CHAPTER EIGHT: DEVOTION

Night had fallen again by the time he eventually found his way back home. Defeated and deflated, he had wandered aimlessly around Ueno and other parts of the city for hours after being dismissed from the hospital. He remembered very little other than the numb fog of pain and despair that permeated everything.

Kasumi stood by the genkan waiting for him when he arrived. He had a sinking feeling of deja vu from the night before. That seemed so long ago now though.

"Okaeri, Ranma-kun," she greeted with a small, disarming smile.

"Tadaima," he answered reflexively, though he could not fully keep the undertone of weariness from creeping into his voice. "Kasumi, I – "

"You're tired, and you must be hungry," she cut him off.

That made him nervous. Kasumi never cut anyone off.

"Would you like to sit and have dinner with me?" She gave a slight inviting tilt of her head toward the inner sanctum of the house. She was not really asking. Ranma knew because she was no longer smiling.

The fathers were out for drinks and not expected back until late, so it would be just the two of them. They could eat in the small breakfast area in the kitchen, which was so rarely used by anyone other than herself.

"To celebrate that 'date' you left for this morning. Remember?"

He did now. That was the alibi that Akane had decided on the night before.

Ranma understood very clearly that nothing about the situation was accidental. This private time and space in which he found himself now had been deliberately orchestrated. Still, he breathed out a small sigh of grateful relief. He had no appetite for either of the fathers at that moment.

"Thank you," he said as he fell in behind Kasumi.

She had laid out a simple meal with two settings. Between them sat a clay pot with agedashi tofu, another plate of pickled vegetables, and two bowls of miso soup. The spread reminded him of the kind of meals that he and his father occasionally received at Buddhist temples in those years when they had been on the road. Those memories were some of the nicer ones that he had from his strange childhood. They were among the few moments which he could recall of safe tranquility permissive of any genuine reflection.

"Itadakimasu," he said quietly in response to her open-handed gesture for him to begin. They ate together in silence for several minutes. He knew that Kasumi was studying him, searching for something. He understood that he was supposed to wait for her judgment. He knew that judgment was imminent when he heard Kasumi set down her chopsticks.

"She really loves you, you know," she said, cutting neatly into the silence between them.

Ranma did know. It felt awful.

"Sometimes, the truest measure of devotion is the strength to actually turn away from the thing you want the most in the world. Love isn't about being with someone; it's about wanting more for them than you want for yourself."

He sighed. Thinking about Kasumi's life and her role in her family, he knew she knew what she was talking about. "I'm sorry. It's just that… well, if I still can't even after all this time…."

He trailed off nervously at the sight of her delicate frown, but then it dissolved away in the next moment with a strange light of understanding in her eyes. Gentle laughter suddenly tinkled around him like an unexpected Spring shower. He was confused.

"I'm not talking about Akane, Ranma, although she really does care for you too."

His eyes turned wide in astonished, stupefied comprehension at the revelation Kasumi was sharing. "She… she told ya that…?"

Kasumi nodded. "More or less. She called after you left. Akane was there too. We talked for a long time. Maybe none of us are normal, but we're still sisters, still a family," she said with a knowing smile.

A painfully heavy deluge of contradictory feelings overcame him. It felt violent like waking up to whiplash from cars slamming up against one another in a chain accident on a busy highway.

"Kasumi, I….I didn't mean to fall in love with her. Nabiki that is. I know it makes no sense, but I just did, and somehow that's the only thing that feels like it makes sense."

She laughed again. "She didn't mean to fall for you either. Believe me. That much was clear."

"Oh. Even to Akane…?"

"Well, that's a different matter." She gave him another knowing smile. "That's always a different matter, right?"

He realised he was smiling now too despite himself.

Kasumi's expression suddenly turned serious again. Maybe Nabiki's words to him were harsh and not what he hoped for, but she was not wrong. Nabiki had always been the practical sister, better than anyone in the family at playing the role of 'normal'. Being with her, however, would not be. "Nabiki's not a normal girl. That's just not her destiny. I don't know if you really understand that and what it means."

Ranma sighed heavily, appreciating the authentic gravity of her admonition. He was wise enough to realize that he could not actually appreciate the weight of that gravity. No one could actually understand what that meant without going through it.

He acknowledged that, which seemed to please Kasumi. He knew when she nodded in agreement. "You've never taken care of anyone before, Ranma-kun. That's not meant as a criticism. Just a fact that we have to acknowledge."

