CHAPTER THREE: THE NORMAL GIRL
"What's it like to be normal?"
The girl sat back and studied him with a poker face as she mulled over his words. Her eyes, however, gave her away. His question had caught her off guard.
"Funny that you think I'd know," she eventually said. "I'm a Tendou, remember?"
Ranma laughed. "Point taken. Seriously, though, I think you're probably the only person around me who does know."
She laughed too before telling him about a quote by Sartre that she really liked. "Life has no meaning a priori; it's up to each one of us to give it a meaning and that the concept of value is nothing but the meaning that we choose for ourselves."
He could not resist the easy opening. "Money?" he teased. "Ain't that the ultimate contrived measure of value?"
The unexpected forced smile that appeared across her features caught him off guard. She did appear amused at all. "Sartre would've rolled over in his grave at what you just said."
"Sorry," he said, though he did not entirely know what he was apologising for. "It was meant as a joke," he added.
"It's okay. I don't have any illusions about who or what you think I am. I'm used to that. It's just that I was desperate. I really just had to do whatever it took for me to get out."
"Whaddaya mean?"
"You said it yourself last night. I hate Nerima. Todai is my way out, but cram school wasn't cheap, and tuition and board are even worse. It took me years to come up with what I needed. We're not exactly a family with much in the way of means."
"Oh." He suddenly felt extremely self-conscious. Unflattering recollections of he and his father's years of unapologetically freeloading in her family's home flashed by his mind's eye. "Sorry."
"Don't apologise," she said. "If anything, I blame my father more than anyone. It's his house, and he invited you and your father to stay with us. Besides, it's not like anyone cares about what I say."
Ranma recognised the same anger he had glimpsed the night before flashing again in her eyes. She also had her fists balled up again unconsciously at her sides. This time though, she looked like she was about to cry. She seemed uncharacteristically fragile and vulnerable. His heart went out to her.
"Ya wanna talk about it?" he asked worriedly.
She smiled despite herself and shook her head. "Not right now. Maybe someday."
"I'm sorry for making ya – "
"I told you not to apologise," she cut him off. "You're not making me tell you anything I don't want to."
He understood. She wanted to prove to him that he could trust her.
"Besides, you wanted to know what it's like to be normal. Being able to feel pain is a good start. There's no beauty without it, remember? You're even allowed to cry and get angry about it. That's not a sin or a crime. What would be is choosing to do nothing about it; freedom is what we do with what is done to us."
"Another Sartre quote?"
She smiled. "It's true though."
"When did ya get so enlightened?"
"When I realised that I was on my own and that I had to be okay with that. I had to learn to see things for myself as they were, not as I was told they were."
"How'd ya learn?"
Her eyes lit up with an excitement that he had never seen in her before. She pushed her chair back from the table and stood. "Come with me. I'll show you. All free of charge."
# # # # #
Ranma studied the soft object that he had just plucked out of his eye. It was a cherry blossom petal, one of countless many swept up in the cool early afternoon breeze whipping mischievously around them.
The girl led three or four steps ahead of him as they moved along a tree-lined path at Himonya Park. Her stride was quick and animated with a confident sense of purpose. Clearly, she had been here before.
She clutched her left hand firmly onto the strap of the small white purse slung across her small shoulders. She had stuffed a handful of white cocktail napkins into her bag as they were leaving Sartre.
"What are ya — ?"
"Just wait. You'll understand," she had said cryptically with a small, secretive smile.
At some point, they veered left off of the central path onto the perimeter wrapping around the lake around which the park had been constructed. Eventually, they came in the vicinity of a small boathouse in one of the more secluded areas of the park.
Here she stepped off of the path and wordlessly began studying some of the larger trees. She pushed up hard against the trunks and tugged on the low hanging branches of a few before finally finding one that she liked.
"Meet me up there," she said, pointing up.
Ranma turned and tracked his eyes in the direction she had indicated. Above them was a large branch at least eight meters above the ground. "Huh?" he asked incredulously.
"I said meet me up there," she repeated impatiently. She secured her purse behind her, leapt up for a nearby branch, and began to climb. As he saw her pressed up against the trunk of the large tree, he was struck by how petite and delicate she seemed.
"I can get us up there in a leap or two," he offered.
"No, thanks. I can make my own way up. Just meet me up there."
"Are ya – ?"
"I said just meet me up there! I may not be a martial artist, but I'm not f-#king made of glass!"
