"It's bigger than I remember," Ranko said in English, following the Guide toward the shack that served as his residence and office both. "Or maybe I was just too freaked out to notice last time." She lifted her skirt a bit, trying to keep her white lace dress out of the nearly knee-high grass.
The Guide laughed, shaking his head. It was a full, merry laugh, and it put Akane at ease despite her nerves standing fully on end as she trailed behind her wife. "No, your memory's fine," he said with a smirk. "After you were here, we had a huge run of people for a while, so we decided to put in a gift shop! A few other amenities, too. But, after a few months, traffic dried up again, and we closed it down. Everything in there's just gathering dust now, I'm afraid. Come inside, I'll make some tea, and we can get started."
The Guide opened the unlocked wooden door and entered with the girls not far behind. "Make yourselves comfortable; I just need a moment to put away my things and I'll be with you." He lifted the paper bag of groceries in his arms a few centimeters for emphasis and disappeared down a narrow hallway, presumably toward his living quarters.
The narrow, cramped room was furnished with a smallish, round oak table and four small chairs, all unvarnished and in poor repair. The table wobbled a bit when Ranko touched it, as if its legs weren't quite level on the creaky wood plank flooring. Besides the hallway on the north wall, there was another archway to the west leading into the disused gift shop. True to the Guide's word, everything in the shop that Ranko could see from the doorway seemed to be caked in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. The door to the gift shop was flanked by two framed paintings: one of the springs themselves as seen from above - the vantage point likely the very ridge where the girls' rented dirt bikes remained parked - and the other of the mountain range as seen from the springs at sunset.
The entire east wall was covered with dark wood bookshelves crammed full with hundreds of leatherbound volumes, each bearing a date range in some sort of white paint on the spine. They were sorted chronologically, and they drew Akane's eye immediately. She ran her fingers over the spines of some of the books on the left of the topmost shelf. "Ranko… some of these books are dated… more than a thousand years ago!"
"Better not spill your tea on them," Ranko said with a spritely giggle. "Might piss him off. But, I mean, he said that the girl that drowned in the spring that cursed me died something like fifteen hundred years ago, so I'd guess they've gotta have records going back at least that far."
Akane nodded, walking up behind Ranko as the latter situated herself on one of the chairs surrounding the wobbly round table and running her fingers gently across her back. She switched from a whisper-soft brush with her fingertips to a firmer backrub with the whole of her palm when Ranko shivered under her touch. Trying to be sweet, not to rile the poor thing up in front of the Guide, she thought with a blush and a smirk. "It's crazy to think, the last time you were in this room, you'd just become a girl for the first time. Gods, how did it feel?"Her voice was soft and soothing.
"I was scared shitless," Ranko said, not bothering to lower her voice as Akane had. "My brain hadn't really gotten to all of the possibilities of it yet. Of course, the fact that I had a pissed-off panda bear standing behind me was a bit of a distraction. Besides that, I couldn't sit still because my brand-new tits were falling out of my gi."
Akane giggled, clicking her tongue with a disappointed tsk. "You mean you let the Jusenkyo Guide see those before I did? Naughty, naughty girl."
Ranko's jaw slacked open, and she turned in her chair to glare up at Akane with shock in her eyes. From the look of her, Akane could not be sure there was any blood anywhere else in her partner's body save her cheeks. "Hey! I didn't try to give him a show!" Ranko protested. "Besides, I hadn't even met you yet!"
"Princess, relax. I'mteasing!" Akane laughed heartily, shaking her head. "Silly girl." She turned her head toward the hallway at the sound of footsteps on the noisy old floorboards. "He's coming back."
Sure enough, a moment later, the Guide reappeared in the doorway carrying a lacquered wooden tray on which rested a jade green teapot and three matching cups. "I hope you like jasmine," he said, hoping he'd correctly remembered the word in English. "So," he said, resting the tray on the table and beginning to pour the teapot's steaming contents into the trio of cups. "Tell me what happened. Spare no details. The slightest thing might be important." He looked up at the room's other occupant. "Sorry, I don't think we've met. Are you…"
Ranko reached out for Akane's hand, giving it a squeeze. "She's my wife." She beamed up at Akane, a resolute look in her eyes that didn't quite match the smile on her lips. He knows I used to be a dude, so he's the rare person I can admit that to and not get funny looks. It feels… nice.
"Akane Tendo, sir. Pleased to meet you," Akane said, offering him a deep bow. "It's surreal to be here, at the place where… it all began, for her."
As Akane spoke, the Guide walked to the small fireplace, striking a match and igniting the dried bits of wood within. He held his calloused hands out to the fire as he listened.
