Chapter 2: Who is Nadeshiko?
Shouts and growls resounded from the yard of the Tendo house. These were frequently joined by the meaty thwacks of foot kicking arm and fist punching torso. Less frequently, the sounds of combat were punctuated by a large splash of water, which would invariably be followed up with even more shouting and growling. In short, it was all according to script. Ranma and Genma fight in the morning, both of them bounce around like magnetically-charged rubber balls, one or both get thrown into the koi pond, and then breakfast is served. It was effectively identical to any number of other mornings that had greeted Nabiki ever since that rainy day a red-haired girl and a panda had entered her life.
Unlike most days, Nabiki's reaction wasn't to roll over and cover her ears with her pillow for just a few more minutes. The sounds of conflict clearly signaled that Ranma had returned sometime during the night, as she had known he would. He always did. The status quo had been restored.
The delay and the night of sleep had done nothing to settle Nabiki's mood. Her playful curiosity and casual opportunity-seeking had grown to have an edge of revenge to it. Originally, she had intended to merely have a bit of fun and persuade a bit of yen from Ranma. That had changed. Publicly embarrassing him was now her new goal.
Much like the morning fight that had greeted Nabiki, breakfast was also intensely familiar. It was just like any number of other breakfasts since the arrival of the Saotomes. It smelled vaguely of fish and soggy rug, courtesy of one drenched Ranma and one dripping wet Genma. Much like those other morning meals, the two of them fought each other over every morsel of food. It had been so long that Nabiki couldn't remember the last time she had had what could have been considered a normal breakfast. It was funny to think that before the Saotomes had arrived, the most unusual thing that ever happened was Akane wearing her gi to the meal from time to time.
Kasumi took her place at the table. That completed the full complement of three female Tendos, one male Tendo, two female Saotomes, and one panda Saotome. It made for crowded seating.
Now that everybody was in place for maximum exposure, Nabiki watched Ranma and bided her time. At the exact moment that he shoveled some rice into his mouth, she nonchalantly asked, "So, Ranma-kun. What were you doing in Ginza last night?" She kept her gaze casual, but she was intensely focused on her target. She wanted to enjoy every bit of his squirming.
Ranma stopped moving for a second in confusion. He looked at Nabiki with a puzzled face. It gave Genma the opportunity to steal his fish and half of his rice before he could retaliate, but Ranma recovered before Genma could launch a second assault. His hands and chopsticks resumed the jabbing and parrying of the standard morning ritual as he asked, "Who? Me?"
It was altogether a disappointing reaction. Nabiki had been hoping he would choke on his rice and splutter, or something. His confused pause was no more substantial than if somebody had come up to her and asked a nonsensical question like how the rocket ship in her backyard was coming along.
"Ginza? You should have told me, Ranma-kun. You could have helped me buy some new plates. We could use some new chopsticks, too. They keep getting broken," Kasumi said.
"I don't know what Nabiki's talking about. I didn't go to Ginza," Ranma said. Something about him was wrong, though. Nabiki wasn't sure what it was. He spoke with a strident and grainy voice of toughness, as he always did whenever he was in female form.
"Don't bother denying it. I saw you there. That cream-colored dress you wore was very fetching. Where did you get it?" Nabiki asked. If he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of squirming, then she would just need to nudge him a bit harder.
"I knew it. You really are a pervert, aren't you?" Akane asked.
"Why do you got to be so dumb, you tomboy? I'm saying I wasn't there," Ranma retorted.
It was always the same script whenever there was an argument. Blame, protest and insult, counter-insult, squabble, fight. If any of the parents was around, then they would either egg them on or try too hard to push them together. It would end when Akane got in the last word in some way or another, and the status quo would be restored until the next time.
Still, there was that strange something about Ranma's actions that bothered Nabiki, and she couldn't tell what it was. He wasn't doing anything to make her think he was behaving strangely. He was acting normally, as far as she could tell. So why did she feel like something was wrong?
"Then where did you go after school? I bet you were out visiting Ukyou, weren't you?" Akane accused.
