xi.
The rumours circulates around the school every time she walks in. (Hey, isn't that one of Ranma's girls? Lucky bastard.) She can honestly just be passing by the house, and then she'll hear another. (Akane, isn't that the Chinese girl? What a whore.)Everyone thinks she's loose, she's crazy, she's a stupid foreigner, she's a prostitute. Even in her workplace, it never stops. (Hey, it's that girl!) (Look, it's her!) (You know, someday, Shampoo is going to snap from all of this pressure.) She can't take all this gossip. Why can't they just leave her alone? (What did she do, anyways?)
(It hurts, you know. She is, after all, a teenage girl. What's so weird about that?)
xii.
There is an old Chinese legend, set to an old Chinese tune,
It tells us how Shampoo loved Ranma under a cursed moon.
Every night, the two would sleep, under the same sheets
And she'd creep out just before dawn,
Hoping in the day they'd meet
But alas one fateful night, the girl is forsworn
Here she lies forlorn
Till the cold grey dawn
Poor little kitty cat
Where's your friend?
Why are you all alone?
Why do you stay under the sheets, surrounded by their blood,
As the boy and his lover lay dead?
Why are you sad, kitty cat?
(Shampoo wakes up at this point, but she can still feel the blood on her …curious)
xiii.
When she sheds her robes before bed, she traces the maps of scars on her body. There's that one, from while she was growing up and her father hit her a little too hard. There's the one from getting burned in her rite of passage, it hurt in a grown-up kind of way. There's the first one she got from Ranma, she has very pale skin which is pretty but it scars easily, and that's from falling all wrong. Yes, that's right, she fell all wrong for him, and that's quite a scar he left on her because of it.
(And that's not all, you can't see all of them, no, no you can't because they exist here. Right here, in my chest. They hurt, why won't they stop?)
xiv.
This is her punishment from her grandmother. This is her punishment from her people. She is to take fifty lashes and never forget that this was a very important law she broke, you were supposed to win him. This is her saviour in Mousse. She will see him daily, as she wakes up and as she falls asleep, in his bed, as his wife. This is her punishment from life: stripped of her rights, made a toy, to be used and abused and thrown away. This is her punishment from Ranma: he loves her, but not enough to chase her.
(She didn't win him, she was won, her virtue lost in a beautiful moment that she can't take back and he wouldn't either. No drugs, no charms, just them before they were married and all the hell they took, take.)
xv.
She is valuable. What is she? She is a gem, amethyst, coral, beautiful, but cold and hard and unforgiving. What is she? She is silk, pliant and pleasing and beautiful and comforting and the closest comfort to any one person. As a stone, she is immortal – very pretty, untouchable and unattached by forever. As silk she is easily worn out, easily torn, shredded, hurt, but loved and adored and held close. So close, but so far. As an Amazon she is a diamond, as a girl, she's fabric of exquisite quality. As a whole, she doesn't know who she is.
(To be close and easily hurt, or distant but never loved, just admired? She doesn't know, she's just a girl – but an Amazon – but a girl – but – but…)
