Coupled Union - Tick Tock: Correspondence [Episode 155849]

Dear Grandmother,

I hope this letter finds you in good health. It has been ten days since I began my journey, and I’m pleased to say my progress down the Huang He has gone very well; I was able to get much farther by boat than expected before the river dried up.

Since I was ahead of schedule, I was able to travel at a more leisurely pace to Tianjin—and even this was made easy by the many men who offered me rides in what I assume are the “automobiles” the Jusenkyo Guide and others have spoken of, though it was obvious that many of them were attracted to my athletic form and were hoping to bed me. Even as I took advantage of their lechery (while making sure none of them took advantage of me), I was struck with a realization about the difference between males and men: while “male” only refers to someone’s physical gender, a “man” is someone of a particularly un-Amazonian mindset. I have already mentioned that I’ve met many men who seem to be utterly obsessed with sex, money, and power, but even the ones who aren’t tend to be very emotionally distant. I know that much of this is true with the male women of our tribe as well, but the degree to which it exists in outsider males is staggeringly greater. It seems that not going through with the experience of becoming a woman increases the negative aspects of the male personality greatly. This, of course, has only deepened my resolve to help Ranma in his journey to womanhood, though I fear that it may be too late for my husband.

But I digress. With the exception of a few perverts who were reluctant to take “no” for an answer, my journey to the coast was uneventful—and now that I think of it, that is a very good thing. After all, if it is a curse to live in interesting times, that implies that it is a blessing to live in boring times, right? Anyway, when I reached Tianjin, I managed to find a Japanese vessel willing to take me to the homeland of my husband and son. It’s strange, but even though I have grave doubts about ever being able to become emotionally close to Genma, I already have very little trouble thinking of Ranma as my own child, even if our ages are so close that there’s no way that that could be physically possible. I suppose that it’s because he grew up without a mother—though from what Xian Pu told me about her conversations with him, the actual fate of Ranma’s birth mother is a bit of a mystery, even to him.

But my time grows short, as the ship will be leaving soon. Give my regards to the rest of our family, and tell my mother that I’ll let her know where she can write to me as soon as I find Genma and Ranma.

With love,
Ti Xiu