"How manly. However, you mustn't forget about Akane-chan when you go and play around with your mistress. Next time you should bring her with you too. I'm sure the three of you would have a lot more fun together," Nodoka said blithely.
Nabiki took a look around the table. She was good at reading people. It was an important skill to have in business.
Nodoka maintained her normal look of vapid passivity. Kasumi was concerned about the discord which had entered the meal and was wondering how it would end. Akane was stuck between the contradiction of wanting to accuse the entire Saotome family of being perverted and the fact that saying such a thing to an elder just wasn't done. Genma was looking relieved at his wife's judgment of Ranma's behavior. Soun was intentionally trying to ignore everything at the table in the hope that it would go away. Ranma was upset at having his honor besmirched by the accusation that he was lying, and he was angry at Akane and everybody else for believing Nabiki.
So what was so wrong? Why did she feel that Ranma's behavior was so off?
Genma took the opportunity to hold up a sign which said, "That's right. No way my son would have any yen to buy stuff in Ginza."
Nabiki wasn't going to let Ranma go that easily. It would only take a bit more to get the truth out. She said, "That's true, assuming she was spending her own yen. I wonder what Ranma-chan did to get such a nice present." She made sure to emphasize all references to Ranma's gender.
"Oh my," Kasumi said.
Nodoka used her thumb to idly loosen the Saotome family katana in its scabbard. She asked, "What exactly were you doing yesterday, Ranma?"
Genma growled and held up a sign which read, "Please put that away, dear." He flipped it around to show, "We fulfilled the seppuku contract, remember? Remember?!"
"You pervert!" Akane shouted.
"You are so uncute. I don't know who Nabiki saw, but it wasn't me. I wasn't in Ginza, and wasn't wearing no dumb dress," Ranma said.
Nabiki suddenly realized what it was that had been bothering her about Ranma's behavior. It wasn't that Ranma was behaving strangely. It was the fact that Ranma was acting normally which had caught her attention. The problem that had been nagging at her was that she had been sure that Ranma had been lying about not being in Ginza, but he hadn't been.
Ranma had a poker face which even an elementary school child could see through, as had been demonstrated in his duel with the Gambler King. Nabiki had taken advantage of his poor bluffing abilities several times to acquire a bit of yen from the gullible boy. However, his eyes weren't squinting, his mouth wasn't frowning, and the only thing she could read from him was the growing anger at the accusation. No matter how Nabiki looked at it, he was telling the truth.
So Ranma might have actually been innocent and completely unrelated to Sakura, but that really wasn't her problem. She might have nudged the snow a bit, but she couldn't really be blamed for how everybody else had piled on to form the avalanche which had followed. Ranma could take care of it on his own. He always did. The rest of the script would play out shortly. The argument would reach its climax, Akane would get the final word in, and the status quo would be restored until the next time.
"Then where were you?" Akane asked.
"You came back rather late," Kasumi said.
"I don't know," Ranma said. He eyed the katana still in Nodoka's hand. He quickly added, "But it couldn't have been me in Ginza. It... it..." He hesitated. "It was the ne..ne..nekoken, alright? You know how that is. I woke up in a park somewhere and came back after that."
"Oh..." various people around the table said in unison.
Akane said, "Really. Is that it? Then why didn't you just say that in the first place?"
Genma held up a sign which read, "See, Ranma? If you were with Akane then you wouldn't have had this problem."
Akane saw the sign, and shouted, "What? I don't see why babysitting him is my responsibility. Why are you always causing me problems, Ranma?"
"Hey, I don't need no babysitter," Ranma said.
"Well, clearly you do, if you can't remember where you went for a whole day," Akane said.
Before the argument could go on, a simple question was posed which demanded to be answered. Nodoka looked from face to face, and then asked, "What's the nekoken?"
The whole table froze.
That was Nabiki's cue to leave. As much as she would have loved to earn some quick yen by selling the information to Nodoka, she had no desire to be within line of sight of Ranma's mother when she found out what her husband had done to her son.
As much as Nabiki wanted to leave, Genma was faster. He held up a sign saying, "Well, look at the time. I got to go. Things to do. People to see." The sign balanced on the table for a second before teetering and falling over, the panda himself having already escaped.
