CHAPTER SEVEN: BLUE, RED, AND BLACK
"Im Blau," on loan from the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, hung before Nabiki on a wall in one of the feature galleries at the National Museum of Modern Art in Chiyoda. Blue had always been her favorite color — cool and unrepentantly fundamental. Few other paintings appealed to her love of this color as much as "Im Blau" with its powerful, unapologetic juxtaposition of it against red and black. Kandinsky somehow succeeded in drawing out of that cacophonic dissonance an unexpected sort of larger harmony. Nabiki adored him for that way he had of speaking directly to the essence of things. He was always bold and unapologetic in his distillations of the world down to the actual core of all that mattered.
"A lot like you, Na-chan," Akiko once said. That also happened to be the last time "Im Blau" had last been in residence at the museum. She used to bring Nabiki here on weekends — especially on rainy days when idleness rendered her restless mind most prone to carrying out mischief and playing pranks on her sisters and others. Nabiki missed her mother very much. Even now, she still felt that her mother remained the one person in the world who had ever truly understood her.
The world in which Nabiki found herself now felt very much like the chaos in "Im Blau" — warring with its own Nature to orient itself into some semblance of harmonious meaning. She quickly remembered herself and angrily swiped the back of her left hand across her stinging eyes. It would not do for people to see her like this. She had not come here to wallow in old grief – but to find solace and ask for forgiveness.
Akane, as expected, received considerable grief from both their father and Kasumi for "leaving the family behind" and "neglecting her duties as the Heir" to the Tendou school. Japan had so many fine colleges and Universities, and so many bad things could happen to a young girl living abroad — especially in a wild, lawless place like America. Any number of bizarre ideas could also get into a person's head in a place like that. Akane might not even be recognizable to anyone in the family when she came back home — if she even came back. Akane's repeated assurances that she could take care of herself and that she would return seemed to fall on deaf ears.
"The Schools will never be joined this way!" the old man incessantly lamented.
Both fathers also came down hard on Ranma for failing in his "duty as a man" to persuade his iinazuke to remain in Japan. Uncle Gemma had threatened more than once to disown Ranma for his "shortcomings as a Man Among Men." Only Akane's strategic, off-handed insertion of the observation that disowning Ranma would be a public admission of Gemma's own failure — as a father and in his promise to Ranma's mother on pain of seppuku — had kept the elder Saotome from finishing the sentence. Nabiki laughed hard when Akane told her.
Still, even Nabiki had not been spared from reproach for her role in "this family tragedy." She still remembered when her father had summoned her home to receive her due earful. Kasumi, of course, had been the one to relay the message, and, of course, the old man insisted on having this discussion in the dojo and when Akane was not around. The two scheming sisters could not be afforded any opportunity collude in their mutual defense.
# # # # #
"NABIKI!"
"What?"
She feigned a calm, blissful ignorance as she gazed directly at the fury in her father's eyes. Her show of placid indifference would surely piss him off, but that had never bothered her before. In fact, venting would probably do him some good. The old man, though fundamentally a good and well intentioned father, definitely had a lot of annoying, old fashioned baggage up his ass.
"This is your fault!"
"Me…? What exactly do you think I've done, Dad?"
"Don't misunderstand me, Nabiki. I'm all for you girls having a good education, but you going to Todai is one thing. This?! Are you trying to ruin our family?! Your Mother made you promise to look after Akane! Obviously, your duty as her sister was to discourage her from contemplating this insanity — not push her off the cliff to do it!"
Nabiki's impish tolerance for the charade dissolved instantly with the offensive invocation of her mother. "Don't bring Mom into this," she warned. "I know exactly what she asked me to do for Akane, and that has nothing to do with the agreement you made with Ranma's father! Akane has a right to do what she needs to find herself. My job — as is yours I might add — is to support her in that journey of growth. She'd be worthless to you as an heir and to Ranma or anyone else as a wife without that! You should be proud of her!"
"How am I supposed to be proud of daughters who would so callously throw away centuries of family honor and tradition?!"
"DAD!" she roared back at him. "Nothing is being thrown away! If anything, a little self-discovery might even strengthen Akane's interest and commitment to Ranma!"
