Interesting Times
By socchan
Chapter Six: Nabiki's Date
It was Friday night, and Nabiki was nervous. It could be because she was going to have dinner with Kuno that night, but she doubted it. Nope, nothing like that. She was probably just worried someone would catch her in the act. She had excused herself from dinner earlier, claiming a business date, and used the time to take a bath to make sure she was ready. She stood now in a light kimono, trying desperately to decide what to wear. A light knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"It's me," Akane's muffled voice replied. "May I come in?"
Nabiki walked over to the door and opened it for her younger sister. Akane smiled and nodded slightly to her when she entered. "So…" Nabiki said, "What's up? More Ranma problems?"
Akane's cheeks turned slightly pink. "No; I just wanted to know where you were going."
"It's a business dinner; I told you before."
"Nabiki," Akane said pointedly, "you never have business dinners. You always 'do lunch', so it doesn't take time away from the family. Now spill: what's really going on?
Nabiki sighed, and wished that just once her younger sister were as clueless about her older sister's life as she was about her own. "Okay, you caught me. It's not really business, but I didn't think anyone would believe me if I told the truth." Plus, it's not something I'd like to admit, in case anyone gets the wrong idea, she added silently.
Her sister's eyes lit up. "Really? With who? C'mon, tell, tell!"
Nabiki's eyes slid to the floor. "Kuno." She said, with some reluctance.
"Ooooo, big sister's got a daaaaaate!"
Nabiki's eyes snapped up. "I do not! It's just he made some really big life-changing decisions lately, and he wanted to talk about where we stood with one another!"
"And you're going out to dinner to do this?"
"Yes."
"And he's paying?"
"Yes."
"And you assume it will be a fairly nice restaurant."
"Yes."
Akane shook her head. "Sure sounds like a date to me," She said, skeptically.
Nabiki glared at her, agitated. "Look, I know what it sounds like; that's why I didn't want to say anything. Now shut up and help me decide what to wear."
Akane looked Nabiki over a moment, then turned to the closet. "Now, if I were you, which admittedly, you are acting as if you were me, and I was going out on a date—"
"It's not a date."
Akane waved it off, and continued. "A date with a rich, handsome—and admit it, he is—guy who suddenly jumped up about fifty IQ points to what we can assume is a fairly expensive restaurant, I would wear… this." Akane swept her selection from the closet.
Nabiki stared at it a moment. "It's perfect." And it was. The dress was made of brown velvet with long sleeves, a scooped neck, and a full skirt. It was elegant and tasteful, and would emphasize her fair skin while blending nicely with her hair and eyes.
Akane wore a rather smug smile. "I'm glad you agree with me. I just hope Kuno doesn't show up in a hakama."
"Oh, he wouldn't." Nabiki said, with distracted assurance. "He's too polite."
Akane shook her head. "Sis, you've got it bad."
"No worse than you," she snapped back. Secretly, Nabiki wondered why everyone was suddenly stealing her trademark smirk, then chalked it up to how abstractly charitable she was acting lately. She made a mental note to exploit someone before the weekend was out. "Thanks for the help." She said aloud.
Akane grinned. "No problem! It's fun playing matchmaker for once, instead of being on the receiving end."
Nabiki mock-glared. "Just wait until it's your turn."
Akane 'eep'-ed, at this, and was gone before you could say 'Look out for the cat, Ranma!'. Nabiki chuckled at her sister's antics, and finished getting ready.
At promptly seven o'clock the doorbell rang. "I'll get it!" Nabiki's voice came from upstairs, and the shocked Tendos plus Ranma watched as a brownish blur raced down the stairs and out the door, causing a slight wind.
Ranma blinked a couple of times. "What was that?"
"What was what, Ranma?" Akane asked, innocently. "I didn't notice anything."
Ranma rolled his eyes, and returned his attention to the television. "Tomboys…" he muttered under his breath, pleasantly amused.
Outside, Nabiki stood with her back to the door, a pleasant smile on her face. She had managed to get out of the house in less than three seconds, a personal best. "Good evening, Kuno."
Kuno blinked in surprise at the sudden arrival of the middle Tendo daughter. He took his hand down from the doorbell, smiled, and bowed. "Good evening, fair damsel." He said, eyes revealing his amusement. He held out a violet rose. "My efforts to surprise you with a flower seem foolish at best, as this rose fades in comparison to the lovely bloom before me."
Nabiki blushed slightly, and took it from his hands. "Thank you, Kuno, it's lovely. May I as why you're using Shakespearean dialect?"
"The common tongue is too harsh to use with such a fair maid as yourself." Kuno said, smiling. "Don't worry, the Wish still works; I just thought you might like to see a play before dinner." He extended his arm to her. "Shall we take our leave of this place?"
Nabiki smiled, half in amusement, and tucked the rose behind her right ear. "Let's." She took his arm, and they were off.
They made small talk on the way to the theatre. Kuno asked how Akane and Ranma were doing, and Nabiki said they were doing well, but as usual, not with each other. Did he have any ideas? Sadly, no, he didn't, but he would tell her in an instant if he did.
