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CHAPTER NINE: JUNE OF THE FOLLOWING YEAR (THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS)

Everything was not okay.

Na-chan was by his bedside again. She peered worriedly over him and held on to his hand as he struggled to breathe. She was again wearing a now-familiar yellow paper gown over her white coat and scrubs. An N95 respirator was over her mouth, and her face was behind a shield.

Again, he had a stiff rod rammed down his throat that prevented him from speaking. This time, though, he was splayed out prone on the bed. Tubes and lines were once more protruding from every orifice of his body. Every part of him was heavy and on fire.

# # # # #

It all began one morning about two weeks after Kasumi arrived. Ranma woke up feeling unexpectedly tired and sore, more so than he had any other morning since they had brought Airyou home for the first time. Though Nabiki’s voice had been calm and steady, she had turned deathly white when he told her. He knew too what she was thinking, vaccinated or not., and took the precautionary initiative of donning an N95 mask.

"I'll go to Kalorama until we can rule it out," Ranma told his wife.

"No. Stay here in case we need the medical center."

He noted that she could not bring herself to say the word "hospital."

"I'll take Kasumi and Airyou-chan now to Kalorama for a few days and have them ruled out." They had added a SUV to go along with her roadster in the months before Airyou had been born.

"Can you drive?" he asked worriedly.

"Don't worry about me.” She offered him the brightest, most reassuring smile that she could muster. "In fact, try not to worry about anything other than my envy for you suddenly getting all this alone time. This will all probably be a fuss over nothing."

It was just past sunset when he woke up on the couch.

Nabiki was by his side placing a cool, damp washcloth on his forehead. His surprise at seeing her was evident as he looked up at her in wonder.

"Na-chan…. You came back?"

"Of course. I'm your wife," she told him. "I won't leave you alone. Besides, I'm vaccinated and low risk. You were able to get tested?"

He nodded. They would know by tomorrow.

"I had Airyou-chan, Kasumi, and myself tested too this afternoon," she told him. "We'll also find out tomorrow."

"Thank you for coming back," he said. His voice was heavy with grateful emotion.

Nabiki tenderly brushed aside a lock of hair that had come over his forehead. "I told you. I will also always be here to protect you," was her reply.

"Na-chan…."

"Shh," she whispered, placing afinger over her lips. "Let's stop before this gets too melodramatic. Imade some curry rice if you're hungry."

He nodded eagerly. Na-chan was amazing at cooking.

Ominously, though, the meal was the blandest one that he had ever had. He was completely unable to smell or taste any of it, as if these senses simply did not exist.

Silent tears glistened in Na-chain’s eyes when he told her.

"Put on a mask, Na-chan," he said.

# # # ##

Nabiki was already up nervously logging in to the EMR the next morning when he awoke. Her eyes were bloodshot and rimmed by haunted black rings, and her hands were shaking as she typed. He was not surprised though when she told him what he was already expecting. She, Airyou, and Kasumi, however, were fortunately negative.

"We'll get through it together," he said. He drew himself away and moved to the far side of the room.

"How could it have happened?!" she lamented openly. "We did everything! What did we do wrong?!"

"Nothing," he told her firmly. He could see where her thoughts were very quickly going. "We didn't do anything wrong, and before your mind starts going in that direction, it will be fine. You'll see."

Nabiki was sobbing openly now as she followed him to the far side of the room and took him up in a desperate, loving embrace. "I love you," she told him helplessly over and over. "I love you. Please don't leave me too…."

By the morning of the third day, it was clear that he was getting worse rather than better. He was beginning to feel noticeably short of breath, having difficulty lying down, but suddenly too weak to walk about much or stand for that matter. The fever was now unending.

Nabiki was on the phone making calls. Her hands shook as she fought to keep her voice steady.

By late morning, he was admitted. By the early afternoon, he was in the same COVID ICU where Nabiki had endured her tortured month of nights. He was barely hanging together on the verge of intubation. She knowingly abused her privileges to follow him and stay by his side, but she did not care.

"I love you too," were the last words he mouthed to her as consciousness slipped away. He felt her hands desperately holding on to his as she looked back at him. Her broken heart was reflected in her beautiful, haunted eyes. Those were the eyes that would come and go for seemingly unending nights and days as he entered into the Netherworld between the blurred lines of reality and dreams.

