[Episode 213321] [Episode 213321]Tepid heat bloomed on Ranma's chest, and searing heat bloomed in his mind, but he pushed his own heat down with years of control. That control, and the extra distance from stepping back so the soup didn't fall on his pants, also stopped him from breaking the guy's jaw.
Around him, the room lost its ambient chatter and all the other students stared at him expectantly, gauging him, waiting for him to flare with anger or cower with fear at the bullying.
No. Even if that's what people expected, he couldn't let a few kids provoke him by dirtying his clothes, and he certainly had enough options to avoid acting like a coward.
But after an insult like this, he couldn't pretend to be calm either.
Ranma said, "Are you teachers getting paid to stand there?!"
And as he hoped, everyone in the lunchroom cringed as Ranma's yell reached the hallway outside, where two teachers stood conversing.
Wrinkles's gang began to scatter without waiting for a response, and some of them got away. Not all, and not Wrinkles himself. He was too frozen from indecision to run away immediately, and by the time he tried, one of the teachers had already stepped his way onto the scene.
Ranma put a picture of the teacher's most distinctive feature on his mental corkboard, and labeled it "Necktie".
It wasn't his fault these people looked generic.
"What's this?" said Necktie. His arrival had all the students in the lunchroom hushed further, and some averted their faces as if doing otherwise would draw attention to them too.
Even the remaining bullies shrank. They obviously knew Necktie. "What's going on this time?" Necktie said, obviously knowing the boys just as well. "Why are you tossing food around? Why are you standing here in the lunchroom?"
"This guy attacked me," said Wrinkles, and pointed at Ranma. "He roughed me up this morning."
Necktie looked at Ranma. "What's your name?"
Nobody here could support Wrinkles's claim, but Ranma wasn't going to simply lie. Even though he wanted to win money from Konoe, he wasn't about to hide his actions after deciding on them, money or not.
"Ranma Saotome," he said, and waited for Necktie to confirm Wrinkles's story.
Necktie's eyebrow flickered enough for Ranma to notice something off, and he turned back to Wrinkles. "Don't lie," he said. "Anybody can see you're in the wrong. Do you think I'm blind?"
Ranma was surprised, but Wrinkles actually gawked at that response. "I'm not lying!" he said as he backed up a step. "He practically throttled me this morning!"
"You mean a new student randomly decided to attack you, even though you're the ones who have the disciplinary history?"
Ranma figured that without evidence the teachers would take his side, but he didn't feel happy being taught by simpletons. He glanced around. The other boys in the group didn't look surprised at the outcome at all. They all stood stiff and quiet, stopped from protesting by experience.
Wrinkles didn't seem to have an answer, so he fell quiet too. Necktie frowned at the silence. "If you're not talking, then you know the procedure. Move."
The group of boys turned and began to shamble from the room, to where Ranma imagined school discipline would normally be handled.
Not Wrinkles though. "What the hell?" he said. "This is so unfair! You're not even going to question him?"
The boy looked around, but even though that was a legitimate question, nobody in the room supported him, Necktie was ignoring him, and Ranma wasn't about to speak on his behalf. He opened his mouth to rant some more, but one of the boys from his own group grabbed him.
"What are you—"
Then Wrinkles face scrunched up and stopped talking. Ranma couldn't see, but from the boy's expression either the other kid was him quiet, or poking a knife into his back.
The room was quiet as the group quickly left with the other teacher who came in with Necktie.
Necktie looked over Ranma, who still had soup and noodles dribbling down his front. "Saotome, was it?"
"Are you going to ask for my side of things?"
Necktie's face grew a little bit darker. "I don't think it matters. Even if you were in the wrong, I'm supposed to let it slide."
A wave of suspicion crashed into Ranma, and the muttering around the room told him only a small part of it was his own. "You're supposed to let it slide? Why?"
"That's not something I'm going to share with the entire school. Just don't make things hard for us and stay out of trouble."
Ranma glanced around at the attentive audience. "That's hard to do when you're singling me out like this."
"Well, do what you can."
Necktie shrugged and left, but the students continued staring at Ranma, memorizing his name and appearance, and noting that he received some kind of special treatment. He could see the notoriety he was developing in those stares.
He might not live in normal society, but Ranma knew normal society would shun him for being different, and not just the don't-talk-to-me kind of shunning he wanted. If asking for directions led to this much trouble, how the hell would he avoid more with such a reputation?
Oh well. He had to go wash himself off.