Ranko swallowed hard, eyeing the tea cautiously. It smelled wonderful, but she dared not taste it until it had significantly cooled. "Okay. So, going back about three and a half years ago, one of the elders of the Amazon tribe inflicted the Full-Body Cat's Tongue pressure point on me. We tried to fix it with a Phoenix Pill, but…" Her thumb slipped under the silver dragon bracelet coiled around her left wrist, stroking the raised ridge on her skin to finish the thought her voice could not.
"We tried a couple of times to change me back, and the pain was too unbearable. After a while, I just… stopped trying. I was so, so careful around hot water, and after about a year of not changing, my body started…" Ranko's face reddened, and she hid her face in her hands. "... behaving like a normal girl's. And then, last July, I finally got hit with hot water again, and it hurt like hell from the Cat's Tongue, but… no change. Nothing happened. I've tried a few times since; same thing."
"I see," the portly man said, stroking his chin thoughtfully as he contemplated his tea. "Very interesting! I don't recall the details, but I seem to remember hearing one of my predecessors talk about that happening to someone once or twice before. We'll have to consult the records!" He motioned with a sweep of his hand to the bookshelves. "And it looks like you two just became my research assistants!"
Ranko nodded, gazing up at the books in intimidated awe. "Where do we even start?!"
Akane, still pacing behind Ranko's chair, shrugged her shoulders. "It could take years with all of these books. We only have a few days! I wish you had it on a computer that could be searched."
The Guide nodded. "My daughter said she's going to do that for me sometime, when she has time. But, her school has been keeping her busy." He flashed a spritely smile at the redhead seated at his table. "She spends most of her time at the desk in her room, studying, and looking up at the Ranko and the Dapper Dragons poster on the wall behind it."
"Sh…" Ranko's mouth fell open in shock, and she rocketed out of her chair. "Your daughter… is a freakin' Firebird?! Are you serious?! Is she coming to the show on Tuesday?!" The excitement faded from her face, and she slumped back into her chair. "Have you told her…" She swallowed hard, and her voice faded to barely a whisper. "... how we know each other?"
The Guide shook his head. "It's not my place to tell anyone. Besides, until I saw you in person, I couldn't be certain you were the same girl I met all those years ago. And, as for your show… I tried, but the tickets were too expensive. Warning people about cursed springs doesn't pay very well, I'm afraid."
"Bullshit," Ranko said, batting the Guide's words out of the air with the back of her hand. "I'm gonna give you a phone number for my agent - my sister - and we're gonna get you a couple tickets right up front. VIP backstage passes, too. Shirts, CDs, the works. You're gonna be the coolest dad this side of Shanghai. Just… tell her you won 'em in a contest or something; don't let her know about, ya know, what I used to be, okay?"
With a grateful smile, the Guide nodded sharply. "It's a promise! And now I've got to make sure I find you your answers!" He reached up to the shelf, grabbing the first book that came within reach and opening it to a random page.
"Um," Akane said, lifting a finger skyward in consternation as she glanced at the open book. "I'm not sure how much we can help. Neither of us read Chinese. At least, far from fluently."
The Guide chuckled, bobbing his head again. "Don't worry; I'll take care of that. So, we're going to need to flip through every book until we find something. Special cases will usually have a bookmark: a dog-eared page, a ribbon, or something similar. Show me any page you find like that, and I'll look over it." He tapped the upper left-hand corner of the page, where a monochrome symbol of a sheep was scrawled in the corner. "This icon represents the spring that the person fell in. It will match the symbols on the signs in the springs themselves. Let's also look at anyone who fell in the Spring of Drowned Girl, too, just in case."
"Yes, sir!" the two women said in unison.
"Akane, I'll start at this end, and you start over there, okay?" Ranko reached for the rightmost shelf, plucking the very last volume from it.
Akane gave her bride a grin and a little fist pump. "You got it, babe!" She hustled to the left side of the shelf, sliding an ancient tome from the top row. A thick cloud of dust hung in the air after she withdrew the volume from its long-undisturbed rest, and it sent her into a brief coughing fit as she rested the book on her side of the round table.
Akane had made it barely thirty pages into her book when she encountered a piece of yellow silk ribbon slipped between two of the pages. She presented the volume to the Guide. "Is this what you're looking for?"
He nodded, taking the book and scanning the page quickly with his eyes. "It's the right kind of bookmark, but it looks like this record is about twins who fell in the same spring, so it won't help us. Keep looking!"
* * *
Akane yawned, stretching her arms high toward the ceiling. "I need a break," she said, rising to her feet. "Forty-one books in, and nothin'!" She gestured with disgust to the rising stack of books on the floor.
