CHAPTER TWELVE: EVEN WITH MY EYES CLOSED
Disclaimer: References to "The Black Swan" are intended for entertainment only. I am not making any profit from the references. All rights to belong to Cross Creek Pictures.
# # # # #
Obumbrata et velata, michi quoque niteris…
I'm not Akane.
Naw. You're angrier, more dangerous.
Even with my eyes closed, the blood and the scars are always there.
They both knew what Kozue meant by urging Nabiki to come here to Fuji, maybe the only remaining hallowed ground in which she could believe. Ranma was the only other person who knew who and what exactly Nabiki had collected on this mountain over the years. She had been unable to think of any other place safe enough for these dirty secrets, unjustly marginalised bits of humanity, to be set free. Here, they could finally mingle again with the Earth, wind, and sky from which they came.
She still remembered the first time she came here, a solitary hike she made to reward herself after she learned of her admission to Todai. She had only been eighteen at the time. The moment she found herself stand atop the world for the first time flashed again before her mind's eye as if it had only been yesterday.
How giddy and starstruck she had been. The furious beating of her own heart reverberating triumphantly against her chest. The fresh, clean feel of the cool morning breeze beating against her cheeks and whipping wildly through her hair. The mighty pressure cooker of chaos that was Tokyo reduced to nothing more than a specter of insignificance hanging at the horizon's edge.
Nabiki wished so badly that she could be stupid like that all over again. Too young and naive to appreciate the freedom of not having any real fears or anything to lose. Still able even to ride on trains. Things now were so different from anything her younger self could ever have imagined. With a sad sigh, she allowed her thoughts to tumble back into the present.
As usual, she planned to ascend via a bullet run — a non-stop trek starting in the late afternoon so that she would reach the crater just before sunrise. She would do so via the Gotenba Trail, by far the most challenging and dramatic ascent of the four summit routes on Fuji. The trail had a total elevation gain just shy of 2400 meters and was known for its rugged terrain and scarcity of rest stations. However, Gotenba was also by far the prettiest and most scenic of all the routes, mostly because of how much less touched by the filth of human hands it remained. However Nabiki did so, she had to be at the summit by sunrise.
Yet, by the time Nabiki parked her car and made her way to the 5th station at the trailhead, she could finally feel the cumulative toll of her days of sleep deprivation. She decided to rent one of the small mountain hut rooms and lie down for a while. Her timing was off anyway with at least a good five or six hours to pass before she should start her climb. Besides, she had no desire to end up puking her guts out from altitude sickness. She could do too without the humiliating prospect of Ranma Saotome's wife needing to call for a flashy Medevac in the middle of the night.
She did not have a reservation, but between her charisma, good looks, and a skillfully inserted offer to pay at least four times the usual price, she managed to charm her way in on a last minute cancellation. As her body touched down on the futon and she drew the covers over herself in the darkness, the decoupling of her senses from reality finally wrapped itself around her mind like a warm blanket on a cool night. The ghosts of her memories gathered around her in the hypnogogic mist, old friends and loved ones congregating by the campfire to roast marshmallows and reminisce about the secrets of better days past. Because of Nabiki Saotome, they were all here now mingling with her in the darkness of her fading consciousness.
Her mother with her bold, luminescent eyes and warm, loving embrace concealing the secret torment of her dreams and caged-bird yearnings. Secrets of her own which she had shared with Nabiki through art, philosophy, literature, and their other shared passions.
Kumi with her little, doll-like body dancing around in the fog of Nabiki's memories, her gleeful, smiling countenance looking up with that eternal yearning for water shining in her eyes. The innocent, unknowing look she almost certainly gave her killers before they slaughtered her for sport like an animal.
Akane with her broken heart full of eternal good intentions who still came to protect her . Her spilled blood — warm and sticky, thick and metallic — all over Nabiki's hair, hands, and clothes as she had held her sister close in her arms.
Promise you'll be happy, that you'll take care of him, Oneechan. I love you….
