The Exit
Ninnik Nishukan

The bus was just as crowded, and somehow she ended up next to him again. She caught him looking desperately around for any other seat than the one next to hers, and felt a pinch in her gut; was she really so repulsive that neither Ranma nor Ryoga wanted to sit next to her?

Shaking her head, then, she scolded herself for being so self-pitying. He's mortified about that stupid game, that's what it is, and who could blame him? What was Ranma thinking…?

…and why didn't he tell Ryoga to kiss Akane instead? She asked herself, the treacherous thought sneaking up on her without warning.

Why, indeed?

As Ryoga finally slumped down in the seat next to her, she turned to look at him despite herself and caught the startled, brown eyes, saw him ducking his head to avoid her gaze and she squirmed a bit in her seat, sighing as she tried to make herself comfortable.

He was so different from her Ranchan— shy, evasive, nervous, daydreaming, spineless…

…he would never have done it. Not in a million years.

She cast a glance in his direction, found her gaze landing on the small band aid on his cheek, just below his eye, noticed the slightly red skin there before travelling up to the seemingly constantly present worry knot on his brow, then down to his tensed-up shoulders.

He would never, ever have the guts to do it.

…would he?

Her gaze rested on his lips for just a moment and she found herself getting annoyed at how they didn't look dry or chapped or thin— if the world had any sense of justice, they should have been revolting. But they weren't. It might not have felt totally disgusting if he actually did do it, she thought, and this infuriated her even more. Her eyes were lingering now, and she was gradually starting to feel like a pervert.

It might have been soft. Warm even.

I've never been kissed before, she reminded herself, so it's not that strange if I wonder about the one chance I've had to actually—

It had always annoyed and saddened her how the girls would talk at school and she could never, ever contribute with anything to the conversation. She had never been kissed; she certainly hadn't been groped, not if you didn't count that one time when Ranma had accidentally grabbed her breasts—when he had still thought she was a guy and didn't even know she had any breasts, for goodness sake! And wasn't that just so patheti--

Ukyo gritted her teeth and leaned her elbow on the narrow window sill and her head against the bus window, trying not to put her weight on the bruise on her shoulder. She didn't talk to or look at Ryoga for another ten minutes.

Ryoga sighed, leaning back in his seat as he tried to find a comfortable position; the bus seat was far less comfortable than the seat he'd had on the train. He was glad to be well out of Shinjuku Station, though— it was the kind of place that was so big and crowded that he'd be lost for days there, never able to find the exit. Just thinking about it made him shudder. It would be oh, so nice if he could just sleep…but there was just nothing to lean on, since Ukyo had gotten the window seat.

Glancing sidelong at her, he regarded the taut line of her back, could just see the strict, tight line of her mouth and he sighed again. She was completely ignoring him, and maybe it was for the best. He wouldn't know what to say, anyway.

Not after that. Not after looking her straight in the eye after having been ordered to kiss her, and seeing the nervousness in her gaze, seeing her pink tongue darting over her lips, the very same he'd been told to—

What would she have done if I'd done it? He wondered idly, his head bobbing a bit as his body tried to lure it into slumber.

It was strange, really— they'd been conversing in an almost civilized manner until Ranma had to open his big mouth, yet now it seemed to be Ryoga she was mad at!

It just didn't make any sense! By rights she should be mad at Ranma! It was he who'd…who'd…

Ryoga tried to blink, but his eyelids were drooping with the weight of fatigue. The seat in front of him blurred and shifted out of focus until it started getting dark…

Ukyo gasped as a heavy weight fell on her shoulder. She snapped her face around; the sight that met her seriously frightened her.

Ryoga's head was resting on her shoulder, his eyes closed, his mouth slightly open and his thick bangs falling over her skin, the slow pace of his breath telling her he was asleep.

Her own breath caught in her throat and her frame quivered with outrage. What the hell did he think he was—what the hell kind of liberties did he think he could—

Raising her hand angrily, she prepared to shove him off of her—

She froze when her fingertips met with his scalp.

All across Ryoga's head were these…these bumps, some a bit bigger, some a bit smaller, but none of them feeling like very pleasant things to have scattered across your scalp. There has to be at least…four, no, five…no…six of them, she realized, her heart sinking. Six times…

They were all from her spatula. She noticed him wincing in his sleep, and her hand drew back hastily out of its own volition.

