“What?!”
Soun winced as his three daughters displayed their irritation with him in a rather clear manner—apparently his wife had known what she was talking about when she’d implied that his strategy of “not telling anybody else in the family about the marriage arrangement so their delicate female sensibilities wouldn’t be subjected to the ravages of undue stress” would not only backfire, but turn out to be completely and utterly wrong.
Sure, he’d expected this kind of reaction from Nabiki—their middle daughter had always been the most independent (or rebellious, depending on one’s point of view) of the three, with her tendencies to start up various moneymaking schemes to increase her personal wealth, often at the expense of her fellow students at Furinkan High School. Not that she was doing anything illegal—there was absolutely no way the Tendos would have tolerated something like that—but Nabiki’s schemes often seemed to tread uncomfortably close to the edge of what was ethical. Of course, Soun often wondered why she didn’t just get a part-time job, with his logic being that if she could find time to devote herself to her various plans to bilk her schoolmates out of their spending money, then she could just as easily devote that time to more respectable methods of earning yen. Nabiki had responded by claiming that there were two reason she didn’t want to get a part time job: 1) her betting pools and information brokerage services were far more lucrative than any part-time job could ever be, and 2) this was more fun, anyway. Soun supposed that he could see her logic; after all, she didn’t really spend as much money as her sisters did—if anything, she spend less, which implied that her true love was actually getting the money to begin with. It was almost like a game to her—and the points were tallied in yen. Of course, this lead the Tendo patriarch to become concerned that Nabiki would become excessively materialistic in her adult years, but as Kimiko had pointed out, all children go through rebellious stages when they reach their teens, and trying to stop them usually just made them even more rebellious. Thus, Soun had reluctantly allowed his daughter to continue her activities, despite his misgivings, and as a result, her independent spirit was allowed to flourish, making her consternation at something as traditional as an arranged marriage disappointing but hardly surprising.
Nor was there anything particularly inexplicable about the negative reaction of Kasumi, his oldest daughter. After all, at nineteen, she was on the verge of becoming an independent adult herself: she was currently in her first year at a nearby university, studying to become a nurse—it was the vocation she’d wanted ever since she was a little girl, but her mother’s illness (and sudden recovery) had caused the oldest Tendo daughter to redouble her efforts to make it a reality. Soun couldn’t deny that she had the personality for it; she seemed to be a natural caretaker, even more so than Kimiko, and she had clearly been ready to take over her mother’s duties when the wonderful news of Kimiko’s recovery had made such a transition thankfully unnecessary. In fact, had she been a little younger, Soun might have been downright shocked by her resistance, as she’d always been so demure in the past, but times had changed, and Kasumi’s studies now took up quite a bit of her schedule—she could hardly be faulted for being irritated by the disruption that the arrival of the Saotomes would cause.
But what really threw Soun for a loop was the resistance of Akane, his youngest daughter. Not because she was somehow more compliant than her sisters; in fact, in some ways, she was the most rebellious of the three. No, her hostility surprised Soun because he wasn’t just Akane’s father: he was her sensei as well. Akane was the current heir to the Tendo School of Anything Goes, not just because she was his daughter, but because she was by far the most talented of the relatively small group of students who trained in the dojo on the Tendo grounds. True, a lot of that likely had to do with the fact that she lived with the School’s master, which resulted in much more one-on-one training than Soun’s other students (who had to commute), but Soun was also absolutely convinced of Akane’s talent—in fact, on several occasions he’d admitted privately to Kimiko that Akane’s abilities would almost certainly exceed his own if she decided to make a long-term commitment to devote her life to the Art. He really was proud of her—proud enough that he was willing to let her deal with some of her own problems with directly interfering, and by “problems,” he meant Tatewaki Kuno and his Gang of Idiots. It wasn’t so much that the kendo player acted like a jerk—Soun had done that more times than he’d wanted to remember while under the tutelage of… the Master… but this weirdo actually seemed to think that the universe was obligated to make sure that his life played out exactly as he wanted it. When Akane had rebuffed his romantic advances, this imbecile had made some sort proclamation declaring Akane to be off-limits to anyone who couldn’t defeat her in combat, or some such nonsense, with the result that Akane now had to beat off a horde of hormonally crazed boys just to get through the doors of her school! Even worse, this Kuno fellow was so charismatic, that several of his own students had tried to attack Akane during a training session (and not only did it not work, Soun had then unceremoniously ejected them from his dojo, forbidding them from ever practicing the Tendo School). Really, the only reason he hadn’t personally beaten the jerks who were pestering Akane into the ground was his daughter’s insistence that she be allowed to deal with them herself. Thus, Soun reluctantly allowed things to continue—but he was also determined to intervene the moment anything got out of hand.
But other than this minor obstacle, Akane almost always followed his advice concerning the Art—and what could be more related to the Art than the joining of the Schools? Unfortunately, Akane didn’t seem to see it this way; she, like her sisters, seemed to view this marriage as an inconvenience at best. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell us about this!”
“I… I didn’t want you to worry about it….”
“Not worry about it? Are you nuts? What if the three of us were all seeing someone?”
“B-but you aren’t… are you?”
“Not as far as you know,” Nabiki chimed in.
As far as I know? What does she mean by— “Wait a minute, Nabiki. Are you saying that you’re actually dating? And you didn’t tell me?”
“Why would I tell you?”
“Because that’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to let your family… know…. I just walked into one of your logical traps, didn’t I?”
“Uh-huh.”
Soun sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I should have known better—you girls have been mature enough to handle this for a while now. But that doesn’t change the fact that one of you is honor bound to marry Genma’s heir.”
Kasumi’s face softened as she heard her father’s apology. “That’s all right, Father… we all understand the importance of maintaining our family’s honor. It’s just that if you’d let us know, we could have mentally prepared for this young man’s arrival.”
“Not to mention that Akane could have used this to get Captain Kendo off her case,” Nabiki added. “Kuno’s obsession with tradition would have made this the perfect way to get him to leave Akane alone.”
“Kuno wouldn’t be on my case in the first place if you hadn’t sold him those pictures,” Akane growled.
“First of all, dear sister, I wouldn’t have known to sell him those pictures of you if he wasn’t already infatuated with you. And second, you gave me permission to take and sell them in the first place.”
“But you didn’t tell me that he would be the customer!”
“Girls,” Soun interjected, sensing that the discussion was going off topic. “You can bicker about that Kuno fellow later—right now, there are more pressing matters to attend to. Namely, the Saotomes.”
Akane and Nabiki reluctantly broke off their argument at their father’s behest. “Okay, Dad,” Nabiki said, “what do we need to do?”
“Well, as I said, I’m expecting them to arrive today, so it would be nice if you could try to get ready—” Soun would have gone further, were it not for the sudden ringing of the doorbell.
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(Posted Sat, 23 Sep 2006 23:43)
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