Honda Tohru slept the sleep of the dead. Last night had been particularly tiring. Not only had she a mound of homework last night, but they worked her extra hard at the building, and then she happened upon a group of poor people lying in the street who had been beaten within an inch of their lives...
Those poor, poor people.
Tohru went to the nearest payphone to call an ambulance. She helped as best as she was able until that ambulance arrived, and stayed on a little longer as a number of police questioned her. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to help them as much as she would have liked, only happening upon this crowd herself. The police released her, despite some misgivings that she didn't quite understand when they voiced them. Tohru returned to the house she considered her home proudly, her good deed for the day finished.
Anyway, the alarm clock rang, signaling the end of her sleep time. Time to get up and take care of the boys. She yawned and stretched, then hung a small jade earring in her ear. It had been her mother's, but she never remembered her wearing it. Whenever Tohru asked about, her mother simply said that it was a reminder of days past and her own fate.
Then she'd start lecturing that 'girls who beat others up don't get good husbands'... all the while training her in martial arts, 'just in case'. Tohru thought it seemed rather contradictory, her mother giving her all this advice that she should be a good person, all the while teaching her how to beat the hell out of people.
Tohru ignored the contradiction. Her mother, after all, was an ex-gang girl herself, and she had turned out to be a nice, outgoing person. Tohru's training kept her as healthy as an ox, yet outside the dojo she was curiously as graceful as one—the finesse she possessed while practicing her forms seemed to stop at the dojo threshold.
Strangely, her mother seemed half-relieved and half-disappointed at this curious wrinkle in her training. When asked, she noted that, although she would have been proud to have her daughter follow in her footsteps, she remarked that it was good that Tohru would 'break the cycle'. She never did elaborate on what the cycle was.
She never got around to letting Kyou-kun and Souma-kun know she was a pretty decent martial artist herself within the confines of the dojo, and especially keeping quiet that —within the dojo— she likely be an even match to Souma-kun. Kyou worked so hard focusing on beating Souma-kun that she didn't want to discourage him with the news that a slip of a girl was more likely to beat Souma-kun than he. Tohru was too nice to do that.
Sadly, even the most badass martial artist wasn't equal to that of the damage done by a ton of twisted metal going at 30 mph. In honor of her mother, Tohru always wore the mysterious jewel ever since that horrible car accident.
Tohru shook it off. There was no point in dwelling on that. Life was about looking forward, not dwelling on the past. Life was too short to waste on sorrow. Life was... yadda, yadda, yadda. With this and other disgustingly optimistic mantras on her mind, Tohru set out to cheerfully make the Souma family breakfast.
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(Posted Tue, 14 Sep 2004 00:31)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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