He knew she spoke to him now as someone who knew things from experience. She had been down this road before and not just once. Her whole life was about sacrifice. She knew what she was talking about.

"You'll need to make sacrifices. Many and often when you least expect. It will not end. I wish someone had explained this to me before I chose to make mine."

"What was it like?" he asked.

"What part?" She seemed genuinely intrigued by his question. No one had ever really asked her that before. "Growing up watching my mother live with her illness? Taking care of my father since she passed? Or trying to stand by Nabiki through her own?"

"All of it."

Kasumi was very young, of course, when everything started, so she did not really understand or even consider that "sacrifice" was a conscious choice. All she knew was that the approbation that she received from her parents for being helpful felt good. That was why she first started doing things like shopping for groceries, cooking, helping around the house, helping to care for her sisters even. In the beginning at least, the feeling was addicting and took on a life of its own.

It blinded her to the bits and pieces of her childhood quietly slipping away with the passing of time. There were all the times when she had said no to girlfriends inviting her to do all the normal things a young teenage girl would otherwise do: window shopping, ice cream, slumber parties, or even the stupid, silly things like boy watching or pointlessly wasting hours reading shoujo manga books. There were even more times when she turned down her sisters' entreaties to play and spend time with them. They stopped asking her after a while. Everyone did.

When Akiko Tendou finally did pass, Kasumi was stunned to discover in herself a strange feeling of somehow having been cheated, robbed even of something. Even after all of the things she had done to help and what she had given up to do so, her mother was still gone. Even worse, far more things to do suddenly piled up, things that no one else could do. Certainly not her father. Akane was still too young too.

Nabiki, on the other hand, had actually wanted to be helpful. Having her around for any extended period of time, however, became too painful of a reminder in too many ways of what had been lost. After all, Nabiki had been the one there when it happened, the only one who even had some semblance of a chance to say goodbye. That and Nabiki looked too much like her mother.

Kasumi knew it was wrong, but, like her father, she had been too weak to be better. After Nabiki also became sick, Kasumi recalled trying to justify the distance that she had allowed to grow between them as a consequence of naive immaturity, but that was a lie.

The guilt remained.

"I understand why Nabiki went to Akane a month ago and why she's only coming to me now," she told Ranma sadly. "Akane was really the one who stood by Nabiki when she became ill. She was the one who went with Nabiki to all of her treatments."

By that time, Akane had become the only one whom Nabiki would allow to do that. Akane did other things too. She invariably defended her sister when there were arguments with their now zealously overprotective father about what Nabiki could and should be allowed to do.

"So ya think I'm wrong ta feel as I do for Nabiki."

Ranma had heard the unspoken admonition with painful clarity. The depth of Akane's bitterness made sense now. She felt betrayed in so many ways by his choice of her sister over her and for more than just his actions. No wonder Nabiki had turned away when she had first seen him that morning.

Kasumi smiled sadly. "I'm hardly one to judge given what I've just told you about myself, right? But for what it's worth, no actually, I don't. In case you haven't noticed, I'm an old-fashioned girl, not an Existentialist or anything fancy like that. I don't think there's any form of genuine love that's wrong. I think though that it's worth remembering that good intentions – noble ones especially – can very easily lead to painful mistakes if you're not clear-eyed about your choice to act on those intentions."

Choosing to be with Nabiki would not be a choice made to feel good about how others thought of him. He would have to be prepared to accept the practical responsibilities of living, not just for himself, but also for her. It would take a lot of growing up really fast, which included maybe even taking school seriously and thinking of a way to one day achieve some financial independence and security. Running a martial arts school in this modern day and age wasn't going to do that, certainly not enough to take care of someone else.

"The Art has given you many good things, but now you need to be more than anything the Art can offer. These feudal notions of bushido, long training trips, and quests in pursuit of mystical fantasies will have to end."

He would be needed like never before. That meant having to know how to listen and hear what was being asked of him even when no one was asking.

For a girl, how a guy listens is one of the most important things that he does. That is how she measures for herself if and how much she is loved.

"Even after you give your all, you may still be disappointed and walk away empty-handed. Many times, you likely will. The only way you'll survive is by believing in something more magical and beyond all rational capacity to believe."

Ranma exhaled heavily as he considered his next words. "I said that I love her. I mean it," he told Kasumi. "I've never been happy like that in another person's company. No one's ever made me dream, smile, or believe like that in possibilities."

Tears appeared in Kasumi's eyes as she heard him.