# # # ##

He knew that he was dreaming again. He remembered Na-chan once mentioning that it happened this way when the body knew that it was about to die.

With his eyes closed, he took in the deep-throated growl of the inline-six. Its vibrations hummed sonorously throughout the rigid chassis and into the seat beneath him. A cool breeze whipped around the uncovered windscreen and beat pleasantly on his face, through his hair, and in his ears. The BMW E85 Z-roadster was hardly new –nearly 10 years old - but it was visceral and alive. He truly understood why she preferred this over something modern and new.

A sweet, delicate waft of peach blossoms drifted by, snapping his eyes open. She was beside him in the driver's seat wearing a mini-length white shirtdress, a royal blue leather belt cinched around her slim waist, and a silk chiffon scarf with blue irises on a midnight black background done up in an elegant cowl around her neck. Glancing down, he caught sight of her slender, delicate arm again confidently clicking through the long, visceral throws of the six-speed gearbox. Her bare legs were exposed to the sun, and her feet were adorned in strappy white wedge pumps.

Sensing his eyes on her, she turned her head and answered him with a warm, knowing smile. Then she slammed the throttle pedal hard into the floorboard. The car shot forward toward the Bay Bridge, which loomed majestically just over the horizon.

His chest throbbed with the weight of something deep and profound as he found himself realising all over again just how beautiful she truly was. Her angelic face was delicate and heart-shaped with a porcelain doll complexion. Her hair was dark, shiny, silken, and cut in an elegantly smart and practical Italian bob style. Her brown eyes were fierce, luminous, and soul-piercing. The world had just irrevocably tilted again on its axis.

Then the Moment came. Strangely, it was amazingly anticlimactic in its merciless lack of any preamble or warning. The car was suddenly thrown forward into a violent flat spin, careening toward asteel side rail before smashing through and falling endlessly toward the infinite blue waters of the Bay far, far below.

He wanted to scream Nabiki’s precious name forever and forever. He hurled it with all his strength at the void to beat it back and prayed desperately for the salvation and the grace of her warm, tender, loving embrace.

He wondered if this was how it had been for Akane when it had been her time.

He did not want to die. Not yet.

He wanted to live.

"So don't," Nabiki's beautiful voice suddenly said. He snapped his head up and looked to his left - except she was not there anymore.

It was Akane.

She was the one sitting in the driver's seat now, appearing as a beautiful eternal teenage girl wearing a white summer dress and a fuschia sun hat. Her entire essence was imbued with an otherworldly blue ethereal glow. At some point, the roaring wind, blue sky and unending waters around them dissolved into a silent nothingness.

"Ranma no baka," she muttered sadly. "We keep coming back to this. You keep coming back here, to me every time that you come to a crossroads of Life and Death. You know that Ilove you – I did with everything that I am and ever was -- but you have to stop!"

"I'm sorry," he replied forlornly, his head bowed under the sudden but familiar weight of shame."I don't want to die."

"No, you don't," the apparition agreed with him. "Not wanting to die is not the same thing though as living. You promised that you'd live! I give you that my sister has driven you to do far better than you ever did before, but a part of you is still questioning if you deserve to live – even with a wife like Nabiki-oneechan and a daughter like Airyou-chan."

He found himself frowning, confused and even indignant. "I can't forget you! I'm not going to, and I don't want to!"

"Baka!" she shot back at him, seemingly starting to glow red now. "That's not it at all. Think back to what you told Oneechan the first time you told her that you love her. What did you say then?"

He remembered clearly. "I told her that I needed to love you to live and grow up, to be ready to love someone like her. Maybe if you had lived, you would have been my wife, and she would be my sister, but that's not what happened or who we've become."

"Exactly," Akane's ghost said, now smiling. "It's so easy now to be able to tell you that I love you, and Ido. That's not who we are though or who we will ever be, not in the cards for the three of us. As part of living, you're not supposed to forget anything. That includes the part of me that is you. Still, at the same time, that part of you too has every right to live and to do so without apology."

Now he was really confused. He told her so.

Akane sighed as she took a seat on the edge of an invisible perch, demurely crossed her legs, placed her hands on her knee, and gestured with her chin to the space beside her. Ranma obliged and took a seat beside her on a leap of faith, surprised that he did not fall as he did.

