to visit her grave. Now she was out here by herself, clapping her mittened hands together to try to keep them warm, while wondering where Ranma was and if he would even be showing up someday soon. It wasn't the first time she had wondered that, or whether he remembered her at all. Perhaps he had completely forgotten about her, traveling around the country with his father. The few days they'd known each other were burned into her memory, but did he feel the same?

A year was a very long time, especially when there had been no communication between them. She wished that there could have been some way to at least talk to him during that time. It was a pity that neither of them had given any thought to how they were to meet if and when he reappeared. Since it would be dangerous for him to come directly to her house looking for her, the only idea she had was to try to meet where they had first seen one another, at the cemetery. Thus her cold hands, not to mention ears, and nose, and other parts.

Even if he did come, Akane couldn't help but wonder if they'd remain friends, as they got older and they each went through changes in their lives. A couple of months after Ranma's intrusion into her life, shortly after her eleventh birthday, fourteen year old Kasumi had closeted herself with Akane in Akane's bedroom, and given her the "talk." Then three months ago, Kasumi had prepared the traditional meal of red beans and rice for Akane's entry into womanhood. The girl found herself reflecting that Ranma Saotome's continued existence might have been in jeopardy had he shown up at that time. It seemed terribly unfair that boys didn't have to put up with such an indignity, but she was starting to come to terms with it.

Squatting down in front of her mother's headstone got her out of most of the wind, even if it did nothing for the cold. If her mother had been alive, she would have given Akane the talk, would have prepared the meal, not that Kasumi hadn't done the best she could, but Akane missed her mother. So many things had fallen to Kasumi, as the eldest. She had to do most of the housework and cooking, had to fill most of the roles of a mother for her two younger sisters. Kasumi had grown more reserved these days; trying to act as though she was already grown up, Akane thought, instead of just fourteen. She seemed rather shy around other people, although unrelentingly cheerful, and everyone always smiled when they saw her.

Their father still hadn't recovered from her mother's death, and would start crying over the smallest things. There were fewer students at the dojo these days, yet he hardly seemed to notice, or to make any effort to turn things around. In contrast to their father's increasingly emotional behavior, Nabiki was slowly turning colder, unwilling to show her emotions at all, and she was developing an extraordinary interest in money.

Akane felt that she, on the other hand, hadn't changed so much from who she'd been the previous year. She was a bit more inclined to moodiness at times, and was ruefully aware that her temper had grown less certain. Perhaps she had thrown herself into martial arts training to a greater degree than ever, hoping to impress Ranma when ... if ... he returned. But that was it.

She had become so absorbed in these thoughts, that she didn't realize she wasn't alone until a hand dropped onto her shoulder. Akane shrieked, jumping up and around, to find the pigtailed boy giving her an urchin grin, unrepentant at having startled her. The size of the pack on his back filled her with amazement. How could he lift that, let alone move around with it?

"Hi, Akane," he said mischievously.

Akane put her hands on her hips and gave him a medium intensity glare, but found it impossible to keep it up, she was so happy to see him. "Hello, Ranma," she replied, ducking her head shyly. "So you managed to get away after all. I was beginning to wonder."

"Yeah, I left pop before dawn a couple of days ago, a ways southwest of Tokyo. I wrote a note for him saying I wanted to visit a friend I'd made at one of the temples here, and that I'd meet up with him in a week at our next stop, a dojo up in the mountains to the north. That'll give me three or four days before I need to leave. And I told you, the timing on this is never gonna be exact, it depends on where pop and I are each year around this time. But just so you know, I did think about getting away earlier. Then I decided it would be better to show up after the anniversary of your mom dying. That way you don't have to pretend to be happy to see me when you're really feeling sad."

"I suppose," Akane said, a touch of sorrow crossing her face like a cloud hiding the sun, and then disappeared again. "So is your father still as bad as he was last year? Do we really need to keep your visit a secret?"

