The Phoenix Saga

"Sure! Thanks!" Ranko waved to a chubby young man in a navy blue hoodie as he walked off to rejoin his friends on the sidewalk. 

"Doesn't that ever get old?" Yumeko asked, walking alongside her pop star friend in a kelly green shirt featuring a stubby elf with a wooden sword and shield. "Like, you can't ever walk anywhere."

The redhead shrugged, rubbing the underside of her left wrist and massaging up into her palm with her thumb. "You get used to it. Just sucks when I get to class and my hand already hurts too bad to take notes 'cause I've been signing shit all morning." 

Off to their right, a line of tents in various colors had been erected on the quad along the sidewalk's edge, from which their fellow Mystics were recruiting for a variety of student organizations. There was one for the manga club, which made Ranko smile softly. Reminds me, I need to give Kumiko a call and check in with her, she thought. Next, they passed a tent for some sort of religious group Ranko didn't recognize, and then one for a political activism organization.

"You ever think about a disguise? Or, like, wearing a mask or something, like you're sick? Even if they recognize ya, they might think you have something catching and stay clear." As they walked through the sunlit quad, Yumeko adjusted the weight of her backpack on her shoulder.

Ranko blushed. "I mean, for one, I would have to get a wig. Pretty hard to miss this going down the sidewalk," she said, playing with the end of her bright red ponytail for emphasis. "But, maybe. Ak… Aki has suggested it more than a few times lately."

Especially now that we basically can't be seen in public anymore, Ranko thought sadly, averting her eyes from the lime-green Gay and Lesbian Student Alliance tent and gazing down at her sneakers with a heavy sigh. Stupid contract. We can barely even go grocery shopping together, let alone anything you could consider a fucking date.

"Maybe! I bet you'd make a cute blonde." Yumeko giggled as the pair passed a bench at the edge of the quad, waving to the muscular, black-haired man seated alone on it with a timid blush. He was wearing a purple athletic jersey and skinny jeans, and sipping from a plastic bottle of iced tea.

Managing a smile up at her friend, Ranko stopped walking. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yui tells me that all the time. Hey, Yume? c'mere a second." 

"Ranko? Ran… what the hell are you doing?! No, no, no!" Yumeko protested, digging the heels of her purple sneakers into the grass. She was unable to resist as Ranko's firm grip clamped around her wrist and physically dragged her toward the bench.

Ranko waved to the boy enthusiastically, completely ignoring the mortified look on Yumeko's face as she spoke. "Hiya! You don't know me, but my name's Ranko. I'm a singer and stuff. This is my awesome friend, Yumeko."

"H… hi," Yumeko stammered, gazing intently down at the grass. The heat from her face could have re-boiled the boy's tea.

The young rugby player nodded, closing his book and leaning back on the bench. "Good to meet ya, girls. What can I do for you?"

"Ranko… no," Ranko's blonde companion pleaded.

"The thing is… Yume here has been looking over at this bench every day at about this time since term started. And I've got a sneaky suspicion it's because she likes you, and she's too chicken shit to say so. So, I'm saying it for her." Ranko dragged Yumeko forward, nudging her toward the bench with a hip check in her maroon denim jeans.

Yumeko swallowed hard, adjusting the round frame of her glasses after being jostled. "I am going to commit actual murder, Tendo," she whimpered under her breath.

"Whatever, just smile, dumbass." Ranko grinned, her fingers still clenched around Yumeko's wrist with her index finger hooked into the plastic band of her purple digital watch.

The strapping athlete scooted to his left on the bench to make a space and patted the green wooden seat beside himself. "You wanna sit down? I've got a little time to kill."

"Oh, gods, I… I can't, I need to… owww!" Yumeko yelped at the sudden pain in her foot as Ranko stomped on it hard with her silver cheer sneakers. 

With a giggle, Ranko shoved her companion forward until she all but tripped onto the seat. "I'll get Mizuki to give you a copy of the lecture notes tomorrow. You'll be fine." She reached down to her white vinyl belt for her sparkly pink pager, pressing a button on it to activate the display and cringing at its content. "I, on the other hand, need to haul ass. You two have fun, now!" She issued a spritely wave with wiggling fingers as she flitted back toward the sidewalk. 

"I'm gonna kill you, Ranko!" Yumeko turned to look up at the square jaw of the muscle-bound blond man, giggling nervously and fidgeting with her fingers. "So, ummm, uh… hi?"