Her father slapped his forehead in frustration as he groaned at his second daughter with palpable exasperation. "You and your sister really don't understand, Nabiki. Honor is about far more than one person's desires."
People existed as parts of a community, be that a home, a village, or even a whole society or nation. Every single one needed a bedrock of tradition on which to define its ethical and moral standards.
"For this Tendou family, that bedrock is, always has been, and must always be our honor!"
"I understand all of that, Dad!" Nabiki shot back, struggling not to curse at him. "And I would never encourage Akane to do anything I knew to be dishonorable. How is what she's proposing different from any of those crazy training journeys you used to take with Uncle Genma? Tell me how you think Akane's decision brings dishonor!"
Soun turned pale and incoherent with rage at his daughter's words. "That is different! We are men!"
Stupid and futile as it was, Nabiki screamed and lunged at him wanting to rip his hair out. Before she could get to him, however, Kasumi appeared like a phantom and inserted herself between them.
"Stop it, Nabiki!" the older girl screeched. "What is wrong with you?! Apologise to Father right this instant!"
"For what?!"
"Maybe you haven't heard."
"Heard what?"
"Nabiki!" Kasumi hissed with a disapproving shake of her head.
"What?!" Nabiki herself now started to feel uneasy.
"I told you before! Be careful about what you wish for! You're always so sure of yourself and your ability to know everything!"
"Cut to the chase, Kasumi! What happened?"
# # # # #
That was how Nabiki learned about the end of Ranma and Akane's engagement.
Ranma informed the fathers that morning of his decision. He agreed that Akane had to find herself before she could determine her needs, desires, and what role, if any, he had in the picture that would emerge. He would not stand in her way. All of this happened just a few weeks after that day when Nabiki had shared mochi and pizza with her sister and days before they graduated from Furinkan.
In retrospect, Nabiki should not have been surprised. Yet, she found herself slapped in the face by the guilty discovery of her own unconscious biases about her sister and Ranma. Somewhere along the way, even she had unknowingly given herself over to the parental doctrine that they were destined to end up together. New York was supposed to just be one step on a road to self-discovery that would still somehow lead to a happily-ever-after ending with the larger-than-life Heir to the other branch of the Musubetsu Kakutou-Ryu.
The Saotomes moved out shortly afterward to Auntie Nodoka's new home (1). Nabiki learned that it happened to be in Setagaya Ward not far from the Komei School. She found out when she discovered Ranma one day again sitting on one of the benches by the school's main gate waiting for her. He surprised her by coming to explain things.
By this time, despite her ex-communication for the time-being from the Tendou home, Nabiki had already managed to hear Akane's version of the story. Still, Nabiki found herself too curious to refuse his side, so she let him accompany her to the station and onto the train back to Meguro. An awkward, expectant silence hung between them until they ended up by the canal, a place where she was sure no one would overhear them.
"It ain't what you're thinkin'."
"What do you think I'm thinking?"
"Ya think the real reason I did it is 'coz I decided I don't like Akane."
She gave him a lop-sided, knowing grin. "A reasonable inference, don't you think? Don't worry. She'll be fine. I think a part of her may even be relieved. She really does need time and space to figure out who she is and what she wants."
Ranma stopped walking, turned off toward the side rail, and leaned over to study the river flowing quietly beneath the cherry blossoms. After spending time with Akane recently, he did not find her decision surprising. However, her moves compelled him too to wonder about himself and his own future.
"I do like being with your sister," he eventually admitted. "She's smart, and she's got really interesting and different ways of thinking from what I do. We had a lot of fun together since ya helped me get her to open up. She's pretty cute too."
"But?"
"I ain't got no clue if the way I feel is just 'coz she's the first girl I ever chose to hang out with like that or if it's really her." Maybe there were other guys Akane could like more than him too. With time and other experiences, they might even discover that they liked completely different people and things with no real or meaningful commonality.
Ending the engagement had been an amiable, mutual decision. Akane, however, had already taken a considerable emotional and psychological beating for making her plans known. Ranma chose to take the blame for being the one to walk away officially. He calculated that doing so might take off some of the tremendous pressure already on Akane's shoulders.