"Oh yeah." Ranma shook his head in disgust. "He's not only 'as bad,' he's been getting worse. It turned out that the neko-ken training had a nasty side effect; it's left me completely terrified of cats. Pop seems to have taken that pretty hard. He keeps going on about how I have to be manly, and not weak like a girl, and he's training me harder than ever. I think it would be a real bad idea for him to find out I've made friends with a girl, and run off to visit her."

Akane sighed in frustration, wondering why Ranma's father had to be so unpleasant. "Well, I wasn't really expecting anything else, I guess. At least now I don't have to keep coming out in the cold to wait for you."

Ranma looked apologetic. "We probably oughta come up with some better way of meeting than one of us waiting in this freezing cemetery for the other one to show up."

Akane chuckled weakly. "I was thinking the same thing. How about if I give you our telephone number? Then when you want to meet, you can call up and say you're Yuka's brother and need to give me a message for her. Yuka's a good friend of mine, by the way. If I'm home, I'll take the phone and you can just tell me when you'll be there. Otherwise you can leave a message saying, oh, I don't know, maybe saying that Yuka wants me to meet her at the library to work on an assignment together. That'll be the signal that you're in town so we can meet."

Ranma nodded. "That's pretty smart. Then we just have to decide where to meet."

"Well, if you really want to keep it secret that you've come to visit me, then we probably don't want to make it the library, or a shopping mall, or anything like that, 'cause there'd be a pretty good risk of someone spotting us who knows me." Akane paused thoughtfully, then a look of enlightenment came to her eyes. "I know! Why don't we make what you told your father into the truth? There's a small temple not far from here. It's closer to my house than this, and not many people visit it. I was there a couple of months ago. It's in good repair, nice and warm, and I think it'll be perfect. Come on, I'll show you where it is."

The two ran off together, hoping that the exercise would warm them. Before long, they arrived at the temple. Ranma looked around, not seeing any other people, and liking what he did see. It was a small, peaceful place, and the inside was indeed wonderfully cozy. He took one last look around, noting landmarks so he could find it again in future, and pronounced himself satisfied.

"Will I be able to stay in your dojo's basement again?" Ranma asked with a touch of concern. "I can't afford to stay anyplace else, and ... and I don't have much food with me."

"Yep, it's all set, food and all," Akane responded cheerfully. "I've already put some blankets and stuff down there for you. Of course, I didn't think about you bringing an entire pack like that, so there's probably more than you'll need, but anyway. Just make sure to stay close to the wall when we get near the house, so that no one can see you from the upstairs windows, and I'll go in first to check that the coast is clear."

They ran into no problems, and a short time later the two of them were sitting down in the dojo's basement. Akane looked him over carefully for any sign of the injuries he had suffered the previous February. She thought she could see a couple of scars on the backs of his hands, and one along the side of his neck, but there didn't appear to be any on his face. She decided to ask him about it. "So all those bites and scratches you had last year, did they heal all right? Did you end up with a lot of scars? I think I can see one or two."

Ranma looked down and contemplated the backs of his hands as though they were unfamiliar to him, and gave a small sigh, an expression of the regret he had initially felt over matters to which he had long since adjusted. "Yeah, it left a lot of scars, all over me, most of 'em thankfully pretty small. And there don't seem to be any on my face, which I'm happy about. The biggest damage was inside my head, where you can't see it. Whenever I see a cat now, I scream and run away as fast as I can, I can't control it. If I can't get away, then I go into the neko-ken state, where I think I'm a cat, except I don't remember anything about it afterward. That happened a couple of times when pop tried to get me over my fear of cats. He stopped doing that pretty quick though; both times when I woke up he was pretty badly clawed and his clothes had to be thrown out."

"He deserves it," Akane replied with some heat. "After doing something like that to you."

"Oh, it gets even better," the boy went on with a grimace. "I found out later that pop didn't finish reading about it before trying to teach it to me. On the next page, the book said that 'only an idiot would try to teach this technique.' Seems to describe my pop pretty well."