"The first time they hospitalised you because your kidneys were failing, who did you turn to in the many moments when you were alone lying there in the dark on your hospital bed?"

You.

"As you lay on the floor that day, the first time you were in Uncle Jim's clinic, drowning in your own blood before they got to you, who did you think of?"

You.

"When you first found yourself fascinated by the Jekyll-Hyde enigma of a woman who my sister was, the lady and the mischievous, fire-breathing, profanity-spewing dragon crusader, who else did you think of?

You.

"And when you first realised that you were attracted to my sister and wanted to be with her, who else was there with you at that moment?"

You.

"Even that night when you told her for the first time that you love her, who else was there with you?"

"Hey! You were in her head too that time!" Ranma protested.

"Yes," the ghost conceded."Oneechan has her own issues, but I'm not the one who can go back and fix that."

Ranma stared back at her wordlessly.

"Seriously though! Who is with you here even now as you lie out there dying?"

You.

"You see, Ranma? Even when you're under Oneechan's vigil, you're still here!" she said. He was surprised to see exasperated tears welling up in eyes that were suddenly impossible depths of sadness and despair. "You're always still looking back over your shoulder, worried about what I would think and say. I gave you everything I had and made what remains now a part of you so that you would go on to do the talking, the thinking, the living, and the believing for both of us. There's just you now -and that's actually okay. You're in charge. You own every bit of your reality, and it's okay to be happy and whole and unapologetic about yourself as you live, love and care for your wife and your daughter. That was why I died. For you!"

"Akane…."

"You really should have listened and believed Nabiki-oneechan when she told you the same thing. She's not just my sister, but like she told you, she's my best friend. She knows me like nobody else. Not even you," she said, gently cupping his cheek in her hand.

... I'd like for you to just think about getting back on your feet so you can walk hand-in-hand with me, even if it's just for a little while...

... I think someone should tell you this at least once about someone like Kiki. Girls like these do not ever show or give out their hearts. When they do, it is only once. It is for keeps. And it is forever...

... I've always liked you, even from the beginning when you and your father first came into our lives. You were my first real crush, always larger than life. You made me realise that there were things about the world that I truly didn't understand, and you made me believe again in possibilities...

... Maybe one day my hair might be just long enough to do up with a kanzashi. I might have penned a Tanabata wish on tanzaku like that if I were someone who believed in doing such things....

... Seeing you here now in this kitchen eating my bread and drinking my flat white, I find myself thinking for the first time that maybe I don't need to go back to that moment at Fushimi Inari Taisha. Not anymore....

Ranma wept openly now into the palm of Akane's hand.

"We'll all meet again one day, my dear Ranma," Akane told him kindly, her voice ringing now with great love and tenderness. "But you said you don't want to die, so fine. It's not supposed to be today or even tomorrow. You've decided that, but when will you really be ready to decide if you will truly live? You won't be able to go back this time until you're ready to make that decision, and if you can't, then this time someone else will also die with you."

"No! Na-chan…!"

Akane sighed. "You love her with your whole heart, but Nabiki-oneechan loves you with her whole being. You're everything that she has. Even now, she's out there risking everything, still trying to prove to you that she's worthy of you: her safety, all that she's worked for in her career, even being a new mom who would leave her baby to do it. Everything - just whatever it takes to not leave you and for you not to leave her."

He felt his face burning with a new shame."I'm not disloyal to Nabiki!" he protested.

"Don't be like that, Ranma!" she chided. "No one thinks you are. Maybe not the best way to put it, but you should go easy on me! I'm the one who's dead, and you know that I wasn't ever that good with words!" the eternal teenage girl told him grouchily.

Akane was still Akane - even in death.

"But the point," she continued, her countenance turning deadly serious as she pressed on, "is that you made a promise, and you have always kept your promises. It's one of the reasons she and I both fell in love with you enough to risk everything. So please. Can you love your wife just as much as she loves you?"

Na-chan….

"The next time you come to the crossroads of Life and Death, will you think of her instead of me?"

I love you….

"Will you protect my sister's reasons for living?"

Watashi mo, itsumademo eien ni anata no koto wo… mamoru…. (I will also always be there to protect you….)

"Can you make the world different for all of us this time around?"

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once in the sky, that would be the splendor of the mighty One. Now, Iam become Death, the destroyer of worlds….

"NABIKI!"