Chapter 13: New Preparation

It was with an entirely novel form of confusion that Ranma came to awareness in the morning. Rather than falling through the air or dodging a fist, she was instead sitting in a car. In a sailor dress. Beside Sachiko. Being driven to Lillian.

Technically she had woken up earlier, although she couldn't say for sure exactly how much earlier that had been. She had some foggy memories of eating breakfast with Sachiko and her mother, changing clothes, and being escorted into a car. They were very hazy, though. Without the morning fight against Genma to spike her adrenalin and force her to either pay attention or pay the price, she had more gone through the motions than anything. It was a shame, too. She was sure she had had a great breakfast, but she couldn't remember much of it at all.

In Ranma's lap was her book bag. More interestingly was the lunch box within that book bag. She thought back, but she honestly couldn't remember where she had received it. However, that didn't stop its presence from bringing a smile to her. Its large size caused a visible bulge in the book bag, and even better, added a decidedly pleasant amount of weight to it.

All things considered, it was definitely one of the nicer ways to wake up that she could imagine. The only potential downside she could think of was that curiosity of what the lunch was gnawed at her. It taunted her to pull it out and see what it contained. She refrained, though. If she saw its contents, then the temptation to examine would transform into the temptation to eat, and if she did eat it as a late breakfast snack, then she would not be able to eat it again come lunchtime.

The trip to Lillian ended up taking about the same amount of time as Ranma's and Sachiko's reverse trip had taken the day before on the buses and trains. The traffic in the bright morning sunlight ensured that any time saved from the more direct route were lost due to waiting at red lights. Along the way, the phlegmatic Sachiko seemed to come into more full awareness as well, and she was back to her typical composed and collected self by the time they had arrived.

"Thank you for the ride. Gokigenyou," Sachiko said to Shimono as she exited the car. Ranma parroted her.

Lillian had transformed once again. This was apparent even as Ranma passed under the tall gateway at the front entrance of the school. While the first signs of festival preparation had begun a few days earlier, spontaneously sprouting up like green shoots of flowers in the Spring, now everything was in full blossom of irrepressible activity.

Ranma and Sachiko walked at a pace which was brisk, if not faster, but in comparison to the frenetic energy surrounding them, they were downright sedate. Everywhere girls could be seen running around, carrying objects of various shapes and sizes. Far beyond the pretenses of normalcy, the very precepts of modesty were under siege. Carefully-pressed skirt pleats were disregarded and expertly-tied white neckerchiefs were tossed into disarray, causalities in the frantic battle against the clock.

Approaching the main school building was like approaching the eye of a typhoon. A cacophony of instruction and construction surrounded the building. Booths were materializing along both sides of the nearby walkways. Squads were drilling various actions on the grass. Classes were scrambling to move desks, block windows, construct stands, or do whatever other preparations that needed be done. A visitor would need to be both deaf and blind to not realize that the festival was coming.

Unlike a typhoon, though, in the center of the chaos was even more chaos. The decorative sign near the entrance of the main building, which heretofore had cheerful teased of the upcoming festival, now displayed an oppressive "01." In response to this, a clatter of activity could be heard throughout the whole building. The volume of noise ranged from distinct to loud, but it was constant and omnipresent.

Even the adults weren't immune to this metamorphosis of character. The teachers, typically so easy to see around the halls and the classrooms, were conspicuously missing. The few women who were to be seen all kept their eyes fixed straight forward at eye level, as if trying to avoid seeing as much of the chaos surrounding them as possible.

There wasn't even the semblance of a regular day of classes; they had all been canceled, and the First-year Chrysanthemum Group instead spent the day transforming their classroom into the cafe it was to be. Bottles needed to be labeled. Signs needed to be made. Tables needed to be set. Menus needed to be posted. Decorations needed to be placed. Some girls gravitated to certain jobs, and other girls who were less decisive were assigned tasks by Ami.

As Ranma entered the room, Yoshino was sitting at a desk with a box of toothpicks on one side and a stack of small paper sheets on the other. The sheets all had the words "Eat Me" printed on them, and Yoshino was in the process of taping the sheets onto the toothpicks such that they made miniatures signs.

"Gokigenyou." Ranma turned a chair around and took a seat, such that she sat opposite Yoshino at the desk.

Yoshino looked over at Ranma. "Gokigenyou. You're looking much better today."