"I'm sorry that you're scared of cats, now," Akane told him sympathetically. "I kind of like them, myself, though we've never had any kind of pets before. If we do get one someday, I'll make sure that it's not a cat; I wouldn't want to cause you trouble the next time you came to visit."

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry too," Ranma grumbled. "I hate being afraid of anything, let alone something like a cat, but I just can't seem to control it." He sighed again. "And it ain't helping that it seems to have driven my pop even more bonkers than ever about 'making a man out of me.' I'm getting kind of tired of him calling me a girl whenever he thinks I'm acting weak. He hasn't done anything as bad as the neko-ken this last year, but he's pushed the level of my training to nearly insane levels. Like, about half a year ago he broke my arm and a couple of ribs throwing stones at me."

"Why?" Akane demanded indignantly.

"He said something about teaching me to dodge, and toughening me up," the boy replied calmly.

She shook her head, feeling helpless in the face of her friend's suffering. "Are you really sure you should go back to him, Ranma? I mean, my daddy and your father may be old friends, but there's a chance we might be able to talk daddy into letting you stay here. Or if not daddy, then maybe you could stay with someone else?"

Ranma smiled at her, although it didn't quite reach his eyes. "But I do want to be the best at martial arts, and that's one thing that I am getting from pop. We don't dare tell your father. Most likely, he'd just send me back anyway, and after that they'd know about my coming to visit you. I probably wouldn't be able to get away to come here any more, since I'm pretty sure pop would figure I'm just wasting my time when I could be training instead."

Akane sighed in resignation. "All right, we won't tell anyone. So, what have you been doing this past year? What's your father been teaching you?" The two of them spent a pleasant couple of hours talking about what they'd been doing since the last time they met. Mostly, though, they talked about martial arts, together with what limited demonstrations could be managed in the crowded basement without going up into the dojo.

The next couple of days were very pleasant for Akane, but for Ranma there was no comparison. It was the first time he had ever been able to actually enjoy spending time with a friend and the fact that he was getting more food to eat than usual was a very welcome bonus. Akane managed to hide her worry about how little food he must ordinarily be allowed to eat, given his pleased reaction over the scraps she managed to sneak to him. On the afternoon of the second day, Akane took the risk of giving Ranma a brief tour of her home so that he could see where she lived, as he had only seen the furoba and kitchen on his previous visit. They were even able to get up into the dojo to spar a few times when the rest of the family was out, to give one another more thorough demonstrations of what they had learned.

All too soon it was time for Ranma to be leaving, if he was going to meet up with his father where and when he had said he would. Akane slipped a set of schoolbooks into his backpack and once again urged him to try to keep up with his studies. They stood there looking awkwardly at each other, with Ranma wearing his pack and knowing he had to go. Finally, Akane rushed forward and threw her arms around him, hugging the boy. She whispered in his ear, "I'll see you next year, okay?" Ranma nodded silently, his own eyes glistening, then turned around and walked down the road. Akane stood there and watched until he disappeared around a corner, trying to swallow the lump which had lodged in her throat.

The last day of January was surprisingly mild for the season, and twelve year old Akane Tendo was just finishing lunch with her family when the telephone rang. Kasumi went to answer it, but came back a moment later, saying, "Akane, it's for you. It's Yuka's brother Masa. He says he has a message for you from Yuka."

Akane paused with her cup halfway to her mouth, puzzled. ‹Why would Masa be calling me? Is something wrong with Yuka?› She put her cup down, and went to the telephone. "Hello? This is Akane Tendo."

"Hi, Akane," she heard the voice on the other end say. The voice wasn't Masa's, but it went on before she'd done more than register that fact. "Sorry I'm so early, but this is the only chance I could get. In about a week, pop is planning to take me up to someplace on Hokkaido. So I figured it was now or never. Can we meet?" Ranma. It was Ranma, weeks before she'd thought to start looking for him.

