Left with way too many options for what to do with Akane, Ranma searched for something simple to do. Honestly he was getting flashbacks about other incidents with Akane, love potions and oddly that shampoo episode where she couldn’t remember him.
The diaries and other hidden stuff Akane knew about reassured him that she was honestly into this. Convinced of that at least for the moment, Ranma wasn’t too sure what she’d think of everything tomorrow.
Well, for the moment at least Akane was the least of his concerns. The one thing he’d learned from all those incidents was that it was always his fault. Even if Nabiki had forged paperwork for some sort of prank and it somehow turned out to be Akane’s well hidden fantasy, he was sure that somehow everyone would blame him for this.
That helped him figure out what among all the options Akane had given him to choose for the moment. Looking over the costumes, Ranma was mildly annoyed with both of them as they were from times some other guy had kidnapped her. “Uhm, the maid and bunny outfits, can you make one cute outfit out of both of them?”
Glancing at the outfits, Akane reluctantly climbed out of his lap to crouch down and consider how to put them together.
Looking at the way she exposed herself thoughtlessly while crouching, Ranma was at least sure naked Akane was a bad idea. The last thing he needed was Ryoga, Happosai, Genma, Kasumi, Soun, Shampoo or however many more people he could list barging into the room at that moment.
If nothing else, having the often angry tomboy no longer naked would put him more at ease at least.
It wasn’t difficult for her to put them together either. First came the cute lingerie from her own collection, a lace edged camisole and panty set she wanted to show off to Ranma. Then she put on the maid dress and simply added on the bunny ears and wrist cuffs.
Once dressed, Akane checked herself out in the mirror. Wondering briefly if she should do a little more like make up or hair ribbons, Akane put that aside for the moment to turn to Ranma. “If this is going to be my slave outfit, I can get Kasumi-nėchan to alter it.”
Ranma in turn was resisting the urge to laugh at the sight of her in a maid outfit with bunny-ears. The idea of a slave-outfit was a bit strange to him, but he supposed it was like any other uniform.
Nodding in response, Ranma decided on a relatively safe route. “Okay, so how about we start your training now? Martial arts, maid and even cooking.”
More than a little surprised, Akane was pretty sure she knew Ranma’s opinion of her abilities in those areas. “You’re going to train me? Really?”
Ranma for his part just shrugged. He knew she really wanted to be better at those things, but also that she didn’t have the attitude to train properly. “Sure, guess we’ll work on some basics first.”
Curious what this would entail, Akane felt some rising anticipation as she followed Ranma downstairs and into the kitchen. To her confusion, Ranma only stopped long enough to borrow two pairs of chopsticks, a cup of rice, and some wax paper.
Supplies gathered, Ranma led her into the dojo. Once there he laid out the square of white wax paper and poured the cup of rice out on the paper.
Kneeling down by the paper, Ranma took one pair of chopsticks and in a blur of fast action filled the rice measuring cup to three-quarters full before quitting.
At that point Ranma set down his chopsticks and laid down as if getting comfortable for a nap. “Okay then Akane-chan. Put the rest of the rice grains in the cup.”
Staring at the simplicity of the challenge, Akane took up her chopsticks. Her first attempt however only managed to send rice grains scattering across the floor as she jabbed down at them. Just trying to pick out an individual white grain of rice against the backdrop of white paper was hard enough. When she did locate and capture a single grain with the chopsticks, the little white pearl of hard starch went skittering across the dojo floor as it slipped from between the chopsticks.
Getting angry and wanting to quit, Akane squelched that urge. Grabbing rice grains with chopsticks didn’t leave her an angry violent option either other than childishly scattering them. So she tried again and failed, and again, repeatedly sending rice grain skittering about.
Of course for someone used to using chopsticks, uncooked rice grains were very hard to pick up. Cooked rice was much easier because it was swollen with moisture and soft, plus steamed rice naturally was sticky and held together in clumps. The rice on the floor was the short grain variety preferred by Japanese cooks for flavor and texture, a small round hard pearl of rice compared to the much longer grains of rice used in other cooking styles. To raise the difficulty by replacing the rice, glass marbles or steel ball bearings would have to be used as a substitute.
To pick up a single grain of rice, she would have to spot it, then grasp it with the chopsticks just gently enough to not send it shooting out from the pressure or misaligning the chopsticks. Then of course a single dry cup of rice had hundreds of grains to pick up, although Ranma had kindly lowered the number with his demonstration.
After a few minutes of effort that only managed to scatter the rice grains further, Akane sagged in defeat.
Ranma however was expecting a result somewhat like that. “Well, you giving up?”
Despite being frustrated with her lack of success, the short haired girl shook her head. “No.”
Smirking a bit, Ranma popped up into the sitting position. “Well good, I didn’t expect it to be easy for you. This is one of those things you’re lacking.”
Standing up and dusting himself off, Ranma gave her some parting advice. “Feel free to take a break and relax when you need to, just need to move them one grain at a time for now, nice and slow. So I’m gonna go get me a book to read while I wait.”
Taking a deep breath and puffing out her cheeks, Akane blew out a long breath of frustration.
After which she resumed progress towards her new goal of snagging a single rice grain.
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(Posted Sun, 10 Apr 2011 09:10)
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