The Little Note

Knock. Knock.

There was no answer.

“Ranma, I know you’re in there.”

Silence.

“Ranma, get out here now!”

Nothing but a slight rustling that may have been the wind.

“I know you’re in there, Ranma. Dad and Mr. Saotome are watching the window.”

A more definite sound came from behind the door, like something hitting the floor. Not quite footsteps, though.

She softened her voice, nearly pleading now. “Ranma… please… you can’t just hide…”

Total and complete silence, this time. Even the faint wind had stopped, even the female voices speaking in whispers downstairs were still. She could hear her heartbeat echoing. Suddenly a loud rustling from the other side of the door interrupted it, startling her.

“Ranma…” she whispered.

Finally an answer came. “What makes you think I’m hiding?”

Her voice faltered. “Well…”

“Akane, I’m though with hiding. That’s one thing you never have to worry about me doing again.”

Now it was her turn to be silent. She waited.

After a few minutes Ranma came out, carrying a backpack that obviously contained everything he owned. He handed her a folded and sealed piece of paper. Making sure she took it, he said earnestly, “This is a message for you to pass on. Open it on a night when after you and everyone else in the house has gone to bed but you’re not alone, and read it out loud. Promise me you’ll do this… and I’ll see you again.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, a hopeless note in her voice. She’d always known it would come down to this… she didn’t know what had happened to spark this odd behavior, but… he was leaving, permanently it seemed. He’d made that much clear earlier.

A ghost of a smile touched his lips, and hung there like a shadow unwilling to depart for the night. “You’ll know. Goodbye, Akane…”

He left. Akane found herself unable to make a move to stop him, and from the steady beat of his footsteps downstairs that suddenly disappeared after the quiet opening and closing of a door, she knew that neither Nabiki nor Kasumi had been able to make a move to change his mind either. Odd…

***

Akane spent three frustrated days not knowing where he had gone. Each night she held the paper until the house grew silent and long afterward, tempted to open it yet wary of the implied consequence of doing so except under his conditions. She didn’t tell anyone about it.

On the night of the forth day she waited even longer than before, not wanting to give up, holding out for the strange conditions to be fulfilled. The house grew quiet, then silent, and still she waited up, watching the red glowing letters on the clock one the wall pass from four digits back down to three, than slowly increase again. Her eyes started to slide closed from the hypnotic rhythm of the blinking double dots and her own fatigue from three days of restless nights when a familiar sound jolted her awake and nearly through the roof.

“Bweee?”

The door creaked open and with her vision adjusted to the near-total darkness of her room she saw a tiny black figure moving against the gray, squeezing past through the barely-opened doorway and slowly making it’s way closer to her.

“P-chan!” she greeted her pet, mind still fuzzy from the late hour. The pig bweee’d again and jumped into her bed and crawled next to her, snuggling into the blankets next to her shoulder. Akane yawned and settled back down for sleep. “It’s nice to have company…” she mumbled sleepily. “ ‘s been so quiet since Ranma left…”

Her eyes, which had slid to within a millimeter of closed, suddenly jerked wide open. A sudden clarity came to Akane, of the sort that can only be experienced when one is very, very, tired. She fumbled for the tiny knob to turn on the lamp by her bed, exclaimed in unison with P-chan at the sudden light, and grabbed the piece of paper on the bedstand. She ripped it open, and even though she couldn’t see what it said she intuitively knew, that this was the key even though during her waking hours she would’ve dismissed it as ridiculous, if the thought had even come to her at all. Her eyes finally adjusted after what seemed like hours, and she read the words on the paper slowly and carefully, waiting until she had said all six of them in a voice slurred with anticipation and forgotten exhaustion to let her mind analyze what they said.

“I’m at your house. Love, Ranma.”

The note couldn’t be for her. He certainly wasn’t at this house, having left four days earlier. It must be for her company…

She looked at P-chan, who seemed just as confused, for a few seconds before it finally clicked. Her mind was too fuzzy to see or cloud logic… so it made deductions based on pure emotion, hunches, things that the daytime disregarded as impossible.

“He gave it to me to pass on to you…” she whispered, not even sure yet what conclusion she had come to. Then the flash came, a moment in which everything seemed so crystal clear that she despaired because she knew she’d never experience it again. But the words continued tumbling out of her mouth nonetheless. “…Ryouga. He’s at your house. Love, Ranma… so that’s why…”

A shocked expression of pure terror had overcome the face of her ‘pet’ who was quite clearly frozen in place. She went on, oblivious.

“You should go to him. I don’t think he was in very good shape… you should go to him. He loves you… no wonder… it all makes sense now…”

She continued on, incoherently, moment of clarity faded into incoherence and a surreal feeling that was marked in her memory as a dream. P-chan eventually managed to unfreeze his legs and leave, albeit shakily, and search for hot water, the paper clenched tightly between his teeth. Unnoticed behind him, Akane slumped back to mumble in her sleep, and would wake up confused the next morning as to why her light was on and with murky memories of a very strange dream.

***

Ranma waited patiently for two weeks, certain that Ryouga would show up eventually and determined to stay even if he didn’t. He spent his time carefully disarming the booby traps the mistress of the house had set up as defenses, sometimes by setting them off, and cleaned up the practically abandoned house as well, going slowly so he wouldn’t run out of work to do.

He actually hadn’t quite finished when he heard the front door opening. Carefully placing the sponge he had been scrubbing the kitchen floor with back in the bucket so as not to splash the heavily concentrated cleaning solution everywhere and peeling the heavy rubber gloves off his hands with equal caution, he went to see who it was with a strong feeling of anticipation.

His back was to him, but Ranma recognized Ryouga nonetheless. “Hi,” he whispered, suddenly very conscious of his heartbeat.

Ryouga spun around, startled. Spotting Ranma, he relaxed. “Hello,” he answered, and smiled. For a few seconds they just looked at each other.

Finally the tension was broken by a chuckle from Ryouga. “You know, that wasn’t a very nice trick you played… clever, but it could’ve gotten me killed. I think she was asleep when she read the note to me, though…”

Ranma smiled back arrogantly. “Lucky for you. But…” his face grew serious. “I meant it, you know.”

Ryouga nodded. “I know.”

There was no silence this time, merely the comfortable sounds of the house and the surrounding neighborhood – the distant bark of a dog, the whirr of the refrigerator, the shout of a child, the hum of the air conditioner, cars driving along distant road – and a whisper.

“I… I love you too, Ranma…”

***

~Mordain

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