* * *

Wanna live proud, but if they knew what we get up to, it's somebody else I gotta say 'shut up' to…

Ranko looked over the verse in her notebook with a heavy sigh. It was more of a poem than a song, as she knew she'd never be allowed anywhere near a stage or a recording studio to sing it. It had always been frustrating, knowing that she and Akane had to be careful given her celebrity status, before she signed the Yokai Records-mandated code of conduct. Nevertheless, the couple had long played fast and loose with the rules. Ranko knew that at times, going back to Turn Me Off/Turn Me On at her pre-wedding party, she'd taken significant risks and almost dared Yokai to discover her secret. Hell, going back as far as Sneak, she corrected herself. A part of her, she reasoned, had almost wanted to be caught, so she wouldn't have to hide the truth about herself anymore. She could apologize to her bandmates, take the slap on the wrist from Amaya, and go about her business free to live as she and her wife saw fit. 

But now, the slightest slip, and her career would be over in the blink of an eye. One kiss caught on someone's Polaroid, and she would cost her friends - and maybe even her sisters - everything. She knew what she was risking when she'd signed the contract, and she didn't regret the stability her sacrifice had bought for her family, but she hadn't been prepared for how much it would make her feel as if she were imprisoned in her own life. Every time she laid eyes on Akane outside of their apartment, it felt like she was suffocating. 

She'd never say a word to them about it and steal their joy from them, but it was made all the worse by the fact that Hitomi and Emi were not remotely shy in their own affections for each other - and everyone else. Sure, Ranko had negotiated for them to be exempted from the code of conduct, and she was glad of it - in no small part because she knew they wouldn't last a second under its rigid terms - but Ranko wished they would tone it down a little bit in her presence for pity's sake. Even Yui and Sakura, within the confines of the Phoenix, stole the occasional kiss or soft moment, but the same heartbeat's worth of affection that Ranko's heart screamed for every time she passed by her wife in the bar had the potential to destroy a dozen lives.

I smile up at you as I walk along down our road, in your favorite yellow dress I borrowed…

Ranko sighed, putting her pen down and blinking up at her music history professor. Chiharu Ogura was a short, stocky woman in her mid-thirties, with short black hair and thick glasses. She hadn't stopped speaking for longer than it took to sip from a bottle of water in almost an hour. I know, lady. Beethoven. Bach. Handel. Buncha old, dead European dudes with pianos. Great. Who cares? Explain to me how this is gonna help me make better pop music, or else please, for mercy's sake, shut up. 

Ranko stretched, twisting her back and wincing slightly. The rough plastic chairs were already uncomfortable, especially for someone afflicted with the Full-Body Cat's Tongue, but the fact that they were mounted to the desks with aluminum bars provided no real options for repositioning. As was the case with the seating in most of her classes, the desk was mounted to the right side of the chair, meaning Ranko had to twist somewhat in her seat in order to write as a left-handed student. You'd think they'd put two or three left-handed desks in every classroom, but nope…

"Alright, everybody!" Ms. Ogura said, pulling on a dangling string to release the white projection screen on which a portrait of Mozart had been displayed until a moment before. It rolled up toward the ceiling with a loud zip sound, revealing the green chalkboard behind it. Written on the chalkboard were a series of bullet points about the upcoming assignment. "Let's talk term papers!"

Alternatively: let's not, Ranko thought, sighing as she slumped in her uncomfortable seat and fidgeted with the end of her ponytail. Booooring. 

"So, if you read your syllabus, you already got a bit of a spoiler on this assignment, but if you had something more interesting to do over the summer, here you go," the professor continued.

More interesting? Me? Naaaah. All I did was play packed houses in seven countries. Ranko scoffed, rolling her eyes a bit. 

"Here's the thing about music history: we're living it. We don't talk about it as much in this class, because we focus a lot on what people would consider the classical period - the Renaissance, Baroque, all of that stuff. But, Michael Jackson, CoCo? I don't think anyone would deny that they're making new classics, right now. So, what we're going to do with this assignment is acknowledge that a little bit." 

The teacher pointed up at the chalkboard with a long dowel. "You're going to do a term paper, eight pages minimum, on a musician or a band. It can be anyone you like, Western or Japanese, as long as they're alive, and ideally, still active in the business. You're going to want to talk about their biography a little bit, and how they got started in music. Cover their career, and talk about what makes their music special. What makes it special for you. Include what they're doing now, if they're still active. Cite all your sources. This will be due at the end of term, on November twenty-fifth."