"I am?" Ranma asked. She reached over and started taping some miniature signs as well, adding hers to the stack Yoshino was making.

"You were looking a bit down yesterday," Yoshino said. "Did something good happen?"

"I guess so," Ranma said. Now that the issue of trying to get into the Ogasawara mansion had been resolved, she felt much better than she had the day before. The way was clear to continue her training, once she had had a chance to report her success to Genma. It was strange, though. The prospects of finally learning the Umisenken and completing her training didn't leave her nearly as excited as she had expected it would. She was still eager to do it, but there was a trace of something else underneath it tempering her excitement.

"That's good to hear," Yoshino said. "Say, what did you think of the Battle of Awazu we were just learning about? Gozen Tomoe is super cool, isn't she?"

"Yeah," Ranma said. Fukuyama had constantly extolled her virtues as well. "I heard she's pretty much the Musashi Miyamoto of the naginata."

Ranma and Yoshino passed the time as they worked by speculating on what it would have been like to have lived during the era of the Genpai War, and especially what it would have been like to have been a warrior during that tumultuous era. They further speculated on what it would have been like if somebody like Gozen Tomoe had instead fought in the Sengoku period, or if she had lived in the Edo shogunate. They had some further discussion of how warrior culture had changed throughout the centuries, with Ranma having more to say on the development of fighting techniques and Yoshino having more to say on the evolution of bushido.

Once they had finished their stack of papers and toothpicks, they both moved on to assist with the large construction project in the back of the room. Ami was overseeing the effort to erect a tall brown pillar there and subsequently cover the ceiling with brown paper. The goal was to make the back third of the room look like the underside of a giant table, but things were not going well. The tape failed to stick to the ceiling, and every few minutes, the pillar would fall over. It took a lot of creative thinking and teamwork to eventually rig up something which held, and Ranma joined in with the rest of the class in cheering once they had succeeded.

When lunchtime came around, Ranma and Yoshino escaped from the savagery that was the main school building and made their way to the lone cherry tree behind the primary gym. Even there, the sounds of festival preparation could not be escaped. The banging of hammers on wood assaulted Ranma's ears, but it was much more muted than being in the center of the chaos.

They chatted for a few minutes while they waited. Shimako then arrived, and they quickly spread out the sheet she carried with her.

"You brought your lunch today?" Shimako asked as they set up.

"Kind of," Ranma said. "I got this from Onee-sama's house."

"You did?" Shimako asked.

"Yeah. I ended up staying over there night," Ranma said. She found herself smiling at the memory. Dancing with Sachiko had been fun. Dinner had been delicious. Even writing that apology letter had felt satisfying in the end.

"I see," Yoshino said. Her mouth had a quirk of a smile on it.

The three girls sat around the sheet and started unpacking their respective lunch boxes. It was the moment Ranma had been waiting for, and she was giddy as she was finally able to discover what was inside.

It turned out to be some rice, some salad, some tempura, some eggs, some sausages, some fruit, and some bread. These she freely shared with Yoshino and Shimako, receiving various other things in return. It was less of an imbalanced trade as compared to her own contribution of melon bread the day before. As that only meant that Ranma ended up with even more better food in the end, though, she was far from upset at the outcome.

After they completed their lunch, Ranma, Yoshino, and Shimako made their way into the primary gym for the dress rehearsal. They were early, but Youko had emphasized the importance of being punctual such as to not waste any of their limited time on the stage.

The gym was just as much of a madhouse of activity as the rest of the school was. The stage set had developed to the point that it was clearly a living room now, but there were still a great many missing details. The girls from the fine arts club were abuzz with activity, trying their best to fix that. The previously muted sounds of hammering could now be heard in full force as Hisako and Miho fixed some planks next to the living room's window. On the side of the stage, Yukiyou was draping some cloth over the reasonable facsimile of a carriage she had constructed.

In the main area of the gym, Rei was working with a couple of other girls to ferry chairs from a nearby storage room and line them up into neat lines in front of the stage. Ranma, Yoshino, and Shimako went over and joined her, speeding up the effort tremendously.

Partway through their work, Sachiko and Youko entered the room. At a glance, Ranma could tell something was wrong. Sachiko seemed distracted as she followed behind Youko; she had a somber and almost pained expression on her face. It caused something of a queasy feeling in Ranma's stomach which she didn't like at all.

