Ranma didn't like to cook, not really, but he'd gotten good at it. He could fix more than a salad, and when he'd hit his head and thought he was a girl - he'd been able to cook quite a number of dishes.
He liked food, okay?
He was helping Kasumi in the kitchen and showing her a lot of things as he went along - because Kasumi needed it. Not because he enjoyed cooking because cooking was a girl's thing and he was all guy! Except at the moment he was a girl physically.
Miso soup was easy enough. There were tubes of the bean paste around, little bottles of the veggies to add in, and so making shiro miso was nearly as easy as boiling water.
Kasumi did most of the work, adding things and adjusting them as Ranma led her through this kata named Making Miso. Fried rice was next. Get the rice cooker, get the salt, water, rice.
Nabiki was drawn closer by the smells wafting out through the house and eventually found herself standing just inside the kitchen without realizing she'd moved.
Ranma for his part wasn't showing off, this was instructing a student in basic techniques.
The inevitable occurred when working with hot water. Ranma-kun made a brief appearance when Kasumi moved too quickly and nearly dropped the soup. Ranma caught the pot, got splashed, put the pot back on the stove and then rinsed the burn with cold water - returning Ranma-chan.
"Are you a prince who's been cursed by a evil witch?" Kasumi asked, the last story her mother had read to her had been "Sleeping Beauty" and she made an immediate connection.
"Well, actually that's pretty close," said Ranma mentally substituting 'prince' with 'martial artist' and 'evil witch' with 'stupid panda fathers.'
"Ah," said Kasumi, Nabiki, and the watching from the hallway Akane. (She'd also smelled the food cooking and been drawn closer.) At their current age, believing in fairy tale handsome princes getting cursed by evil witches wasn't that unbelievable.
Soun came down the stairs, enticed by the smells, and was shocked to see Kasumi getting instructions on cooking while Nabiki washed vegetables in a bowl and Akane watched everything with big eyes.
Soun was about to protest when he noticed that Akane wasn't angry, Nabiki was actually doing things, and Kasumi had the trace of a smile on her lips. This was such an improvement that he was loathe to break whatever mood had begun lifting the pall of gloom.
Dinner that night was an oddly ecclectic affair. Shiro miso, beef fried rice, and a salad.
Soun found the silence of dinner a bit intimidating, especially after the four girls had been so companionable earlier, and so decided it was his place to break that silence. "So, how did you end up getting trained by Saotome? I wouldn't expect him to take a girl as a student. No offense."
"Ah," said Ranma, startled. "Well."
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(Posted Wed, 04 Feb 2004 11:44)
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