Akane turned her body around in order to hide her facial reactions in case anyone was watching. "Sure, I'll meet her there. In fact, I can leave right away. Thanks for calling." She hung up the phone and turned around, to see Nabiki watching curiously. "Yuka wants me to meet her at the library," Akane told her sister, "but forgot to call until she was out the door. She yelled back for her brother to tell me." Akane slipped up to her room to grab her coat, hoping that the lie had passed muster, then back downstairs to slip on her shoes and head out the door. She felt like a character in a spy movie, starting off in the direction of the library, then turning aside to head to the temple as soon as she was out of sight.

Ranma was standing inside the yard when she came through the temple gate, wearing a backpack just as huge as the previous year. They smiled and waved at each other, but then both got a bit of a surprise when she came closer. Bemusedly, Akane realized that she was looking down at Ranma's eyes, from a height perhaps twelve centimeters taller than the boy. He in turn was looking up at her.

"Huh! What gives, Akane?" he asked, perhaps a little more harshly than he intended due to the shock. "What've you been eating to make you grow so fast?"

Akane recovered quickly from the shock. She was taller than most of the boys in her grade this year, after all, so it wasn't really all that strange a thing for her. Their teacher had covered this in health class, and she repeated the lesson now. "People our age go through a growth spurt, Ranma, where they grow really fast for a while. It usually happens earlier for girls than for boys, but on average boys end up taller than girls. Didn't anyone tell you about that?"

"Oh." Ranma thought about this for a moment. "So next year I might have caught up, huh? Okay." Then he shrugged. He wasn't exactly happy about this development, but he didn't see that there was much that he could do about it, so he decided to pretend that it didn't matter. "Hey, you looking forward to your thirteenth birthday? Hard to believe I'll be a teenager in a few months."

Akane smiled. "I know. I can't believe I'll be, either. Daddy says he's going to buy me a set of weights of my very own. No more sharing with the students in the dojo. What do you think you'll get?"

Ranma looked away from her, feeling embarrassed. "I don't expect I'll get anything, except some extra food. That's all that pop's ever given me before on my birthday. Usually with a harder workout than usual, so I don't go thinking I can 'get soft' just 'cause it's my birthday."

Akane lowered her own eyes to the ground, feeling ashamed of her own good fortune in the face of Ranma's poverty, both of family and finances, and having forced him to acknowledge it. Looking for a change of subject, she said, "I don't think we should try to go to my home yet. Everyone's there right now. Kasumi and daddy will both be going out on errands in about another hour; it should be safer then since we'll only have to avoid Nabiki. Not that that's particularly safe, but at least it will only be her instead of her plus the other two. Besides, she'll likely be in her own room, which doesn't have a window looking out over the dojo."

"So whaddya wanna do in the meantime?" Ranma asked quizzically.

Akane thought about this for a couple of minutes. "Well, how about I just show you around Nerima a bit? I could show you the library, and where I go to school, and stuff. We just need to try to avoid being seen by anyone who knows me, though we can probably explain it away if someone does. The biggest problem will be if someone mentions it to Nabiki. She's been getting awful nosy, and she's good at putting together scraps of information she hears from different people."

Ranma conceded that touring Nerima sounded like as good an idea as any, and they did just that. Akane was rather proud of her school, and was a little disappointed that Ranma didn't show more enthusiasm for looking at it. He did like seeing the inside of the library, however. "I wanna thank you for those books, Akane. I mean, they weren't the most exciting things to read, but they helped pass the time when I was stuck in my tent during the snow or rain or stuff, or when I wasn't allowed in the training rooms of the dojo where we were staying. I just need to make sure pop doesn't catch me reading them. He threw one of the books away once when he found me reading it, saying I shouldn't be wasting my time on such stuff." He sighed, a wealth of regret in the sound. "I wish I could get to a place like this more often."