Ranma put the chair she was carrying down next in line and split away from Yoshino to approach Sachiko. Closer up, the impression she had received at a distance was more pronounced, as was the unsettled feeling Ranma had.

"Gokigenyou," Ranma said.

"Gokigenyou," Sachiko said.

"What's wrong?" Ranma asked.

"What do you mean?" Sachiko asked.

"You look kind of.. uwewue..." Ranma said. She let her face go slack and she waved her fingers in front of it.

Sachiko's lips quirked and she asked, "Is it that obvious?" She shook her head and stood up straighter. "It's nothing you need to worry about." She definitely looked more normal now, but Ranma could still feel something was off about her.

"Nah, come on. Tell me. If something's wrong, I'll help you take care of it, no problem," Ranma said. She bounced on her toes.

"Thank you," Sachiko said. She leaned over and adjusted Ranma's neckerchief. "I appreciate your offer, but this is something I'll need to do on my own."

"Okay, but if you change your mind, just let me know," Ranma said. Her mind kept looping through thoughts of how she could help, even though she had no idea what she could do.

"Sachiko-sama!"

The shout filled the whole room. Ranma jerked over at the cry, while Sachiko gracefully turned her whole body to look.

Fuuko was jogging across the gym. She had a certain lethargy to her movements, and her eyes had dark rings under them. Nevertheless, her voice was still enthusiastic as she gasped, "Sachiko-sama, we finished it." She held up a handful of hangers from which draped the prince's costume.

"Thank you," Sachiko said.

Fuuko sighed. She said, "You're very welcome."

"That's everything we need to get started," Youko said, slightly loud from the center of the gym where she had been talking to Sei. "Good job, Fuuko-san."

"Thank you," Fuuko said. She followed behind Sachiko as the Yamayurikai migrated to the dressing room at the side of the stage.

There was a modest amount of jostling in the dressing room as everybody changed clothes. Fuuko helped Sachiko take stock of and subsequently don each article of the prince's costume, much like how Harumi had helped Ranma the day before. It meant that Sachiko was the last one still changing when Ranma left to join the others.

On the stage, the members of the fine arts club were quickly collecting their things and walking off. Most of them made their way to the chairs which had been set up in the main section of the gym, joining Minako who had arrived at some point earlier. However, the removal of the fine arts club members was offset by the more numerous members of the dance club entering, which actually caused the overall number of girls on the stage to increase.

After a few minutes, Sachiko emerged from the dressing room. The cut of her shirt and trousers did much to downplay her feminine attributes, and the long ruffle-breasted jacket and the broad, frilly neckerchief further distracted the eye while looking suitably royal. She had tied her hair back into a more androgynous ponytail, and the overall impression she gave was that of a debonair prince straight out of a fairytale, if closer to the pretty side than to the dashing side.

Youko noticed Sachiko's arrival, and she sharply clapped twice. She then loudly said to the entire assembly, "Thank you for coming. This is going to be our last rehearsal before the festival tomorrow. We'll be going through the play twice. I'd request that you pay particular attention to the scenes with the prince. After the first run through, we'll take a brief break and review how it went. Then we'll do a second run through before ending for the day. Does anybody have any questions?" Youko waited a few seconds, but no questions were posed. "In that case, members of the dance club should go get changed, and everybody else should take their places."

The first rehearsal went poorly. A pencil worked well enough as an improvised knitting needle, but there was no way to hide the several seconds of awkward pausing at the fog machine's delay. Yoshino also required Harumi to come on stage and show her where to pull down on Ranma's transformation dress. The carriage Ranma was to take to the ballroom required some emergency taping as well, which was convenient in that it took a minute for people to unjam the wheels necessary to transform the living room into the ballroom. At least the dance with Sachiko went flawlessly, even if one of the dancers had tripped and caused a commotion in the background.

Ranma could only imagine what notes Minako was taking.

The second rehearsal went much better. Somebody had run to the Rose Mansion to retrieve the missing knitting needle during the break, the fog machine was triggered much earlier, Yoshino now knew where to pull down on Ranma's dress to complete the transformation, the freshly-sewn seams on the carriage held, and the set transition between the living room and the ballroom happened smoothly. At its conclusion, everybody around the stage shared a general round of congratulations, and there was some vigorous clapping from the makeshift audience who had watched. Youko then dismissed everybody for the evening to allow the fine arts club to return to the stage and finish working on it.