# # # # #
"Sorry, " a chagrined Ranma muttered as he warily eyed the angry girl now sitting roughly four arm lengths away from him. She had her back up against the trunk and her knees drawn up to her chest. She appeared to look everywhere and at everything but him.
"No wonder my sister always wants to hit you," she muttered grouchily.
She turned out to be a very good climber. Her movements had turned out to be unexpectedly graceful, even beautiful. She was much faster, agile, and confident than he had thought she would be when determinedly made her way up toward the branch that she had selected.
"Here," he said, offering the side of his face within arm's reach in weary resignation. Years of dealing with her sister and his unwanted fiancées had taught him the drill. This time, however, he felt he actually deserved it.
The icy stare that she flashed in reply was withering. Subsequently, she wordlessly reached into her purse, pulled out a pen and one of the cocktail napkins, and started to write something. Her silence stung more than any actual physical slap or words of reproach.
In the chilled air between them now, he suddenly had the sense of an epiphany slipping away. For a moment, the notion of Icarus leaping off the Stage at Kiyomizu-dera had not seemed so far-fetched or crazy at all. For a moment, he had believed that the normal girl whose hands had made Icarus leap would have been willing to teach him a little bit about living.
He found himself suddenly filled with a terrible depth of sadness. Looking at her hurt. He had to turn away. He actually wished that she had hit him as her sister would have. It would have been familiar; he would have known how to deal with that.
As he looked away, he found himself studying the still water of the lake below. There he could see the clear blue sky above, the tree with the two of them in it, and people who would occasionally pass by on the path below. Among the people who passed were some runners; a mother pushing a stroller; an old couple holding hands as they passed by; some children playing; a man walking a dog. A brilliant mid-afternoon sun illuminated the whole tableau, mocking his mood. Eventually, a couple in a boat rowed by, dissolving the image away in the ripples stirred up in their wake.
He knew that she had finished with him quite some time ago by now. Yet, he could not bring himself to leave. A half hour quickly turned to an hour and more. He did not want to go back to Nerima and the old asinine script of repetitive, predictable, unending insanity. He did not want to go back to the abysmal vacuity of who he was. Seeing if he could steel himself for the inevitable, he closed his eyes and tried imagining that he could forget.
# # # # #
More time passed, but he could not forget. With a sigh of dread, he opened his eyes and glanced back down at the water. He felt certain he would find she had abandoned him by now.
To his surprise, she remained up in the tree with him, still with her knees drawn up to her chest, and still concentrating on whatever she was writing on the napkin in her hand.
"Ever hear that old story about the group of prisoners locked away in the underground cave (1)?" she suddenly asked. Her voice was surprisingly calm, even conversational. Still, however, she did not look up at him.
"No," he said warily. "How does it go?"
She described a group of prisoners in an underground cave who were chained with their legs and necks fixed, forcing them to look only at an empty wall in front of them. Other than the wall, they could not see anything — not each other or even themselves. Behind them was a fire, and between them and that fire stood a wall on which their captors walked across carrying puppets and objects. The captors moved such that only the puppets and objects and not their bodies cast shadows. The shadows landed on the cave wall in front of the prisoners and became the only things that the prisoners could see.
"For the prisoners," she said "those shadows are what talk and make the sounds, as if they're the actual people and objects rather than just representations." The prisoners saw, heard, and knew only what the people walking on the wall decided that they should see, hear and, know.
"Brainwashing?"
"Yeah," she agreed, still without looking up at him. "Let's have some fun with this though. Say one day the people on the wall decide to let one of the prisoners out of her chains – just to see what happens."
"Okay…."
"Naturally, she'd look around and see the fire, but then seeing actual light for the first time would hurt so much that she'd scream and have to turn away. Her captors mock her by freely admitting that everything she sees now in the fire light is what's actually real."
"'Freely'?"
"Yeah. They know she'd be unable to believe them. Of course, she'd choose to escape from the pain. Of course, she'd beg to be put back in the chains and want nothing more than to stare at the wall for the rest of her life. It's safe and familiar."
"That's not what actually happens though, is it."
"Of course not. There'd be no fun in that."
"What'd they do with the girl then? Or what does she do?"
"Well, of course, the nastiest, most cruel thing they can think of to do with her."
"Of course. That being?"