"It's school time for me. Thanks for the meal. Bye," Nabiki said. She practically fled the room. She ran up the stairs, grabbed her book bag, and then was out the front door.
Nabiki's feet automatically took her along the roads she always took to school. She had walked the same route so many times that she could follow her habitual path without paying any real attention to it. Familiar landmarks passed by almost unnoticed as she instead focused on what had happened over breakfast.
The entire discussion had left Nabiki feeling unsatisfied. The explanation of the nekoken was so banal as to make the whole effort she had put forward pointless. Ranma had run from the fake cats that Mousse had set up, and in his already frightened state something else had triggered the nekoken in its entirety. He had then disappeared to nobody-knew-where to do nobody-knew-what. That nobody included Ranma himself.
At least Ranma had gotten his just rewards during breakfast for causing her so much trouble.
That raised another point, though. Sakura looked identical to a female Ranma. There had to be something of value there. The exact form of that value was unclear, but there had to be something Nabiki could extract from the situation in the form of either yen or entertainment. She could think of numerous pranks she could set up with a body double of a female Ranma. Ranma might also be willing to pay for knowledge of Sakura's existence, to help distract a certain crazy sword-obsessed upperclassman if nothing else. Additionally, some new photos would provide a fair bit of yen. She could imagine how much Kuno Tatewaki would pay for photographs of twin pigtailed girls, and Nabiki would be only too happy to accept the yen from the would-be samurai.
For that matter, she could probably earn a large amount of yen by setting Kuno up on a date with Sakura. It would be like doing the hostess a favor. Tatewaki might have been obsessive and crazy, but he was rich. There was no way that Nabiki herself would ever consider marrying him, but any girl working at a hostess bar had to both be desperate for yen as well as have low moral standards.
That only left one challenge. Nabiki would need to actually find information on Sakura. It would be hard to do now that Nabiki was known and not welcome in Flare, but she had an idea she could try. She would just call them. A voice on the phone was much harder to recognize than a face. She just needed to do a bit of planning for what she would say in preparation for that conversation.
Other students might have spent their lunch eating and talking with their friends. Not Nabiki. She used her time for something much more important: business.
There would be the rumor-peddling, the photograph-selling, and the arrangement of international merchandise sales. For her bigger endeavors, she might find some classmates and use the transformative powers of yen to change them into Business Associates to assist her with the enterprise at hand. While others might have wasted their time fluttering around with whatever transitory fancy they had for the day, the mercenary ice queen of Furinkan had more important things to do. She was finding ways to acquire yen.
Wednesday's lunch was still business, but business of a different fashion. It was not immediately profitable. It was instead spent on the fundamental gathering of information which was the basis of any successful venture. With some luck, she would be able to take a phone call and develop it into a very tidy profit in the days to come.
The pay phones in Furinkan High School were poorly maintained, as evidenced by their tinny sound quality. They did have several benefits, though. They were in a quiet corner, and their infrequent use meant that Nabiki had the area to herself. Most importantly, they were available during the day. Banks never called at night. The less unusual she could make her phone call, the fewer questions would be asked; and the fewer questions asked, the fewer problems she would face.
Nabiki took a moment to confirm that she was in fact alone and then dialed the number on the business card she had taken from the hostess club on Tuesday.
"Hello, this is Flare, how may I help you?" a woman answered the call.
Nabiki pinched her nose shut. She then said in the most official and punctilious voice she could manage, "My name is Fujimura Uki. Is this..." she intentionally paused for a second as if she had to read the name off the card, "... Flare?"
"Yes, it is. Yokoyama Yuka speaking. How may I help you, Fujimura-san?"
"I am calling on behalf of the Second Bank of Tokyo. I wanted to report a problem with a check you recently issued," Nabiki said. She intentionally paced herself to keep her voice level and official-sounding.
"What seems to be the problem?" Yuka asked in a concerned voice.
"I have a young woman here who just tried to deposit a check you issued. You made it out to a..." Nabiki paused again, "... 'Sakura.' You listed no surname. I'll need her full name to process it for her."
"Sakura? We don't have anybody here named Sakura," Yuka said.
