CHAPTER ELEVEN: CONSEQUENTIALITY AND THE SHADOWS BETWEEN WORLDS

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

I need to state upfront that I have absolutely nothing against people who study business or work in that field. My brother is actually among them :)

The views of the business world expressed in this chapter are entirely Nabiki's own and no one else's.

Thanks for reading.

- KL

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You look like shit, Kiki."

Nabiki laughed despite herself. True to form, Kozue was probably the only person in the world brazen enough to say such things to her face. The Kansai girl had always had a habit of saying the most annoying things at the most irritating of times.

Ranma definitely would not have dared.

Even Akane probably would not have either.

"Fine way to greet a girl on a Sunday morning. I thought we were here to talk business."

"Cut the shit, Kiki. You know better."

Kozue was right. Nabiki did know better. This was going to be one of those sessions where the crazy Kansai girl wanted to work on her pretty Heathen's little Anglo-Japanese head. All the more reason Nabiki found herself annoyed that she had picked up Kozue's call.

Business was the best it had ever been. There was nothing to talk about in that regard. They had just released their best quarterly figures ever to their investors the other day — the day the hospital had called asking her to consider letting Ranma die.

"For the record, I never asked for anything from you for myself, and I'm not going to start now."

"Damn you, Kiki! Of course not! I guarantee you there's no charity for you here."

"I get that. You're too crude for me to even conceive of equating you with charity."

Kozue raised her hands, visibly wanting to strangle her friend before seeming to remember herself. Pausing to compose herself with a deep breath, she eventually stepped forward to brush aside a lock of hair that had come over Nabiki's eyes.

"All kidding aside, Kiki, whether you like it or not, I miss your smirk, and I'm worried about you."

Nabiki managed a laugh. "I'm smirking at at the shit you're saying right now."

Kozue give a dismissive wave, the seriousness of her expression unwavering. "That's plastic shit, Kiki. We both know it. You've barely even taken a day for yourself since he went in."

"I'm fine. Work keeps me grounded."

"Are you really fine?"

"I — "

"Have the worst case of acrophobia. Yet, there you were on the roof the other night, dangling your feet over the edge like a madwoman."

"Kozue — "

"I saw the security footage. Own it, Kiki. You had something in your head."

Damn Kozue. Probably the only person left now who really knew or understood anything about her. Nabiki shook her head as she sank back in her chair and sighed, drained and defeated.

"Don't worry. Would've been too messy. Besides, he still needs me to keep the fucking vultures and parasites away at the hospital. They're ready to let him die."

"Kiki…."

Sors immanis et inanis. Dear little Heathen. Am I the reason?

"You don't deserve this. Loving others is not a crime."

Nabiki gave her best friend a sad, forlorn chuckle. "Apparently, it is for me."

All of that blood. Its warm, sticky feel and thick, metallic smell. In her hair, her hands, her clothes — everywhere.

It is for me….

# # # # #

Ever since their years at Komaba, Nabiki and Kozue had been an inseparable pair.

No one who knew them found it surprising that they became roommates after moving to Hongo (1). Truthfully, Nabiki doubted she could have really stood living with anyone else. Kozue was not stupid. She was neat, orderly, and prone to the most bombastically colorful and amusing tirades, especially when angry or stressed. Watching and listening to the Kansai Bomb, as people within their circle came to call Kozue, going off was great fun, as long as you were not the target of course.

Nabiki smiled, unable to forget the first time she introduced Ranma and Kozue to one another all those years ago.

"I have to warn you. She can be a little rough around the edges."

"Meh. Don't sound like anything I ain't seen before," he said, glancing pointedly at her with that rakish, insufferably cocky grin of his.

"Famous last words, my dear Saotome," she delighted in telling him. "Famous last words."

Indeed, Kozue had led off by ignoring his offer of a handshake, instead launching directly without preamble into a rapid-fire game of twenty-one questions. To his credit, Ranma actually comported himself with the coolness befitting of a genuine heir to an ancient school of martial arts. A weaker soul would have shriveled under Ishikawa's eagle-eyed gaze and the raw weight of her larger-than-life personality.

"Favorite sport."

"Running."

"Favorite color."

"Blue."

"Favorite food."

"Sunny side up eggs."

"And drink."

"Shitty canned beer from a vending machine."

"Hey wait a minute! Ranma…!"

"Last book our pretty little Anglo-Japanese Heathen here has read and actually enjoyed."

"Kawaguchi's 'Before the Coffee Gets Cold'."

"Actually — "

"Butt out, Kiki! This is between me and your lover boy here. Favorite artist and works!"

"Kandinsky, I'm Blau, and Lyrical: Man on a Horse."

"Favorite philosopher."

"Nietzche."

"Favorite foreign author and novel."

"Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment."

"Greatest pet peeves."

"Unconscious biases, apathetic have-alls, and believers in God's benevolent good will."

Kozue actually paused to look aside at Nabiki, clearly impressed. "Not bad. You may actually do for my dear, beloved Heathen after all!"