"You haven't even found any Spring of Drowned Girl records yet," Ranko mused. For her part, she had shown the Guide several bookmarked pages and four records of people she shared her curse with, not counting the page in the first book she had opened that bore her own picture opposite her father's.
The Guide checked the spine of the book Akane had just added to the pile on the floor. "That makes sense. These books are from one thousand, nine hundred years ago; the Spring of Drowned Girl hadn't been formed yet."
He stood, turning his head to the side and groaning with relief as his neck popped several times. "How would you girls like something to eat? We've been at this for hours."
"Yes, please!" Ranko said, her statement backed up by a growling in her stomach.
With a grin, the Guide turned toward his kitchen. "Good thing I went shopping today! Gods, what Plum would say if she knew who I was cooking for tonight…"
As soon as he had left the room, Ranko reopened the book that rested on the tabletop under her right elbow, where it had been since she finished scanning it. She flipped hastily through the first half of the book, stopping when she found herself staring into her own eyes. Her own, and also… the eyes of a masculine face she had not seen in years, save in nightmares.
"It's hard to even imagine it anymore," Akane said, running her fingers over the page. "To think, I actually dated that weirdo!" She giggled, leaning over Ranko's shoulder and planting a kiss on her wife's cheek. "I'm much happier with my girl, though."
Ranko nodded, her eyes and voice both a bit distant. "Yeah, she's happier to be with you, too."
"We're gonna find it, baby. I promise. And even if we don't find it while we're here, the Guide can keep looking. We can give him our phone number and he can let us know when he finds something." Akane rubbed Ranko's back reassuringly through her white lace dress.
"I know," Ranko said quietly. "It's just… maybe you were right. Maybe it was a bad idea coming here."
Akane shrugged, straightening her back and beginning to pace the floor to stretch her legs. "I mean, I was mostly worried you were gonna do something dumb, and at least so far, you haven't. What's the matter?"
The redhead slumped her shoulders, letting her chin fall into her hands with her elbows resting on the tabletop. "I guess… it's been so long since I thought about Jusenkyo, and my past, and… I'd almost forgotten. Almost convinced myself I was an ordinary girl. And then I come here, and I remind myself that I'm…"
"Extraordinary," Akane finished for her. "Amazing. A twenty-one year old woman whose face is on posters on the bedroom walls of teenagers thousands of kilometers away from home. Amazing, and beautiful, and sweet, and…"
Ranko sighed heavily. "That's not what I meant, and you know it."
"Maybe not," Akane replied, leaning against the far wall. "But it's the truth. The only truth that matters. And if you insist on thinking you're something different because your story started here, well then, I guess you're just going to have to come to terms with the fact that you're my magical girl, just like in one of Mei's manga. I hope you're ready to fight evil by moonlight."
Ranko stared down at the page. She lifted it just enough to peek at the other side, where a familiar boy in a yellow shirt peered at her from a photo affixed next to that of a very irritated-looking black piglet. "I don't want to be magical. I just want to be normal."
"You are a normal girl, in every way that matters. And nobody will ever think otherwise, unless they come here and read that book," Akane assured her. "I told you at the wedding, and I meant it. It's not a disguise. There's nothing to hide. This is just who you are."
At least, until Plum puts the records on the computer, Ranko thought. And if she recognizes me…
Gritting her teeth, Ranko gripped the corner of the page and tore it from the book. Before Akane could utter a sound, Ranko had crumpled the paper and cast it into the crackling fireplace.
"There," Ranko whispered, nodding resolutely to herself. "Ranko Tendo is the daughter of Soun Tendo and Hana Takahashi, and no one named Ranma Saotome ever existed at all."
Shit, Akane thought as she watched the last corner of the page blacken into ash and crumble into the embers below. I hope the Guide doesn't notice she did that… She walked back to Ranko's chair, leaning down and giving her a hug around the shoulders. "Do you feel better?"
"Yeah, a little," Ranko said, nuzzling her cheek into Akane's forearm. "I just don't want to ever think about a day where I wasn't who I am, and who we are together, again. I'm sorry I brought us here, Akane. I screwed up big time."
Akane squeezed her lover tighter. "Maybe. But you never would have known that if we hadn't come. You never would have let it go in your head. And now that we are here, we are going to get your answers… and if we choose to forget them in the morning, that's okay, too. All I care about is that when we leave here, you're at peace with everything."
"I will be," Ranko promised, bowing her head and kissing Akane's wrist. "As long as you're with me."