Nabiki had planned a response to all the questions, protests, and suspicions she could think up in response to her assertion. However, outright denial of Sakura's existence was not one of the contingencies she had anticipated. It was so ridiculous that she hadn't even considered it. She had seen the girl in the club, after all. That was what had started that whole escapade with Ranma.
She thought as quickly as she could, searching for an appropriate response she could give. She said, "You don't? She's a woman about 150 centimeters tall. She has long red hair. Are you sure you don't know her? She says she works for you, and she gave me this phone number."
"Do you mean Yamato-san? Ahh... I think I know what happened. Kugimiya-san must have used the wrong name on the list when he was issuing the checks. Please apologize to Yamato-san and have her return it to us. We'll issue a corrected one."
So Sakura's surname was Yamato. That was a good start. Nabiki only needed to get an address, and preferably a phone number as well, to consider the call a success. Still, something Yuka had said didn't make sense. She had said that they didn't have a Sakura working there, even though they clearly did. And her statement about names was strange, too. Nabiki asked, "You used the wrong name? What do you mean?"
"Don't worry. It's all legal," Yuka was quick to say. "We're a hostess club. Yamato-san only uses the name Sakura when she is working. It helps keep persistent customers from stalking her outside of work. That's why I didn't recognize it at first."
The exact operations of a hostess club were outside of Nabiki's experience. She only knew about them by reputation from rumors. She wouldn't have thought of it on her own, but now that it had been pointed out, the idea of stage names made sense and was obvious. In retrospect, it was dumb to not assume that in the first place.
However, this revelation did mean that Nabiki needed to find out the hostess's given name as well. Having a real surname of Yamato was a bit better than a fictitious given name of Sakura, but there were still untold thousands of Yamatos in Tokyo.
Time was ticking, and Nabiki only had this one phone call. She wouldn't be able to try this gambit a second time, and once Yuka hung up it would be all over. Nabiki had to find an excuse to keep her on the phone to get more information. She clutched at the first excuse she could think of. Hiding her anxiety as best she could behind a tone of banality, Nabiki said, "That makes sense. Actually you won't need to write another check. If you can just verbally confirm her identity on the phone than we can go ahead and process it now. It will save us all some time."
"You can?"
"That's right. As you are the ones who issued the check, it will be fine unless you protest the transaction, which I assume you won't," Nabiki lied. She really hoped the woman on the phone was as financially illiterate as she seemed. Nabiki could feel her heart pounding in her ears, although she kept her voice steady and sounding bored. "So who should the check have been made out to?"
"That's very convenient. Thank you for your understanding. We should have written it to one Yamato Nadeshiko," Yuka said.
Nabiki had to choke back her exclamation at that declaration. That would have been unprofessional, and it would have definitely given her away. She instead said, "Thank you. And can you provide her address as well?"
"Her address?" Yuka asked suspiciously. "Don't you already have it? What did you say your name was again?"
Nabiki's heart jumped at the challenge. She actually didn't remember the name she had made up at the start of the phone call. She had overplayed her hand. Nabiki kept her voice as calm as she could as she tried to disengage. "I'm sorry, please wait a second." She paused. "Oh, I see. My coworker is saying that we won't need that to processes the check after all. I think I have everything I need, but I'll call back again if my boss has any questions."
"Okay..." Yuka said hesitantly.
"Thank you for your help," Nabiki said, and then quickly hung up. She took a deep breath and willed her heart to stop racing. It felt as though it wanted to leap out of her chest. That feeling eased after a few seconds, and everything slowly returned to normal.
It was a quick walk back to the classroom. Lunch was almost over, and she would need to eat quickly if she wanted to finish everything before class resumed. As she walked, Nabiki reflected on what she had learned.
She now had a name. Yamato Nadeshiko. It was completely ridiculous. Who would give their child a name like that? Being named after the idealized flower of Japanese womanhood was the type of thing which could give a child a nervous breakdown, and it would probably result in the family itself being ostracized due to its hubris. It would be like naming a boy Tokugawa Ieyasu, the name of the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The connotations and the expectations levied upon the girl must have been impossible. No wonder she had ended up working in a hostess club.
