Phoenix (A Ranma 1/2 Fanfiction)

Chapter Sixty-One: Shattered

Mei looked at her watch nervously. Come on, Ranko, she thought to herself. Five minutes until opening. The line already stretched around the corner of the building, waiting for the women inside to open the doors to begin their weekend revelry. "Where could she be?"

Izumi darted through the saloon doors, tossing her purse on a shelf under the bar top. "Hey, Mei, did you take the trash out?"

The blue-haired girl shook her head. "No, but it wasn't full. Why?"

Izumi shrugged, tying a little black apron holding her notepad and straws around her waist. "The back door was unlocked. I thought somebody might have gone out."

Yui frowned. She knew she'd locked the door after bringing in the week's liquor delivery. Hana was in her office, so if none of the other girls had opened it...

"Mei, can you handle the bar for a few minutes?"

Yui's request was met with a shrug. "I guess so. I've got nothing to do, since I'm supposed to be running a show for a singer who isn't here. Why, what's up?"

Yui looked toward the back room, a concerned expression in her eyes. "I just need to check on something."

Mei slid over to Yui's well behind the bar, and Yui stepped through the saloon doors and looked up the stairs. With a sigh, she began to ascend. She fervently hoped she was wrong, but she hadn't been able to get Ranko's demeanor from the other night out of her head.

Quietly, she turned the doorknob and entered. Normally she would have knocked, but she didn't expect an answer whether the room was empty or not. The bedroom was pristine; the bed was made, no dirty clothes on the floor or dishes in the sink. But there was also no one in it. She had just turned back for the stairwell when she thought she heard a soft sound coming from the bathroom. She held still, holding her breath for a moment until she heard it again, and frowned sadly. That was a sound she knew all too well.

The bathroom door was pulled closed but not latched, so she gently pushed it open. There she found her youngest sister, still fully clothed in a silver skater dress covered with purple flowers, curled up in a ball in the bathtub. There was no water in the tub, unless one counted the salty deluge raining from Ranko's eyes.

Yui sighed, walking into the room gingerly and sitting on the closed toilet seat next to the tub. "Ranko, honey, what happened?" She spoke as softly and disarmingly as she could, unsure if Ranko could even hear her over her sobbing.

The younger girl curled herself tighter into a ball, seeming to try in vain to hide from Yui's sight. "Just... leave me alone."

Yui reached out to put her hand on Ranko's shoulder, but her sister shrank even further away from her touch. "I think we both know that's not going to happen. Please, talk to me?"

"I d... don't want to... talk about it..." The teen sniffled, wiping her running nose on her right forearm.

"Maybe, but I think you might need to." Yui sat forward on the toilet seat, trying to be as close as Ranko would let her. She remembered what Hana had told her about the night Mikado had attacked Mei; how hard it had been to get Ranko to open up. Like her surrogate mother, she knew that her youngest sister needed an outlet for her feelings, even if one had to jackhammer through years of hard-won emotional walls to help her release them.

"Please, Ranko. What happened?"

The crying teen's words echoed hollowly in the tiled shower stall between her sobs.