Phoenix: Reignited Edition

Ranko sat alone on the Tokyo commuter train, her leg bouncing on the floor with nervous energy. The rhythmic clattering of the train on the tracks rattled in her ears like a ticking clock counting down to some dark fate. Everyone had told her not to stress about the events of the day, but she couldn't help it.

So much is riding on this. If I screw it up, I'll embarrass Mama. I'll… hell, I don't know what the heck she's gonna make me do even if it goes well. But, I gotta do my best. Somehow.

A shrill series of tones pierced her thoughts, followed by a robotic, monotone voice. "Arriving, Hiro-o Station."

The commuter train hissed to a stop, and the redhead stood, picking up her white peacoat from the seat next to hers and slipping it on over her blue tee shirt. She'd paired it with her black jeans and black heeled boots. It was unseasonably warm that Friday afternoon, and Ranko was glad of it; after the frigid December, she thought it might take until May to get the chill out of her bones. Part of her had wanted to dress up for the occasion, to make as good an impression as possible and hopefully balance out the disdain she expected to receive as soon as she walked in the door. Ultimately, she'd decided that if she was going to go into battle, she needed a little bit of armor, and fidgeting with her uncomfortable clothing would only have made things worse.

Slipping the strap of her black leather purse over her torso and stepping off of the train onto the platform, Ranko looked around with a resigned sigh. The thick heels of her boots made a metallic rattling sound as she strode across the steel grating of the station floor, the noise giving way to a rhythmic clacking when she stepped outside the station and onto the sidewalk. Ranko winced, shielding her eyes as she emerged from the subterranean transport hub into the mid-afternoon sun. Man, I gotta get some shades, she thought as she blinked the sunspots from her eyes. She remembered the heart-shaped pink sunglasses she had back in her little studio apartment, though she'd never thought to wear them other than onstage. I mean, I guess they're cute, the redhead mused as she scanned her surroundings to get her bearings.

Her foot tapped the asphalt with nervous energy as she waited for the signal to enter the crosswalk. When the light indicated it was safe to cross, she scurried across the busy street and into a wide expanse of grass. It was one of the largest green spaces in the Minato district, and there was a peaceful air about it that permeated Ranko's anxiety, if only a little. She hummed to herself as she rounded one of the winding bridge trails that made their way across Imperial Pond, smirking to herself as she spied a brilliant blue kingfisher perched on one of the bamboo poles jutting upward from the surface of the murky water. In another life, another day, I'd have jumped across those just to prove I could, she thought with a chuckle and a shake of her head. And today, I'm just worried it would mess up my hair if I fell in. I guess a lot of things are different than they used to be these days.

Ranko smiled, watching a young couple playing fetch with a small, shaggy dog in a clearing as she passed along a path of weather-worn red cobblestone. I should've come here more often when I was homeless. There's a serenity about this place I could have used back then. Indeed, her heart rate felt almost normal for the first time all day. Checking a pillar-shaped signpost to confirm she was heading the right way, she took the left path at a fork and continued her stroll through the park. A quick glance at a wrought-iron clock on a tall black pole informed her that she needed to pick up the pace, however. Last thing I need is to be late because I stopped to smell the flowers.

The nervous teen emerged from the treeline into a large clearing at the back of the park, making her way toward the white five-story building nestled into it. She passed between two white, square columns, pausing for a moment to steel her nerves before stepping close enough to the glass double doors to trigger the motion sensor that slid them open and admitted her. Inhaling sharply through her teeth, Ranko winced at the echoing sound her heels made on the white tile floor in the cavernous, and eerily quiet, main room. Several people turned in their study cubicles to look at her, and she blushed awkwardly at the realization that she was being watched.

Her attention snapped forward again at the sound of the young man at the circular oak desk greeting her. "Hello, welcome to the Tokyo Metropolitan Library. How can we help you?" He looked up from the novel he was reading, taking a moment to remember he was supposed to smile despite his annoyance being interrupted during an action scene.

Ranko swallowed hard as she addressed the collegian in the white shirt and thin blue tie behind the desk. "Uh, hello. My name is Ranko Tendo, and I'm here for the high school equivalency placement exam?" She fumbled around in her little black bag, producing her new identification card and a slip of green paper indicating that she was registered for the test.

"Ah, of course. You want the second floor," he said, pointing with an open hand to the steel door behind him. "The exam is being administered in a study room just to the right of the elevator. It's room two-fourteen. Good luck!"

