They were harsh, unforgiving loopholes, but they were there. One could always renounce everything, and become a Buddhist monk. One could renounce family, and be cast out of the social net that supported everyone. And of course, one could commit seppuku, which would greatly shame the people who drove the deceased to choose death.
These were the threats that Soun and Genma held over Ranma. But to compel Ranma or Akane to marry through some form of mind control would be equivalent to slavery. No one had the right to remove the choice of death over being forced to endure. Anything else was just cruel torture, and not even the family honor and "Wa" were worth the sacrifice.
Kasumi only considered forcing the marriage for the briefest moment before recoiling in disgust. There were better methods available in the book; methods that combined behavioral adjustments with changing the flows of chi through the chakras of the body using shiatsu and acupuncture. Methods that relied on herbal concoctions whose recipes were thoroughly detailed.
While some people have argued at length on the evils of behavioralism, Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" being perhaps the most famous example, Kasumi saw nothing wrong a priori in the use of behavioralism per se. It sounded to her quite similar to the kind of thing that was part and parcel in the bringing up of a young child.
Granted, teenagers are not young children. That was why more complicated methods were needed to break bad habits like lashing out with insults and violence. That was why complicated recipes and chi manipulations would be needed.
It was the duty of the mother of the family, after all, to see that her charges were brought up well, and she had been cast into the role of mother for both Akane and Ranma, will I nill I. There still might be an ethical dilemma over the use of a specific cure for a specific fault, but Kasumi had no qualms over the use of the Master's Way in breaking the habits that damaged the harmony of the two families.
However, behavioralism, to be used effectively required more knowledge than she had about the underlying reasons that Ranma and Akane behaved the way they did. Kasumi would have to find out more about them than she could likely get through conversation and observation. Kasumi would have to invade their privacy, particularly those areas they most wanted to hide.
This did cause Kasumi to pause. Personal privacy was extremely important in a culture where it was extremely difficult to get away from people. This was a culture that made use of paper thin shogi walls. Where only the upper middle class could afford a compound like the Tendo home for only four people, while most people lived in apartment complexes, stacking scores and hundreds of people living over the same small parcel of land.
What Kasumi might have to wind up doing would be worse than reading someone's diary. Kasumi might have to search for those things that they denied to themselves. Kasumi might learn things that they kept secret from themselves. There couldn't be a more personal invasion.
But it might not need to go that far. And she wouldn't dream of letting anyone else know what she learned, Kasumi rationalized. She'd be fulfilling the role of a psychiatrist, doctor, or father-confessor. Kasumi conveniently didn't consider that in each of those professions, the professional is sought out by the patient.
And she'd be doing it for Akane and Ranma's own good. She wanted both of them to be happier, and they were quite clearly unhappy with the way their lives were going. She'd just be making up for the years that Ranma and Akane grew up without a proper mother.
So, with good reasons and bad, Kasumi decided it was better to interfere than to do nothing.
Clearly, at least to Kasumi, Ranma was the keystone to all of the confusion in the area. However, Ranma was still a guest, sort of, and not quite family. Unlike some members of her family, Kasumi believed in the virtues of self-sacrifice, so in order to preserve the Wa of the household, it fell first to her to make the requisite sacrifice, and after that, it fell to her family.
So Akane would have to be the first to fall under unnatural scrutiny. For the first session, there was no reason to pry excessively. This modified sleeping draught should do the trick. It inspired a dream-like state, during which the recipient would find it impossible to disseminate or prevaricate, answering any question presented as honestly as they would when they were thinking to themselves.
It would be nearly identical, because the victim would feel like they were talking to themselves. And nothing they talked about would survive the transition from short-term memory to long term memory. It would be remembered as the first of many dreams that the recipient had that night, and earlier dreams are wiped out by later dreams.
When the recipient lay down to go to sleep, or within about a half-hour after drinking the potion, the patient would fall deeply asleep, and completely lose the memory of the period of questioning.
Unlike western medications, which often relied on using alcohol to extract the effective properties of plants, leaving a liquid syrup after the extra water and alcohol was removed, The recipe for the dream honesty potion relied on making a tisane of various herbs. The resultant tea could be easily mixed with other teas, or served as it was. As an added benefit, due to the willow bark, and chamomile, it made a mild muscle relaxant that might mitigate tension headaches.
Acquiring a collection of rare herbs and teas for the use in this and other potions wasn't difficult. Finding a place to store them on the top shelf of the cupboard behind the bulk dry-goods where no one could see it and neither of her sisters could explore without a step-stool was only a little harder. Kasumi mixed up a small amount of the tea, and stored it in a tin container marked "For medicinal use only."
From that point on, all Kasumi needed was patience. It was only a few days later that Akane was fuming over the apparent infidelity of her unwanted fiancee. Ranma had disappeared after dinner without telling anyone, his already angry fiancee in particular, where he was going.