"I was just tryin' to do the right thing. Sorry 'bout wastin' your time. Thought the least I could do wuz come try to explain."
"It was kind of you to do that for Akane," Nabiki acknowledged before deciding to throw a verbal backhand at him for good measure. Their conversation had become far too heavy and depressing for her taste. "Don't apologize either. It's annoying."
"Huh? Whaddaya mean?" His face contorted into a bemused frown.
"We all had some fun, and you both learned some important things about yourselves and each other," she explained. "That's not a waste. If it means anything, I, for one, think that you and Akane are doing the right thing."
He nodded to himself as he digested her words. "You're the first to say that. Thank you."
"What happens now?" she asked as she stepped up beside him against the rail and also studied the river waters drifting by below.
"Whaddaya mean? In terms of what?"
"Anything," she said with a small shrug of her shoulders.
He also shrugged. "Be ronin (2) for at least a year, I guess. Figure out if there's somethin' I wanna get an education in."
With his father's screwy priorities having hung over his head for so long, Ranma honestly never had much of a chance to think through his own desires before. Yet, knowing someone like Nabiki at Todai, hearing about Akane's plans, and now with the engagement off the table, the potential for possibilities seemed limitless.
"I…. I wanna thank ya for all ya tried to do to help me and Akane. You're actually a really nice person."
Nabiki knew he meant well, but she suddenly felt very uncomfortable. Her name and "nice" were not words she was accustomed to hearing together. Even boys and men trying to flatter her did not use those two together. Her mother, as far as she could recall, had been the only other person to describe her that way. Memories of the year when she had no voice came back, drowning her anew with the brutality of a tsunami.
By the time she realised what was happening, she was already too late. Her annoyance had spilled over yet again over into the familiar realms of unresolved anger and unending sadness. Old, haunted questions re-emerged about all that might have been if only Akiko had not died. Maybe Akane could have found her way to questions that actually mattered far sooner. Maybe Kasumi would not be such a damned coward always afraid of living. Maybe her father could actually have been a more even-keeled man, present as a source of loving support for them all instead of the scared, raving ass who always talked about what should not be done.
Maybe Nabiki herself even really could have been a happy person and not the angry, bitter daughter Akiko left behind, cynical and disillusioned by her lonely lack of any real power to influence the crazy, unfeeling, fucked-up world around her. Even worse, she continued to prove too fundamentally weak of a person to not feel for all that she saw and heard around her.
Your Mother made you promise to look after Akane! Obviously, your duty as her sister was to discourage her from contemplating this insanity — not push her off the cliff to do it! How am I supposed to be proud of daughters who would so callously throw away centuries of family honor and tradition…?
He professed to have loved her mother with all of his heart and soul. Yet, he had no fucking clue about her mother's actual values and beliefs. Idiot!
And then there was that fucking "We are men!" shit. She could not forgive her father for saying those things to her either. Akane was not a fucking cow or a doll, and neither was she. Their mother would never have allowed him to speak to her like that. Fuck him for daring to lash out at her like that!
Fuck whatever higher beings were out there laughing for taking away her mother!
It was too late now.
She was out of control, too hot and rabid to stop herself from smashing into the dam's breaking point. The tenuous moorings of her consciousness in reality burned away in the heated red of hate and blood that drowned out her vision. All over again, she was the stupid, numb, helpless little girl in black too weak and wretched to say anything or even cry as they sealed the casket and burned away all that remained of her beautiful mother's earthly existence. Again, they took turns laughing or pitying her for not having anything to say for so long.
A nasty, dying roar of anguish rang out in the darkness. Vaguely, Nabiki found herself aware that this sickly, inhuman sound was that of her own fury and despair. A bizarre, infernal incantation raw from the Heathen lips of Hell's angels echoed in the descending darkness of her mind — recurring malevolent, spiteful words that she had first come across in a reading from one of her classes a few weeks back:
Sors immanis et inanis,
Rota tu volubilis, status malus
Vana salus,
Semper dissolubilis
Obumbrata et velata,
Michi quoque niteris…!