Oh, fantastic, Ranko thought with a sigh. Nothing says "happy birthday" like a huge freaking essay. At least it doesn't have to be on a completely suck subject, I guess. She glanced up at the clock mounted to the wall just beneath a small Japanese flag, smiling in relief and closing her notebook. Almost time to get out of here. Better start packing up. She jammed her notebook and pen into her backpack as the professor answered questions from her classmates about the upcoming assignment. 

"Alright, you guys. Get out of here! Happy Friday!" The professor waved toward the door with both of her stubby arms. The room quickly filled with a cacophony of thirty-two desks scraping against the floor as the teens and twenty-somethings rose to their feet and began collecting their belongings. 

Ranko stood, slinging her pink backpack over her shoulder. She stretched with a loud groan, the white lace top she wore sliding up a bit on her midsection. I'd be better off sitting on the freakin' loor than in those shitty desks, she thought as her lumbar spine popped in two places. 

"Hey, Ranko! You got a second?" 

The redhead turned, putting her arms down as a handsome boy in his early twenties with short black hair approached. He was on the skinnier side, dressed in black slacks and an aquamarine polo shirt, and he wore a pair of wire-frame glasses. He reminded Ranko a bit of her friend Ken. "What's up, Sora?"

The young man strapped his black backpack on, approaching her desk with a sheepish grin. "You, uh, given any thought to who you're gonna do your paper on?"

Ranko shrugged, turning toward the door to exit the classroom. "Paula Abdul, I think. I've read so much stuff about her career, I could probably write twenty pages on her from memory. I don't really have a lot of time these days for, like, deep research and shit."

"Right on," Sora said nervously, fidgeting with his hands.

He shrank back a bit as he spoke, as if he was disappointed in something she'd said, or not said. Ranko racked her brain. What was I supposed to… oh, fuck, I hope this dude's not hitting on me. He's a decent enough guy, and I really don't wanna have to Saburo his ass. Better change the subject. Ranko blushed a bit, offering him a disarming smile. "So, uh, who are you gonna do yours on?"

Sora chuckled timidly, swaying a bit on his feet. "Well, I… uhhh…" 

Ranko laughed as the pair exited the building into the quad, and she reached up, giving him a firm whack on the back through his backpack. "C'mon, boy, spit it out! You can do it!"

"I was actually hoping I could…" 

Aww, hell. I was right. Here it comes. I'm fucking married, dude! I'm just not allowed to tell you, because my wife is way fucking cuter than you. Ranko sighed, her shoulders slumping so much that her backpack almost slipped from the left one.

"... maybe do my term paper on you?" Sora looked up at her hopefully.

Ranko froze in her tracks as if she'd been hit in the face with a board, blinking and shaking her head in stunned shock. "Wait, what?!"

Sora nodded, looking around sheepishly as if he was concerned someone else would see the two speaking. "Well, I mean, think about it. Ogura wants us to research a famous living musician, but we've got one just sitting in the room with us. What better research source could I have than just… asking you? Like, I could do an interview with you sometime, over lunch or whatever."

So, still a date, but with even more awkward. Well, isn't this just fucking awesome. Ranko closed her eyes, hoping he wouldn't see the panic in them as she squirmed in her silver shoes. "Yeah, I don't know if that's a good idea," Ranko deflected. "I doubt ol' teach would let you get away with that. Feels a little too slick."

Sora shrugged, having to adjust his heavy backpack as it slid a bit off of his shoulders. "Actually, it was her idea. C'mon, please? What do you have to hide?" 

Now, that, you could write a motherfucking thesis on, Ranko thought with a heavy sigh. 

"C'mon. I promise, I'll be nice. I'll let you read it before I turn it in and we'll change anything you don't like. And there won't be anything weird going on, I swear. I know they probably don't like you talking about it, but I can see that you're wearing a wedding ring." Sora smiled softly, and there was a gentleness about it that put Ranko a bit at ease. "Besides, Ogura said she won't let two people pick the same artist, so if I write about you and let you have a say in what goes in it, nobody else can do it and just write whatever they want."

Well, now you're just making me wish I'd thought of writing about myself. Thanks. Feels like kind of a dick move to steal his idea now, though. Oh, hell. Ranko rolled her eyes, giving a heavy sigh of resignation. "Fine." 

She turned to him, wagging a finger up at his chin. "But, so help me gods, Inaba, if you don't take me somewhere decent…"