Ranma changed clothes back into her school uniform, and she worked with Yoshino and the others to finish setting up the chairs in the main section of the primary gym. After that, she bid everybody a farewell and left for the evening. She had a real sense of satisfaction with how things were going. The play was in good shape, and she was able to report to Genma the successful completion of her task. The only real thing which concerned her was that Sachiko still appeared to have something bothering her. Ranma was still stuck on the idea of trying to help Sachiko, but the past few hours had provided no new insight into what she could do, either for Sachiko's fear of boys or for this newfound unknown problem, and she continued to ponder them both as she walked. The only conclusion she could come up with, though, was that martial arts problems were much easier to handle.

It felt strange to be walking back to camp so early, with the sun still in the sky. The bright light increased visibility dramatically, and there was a great deal of traffic on the streets. It made it so when she did reach the small temple which held their camp, she actually had to loiter around and act busy for a minute before she found an opening she could use to slip past the bushes and enter the camp unseen. Genma was lounging around on the ground, but he sat up as Ranma approached.

"Where were you last night?" Genma asked, slightly quietly to avoid any undesired attention. The daytime helped in this manner; there was more background noise to mask their talk.

"I was at the Ogasawara mansion."

"You were?" Genma asked. His voice increased in excitement, but not volume. "Of course you were. It took you long enough."

"Yeah, yeah. So what's next?" Ranma asked. By this point, she was thoroughly expecting that Genma would not say. He had already held back so many times before, revealing each new phase of the training like it were another hidden layer of an onion. She wondered exactly how many steps there would ultimately end up being.

"I told you already, one step at a time," Genma said, fulfilling Ranma's expectation. He grabbed a stick and started drawing on the dirt. It was an outline of a building, as if it were a set of blueprints drawn on the ground in front of him. "This is the mansion. Here's the front entrance." He tossed the stick over to Ranma. "Now what's the inside look like?"

Ranma caught the stick, but she didn't move forward. She looked up at Genma and asked, "Wait. How do you know what the Ogasawara mansion looks like?" Far from being a generic rectangle, the building outline detailed every curve and corner of the mansion's exterior walls. Ranma herself wouldn't have been able to draw such an accurate representation; her one visit to the mansion only provided enough memory that she could recognize it for what it was.

"I've been checking the place out, too," Genma said.

"What?"

"This is the first time you've cased a place. Obviously I can't rely on you."

"What?" Ranma repeated. She hadn't been casing the mansion; she had been observing the ineffable aspects of how Sachiko lived. At least, that's what she thought she had been doing. Upon reflection, though, that had just been her own inferences. Genma had only said to get into the Ogasawara mansion, not why.

Pieces started coming together. Details which hadn't quite fit with her theory stood out: The pseudonym Genma had given for both himself and for her. The instructions to not draw undue attention to herself. The emphasis on finding any rich girl to befriend. The importance of getting into the mansion by a certain deadline. And now, the investigations Genma had done on his own. It all suddenly fell into place. This wasn't training for some strange social or verbal martial arts.

"You're going to rob them!"

"Shh..." Genma frantically waved his hands down. "Not so loud. But yeah, we're going to rob them."

"What about the martial arts training?" Ranma asked. She whispered as emphatically as she could. "I thought this was to learn the Umisenken."

"This is martial arts training," Genma said. "The Umisenken is based on the ways of a sneaky thief, and it's the strongest set of martial arts techniques I've ever created. It'll help you survive when you're in most need. It can save your life. Why, after this job, we'll be set for life. That medal you tricked from them was cute, but hardly worth all this trouble."

Ranma felt disoriented. Throughout the years, she had lost count of the number of temples and dojos they had plundered, let alone the more casual thefts of supplies from stores. She had never really given them much thought. It was simply the way of the world.

This somehow felt different, though. She knew Sachiko. She liked Sachiko. How would Sachiko feel when she woke up and found everything in her house gone?

Ranma suspected she knew. She had felt an coagulated breathlessness earlier in the week when Genma had taken that commemorative medallion from her, and she hadn't liked it one bit. That was probably what Sachiko would feel, and even more so. Strangely, the idea of that made Ranma feel even worse than her own loss had.

