CHAPTER TEN: IN BLOOD AT THE SAIMON GATE

The answer is written in your blood….

Ranma awoke with a start.

He was no longer at Kiyomizu-Dera or Nishi Otani.

Instead, he found his reflection staring back at him in daylight mingled with artificial white light from overhead LED strips. Countryside scenery blitzed past the window on the other side of his reflection.

An unfinished sketch of his recurring dream of meeting Nabiki's mother at Niomon sat on the open tray table in front of him. Already, however, she could clearly be seen standing there shimmering in the first light of sunrise. Her fierce, soul-piercing eyes looked back at him with the full force of their very unnatural weight. A bone-chilled shudder rippled down the length of his spine as he closed the sketch pad and carefully slid it to one side of the table.

Now he remembered.

He was in a carriage on a shinkansen speeding back to Tokyo via the Tokkaido route. Mt. Fuji was just coming into view. That meant they were just a little over a half hour away.

Kasumi had sent him to Kyoto a little over a week ago. She thought it would be good for him to take a few days to rest and think, especially after what happened the day she and Akane had gone to help their sister return from Hongo to Komaba.

Ranma had wanted to help too. He had intended to tag along on the train ride from Nerima to Ueno, despite Akane's silent death stare. Kasumi also did not think it was a good idea for him to come, but she was not going to stop him. However, just as he was preparing to follow the two Tendou sisters down the stairs at the now very familiar subway stop near Furinkan, the text message came.

#Please don't come.#

He wanted to be angry, but he couldn't no matter how hard he tried. He definitely was not surprised, but that did nothing to mitigate how painful the words still were. He fell back toward the now too familiar abyss of sadness and despair. He still had no idea what to do with all of the implied lines and confrontational planes around him.

"Go to Kyoto, Ranma," Kasumi had urged. "It's beautiful there, especially at this time of year. I think it will also help you to understand."

She warned him, however, that people in the West tended to have a different perspective on things, but maybe that would be appropriate now. "It's a little slower paced. More introspective, even spiritual. It might be good for you."

Kasumi was right.

For a moment, he was able to escape.

Kyoto was spiritually alive and ancient like no other place he had ever seen. Life did move there at a different pace. He discovered so many fantastic places to go and think: the Pathway of Philosophy, Higashi-Honganji and the massive ropes woven from the hair of devoted worshippers, the playful mystique of Yasaka Jinja, the haunting steps of Fushimi Inari Taisha, and, of course, Kiyomizu-Dera itself.

He laughed as he recalled Kasumi's terribly modest, understated descriptions of the temple. It was every bit as grand and majestic as her sister had drawn it and even more. Kasumi had always been a master of contrary understatements as tools to influence what others thought or did. She wanted him to come here.

The Niomon Gate was massive.

The Saimon Gate beyond it was otherworldly sublime in its tranquility. It was said to be a potential direct gateway to Paradise for those who came at just the right moment in their lives.

When he came to the Otowa Falls, he chose not to look at the signs declaring the meaning of each of the three streams. Instead, he chose to drink blindly from the one on the left simply because its position reminded him of Nabiki's hands. He smiled when he finally looked at the sign identifying the one that he had chosen. It was not the one for longevity or prosperity, but rather the one for love.

From the vast Stage in the Main Hall, he saw the city glowing in the embrace of the surrounding mountains now covered in the orange, red, and golden hues of the Autumn leaves under the late afternoon sun. The whole tableau was unspeakably beautiful. Still, however, the answer to the question of why Icarus would come to this specific place eluded him. He wished Nabiki could have been there with him at that moment to tell him. With a sigh, he turned away and began trudging his way back towards the city center.

En route, he stumbled on a small funeral procession just outside of Nishi Otani. He grew uneasy when he saw the picture of the deceased: a young woman clearly departed before what should have been her time. He wanted to turn away with every fiber of his being and keep moving, but somehow he felt unnaturally compelled to follow them into the cemetery grounds.