Maybe Hibiki Ryoga's skull wasn't as thick as everybody thought it was.

Ryoga gave a little sigh and shifted his face slightly, causing his lips to brush against her skin. They really were soft, and it made her so angry. Her entire body went taut when she felt his breath directly on her bare skin. Even though it was warm, it made goose bumps appear where it touched her.

Ukyo held her breath, trying not to move, biting her lip to keep from making a sound. She felt like she was playing hide and seek again, like the old days, trying to become an invisible presence by tensing up her body, in a room where the seeker would obviously see her feet sticking out from under the curtains any minute.

This could only end in awkwardness.

She let out a small squeak and was forced to take a breath when he suddenly shifted again and brought one hand to rest in the little nook in the bend of her arm, right where the skin was so thin and sensitive against her veins.

She just couldn't bring herself to use force against him, though, not after realizing what she'd done to his head, so she tried simply tuning him out, concentrating instead on the conversations on the train.

Ukyo tried distracting herself for a minute or two with a couple of middle-aged businessmen having an extremely boring conversation about some sort of project at work, when she suddenly noticed Ranma and Akane talking, two rows ahead.

"…world were you thinking?" Akane said in a hushed, but slightly agitated voice, just loud enough to hear.

"Look, it's no big deal, right?" Ranma replied in a whisper, or in what probably passed as a whisper with him, anyway. "If what you said's true, then they've probably already—"

"Ranma," Akane interjected flatly, "just because they're boyfriend and girlfriend it doesn't necessarily mean to say they've kissed yet. Maybe it's still very new. So you shouldn't have tried to get Ryoga to kiss her in front of other people…" She was quiet for a few seconds, before adding in a softer voice: "I mean, we still haven't…I, uh…I mean, it's very awkward if there's people around…"

The pause was longer this time, and Ranma's voice was very serious, almost sad, when he spoke. "Yeah. There are always a lot of people around." He said, obviously having forgotten about whispering entirely. "Always."

Ukyo suddenly found that her fists were clenched so tightly that her nails had left little crescent-shaped grooves in her palms. Swallowing, she tried to make the painful, hot feelings in her stomach and on her face go away, but only felt herself reddening further until tears threatened to spill from her eyes. Her entire world had been reduced to one terrible, little fact.

Ranma thought that Ryoga was her boyfriend, and he didn't care.

Hell, he even tried to make Ryoga kiss her right there in front of him.

In fact he even seemed happy about the supposed pairing, she realized, as she thought of how cheerful he'd seemed back there in the ghost cave all of a sudden, and for no apparent reason.

The only thing she could cling to was the knowledge that Ranma and Akane still hadn't kissed.

But did that actually make things any better?

Akane was the one he was sitting next to right now and being all secretive with, not her.

When Akane and Ranma moved to get off at their bus stop and turned back to wave goodbye to her and grin at her in a conspiratorial kind of way because she was sitting there stupidly with Ryoga slumped against her and a red face, and there was just no way they could've interpreted that as anything but what they'd thought all along, she felt awful, awful, awful—

She felt sick, she felt exhausted, she hurt in so many places, her bruises, the scratches on her arms, but most of all, most of all, her head pounded with a kind of pain that had nothing to do with getting physically injured.

A bitter, vindictive little side of her attempted to convince her to leave the stupid jackass here and let him just ride around and around until he got himself lost good and well, but it was quickly disregarded.

What good would that do? And how was he even responsible for her pain?

When her bus stop finally came up, however, she found herself shaking Ryoga awake with just a little more force than what was strictly necessary.

"We're here! Get up!" She shouted, and felt herself almost flinch at the harsh sound of her own voice. Calm down, calm down, calm down…

"Wh— huh?" He blinked up at her blearily and she only got further annoyed.

"Look, I don't know where you're going, but this is my stop, anyway, so I'd appreciate it if you'd move!" She said, pushing at his arm.

"Oh, uh…sure…" He answered in a bewildered voice, scrambling to get out of the bus.

As the bus drove away, though, it was as if she lost all of her momentum. The other people getting off the bus were sending them curious looks, and she even recognized one or two of them as some of the regulars at Ucchan's, which only made it worse, and then there was this one little child who was even walking backwards on his way from the bus stop just so he'd be able to stare openly at them, and—

When an old man who was waiting for the bus gave them an especially startled stare, she'd had enough. "We fell down the stairs," Ukyo said in a voice dripping with false sweetness, batting her eyelashes at the man.