"I promise." Akane smiled, tousling the top of Ranko's hair. "But in a few minutes. I gotta get out of this dusty room for a minute. If I look at one more old book, I'm gonna scream." She released her wife, stretching again before striding idly into the disused gift shop.
Save the fact that everything looked as if it hadn't been dusted in years, the small room could have passed for any shop in Minato. There were racks of tee shirts and figurines, postcards, spinning towers featuring arrays of small packages, and even a small display of long-expired candy bars. It's like a zombie movie in here, Akane thought as she explored the neglected space.
Man, do I wish they were still selling stuff, Akane thought as she picked up and inspected a gray tee shirt that she surmised, at one time, must have been black. It bore multicolored English writing that read My boyfriend visited the Cursed Springs of Jusenkyo, and all I got was this girlfriend. Beneath the final word, the icon of the stick-figure woman from the Spring of Drowned Girl was visible in pink screen printing.
The shirt behind it caught her eye, too. It was a similar design, but the word girlfriend was replaced with piglet, and the icon beneath it looked terribly familiar. She sighed quietly, wiping away a tear at the memory of her long-lost pet pig. Wherever you are, P-chan, I hope you're doing okay. I miss you, she thought sullenly as she returned the shirt in her hand to the rack.
Who would want to send a postcard from here, she thought as she made her way to a spinning countertop display. I wouldn't think most folks would even want to admit they had ever been here. Then again, she thought as she turned a piece of dusty cardstock over in her fingers, not everybody embraces their cursed form the way Ranko has, I guess.
She made her way to another display, this one a white wire tower nearly as tall as she was. Situated around the tower were several pegs from which dangled small white packets that looked not unlike pouches of seeds in a garden store. Each packet was printed with an aerial image of the training ground and festooned with bold Chinese characters. In the upper left corner of each packet was an icon of an animal, which Akane had come to recognize indicated one of the springs.
What the… Akane picked up one of the packets, bearing an icon for a dog. She turned it over in her hand, finding the reverse side packed with tiny Chinese characters. Several short phrases were bolded.
What the heck is… Akane reached into her back pocket, pulling out her Chinese dictionary. She began quickly skimming the pages, looking for any of the symbols she could recognize.
Instant… one time… just add water… results not permanent… what?!
"Akane! C'mere, quick!"
Akane gasped, having been snapped out of her intrigue. She hurried back into the main room at the sound of Ranko's voice, finding her excitedly staring at the Jusenkyo Guide.
The Guide had a book in his hand, and once he was certain he had both girls' attention, he began to read.
"So, this record is of Zu Lhao, a man who fell in the Spring of Drowned Duck three hundred and forty-two years ago," the Guide began, tapping the sketch of a man with a Fu Manchu moustache at the top of the page. "According to the records, he had an instance where he failed to change back into his pre-cursed form."
"And?!" Ranko leaned forward in her chair. "What happened?!"
"I'm reading, I'm reading!" The Guide laughed, shaking his head. "I swear, you and Plum could be sisters!" He turned his eyes back to the page. "It says his wife caught him having relations with their maid, and… oh, dear. She transformed him into a duck, and then locked him in a golden cage, where she kept him for years."
"Damn," Akane said, punctuating her exclamation with a low whistle. "Can't say he didn't deserve it, but…"
The Guide chuckled, continuing to read for several moments before speaking again. "It seems that four years after she had caged Zu Lhao, their household fell on hard times, and the new maid, who did not know who the duck was, attempted to cook it to keep the family from going hungry."
"Ouch!" Ranko gasped. "And then?"
The Guide turned the page, cringing. "Looks like… no change, and… delicious duck soup. I hope they used parsnips. They go really well with duck, you know."
Yikes, Ranko thought. Cold much?! "So, that confirms it? That it was just not changing for a long time that locked his curse like that?"
The Guide shook his head. "Once is a coincidence. Twice is a pattern. Let's keep looking."
* * *
Ranko yawned loudly, handing another book to the Guide. "I don't know how much longer I can do this," she said, rubbing her eyes with her fingertips. "And I sing all night for a living."
"Oh, now, this is interesting!" The Guide tapped the bookmarked page in the book Ranko had given him. "This record tells the story of Fa Yu, who was a monk. He came here specifically seeking a curse, and chose the Spring of Drowned Goat. It says he spent ten years in his goat form, without ever changing back once, to contemplate and meditate. When he was finished, he doused himself with hot water, returned to his human form, and wrote several books."
"Well, that's terrible!" Ranko said, slumping over the book on the table in front of her. "We're back at square one!"