Indeed, Nabiki once really had believed that she could rely on secrets to keep herself and the people she cared about from getting hurt. She had never actually been a person who created or kept secrets by design, much less even someone who even liked holding onto them. Simply, when a person had to live without having a voice, everything became a secret by default anyway. To survive, she had learned how to act as a proactive observer of circumstance, pragmatism dictating as always what she chose and when to share with others.
Even in her naivete at the age of twenty-one, keeping her evolving relationship with Ranma Saotome a secret had never really been Nabiki's plan. She would have been proud to let everyone see her handsome boyfriend by her side, the martial arts prodigy and clever, aspiring manga artist who had swept her off her feet. However, the series of events that followed in the months after their confessions at Suginami kept her quiet. If only Nabiki had been a better sister, a stronger person brave and wise enough to know better, maybe things could have been different.
# # # # #
NINE YEARS AGO
Akane's first year at Tisch proved more difficult than she, or even Nabiki, imagined it would be. Unlike Nabiki, her sister had always been the popular one at Furinkan, exceptional at disarming others and making friends. The other kids at Tisch, however, were not there to make friends, especially with some exotic Japanese upstart who showed up without warning speaking English like a Brit.
"You remember that Natalie Portman movie for which she got an Academy (1)?" Akane asked over the phone one day.
"Yeah?"
"It's kinda like that."
Nabiki remembered the story involving something about a lecherous instructor, a descent toward madness propelled by hedonistic, drug-stimulated appetites, and a dark, shameless foil of a rival. Even as thick as Nabiki's skin was, imagining her sister in such a world made even her wince. "So you're the lead and you're thinking about hurting yourself…?!" she ventured nervously.
Akane laughed. Hearing that brought Nabiki a sense of relief. "Okay, maybe not quite the best analogy. I am the lead, but no drugs, psychosis, or girl-girl… stuff."
"I'm glad. Lecherous instructors?"
"No, none of those either, but there are more perverts with wandering eyes around New York than there ever were in Tokyo."
"You sure it's not just that literal American directness thing?"
"No."
Nabiki had been tempted to tease Akane and ask if she had gone out on dates with anyone, but then thought better of the question. She worried about pouring salt on open wounds. No doubt guys in America would be as taken with her sister as they had been in Japan. Yet, as miserable as Akane described herself, Nabiki doubted her sister had taken anyone up on their interest. In more ways than one, that sort of thing would be the last thing Akane needed right now. They were also circling a little close too to the elephant in the room between them.
"Try not to hit anyone there," Nabiki eventually said, playing it safe. "I know you're a martial artist, but you know what they say about Americans with their guns and lawyers."
"Would you defend me?"
"If you can wait a few years, sure."
"Family rate?"
"For you, pro bono."
The two sisters shared a laugh before Akane remembered herself, turning sullen and soft-spoken once again.
"It's really lonely here though, Oneechan," she admitted. "Everyone's so cutthroat, just really blood-thirsty competitive. No one ever waits for you to take your turn. Doesn't even matter if I can speak their language. They just want to see you fall so they can take your place."
Nabiki knew what her sister meant, but the things Akane described were hardly unique to her context. The world was run by people eager to see others fall so they could take your place. All of those fucking uncaring "have-alls" again.
Of course, Nabiki kept these thoughts to herself, not wanting to hijack the discussion with her own tirade. "Self-discovery is a lonely journey," she agreed evenly.
"Yeah, it is. To be honest, I… I called because I wanted to talk to you about some strange thoughts in my head lately."
"What kind of thoughts?"
"Am I the reason?"
"The reason…?"
"For all the things that've happened to us since we lost Mom. I feel like all I've done is bring unhappiness to everyone. Dad. Kasumi. You especially."
"Me?" Nabiki asked in bewildered incredulity. "Of all people, you — "
"I still remember what you told me that time Ranma and I ruined your phone and your shoulder," Akane said, soft sobs audible now over the line. "You said that other than incidentally being my sister, you barely register to me and everyone else. You thought you don't matter to me."