"Ukyo?" Ryoga stepped into her line of vision and frowned at her in a 'what-is-it-now?' kind of way. He was obviously not very happy about how she'd woken him up. "What's wrong?"

"I'm just sick of…" Ukyo didn't quite know what she was sick of since there were so many things to choose from, so her voice trailed off and she turned around and started walking in the direction of her restaurant. Unfortunately, he followed.

She knew he would, though. After all, where else could he go?

For a moment or two, she considered telling him the bad news in such a way that it would give him as great a shock as the one she'd received, and instantly she wondered why she was thinking all these petty little things—

The answer was easy, though. She was hurt and angry and was feeling sorry for herself, and that often made you want to dish out some hurt yourself. Anything was better than suffering alone.

"Ryoga," she began haltingly, trying to weigh her words. "On the bus, when…when you were asleep…well, I heard Ranma and Akane talking."

"About what?" Ryoga asked apprehensively. The tone of her voice made him feel like he should be bracing himself against something dreadful.

Ukyo shifted a little, suddenly feeling like she should've thought this more through first. "They…I mean, Ranma and Akane, they seem to think that we…uh…"

"What?" Ryoga tilted his head at her, trying to meet her downcast eyes.

"They think…they think we're together." She pressed out.

"Together…?" Ryoga repeated with a puzzled look.

Boys could be so dense! "They think we're boyfriend and girlfriend, all right? You and me?" Ukyo exclaimed then, her patience wearing thin. "And they just don't seem to care— in fact they're even happy about it!" Now that she'd finally gotten the words out, she just had to keep going. "That was what it was all about there in the ghost cave when Ranma was palling around with you all of a sudden and Akane was saying how happy she was for me!"

As she'd expected, Ryoga's expression seemed frozen, his frame stiff and his eyes staring.

"Well?" Ukyo demanded huffily.

Ryoga's lips moved soundlessly for a while as if he was trying to work something out, and then his shoulders loosened a bit and his mouth snapped shut. "I see." He said finally; now he knew why Ranma had tried to be so friendly towards him.

Ukyo blinked. She'd expected some screaming, some death threats aimed towards one Saotome Ranma and just some general destruction. What was this?

"What?" He asked, in a somewhat thick voice, when he noticed her gawking at him.

"Why aren't you slamming your fist through the nearest brick wall or pulling up telephone poles or something?" Ukyo asked carefully.

Ryoga flushed a bit at that, and Ukyo lifted both eyebrows in surprise when she saw that Ryoga had already reached out right behind him and given the pole of the bus stop sign a good ol' one-handed squeeze. As he drew his fingers away, they saw the shape of them imbedded in the metal of the pole itself.

"Sorry," Ryoga mumbled, clearing his throat.

"Let's go before anybody else notices," Ukyo whispered and lead him away.

When they'd been walking for about a minute, Ukyo couldn't stop herself, she simply had to ask. "What are you thinking?"

Ryoga didn't need to ask her about what. He drew a breath and closed his eyes for a second or two while he contemplated his answer.

I'm done. I'm just done. He thought to himself, feeling more resignation than the numbness he'd expected to feel. He didn't even feel depressed, not any more than the regular, ever-present depression; in fact he was just…exhausted.

This…is…it.

No further.

Today, he realized, he'd hit rock bottom. Was he really so pathetic that he'd consider spending the rest of his life in a ghost cave just to be with Akane? Was he really so desperate that he'd believe in that insane fantasy for even a second? Had he no self-respect any longer?

Maybe Ukyo was right. Maybe he really didn't know how far gone he could be at times. He felt ashamed when he thought of the fact that Ukyo and Ranma had both witnessed him dragging Akane all over the place, a stupid, zonked out expression on his face.

"Ryoga?" Ukyo asked curiously.

"I'm just…I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore." Ryoga said eventually.

"What?"

"It's hopeless…"

"Oh, come on, but you always say that—"

"No, it's not even hopeless, it's just stupid, not seeing them for what they—it's stupid…!"

Ukyo couldn't believe her ears. "So that's it? So you're just giving up?"

Ryoga shook his head. "No, I'm just being realistic. For once," He added darkly.