Ranko thanked the receptionist, waving as she made her way around the desk. Her face warmed a bit at the realization that his eyes were lingering on her backside as she walked to the left side of the lobby. She pressed the backlit button on the wall to summon the elevator, and by her estimation, it must have taken a week and a half for it to descend from the third floor and open its doors with a little ding. She stepped in, pressing the button for the second floor and leaning against the back wall of the metal cube as it ferried her to her destination.

When the elevator opened with another merry chime, Ranko immediately spied the open door of the study room. Several other people were milling into the room, all of them wearing similarly nervous expressions. Ranko was the youngest of them by at least fifteen years. She sighed, a sense of shame welling within her.

Look at all these people, losers like me who never managed to get through school. But, I guess I'm lucky; if Mama didn't push me to do this, I'd probably end up having to do it for some reason or other when I was way older. She allowed herself a soft smile. She's always lookin' out for me. 'Cause I'm her daughter, Ranko recalled, her grin widening at the memory of her first meeting at the library.

With a nervous wave to the proctor sitting at the large aluminum desk facing an array of smaller ones, Ranko slipped into the room. She slid her backside into one of the empty plastic chairs near the front of the room, behind a small pressboard desk on which rested a thick packet of paper and a green strip of cardstock lined with hundreds of little printed circles. Two sharpened pencils rested to the right of it. Whew. Okay, Ranko. Here we go. I can do this.

The severe-looking woman at the desk at the front of the room stood, adjusting her thick-rimmed glasses. "Okay, I think that's everyone, so I think we can get started. Would someone get the door, please?" She nodded her thanks as a middle-aged man in denim overalls stood and walked to the door to close it. "So, welcome. You will have two hours to complete the test. Remember to fill in the bubbles on your form completely and carefully with your answers, or the machine won't be able to read them properly. There's no penalty to your score for getting a question wrong, so if you're not sure of something, take your best guess. When you're finished, put your form in the slot here, and you can head out quietly, so as not to disrupt the others. Good luck." She pressed a button on the black box on the desk, and a series of red digits appeared on its face, ticking from 2:00:00 down to 1:59:59.

Ranko picked up a pencil, looking over the Scantron form. She found the blank for her name, carefully writing out the hiragana to spell out Ranko Tendo. She took her time with this; she was still quite proud that the name was truly hers, and she wanted it to look nice. Despite her best efforts however, the lines were uneven and shaky, and she cursed her terrible penmanship under her breath. I gotta work on that. Girls are supposed to have pretty handwriting. My chicken scratch is a dead giveaway that I used to be a dude.

She glanced up at the clock, seeing that two minutes had elapsed, and only her name was filled in. The nervous teen chuckled grimly to herself. Hey, at least I know I got one question right, and that one would've been wrong until last week, too. So, progress, I guess? Ranko used the end of her pencil to break the sticker sealing the test packet and opened it, tucking a stray strand of flame-red hair behind her ear. Okay, Ranko, let's do this, she thought to herself with a heavy sigh of determination.

The first section of the test focused on basic arithmetic, and Ranko flew through it with ease, filling in the little circles on her form quickly. If the whole test is this easy, all my worries were for nothing, she thought with a confident snicker. By the time she reached the fourth page, however, most of the numbers in the math problems had been replaced with romaji letters and Greek symbols. Weeeeeell, shit. So much for that. She closed her eyes, straining to remember the few times Akane had tried to help with her algebra homework. Bouncing her toes nervously on the floor, she worked the problems as best she could and bubbled in answers on her sheet, but she was far less confident in her responses.

Furrowing her brow, Ranko held her breath as she turned the page, hoping to move on to history or language arts. Instead, the spread of pages was covered with pictures of triangles and parabolas on graphs, and something about limits and derivatives, whatever those were. To the bewildered teenager, the problems might as well have been written in cuneiform. She stared at the graphs in horror for several long moments before stealing a glance up at the clock. Almost thirty minutes had elapsed, and there were still dozens of pages to go in her test packet. She had no idea where to even begin with the geometry and calculus problems, so she bubbled in the third answer for all fifteen questions. Maybe I'll get lucky on a few of them, she hoped.

Turning the page, she was relieved to find questions that were written in words she actually understood. The history section began much as the math section did, with questions she considered fairly easy. What cities the Americans bombed in World War II, the Meiji period and the fall of the daimyos, what year Emperor Hirohito took power, no problem! Then the questions began to delve into the details of the Manchurian incident, the Battle of Namdaemun, and the Yoshida Doctrine, and again she found herself lost and filling in random bubbles on her sheet.

