INTERLUDE: VANA SALUS
PRESENT DAY
Vana salus, semper disolubilis.
Gods too decompose.
Who will wipe this blood off us?
What water is there for us to clean ourselves?
What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?
Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?
Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? (1)
Yet, Nabiki was alone again.
In numb agitation, she could not help fiddling with her wedding band as she stared out the window at the people and city lights blitzing by her car. Driving was the only way she ever moved about Tokyo these days. She made no secret of her hate for trains. She would rather die before ever taking one again. 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.
Every time time she thought of trains, she 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.
The concert at Suntory Hall had ended hours ago, but she had been unable to stomach the thought of going back to her big and empty home. She used to love getting a bite to eat after performances, often fried chicken and beer for nostalgia whenever she managed to drag Ranma out with her for these types of events. However, had not had much appetite for either for quite some time. Ever since the events that had led to Ranma's current state, the taste had never been quite same.
Nabiki asked her assistant to drive her around the city, no particular destination in mind. Eventually, they ran out of places to go. At around two, she reluctantly let her driver take her back home to Roppongi. She then gave the girl the next couple of days off for the extra trouble.
Afterward, Nabiki dragged herself up the stairs, slipped the pins out of her hair, undid her earrings, discarded her skirt and leggings, and absently crawled into bed with her blouse rumpled and half unbuttoned. Of course, sleep was not going to come. The vast expanse of the king-sized bed served as just another reminder of everything that had happened. Her fingers wandered once more over the scar on her left breast.
She found herself perplexed as to why she had even bothered coming upstairs at all.
Eventually, she found herself seeking solace and refuge in Ranma's study. Even now, his papers and the room carried the scents of fresh pinewood and cedar. She picked up the stack of storyboards sketches on his desk and carefully laid them out on the floor around her. A few were finished. Most were not. All of them were extraordinarily beautiful.
The boards from his last project were at the bottom of the stack, just where Nabiki had placed them. Having them on top where they would be the first thing to catch her eye each time she came into this room had been just too painful. The project was a revival of an old story about a hapless ronin and a widow who fall in love.
Nabiki had always had a soft spot in her heart for this particular story, though she had been been skeptical of his ability to pull the concept off when he first ran the idea by her. Perhaps he knew something about ronins, but what the Hell did he think he knew about widows? In the end, Nabiki had been wrong — on multiple ironic levels. Yusaku and Kyoko's story (2) had been the breakthrough Ranma needed, winning him the prestigious annual Asagaya prize and becoming his first major success. Nabiki and been humbled by her own fallibility in judgement, both as an artist and as a woman.
Gunshots rang out once more in the darkness, making the night rain blood all over again. Nabiki had heard that sound too many times to flinch anymore. She could no longer tell either who's broken body — bob cut hair or pigtailed — was falling back toward her. For the millionth time, she wished it her were own. No use. Nothing could make the world go back to the way it once was or give her back the people she loved most. With no one around to see, she wrapped her arms around herself and began to cry.
At some point, she faded away on the floor into a brief, fitful sleep. When she awoke, she found her body sore and aching from the unforgiving hardwood. Her head throbbed from more recurring nightmares and painful recollections. She resented herself for even being able to wake up, but then that her sister's voice echoed once more in the ears of her mind.
Promise that you'll take care of him, Oneechan, and that you'll be happy. I love you….
For a while, she really believed that she could keep those promises. In the end, however, she had done neither. She was not happy nor had she been a good wife. Guilt washed over her anew as she looked down at her ring.
I am not a bitch — but I will fucking kill you.…
Haha — a crock of shit through and through. She was a bitch, and she would be the death of her husband. The cold, empty silence permeating all of the unused rooms around her now stood as the undeniable testament of her failings. Even worse, she had not even wanted the damned house in the first place.
Contrary to what Nabiki knew most people assumed, she did not actually believe in having some big white mansion with floor-to-ceiling windows and skylights on top of some high hill to showcase her power and influence or Ranma's success and fame. Eight hundred square meters. A two-story foyer entrance with a chandelier. A chef's kitchen with stone countertops and a high output gas stove. Eight bedrooms. She considered it all far too excessive. In fact, she would have been more than content with a two-bedroom flat tucked away in some anonymous high-rise building.