On the other hand, Genma had claimed this was the strongest set of martial techniques he had ever created, and if there was one thing Genma took seriously, it was martial arts. It was the strongest set of techniques from the strongest martial artist Ranma knew. Far beyond merely mastering just another school, the promise of learning the Umisenken was exhilarating.

She just didn't understand why she felt listless instead.

"Hurry up," Genma said. He poked Ranma with another stick. "Time's passing, and preparing a good heist takes time. Now what did you see?"

At Genma prompting, Ranma pushed past her reluctance and moved to the other side of the drawing on the ground, such that the wall Genma had indicated was the front door was closest to her. This was for martial arts, and she should have been excited. There was no reason to not be excited.

"This is the library. Here's the dining room. I think the servants' rooms are here, but I didn't see them," Ranma said, tentatively sketching out the rooms as she went. It was a messy picture. The scale was inconsistent, and there were numerous blank spots of areas which she hadn't seen. However, within reason, she was sure she had gotten everything right.

After she finished the ground floor, Genma sketched out another outline, and Ranma repeated the process for the upstairs level as well.

"Hmm..." Genma hummed to himself as he stared at the diagrams. "That's a start. Now the most important thing to consider are the people. Who did you see there?"

"There were a lot of people. I saw Onee..Sachiko-sama's mother. There was Yamamura-san and..."

"No," Genma said, interrupting Ranma. "That's not good enough. I need details. Where did you see them? When? What's are their duties? How do they act? What do they look like? The more we know about them, the more successful we'll be. Now start from the beginning. Who did you see?"

The apprehension and lassitude Ranma had had at the start of the description had remained. Indeed it had continued to grow. She had come this far already, though, and she continued onward.

She took the stick still in her hands and pointed at the porte-cochere. "When we arrived, Shimono-san and another woman were sitting here."

"Who's that? What does Shimono-san look like."

"I don't know," Ranma said. She hadn't paid too much attention to him, beyond the facts that she had always driven Sachiko home and that he had always brought dinner with Yamamura. "She's pretty and young." That was the easy part. It seemed like everybody around the Ogasawara mansion was a pretty, young woman. She thought more. "She's about this tall. Wears a uniform. That's about it."

"That's the kind of thing you'll need to pay attention to in the future. A uniform is a huge asset to fitting in to a place and not being noticed, like that getup you are wearing now," Genma said. He negligently flicked his stick towards Ranma's sailor dress. He scoffed. "Did you see her any other times last night?"

"No."

"Okay. How about that other woman?"

What followed was a grueling interrogation of everything Ranma had seen in the Ogasawara mansion. Even though Ranma had been paying particularly close attention on the trip, she had mostly been focused on Sachiko. She could easily account for her movements and her mannerisms, and she even did a decent job with respect to Sachiko's mother. When it came to detailing each of the numerous maids she had seen, though, she had far less success. The only real impression she had was that they were all pretty, but it took numerous questions, plus enduring several pointed insults, before Ranma was finally able to convince Genma that that was the limit of what she had noticed about them.

The conversation only became harder from there. Ranma had only paid scant attention to the decorations around the house. Which statues were silver? Which paintings were in this hallway? How tall were the ceiling? What color were the walls? Were there any patterns on the floors? Ranma only had the most tentative recollections of the details Genma was asking.

They went on for two hours, going through every detail Ranma could think of and more. It was like the opposite of her practices with Sachiko. There, time had blinked by unnoticed. Here, Ranma could feel the passing of every second and the weight of disapproval from Genma every time she said she didn't know something.

Finally, in the end, Genma proceeded to recap everything Ranma had said. It proved his skill once again. He synthesized the hours of interrogation, rambling, hesitant speculation, and tenuous recollection into a succinct ten-minute summary; beneath his lazy exterior, Genma was the smartest and most talented person Ranma knew.

"I guess that's good enough for now," Genma said, once Ranma had confirmed that he had everything correct. "I'll need to plan and prepare. We go tomorrow night."

That was a reminder. There was still tomorrow: another day of class, or rather, the day of the festival. Regardless, it meant that she would see Sachiko, whom apparently she was supposed to be robbing, not to mention everybody else. She asked, "What am I supposed to say to everyone?"

Genma scoffed. "Nothing, obviously. Don't do anything that might tip them off. Just act normal like, but come back as early as you can without raising suspicion. You should get some rest before we go."