"I was angry when I said that. You shouldn't take me so seriously all the time."
"O-okay. You know though that you do matter to me, Oneechan, right? More than anyone. The way you stood up to Dad and Kasumi for me when I said I needed to leave, all the things they've said and done to you for doing that. I'm sorry. It's my fault."
"Don't be ridiculous. When have I ever given a shit about what Dad says. You haven't done anything wrong."
"Oneechan, I — "
"You remember when I lost my voice, right?"
"Y-yes. Yes, I do. I… I've been thinking about that time a lot too lately. If I'd talked to you more just right after Mom died, maybe that wouldn't have happened to you. Maybe that's my fault too."
Nabiki struggled to tamp down on her own emotions. Exasperation. Incredulity. Unresolved anger, even an aching need still for validation from people whose opinions did not matter. She had to remain in the middle road between objectivity and empathy.
"When I lost my voice, you were the only one around me who didn't change, didn't treat me differently. You have no idea what that meant. That and Mom made me promise to look after you."
At some point, Akane's dreams and ambitions had evolved almost into personal crusades for Nabiki too. Because Akane also was all that Nabiki had left of their Mom. She could not allow Akane to fail — no matter the cost. Just as Akane had not changed when she lost her voice, she alone had to stand by her sister, as their mother would have wanted.
Helping Akane get out of Japan, standing up to their father had been the least Nabiki thought she could do. Akane did not owe her anything. Maybe she was even the only living person in the world whom Nabiki would place in that category. She told Akane she should run with that fact and let things be.
"You don't understand, Oneechan. Mom…. I never told you, but she made me promise to look after you too. All I've given you are reasons to worry or be unhappy."
Mom….
Nabiki wanted to shout at Akane how wrong she was in her thinking. About how much everything had changed since her exile from the family home, the day when Ranma had comforted her by the canal in Naka-Meguro. How free and happy she finally felt about her life and the world around her despite all that had happened since their mother's death.
Maybe things had fallen into place even because of all that shit and the stronger and wiser person those things made out of her. Their father's issues about gender roles and his inability to live in the modern world were his problem and his alone. Likewise, generally well intentioned as Nabiki still believed Kasumi to be, their older sister's simple-mindedness and lack of ambition were her own issues.
As for Nabiki herself, beyond Todai and her other achievements, she could feel the admission about her relationship with Ranma hanging by a thread at the tip of her tongue. Her sister should know the truth; they would find a way to deal with the fallout together after.
Akane, however, kept going before Nabiki could express any of her thoughts. Her sister soliloquized about how things might have been if she had never been born. How much simpler and happier life might have been for Nabiki and everyone else in the family. Ranma too. His life was put on hold for so long because she could not figure out the difference between what she wanted and what she needed.
"I know I should've let him go sooner, but if I… if only I could've been strong enough to be with him…."
Nabiki shuddered as the ramifications of her own conceit struck her. She understood. She had come too close to stumbling over the Rubicon with talk about Ranma. She could not talk about him, not even as a nameless abstraction. Aside from assuring Akane of her own well-being, the details of her own life were secondary, even irrelevant. Now was not the time to be daydreaming about fairytales in which they could all eat their cake and still have it after.
Her intuition that day in Suginami had been right all along. Her sister needed all the help she could get with far bigger problems. Akane had called because she wanted that help. Tamping down on the harsh and brittle iciness of her own fear, Nabiki knew what she had to do.
"Akane, I know I just asked, but I have to ask again. I hope you'll answer me honestly the way Mom would want. Are you thinking about hurting yourself?"
Akane replied with a mirthless snort of laughter. "Don't worry, Oneechan. Exiting the stage at this point would be too easy, right? It won't undo anything that's already happened. The only reason to walk now would be because I'm admitting I'm too weak for the pain, which I'm not. I'm still a martial artist. I'll find a way (2)."
For now, Nabiki could live with that answer, but only if it were true. She had to be sure. "Promise me, Akane. On your honor."
"I do."