Akane sighed, letting her head fall back against the wall. "Try not to get discouraged. We'll figure it o…" Her eyes lit up as she turned the page in the book in front of her. For the first time in all the books she had searched, the symbol of a stick-figure human in a skirt graced the upper left-hand corner. "Hey! I finally found a Spring of Drowned Girl curse!" She triumphantly presented the book to the Guide.
The Guide, however, shook his head dismissively with barely a glance at the page "No, this story can't help us. This is the story of the girl who fell in the spring and createdthe curse."
Ranko sat up attentively in her chair. "Will you read it to us? Please?!" She thought about her moment with Akane, laying the wreath of flowers on the still water of the Spring of Drowned Girl. She had long lost count of how many hours ago it had been, but the first rays of morning sunlight were beginning to peek through the windows of the little mountainside shack.
"Very well," the Guide said, clearing his throat. "This is the story of Oba of the Pure Water Clan. She was a Japanese woman, aged 15, who was here training with her mother when she fell in the…"
"Hold up!" Akane shot out of her chair, her eyes wide. "Did you say Pure Water Clan?!"
Ranko blinked in surprise, recoiling a bit from Akane's sudden, loud outburst. "Akane, relax! Sheesh, take a chill pill! That's just the weird way people talked back then."
"No, Ranko…." Akane darted around the table, taking her wife's hands in hers. "Pure Water is how Mama Shimizu and her family write their name! And we know their martial arts tradition dates back centuries. You always said you were surprised that your girl form still looked like your mom. It's possible that the girl who drowned in that spring…"
"... really was my ancestor?!"Ranko gasped.
"It would make sense," the Guide said, "that if the body you changed into was somehow biologically compatible with your own, and it had time to settle in place…"
Akane stepped forward, stroking her chin. "Like an organ transplant?! Where if the donor and the recipient are compatible… everything meshes, and it works as if it were there all along?!"
"Precisely!" The stout man snapped his fingers, pointing to the dwindling supply of books on the middle bank of shelves that had yet to be searched. "Quickly! Get me the book labeled 650 to 700!"
Akane darted to the shelf before Ranko could respond, tossing the ancient tome to the suddenly reinvigorated man.
He clumsily caught it, hurriedly opening it on top of the one he'd been reading. He flipped through the pages, scanning only the corners of each, until he stopped at one marked with the silhouette of a duck.
"The first person to drown in the Spring of Drowned Duck was…" The Guide sat back in his chair, his eyes wide with thunderstruck realization. "Zu Shang."
"The same family name…" Akane's hands flew to her cheeks to cover her open mouth. "Could it be?!"
The Guide nodded. "Without full family registries at our disposal, it's hard to know for sure, but if you're asking my opinion…"
"Would it matter, though? I mean, it's not like Zu Shang was biologically a duck…" Ranko scratched her head, a mystified glaze over her eyes. "I'm confused. Maybe I'm just exhausted."
The Guide stroked his chin thoughtfully. "That's true, but… there's a legend that says a part of every soul that touches one of the springs somehow remains. That everyone who falls in the springs leaves something behind, when they take something new away. I wonder if this is just the manifestation of that. And it would be even stronger in your case, considering your ancestor wouldn't just have fallen into the spring and been cursed, but was the soul that created it in the first place…"
Ranko stood slowly, a blank, dumbstruck look on her face. She walked to the window of the small shack, shielding her eyes from the sunlight glinting off the dozens of cursed pools of water and hanging in the valley mist.
"Hey," Akane said softly, resting her hand gently on her lover's back. "Talk to me, princess. What are you thinking?"
"I always thought, everybody else is like, half their father's bloodline and half their mother's. But me? I've got two parents I have no blood relation to, and then two parents I barely have a relationship with, and then this fifth… something, that made me who I am. But now?"
Ranko turned to smile up at Akane. "I know where I come from now. The Shimizu clan's blood made this body." She grinned, leaning back into Akane's arms. "And the Phoenix clan made the rest of me."
Akane smiled, leaning down and kissing her wife's forehead. "I'm glad to see you smiling. I want you to know, it wouldn't have mattered to me, whatever you found out here. I'd have loved you just the same. But I'm happy you finally have an answer, and it's something you can feel good about."
"I do," Ranko said through a yawn, "but now the adrenaline is wearing off, and I feel like I'm gonna drop if you don't hold me up."
The Guide smiled warmly, rising to his feet and gesturing toward the hallway. "I have a small guest room, if you'd like to rest for a few hours. I'm afraid there's only one bed, so you'll have to share it."
Akane turned without releasing Ranko from her arms, a wide smirk forming on her lips.
"Don't worry. That won't be a problem."