"And what about after that? Onee..Sachiko-sama's gonna notice everything's gone, right? What should I do then?"

"What makes you think you'll see her at all after that? We're done here. They only have a fake name to go by," Genma said. He then leaned forward and directed a penetrating glare at Ranma. "You didn't tell them anything else, did you?"

"Of course not," Ranma said.

"Good. Then we'll be gone in two days, and they'll never find us. I got a friend who's waiting for us already. He's got a dojo. We're going to stay with him. He's got some daughters about your age. You'll love it," Genma said. "Now hurry up and get changed. You missed a day of training, and you'll need to catch up."

Ranma slowly changed into a keikogi. She had to fight through the heavy oppression surrounding her, though. The dark and ominous feeling she had had ever since realizing Genma's plan had only continued to grow throughout the hours.

She told herself that it wasn't that different from any of the casual thefts she had done with Genma in the past: sneak in, grab some things, sneak out. It did little to help, though. If anything, it made things even worse.

Nevertheless, it was for a good cause. Not only was she on track to learn the strongest martial arts from the strongest martial artist she had ever known, Genma had said that after tomorrow night, they would be set for life. There was a lot to look forward to. There was a lot to be excited for.

She found herself forcing her mind away from thinking about it.

"What about dinner?" Ranma asked as she stepped out of the tent. The sun had set during their extended interrogation, and she felt it.

"Dinner? Of all the lazy sons in the world, why have I been cursed with..." Genma's rant was interrupted by a loud growl from his own stomach. "Fine, boy. You can grab something on the way."

Genma peeked out through the plants to make sure the area was clear. Ranma did as well, although she was more going through the motions. She just couldn't shake off the bad atmosphere around her, and she just followed behind Genma as he led them out of the camp and to a semi-distant convenience store.

At the store, Ranma took the opportunity to grab some hot water. He hesitated with his hand hovering over some rice balls, though. The image of a devastated Sachiko flashed into his mind. Still, he was hungry, and he had no other choice. Anything Genma had, he would eat himself, and it would have had a similar providence of theft, anyway. It wasn't like Yamamura and Shimono were waiting behind a door with a huge tray of food, or Eriko was about to walk into the conference room with a giant pot of curry.

Ranma did his best to ignore the twinge he felt as he quickly grabbed the rice balls, and then tried to ignore the second twinge he felt as he left the store.

He skirmished through the streets with Genma as they made their way to a nearby park bench to eat. That fight continued into the meal, with Genma launching his first attack to steal a rice ball. Ranma rallied to the defense, but he quickly lost one despite that. He reflexively started trying to steal a piece of bread in return, but his hand hesitated on the way there, and the tepid attack was easily deflected.

Ranma continued to skirmish, as was both expected and needed, but his heart really wasn't into it. He managed to take some bread and his defense wasn't wholly useless, but it was undeniable that he had ended up with noticeably less dinner than was typical. Moreover, the cold rice, bread, fish, and meat tasted ashen in his mouth. There was just no comparison to the past week of dinners with Sachiko and the others.

The rest of the evening was spent fighting through the streets, near the rivers, and wherever their travels happened to take them. Genma did call it off earlier than normal, saying that the following day would be a long one and that they should rest to prepare for it.

Ranma ended the night like he had ended so many other ones in his life: he fell onto his cold bedroll. Despite the extra-intensive training Genma had subjected him to, though, he tossed and turned in his bedroll for a long time before he finally fell asleep.

Omake:

"Sachiko."

This year was even busier than Sachiko's first year had been, and she was commensurately in more of a hurry. Nevertheless, she stopped and turned around. When somebody called out to you, it was proper to stop and turn to address them. This was even more the case if that somebody was your grande soeur.

"Yes?"

Behind her, Youko was briskly walking forward to catch up to her.

"Do you have a minute?"

"I do," Sachiko said. The next thing on her schedule was the dress rehearsal. She hid it, but she was nervous. She knew all the lines and had practiced them enough with Ranko, but this would still be her first time actually playing the role of the prince for real.

"Good," Youko said. "I wanted to speak to you about Kashiwagi-san."

Sachiko tensed up. Suddenly the rehearsal didn't seem so bad. Her fiance was the last thing she wanted to talk about. The fact that Youko had effectively ambushed her with the topic, so Sachiko had had no time to prepare for it, made it that much worse. She tried to hide her anxiety and frustration.