While they were talking, Nabiki took the time to examine her escort. He wore black slacks and a matching vest with a white silk shirt under it. An indigo sash was wrapped around his waist. "You look nice tonight," she commented.
He smiled disarmingly, and Nabiki's heart pounded. "Thank you; you look nice as well."
Nabiki's cheeks flushed, and she had to look away. "Oh!" she exclaimed, noticing the poster. "Is that what we're going to see?"
Kuno's eyes twinkled. "Indeed it is. I thought 'As You Like It' might have enough gender confusion in it to keep us interested." Nabiki laughed, and the two went to find their seats.
Once sitting, Nabiki found she had a hard time concentrating on the play. Probably without realizing it, Kuno had draped his arm over the back of her seat, and the close proximity was making it a little for her to breathe. He was wearing faint cologne that mingled with the air around him. After a while, thought, she got caught up in the play, and didn't notice when Kuno's hand dropped from the back of her seat to her shoulders. She did notice the absence of warmth when the audience rose for a standing ovation, but didn't make the connection.
"Where to next?" Nabiki inquired as they left the theatre.
"Next, we go to dinner."
"Not ramen or okonomiyaki, I hope."
Kuno looked appalled. "For such a good friend as you? Never! Besides, I have to think of something to do with all my spare cash…"
Nabiki whapped him lightly on the arm. "No money talk; it'll only distract me. I'll go off on my business tangent for the rest of the night, and it'll ruin dinner."
Kuno laughed. "As you wish*, fair maiden."
"And stop calling me that!"
"Would you rather I call you 'precious flower', or something equally rediculous?"
"No; call me Nabiki."
They continued joking good-naturedly until they reached the restaurant. There, they were seated at a nice table in back, and a waiter took their orders.
"So…" Nabiki said, fiddling with a piece of bread. "You wanted to know about Ranma's situation."
"Well, I kinda pieced some of it together from memory, and I get that he changes into a girl, but I still don't know how…"
"Kuno, I think we'd all be worried if you'd managed to figure that out."
Kuno glared at her. "Very funny. Will you tell me, or not?"
Nabiki considered the story a moment, staring off into the distance. "I'll start from the beginning, and relay what I know as I know it. And believe me, I know quite a bit… (A.N. I re-wrote this instead of summing it up in a single paragraph because of your request, Paru-chan, so you'd better appreciate it!)
"It all started way back when, before Ranma first showed up. Dad had just announced that one of us was engaged to the son of a friend of his, and we got pretty angry with him. Then Ranma actually showed, only at the time, he was a she, and his dad was a panda. Anyhow, Dad passed out from shock, and once he woke up, Akane and Ranma went to spar. After that, Akane accidentally walked in on Ranma in the bath while he was a guy, and chaos reigned for a few minutes, until Ranma and his dad sat down to explain. Turns out that while on their stupid little training trip, Genma had come across some stupid Chinese book detailing training areas, and they went to this one called 'Jusenkyo', the Legendary Ground of Accursed Springs. They fell into the springs of drowned girl and panda respectively, so now they change when splashed with cold water, and back with hot."
Kuno choked on a bite of food. "Sorry about that," he said, thumping his chest lightly. "Something went down the wrong tube. That explains so much, now that I think of it. Do continue."
Nabiki rolled her eyes. "Well, anyway, once we found out about Ranma's little… problem, Kasumi and I kinda pushed the engagement onto Akane. She didn't want it at first, but now I don't think she'd give it up for anything. Then came the first day of school, and you remember how that went."
Kuno nodded. "Ranma and I jumped out the third story window and into the pool. He ran, and for good reason, and I chased, for less of one."
Nabiki nodded. "After that, Ryoga showed up, accidentally sheered off Akane's hair, and it was just one thing after another. Kodachi, the martial arts skating pair, Shampoo, Mousse, Cologne, (socchan: I could sit here and rattle off things all day, but I'm not going to, A: because it would be boring, and more importantly, B: because I don't know all of them.) Happosai—"
"Happosai?"
"Old panty-stealing pervert. Ukyo, Taro, countless fiancees for both Ranma and Akane, the works! Just about anything you could think of, someone was after Ranma for it. Well, indirectly, at least. And then there was his mom, and she wasn't much help, what with that whole 'man among men' thing. The insanity finally peaked a couple of months ago, then it kinda calmed down for a while after the whole wedding incident."
"Did I mention how sorry I was about that?"
"Several times, yes." The story had stretched long past the appetizers, through the main course, and finished itself just before dessert. Nabiki glanced at Kuno, trying to gage a reaction. "Well, I said I'd tell you about the 'cat' business, so I may as well get on with it now. A little more than a week ago, I stopped in Carmella's shop, and poked my nose where it didn't belong."
"You do that a lot, don't you?" Nabiki glared at him. He grinned. "Then again, it's part of your charm."
Nabiki fought back a blush. "Well, I poked it in the wrong place, and accidentally got cursed in the proccess. Now I turn catlike on significant phases of the moon, such as full, quarter, and empty. On the plus side, I managed to pick up the Wishes at the same time.
"So how about you?" she asked, when she had finally reached the present, "How did you get so many curses on you?"