Fate truly was cruel and inane, a wretched spinning wheel conjuring vain hopes and lies about human wellbeing, inevitably fading into nothingness - veiled and in shadows meant only to torment the living.
Sors immanis….
Why the fuck did you have to leave me?!
Why couldn't I even say goodbye?!
# # # # #
"Nabiki…?"
Ranma's hands fell on her shoulders, snatching her away from the ominous abysmal edge of the sudden onslaught of lurking madness. Shaken, she gasped as the terrible vision of her beautiful mother disappeared, replaced unceremoniously by his concerned face before her.
"Ya okay?" he asked, genuine worry audible in his voice. "Nabiki?"
However, the ignominious prospect of discussing anything about the depths of darkness within her with anyone, much less Ranma Saotome, filled her with mortified horror. In a panic, she scrambled to bury the evidence of her demons behind her usual mask of barbed stoicism.
"I'm fine," she answered. However, the crack in her voice threatened to betray her. She tried to school her features into a disarming smile and decided to keep talking, both to steady herself and to attempt to throw him off. "I also had to listen to my Dad's rant the other day about the engagement thing, but don't worry. I'm not a martial artist, but I'm still tough enough for a demon head or two."
He scrutinised her with a strange, humorless look that she did not understand before saying, "I know I said somethin' that really bothered ya just now. I'm sorry."
Dammit. He did not believe her. She prepared to cut him off and make an excuse about having to get back to Komaba. "Ranma — "
"Ya remember that Nekoken technique thing, the one that fucks with your mind by drawing on the fear of cats?"
Nabiki did remember, but before she could say anything, he turned his back to the rail, slid down to sit on the ground, and looked up at her with a silent, impassioned entreaty in his eyes.
"Just listen for a moment, yeah? If ya still wanna leave after, I understand."
Her resolve to turn away crumbled. For some reason, she did want to hear what he would say. She dropped down to sit beside him. As she did so, she had to avert her gaze. She could not stand letting him read anymore into her.
He talked about a certain look of red in a person's eyes right before they reached the limit of how much terror the conscious mind could handle before slipping into the cat's mindset. Uncle Gemma became obsessed with drawing that look out of Ranma when he was forcing him to learn the technique. Over and over, Ranma was forced to thread on that razor's edge of madness until his mind's will crumbled and he finally slipped into the Nekoken for the first time. Ranma had been only 10. The memories of all that he endured in order to fall off the cliff into darkness then still continued to haunt him.
"That's the look ya had in your eyes just now."
"I… I —" Nabiki started to protest, but her mouth could not form any words.
"Nabiki — "
Only when Nabiki felt Ranma's arms closing around her and the heat of her own tear-streaked face against his shirt did she realise that she was screaming. She could no longer contain the pain of her broken heart. Her body exploded and came apart with violent, unchecked sobs unlike anything she had ever known.
She cried for a very, very long time, but he stayed with her, gently rocking her in his arms, and whispering kind, meaningless assurances. His fresh scent of pine and cedar washed over her as he did. Somehow, all of it had a strange, gradually soothing effect on her.
After she had spent herself, she found herself telling him everything. Years and years of unspoken thoughts and feelings bled freely into the open.
Her mother's beautiful name.
Her father's words to her in the dojo — and others very much like them over the years directed at either herself or one of her sisters.
The questions that tormented her about what might have been.
The hellacious vision of fire and blood on her dead mother's face.
The indescribably painful hole that remained cut out in her heart
Everything but the year when she had no voice and the bizarre, hedonistic vision of the individual words from the incantation from "O Fortuna" turning one by one into angry crimson drops of blood.
Those last ones would have been too much, though he probably thought she had lost her mind by now anyway. Even Nabiki thought she had. If he did walk out on her, however, that would not have been anything new, and none of what she said really mattered since he was no longer going to be a part of their family. Concluding that she truly had nothing left to lose, she decided to tell him what she really had wanted to say all along.