The sinking sense of awful, awful, awful that she'd felt on the bus came back with reinforcements. She began to feel panicky. Was she really going to have to give up…? No, she didn't want to know, she didn't want to think it, she didn't want to admit that they— that Akane and Ranma—

"Ryoga…!" She began desperately, begging him not to go on.

"Wake up, Ukyo," He said mercilessly, and she could feel herself slowly falling apart, piece by piece. Why did he have to say that? "If we actually need a plan, actually need to trick them into loving us...isn't that kind of hopeless? Isn't that kind of pathetic?"

"Pathetic" was really, really the last word I needed to hear right now, Ukyo thought as she winced.

"When I first came here," Ryoga said quietly, "I told Ranma I wanted to 'ruin his happiness'…but I'm not sure if I want to do that anymore…"

Ranma in the cave… grinning broadly and laughing happily, smashing his fist into his face, but in a half-hearted, good-natured, not-very-painful way, as if that was supposed to be the weird Ranma version of nudging a friend's shoulder or slapping them on the back in manly congratulations…

The truth was that, if forced to choose between the promise of a friendship with Ranma and the almost non-existent little spark of hope of a possibility of one day winning Akane over, Ryoga knew what he'd choose.

At first, Ryoga had been delighted whenever something bad happened to Ranma, as if it had been divine retribution for all the pain, humiliation and loneliness he himself had suffered, but at some point, he didn't quite know when, he'd started caring. It might've been during the whole Shiryuu Shoten Ha ordeal, he guessed, but probably earlier.

He didn't have to like it, but the fact was that Ryoga cared about what Ranma thought about him. He cared about whether Ranma was miserable or happy, whether he was hurt, whether he lived or died. Why else would he risk his life by leaping into a crack in the very Earth, which was just about to close around him, only so that Ranma wouldn't have to live out his life permanently cursed?

If he truly hated Ranma, he'd have let him be trapped in a body with the wrong gender forever, so that he could never marry Akane, never produce an heir to the Tendo dojo. Maybe then Ryoga would stand a chance with Akane. Somehow, though, it had never even occurred to him before later; it just hadn't even been an option to do that to him.

If he was brutally honest with himself, he had a feeling that Akane just might've married Ranma anyway and had them adopt a child. When Ranma had been as weak as a baby and rendered completely useless in taking over the Tendo dojo, she hadn't cared. She'd still wanted Ranma.

Because she did.

Love him.

She'd told P-chan as much on more than one occasion.

That was the difference between him and Ukyo and that was why they were reacting differently, Ryoga knew. He'd seen it coming a mile away; she probably hadn't. He'd witnessed more evidence of Ranma and Akane's feelings for each other that any of the other suitors. Ukyo, Shampoo, Kuno, Kodachi…nobody had seen as much as he'd seen.

"I never wanted to ruin his happiness," Ukyo said miserably, "I just wanted to get back at him and his father for what they did to me…but then I just wanted to make him happy."

"With you?" Ryoga asked.

Ukyo narrowed her eyes; she didn't like the tone he was using and what it implied. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Ryoga shrank back, bewildered; he'd been somewhat lost in his own ponderings and this attack had been very unexpected. "Wh-what? I just—"

"You mean to say I'd have made him unhappy?" She challenged, hands bunching into fists.

Ryoga bristled. "Yes! I mean, no—"

"What?" Ukyo exclaimed, outraged, grabbing his shirt and basically pulling him off of his feet.

Ryoga yelped. "Hey! I just— I mean you're saying you wanted him to be happy but you wanted him to be happy with you, right?"

"And?" She growled.

"And that's all." He promised.

Ukyo stared at him, then felt as if all her spirit had left her. Come to think of it, his tone had been pretty much perfectly normal, hadn't it? It hadn't really sounded like the typical making-fun-of-people-in-an-arrogant-way kind of voice. "Sorry," she mumbled, dropping him to his feet. "I'm kind of high strung."

"Yeah," Ryoga agreed, looking at her worriedly. "Really."

When they were nearing her shop, Ukyo looked up at him askance. "I still can't help but think that you should be acting more…y'know, depressed."

