Chapter 06

## Character Appearances

Sumeragi/Sango ● Uruma/Shizuka ● Nameless magical people

***"The Door"*** is the 6th chapter of *Ran and the Gray World*, a manga written and illustrated by Aki Irie.

## Premise

Lady Shizuka has been gone from her post for a long time. Three ladies are trying to stay calm by having tea on top of the enormous, gigantic door. Suddenly, an earthquake. The door is opening!

## Summary

While Lady Shizuka is away, her assistants attend to the door. However, it begins to open, and the whole team at Kuramachi Shrine is in panic. Thankfully, Lady Shizuka arrives, pushing one foot down upon the door and shutting it forever. After freshening up at the shrine (all on top of the door), she sends a package to home.

Meanwhile, Ran is at the New Years Festival. Outarou is on the roof spying for her. Ran has lost her shoe and meets a kid who also lost someone in the crowd. As they try to find Mamoru's mom, Ran runs into Hibi. He bullies her, taunting her with her sneaker that he found. After pushing her down the steps, he leaves her alone and Ran transforms into her older self with her shoe. She and Mamoru finally find Mamoru's mother.

Ran spots Outarou on the roof and transports herself there. Outarou is amazed at how she seems to glow, and as Ran asks him to be his friend, Outarou intimately touches her, which makes her disappear back down below.

Back at home, the Uruma's receive a package from their mother. She has found a magic instructor for Ran. Their father has an idea of who it could be, and he is scared.

## Detailed Summary

### Main Chapter

Three ladies sit around a turtle as their tease lays on top of its shell. They discuss the absence of Lady Shizuka. Then, shaking occurs, not an earthquake but the opening of the gigantic enormous door in which they set up tatami mats and their tea sets on top of!

Everyone scrambles to get forces to pull upon rope to get the door shut. Meanwhile, Lady Shizuka is taking a bath. Workers burst in and interrupt her, bearing news of the door opening.

Lady Shizuka arrives at the scene, and laying one foot down on the door, shutting it. Now laying on a big pillow on top of The Door, Lady Shizuka pouts about her bath being interrupted and decides to write Ran a letter. It seems the ladies in Kuramachi are interested in Jin because they have written numerous letters to him and stuffed them in Lady Shizuka's basket of letters. Lady Shizuka whispers to a basket that it was now a bird, and the basket bird flies away with the letters inside it, toward the Uruma residence.

Meanwhile, Outarou is on a rooftop eating yakitori with a friend. He's got his binoculars to keep a look out for Ran. They observe Ran's brother Jin sleeping among the bustling festivities, and delight in the fact that it indicates that Ran is alone.

Meanwhile, a young Ran is lost and has misplaced one of her sneakers when she tried to get through the bustling crowd. She finds a hat-and-yukata-wearing kid who is lost like her. Ran keeps the lost child close by and leads them both toward a pole so they can be 'conspicuous' because 'that's what Jin says to do if you're lost'. As they wait near the pole, Ran's eyes naturally fall onto two girls wearing yukatas.

Then, Hibi appears. He says he found something interesting. It's Ran's other sneaker! Ran demands he give it back to her, but Hibi snuffs her and throws it to one of his friends close by. The friends, catching on, play catch with the sneaker and Ran chases after them. She ends up in a winding road away from the festivities in the dark, right in front of stone steps leading down. She feels hands behind her and someone pushes her. Ran falls on her butt down the steps. It was Hibi and he has her other shoe snug under his right arm.

With a smug look on his face, Hibi asks Ran, "Why do you carry these shoes around anyway?" swinging the shoe by the shoelaces as he prances down the steps. He then swings and throws the shoes along a pile of trash bags near a pole. Indignant, Ran steps through the trash and finally comes out of the trash pile with both shoes on. Hibi's friends have disappeared now. Ran squats in front of the lost child and transforms before him, suggesting they should actively look for his mother.

The kid claps fervently at Ran's magic 'trick' and Ran blushes. She then joins the men with the taiko drums, grabbing a handful of fireworks and throwing them into the air, igniting the blooming lights.

The kid, whose name is revealed to be Mamoru, is finally found by his mother. As Ran is spotted by Outarou, she sees shadows of people on the roof and transports herself there to investigate.

Outarou, shocked and suspicious about the fact that a human being has arrived on top of a roof so quickly despite having just been down at the festivities a moment ago, pointed out the very notion to Ran, to both questions which she said "It's a secret." Outarou also notes how Ran was literally 'glowing', just like 'last time'. Ran's face then turn red, shy and unsure if Outarou would be willing to become friends with her despite being unable to tell him the answer to his questions. Outarou draws her closer, whispering in her ear, "You can keep as many secrets as you like. In exchange, we have to be closer than that." Ran then vanishes.

Face beet red, Ran shivers and tries to organized the jumbled thoughts in her mind. Outarou is in the background yelling for her, weary that she disappeared.

Ran finally makes it home where her dad is eating some festival corn. He offers her some to which she refuses, dejected that she cannot console her brother or her father about Outarou and what had happened. Jin questions her strange attitude until they all hear a loud crash on the roof. It's the basket bird delivering mail from their absent mother!

Ran feels relief, reminded of the fact that she can console her mother about what happened. The family opens the package inside the living room, revealing a yukata for Ran (just what she wanted) as well as one for Jin (along with the letters which he groans at the sight of), both yukatas made by a person named Sango. The package also came with a letter revealing that she has 'finally found a magic instructor for Ran' and the instructor is on their way!

### Epilogue

As Ran and Jin wonder about who the magic instructor could possibly be, their father expresses how it might possibly be "her," and if it was Her, she was 'already watching' and he would need 'to escape'. They then watch their father's shaking hands grab a black umbrella, take a ladder and crawl to the roof with it, jump off the roof with the umbrella open, and land in a bush to come out a crow.

## Gallery & Featured Pages

* Gallery
* yakitori
* Basket Bird
* Mamoru
* Black umbrella

## References

1. ↑ Title translated by: Futari Wa Pretty Anon