Ranma laughed. "I try. On pain o' death usually."

Both Nabiki and Kozue laughed knowingly.

"Ya actually got any hard questions?"

"Well, now…. You're an artist too, right?"

"Tryin' ta be."

Nabiki had stomped impatiently on his foot. False modesty would never suit Ranma. In fact, she found it downright sad to see, like a cheap seersucker suit on a used car salesman.

"Ouch!"

"Own what you fucking are, Saotome! You're hopeless pretending to be any other way."

"Fine! Ya, I am, in more ways than one."

"Good! Then maybe you can explain to me why a genius like our dear Heathen here has so willingly put her art aside for the law…."

It came from one of the last pearls her mother gave her about how the world worked, a few weeks before Akiko died. Her mother had always been the greatest fan of Nabiki's art, the staunchest advocate for her daughter's creative passions and her uncanny Kandinsky-esque "knack for distilling the world down to the essence of things." Akiko had also been the first to tell her daughter that the quickest way to kill off artistic those passions would be to try and make a living out of them. Passions should remain as cherished hobbies.

You're different from everyone else, Na-chan, from your sisters even. Be wise and pragmatic with how you use your gifts. Whatever you do, don't get trapped living in the shadows between worlds….

Her mother obviously had some regrets, though Akiko never actually talked about what those regrets were. Nabiki had always had her suspicions. Akiko did have her own fair share of creations — beautiful sketches, paintings, writings — but which she never really talked about or showed to anyone other than Nabiki and her sisters. Even then, Akiko was always discerningly selective and sparing about the things she shared with her own children.

Coming from anyone else, Akiko's words about becoming an artist would have meant nothing to Nabiki.

Coming from Akiko, Nabiki had been crushed.

You don't think I'm good enough….

Nabiki could still remember the way Akiko had drawn her teary-eyed daughter close, reassuring her that she had misunderstood. She was indisputably gifted, more than most anyone around her. Akiko knew it, could never doubt her own daughter. No slip of the tongue or anything anyone else might ever say or think could change the fact of what she was.

Akiko's admonition had no relation to being good at things or otherwise or even whether a person should keep or forfeit their passions or any of the secrets in their heart. Nothing to do with any of that. Akiko had been talking about something else entirely.

Consequentiality.

It became a sort of sutra mantra for her after her mother died. The actionable corollary to seeing and hearing things for what they were and not what she was told they were. The torch of reason that would keep her on the narrow, chosen path of Destiny threading through and around the shadows between worlds, including those of the haves and have-nots. The essential root of the Machiavellian pragmatic minimalism that had defined all of her major life choices from that point onward.

The subjects she chose for her art.

The clothes she wore and the clean and simple way she styled her hair.

The surprisingly few personal possessions she actually chose to have, relative to what she generally led people to believe.

Her natural aptitude for harnessing the power of people's motivations, particularly through their pocketbooks, to advance her agendas.

The part-time job she took as an usher at Suntory Hall just after moving from Komaba to Hongo (2).

Most of all, the major she chose when she arrived at Hongo.

A business degree?

Fuck, she would have shot herself in the face before debasing herself to step into the obscene gilded halls of Have-All Central. The truth was that Nabiki despised business people, regarded them as the most toxic type of fake and fraud, pathetic open books with entirely superficial motivations, and barely human. They were all smooth talkers whose mouths dribbled with bullshit, but never actually had any idea what the fuck they were really selling, so deluded by their own sweet-sounding words and the general stupidity of most people that they actually believed in the illusion of their own greatness. All of them believed they were the next Bezos, Musk, or Jobs. Yet, none of them could be considered worthy of licking the shit off of a puppy's foot.

This furious disdain had been one of her more closely guarded personal secrets — right up there with fried chicken and canned beers. Out of the sheer depths of her hate for them all, she mockingly masqueraded as someone aspiring to be one of them.

A wolf seeking to burn another wolf alive had the best chance of doing so when disguised in sheep's clothing. Fundamentally, little distinguished those creatures from the ones who had taken turns laughing at her and pitying her in that year when she had lost her voice (3). No one would be allowed to hurt her like that ever again. They would all pay.

As for actual skills and assets, maths — numbers, figures, stochastic calculus even — had always been easy for her; she had native bilingual fluency in Japanese in English; boys and men already had their eyes on her; and she already knew how to be charismatic and eloquent when she wanted to be. She knew full well, however, that a brain, beauty, and charm alone would hardly be sufficient to carry her to the summit of greatness. Whatever the price, she needed to get there in order to have the power to remake the world as it should be, right all of its wrongs and ills.

So she chose to study law, confident that Akiko would have approved. Other than Ranma and Kozue, most everyone else had been surprised, even Akane. Nabiki gleefully delighted in that reaction, taking it as a compliment of just how well she had engineered her own reputation, biding the time since she lost her mother for the opportunity to remake the world as it should be.

