Minako Tendo had always been a bit of an anomaly. The most obvious way this came across was in her hair color: while her father, sisters, and her late mother all had dark brown or black hair, she was blonde, a fact that caused many of in the Tendos’ Nerima neighborhood to speculate that Kimiko Tendo had had an affair, or that Minako was “switched at birth” with her real child. Soun never gave this murmuring any credence, but he eventually had a paternity test done just to get the busybodies to shut up and leave his precious Minako alone; needless to say, he was indeed her biological father, though there were some who stubbornly refused to give up on the possibility of a juicy scandal and claimed that the paternity tests were somehow flawed. However, it was enough for most of the neighbors, which was a good thing, as Kimiko died in an accident only a few months later, and having to deal with both her mother’s death and rumors of illegitimacy would likely have been too much for any six-year-old girl to take. Still, when she met with people who didn’t know about her story, she usually claimed that she dyed her hair, rather than go through an extensive explanation.
Much like her older sister Akane, she had a lot of physical talent, but where Akane focused on studying the family’s school of martial arts, Minako preferred to use her energy in competitive sports. She was the star of her junior high school’s women’s volleyball team, and had proven to be so gifted at the sport that the coach at Furinkan High was already giddy with anticipation for the girl’s immanent attendance; for the most part, the student body accepted as fact that the youngest Tendo would get a place on the varsity squad as soon as she arrived.
Still, she often trained with Akane, simply as a workout; often the two of them would go jogging together, and Minako usually did some very basic katas with her sister in lieu of more traditional calisthenics before she went off on her own to do training specifically for her sport. Both of them enjoyed this time together; it was something the two had in common, unlike their opinions regarding those who possessed a Y chromosome. Minako had recently entered puberty, and with puberty came her exit from the “cootie” stage of intergender relationships. She became interested in boys, even if she was still a little hazy as to where this interest came from—she knew that sex had something to do with it, and she had a reasonably good idea of what sex was: something went into something else, it felt really, really good, and it was how women got pregnant (and most importantly, her father would likely have a nervous breakdown if she did it before she got married). The specifics, however, were beyond her knowledge at the moment, and her older sisters had yet to give her “the talk” (Soun believed that it was best for a woman to learn about sexuality from another woman—when he tried to have “the talk” with Kasumi, it had resulted more in confusion than anything else; fortunately, his oldest daughter had been able to fill in most of the blanks by reading about the subject in the public library, and had thus been able to fill in for him in the cases of Nabiki and Akane). For Minako, boys were still a relatively new interest that had yet to wane.
Akane’s interest in the opposite gender, on the other hand, had not only waned, but was on the verge of extinction thanks to the antics of Tatewaki Kuno. When Akane spurned the advances of the captain of Furinkan’s kendo team, Kuno refused to simply get over it like a normal human being (as he was so vain that he couldn’t think of himself as a normal human being) and instead went into denial, managing to convince himself that her rejection was because he had yet to prove himself worthy of her attention, when in fact, the real reason she turned him down was because she thought he was a stuck-up snob who constantly flaunted his family’s heritage and his family’s money as though they were any reflection on his personal character (and let there be no misunderstanding: Kuno really did think that his family and his money were enough to prove that he was better than his peers—though he hated that word, as it implied that there existed people who could be called his equals). Soon afterward, Kuno announced that anyone who wanted to date Akane had to defeat her, which to the ear of the average person sounds insane, but, as Nabiki pointed out, it did make sense if you were able to follow Kuno’s convoluted logic.
Kuno believed that one had to earn Akane’s respect in order to date her, and on this point, at least, he was absolutely correct. His error was to assume that as the two of them were both martial artists, her respect could be gained in the same way his could be gained, namely victory in combat. Thus, Nabiki reasoned, it was possible that Kuno actually thought he would be helping Akane with his announcement, because it would ensure that nobody couldn’t earn Akane’s “respect” would attempt to date her. But even if Kuno’s deductions had been true, it was highly doubtful that Akane would have appreciated his gesture, as it resulted in a massive horde of perverts gathering each morning to attack her en masse, mistakenly believing that she had to date anyone who defeated her (a sentiment that even Kuno did not agree with, though he still allowed the mob to assault Akane each morning because he was always certain she would emerge victorious). Given that nearly every unattached guy at Furinkan tried their luck with the “any given Sunday” principle at least once, one could see how her opinions of the male gender could become darkened rather quickly.
Her dislike for men eventually became so pronounced that Akane had briefly considered the possibility that she might be a lesbian. She rejected this notion for two reasons: first, she still found many of the boys at Furinkan to be sexually attractive (though morally repugnant); second, she knew that not all guys were that bad, thanks to her friendship with Dr. Tofu, a young practitioner of both Eastern and Western medicine who’d established his practice in the neighborhood several years ago. Tofu was kind, patient, understanding, and (to the best of her knowledge) not gay, thus proving that there were decent men on the planet. Still, Akane believed that Tofu managed to be a good person in spite of his gender, rather than because of it.
At the moment, she and Minako were nearly done with their run for the afternoon; the conversation had been… well… interesting. Minako kept going on about the unusually vivid dreams she’d been having, where she was some sort of superhero. Normally, Akane would have just smiled and nodded, and possibly gone on to describe her own dream about Jackie Chan, Speed Racer, and the Emperor battling Viking invaders on the back of a giant turtle swimming in a sea of chocolate sauce, but this seemed different, though Akane couldn’t tell why.
In the end, she just shrugged it off; Minako didn’t seem to be troubled by these dreams, so why should she?
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(Posted Thu, 06 Apr 2006 05:22)
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