Nabiki leaned one elbow onto the table and laid her cheek into the palm of her hand with a bored look on her face. "Let's not, and say that we didn't."
"Now, daughter, don't you realize that if we don't settle the engagement now, we won't have a base set of rules to work with?"
"Don't you realize that we can't simply say one of us is engaged to him on a whim, Dad?"
"But this isn't a whim...."
"Yes, it is. You've got us suddenly engaged to a boy who was just brought to see us."
"Families do it all the time," he reminded her. "Introducing their children to each other as marriage candidates."
"Yeah, as candidates. Not as already being engaged. And you can't bring up this promise, since only one side was named. You have three daughters, you know, and each of them are a bit taken aback by you dropping this on us," the middle Tendo daughter told him.
"Is that true?"
Both Akane and Kasumi nodded, with the latter looking apologetic as she spoke. "There is too much involved to simply go through with engagement as it is."
"But we have to do something!" Genma barked, with a little desperation in his tone. "I haven't gone through all that effort to simply leave things as they stand!"
"What 'effort'?" Akane asked him.
"Why all the work that I put into raising Ranma to be a proper heir to the school! Leaving my wife, forcing us to live on the road, having to work to put my son through tough training after tough training...."
"Oh, yeah. You sound like you had it bad."
The Saotome patriarch smiled broadly. "I knew that you girls would eventually understand my situation!"
"I understand a lot... like the fact that I can't believe that you would be so... so... able to ignore the difficulty that you cause others."
"How could I cause you difficulty?"
"I don't know," the youngest Tendo asked sarcastically. "Perhaps... by forcing your innocent son into an immediate engagement when you've only just informed him of this 'promise' and haven't given him a chance to actually make things go in the right direction!"
"But what does it matter who he chooses?"
"They ain't three copies of the same girl, Pop," Ranma muttered.
Looking at the elder Saotome, Nabiki nodded at her friend's words. "He's right about that. We're totally different people, and simply picking one of us just to satisfy your own desires."
"I am simply acting as any responsible parent would," Genma sniffed, seeming to ignore the obvious looks of skepticism from the teens.
"No, you're trying to push ahead something that, during the best conditions, should be taken slowly. Is there some reason to rush us into something like what you want?"
"No.... No, absolutely not."
"Then you don't respect us."
"How could you think that of me?"
"Simple. You are merely treating us as bodies and names, not people. What you want to do will affect our lives forever, and we don't want things to be screwed up for us because you've been too hasty and ignoring reality."
"Saotome...." Soun began, sounding concerned.
"That's not it at all!" the big man responded in a panic. "I just want to have things put so that we can have everything settled for now. So that this way we can follow what guidelines are set up by that situation."
"You're right in thinking that way. But my daughters are right. Pushing them into a marriage without knowing which one was the proper choice could be a problem. I mean, none of them has jumped out to be chosen, even unintentionally."
"True. That leaves us with the engagement as it is though. We have one groom, but three possible brides."
"And we can't choose one, which means that they're all connected to him."
"That's it!"
Blinking, the Tendo patriarch frowned at his friend. "What is?"
"Well, all three of them could be my son's wife, right? That makes them all his fiancees!"
"Might I remind you that bigamy isn't what you seem to have started out with?" Nabiki commented drolly.
"Obviously, I am not talking about that. But if we make it general, the first sign that we have that my boy is getting close to one of you, we can be sure that the choice is obvious."
"Which means that we can have the wedding as soon as is legally possible," Soun put in.
"Of course. Don't want any problems with it."
"And we won't have to worry about a wrong choice!"
"Exactly! No one could blame us then!"
"It's perfect!"
"I'm glad that we came up with the idea that doing it now wasn't the best option!" Genma declared, and cheered with his old training buddy, with both men looking rather happy being focused on congratulating each other.
"At least we got them to hold off on pushing us into immediately acting on their promise," Kasumi murmured just loud enough for the other teens to hear, but the younger individuals were a bit too busy watching the fathers in distaste, while:
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Sat, 22 Apr 2006 01:24)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.