"…Akane-nee-san?" Tendou Ranko asks her cousin, one fine spring Sunday morning as the two of them eat their breakfast at the table. It's just them, Kasumi bustling in the kitchen, Soun out in the dojo performing kata and Nabiki probably still sleeping the sleep of the dead. Shampoo is doing her usual thing of sleeping on the engawa.

"Mmm?" Akane asks, still half-asleep, lulled by Sunday morning TV.

"Why doesn't Auntie Nodoka like me anymore?"

Akane's entire body language changes and she straightens up. "What?"

"Auntie Nodoka. She doesn't even come by often and when she does, she won't talk to me."

"What do you mean, comes by?"

"Her and Uncle Genma." Ranko sighs. "It's like they don't even want to talk to me. They haven't been by in a long while though. I wanted to go shopping with her again."

Akane bites her lip. "Well, they've been busy, Ranko-chan. I'm sure they'll come by."

"But why won't she talk to me?"

"I don't know, Ranko, why don't you ask her when she's next here?"

Ranko shrugs. "I'll try but I don't know what else I can do."

Akane shrugs in return. "I don't know what to tell you, Ranko." She says, "You know how weird they can be, especially after their son…"

Her face betrays an obscure pain. Ranko's spent ages cataloguing these looks. Most often they're directed at her, from one of the people in the house – except Nabiki. Her middle cousin is cold, sometimes arctic to her and she often wonders what she'd done to the bob-haired girl.

Her memory's not great, not after she'd gotten out of hospital, but she'd remember doing something to annoy Nabiki. But wrack her brains as she might, she simply can't think of it. Certainly she doesn't hate her cousin, though she does resent the coldness and the attitude which she feels is undeserved.

"What about their son?" Ranko asks, puzzlement on her features and a hole in her memory in the shape of a boy. "I don't remember them having a son…"

Akane sighs. "You should, you two were close. Like brother and sister."

Ranko shakes her head. "Akane-nee-san, you need to remember that I don't remember. I'm not playing with a full deck of information. Amnesia doesn't work like in the movies, you know?"

Akane sighs and talks down to her. Again. She's sick of it. "They had a son and you two were very close, almost like twins, but he's gone now."

"And… that's it?"

"That's it."

Ranko sighs and stands up, picking up her bowl and some of the other dirty dishes. "I think I will help wash up, Akane-nee-san."

"Suck up." Akane mutters.

"Just because Kasumi-nee-chan lets me cook and I help around the house doesn't mean you have to be mean to me, Akane-nee-san." Ranko says softly, bitterly. She tries not to let Akane's attitude bother her but she's already on edge from overhearing the argument last night.

She'd been right of course; it had been a long night of waiting and tenseness. But it passed as all of them did, and Ranko simply found joy in dancing under the moonlight in the garden again.

She's taking the dishes through the hall, padding on silent feet when she overhears Nabiki and Kasumi talking in the kitchen.

"—Don't think you understand, Kasumi!"

"Nabiki!" Kasumi hisses. "That girl needs us. Our help. She's our cousin."

"She's as much my cousin as you are, Kasumi, which is to say not at all. Or did you forget Ranma so quickly?"

There's a wet slap and for a moment Ranko worries Kasumi-nee-chan has slapped Nabiki-nee-san, but the dripping sound she hears means it was probably the elder sister throwing down a cleaning cloth. "She is our cousin in every way that matters!" Kasumi whisper-yells to Nabiki. "We owe her that much."

"Suit yourself. But we can't afford her. Between the food bills and the private, not public, medical bills… We aren't going to be solvent if we keep her and her… pet."

"Nabiki, those poor dears have suffered so much, I am not throwing them out!"

Nabiki's pyjamas rustle as if she shrugs. "Again, suit yourself, but I'm out of ways to pay for this place if Daddy doesn't start offering classes again or one of us gets a job."

"Ranko-chan is trying to do that, Nabiki, but you've noticed how no one will hire her!"

Ranko's heart sinks. She sighs. Perhaps she should consider more options to make money for the house if she is that much of a burden. Confirmation of Nabiki's thoughts on her is bad enough, without knowing she's also causing trouble for the eldest sister who has her respect.

She rolls her shoulders, though, and walks into the kitchen as if nothing's happened, putting the dishes in the sink and smiling at her cousins as she works. She tries not to let the words they'd said get to her, but they weigh in her heart like stones.

What does Nabiki mean that Ranko is as much her cousin as Kasumi is? She has to be, that's her registration last she checked.