Unfortunately, while Nabiki had learned Nadeshiko's name, she did not have any other meaningful data. A name was a start, but it was nothing she could really act on. If she ran into the hostess again, Nabiki could call out to her, but that was about it. It wasn't as if she could really go around the streets of Ginza shouting out for Nadeshiko. It would require more thinking about how to actually find and approach the hostess.
Nabiki put it all out of her mind after lunch had ended, and she instead focused on her afternoon classes. Ultimately, Literature and History were far less exciting than the business of business, but classes were important, too. Learning English had been a great help in setting up some international sales, and Mathematics was useful for sales projections and accounting. While she preferred the actual act of earning yen, she could also see the value in learning the skills she needed to be more effective.
Things came to a halt at 14:30 when a deep boom resonated throughout the entire building. It felt like the initial tremors of an earthquake. In most Japanese schools, this would have been the cue to take shelter under a table or in a doorway. In Furinkan, a very different response was warranted. Everybody, including Nabiki, immediately rushed to the nearest window to watch. Explosions were a regular sound in the school. They signaled the start of the familiar script, and nobody wanted to miss the excitement. As the teacher had been the first one to reach a window, classes had also taken a short pause in deference to the ongoing show. There was nothing else to do besides watch the fight.
In the courtyard, Ranma was picking himself up off the ground. Ryouga had just jumped out of a window to follow him.
"Pretty good. But can you do it again?" Ranma asked. He charged forward towards Ryouga and punched him. In the distance his arms looked a bit blurry, as if they had been caught on film by a slightly out-of-focus camera. It masked the extreme speed of his flurry of punches as he pummeled Ryouga.
For his part, Ryouga barely flinched as he endured the barrage. Fists which could shatter concrete only slightly affected him. He shouted, "All too easy. Take that!" He swept his arms in an exaggerated sweeping gesture, as if to entrap Ranma in a bear hug.
"Not this time!" Ranma shouted. He jumped forward, grabbed Ryouga's head, and vaulted over him. As he leaped, the ground beneath him exploded, sending rubble flying backwards into the school walls. "That's it? You've been gone for weeks. I thought you'd have figured out something better by now."
"I'm just getting started!" Ryouga shouted. He spun around and tried to punch Ranma's face.
Ranma ducked underneath and sent another flurry of punches into Ryouga's exposed stomach.
"You delinquents!" a child's voice interrupted. All eyes naturally turned to the sound. The young form of Hinako Ninomiya stood at the entrance of the school. The teacher held up a coin, pointed it at the pair of fighting martial artists, and shouted, "Happo Five-Yen Satsu!"
"Look out!" Ranma shouted. He pushed off against Ryouga's shoulder and vaulted out of the line of fire. Ryouga was less fortunate. The eternally lost boy collapsed to the ground as the teacher drained his battle aura. Concurrently, Hinako grew, until her voluptuous form filled her tailored and now tightly-fitting clothes.
"Stand still and take your punishment, you delinquent!" Hinako shouted in a now much more mature voice.
"No way," Ranma said. He leaped over to and then out through the school gate in two bounds.
"Get back here! Classes are still in session!" Hinako shouted and gave chase.
Ryouga groaned and pushed himself upright. He looked as if he had been run over by a truck. That he could get to his feet at all after being drained by Hinako was impressive. That same attack had left Kodachi, Ukyou, Shampoo, and even Ranma in a limp heap in its wake. The eternally lost boy then meandered off after the two other fighters. At least, it looked like he was trying to give chase. He departed by bashing through the school wall in vaguely the same direction as the other two. This left the courtyard empty once again.
It was all too common for Ranma to disappear like that. It was more unusual for him to actually walk home with Akane than it was for him to be pulled away from school by some battle. Or some wish. Or some promise of a cure. Or by whatever other random incident happened to occur.
It didn't matter, though. Nabiki didn't have to actually see it to know how the encounter would end. The script was always the same. Something caused somebody to fight Ranma, they fought, there was a large amount of collateral damage, after zero or more losses Ranma would eventually win in the end, and the status quo was restored until the next fight. She gave the same 1:2 odds she always did that Ranma would be home by dinner.