He shook his head slowly. "I…I guess I'm just…it just feels a little settling, I guess, to finally know." The last time he'd seen Ranma and Akane had been at Ryugenzawa, which had been…emotional, to say the least. Out there, he'd more or less already decided not to pursue Akane anymore…until Ukyo had shown up out of nowhere and dragged him along very enthusiastically, unbeknownst to her convincing him to give it another shot and throwing him into uncertainty yet again.

But know he finally knew.

"What?" She frowned.

"Before, it was very confusing. Sometimes something would happen to make me get my hopes up, but now I know." At Ryugenzawa, it had made him sad to know the truth, but at the same time it had felt like a relief.

"What?" She tried again, impatiently.

He swallowed. "She's…she's not interested in me that way."

Ukyo looked at him incredulously. "What, so now you're gonna be all noble and give up on her?"

Ryoga's brow knitted. "It's not about being 'noble'! I'm not Kuno, for goodness sake! It's about not being stupid about this for once!"

"What about all the time and effort you've spent on her?" Ukyo prodded.

"What are you trying to do here, Ukyo?" Ryoga asked, sighing irritably. "Make me feel as bad as you?"

Ukyo went very, very quiet at that, and he instantly regretted his words. Not because she looked as if she was going to hit him, but because she looked as if she wasn't going to. He was horrified to see that her eyes were shiny with unshed tears. He had never, ever seen her cry, and panic was rising in him like an inevitable tidal wave.

"U-Ukyo, look, I'm sorry, I…" He cast around for something to say. "Listen, I do feel bad, okay? Of course I do! I feel bitter and angry about the way I've been acting ever since this whole mess started! And of course I feel bitter about all the time I've wasted, but you're acting weird! Are you trying to make me feel even worse?"

Ukyo was silent for another moment before she sighed. "Maybe." She admitted in a tired voice.

"Gee, thanks." Ryoga muttered.

"Look," Ukyo said angrily, but there was a hitch to her voice. "I'm sorry, but I guess I'm just not feeling very considerate right now, okay? And it pisses me off that you're acting so calm!"

"I'm not calm." Ryoga objected.

"Oh, sure, you're awash on a sea of boiling rage!" Ukyo scoffed.

Ryoga sighed. "I'm gonna be mad, okay? I'm gonna be mad and depressed and everything one day soon when I sit down and think about it, but right now I'm just so sick of hearing my own complaints and I'm too tired to go off blasting a million Shi Shi Hokodans, all right? I don't have the energy. I've been walking and walking and I haven't slept for almost two days. I just wanna go home and sleep."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Okay." She went on, apparently considering something. "Where do you live?"

"Huh?"

When Ukyo had brought him to his house— which, it turned out, wasn't too far away from her own, only a couple of blocks or so— for some reason she hung around, hovering behind him on the steps as he went searching under the heavy, ceramic flowerpots next to the doorstep to find a spare set of keys which he very barely ever used.

The summer vacation, which had started only a few days ago, was stretching out in front of her, long and lonely, and she felt a rush of panic.

I need something to focus on, something to do, Ukyo thought frantically, and considered tomorrow's lunch rush with longing, but realized she needed something bigger, something out of the ordinary to do, something that would allow her to forget Ranma and Akane for a little while, just until she'd gotten her bearings back.

I need something to discipline myself with, something to make me stronger, something that'll make me feel like I'm actually doing something, like I'm changing, something that I'm doing just for me, because I want to do it, and not because—

She tried remembering some sort of hobby or something that she'd been interested in, once upon a time, but came up blank; all she'd ever done was to cook okonomiyaki…and she'd done martial arts.

Martial arts…

"Ryoga?"

"What?" He finally looked up, a little surprised to see that she was still there.

She took a breath, watching as he found his key and straightened up again. "Remember what you said about me not being able to fight without weapons?"

"…yes?" He asked apprehensively.

She leaned towards him, a determined, fierce expression in her eyes. "Teach me."

"Uh…" She had to have some sort of agenda. Why would she—

"Please. I'd be willing to pay you for it."

That got his attention. Hibiki Ryoga wasn't exactly known for wading around in cash. And Kuonji Ukyo never told him please. "Are you kidding?"

"Nope!" Ukyo shook her head.

He narrowed his eyes at her critically. "How much?"

"Well..." Ukyo began thoughtfully, "To begin with, I guess I could forget about the money you owe me for the train ticket and the bus ticket..."