Getting food dumped on him by school bullies was no problem. Calling the teachers so he wouldn't have to fight was also worth it. He stayed cool, and handled himself as well as anybody could expect.
But getting a wide reputation when he should be acting normal? That was bad.
Nobody bothered him the rest of the day. His classmates stayed away and the teachers treated him the same as before, as if strangely uninformed. That suggested most of the teachers didn't know who he was, but the lunchroom talk made Ranma suspect Konoe had gone around telling everybody that the new boy was a horrible troublemaker. Strange for his regular teachers not to at least glance at him nervously.
Maybe the news must not have spread far, but Ranma could hear the gossip moving out of his homeroom into the other floors already.
Like his teacher wanted, the school day ended with Ranma cleaning the homeroom. Ranma wiped the floor and took out the trash quickly and painlessly, considering all the other things on his mind.
Even though he tried to win the bet with Konoe today, the way things went wrong showed he was drifting with no goal, and without one he didn't—wouldn't—accomplish anything. He needed to make a concrete decision about what he was going to do now.
Should he concentrate on his studying, or on training? He wanted to train, of course, but without his dad, how would he do it?
No, the bigger problem was if other people kept getting in his way, he wouldn't get anything done.
He needed to know the reason Konoe wanted him here. It couldn't be to attend such a terrible school.
Maybe he should even get the old man's advice, since he had to go to the old man's place anyway?
No. By the time Ranma limped from his school to Konoe's office, he changed his mind. Konoe had his own agenda, and Ranma didn't want to have that conversation without knowing more about his situation. That meant he'd have to sit through more than one day of school.
Well, in the meantime he needed to check in with Konoe and try to get his money.
Ranma dragged himself to Konoe's office around five o'clock in the afternoon, so there weren't many girls around to stare at him limping through their school.
From outside the office, he could hear Konoe talking, and since Ranma wasn't in a hurry he didn't interrupt the old man's business. Besides, tripping on the stairs messed up his injury, so he welcomed a chance to sit down.
For the last few days, he had been recovering from the hit that teacher called Takamichi gave him, and he hadn't been able to do anything useful... but he also didn't want to get better too quickly. That would make Konoe suspicious, and he didn't want to risk the old man getting investigative.
He had turned off his brain during the slow recovery, but now he needed to think. Suppose he ended up training. He'd have to distance himself from the students at school, and if he avoided after-school clubs and anything more than bare-minimum study, and if he had no money problems, that would leave him a lot of time for training.
If he had money problems, then he needed to work. That would waste a lot time, and stall his improvement badly.
He could... but no, that kind of income would be too shady for Konoe to ignore.
Doing errands for pocket money wasn't reliable enough to fund his training, but if he tried to find a job, he'd have to get permission from a school authority now that Genma wasn't here to sign the forms.
Konoe forced him into this situation, and no way was he begging Konoe for an income. Before it came to that, he had options.
Konoe's office door interrupted his thinking, and Ranma saw a girl from his own poor-as-hell school in that ugly girl's uniform coming out of the office.
She was that weird girl who butted in this morning and later ran away from him. Ranma knew this meeting would be just as awkward, but that was no reason to be mean, so he simply got up and said, "Hello again."
The girl flinched, which Ranma considered overreacting. He didn't snarl it or anything. For a second, he wondered if she would run away again.
She did nothing at all, so Ranma dismissed her from his mind. He limped into Konoe's office and yelled, "Hey old man, you owe me money!"
"And speak of the devil," said Konoe.
...Meaning they were talking about him?
Hmm.
But Ranma decided if Konoe didn't fault him for his own greeting, he'd be unfair in over-thinking Konoe's.
"The devil says you owe him money."
Konoe's brow was slanted in displeasure. "Oh? Well, that's not how I hear it. Fifty thousand in exchange for not getting in a fight on the first day of school. Weren't you in a fight today?"
There went Ranma's hope of an honest profit. On to dishonesty, then.
"Nope."
"According to at least one person, you attacked a kid before school even started. Grabbing him around the neck would qualify as fighting to me."
Something that mild was far from what Ranma considered a fight, and he made no promise to avoid fighting outside of school hours, but both excuses were against the spirit of the bet.
He shrugged, and jumped to the point. "If my school has some sort of disciplinary accusation against me for whatever I did this morning, then fine. Otherwise, keep the schoolgirl gossip to yourself."
He turned and eyed the girl at the door, who now stared defiantly back at him. Ranma turned back before the eye-roll reflex hit.
