The Blue Thunder walked home, his bare feet slapping silently against the paving. For once he was glad that the Kendo Club had been prohibited from practicing every afternoon after school, for he had deep matters to ponder and it would be unfair to his men to deprive them of his greatest attention at their exercises. When he had roused once again in the presence of the school nurse, that worthy had indicated that there was little if any point in sending him to join what remained of his last class of the day (indeed, there was little point in him attending any class, but his arrival would unquestionably disrupt the studies of his classmates) and directed him to leave for home immediately. He had not been loath to do so.
Walking, of course, was a means of transportation he adopted by choice. It afforded him, on this and many other occasions, the opportunity to think, undisturbed by his deranged sibling or plebeian classmates. It granted the populace the opportunity to see him, and take solace in seeing the noble samurai who walked among them, ready to protect them at need. Not least, it was a symbol of humility, a virtue that, as a samurai, he embodied most fully and therefore he eschewed the use of a motor vehicle for the short journey.
It had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that his behaviour behind the wheel had so alarmed three successive instructors that most of the driving schools in the area had blackballed his sister as well to be on the safe side.
“…and now half the school thinks I’m engaged! And I bet that won’t make any difference to the idiots every morning, either.”
Ranma tapped on the door below the duck nameplate, smiling faintly at the tone of exasperation in her new friend’s voice.
“Come, in we’re decent.”
“Speak for yourself, little sister – I’m aiming for ‘stunning’… hi Ranma.”
“Hi Nabiki. I, um, Akane, you said you’d give me a hand with getting up to speed…”
Akane relaxed and smiled. “Sure, Ranma. I’m just complaining about that idiot Kuno,” she said. “Although it doesn’t help that someone told him I’m engaged.”
“That’s not what I told him,” protested Nabiki mildly. “He ran out before I finished telling him. I did tell everyone in my class Ranma was a girl. It ought to get around everyone within a few days.”
“Everyone except Kuno, you mean. Push Nabiki over and sit on the bed, Ranma. What did you want to go over first?”
“Well, History would be a good place to start. I’ve never looked at the Edo Period, really…”
Kuno Kodachi prowled through her greenhouses with less than her usual studied grace, absently seeking any small jobs her plants might require. Most of her attention was on considering her brother’s semicoherent monologue over dinner.
Firstly, and perhaps of least import, he was extolling the virtues of some low-born tomboy whose name he had neglected to discover, although he seemed convinced she was enamoured of him. Most curiously, when she had inserted mention of the girl he had been obsessing over almost since the start of the school year into a gap in his ravings, he had immediately reverted to praising the Tendo girl. It did appear that the two girls were associated in some way, and it was clear that the new girl had beaten him in single combat – just as the Tendo girl had on many occasions previously. How, exactly, her brother construed that as an indication of their affection towards him Kodachi had never understood, and rather hoped never would.
Secondly, he had accused her of dosing him with something, although he had expounded on the dangers of her experiments and the need for greater care than she had – allegedly – practiced the night before, intimating that whatever she had – allegedly – done was a consequence of negligence rather than design. He didn’t seem to have noticed that she hadn’t been at home, or even in Tokyo, that night, thanks to travelling delays on the way home from a horticultural exhibition in Kyoto she had attended as part of a party from her school gardening club. Their return home had been arrested by a perfectly mundane road accident which had caused their coach to remain stationary in traffic for some two and a half hours. She had finally sought her bed in the early hours of the morning.
However, there were various compounds brewing in her laboratory, and she had checked thoroughly to ensure that none had released unexpectedly. There was no evidence of any such accident, nor of any tampering or even entry since she last worked there. Nor was there any sign of entry to her greenhouses, although (as her brother seemed quite incapable of understanding) there was no way any of the compounds generated by her more medicinal plants could escape without artificial processing.
She turned over the leaves of a rosebush, frowning at the faded grey of the blossoms, and watered it carefully. With luck and constant attention, the simple treatment would cause the bush to grow black flowers, but it did take some time to take effect and the bushes didn’t always thrive with the unusual feed.
Clearly, Tatewaki had suffered some incident which he refused to understand – much as he had refused to comprehend that it was his own sleeve that overturned the tea, that first occasion she began to doubt his sanity – and had settled on her interests as an alternative explanation. It was not the first time he had accused her of affecting his life in some underhanded manner, and he had never been right yet, at least in specifics.
Sighing, she set aside any hope of comprehending her sibling’s deranged accusations, set down the watering can full of black ink just inside the greenhouse door, and made her way to her bedroom. Surely, whatever he was accusing her of was some artefact of not being fed the blend of sedatives, mood dampers, and assorted psychotropics she had been using to keep him in a socially acceptable level of eccentricity since he entered puberty, and, that being so, would be rectified as soon as the dose she slipped into his miso this evening took effect.
With any luck, this time she didn’t get any of it on her own hands. It was so much harder to live down to the standards expected of her family when her head felt full of cotton wool.
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(Posted Fri, 29 Jun 2007 19:56)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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