Again, she found herself assured by the comforting order and purpose that her mother's guiding principle had unfailingly brought to her life. To dominate and crush all the uncaring have-alls of the world, rid it of their fucking carcasses, she needed to know and understand the rule book itself that the fuckers used to tip the scales in their favor. Only then could she truly become the wolf in sheep's clothing she needed to be in order to get close enough to burn them all alive.

By that time, Ranma had a fairly good sense of her misanthropic disdain for people who had things, even if he still had not realized yet how far and deep the wounds at root of these feelings cut. Of all people, she had fretted about whether or not he thought that she was crazy — which she was not.

Ya ain't nice — but ya ain't crazy…. (3)

Even to him, she had not yet been able to trust herself to fully reveal the raw extent of her secret rage and fury. Sure it sounded Nietzschean, but so what. Nietzsche had the right general idea about how to make the world a better place, but he was the crazy one, not her.

She. Was. Not. Crazy.

Regardless, to be clear, she had absolutely nothing against others brave enough to follow their artistic passions. She was just not one of those people. Not like Ranma or Akane.

In the months after they first got together, he began taking short-term contract jobs doing small adds and other odd things whenever he was not teaching at a gym or working at some coffee shop (she had made him immediately quit the one in Suginami as a condition of their budding relationship). Nabiki had to admit that he actually had an eye for things and a knack for putting stories together, probably better than even her own. Thus, when he decided to enroll in animation and illustration classes at Asagaya, Nabiki enthusiastically supported his choice — provided of course that he had nothing to do with that Miyuki bimbo who had tried to kill her.

For the first time since her mother died, Nabiki was happy. Every question in her world really could be answered, every dilemma resolved by her devotion to the sutra mantra her mother had given her. Every wise choice, every success.

Everything except the things lurking in the siloed shadows between worlds.

The things that actually ended up mattering.

# # # # #

Nabiki blinked as she became aware of Kozue's voice drawing her back to the present. Her sister was still gone. She had still been unable to keep her promises. Her husband was still in a coma and on the verge of death.

"Maybe you should go away for a few days. I'll check up on him regularly, hold the fort down no problem. No one will do anything stupid while you're away. I promise."

Nabiki gave Kozue something between a snort and a laugh.

"I'm serious. Go see your sister. It's been a while, right? I think talking with her would do you some good."

"Doctor's orders?"

Kozue, another one who had put her art aside for a pragmatic vocation, smirked at Nabiki's snide backhand. She had the title and credentials of a physician — which was all that mattered from the perspective of the business — but had never actually practiced after completing her training. Despite that, the Kansai woman still often had some uncannily good therapeutic insights about people. She was, as she put it, unencumbered by experience.

"Tell her what's been going on, how you feel, what you're thinking."

"And then what?"

"You come back with an answer the way you always do, ready to fight like Hell."

Soon after, Nabiki found herself shooting Westbound on the Chuo Expressway through Yamanashi. The sky above was clear and blue, and the carriageway was surprisingly empty, even for a Sunday. The G20 BMW's three-liter in-line six replied with a throaty growl as she buried her foot into the M-styled, rubber-studded, stainless steel accelerator. A ferocious surge of torque slammed her back into her seat as the ZF eight-speed, locked into sport mode, downshifted eagerly from seventh to fourth.

She was grateful that she had learned how to drive in the year after Todai that she had spent in New Haven for her LL.M. There was no way in Hell that she would ever take the train from Tokyo to Fuji. She simply hated trains, a fact of which she made no secret. Most people assumed it was because she considered riding them beneath her status. This was not true, though continuing to let people think as they were inclined served her purposes.

It was just that every time she thought of trains, she still would invariably see and smell the blood all over again. That warm, sticky feel and the thick, metallic smell. In her hair, her hands, her clothes — everywhere.

Mt. Fuji finally emerged over the horizon after another hour or so, beckoning with its snow-capped peak gleaming brilliantly in the sun.

Just then, Ed Sheeran's latest new song began streaming over the Bimmer's twelve-speaker Harmon Kardon sound system. He sang about dancing alone in a bar one night with his eyes closed, drowning out his grief over his best friend's death with alcohol and denial.

A bone-chilled shiver shot down Nabiki's spine as she listened. She locked the track into a repeat loop, unable to get the words out of her head. He seemed to be commiserating directly with her about the very ghosts that had drawn her out here. If only she had spoken to Akane first, everything would have been different. Very, very different.

You're wrong. I don't hate you for being the one he chose. I hate you for not trusting me enough to tell me….

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CHAPTER NOTES:

(1) Todai is the only University in Japan where undergraduates have two years of a general curriculum before choosing a specialized field of study. The general curriculum is taught at the Komaba Campus. Most students move to the main Hong campus after for their specialized studies.

(2) Cross-reference to the opening section of Chapter 1.

(3) Cross-reference to the initial mention in Chapter 3 of Nabiki's psychosomatic mutism in the aftermath of her mother's death.

(4) Cross-references to the scene in Chapter 7 by the canal in Naka-Meguro.