"Kasumi…?" he asked in a panic. He started to stand and make his way around the table, but she waved him off.

"Nabiki-chan said something that sounded a lot like that too," she explained. "Just as my mother did about my father. You know that's something that bothers her, right?"

"That I could end up like your father?"

Kasumi nodded. "Maybe worse. You likely won't even have children of your own to hold on to and help keep you sane. You know that, right? She said she told you. Can you be okay with that?"

"I…."

"I know it's not a fair question, Ranma," Kasumi admitted. "Nothing I'm asking of you is fair, but for Nabiki's sake and yours too, someone has to ask. You have to know what matters to you, what you really value — before you make your choice."

He smiled despite himself, grateful for her support. They fell into a pleasant, companionably reflective silence. Time passed.

Life has no meaning a priori…. It's up to each one of us to give it a meaning, and the concept of value is nothing but the meaning that we choose for ourselves.

"Ranma-kun…?" she eventually prodded, drawing him back out of his thoughts.

"Yeah?"

"Have you ever actually been to Kiyomizu-Dera?"

"Actually… no," he admitted. He surprised himself with how sheepish he sounded. Yet, of all the places he had been and all the things he had seen, somehow he had never been. It was actually funny.

"You really should go some time," she said. "I have to warn you though that it's not really that impressive. Nowhere near as grand or spectacular as she drew it. The three streams together are less than what comes out of a shower head, and the Stage is not really that high up."

He was surprised.

"I always thought it was interesting how much Nabiki likes that place. I could never get her to tell me why."

He was intrigued. "She never answered me either all those times when I asked her why she drew Icarus at Kiyomizu."

What she truly believed….

"Can I ask ya a question, Kasumi?"

"Of course, Ranma-kun." She slipped into her mouth a piece of long-cold tofu between the chopsticks that had somehow materialised in her hand. "That's fair. I've asked enough of you tonight, right?"

"Ya just told me that I need to believe in something beyond all rational capacity to believe in order to survive what I'm choosing. What convinced ya to believe in me?"

Kasumi, of course, did not miss the meaning buried in his words. "So it's really true then," she mused. "Ranma Saotome really has finally chosen."

He nodded.

She laughed. "You know what the problem is with all of these Greek stories Nabiki and the whole world are fascinated by?"

Of course he didn't.

"Simple really. They're all invariably tragic. Even the comedic ones are ultimately tragic. It may be great for Art, but hardly so for real life, yes? We Japanese have the same problematic affinity for tragedy."

"Uh, how is it that you and Nabiki know all this stuff about Greek philosophy and literature?"

Kasumi smiled. "Our mother used to tell us stories when we were younger. She read Classics in University and used to teach before she got sick."

"Oh."

"You know though that it doesn't really have to be that way with these sorts of stories, all ending in tragedy, right? I'll bet that was a choice that some old 'wise' man decided at the beginning when people began to write things down."

"And just that no one's been brave enough to challenge that?"

She nodded. "Something like that. People are herd animals with a hard time resisting inertia or even recognising that it's there sometimes, but there are other choices. There always have been. You just have to see them and pick which ones you'll act on. You're supposed to be the Heir to Anything Goes, right?"

"Uh, yeah." Not exactly like there was a long line of candidates.

"I imagine the Art tells quite a bit about marching to your own drumbeat of Destiny and how to write your own story. I think you may be the only one who can convince Nabiki that Icarus didn't actually crash and die alone in the Icarian Sea when he reached for the Sun. I know you can because I've seen you already do something that even I stopped believing could be done."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"You've made Nabiki happy."

"I – "

"You have, Ranma." Kasumi's tone was uncompromisingly firm, more firm than he had ever heard from her. "Remember that — no matter what happens now. That was the hard part too. Now, all you have to do is just convince my sisters that you intend to keep doing that; that it's finally okay for Nabiki to feel that way; and that you're ready to want more for Nabiki than even for yourself. Then, I think she'll answer your question about why she drew Icarus at Kiyomizu."

He did a double take as he processed her words. "Sisters with an 's'…?"

Kasumi regarded him with an eerily Nabiki-like Cheshire-cat's grin before finally relenting. "I'm kidding, Ranma," she conceded. "It'd be nice if you could convince Akane and even my father, but I know that's not really up to you. The only things I can tell you with certainty are that Nabiki does love you and they both love her very much. However you do it, I hope that you succeed in convincing Nabiki that you do mean to keep making her happy."

He had no idea where he should begin.

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