After dropping her husband’s letter at the post office, Kasumi headed out to the market. She had yet to decide what she would prepare for her family that evening, so she decided to stock up on the essentials—given her husband’s ravenous appetite, she hardly needed to worry about having too much of anything. There was an extra spring in her step as she moved from shop to shop, looking for the best deals she could find, and the shopkeepers noticed it. Several people asked about her exceptionally cheery (even for her) mood, but she had to keep her marriage a secret, lest her father develop an aneurism worrying about how others would react to Ranma’s curse….
That actually did worry Kasumi somewhat; when Nabiki had revealed that a significant number of the neighbors had seriously suspected the eldest Tendo sister of being a lesbian, she had been just as shocked as everyone else in the room. Certainly, she knew that several of them had been speculating on the possible reasons that she remained at home, and one would expect that some of these speculations would be rather scandalous (that’s human nature, after all), but apparently, this theory had been disturbingly common. As she looked around the marketplace, she began to wonder if these kindly, unassuming people would really believe that she had homosexual proclivities—
Kasumi shook that thought from her mind; Nabiki had clearly said that the vast majority of those who had held that opinion had changed their minds in the face of Nabiki’s logic. Still, she was a bit troubled by a issue that she simply couldn’t fathom: Why had they been so willing to believe such a rumor in the first place?
Dr. Tofu was not having a good day. Somehow, he had managed to lose Kasumi to a sixteen-year-old boy who transformed into a sixteen-year-old girl on what appeared to be a fairly regular basis. This, in turn, had been having a rather negative effect on his medical practice. Nothing that would get him sued for malpractice, but his chiropractic skills were a tad bit sloppy, which resulted in several patients’ adjustments being a bit more painful than necessary.
There was a small part of him that wanted to be angry at Ranma for dashing his hopes, but Dr. Tofu (unlike many of his patients, particularly the martial artists) was far too sensible for such pettiness. It wasn’t as though Ranma had been racing to get hitched to Kasumi before he had a chance to do the same; they hadn’t even known of each other’s existence before that morning, after all. No, Dr. Tofu mostly blamed his own indecisive tendencies for the loss of Kasumi; for some reason, he had never been quite able to get his act together during her (admittedly frequent) visits. Instead, he kept pining from afar, hoping that everything would somehow magically resolve itself and give him the happy ending he desired (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). But he had waited too long, and someone else had claimed her heart.
This was the kind of pathetic, clichéd self-pity that was currently roaming through the head of the good Doctor as he tried to go about his day. He didn’t need to be told this, as other parts of his personality were perfectly aware that indulging in such sad-sack drizzle wouldn’t change a thing, and even if it did make him feel marginally better about himself for a brief period of time, he couldn’t sustain it all day, as it was distracting him from his work. However, this knowledge gave him no insight on how he might climb out of his deep blue funk (and his patients probably would not accept this as a viable reason to reschedule the rest of the day’s appointments). Dr. Tofu sighed once again. What the heck do I do now?
Sometime after Kasumi left to go shopping, Soun managed to emerge from his catatonic state. Other than that, however, he hadn’t made much progress.
“But Genma, what if they let their guard down and make a mistake, and someone takes it the wrong way, and—”
Genma was starting to get mildly irritated at his best friend’s unwillingness to take a pragmatic view of the situation. “Soun, this is starting to get ridiculous. It’s one thing to be worried about how Ranma and Kasumi will be viewed by the public the boy’s curse becomes well-known, but you’re acting as though it’s a foregone conclusion that they will have lesbian sex just because they can.”
“I’m not saying that at all! It’s just that it’s such a common male fantasy, and—”
“Soun, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. What our children do in the bedroom for recreation is none of our concern. What we should be concerned with is what they do in the bedroom for procreation. And to that end, I suggest we make a thorough search of Kasumi’s room and remove any pills, diaphragms, prophylactics, sponges, or anything else that could stand in the way of biology.”
Soun’s reaction to the insinuation that his eldest daughter, the picture of chastity, might actually possess any sort of birth control (which would imply that she actually thought about sex) was fairly predictable: “Urk&mdash!”
Genma, however, wasn’t finished. “Why don’t I do that, while you go through the kitchen cabinets and get rid of any of these herbs,” he said, pressing a rather lengthy list into his friend’s hand. “Nodoka says that these are often used in traditional birth control teas and the like. Not that I believe any of it, but there’s no sense in taking any chances when we’ve got an heir on the line, right?”
“Grok—?”
“Great! Now, let’s get started before Kasumi comes back.”
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(Posted Mon, 01 May 2006 21:36)
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