If nothing else, Ranma's most recent encounter did demonstrate one thing clearly. Nabiki reflected with bemusement how silly she had been to actually have thought that that demure girl in the hostess club could possibly have been Ranma. The vulgar boy couldn't go five minutes without insulting somebody, and he had the sophistication of a tramp. He probably didn't even know what chiffon was, let alone would ever wear it. In retrospect, the whole thing felt foolish on her part.
The departure of Ranma signaled the end of the show. Nabiki's teacher resumed his place at the front of the classroom, and the students likewise resumed their seats. The fight had been a nice diversion from the lecture of the atomic bomb and how its usage had influenced the development of Japan, but it was now over. Given the late hour of the afternoon, that would most likely be the last interruption of the day. The chaos had passed for now, and the earliest it would resume would be in the Tendo household that night.
After classes ended, Akane returned to the dojo immediately. Nabiki had other things planned. She spent her time alone. It wasn't as though she had any friends to waste her time with meaningless babble of a recent movie, or any clubs to slave away for while working without pay. She had made that decision long ago. The mercenary ice queen of Furinkan instead spent her time in business. She sold products, bought rumors, traded favors, and balanced books. All the while, the increase of yen served as a scorecard to show how well she was doing in her efforts.
As was a well-ingrained habit, she kept an eye on the clock. As long as she was back by dinner, nobody asked too many questions or raised any fuss. She left with plenty of time to visit a nearby photography store. It was right where it always was, near a park and by a convenience store. She paid them and the various other familiar landmarks of Nerima no attention as she unconsciously walked her habitual path.
Once she had arrived at her destination, she dropped off her canisters of film to be developed. They would be ready by Thursday. While she could have requested expedited service, she was in no particular hurry. She didn't want to waste yen for no good reason.
After her errand was done, she took the equally familiar path back to the Tendo Dojo. She didn't bother to think about the trip. Her feet automatically took her forward step by step. It let her instead focus on the problem, or more precisely the opportunity, that Yamato Nadeshiko represented. Unfortunately, the short walk provided no answers as she quickly found herself at the front gate of her home.
By the time Nabiki arrived at the Tendo house, everybody else was already there. Soun was sitting in the living room reading a newspaper, and Genma was sitting outside in a meditative position. He was almost certainly sleeping. Akane was there as well, as odds had suggested she would be. Unfortunately, she was trying to cook dinner, but the watchful eyes of both Kasumi and Nodoka ensured that her food would be edible. Hopefully.
Much less certain had been Ranma's presence. Apparently he had beaten the odds and was in fact present. He was male, but he smelled faintly of rubber for some reason. Neither Ryouga nor Hinako was in sight, and Ranma was neither sulking nor fuming. She wasn't sure how, but he must have beaten one or both of them in some fashion before returning to the Tendo home. Status quo restored.
Dinner itself was as normal as dinner ever got to be at the Tendo household. Nodoka had made some comment alluding to Ranma getting married to Akane, whereupon Ranma had protested, Akane had blamed, Ranma had insulted, Akane had counter-insulted, and things had escalated. Genma commented on how the pair already acted like a couple, which shed some light upon his relationship with Nodoka.
Nabiki ignored it all as easily as she ignored the paths she habitually followed throughout Nerima. It was always the same script whenever there was an argument. There was nothing she really needed to pay attention to, unless she wanted a bit of free entertainment. This evening she had better things to think about than watching how Akane got in the last word before the status quo was restored until next time.
If Nabiki could develop a rapport with Nadeshiko, she was sure she would be able to turn a good profit by arranging a date between her and Kuno. They were a perfect match. Her preposterously pretentious name demonstrated that. If anything, Kuno would find the grandiose pomposity as proof that she was destined for him. The only question was how to establish that contact. Nabiki was banned from Flare, and she only had a name to go by.
A dinner spent in thought shed no light on the matter. Nabiki went to bed still thinking about both the question of what to do as well as the stacks of yen a solution to the question represented.
Last Updated: September 16, 2018