Ryoga sighed in defeat. He couldn't possibly refuse her when she'd been kind enough to help him earlier, and she knew it. "All right."

That evening, even if he was so tired he'd gone to bed really early, Ryoga lay awake for about an hour because he couldn't stop thinking about Ranma.

Ranma still teased him like mad, still used his head as a stepping stone and still tricked him, but there had been a change at some point. He looked sort of happy whenever Ryoga turned up, provided it wasn't as P-chan and Akane was bringing him into her bedroom— that was the problem right there, really. It was what made Ranma bother him incessantly, what made him jab at him whenever he could.

Ranma was always lousy at expressing his feelings, but his feelings in that matter were pretty much written in capital letters across his forehead. The reason he acted like he did was because he seemed to feel just a little threatened by Ryoga, afraid of the guy that Akane kept on saying was so nice and so polite and so considerate, while she described Ranma as a rude jerk. Ranma always tried being Ryoga's friend, but forgot all about it whenever Akane was involved. Challenging his position as Akane's fiancée was never okay. It was as simple as that.

So...the logical conclusion would have to be...if there was no longer any competition for Akane's attention, Ranma would—

He already was. That was what he'd tried to do back there on the train, even if he was as ham-fisted as ever. It was hard to break out of the habit of two years, but Ranma was trying to be nicer to Ryoga. He'd looked so pleased in the ghost cave when he'd congratulated Ryoga on his and Ukyo's supposed relationship, because that eliminated him as a rival for Akane's heart, hence eliminating the reason why they could never be real friends.

Ranma wasn't "evil", despite whatever delusions Kuno had about him. Ranma had kept the secret of Ryoga's Jusenkyo curse for two years, not only refraining from telling anyone, but actually helping him keeping it a secret whenever he was in trouble. Ranma helped him with the Mark of the Gods, he'd helped him get home to his house more often than he could count, including when he thought Shirokuro was sick, and sometimes he got the impression that nothing delighted Ranma more than whenever he'd return to Nerima with a new technique, challenging him, keeping him on his toes.

Even if there were a lot of people more powerful than he that had challenged Ranma, Ryoga remained Ranma's greatest rival because he was the most persistent. He just kept on turning up, over and over, and he'd been on more adventures with Ranma than anybody else.

More or less, he was the only thing Ranma had that could be called a friend. Sure, he had his dad, the Tendos, his 'Ucchan'... but that was just different. Genma was his father, and completely untrustworthy, Soun was Genma's best buddy already, Nabiki was only after exploiting him for money and treated him more like a troublesome little brother in any case, Kasumi was more of a mother figure and too busy with the house and her family, and Akane was...well, she was much more than a friend to him, it was as simple as that. Ukyo was his childhood friend, but she'd joined the march of the fiancées, and any chance of a casual friendship ended that day. Besides, she was a girl. It was just different with girls.

You couldn't be all buddy-buddy with a girl, not like you could with a guy. Girls, even if they weren't even remotely interested in you in that way, demanded a little bit of special treatment. You couldn't slap a girl on the back. You couldn't comment on other girls in front of a girl. You couldn't go all out in a fight with a girl. And the list went on.

And those things, it seemed, was what Ryoga provided Ranma with. Like Ryoga, Ranma had spent a lot of his youth wandering from place to place, and even if he hadn't been lost and alone, it must've been very disruptive. As far as he knew, he and Ukyo had been the only friends from his past to come calling.

As for Mousse, he'd never attempted to be friends with Ranma. Ryoga thought of him as not a lot better than being on the level of thinking about Ranma that he himself had been when he'd first come to Nerima after Jusenkyo to seek his revenge. Mousse had calmed down slightly, but it seemed he had no wish to be Ranma's friend and still tried to get the better of him whenever he could. It was understandable, though; he'd been trying to get Shampoo to love him basically all his life and when Ranma had showed up, that impossible task had become even more impossible.

So...Ranma basically thought that he and Ukyo were dating now, which automatically made Ryoga a friend and not a rival, especially since he was dating his childhood friend, which made Ranma even happier. Ryoga knew that Ranma had never had a clue what to do about Ukyo. If he turned down Shampoo, at least she'd have her great grandmother and Mousse and the other Amazons, but what did Ukyo have? Besides, Shampoo wasn't exactly his friend, not like Ukyo was, so the truth was that Ranma seemed to care a little more about hurting Ukyo than Shampoo

And now, or at least so Ranma thought, the problems he'd had with Ryoga and Ukyo seemed to have fixed themselves for him. No wonder he was happy. It was a pity for him that all of his presumptions were wrong.