The girl's captors dragged her out of the cave to the world above, tied her spread-eagle to the ground, violently pried her eyes open, and forced her to look around in the sunlight. Terrified, she thought she was going to die – but then her eyes finally adjusted. She began to discern different shadows, then the reflections of people in things in nearby water, and finally actual people and things themselves. Eventually, she could lopp up at the sky, see the sun itself, and finally understand how beautiful the real world actually was.
"That's hardly actually nasty or cruel. Ya could even consider it a blessing in the end."
"You're too easily impressed, and it's hardly the end. We're not even at the fun part yet."
"No?"
"Nope. Of course not."
"Okay…."
"I'll give you a hint. This will end up being a beautiful story."
"I'm not getting whatcha mean."
"Beauty does not come without pain, remember?"
Now, the girl's captors dragged her back down into the cave, threw her back in chains, and re-condemned her to face the wall. Yet, she remained euphoric and addicted to the memory of all the beautiful things that she had seen. She began babbling to the other prisoners about her new and wonderful experiences. No one believed her though; they thought her crazy and either ignored her, pitied her, or feared her. She found herself alone to slowly rot and die in the frustrated, anguished hell of her beautiful memories.
Ranma shuddered. An the image of Icarus at Kiyomizu-Dera flashed again in his mind's eye. His companion was right; it was a beautifully cruel and nasty way to die.
"Here," she said. She reached out to him with her left hand, offering him the napkin on which she had been scribbling.
Ranma trembled at his very core as he saw.
She had sketched an image of him sitting at the far end of the branch while staring down at the lake below. The lines were rough, and many of the details were still missing. Yet, the weary eyes and the pained longing and sadness in them were chillingly vivid and unmistakable.
"Sorry about all the missing texture and shadowing. There's only so much that can be filled out in an hour or two."
"You're not mad at me," he suddenly realised, feeling very foolish.
She laughed. "Of course I was. You're really annoying sometimes, but staying mad at you would've been self-defeating."
"Ya coulda at least let me know."
"Ever heard of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle?"
"No."
"A core tenet of modern quantum physics. You can't accurately know the position and velocity of an object at the same time."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning the awareness of being observed changes a subject's behavior."
He understood. "Ya needed me to think ya were cold-shouldering me in order to get the pose ya wanted."
The familiar smirk of the Cheshire cat again appeared on her lips. "You asked me how I learned to see things as they were, not as I was told they were. I said that I'd show you. You really have to look at things in order to be able to deconstruct the essence of the world around you into actual lines."
He looked back down at the napkin in his hand and found himself tracing her lines with the tips of his fingers with genuine wonder and admiration. Raw and rough as the sketch was, it was still one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. She really did see people and things as they were, and she had been true to her word when had said she would show him how she did. However small her gesture, it was the first time in a long time that anyone had kept their word to him.
"Thank you," he told her. He meant it.
"You're welcome."
"How long ya been sketching?"
"A long time."
"Since your…?" he ventured.
She nodded. "After that, there was just a lot of silence all around the house. Kasumi disappeared into the kitchen. Daddy spent time with the bottle. Akane found the dojo."
"Ya were lonely?"
She nodded. "I started reading, listening to, and dreaming about things that no one else around me cared about. I had to fill my own space up with something."
"You're the prisoner who's been taken out of the chains and dragged up to the surface, huh?" he teased, trying to lighten the mood.
She smiled. "Yeah, that's me. I've been that girl for a long time."
"But you're finally leaving."
"Yeah. Soon."
"Ya think I'm the same? Another prisoner being taken out of chains and dragged up to the surface?"
"Yes!" she exclaimed with a clap of her hands. "You're finally asking the right question."
"Am I the same?"
"Uh uh," she chided, wagging her finger at him. "That won't help you. You have to figure this one out for yourself."
"Because ya did?"
"Because that's what a normal person would do if they really wanted to live."
"That a challenge?"
"It's whatever you need it to be to motivate you to do what you need to do."
He looked down again at the napkin in his right hand. Between the ghostly, unfinished lines of his own face staring back at him, a strange seed of inspiration suddenly struck.
"Can I ask ya something else?"
"Sure."
"Can ya teach me how to sketch?"
"So you can impress my sister?"
"So I can finish what ya started on this napkin."
# # # # #
CHAPTER NOTES:
(1) "The Allegory of the Cave" is a famous excerpt from Plato's "The Republic" examining the contrasts between reality and human interpretation of it. The story itself is presented in the Socratic style as a conversation between Plato's mentor Socrates and his brother Glaucon.