The Ring

The Ring

Ranma ½ and the characters therein are the property of Rumiko Takahashi, not me.

I must be some sort of sexual deviant or something, because all I can seem to write lately is lemons…

“Ah ha!” shouted a dusty Akane. She’d finally found what she was looking for in the attic. She straightened up from under the pile of boxes she was searching, and held her treasure up to the light. It was a small wooden box, completely devoid of any ornaments other than a small brass hook and eye keeping the lid closed. She opened the lid and looked inside. There she saw an arrangement of jewelry, some of it old and outdated, but still beautiful to look at. Besides, Akane would never pawn off any of it. It belonged to her mother.

She stood there in the dim light for a short while, admiring the jewels. She was hoping to find something that she could wear often to honor her mother, something simple but elegant, perhaps some diamond earrings or a gold necklace. She was sifting through the jewels when she heard a click. Curious, she looked under her finger to see that a small trap door had opened in the bottom of the box, revealing a small secret compartment. She must have pushed down on the door, opening the spring loaded latch. Lifting the tiny door, she peered inside, and found an unusual piece of jewelry. It was shaped like a “C” and had diamonds mounted on both ends of the curve. She looked inside the compartment, thinking that it was an earring, but she didn’t see its pair. Besides which, there didn’t seem to be a way to hook it to an ear.

“What is this?” she wondered aloud.

The curious piece of jewelry continued to perplex her that evening as she took her bath. She was sitting in the furo, staring at it in the palm of her hand, trying to figure out just what it was. She reached out her other hand to touch one of gems. She was surprised to find that it could rotate. Holding it in her fingers, she twisted the gem until it came off in her hand. Akane briefly panicked that she had broken her mother’s jewelry, but then noticed that the gem was meant to screw on and off of the base like that. Maybe it was an earring after all and this was how you put it on. Still, you’d need a rather big hole in your ear to wear it.

She looked up when she heard the door open and in walked Kasumi wearing a robe. “Oh! I’m sorry Akane! I didn’t know anybody was in here,” she apologized.

“It’s OK Onee-san,” replied the younger woman. “I must have forgotten to put the sign up. You can join me if you want though!” She smiled at her older sister.

Kasumi smiled back and disrobed. She quickly washed herself before entering the tub, sitting across from Akane. “What’s that in your hand?” she asked.

Akane looked up from her pondering surprised, almost as if she had forgotten her sister was even in the room with her. She held out her hand. “I found Mom’s old jewelry box up in the attic and this was in a secret compartment inside. I can’t figure out what it is or how to wear it though.”

Kasumi held out her hand for the ornament, and Akane gave it to her. The older woman examined it briefly, before her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “Umm, Akane, this is a body piercing. Are you sure you got this from Mother’s jewelry box?”

Akane’s eyes bulged as well. “A body piercing? Mom?”

“Yes…” replied Kasumi. “I wasn’t aware that she had one either, but my friend Mitzi has one in her belly button that looks just like this.” She continued to stare at the piercing, trying to figure out what it was doing in her mother’s box. “I don’t recall ever seeing a belly ring on Mother though…”

Akane took the ring back from her sister and examined it once more, looking at it in a different light now that she understood what it was for. Then an idea struck her. “That picture of all of us at the beach! Mom was wearing a bikini that day. That was about a month before she passed away wasn’t it?”

Kasumi thought about the picture, remembering the trip. “Yes, it was. We can look at it after we get out of the bath. I know which album it’s in.”

Twenty minutes later they were rifling through the picture album trying to find the pictures from that day at the beach. The two sisters were somewhat misty eyed at the reminiscing they were doing, all the reminders of their long deceased mother, but they were happy to be doing the reminiscing with each other. Finally they came to the picture taken by a stranger they had asked to take, a picture of the entire family sitting together on the blanket, Kasumi about eight years old and Akane only five. A six year old Nabiki was smiling and waving a shovel at the camera. Soun was looking much younger, and had his arm around his beautiful wife.

“Akane, you look so much like her,” Kasumi said as they looked at the picture. It was true, right down to the hairstyle Akane was a dead ringer for her mother. Even down to the body type, it was obvious that the woman had been an avid martial artist as well, as her bikini showed off her toned and muscled body. There was one problem though.

“There’s no ring,” Akane said. “There’s not even a hole, or a scar where there would be a hole for a piercing. She wasn’t pierced there.” She looked at her sister, about to ask the obvious question, when she noticed that Kasumi had become even paler than usual. “Kasumi?”

“Mitzi has another piercing that looks like this,” Kasumi replied. “I was hoping I was wrong, but Mother doesn’t have one in her belly button, so there is only one other place it could be.”

Curiosity gnawed at Akane. She had to know what had caused her sister to have such a strong reaction. “What? Where?”

Kasumi’s pallor changed suddenly from pale to bright red. She leaned in close to Akane and whispered into her ear. Akane’s eyes widened and her own face turned beet red. “In her WHAT?”