"Yes?"

"Have you had a chance to speak to your parents about him?"

That was a very personal question. If anybody else had asked, she would have ignored it. This was her grande soeur, though, and not anybody else. Youko wasn't infallible, but she did have Sachiko's best interests at heart. Besides, ignoring a grande soeur simply wasn't done.

"I have not," Sachiko said. It was definitely a sore spot. Despite her words to Suguru, his pleas had had an effect on her already irresolute decision to talk to her parents. Every time she thought about it, her tongue froze up. She wanted to do something, but it was impossible.

Youko frowned a little. She asked, "Why haven't you?"

"It's not that easy," Sachiko said. She loathed to show weakness, even to Youko, but it was something she was working on. "This is really important to my parents. It's not like stopping dance or piano classes. They really want this to work."

It was hard to fully put into words the gravitas of the situation. She knew how much this meant to her parents. They would occasionally make comments about how good a person Suguru was, and how he had recently become the student council president of Hanadera, and wasn't he just the perfect match for Sachiko? They weren't even close to subtle.

Sachiko could see why her parents were so enamored with him, too. In addition to his many achievements and talents, he was also a cousin, and thus would keep the Ogasawara Group closer to the family if he were to take it over.

And her parents wanted it so badly.

"He grabbed you, and who knows what else he would have done if Ranko-chan hadn't stopped him? I know you said he didn't hurt you, but think about it. If this is how he's acting now, imagine what it will be like if you were to marry him." Youko shook her head.

Sachiko could imagine, but that didn't matter. She said, "I shall do my duty as befits the heiress of the Ogasawara Group."

She was sure she could figure out some way to handle things, somehow. And people did change over time. In the worst case, she could just avoid him after they were married. He had even outright said that they could be a marriage in name only, with both of them having their own independent lives from each other. It wasn't at all what Sachiko wanted in a marriage, but it was something she could survive through. Her mother did all the time.

"Would your parents want that kind of life for their daughter?" Youko asked. Her hands gesticulated in front of her as she spoke, as if she could somehow convey her emotions better that way. "Is the Ogasawara name worth so little as to need to settle for somebody like Kashiwagi-san?"

"Settle" wasn't the right word. Suguru was perfect, at least on paper. Handsome. Sophisticated. Cultured. Intelligent. Student council president. In terms of a show marriage, it would have been perfect. Suguru really was correct; if they did marry, and they both had affairs on the side, it really would be convenient.

However, Sachiko wanted more out of her marriage. She wanted somebody she could love, cherish, trust, confide, and share the rest of her life with. And that was assuming Suguru really could be trusted, that he wouldn't abuse his position as her husband.

Sachiko lowered her head, but she did not say anything in response. The worst thing was that she agreed with everything Youko was saying. It just wasn't that easy. Honor and familial piety were of paramount importance, and this was the thing her parents most wanted.

"Just think about it. I only want what's best for you," Youko said.

"Yes, I know," Sachiko said.

Youko had always been like that. Sei and Eriko had called her a busybody, and they were right. It was the thing Sachiko most admired about her. Youko was always so open and direct with everything: what she thought, what she wanted, and what others should do. Youko just did whatever needed to be done.

Sachiko was not Youko, though. She had much more of a natural inclination towards introversion, ruminations, and worrying; she had always had a need to live up to the name of the Ogasawara family. She had progressed a great deal over the past year, with the support of Youko; she could already look back at herself from two years prior with embarrassment and shame, as well as with pride at how far she had come since then. Even so, she was a long way from having the audacity to confront her parents about her arranged marriage to Suguru.

In that way, she was quite envious of Ranko, her unorthodox petite soeur. She reminded Sachiko of Youko, albeit if Youko had been taken to a dramatic extreme. If Youko was direct, and if Sachiko was cloistered, then Ranko was temerity personified. She just barged through everything in life irrespective of reputation, public opinion, and decorum.

Want to disagree with Rosa Chinensis in the middle of a meeting with the entire Yamayurikai? Just tell her she's wrong.

Want to avoid a hounding newspaper girl? Just jump out of a window.

Want to eat seven helpings of curry? Just grab a spoon.

Want to fend off Suguru? Just punch him.

Want to annul an arranged marriage? Just tell your parents.

If only it were that easy.

Last Updated: September 7, 2020