Nabiki is saying something to her and she looks up from the dishes to find her bob-haired cousin looking at her with what she can only assume is disgust.

"Sorry, Nabiki-nee-san, I was lost in my own thoughts. What did you say?"

Nabiki sighs. "I was wondering if you had a job yet?" Ranko winces and her cousin shakes her head. "I didn't think so. What about those ones I gave you the other day?"

Ranko looks down at her hands in the warm water. "They didn't want me. Apparently they 'knew' me, and considered me a 'troublemaker'. I don't know why."

Nabiki facepalms. "Damn, those were close to the last ones."

"I'll keep trying. Maybe I can find something a little further out. I might have to stay with Auntie and Uncle Saotome, but they surely wouldn't mind?"

Kasumi shakes her head. "I'm sorry but no, Ranko, they're not able to take any guests at the moment."

Ranko deflates. "I'll look somewhere else. What about Ucchan?"

Ranko likes Ucchan because Ucchan doesn't treat her like an invalid child. She treats her like a person. Akane's over-sweet childish tones (when she's not annoyed with her), as if she's an idiot and Nabiki's caustic condescension grate on her nerves, but Ukyou never treats her like anything but a person. She might, she admits to herself, even have a little bit of a crush on the okonomiyaki chef.

"She has Konatsu, but she is a little further out than I'd like for you to be, a little closer to the high school."

"Why don't you want me near the school?" Ranko asks Kasumi.

"It's a little complicated, Ranko-chan." Her eldest cousin says, patting her shoulder.

Ranko sighs, mostly to herself. She knows she won't find out for some time until her recovery is 'complete', whenever that's going to happen.

She finishes up her washing and returns to the family room, sitting on the engawa with Shampoo and petting the cat who begins to purr happily, curled up on Ranko's lap.

Akane's watching television, but she casts an irritated glance to Ranko as she sits with her cat, looking out at the koi pond.

"Why do you hate me, Akane-nee-chan?" Ranko asks suddenly, the look finally tipping her over the edge.

"Wh-what?"

"I don't think I have done anything to you and yet your treatment of me is often very poor. I know Nabiki-nee-san doesn't think of me as even part of her family, but I'd hoped you still did even if I have done something that I just cannot remember. You become very angry sometimes, and you hit me."

"Well, you can take it…"

"No Akane-nee-chan, I can't. I used to be able to, but since I lost all of my abilities, I do not have the same healing factor I had or the sturdiness."

"W-well why do you think I hate you?" Akane seems more upset by the thought than anything, but Ranko barrels on.

"Your treatment of me, as I mentioned earlier. You talk down to me, as if I am mentally deficient or a child, and I am neither. Yes, I have poor memory of before I was in hospital and yes, I am… perhaps somewhat stranger now, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid."

"W-well, it's…"

"I just want you to be honest." Ranko says. "That's all I want of anyone, and no one seems to just outrightly tell me things." She sighs. "You all must think I'm an idiot, or more scatter brained than I actually am. I can put things together, you know."

Akane sighs. "I don't hate you, Ranko." She replies, softly for once, and with none of her usual anger or condescension. "I just don't get you. You're so much different to how you used to be. You're like a different person."

Ranko swallows. "I am? I don't feel different."

"I think it's part of what was done to you."

What was done to you. Ranko considers Akane's choice of words. That can't have been an accident.

"What was… done… to me?"

"What happened, you know, the accident." Akane waves her hand irritably, a little of her usual attitude creeping in. Ranko bristles.

"Yes, the accident you won't tell me anything about, any of you." Ranko gives a frustrated huff. "I wish you'd tell me. It's like there's some big, deep, dark secret you don't want me to find out!"

Akane shrugs and returns to her television; the conversation apparently over according to her.

Ranko grinds her teeth and finally lets it go, standing up and setting Shampoo down on the floor. The cat gives Akane a look that would be disdainful if she were a person, but Ranko shakes her head and walks to the genkan.

Kasumi emerges from the kitchen. "Where are you going, Ranko-chan?"

Ranko shrugs as she puts on her favourite trainers. "Out. Maybe Ucchan's, maybe to the commercial district to look for a job. It isn't like anyone but you cares, Kasumi-nee-chan."

Stepping out the gate, she winces at the glare of the sun. She doesn't like bright light so much anymore but having left the house in a huff she's loath to return just for her sunglasses. She feels bad for sniping at Kasumi, but she feels so frustrated.

Maybe 'Yoiko' wouldn't be such an appropriate name after all.