The fathers had already tasted a hint of her anger as they talked about the engagement in front of Akane as if she wasn't there, or as incapable of holding a valid opinion on the subject as if she were a piece of furniture. Nabiki had retreated to her room, not seeing any reason to spend time with a furious sister, or a pair of semi-sociopathic morons.
This left Kasumi as the only one within the vicinity of the angry youngest Tendo. As it was past the time Akane usually started preparing for bed, and Akane was obviously too angry to relax, Kasumi suggested a calming tea that would help Akane go to sleep immediately, "Unless you want to stay awake until Ranma comes home."
"Why would I want to wait for that jerk!"
Kasumi smiled, "Well then, go get dressed for bed, and I'll bring up a mug of tea that'll help you to sleep."
A few minutes after Akane drank the tea, Akane went from ranting invectives on the unfairness of life to looking blankly around the room.
"Akane, how do you feel?"
"Sleepy."
"How do you feel about Ranma?"
"He's an egotistical Jerk!"
"Let’s play a game, Akane. We're going to paint a word picture of Ranma. Every time I ask you, you have to describe Ranma without repeating yourself. You've already said Ranma's egotistical, and a jerk. What else is he?"
"He's thoughtless. He doesn't care about my feelings!"
Kasumi was tempted to pursue this line of questioning, but she decided to continue to probe about what Akane thought of Ranma. "What else is Ranma?"
"He's a pervert that likes having girls hang off of him."
"What else is he?"
"He's a great martial artist."
"What else is he?"
"He worries about my safety."
"What else is he?"
"He takes risks and injuries for people who don't deserve his protection."
Kasumi continued on this track, trying to determine how Akane saw Ranma. She desperately ignored her blush when Akane talked about Ranma's "tight butt showing through his pants" (query number 17), "well defined hard chest" (query no. 23) "bouncing boobs" (query no. 27) and "giant penis jutting out" (query no. 35, the last question).
Further questions indicated that this was a memory from Akane's first run-in with Ranma in the bath on their first day together. It also indicated that Ranma's manhood was probably normally sized, but Akane had never seen one before like that, and it seemed huge; baseball bat huge. Only by comparing it with her memory of the body it was attached to, could Kasumi get a semi-accurate idea of the size.
Kasumi was relieved Ranma wasn't suffering from some form of elephantiasis. Thanks to the "Master's Way" and other medical textbooks, Kasumi had a better idea of what an average erect penis looked like. She could understand how Akane's mind focused on it, blowing it out of all proportion. After all, Kasumi had yet to see an erect penis outside of photos and drawings.
Kasumi tried playing the paint a word picture game again asking Akane's feelings on her engagement. Through iteration after iteration, Akane failed to say anything positive, coming up with new and varied derogatory terms for her father, Nabiki, Kuno, Ranma, and especially Genma.
Akane's opinion had Ranma and Kuno escape the vitriol relatively unscathed. Nabiki apparently had used the engagement to make Akane's life worse, instead of helping her as any decent sister would have done. Soun was a thoughtless, worthless, waste-of-space filling the hole where a decent father belonged. A selfish bully, so over the top that even when he was coming down on Akane's side against Ranma, Soun embarrassed her with his behavior.
However, when Kasumi asked Akane to paint a word picture about her feelings about marrying Ranma, she received quite a different result.
"He'd have the right to touch me."
"How could I trust him."
"He doesn't take me seriously."
"What if he leaves me, like his father did?"
"He'd only marry me to fill family honor, he doesn't love me."
"Why can't I trust him?"
"What will people think of me if he tells them we're married when he's a girl?"
"What if he pretends we're not married when he's a girl?"
"What if he's trapped as a girl?"
"What if I prefer him as a girl?"
"I'd cease to be a person; I'll just be Ranma Saotome's wife."
"I might get pregnant."
"Our parents will force us to have hundreds of children."
"Everyone will say that we got married so young, because I was a loose woman that got knocked up."
"What if I marry him and find out I don't love him?"
"What could I do if he cheated on me?"
"What would I do if one of the others seduced him?"
"If I married him, he'd get my dojo!"
It shocked Kasumi that the list of fears and insecurities seemed without end. And it was such a wide ranging list. Akane finally succumbed to sleep before the list ended.
While Kasumi asked Akane to paint a picture of her feelings about marrying Ranma, Akane painted a better picture of herself. Constructing a marriage with Akane looked like attempting to build an aquarium, only to discover that half the panes of glass were filled with fractures, with only some of the schisms poorly patched with duct tape.
And Akane should have been the stable one. She grew up in a secure home environment where people cared for her. Not like Ranma, who was dragged across Asia by a man more concerned with his stomach than his own son. Kasumi began to dread what she'd learn from Ranma.
"Our father's idea of getting them married first and then fixing their problems is not only ludicrous; it's disastrous!" Kasumi considered all she learned "Even if Ranma were ready to support his side of a marriage, this could break Akane."
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(Posted Wed, 03 Nov 2004 04:20)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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