She would always appreciate clean and orderly aesthetics. However, her devotion to minimalism at this stage of her life was far more pragmatic than philosophical. A home was a place for sleeping, showering, and maybe grabbing a bite on the way out the door. As long as she had walls to showcase her sketches and paintings, some space for her Noguchi-style coffee table, a sturdy desk with a comfortable chair, and a safe parking spot for her BMW, she would be more than happy.
Ranma was the one who wanted the house, badgering the shit out of her for it. She had been caught off guard. He had been borderline obsessed with the idea.
"I wanna have the thing built atop a hill oriented along an East-West axis," he said. He joked about owing proper homage to her old admonition about the primacy of light. Otherwise, he would have to live constantly at risk of being struck down in the prime of his life, a samurai who had made the mistake of incorrectly orienting himself in relation to the sun.
"Stupid fucking ass!" Nabiki remembered screaming at him. She did not consider herself superstitious by any stretch of the imagination. However, words like that seemed to just be asking for trouble.
He needed a good studio for his work, and he loved the idea of having a real kitchen where he could play around while mulling over ideas in his head. He had picked up some decent culinary skills over the years, pointed out that they were certainly better than hers.
"Are you trying to talk me into it or out of it?!"
Fine. They could have wild, crazy, uninhibited sex at whatever hour they wanted and without having to worry about what the neighbors might hear and say. Beneath his virgin inhibitions, Ranma turned out, indeed, to be a Man Among Men with regard to his appetite for that kind of stuff. Nabiki had her own needs too. She started taking his house idea seriously.
However, the match point came in the form plan to set up a dojo on the ground floor. Only a big floor directly over a foundation would work for that.
She would never be a practitioner of the Art of any significance and had even been more than glad to forfeit her Tendou name when they married (1). Still, despite her dry-witted quips about the martial artists who had haunted her childhood, even Nabiki respected the Art's inherent beauty, its physical forms, and its philosophy. She always had. Being Ranma's wife — coming to truly understand how and why he still practiced the Art despite all the pain and suffering it had brought into his life — made her only appreciate and believe in their School even more.
Akane would have been pleased.
Am I the reason?
Nabiki could barely breathe anymore. She had to get out of here before she lost her mind all together.
She threw on the first clothes she could get her hands on, a black T-shirt and some jeans, slipped some canvas trainers onto her bare feet, and snatched up her car keys. She made arrived at the hospital just a few minutes before five, having stopped by a 24/7 convenience store en route to grab a coffee and a bouquet of purple irises. Just as she placed the flowers in the vase by the bedside and embraced her husband, she could make out the first rays of morning sun through his room window just starting to crest over the horizon.
She was back to where they had begun — a hospital room. Everything had come around full circle. The scar over her left breast started to itch again.
She took up Ranma's unmoving hand and pressed the back of his fingers against her cheek. However, the effort was futile. There was no solace to be found now in his touch.
Instead, there was only the stigma of atrophy, which had ravaged the once impeccably beautiful lines of muscle, tendon, and bone. His wedding band had become dangerously loose. She had been forced to take it away for safekeeping weeks ago.
Promise you'll be happy, Oneechan, and that you'll take care of him. I love you….
All of that blood again. Its warm, sticky feel and thick, metallic smell. In her hair, her hands, her clothes — everywhere. It would not come out, could not be washed away.
Don't go….
Just then, Nabiki's phone started buzzing in her back pocket.
Kozue.
# # # # #
They became an inseparable pair in their years together at Komaba. No one who knew Kozue or her found it surprising that they became roommates after moving to Hongo (3). Nabiki doubted she could have tolerated 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 savagely irascible Kansai girl 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 her friend to one another.
"I have to warn you. She can be a little rough around the edges."
"Meh. Don't sound like nothin' I ain't seen before," he said, glancing pointedly at her with that insufferably rakish, cocky grin of his.
"Famous last words, my dear Saotome," she delighted in telling him. "Famous last words."
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 boy here. Favorite artist and works!"
"Kandinsky, I'm Blau, and Lyrical: Man on a Horse."
"Favorite philosopher."
"Nietzsche — at least before he went mad and rejected compassion."
"Favorite foreign author and novel."
"Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment."
"Greatest pet peeves."
"Unconscious biases, apathetic have-alls, Tolstoy, 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 hopelessly ill-suited for modesty."
"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."
Because Kandinsky had, Nabiki had told them. Of course, the truth had nothing to do with Kandinsky. That came from one of the last pearls her mother gave her about how the world worked.
Akiko had always been her daughter's greatest fan, ever proud Nabiki's 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 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, even from your sisters. Be wise and pragmatic with your gifts. Whatever you do, don't get trapped living in the shadows between worlds….