"Other than Mom, you're the only person who's ever told me that I'm 'nice.' Please don't do that again. She told me that, and then left me in this fucked up world where 'have-all' asses have their way with all the 'have-nots' and where honor, dreams, and aspirations mean different things for a man than a woman. Even if you don't understand and think I'm crazy, just say that you won't."
He smiled. "All right. I understand. Ya ain't 'nice' — but ya ain't crazy either."
Her eyes locked onto him with bewildered incredulity. "H-how do you know…?"
"Between my Jusenkyo problem, a crazy panda for an old man, and all the insane wanna-be fiancees I've had since comin' to Nerima, I think I understand a thing or two 'bout crazy. Maybe you're a little rough around the edges — a few secrets and a past with some bumps — but ya ain't crazy."
She gave him a wan chuckle despite herself.
He did have a point. Compared to her life, his own could make a decent drama or even a manga series.
A weight she had not been aware of previously suddenly seemed to lift off her shoulders.
"What happened by the way? Ya don't have to tell me if ya don't want, but – "
"It was a brain aneurysm."
Akiko's demise had been traumatically fast. One moment, she had been normal, laughing and talking with her daughters. The next moment, she was just gone. It had actually happened on a beautiful Spring day much like today.
Nabiki, just a few weeks past her first period, had just turned thirteen then. That would become the year when she had no voice. Of course, she kept the details to herself, only telling Ranma about how the day had been in Spring and that she had just become a teenager.
"I'm sorry."
Nabiki gave him a weary shrug. Anything she could have said would have been an inconsequential waste of breath. She knew from experience.
"That why ya create all those things outta whatcha see all the time?" he asked as he digested her words.
"What do you mean?"
"Paintings like the one ya used my hand for. The sketch I saw that night when we munched on chicken. Those are how ya process and make sense outta all the things ya see, right?"
She nodded. "It helps."
"The one ya used my hand for. What happened to that one?"
Nabiki sighed. He was referring, of course, to the blue, red, orange, and black one depicting the anonymised silhouettes of a pair of open hands held open to one another over a body of water reflecting an image of sunrise (4). Kozue had been right about that painting really being one of Nabiki's better creations, and, as Kozue predicted, a part of Nabiki did regret selling it.
Still, as intended, she had been able to get new clothes and shoes for Kumi, Daigoro, Takashi, and William with some still left over for other agendas. The painting fetched just under 30000 yen and generated more additional interest in her style among the locals than she expected.
"Can ya teach me how to do stuff like that?"
Nabiki started to laugh, thinking that Ranma was teasing her. Any moment, he would laugh too, and the joke would be out in the open.
Except he did not laugh.
"You're serious," she realized as she saw the disappointed frown on his lips.
"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"
"It's just…."
"Another unconscious bias?" he offered. "About 'have-all' martial arts types like me?"
Recognizing the moral quagmire in which he had trapped her, she sighed again and threw up her hands in uncharacteristic defeat. This sort of thing was becoming far too common between them. The last few days had clearly taken their toll on her.
"Fine. Why not? But this entire conversation just now stays between us."
"Of course. Even if I ain't engaged to Akane anymore, we're still friends, right?"
She returned his smile, touched by his reminder of the last rule she had laid out that night over chicken. However, the memory also triggered her recollection of Akane's mischievous ribbing a few weeks back about that and the canned Kirins on Christmas Eve.
"By the way, Ranma…."
# # # # #
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean what I said about you."
The colors of "Im Blau" staring back at Nabiki here on this late Spring Sunday afternoon suddenly seemed just a little bit brighter. The lines too seemed just a little bit clearer.
He speaks directly to the essence of things, always bold and unapologetic in his distillations of the world down to the actual core of all that matters. A lot like you, Na-chan….
"I miss you, Mom."
# # # # #
CHAPTER NOTES:
(1) The original Saotome home was destroyed by the fiancees at the end of the manga.
(2) In Japan, a rōnin (浪人) is a student who has graduated from high school but has failed to enter any school at the next level, or the school they were specifically aiming to enter. These students usually take extra time to study outside of the school system for admission in a future year.
(3) Cross-reference Chapter Note #1 for Chapter One.