The gratitude in his voice made Akane happy, and she resolved to find some novels to give him in addition to the textbooks this year. Some nice action stories involving martial arts, or historical fiction, perhaps.

Ranma lazily spun a globe under his finger, and asked abstractedly, "You ever imagine visiting another country, Akane? Like maybe China, or America? Do you ever wonder what it would be like?"

Akane looked at the globe, and answered him seriously. "I doubt that I'll ever get the chance. I know that my family, um, seems sort of well off to you." Akane was feeling embarrassed and not meeting his eyes. "But really, we aren't. Not compared to people who can afford to make trips like that. I don't think we'd ever have the money for it."

The boy nodded mutely, embarrassed in turn over the subject of money and the relative financial status of their families. From his point of view, Akane's family was fabulously wealthy; he couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like to be able to afford things beyond the Tendo's reach.

Akane finally indicated that it was time to make the attempt to slip into the dojo at her house. Very cautiously they crept inside and down into the basement, then waited anxiously to hear if any alarm were being raised. After several minutes of quiet they started to relax.

"Looks like we're safe," Ranma declared, shrugging off his pack and cloak, and sitting down.

"Looks that way," Akane agreed, removing her own coat and sitting opposite him. After a moment she realized that Ranma had frozen in position, then followed the direction of his gaze to her chest. Blushing furiously, she crossed her arms in front of her, hotly demanding, "What are you staring at?"

The young boy had, of course, been staring in shock at the small but visible curves which were now present, which had not been noticeable the previous year. When Akane crossed her arms, drawing his attention to what he was doing, he immediately looked away, blushing in turn. He was really only vaguely aware of the differences between boys and girls, and that those differences increased as one got older, but he was certainly well enough aware of the general shape of the upper body of adult women. It seemed that his friend really was starting to grow up.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude," he told her nervously. "I just wasn't expecting ..." He let his voice trail off, not sure how to finish the sentence. Akane merely hmmphed, but let the subject drop.

They soon got over their embarrassment and were chatting like old friends, catching up on the news from the year that had passed. Akane talked about her family, school, friends, and some of the things her father had been teaching her. Ranma talked at greater length about the martial arts techniques he was learning, and some of the places he had seen. Akane found that she was envious that Ranma was learning more martial arts than her, although she wouldn't want to trade her home for his hard life on the road. Ranma experienced almost the mirror image of these sentiments, feeling envious of his friend's home life, but not really wanting to give up any of his martial arts skills in exchange for such a life.

Their friendship nearly suffered a fatal blow that evening when Akane brought him a sample of some alleged fudge she had made that afternoon with Kasumi's help. Ranma eyed the greenish-brown concoction dubiously before popping a piece into his mouth, which he promptly spat out again while choking. They got into a rather tense argument, in which Akane was upset at Ranma's overreaction to one of her first attempts in the kitchen, while Ranma couldn't understand why she had tried to feed him something like that without tasting it herself first. Eventually Akane stormed out and cried herself to sleep, but she tentatively came back down the next morning and the two of them managed a more productive argument about it. Akane ended up promising to test anything she made before trying to give any to him, and Ranma promised not to overreact so melodramatically even if something did taste bad.

The rest of the Tendo family were at home most of the time for the next couple of days, so there was only one brief period on the third day when Akane and Ranma were able to risk sparring together up in the dojo. This session made it clear that Ranma's training was starting to outstrip Akane's, although they had both already guessed that from their conversations. Ranma made use of the opportunity to give Akane some pointers to help with her own training, which she took in greedily.

After the strenuous workout, they sat beside one another on the floor of the dojo, using towels to wipe off their sweat. Ranma stared off into space and said, "If only my pop weren't so bad, I'd almost wish that you could come with us. That way you could get as much training as me."

Akane thought about it and shook her head. "As much as I'd like to be able to keep up with you, I could never put up with the way your father treats you. I'll just have to keep pushing daddy to train me harder. Besides, I doubt that I could stand to leave my family and friends. It's funny though ..." Her voice trailed off.

