"You seem happy," said Ami's mother as she viewed her daughter's upbeat mood.
"Met a new friend today," said Ami, a faint blush dusting her cheeks as she considered how well put together her new friend was. Actually she thought her duplicate would make a good friend too.
"Oh?" Doctor Kumori Mizuno put together the blush and a new friend and came to conclusions. "What's his name?"
"Ranma Saotome..." Ami winced as she realized the trap. "Uhm, really it's... mother?"
Her mother stared at her. "Ranma... Saotome... oh my goodness. He's still alive?"
"Mother?" Ami was a little alarmed.
"Tea..." the obviously shocked elder Mizuno said. "This should be discussed over tea."
Finding herself seated and a hot cup of tea in front of her, Ami was ready for anything.
"Ranma Saotome is... your fiance."
Would you believe almost anything?
"WHAT?!"
The elder Mizuno sipped at her tea. "It all started years and years ago. Back in high school. I was a cram school student, but I was tutoring this boy whose parents felt he was a wastrel and glutton and heading for life as a bum. Genma Saotome. Uhm. His parents were right. In any case, his parents were paying me to tutor him so that he could pass some basic classes. At one point he made a deal with me that if he could just pass this one test and get his parents off his back, he'd engage his first son to my daughter."
Ami took a deep gulp of tea. So she... and Ranma...
"Naturally I didn't think much of it. Even when he took my skepticism as a challenge and wrote it all out." Doctor Mizuno considered her tea. "He passed that test. Just barely but he passed. I had forgotten all about it until years later."
Ami gulped down another jolt of tea. Years later?
"Genma tracked me down while I was just starting my practice here at the hospital. You were about five at the time. His little boy had been savagely mauled by animals. What really struck me as strange at the time was the indication that some of the wounds were several days old while others were only a few hours."
Ami nodded even as she felt the room beginning to spin around her. This was all so much at once.
"Naturally I called the police when little details of his story changed and I had a chance to read this little book over his shoulder," said Doctor Mizuno. "I tried to keep him there by reminding him of his duty to marry his son to my daughter. Instead he grew increasingly nervous. Sometime after you had been introduced to Ranma, he took his son and fled. You had nightmares for a week afterward..."
A niggling memory suddenly popped up in Ami's head. "Ranma is Rannie?! That evil fat man?"
"That would be Genma, actually," said the Doctor. "Now I know this is a bit much, and I can understand if you want to refuse."
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(Posted Wed, 14 May 2003 14:04)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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