That doesn't have to mean anything, Ryoga thought. Even if I'm not Ukyo's boyfriend, can't I still be Ranma's friend?

The last few minutes before he fell asleep, he tried thinking of how exactly he was supposed to teach Ukyo tomorrow. What was she expecting from him, anyway? What exactly could he teach her that was worth her money? Well…he'd just have to see how good she was first, and then take it from there.

When he finally slept, he dreamt that he was trying to go to sleep on a big, fluffy cloud that had dropped from the sky, but that Ranma, Akane and Ukyo were running around the cloud, pelting each other with little plastic packets of bread, so that he only stayed wide awake and annoyed. All he asked for was some peace and quiet! Finally Ukyo got out a giant stick of Pocky and proceeded to beat him over the head with it, over and over.

Strangely enough, the brittle stick of biscuit didn't break. It was his head that did, in the end; just like a porcelain cup.

Ryoga snorted in his sleep and rolled over.

Ukyo couldn't sleep. The moment when she'd found out about Ranma's true feelings about her kept playing over and over in her mind like some sort of broken record.

The fact that her happiness— or what he'd assumed was her happiness, anyway— made Ranma happy had to count for something with her because it showed he cared, but the fact that he didn't necessarily want her to find happiness with him had hurt.

It didn't really matter who he loved anymore, because he didn't love her, not that way. He could end up with Akane, Shampoo, whoever it was— most probably Akane, though, Ukyo thought, smirking to herself; if she had the satisfaction of seeing him reject that bimbo, it would really be something at least, it would prove it hadn't been about who was the most feminine— but no matter who he ended up with, it wouldn't be her.

Of course, in her heart of hearts she'd seen it coming. She'd hung around Ranma long enough to realize that for all of her attempts she was getting nowhere with him. But it didn't hurt any less even if you knew it was going to happen before the nurse gave you the flu shot.

She had two choices now. There was always more than one choice.

She could either moon around, moping about him and bemoaning her fate and all the wasted days for a few months— incidentally wasting even more days— until she either felt better or did some crazy thing…or she could get her rear in gear and actually start doing something for herself.

Like Ryoga had told her, even though it wasn't exactly happy news, at least it felt sort of settling, finally knowing the truth about where she stood with Ranma. Now she didn't have to keep trying and trying because now she knew it was all completely futile, like ramming your head into a rubber wall in an attempt to make a dent in it. A rubber wall wouldn't notice you no matter how many times you pounded your skull against it, but a person most certainly should, and he hadn't noticed. It was his own fault.

These thoughts that were plaguing her weren't going to simply go away just because she wanted them to— she knew she was going to wonder about herself and him and the other girls for months, or if she was so unlucky, years to come. All of this wasn't something you just forgot.

What was going on in that head of his? What had she done or not done to make him not be interested in her in that way? From time to time, she knew she was going to ask herself questions like these, and she knew that she'd probably even cry sometimes.

Tomorrow wasn't going to be one of those days, however, she decided, even if tonight was. Tomorrow she was going to start shaping up, and it was nice and reassuring, knowing for certain that it wouldn't be for him. For once, it would be for nobody's sake but her own.

If you didn't have self respect, her father always said, you didn't have anything.

Ukyo knew she had to sleep if she was going to be in any kind of condition to go training tomorrow. Despite telling herself this, though, she couldn't sleep for another four hours. She was going to be in such a bad mood tomorrow.

Around four or five a.m., before she drifted asleep, Ukyo wondered if Ryoga actually knew how to teach martial arts or not.

Author's note: I had to make a correction in this chapter, where Ryoga searched through his backpack to find the keys to the front door of his house— I changed it to him looking for the key under some flowerpots instead, because he'd lost his backpack in the lake, so how was it even possible for him to still be carrying it? I'm a bubble head for overlooking that, once again only focusing on some sort of narrative point and forgetting all about logic.

Thanks to O.T. Hill for noticing.

I guess I wanted a slightly less mature and more bickering Ryoga/Ukyo this time around. Maturity is reserved for Omiyage. ;)