Different people react to the same or similar matters in very, very different ways. Which makes sense, really. We all draw upon different experiences, different life lessons to direct us in entirely unique manners. It’s part of who we are. Unfortunately for Ran, she had an entire lifetime of “friendship with Lum” to draw upon. That might seem harsh, since Lum is generally a rather nice person. Except that most nice people aren’t really nice all of the time, and Lum certainly wasn’t any kind of angel when she was little. Rambunctious is a word that springs to mind, or as Ran might put it, “hellspawn from the deepest pits of space-Hades.”
It wasn’t even as if Lum was being deliberate about it, but it’s rather difficult to convince someone that was the victim of years and years and <i>years</i> of mayhem and mishaps that it was anything but deliberate. That kind of experience tends to twist a person inch by inch, degree by degree from sane to a more conspiracy theorist mentality without anyone else even noticing the steps along the way. Never mind the person themselves.
Which led rather neatly into her new thought process while en route to school. What a strange and wonderful coincidence it was that of all people she would be compelled to dream about it would be Lum’s <i>darling</i> fiance, going out of her way to drive Ran crazy with perverted hijinks, expert teasing of her needy dream body and she stumbled a little mid-stride in remembrance.
“Oh, woe is me!” Ran dramatically declared. “To be the victim of a cunning prank by that devious hag, I’ll rend her limb from limb for this! Just see if I don’t! Woe is innocent li’l Ran, who would never, could never ever even hurt a fly!”
Of course it should go without saying that she completely failed to notice anything out of place with that line of thinking. Such are the thoughts of the perpetually tormented. Why, even now she was considering the possibility that Lum was messing with her. Trying to make her fall madly in love with Ataru in an effort to steal away her happiness once again. It would be just like her to try something like that just for a few cheap laughs! Set this whole thing up deliberately, and then -
Ah-ha! There they were just now! Up ahead of her, with Lum floating off down the street above the pavement. This was the perfect chance for her to confront the sneaky Oni, demand a few answers about those dream berries and -
“Hey, you look better rested than usual,” Ataru said, and Ran had to steady herself against the wall from the sound of his voice alone. “Not that I care or anything, but did you have a nice dream or something?”
“Mmhmm! Very nice, darling! It was about -”
“Nah, best to keep it to yourself. Dreams are a personal thing and besides, the last thing I want to hear is what sort of dreams you might be having.”
This was it. This was the perfect chance to nonchalantly sidle on up and ask a few questions about dreams, probe Lum for information. Maybe flirt with him a little to piss her off, throw her off whatever game she was playing. It would be fun. It would be easy. If not for one single, simple fact.
Her legs weren’t working the way they should be.
It was ridiculous. Here she was peering around the corner with the perfect chance for some answers, and her eyes were drawn to Ataru’s butt. It was a nice butt. A cute butt. But that butt wasn’t the butt of the issue, so to speak. What was more important was that she find out what the hell was up with that dream berry, not staring at Ataru like he was a piece of meat. Especially when she should be staring at Rei like he was a piece of meat!
Ran pressed herself flat against the wall, breathing like she’d had her own life force drained for a change. This was bad! Had the dream really affected her that much? Oh dear! Oh no! Li’l Ran cutely bit her lip and whimpered like an innocent puppy being denied a treat (a sound she’d heard Rei make when he saw a billboard advertising a new fast food restaurant, and he mistook the picture for… Well, that was a whole other story altogether) but the thoughts running through her head at that moment were absolutely anything but innocent.
“That… That sneaky snake!” she suddenly yelled. She stared at her hands which were trembling with rage. “She’s made it so that I can’t even approach them without feeling - Kya! I can’t say it, it’s too nasty and disgusting so I’ll have to take out my humiliation on her at another time completely!”
It has been remarked that revenge is a dish best served cold, and sometimes Ran did adhere to that during her more lucid moments. With that in mind, she fully intended to leave her revenge freezing on an open cold flame while she sat stewing in class, waiting for lunchtime, waiting for a chance for Lum and her super sexy darling to separate so that she could have a few. Polite. Words.