As he did so, the full scope of his problems, — still very real, heavy, and many — crashed down on him without mercy. He was in love with a dying girl who would not even see him. That girl also was still the sister of his actual fiancée, with whom he was not even on speaking terms. The status quo of the engagement clearly no longer was a tenable thing. Yet, though he was finally ready to rectify the sorry Gordian knot of his obligations, his iinazuke's silence precluded him from doing anything. If that were not enough, at some point too, he would have to deal with the buffoonery of the fathers, who still knew nothing at all.

Ranma dropped to his knees amongst the graves, thankful that no one was around to see as he did. He was torn between rage at the apathy of any Providential being that might happen to exist and self-hatred for having allowed himself to become so pathetically helpless and impotent. He was close to wanting to bash his own skull against one of the stone markers to end his misery. He felt unbelievably tired, and his body felt so very heavy and useless.

At some point, he fell asleep. That was when the dream first came to him along with Akiko Tendou's answer.

The answer is written in your blood….

The sun was already rising again by the time he awoke. He looked for a long time, but he never found the stone marker bearing her name. It didn't matter though. Ranma knew now what he had to do.

He had to get back to Tokyo.

# # # # #

Akane was waiting for him as he exited the shinkansen terminal at Tokyo Station. He was surprised. A terrible dread came over him as he noted the unshed tears in her tired eyes.

"D-did…?" He could not finish his question.

She shook her head. "No, but I… I need your help."

"How did you know I – ?"

"Kasumi told me," she answered. "We have to talk. Now."

She led him to a chain coffee shop in the main terminal. The place was a sad, soulless, empty caricature of the neo-urban sophistication of Sartre, but she picked it precisely because it was empty. The two flat whites that they ordered to justify sitting down went untouched as she began talking.

She had to explain to him some things about the natural history of leukemias. They often began as chronic or subacute smouldering storms. Chemo and other therapies were intended to keep them this way for as long as possible. How long the doctors and the body could defer that outcome was a constant war hanging in a fragile balance. Even worse, relapsed cancers were inherently more aggressive and fundamentally more unstable genetically.

He knew what Akane was trying to say. "There isn't much time. She needs another transplant and quickly, doesn't she."

Akane nodded. "They had to stop treatments while Oneechan had the pneumonia," she said. They always had to stop when there was an infection.

Each time, the cancer was free to mutate and gain new means of therapeutic escape. Normally, these things took weeks or longer to happen. Several days ago, however, when the doctors tried to resume her sister's previous regimen, they were already too late. They had to fall back on the next line of options.

There was a very real chance that they would not have enough options to last until another donor could be found, especially given how hard finding a match had been the last time. Even then, because this would be a second transplant, the odds of lasting even 3 years were less than 1 in 5 — if she could survive the recovery again.

Akane shuddered as the tears that she had been holding back silently began to fall unchecked. "Oneechan…. She said she doesn't want to do it."

He felt the air suddenly being sucked out of the room. His chest tightened in fear, unwilling to believe that he had heard correctly.

Nabiki was special. Like him, she never quit and never lost. She was always smarter and incomparably resourceful. He knew now too that she was far more resilient and determined than any other person he had ever met.

But it was true.

Akane told him how her sister had changed since the day he had last seen her in Hongo. Something was missing. The mischievous twinkle in her eyes was no longer there. In its place was the quiet, aloof listlessness of resignation.

She no longer told Akane or Kasumi things, and she rarely left her dorm at Komaba. Sometimes she went out on the rooftop to sketch or read a little, but not much more than that. The University had offered generous accommodations to help her resume attending lectures and study groups, but she hadn't taken them up on anything.

Akane could feel it. She was terrified. Her sister was preparing to die.

Now Ranma was scared too. "W- why…?!"

"Oneechan said she's… not sure if she can hold on anymore for a donor or… or if there are even enough good reasons left to want to hold on."