"The school," said Konoe, "does have a note about you that corroborates my witness's testimony." The old man shuffled some papers on his desk, as if this was some kind of legal hearing, instead of a chance to compensate for Ranma's basement living. "Apparently your victim gathered his school clique and tried to take revenge for your actions."
"And I didn't fight them," said Ranma. "Besides, when somebody tries to take revenge on me, does the school say it's my fault?"
Ranma wanted to know. If his school believed that, he'd have to behave differently there.
Konoe coughed. "Well, no."
"Then you got nothing."
"I'm afraid I find the witness credible. She gave me a full account of your behavior this morning. If you give somebody else reason to attack you, you're responsible for the attack."
For a second, Ranma considered if the girl behind him was sent by Konoe to spy. He junked that thought quickly—if she was there to spy, why would she be so surprised at his name? At least that what Ranma figured she was so surprised about, since he had no idea why she would care about his room number.
"Really? I'm responsible if I started it? Okay, then, let me ask your little witness."
Ranma turned to the girl again. "Why was I grabbing that guy in the neck this morning?"
The girl stared at him and couldn't reply, exactly as Ranma expected because he knew she hadn't seen that part.
"How do you know I started it? Why do you think I would fight somebody I don't know in a school I've never been to while hobbling the entire day, unless somebody else started it and I tried to smooth things out?"
The girl had that squirrel-in-gunsight face Ranma saw on naughty kids whenever he glanced at kid shows on TV. She had no answer, of course.
Ranma turned back to Konoe. "If the school is writing me up for fighting, then fine. Otherwise, old man, you don't get to decide who to believe. Are you handing over the cash?"
"Did you abuse a boy at school today?"
Ranma glared at the old man who sat there ignoring whatever he said. He needed that money, but he already decided that getting it wasn't as important as his satisfaction this morning, so as much as it bothered him, demanding proof from Konoe was just avoiding that decision's consequences.
"Yes, I did."
Konoe spread his hands. "Then you lose."
What a wasted day of restraint. If he was going to fail so early, he should've gotten more satisfaction by punching Wrinkles.
But no, Ranma reconsidered. That would've just made his tardiness and his reputation worse.
He thought about blaming Takamichi for the injury that made him slow, but the man was doing his job. Ranma was the one who got violent because Konoe dismissed the test.
Konoe dismissed the test because he thought Ranma had cheated.
Ranma got a score he could explain only by cheating because he wanted to skip school, and that was because Genma put him in school.
Genma said school was necessary because of Ranma's temper.
Dammit. Ranma agreed to go to school. He got perfect scores on the exams. He wanted directions to get to school on time. He swallowed the humiliation of getting picked on by some dumbshit kids playing schoolyard bully, and spent the afternoon in his shirt while his jacket dried. And for what?
Genma said school was necessary because of Ranma's temper. He had to get out of here before that temper broke from the injustice of it all and made everything worse.
"Fine," Ranma said. "I lose. Keep your money."
He turned to leave.
The girl was still standing there blocking the door, now fully steeled herself against him with what Ranma recognized as a challenge face, all frowning and glaring.
For a second Ranma considered blaming her for everything, but no. No, the time for blame was past and he should let it go. But that doesn't mean he had to take any more of her interference.
Ranma glared back when she didn't move. "What?"
She crossed her arms, and asked, "Before I say anything, I have to ask this. Do you know who I am?"
Ranma was about to say, "Forgetting people before the end of the day is too much even for me."
No. Wait, she wasn't asking that. If this girl knew him from somewhere, that would explain why she was bothering him. Ranma look at her face. Its babyish roundness matched her squeaky voice, and with her brown hair tied up in twin pigtails with bow ribbons, he couldn't help but see her as a child.
He cleared Wrinkles and Necktie from the corkboard, and stuck her picture there in their place. Under her picture, "Hairbows".
"I remember you," he said. "Your family does martial arts and I challenged your training hall."
Hairbows stammered for a second, then collected herself. "Y-yes. Okay, you remember, then you know why I'm standing in your way."
The last thing Ranma wanted was to be reminded, so Ranma used the first idea that came to mind to defuse a confrontation, so that he could get out of this office.
Hiding his limp as best he could, he walked right up to Hairbows, and before she could back away he bowed his waist so deep his head fell below the shorter girl's chest. He could feel her surprised stare. "I want to apologize," he said while staring at the floor. "I shouldn't have humiliated you. It wasn't an honorable thing to do. I hope that you'll forget my fault and let me make it up to you and your family."