She could hardly wait.
<hr>
As is normally the case, morning classes were boring and repetitive and time seemed to slow to an aching crawl. Shinobu didn’t tend to mind this out of a sense of responsibility, yet today felt a little worse than usual for some reason. Matters weren’t helped by the fact that whenever she looked at Mendo, she felt like bursting into laughter, nor by the fact that when she looked at Ataru she felt this strange compulsion to eat a banana.
“In order to find the area under a graph, one must remember to…”
And the class boredom was not helped by the fact that the maths teacher had, again, forgotten that they had already taught this exact lesson yesterday. Word for word. Number for number. Formula for formula. Graph for graph. Answer for answer. A diligent student she may consider herself, but even the so-called “nerds” weren’t paying attention anymore. Attention was at an extinction level within this classroom at this time, and as such matters lie “letting the mind wander” was doing really quite well for itself.
<i>”No, really! Where are my pants?!”</i>
She would not laugh out loud in the middle of the classroom. She would not. Especially for no good reason! Focus on something else. Like… Like the fact that Ataru was trying to pretend he wasn’t just looking over at her with a really weird smile on his face.
Ataru. Shinobu frowned and began to lean on her desk so she could at least try to focus on that particular topic. Her relationship with that boy was, at best, weird. Beyond weird. They weren’t an item anymore, pretty much. It was sort of like, they’d tried at first after Lum showed up again but they’d just sort of… Drifted apart. It had happened so smoothly that it didn’t even register, really. They weren’t dating, hadn’t even tried for ages.
Which made it weird that she was remembering something like… A ballroom dance? Her in a dress that was far, far too luxurious for her family to afford, striding into a grand ballroom where Ataru was standing in a tuxedo. He extends his hand to her with a slight bow and a smile that was part apologetic, part welcoming but all charming. Then she was in his arms, resting her head on his chest as they let the music sweep them away. And then…
The bell for lunch rang out, jolting her awake from the half-remembered daydream. Huh? No, something like that had never happened. As the other students rose from their seats around her, Shinobu was still lost in thought. Strange, the memory was distinct as though it had happened recently, but Ataru would never have been able to afford something so… Grand and magnificent, far too rich a gesture for someone like him. In addition to that, she couldn’t quite grasp the edge of the event. Before and after. What had they done leading up to it, and what happened later? It was fuzzy, indistinct… Had that been some sort of fantasy rather than a memory? It felt so real.
Was she still hung up on him, then? Even though he seemed happy with Lum, the alien floozy. Happy as he’d ever be with just one girl, at least. That boy was an inveterate womaniser, though he was never really all that successful at it. Honestly, looking at him now she almost wanted to… Oh, she didn’t even know how to say it. Give him some pointers, maybe? Tell him not to try so hard? He could come off as quite charming if he was able to keep it in his pants. That way he’d find it so much simpler to sweep a lady just like her off her feet, lead her into the bedroom and then -
“Miss Shinobu -”
Which is when Shinobu, still completely lost in thought, suddenly stood up without even noticing she was gripping both sides of her desk with the full force of her considerable strength and sent one Shutaro Mendo flying backwards across the classroom without even noticing what she was doing.
<hr>
It was a peculiar thing indeed. Most of the time, students would attempt to visit the school’s infirmary in an attempt to ditch class by feigning illness. Not quite so much at Tomobiki. If they were feigning sick, it was because there was a tall, leggy, stacked nurse waiting there to treat you. Mendo was not the kind of person that would feign sickness, of course. Should misfortune find some way to overcome his superior physiology, then and only then would he succumb to the need and pay a visit. Satisfying some perverted desire to merely view Miss Sakura was a little above him.
Then again, if he absolutely had to pay her a visit then why not take the time to appreciate the spectacle? That was the nature of the Mendo family. Even if misfortune should befall them, they shall grasp hold of that silver lining and use it to better their wealth and turn that cloud into dust.
