“Thank you Ran– Oh my!” Kasumi stopped herself as she reached out to take the bag containing the vinegar from Ranma, seeing the other burdens in his arms. Ranma had just entered the house and had not had the chance to put away his other . . . purchases . . . before Kasumi came out of the kitchen smiling sunnily as she usually did. “What is all this?”
“Th-there was a peddler at the market,” Ranma started to explain. “I thought Mom might like the vase. . . .”
“Oh, how manly of you to think of your mother!” Ranma sighed at the compliment. Kasumi always knew the exact right thing to say. “And those earrings! They’re beautiful! For Akane?”
“Y-yeah,” Ranma answered, feeling himself start to blush.
“That reminds me, Ranma-kun,” Kasumi began, taking the plastic bag with the vinegar from him. “Akane has something she wants to say to you. She’s up in her room doing her homework, so why don’t you go on up and talk with her?”
“A’course. Whatever you say, Kasumi.”
“Would you like me to wrap that vase up for your mother?” she asked reaching toward it. Ranma found himself acting without a thought, jerking the vase out of her reach.
“No!” Ranma said a little louder than he intended, flustering Kasumi. Ranma immediately felt guilty. “I mean, I want to wrap it myself.”
Kasumi smiled again. “Oh yes, of course you would! You’re such a sweet boy, Ranma-kun.” Still smiling, Kasumi turned and headed back to the kitchen to start preparing dinner.
If the Tendous had stopped after Kasumi, and she was your fiancée, would she still call you “boy?’”Ranma wondered to himself. He shook off the unanswered question and mounted the stairs, headed for his room.
*
Ranma watched through Akane’s ajar door as she sat at her desk, bent over her homework motionlessly, apparently hung up on a question. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, watching her ribs expand and contract with her breathing, and her pencil hover a hair’s-breadth above the paper. She sporadically rolled the writing utensil between her slender digits as the answer continued to elude her, and Ranma found himself entranced by the simple motion of passing it between her fingers and tapping it against her thumb.
“Ranma?” He jumped, his eyes quickly darting up from her pencil to her face, finding her gaze resting on him. How long had he been standing there? How long had she known he was there? He forgot to panic as his vision settled on her dark, endless eyes, which always made him melt inside. This time was no exception.
He felt the now-familiar warmth spread through his chest before he tore his eyes away and stared at a spot on the wall. “Kasumi said you wanted to talk to me?”
“Uh, yeah,” she began, and Ranma heard the desk chair squeak as she stood. “Ranma, I — uh, that is . . . .” Akane trailed off and Ranma quirked an eyebrow, turning to face her once again. She had her hands folded behind her back and her head bowed as she stared at the floor. “I . . . I’m . . .” she took a deep breath and looked up to meet his gaze, “I’m sorry for flying off the handle, OK?”
Ranma stared at her blankly, having forgotten the incident already. Akane, of course, took this the wrong way.
“I said I’m sorry, OK?!” she growled. “What more do you want?!”
“Huh?”
“Argh! You’re such a JERK!”
“What are ya yellin’ at me for?!” Ranma yelled back, retaliatory instincts taking over. “I ain’t done nothin’!”
“Ranma! Akane!” Both turned, surprised out of their fight. Kasumi stood in the doorway, clean towels stacked neatly in her arms and her trademark smile AWOL. Ranma gulped audibly. “You both need to stop fighting! Ranma, Akane was trying to apologize for not listening to your side of the story this afternoon when Happosai tricked you into going into the girls’ locker room. Akane, Ranma probably just forgot about your fight since I distracted him when I sent him to the market.
“So stop fighting over nothing,” she said with a sigh, a little bit of her smile returning. “You both need to work on your communication skills.” She shook her head empathetically and continued down the hall.
Ranma and Akane stared at the place where Kasumi had stood for several moments, then slowly turned to face each other.
“Is that true? Is that what you were apologizing about?”
Akane blushed slightly. “Y-yeah. What about you? Did you really just forget?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh.”
An awkward silence fell on the pair while they stared at their respective shoes for a while, both a little embarrassed. Akane was the first to break the moment, turning away and sitting back in her chair. Ranma followed, taking the chair he usually used during tutoring sessions and sitting in it backwards. Akane took up her pencil again and Ranma glanced over at her paper. She only had her name written at the top of the page.
“So why d’ya think Kasumi’s playin’ aribiter all of a sudden?”
It was Akane’s turn to quirk her eyebrow. “Do you mean ‘arbiter’?” she scoffed. “Since when do you use words like ‘arbiter’?”
Ranma scowled. “Whatever. Answer the question.”
“Well our parents did just try to marry us last week. To each other. Or have you forgotten that, too?”
“No,” he defended, annoyed. “But sometimes I wish I had,” Ranma admitted, shuddering internally at the memory of the fiasco.
She turned on him. “You better not let me catch you talking about our real wedding like that, or you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
“Woah! Breathe, Akane! Breathe!”
“Oh, ha-ha. Very funny.” Akane rolled her eyes and Ranma chuckled. “Anyway, it must have just hit her that we’re gonna get married, probably sooner than later, and she wants to help us stop fighting. I mean, when you’re married, it’s not like you can break up every other week when you get pissed off.”
“Which is kinda what we do.”
“Yeah.”
“N-not that we’re really a couple,” Ranma added, suddenly nervous at the line of conversation.
“Of course not,” Akane assured matter-of-factly. “It’s just an arranged marriage.”
“Yup. That’s it. Nothing we can do about it.”
“No point in fighting it.”
“Nope, none at . . .” Ranma started to trail off, wondering if he was unwittingly agreeing to marriage, “. . . all.” Akane broke his tension, however, as she began to laugh.
*
Ranma sat cross-legged on his futon and stared at the vase, set unobtrusively on the floor in front of him. He had to hide it somewhere – somewhere safe. He scanned his Spartan boudoir, eyes coming to rest on the wardrobe set against the far wall. For a moment, he considered stashing the vase there, but then recalled the incident with his father’s funerary fish and ruled out the closet as a possible hiding place.
His gaze continued to drift, settling on a few other places (buried in his laundry, the vase was sure to be discovered by his mom or Kasumi, but rolled up in his futon would only work while he wasn’t using it) and eventually he came to a conclusion. He really didn’t have much in the way of material possessions.
After several more minutes of deliberation, Ranma finally decided on the crawlspace under the house. He didn’t particularly like the idea of putting it somewhere he couldn’t keep an eye on it, but it seemed the only option.
Resolute, Ranma tucked the urn under one arm and hopped out the second-story window.
And right on top of a snooping Shampoo in cat-form.
~*~*~