"Wha-"
Ranma could see Hairbows back up because her shoes moved upwards out of his view, and he figured she had a dropped-jaw look on her face from the way faint gurgling came out of her mouth.
The popping noise from her head was probably his own imagination. He stayed bowed as Hairbows's brain rebooted.
That turned out to be a mistake when she punched him on the top of his head as hard as she could.
Ranma's head did not like that, and neither did the rest of him when he fell to the ground with all of his injuries screaming. He didn't even have the presence of mind to curse out loud through the pain, but holy fucking cockballoons, in his thoughts he cursed energetically. Not too coherently though.
Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the scrape of a chair being pushed back, but before Konoe could say anything Hairbows ran sobbing from the room, slamming the door behind her.
Well, Ranma thought as his spasms subsided, at least that was one obstacle down. He treated her like a child and got the response he wanted, though not the way he wanted it. She wasn't going to stop him from leaving anymore. He opened one eye, and saw Konoe standing over him. Too bad the other obstacle wasn't as easy.
Konoe stooped down and asked in concern, "Are you alright? How bad is it?"
"She punched me in the fucking head!"
Ranma took responsibility for his own decisions. He decided to mess with that girl, so when Konoe wanted to get him healed, he refused to take the easy way out of his pain. He could've healed himself or accepted healing any time, like for the injury Takamichi dealt him, but copping out that way was cheap. Instead he spent another entire night sleepless and grumbling in bed. He couldn't train, but that was the price of integrity.
One night was enough to leave his head at a distracting ache, and head movements made him dizzy. The headache slowed him down, and that more than made up for how much less he was limping.
Integrity forbade him from skipping school for more rest, of course. Ranma walked to the school gate the next morning like that.
While normally he would've found the gate plaque still missing to be worth a second glance, not today.
He didn't need this crap today.
A wall of dumbass kids blocked his way through the middle of the courtyard as they watched with great interest some other dumbass kids yell. With their volume and the size of the crowd, Ranma couldn't help but overhear talk of respecting so and so, joining up with such and such gang, getting expelled for getting caught again, and who the hell was this guy walking in the middle of them?
Ranma dragged himself through the argument between the shoddily dressed kids without a word or a glance. If he was going to say anything at all, he would've told them to take their spectacle somewhere else. Maybe to the gym building, where they could also take a shower while they're at it.
He didn't need this crap today.
Somebody yelled obscenities at him. He didn't care, and continued walking. He could hear the thudding of his own heartbeat somewhere in his head, and it was already worsening the ache.
When whoever was yelling at him caught up and grabbed his arm, Ranma finally looked toward where the voice was coming from. He didn't recognize the guy. He didn't care either. Not about the onlookers who probably recognized him from the trouble yesterday. Not about the badly dressed kid yelling into his face. Not even about the brass knuckles around the kid's other hand.
On some level, Ranma applauded the kid who was now trying to knuckle him in the jaw, because when would've been a better, more vulnerable time?
But he didn't need this crap today.
A hook punch from close range takes less than a second, but by the time the kid began the movement Ranma had already half-finished swinging his satchel, so it slashed the kid across the face long before the hook could be completed.
The satchel was empty so the blow didn't even knock the kid down despite its speed, but it knocked him back. Ranma watched the kid ready himself again as the rest of his retard companions began cheering at the thought of a fight.
This was stupid.
This was all just stupid! He got put into school against his will, got dumped into a lower grade, and even though he went along, for two days in a row these dipshits who he didn't even know keep getting in his way. His side hurt from swinging the bag, his headache just spiked again, and he shouldn't be in this school, at this city, and trying not to maim people in the first place!
Forget it, he didn't need this crap today.
The kid started to charge at him, full of anger on his face. Even through the headache, Ranma knew that look. He knew that anger was born in the mind. The mind sent the anger to the body. The body directed the anger to the arm. The arm focused the anger into the fist. So a fist was like an extension of the mind. And from the mind to the knuckles, the bones of the shoulder, elbow, and wrist connected everything.
Ranma caught the kid's arm, folded it, and now things weren't connected anymore.
The courtyard stopped moving at the sight of a forearm jutting downward, held in place by skin and nothing else, a dead branch almost about to fall away and land on the courtyard concrete with a wet crack.
Maybe even the same wet crack that elbow made.
The metal knuckles began to slip out of the boy's fingers, and he began babbling loudly, shaking so badly he fell on his back.
And when that shaking made the forearm start bouncing around his lap, he began screaming.
That miserable sound made Ranma's head ache more, but a stomp to the mouth ended it.
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(Posted Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:48)
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