“I’m sorry, Akari-ch… Akari-san.” Ryouga-sama wouldn’t look at her, just stared at the ground and poked his fingers together. It was all right, though. She understood how shy he was. “I know I should have told you before this, but I didn’t want to tell you in a letter, and I couldn’t find you, and…”
“It’s all right, Ryouga-sama. We’re together now, and I can take you home.”
“That’s just it, Akari-san. I can’t go with you. It wouldn’t be right.”
Wouldn’t be right? “What’s wrong, Ryouga-sama? You… you used to call me Akari-chan. Why are you so formal now?”
“Because… Akari-san, you’re a very sweet girl, and I like you a lot, but… I’m in love with someone else.”
“I know. You love Akane. But she belongs to Ranma, and you belong to me.”
“No. I’m not in love with Akane. I mean, I love her, I’ll always love her, but… there’s someone else.”
Ryouga-sama in love… with someone besides Akane? With someone besides me?? Akari’s world shattered into a million pieces. Ryouga-sama, always so shy and gentle with her, so cute with those little fangs and that adorable bandanna… Ryouga-sama, who turned into the most darling pig in the world… Ryouga-sama, who alone of all men had passed her grandfather’s test, had defeated Katsunishiki, had proved himself strong enough to take care of her forever… tears spilled out of her eyes and down her face, making dark spots on the front of her plaid dress. “Is… it about the pigs? I’ll give them up, I swear I will!”
“No, Akari-san, it’s not the pigs. It’s… I don’t know how to describe it, except that when I’m with Ukyou there’s a…”
“Hey, Ryochan!”
Ryouga raised his head and turned, a light in his eyes and a big goofy grin spreading over his face. Akari swiped her hand across her eyes and looked up at her rival…
He was dressed in a school uniform, and carried an enormous spatula at his back and a bandolier of small ones slung across his chest. His long hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. From the lithe grace of his movements, he was obviously a fellow warrior, as beautiful as the boys in her favorite anime… and he was smiling at Ryouga, a smile full of love and tenderness, and Ryouga was smiling back. He’d never smiled at her like that. Akari’s shattered world split into even smaller pieces. A boy! Ryouga-sama… her Ryouga, the perfect man of her dreams… was a… a pervert… was okama… She wanted to scream, to set Katsunishiki on them, but she knew that if she opened her mouth she’d be sick… without a word she whirled and ran away, blind, stumbling, not caring where she was going, just away, away from perverts and bishounen and Nerima, away from everything. Ever faithful, the huge pig heaved itself to its feet and lumbered after her.
“We’re sorry, Unryuu-san. They had a court order… we had no choice.”
“I understand.” Akari’s shoulders slumped and she turned away. The animal rights activists again. One small group had zeroed in on pig-sumo, an obscure sport with no powerful political lobby to protect it. It was cruelty and exploitation to “force” a pig to sumo-wrestle, they said. Never mind that Katsunishiki was probably the best-treated pig in all Japan. Never mind that he loved sumo, that the lack of competition weighed on his spirit even more than on hers. He hadn’t had a match all summer…
“Please stay and share a meal with us. It’s the least we can do to repay you for your trouble in coming.”
“No thank you. I must be getting on my way. Come, Katsunishiki.” She hopped onto the pig’s back and they took the road out of town, north, into the forest.
“Who was that girl?” A youth, wearing the coat and headband of the local Young Men’s Association, addressed the inn owner.
“She came for the pig-sumo match we had to cancel.”
“Is she going into the forest?” the youth asked, horrified. He yelled something and ran after the retreating pair.
Akari heard the yell. She tapped Katsunishiki to get him to speed up. She didn’t want to be around people any more; she just wanted to get to someplace where she and her pig could be alone. Where she could cry. She missed her grandfather. She missed the life she used to have. She missed the dreams she used to have, of training the pigs, Ryouga-sama helping her, caring for her, his strength and gentleness…
But thinking of Ryouga just brought back the memory of the last time she’d seen him, the way he had looked, the way he had lit up at the sight of that, that boy… Next to that betrayal, the disappearance of her livelihood seemed like anticlimax. Now out of sight of the village, she buried her face in Katsunishiki’s neck and wept. She didn’t notice when the pig turned off the road, into the forest. She didn’t notice the enormous lizard perched on a branch… didn’t notice the baby koala, as big as Katsunishiki’s head, clinging to its mother… didn’t notice the huge platypus slink back into the underbrush when the pig grunted at it…
Ow! Akari rubbed her backside and blinked. She was on the ground… what had happened to Katsunishiki? The huge pig lay on his side, out cold, a swelling bump on his head. What had…
“Are you all right, miss?”
Akari stared up at a tall, slim young man holding a pushbroom as if it were a weapon – a weapon he was expert with. He wore old-fashioned clothing, and a warrior’s headband held his dark hair out of his eyes. They were such gentle eyes… her anger melted away as she gazed at him. “You… you defeated my sumo pig,” she whispered.
“Oh, is that your pig? I thought he was a mountain monster. They do cause trouble sometimes.”
“Mountain… monster?”
The youth’s expression hardened. “You should go back,” he told her sternly. “This forest is dangerous. I’ve set a lot of monster traps beyond this…”
A cascade of rocks fell out of a tree onto his head. The impact smashed through the planks he was standing on, lightweight boards with a thin covering of dirt, sending him into the pit beneath.
And he doesn’t exactly remember where they are.
Katsunishiki grunted and struggled to his feet. “I suppose we should try to find where he lives,” Akari sighed. She moved the rocks and broken boards aside and, with a great deal of effort, pulled the unconscious youth out of the pit and slung him across the giant pig’s broad back.
He’s certainly handsome, Akari mused. And strong enough to beat Katsunishiki. That means he’s as strong as Ryouga-sama. I wonder what his name is.
I hope he likes girls.
NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC:
A couple of years ago I tripped over an alternate-pairings fic that matched Akari with Shinnosuke. It seemed to fit pretty well – he could defeat her pig, and he’s so sweet…
As for dealing with a Ryouga-Akari breakup, it didn’t seem there was anything I could say that hadn’t already been done better by either Marisa Price or Kunoichi – until last summer’s chapters of Shadow Chronicles, where Hinako thought Ukyou was a guy… so what if Akari made the same mistake?
Okama: literally “honorable kettle,” from the fancied resemblance of the human posterior to that utensil. Standard slang for a gay man, though one of my sources says it’s now considered somewhat derogatory.