The Japanese language section wasn't too challenging for her; there were a few kanji she didn't recognize, but otherwise, she felt confident in most of her answers and she breezed through it in a matter of a few minutes. Tapping her pencil eraser on the desktop, she looked up to check the clock. One hour to go. Thumbing through the corners of the pages to count the remaining pages of her test packet, Ranko emitted a small sigh of relief. Doing okay, I think.

She turned to the next page, and found herself staring at the start of the English section. Well, fuck. This is what landed me here in the first place. She grimaced, remembered the trio of Americans that had been so rude to her in the bar that night, and glowered at the page. No way you jerks are gonna beat me, she thought to herself as she readied her pencil. I'm gonna figure this shit out, and then assholes like you aren't ever gonna get to laugh at me again. With all the confidence of ignorance, she dove into the questions. She actually felt comfortable with some of the vocabulary, but the sentence structure and more advanced words eluded her. In fairness, they tend not to teach words like tequila in high school English class anyway, she thought with a smirk.

With twenty minutes to go, she delved into the final section of the test: science. The first few questions dealt with biology subjects, and of the questions she could answer, nearly all of the requisite knowledge had come primarily from her martial arts training. She cringed when a question asked her the number of bones in the human body, remembering that she quoted the figure to Mikado before beating him half to death behind the Phoenix just before Christmas. On the next page, she was prompted for the chemical symbols for several elements on the periodic table, the formula for water, and so forth.

She turned to the last page and groaned. The fuck?! More math?! This isn't fair! The differential equations of the chemistry section, and the laws and theorems of the physics portion, loomed up at her from the page. Ranko scratched her temple with the eraser end of her pencil as she read a question asking her to calculate the volume of a mole of hydrogen. Huh. I thought all animals were carbon-based, even moles. Whatever. Science is for nerds, she thought. Mei would probably be fine. The next problem described a ball being thrown out of a fifth-story window, and asked how long it would fall. Ranko was grateful the question was multiple-choice, because she likely would have written "until it hits the ground" otherwise.

Ranko checked the clock again as she closed the test packet. Four minutes to spare. Holy fuck. She sighed, looking over the little graphite dots all over her paper. I could try to go back over my answers, I guess, but let's be real: it ain't gonna get any better, and I'm just gonna second-guess shit. With a quiet sigh of resignation, she stood, dropping the slip into the slot at the top of the dark-stained wooden box on the corner of the proctor's desk. She offered a slight bow to the exam proctor and exited the room, the clacking of her heels momentarily drawing the attention of the few remaining people still taking the test.

She quickly exited the library, taking a few deep breaths once she emerged into the open air of the park to try and calm herself. Whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen, I guess. There's no changing it now. However it goes, I'll deal with what comes next, and I'll have help if I need it.

The young redhead sighed, beginning her walk back through the park toward the train station. Her cheeks warmed at the sight of a blonde girl, maybe three years her junior, walking a dachshund on a leash in a high school pinafore in red and white. Could Mama… really try to make me go back to school? As a girl?! I mean, that's what made me haul ass from Akane's place in the first place! Would they even let me, or am I too old? Would I have to go to an all-girls' school, or am I gonna have to deal with… boys? She swallowed hard, looking down at her feet. I've got enough wandering eyes, and wandering hands, to deal with at work as it is.

Ranko watched the high schooler with the dog meet up with a tall boy with shaggy black hair, letting a thin smile crack her lips as he wrapped his arms around her. I wonder what Akane would think of me having to go back to school. Wearing a girl's uniform like that. Would she find it cute, or is she more likely to just laugh at me? Especially since next year, she'll be off to college, and I… won't.

She shook her head vigorously, trying to dislodge the intrusive thoughts from her mind as she emerged from the park onto the sidewalk. The light at the crosswalk was already illuminated, so Ranko quickened her step to make it before the cycle changed. No use worrying about it now. We'll figure it out when it happens, and besides… I have something more important to think about right now.

Ranko bounded down the stairs to enter the subway station, anticipation bringing a lightness to her heart and a smile to her lips. Let's see… which one to Shibuya… ah! She hurried through the crowd of commuters, only stopping at the sight of a young boy sitting on a wooden bench with a white bucket at his feet. Digging quickly in her purse, she produced a few hundred yen in small bills for the boy. A few moments later, she boarded the train for the shopping district, beaming down at the single long-stemmed white rose in her hand.

I'm finally gonna get to see Akane tonight, she thought, grinning wide as her nostrils filled with the sweet scent of the flower she clutched to her chest.

I have to look fucking perfect.