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….
Akiko had drawn her close, reassuring her that she had misunderstood. She was indisputably gifted. No slip of the tongue or anything anyone else might ever say or think could change the fact of what she was. This had nothing to do with being good at things or even whether a person should keep or forfeit their passions or any of the secrets in their heart. Akiko had meant something else entirely: consequentiality.
Nabiki adopted it as a sort of sutra mantra 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 destined exceptionalism, threading through and around the shadows between worlds, including those of the haves and have-nots. The root of the pragmatic, Machiavellian minimalism that 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.
The agendas she chose and her natural aptitude for harnessing the power of people's motivations, particularly through their pocketbooks, to advance those agendas.
The part-time job she took as an usher at Suntory Hall just after moving from Komaba to Hongo (4).
Even the major she chose when she arrived at Hongo.
All those fuckers back at Furinkan probably would have guessed business, but she would rather 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, the most toxic type of fake and fraud, lowly open books with entirely superficial motivations, barely even human. Smooth talkers whose mouths dribbled with bullshit, but never actually had any idea what the fuck they were really selling, 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.
Nabiki's disdain for these animals had been one of her most closely guarded personal secrets — right up there with fried chicken and canned beers. Masquerading as as one of them in the years after her Mom died had just been a pragmatic act of vengeful hatred. 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.
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. First, however, she needed to know and understand the rule book itself that the fuckers used to tip the scales in their favor
That was why Nabiki chose to study law.
Other than Ranma and Kozue, most everyone else had been surprised, even Akane. Nabiki was actually quite proud of how convincing her illusion had proven to everyone, even in Ranma's eyes, at least until that day when he had tracked her down to Setagaya and the Komei School. She had merely been biding time waiting for the opportunity to remake the world as it should be.
Akiko would have approved.
# # # # #
"Damn, Kiki! You look like shit!"
Nabiki laughed despite herself. "You still have the shittiest bedside manner."
Ishikawa had never lost her touch for saying the most annoying things at the most irritating of times. Probably the only person in the world brazen enough to say such things to Nabiki's face. Even Ranma or Akane would not have dared.
Kozue was another one who had ultimately put her art aside for a pragmatic vocation. She called herself a physician, at least on paper. She had never actually practiced after completing her training. The title and credentials were enough from the perspective of their business.
Still, Kozue liked to work on people from time to time. Even worse, she proved uncannily good at it too. She was, as she put it, unencumbered by experience. Her pretty little Anglo-Japanese Heathen's head had always been of particular interest.
"I'm fine."
"Are you really?"
"Work keeps me grounded. I — "
"Have the worst case of acrophobia. Yet, you were up there on the roof the other night, dangling your feet over the edge like one of those fucking Tolstoyan madwomen you used to rage about."
"Kozue — "
"I saw the security footage. Own it, Kiki. You had something stupid in your head."
Damn Kozue. Nabiki shook her head as she sank back in her chair and gave a weary, resigned sigh. Fine. Whatever. So what if Kozue knew.
"Don't worry. Would've been too messy. Besides, I made a promise, right? He still needs me to keep the fucking vultures and parasites away at the hospital. They're ready to let him die."
"Kiki…! You don't deserve this. Love isn't a crime."
Nabiki gave her best friend a sad, forlorn chuckle. "Fortuna imperative mundi. Vanu salus, super dissolubilis…."
"I'm serious, Kiki. Go back to Fuji. I'll check up on him regularly, hold the fort etc. down no problem. No one will do anything stupid while you're away. I promise."
"And then what?"
"Come back with an answer. Maybe even remember how to fight. You gave your word that you would."
# # # # #
INTERLUDE NOTES:
(1) Another excerpt from Nietzsche's parable of the madman from "Thus Spoke Zarathusthra."
(2) These are references to "Maison Ikkoku," another series created by Rumiko Takahashi. As a disclaimer, I do not own Maison Ikkoku or any of the related characters. The Maison Ikkoku series was both created by Rumiko Takahashi and is owned by Shogakukan and Viz Video. This fanfiction is intended for entertainment only. I am not making any profit from this story. All rights to the original Maison Ikkoku stories belong to Rumiko Takahashi.
(3) 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 Hongo campus after for their specialized studies.
(4) Cross-reference to the opening section of Prelude: Suntory Hall where the ushers are gossiping about Nabiki sitting in block RB.