So it was that he gripped the side of his head with one hand, the doorknob with the other and strode confidently, albeit groggily, into the nurse’s office so that he could -
“Hellohellohellowhatseemstobetheproblem?”
- Find himself seated on a bed while a blur rushed around him. Mendo opened his mouth to speak, and a thermometer materialised in his mouth. He blinked, and Miss Sakura was standing directly in front of him, trembling all over as though the act of standing still was a tremendous effort.
“I am sorry,” she said in about as deliberate a manner as one could possibly speak. If it were possible to make the greatest computers in the universe attempt to calculate it, they’d probably work quite intently on the very best way to ask their designers to stop wasting their time. “I. Drank. A… Little. Too. Much. Coffee this morning and it is making me feel hyper. What appears to be the problem?”
“Nothing!” Mendo said, extracting himself from the bed and taking several sharp strides towards the door. Hijinks! He could feel the hijinks closing all around him like some great… Dark enclosing bell being descended upon his head. “I apologise for wasting your time, it was a false alarm! Nothing to worry about!”
And then, somehow she was in front of him. Blocking the way out of the room and twitching slightly as she did so. “Is that blood? DearmeMisterMendowecanhardlyletyouleaveinthiscondition!”
“It - it’s nothing much,” he stammered, and cursed himself for losing his cool under even these conditions. Anyone else wouldn’t have thought anything ill of himself for being stressed out about a medical practitioner being quite obviously not in their usual state of mind and simultaneously determined to treat a head injury. Especially in light of the head injury part. “Just a scratch, haha! I was rather hoping for a sticking plaster, it’s nothing serious enough for you to concern yourself with!”
“Nonsense,” Sakura insisted, pushing him back onto the bed. “Anyone could tell this wasn’t just a scratch, you must have struck it against something pretty hard. A head injury is almost impossible to self diagnose. One minute you’re fine and the next you’re havinginappropriatedreamsaboutastudentanddrinkingenoughcoffeetodrownanelephant.”
While Miss Sakura inspected his head with her strong yet gentle hands, Mendo’s mind was already doing some mental arithmetic which had a clear and obvious bias built right into it. He was a proud person, assumed himself the centre of the universe. If asked if this was true, he wouldn’t even deny it. Because, of course, it must be true! How could anything else be more important than one as brilliant as he? How could it be ego or arrogance to speak the truth? That was his rationale from start to end and no rebuttal existed that could shift him of this.
Therefore, once his brain had picked apart what the incredibly twitchy but still incredibly attractive woman had just inadvertently confessed to him, well… It sounded rather to his ears that she had just confessed to having dreamt about him last night. It made sense, of course. Surely all women must succumb to his charms. And she was correct, of course. It would be wholly inappropriate and unprofessional for her to react to these perfectly natural feelings. The way her trembling hand was checking his forehead? Just an excuse to touch his perfection, for she had conveniently forgotten the thermometer hanging out the side of his mouth.
How natural it was for a woman like this to fall for him. Why, it almost made him completely oblivious to the fact that she was wrapping him head to toe in bandages as though he were some kind of Egyptian mummy. It was just a cute little nervous tic that she was -
“Thank you, Miss Sakura!” he said once he was wrapped head to toe. “I shall see myself back to class now. Please drink less coffee. It cannot be a healthy habit.”
She made a sound that was probably a barely restrained lusty farewell, and closed the door firmly with him on the outside of the infirmary. Only then, with no one anywhere in the immediate vicinity did Mendo express his true emotions which came from a place deep, deep down within his soul, emotions that his pride dampened to the point of nonexistence rather than let any attractive female see them.
“Wah! It’s dark!” for the bandages covered his eyes. “It’s cramped,” for the bandages restricted his movement. “I’m scared!” for he was quite thoroughly terrified out of his tiny little egocentric mind. All in all? Things seemed quite right with the world.
- Ran attempts to corner Lum by herself to discover what the deal with the dream berry is.
- Sakura starts taking more drastic measures to get over how the dream is making her feel.
- Shinobu remembers more of the dream.
- Ataru is spying on one of the three.
- Something else
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