"Good. Promise me something else."
"Yes?"
"Call me any time you need someone to talk to. Night or day, it doesn't matter. In return, I promise I'll always be there to listen to what you have to say. You're not alone."
"I, Oneechan, you don't — "
"Promise, Akane. If you really mean what you say about not wanting me to worry or be unhappy, promise me. Or else I'm hopping on the next plane I can get over there to kick your ass, and you know that I don't need to know martial arts to do that."
"I… Oneechan…."
"Promise me, Goddammit! On our mother's grave, fucking swear it, Akane!"
Akane relented, cowed by Nabiki's uncharacteristic outburst of unrestrained fury. Nabiki herself could hardly recognize her own voice as she heard herself.
"I promise," she managed meekly. "On… on Mom's grave, I promise."
Nabiki wanted to apologize for being rough, but she did not. Doing so would probably come across as little more than a patronising platitude. She had to do whatever it took. Still, having been down her own unspoken road of soul searching before, she empathized probably more than anyone else with how her sister felt. Nabiki had just never told anyone about it nor would she do so now. She did concede to Akane that there could be no beauty without pain. Learning new things always hurt.
"Whether it's a new kata or move in the Art, about living or even who you really are, that's how it always begins. I promise though that things'll get better. When the pain stops, then you know you've learned something."
# # # # #
For a long time after Akane ended the call, Nabiki had sat in the darkness thinking in numb silence. Recalling herself even sounding like an optimist annoyed her. It was chintzy and immature. Her brave front had just been an act. She knew that Akane's sense of honor would buy them some time, but Nabiki still felt incredibly anxious and worried. In her own struggles with her own demons, Nabiki had never wavered once in her faith in her destined exceptionalism. Akane, on the other hand, did not have that same core of resolve.
Nabiki did not mean to keep secrets from Ranma either. She wanted to talk to him, but she had no idea how to approach him. She had little experience putting these sorts of things into words. After all, after her mother died, no one had been around to listen, except for Akane, who had been too young then and who now obviously had no capacity to help her in the present.
All the more, the guilt she began to feel being around him further precluded discussing matters about Akane. Nabiki knew she was being irrational. He had already assuaged her conscience that he and Akane were just not meant to be.
Even though Ranma would never be the outwardly emotive type with grand shows of affection, he had his way of making clear to her that he continued to notice her and that she mattered to him. Enduring Kozue's interrogation and the ease with which the answers to her friend's questions rolled off his tongue. Showing up and wordlessly matching her pace when she went on morning runs. Nagging her to remember to eat and sleep as she juggled her classes, the job at Suntory Hall, and running to Setagaya and the Komei School as best she could manage.
Still, something else bothered Nabiki, haunted her even. She could not name or understand it at first. Only when she asked Ranma to help her brush up on some old basics of self defense because of a recent string of assaults on co-Eds in the Ueno neighborhood did she finally realize what it was.
The way he instructed her had been the pivotal clue. She well knew that he had never once touched Akane, despite all of her tireless, hollow protests about him being a pervert — not even when they sparred. For that matter, he never touched any of the other girls either who used to chase him back when they had all still been in the shit hole of her Nerima childhood.
With her, however, he was physical without hesitation. He taught her how to block by throwing actual punches at her, landing more than a few that left light bruises on her arms. He showed her how to break an assailant's hold by simulating actual choke holds. When she asked him to teach her how to land from a fall, her threw her onto the mat on her ass repeatedly.
Outwardly, she kept her best poker face in place, reciprocating the cool kaizen (3) of his bushido objectivity. There was no need for her to say anything. It would only break the spell.
Inside, however, the racing of her heart would thunder in her ears as the intoxicating thrill of his sweet cedar and pinewood scent washed over her. The fire of his touch would send shivers of exhilaration up her spine. Despite the one thing he had still not done for her in their time together, she knew exactly what he was trying to say.
He respected her. Above all others, really and truly.
