Ukyo Kuonji's life did not revolve around Ranma Saotome. No, really. She was a young woman who owned a business, you think she's got time to spend all day trying to seduce her future husband? That was part time work at best. Which is why right now she was cleaning her shop after closing time. No longer dressed like a boy, she'd let her hair down and was a lot more relaxed, because this was her zen time. The time of day where she didn't have to worry about pretending to be a boy because societal pressure meant that women weren't meant to own businesses, and the only thing she had to be concerned with was taking stock and making sure everything was cleaned up for use the next day.
She could switch her brain off and go on autopilot. It was nice like that. Ukyo enjoyed this time of the day, it was so...pleasant.
Little did she realise that tonight, things were going to be a little bit different. And the difference started when Konatsu entered through the front door, which was interesting because she'd definitely locked it and he didn't have a key yet.
"Oh, and where have you been?" Ukyo asked.
“Miss Akane… or Shampoo... invited me to her house.” Konatsu said, “Why does she have two names?”
“Her parents are weird.” Ukyo said, “So… Akane’s place. Huh.” That could be anything. Akane was mostly nice, but she had a scheming side to her. "Were they trying to rope you into some freaky scheme to get me out of the way so she could marry Ranma?"
"Oh no, they were perfectly welcoming," Konatsu said.
"You sure about that?" Ukyo asked. "They didn't, for example, get some wacky idea of trying to set us up so that I'd leave Ranma alone for her to snatch up?"
Konatsu gasped, “Oh I would not be worthy of such a gift!” She said, before getting onto her hands and knees, “Thank you for implying such a plan, even if it would ultimately be doomed to failure, might possibly involve one as worthless as me!”
Ooh boy, this ninja had some real self worth issues. Like, she looked pretty cute but Ukyo was in no way into girls. Even if Ranma was really cute as one! Even if she got confessed to weekly back in middle school from one girl after another! Even if the one male who had been ever interested in her before coming to Nerima still thought he needed to look like a girl!
"Well, you're here now. Grab an apron, and get to scrubbing." Ukyo ducked under the counter to grab some gloves for Konatsu to wear. "Try focusing on the okono-"
She stopped. By the time she'd raised her head again, the entire restaurant was devoid of dust. Except for one place. Konatsu. Every single inch of Konatsu's hair and clothes was caked in dirt. The kunoichi rubbed at her face and revealed an innocent and content smile.
Badumf. Cute. Really, really cute. It Reminded Ukyo of Ranma when she got her hands on some ice cream as a girl.
Now, the cuteness wasn't actually why Ukyo's heart skipped a beat, it's worth noting. It was the fact she'd never seen her restaurant so clean, and it had been done in seconds.
"Konatsu, how did you do that?"
"Did I do something wrong, mistress Ukyo?” She asked, looking like tears were about to spring forth from her eyes.
Something wrong...? Something wrong? While it's true that Ukyo enjoyed letting her mind blank out while she cleaned out the restaurant at the end of the day, it was a massive time investment. It usually took a good hour every night. If Konatsu could do that in seconds... It would save her so much time to do her own thing! She could actually head on out there and hit on Ranma more often!
"Konatsu, get cleaned up!" Ukyo said. "The shower's upstairs, by the time you're done I'll have whipped up an oko-"
"I am finished," Konatsu said, suddenly standing in front of Ukyo with a towel wrapped around her body and another around her hair. "Mistress Ukyo, I think your shower is broken. The water was at a comfortable level of warmth, which is obviously far too expensive."
“The shower’s what.” Ukyo said, trying not to stare at the slender towel wrapped figure. Konatsu flipped her hair back and sat down, carefully clutching her towel to her chest. Slender. She was so... slender and... Focus, Ukyo. "I mean, that was fast. You couldn't have been in the shower ten seconds."
"Two seconds," Konatsu humbly corrected. "Ten seconds of shower time, my goodness. How extravagant. Next you'll be saying I should scrub my body and then bathe in a tub of hot water for my comfort."
<i>"Mistress Ukyo, how do I scrub my body properly? I do not understand."
