"Hinako-sensei... your house is messy," he muttered, snatching the papers out of the air one by one and throwing them in neat stacks across the table, kicking more of the loose articles off of the floor as he slowly dodged back and forth to grab all of the items being thrown at him. It was slow going, but he was actually making headway against the nearly absentminded destruction and chaos the girl was causing.
"This is kind of hard," he thought to himself. "It's actually kind of like speed training... except that if I mess up, the place just gets messier." He frowned, thinking about that, as Hinako climbed victoriously out of the chest, holding her prized book aloft, and peering about at the straightened up environs.
"That's good!" she exclaimed, clutching her book to her chest and smiling. "It's important for a couple to be able to look after one another -- they have to have mutual investments in time in a relationship to make it work."
"Is that so?" Ranma responded absently, folding a shirt that had been left on the floor and dropping it on a pile with other laundry.
"Mmm-hmm," the girl mumbled, frowning slightly. After a moment, she shrugged, and sat at the table, thumping the heavy tome onto the table. "This book is called 'Values of Modern Relationships'," she said, reading the cover before cracking it open. "It's a few years old, but there's some really fun stuff in it, and I'll go ahead and tell you some of it, okay?"
Ranma nodded without turning to look at the girl, juggling a number of magazines in the air and stacking them neatly by the trash. "Hey," he said, frowning. "A fishbowl."
"Ranma-kun, pay attention to me," the girl murmured, taking the fishbowl and suddenly shifting to her more adult form. "Oooh! Thank you, Ranma-kun, I was wondering where that went."
"Er..." he managed, realizing what it was; the fighting fish that allowed her to remain in her adult form as she wished. "You're welcome?"
"Such a dear!" the woman said, winking at him before returning to the table. "Now, because we're going to be learning about being a couple, there's a lot I'd like to explain to you. You can keep on cleaning if you think you can pay attention to me."
"Uh.... Okay, that's cool," he said, nodding as he moved to attack another pile of unsorted stuff on the floor. "So, what do we have to learn?"
"Well, Ranma-kun, in a relationship, the couple is sharing their lives, and so, they share their responsibilities, too. For example, in most modern relationships, the tasks are neatly divided between maintaining the home, and providing income. Usually, the husband will work to bring money into the home, while the wife takes care of the house and finances."
"Okay, I think I get that," Ranma said, frowning as he collected dirty dishes from the table, trying not to disturb the book that Hinako was still reading. "But, what if they want to do things differently? I mean, what if instead of being a salaryman or whatever, the husband, uh... teaches martial arts?"
"Well, it's the same thing, more or less. He's providing income and then trusting the wife to take care of the house. And that's the core of a working relationship. Trust, and sharing of responsibilities."
"Trust," Ranma mumbled, frowning as he turned to the sink in the kitchenette. "Well... I dunno about the whole responsibility thing. I mean, I don't got too many responsibilities right now anyway, right?"
"Well, you have school, and a number of fiancees, Ranma-kun, aren't those responsibilities?"
"I... guess so, but I don't really see how I'm supposed ta share that stuff." He broke off from washing the dishes and regarded the teacher curiously scratching his head. "I don't really, do I?"
"Well...." Hinako closed the book and frowned, the playful smile vanishing for a moment as she turned serious. "That's a difficult thing to say, Ranma-kun. With school you share a certain responsibility with me. You have to show up and learn, but I have to teach you. That's how it's shared."
"How do you share the responsibility of being engaged?" he asked, scowling as he realized that he had rubbed dishsoap into his hair when he scratched his head.
"Well... you need to... er... marry the person you're engaged to, and they need to marry you, I suppose." The woman shook her head. "I think I chose a bad example."
Ranma wiped at his hair with a towel for a moment, removing the soap. "So... what happens if it's a shared responsibility, and one person is doing their part, but the other person... isn't?"
"Ah... maybe we should move on to finance," Hinako mused, unable to meet Ranma's eyes.
"You said it was about trust," Ranma said quietly. "So... if someone's doing their part, and the other person isn't, does that mean that there's no trust?"
"Ranma-kun... I didn't mean for this lesson to go like this."
"Does it mean that?"
"Well.... It can, Ranma-kun. And if there's no trust, than it's not likely that a good relationship can be. What are you thinking about?"
See other episodes by Brian Randall
(Posted Mon, 21 Oct 2002 15:52)
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