With that realisation, a renewed resolve arose within her to finally take it from him, that which somehow, even after Suginami, they had still not allowed this for themselves. She had been patient, agreeing in this matter to one of the few conservative aspects of traditional Japanese female restraint that she had allowed herself as a woman, but by now the issue was becoming more than a little ridiculous. The opportunity arose one Friday evening when he had gotten them in after hours at one of the gyms where he taught classes. They were working on her falls again.
A sudden, naughty inspiration struck her as he took up the fabric on the front of her gi to throw her. Deviating from the routine they had discussed beforehand, she snatched up fistfuls of his own shirt in her hands, causing them both to fall instead. His eyes widened with obvious surprise, but he adapted and followed through exactly as she predicted he would. In the blink of an eye, he rolled over so that he would end up underneath rather than crush her with his own weight.
"Whaddaya do that for?!" he hissed with obvious irritation.
"You're a smart boy. What does it look like?" she replied huskily in his ear, insistently pressing her cheek firmly against his as she did.
"I…. "
"Kiss me, Saotome."
"Nabiki…!"
"Kiss. Me."
It was the first time their lips ever touched. She thought she understood what she had asked for. She was wrong.
The world exploded feverishly in a fiery blaze of heat and light. He cupped her face between his hands, greedily crushed his lips against hers, and she began to drink from the deliciously wet and spicy sweetness of his tongue. He was so very solid and warm – more alive than she could have fathomed for any living being.
The very essence of her world tilted irrevocably on its axis now. Feverish want revealed itself for the indisputable need it actually was. Any remains doubts vanished, leaving only an irrevocable, immutable living certainty as primordial and fundamental as water, heat, and light. In that hellacious darkness of filthy human reality emerged the first tangible hint of the potential existence of Heaven and Paradise she had ever seen in her life.
Maybe no grand "L-word" had passed between them nor had she yet shown him the salmon-colored scar throbbing again now over her left breast or even allowed him inside her. They had so many other things still to say and and share, but none of that actually mattered any more in the grand design laid out by Fate and Destiny. Nabiki Tendou had truly, incontrovertibly, irrevocably fallen for a man, and Ranma Saotome really was that man.
In horror, she finally understood what really had been bothering her. The malevolent ease with each these raw feelings had eluded her intellect and slipped past the lifetime's worth of pragmatic cynicism and outward stoicism — that which she had embraced so fervently in order to always remain in control, to never be hurt again — terrified her. Already, she had slipped far past that point where vague, premonitory senses of being hunted down by the dangerous and diabolically unnatural had any meaning.
Sors immanis et inanis.
I'm not gonna hurt ya. I promise.
Vanu salus, semper dissolubilis.
Can we give ourselves a chance?
Such a stupid, pointless question, though Nabiki conceded it had to be asked. In reality, however, she had no more say in this matter than she did about if she wanted her voice or even if her mother had lived or died. Heathen or whatever kind of independent free spirit she fancied herself, she was helplessly along for the ride now, her Destiny already long ago swept up in the inescapable tides of the sea of Fate. Free will had merely been an illusion, even on that first early morning in Suginami. The only real choice she had ever had was if she would abide with her eyes closed or otherwise.
# # # # #
CHAPTER NOTES:
(1) "The Black Swan," a 2010 psychological horror film directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. Loosely inspired by a Dostoyevsky novel, the story is set in New York and chronicles the brutal rivalry between two ballerinas competing for lead roles in a production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake". Portman's character, overwhelmed by a feeling of immense pressure when she finds herself competing for the role, loses her tenuous grip on reality and descends into madness.
(2) Akane means what she says here. She's may be depressed, but is not suicidal.
(3) Kaizen" is a Japanese operative philosophy generally translating as "change for the better" or "continuous improvement." Colloquially, the term was first popularized by a groundbreaking 1986 book on business competitiveness by the famous Japanese organizational theorist Masaki Imai. In practice, "kaizen" is widely applied in Japan not just in business, but many other contexts including medicine, psychotherapy, life coaching, government, manufacturing, and banking.