Ukyo then rubbed soap all over her breasts, moved behind the helpless naked and confused Kunoichi and then - </i>
No. No, no, no. She had been alone for far too long if she was fantasizing about someone she was completely unattracted to! Save those kinds of fantasies for Ranma!
"Anyway, you sit right there," Ukyo said. "I'll use my own personal cooking equipment to make us some dinner. After a hard day's work there's nothing quite like Uchan's special okonomiya-"
That was impossible. That was completely impossible. All she did was turn around and Konatsu was already at the stove in Ukyo's kitchen pouring out some batter, chucking some vegetables in the air and slicing them into pieces that landed neatly on the batter, and then pouring out some sauce. While wearing nothing but the towel.
"Nnnngh!" Ukyo bit into her thumb. It didn't help that she was mentally adding a pigtail.
"Here you go Mistress," Konatsu said, bowing and offering up a plate. "For your kindness, I could hardly make you make me dinner."
"R-Right," Ukyo said. She looked down at the plate. It looked pretty good, actually. She'd poured everything out properly, the vegetables were neatly sliced up, the sauce was poured out to the right proportion.
There was only one problem. The serving for both of them was about the size of a hundred yen coin. You couldn't call that an okonomiyaki. You could maybe call it a mini-yaki? A microyaki?
"... First things first, we gotta make sure you know the right proportions to use..." Ukyo sighed. Can't have her serving up portions that small to customers, who knew how they might take it?
And so the night passed without anyone saying a certain word in Konatsu's presence.
<hr>
Ranma wasn't too sure he liked the look on Akane's face this morning. She was a little too smug, her smile was like the cat that caught the canary and you have to know by now how he feels about cats.
"What're you up to all of a sudden?" Ranma asked. "Why're you dragging me off to Uchan's for breakfast all of a sudden?"
"Oh, no reason," Akane sang. "I was just thinking, don't Ukyo and Konatsu make a super cute couple?"
"Ah. You're trying to set them up," Ranma said. Internally he was moaning. It was in vain, but he was really kind of hoping for something other than that. "You know that Uchan's not gay, right?"
Akane gave Ranma a side-eyed look. “Do you remember what she did when she found out about your curse?”
"She poured hot and cold water on me for about two hours, took a couple of pictures of my girl form, had me sit in her lap for about ten minutes, then checked my girl form's bra size. Why?"
"... I didn't know about the bra size thing..." Akane said, eyeing up Ranma's chest jealousy. Which made him feel really self conscious, he was not even in girl form right now!
“Aren’t your boobs bigger than mine anyways now? You looked real proud of yourself when they got bigger.” Ranma grumbled, and three people walking by did a double take.
“And then yours grew to match them! I won’t rest until I’m the sexier girl here.” Akane said. And then several more people tripped over themselves.
"Hrmph! Keep dreaming! No matter how big yours get, your lousy attitude will drag your sex appeal all the way down!" Ranma stuck out his tongue. "My figure is way better than yours any day, anyway."
One guy went to a payphone to call his therapist, while everyone else decided they didn't want to get involved in this nonsense and put it out of their mind.
"Anyway, no hijinks alright?" Ranma said. "I just wanna head inside and eat some okonomiyaki without having to worry about -"
"I love you!"
<hr>
“God Dammit why!” Shampoo shouted.
“I should have known. Your weird magic items never work.” Akane facepalmed.
<hr>
Whatever sentence Ranma had intended to say would forever remain a mystery, but if he'd intended to finish it with "excitable cute kunoichi diving out of his best friend's shop to glomp him to the ground" then it seemed like he'd have a thing or two to worry about today.
- Needless to say this gets Ranma in trouble with Ukyo. Though not quite for the reasons she is telling herself.
- It quickly becomes extremely obvious what's happened, and now everyone has to focus on containing the most skilled Kunoichi of her generation. They're doomed.
- Akane keeps quiet on what’s going on. So they head to school after a bit of slapstick violence. For some reason Ranma’s the only one who keeps saying Okonamiyaki.
- Something Else
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