Without warning, something snapped in Akane. She seized the edge of the table now with shaking hands. When she finally looked up at Ranma again, the same unearthly, savage light that had blazed in Nabiki's and Akiko's eyes too was there.

He felt the full weight of her fury boring straight to the innermost depths of his soul. He knew he would take the intensity of that gaze with him to the grave.

"I hate you, Ranma," she spat at him. "All of this is your fault! I HATE YOU!"

There were so many reasons why.

For always being better than her at everything she tried and without ever really having to try himself.

For making her fall in love with him even though he didn't give a f-#k.

For breaking her heart by not being able to love her back.

For not coming after her that day at the hospital in Hongo.

Akane herself had tried so very hard for so long. She reminded him that she had even been ready to give her life for him at Jusendo and to marry him when they came home. She really, truly had.

Most of all, though, Akane hated him for what he had done to her sister. He had reduced the strongest, most beautiful, and clever girl Akane had ever known into an impotent, lovesick wreck consumed by guilt and delusions of sacrificial Existential nobility.

"F-#k you for all of this, Ranma Saotome!"

"I'm sorry," he told her. There was nothing else he could say. Maybe not everything was his fault, but he was used to hearing otherwise regardless. Besides, everything else Akane had said was true.

"Save it, Ranma. I didn't come here for pity. I came here because I want something else from you now."

What she wanted was far more important than one stupid girl's heartbreak over unrequited love. There were so many of those anyway. They were cheaper than a dime a dozen.

Hearing Akane berate herself that way hurt. He had been wrong. Maybe he did not love her as she would have liked, but there was nothing banal or mediocre about her at all. She was special too and probably a better person than he was.

"You're worth a lot more than that, Akane."

"Shut up, Ranma. I told you I didn't come here for f-#king pity!"

He nodded. He would listen, and he promised he would do all he could to give her what she wanted.

She demanded that he stake that promise on his honor. Blindly before he knew what she was asking.

He did.

"I… We should end our engagement. I'll take care of our fathers. It's really been over for a while now anyway, right? If it was ever real in any way."

She needed him to ask her sister to accept the engagement in her place and to help them find a donor.

"Akane…!"

He would help regardless. He didn't need to be anyone's iinazuke to do that. His willingness to help with finding a donor was not to be misconstrued in any way as a quid pro quo for the right to be with her sister.

Akane nodded; she knew. Finding a donor alone though wasn't going to be enough — not even close. A willing donor meant nothing if they didn't have a willing recipient.

"I…. I don't care anymore how you do it, but I need you to give her something to believe in again."

That was why Akane wanted him to ask her sister to be his chosen iinazuke.

"Ask her to… to let you love her and to give you a chance to make her happy. Tell her all that stuff about love not actually being about wanting to be with someone, but rather about wanting more for that someone than you want for yourself. Throw in all that nonsense too about how love isn't actually ever wrong and how even Sartre had a wife in all but name and believed in love in the end. Just go and do whatever it takes to help me save my sister — my best friend."

Now, Ranma began to understand — really and truly – the true scope and gravitas of the revelation that had been imparted to him the night before. The voice of the girl at Niomon was echoing again in the ears of his mind, but this time her words were the bells of Jerusalem ringing as St. Peter resumed calling out names. He could suddenly see a path to finishing the sketch that the "normal girl" had started at Himonya so long ago.

Time is short now, Ranma-kun. Remember what I've said, and trust your eyes and ears. You'll know just as you knew when you first came to Nishi Otani to look for me….

"Akane, I… Thank you," Ranma said as he stood and gave her a very low, solemn, and heartfelt bow.

Akane nodded and gave him a miserable attempt at a smile as she struggled through very visibly painful, bittersweet tears. "Oneechan, s-she deserves a chance to be happy. Go, Ranma. Keep your promise. Tell her that I… I love her."

At the end, Akane gave him an address in Hongo where he could have his blood checked on the off chance that he was a match. He already knew though what the test would show.

The answer is written in your blood….

For Nabiki and Akane both….

# # # # #