Ranma scowled fiercely, and flicked some invisible dust off the leg of his gi. "I guess I can understand that. Pop hasn't really given me the chance to make any friends. It seems like whenever I find a possible friend, pop decides that it's time to move on. You're the only long-term friend I've had, and I only see you once a year, and even then only because he doesn't know you exist."

Akane looked at him sympathetically. "I was going to say, it's funny that you wish that I could come with you, because I wish that you could stay here with me. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed before going to sleep, I think of some of the things that your father is probably doing to you, and I just want to cry. You could stay, you know. I bet my daddy wouldn't even mind too much. He might even like it." Sadly, as if to herself, she said, "He'd love to have a son around."

It was Ranma's turn to shake his head. "I don't like the way pop treats me either, but I am learning a lot from him, and I still have a long way to go before I've mastered it all." Ranma turned and gave her a sunny smile. "Maybe in a few years, after I've learned pretty much everything that pop can teach me, I can come back here and take you up on that offer. And then I can teach you everything that I've learned. I bet I'd be a better teacher than my old man is on his best day."

Akane's eyes dipped to the floor. "I think I'd like that, Ranma," she said quietly.

"There's another question I've been meaning to ask," Ranma said, changing the subject. Akane heard a touch of bewilderment in his voice.

"What is it, Ranma?" She looked up at him again.

"Well, it's like this," he began hesitantly. "Whenever I'm staying down there in the basement, I can hear your father's classes, of course. But there don't seem to be as many of them this year. Is my memory playing tricks on me, or is your father not teaching as much this year?"

Akane bit her lip, while thinking over how to respond. She didn't really want to answer this, but Ranma was her friend, and she didn't want to keep things from him. "You ... um, you're right. Daddy hasn't taken on any new students since spring of last year, around the beginning of this school year. Most of the beginning students, and even a lot of the intermediate ones, have quit. I think maybe they thought daddy wasn't giving them enough attention. It's mostly just the advanced students, and some of the intermediate ones, who are left, who are serious about completing their study under daddy. I've tried to talk to him about it, but ..." Akane was having trouble keeping the tears out of her voice. "I don't think he cares anymore."

Ranma felt terrible for his friend, but didn't know what to say. Slowly, he reached over to where her hand was resting on the floor and put his hand on top of hers, hoping it would give her some sort of comfort. Surprisingly, it did seem to help, as Akane quickly calmed down, and they both sat there for a while each lost in their own thoughts. When the sound of the bell at the front gate signaled that one of the family had returned, they jumped up and scrambled for the basement.

The next day it was time for Ranma to leave again. Akane slipped into the dojo before dawn to wake him, and watched as he finished packing, then turned to face the stairs to leave. After a moment of stillness, he turned back to her and, without saying a word, wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug. Finally, in a gravelly voice, he said, "I'll see you next year, Akane. Don't stop thinking about me, okay?"

Akane pulled back to arms' length to look him in the eye, with unshed tears glistening in her own, and declared, "Of course not, Ranma. And you'd better keep me in mind, too." Silently, she escorted him up the stairs and out the back gate, and once again watched as he walked out of her sight. ‹I wonder if a day will ever come when I won't have to watch him disappear again?›

Author's note:

Since I foresee the possibility that some people will complain that Akane is too young when she has her first period, I thought that I would add a note up front in reply to this. According to the online sources I checked, the average age of menarche in Japan is twelve, so while I agree that eleven and a half is a bit on the young side, it does not seem to me to be unreasonable.

This is the only time that two separate years of the story will be combined into a single chapter. The remaining years each get essentially their own chapters.

I have added a page to my web site called "Response to Reviews," on which I will publish story comments and replies to selected reviews. This is my way of making responses to reviews which are publicly viewable, since FanFiction only sends replies to the person who wrote the review.