Rather, it had to do with how lovely she was. This was the sort of woman who didn't show her age, and would likely be hard to measure age by. If she was over forty, she might look like she did when she was in her twenties, with only a little bit to reveal her actual age. She had the sort of looks that made young men wish that they could have a 'mature woman'.
But Nodoka Saotome wasn't the sort of woman who would pay much mind to such attentions. After all, she was a married woman, and as such, she could not honorably entertain any such affections. She might feel nice that men would desire her, or that women would hold her up as a role model, but she was not someone who would demean her wedding vows by acting as if she were unwed, especially now.
It was important that she be that sort of role model for her daughter-in-law, after all. The poor girl didn't have a mother, which had made it doubly important to take her under her wing, even if the girl hadn't already been completely in love with her son. As it stood, the poor child needed to have some sort of steady parental figure in her life, and if she could fill that, the Saotome Matriarch was happy.
Of course, Nodoka didn't mind doing it at all. In Makoto, she had finally found the daughter that she'd always wanted, and the two of them got along quite well. In fact, she and her daughter-in-law had spent many a trip on trains to spend time together. They'd become a true family quickly, and had already bonded rather nicely.
And now with every station that she passed, she was getting closer to having her reunion with her son. When they'd first been reunited, she'd been so happy that she'd been certain that she was about to burst. By what she knew up until then, it had been easy to think that she could have more joy in her life. But her son had gone and shown her that he would be sharing a true love with his wife, which was a relationship that would never end. Getting to see them together would be a wonderful thing, and what she had been waiting for ever since her only child had gone on this last training journey.
However, there was a problem, given that her husband had been an idiot again. He hadn't let her know about this promise of his, which was rather foolish, since she could have handled everything before it had gotten to this point. But he had kept it to himself... again, which would likely mean that he had thought that he would be able to bring it in at what he thought would be the 'perfect moment'.
Nodoka didn't have much respect for her husband, and she couldn't find much chance of that changing in his favor. Too many times he'd been caught up in something silly, and hadn't thought of the consequences. This was going to be yet another time when his inability to think about what he was doing was going to come along and bite him on the backside.
With their son married to a lovely girl who had given him her heart, there was no way that the relationship could so easily be set aside. Certainly, that promise between men had not been one to take lightly, but with most of the involved parties not being aware of it, there was no reason to follow through with it. The Tendo girls were sweet children, and true friends to her son, but she was not about to force them to break up the marriage of people that they cared about simply to satisfy a pair of fools who couldn't have been bothered to make sure that people involved could know enough to avoid any problems.
With her son being manly and responsible, while her husband was being foolish and headstrong, there was only one individual to blame, and he was going to get a good talking to as soon as she would catch up to him.
Genma got a chill running down his back and frowned in confusion. "I wonder what that was."
"What was it?" Soun asked.
"Like I just got ice water poured into my veins."
"Knowin' ya, Pop?" Ranma murmured. "Somethin' ya did's gonna come back ta haunt ya."
"Stupid boy! I don't have anything in my past that I can't be proud of!"
The Tendo patriarch nodded, and patted his friend on the back. "You must have just been out a little too long. Fortunately, we can go inside in just a moment. But I'm sure that it's nothing."
"I ain't too sure 'bout that," the pigtailed boy whispered under his breath, while:
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(Posted Fri, 21 Apr 2006 01:46)
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