"Ah, that. Well…" Kuno grimaced. "It all started when I was about seven, and Kodachi was six. She had dug up an old spell-book from somewhere in the house, and was trying to work the spells, using me as a guinea pig. Most of them didn't work, and a lot backfired, but some of them found a bizarre way to come about. The curse that made me use abstract language? That was an 'Olde English' curse that hit both of us. An 'obsessive' curse hit both of us as well, but she got the brunt of the 'Insane Tendencies' curse. Finally, it got too much for me, and I hid the book somewhere. Unfortunately, she'd had a stupidity charm in the works for a while, and hit me with that in revenge once she found out what I'd done." At this point, Kuno signaled the waiter for the check. "A few of the earlier curses she'd hit me with wore off, but I can't remember most of them, and likely as not, a few traces were left until last week. I do recall wanting to be a ballet dancer at one point, but that wore off quickly." Kuno left a tip on the table, and paid the bill. They were walking down the street to the Tendo household. "And that's pretty much how things were until you came along and gave me that Wish." He smiled down at her. "And for that, I thank you."
Nabiki blushed and stared at her feet. "I just wanted you to stop bugging Akane."
"Whatever you say, Nabiki. In any case, I'm glad you did give it to me."
She looked back up at him. "Because it got rid of your curses?"
Kuno shook his head. "That was just an added bonus. The truth is, it did exactly what you said it would, and exactly what I paid for it to do."
Nabiki found it hard to take he eyes off him. "And that was…?"
Kuno stopped walking, and she followed his example, just realizing they were in front of the gate to her house. "It helped me decide who it was I really loved."
Nabiki frowned. It wouldn't be Ranma, especially after everything she'd told him, so maybe Akane…? No, she'd said he didn't look at her with love (or at least obsession) in his eyes as he'd had before he told her he was giving her up. Then… "Who was it?" she asked, not quite realizing she had spoken aloud.
"Well, she's your age. She's very pretty, but not quite as lovely as she is smart. She's graceful and articulate, and one of the few people I feel I can truthfully call my friend. You know her very well, in fact." Nabiki's heart sank, though she couldn't say why. In her mind, she ran off a list of people she was potentially losing her one true friend to. "It took me all the time I was out to figure out who she was, and once I did, I didn't know how I'd missed her! She was right in front of me the whole time."
Nabiki bit her lip and stared at the bottom of the gate, hands clenched in front of her, eyes wet. It's probably just dust, she thought to herself. Yes, that's it, dust. The perfect lie. Even I almost believe it…
Kuno looked down at the young woman in front of him, her eyes glittering in a moon just barely less than half full. He mustered up all his courage, and concentrated very hard on the indigo cat's claw around his neck that had helped him come to his realization, and the violet one around Nabiki's that matched the rose in her hair. He opened his mouth and spoke.
Normally in Nerima, the strange curse that had been active in the area for the past nineteen years would have kicked in and ruined this moment, or a wayward chaos Kami would have set about doing what it did best and made things even harder for the love gods, but the close proximity of two Cat's Wishes made Kuno and Nabiki all but invisible to the miscellaneous supernatural forces around them, and Kuno was allowed to speak.
"And she still is."
Nabiki's head nearly snapped in his direction, and tears that had accumulated took to the sky. "Kuno," she said, hesitantly, barely daring to hope, "do you…"
He leaned over and their lips met, cutting her off. For one magical moment, Nabiki was swept away by a flood of emotions, all rejoicing for that one beautiful word, Love. Then, the moment ended (was it really that short?) as Kuno broke the kiss. Dazed, Nabiki could only stare into his eyes. His voice was soft when he spoke. "I think, Nabiki, that you know I do."
Nabiki could only continue to stare into his eyes, speechless, watching stray specks of indigo drift through their depths. No words were really needed. Kuno's hand stroked her cheek, and this time she lifted her face to meet his lips halfway, her eyes closing as she allowed her other senses to take over.
This time when they broke apart, they did not join again. The warmth and affection in Kuno's smile almost matched Nabiki's own. "Good night, Nabiki," he said, dropping his hand, "I'll see you tomorrow."
"Okay…" a still dazed and slightly breathless Nabiki said. Kuno put on a crooked smile and bowed to her, Shakespearean style. Nabiki smiled, and waved at his retreating figure until he was out of sight. She sighed happily, then reluctantly turned and went through the gate to her house. As she walked, she moved the rose from her right ear to her left**. Akane met her at the door.
"Did you have a good date?" she asked, sounding smug as she looked.
"Yes," Nabiki said, dreamily.
Akane chuckled as she watched her older sister all but float up the stairs to her room. (socchan: *choking on fluff* Must… Finish…! Cannot… allow… readers…to be…disappointed! Oh, good, the chapter's over now.)
=^-,-^=
*Ten points to whoever gets this reference.
**Hawaiian custom. Wearing a flower behind your right ear means you're single, wearing it behind your left ear means you're married (I took a liberty and made it 'taken' for this), and wearing a flower behind each ear means you're married (or taken) and fooling around. I had to pick something up on my two weeks without a computer. (Waaaaah! I'm still moping about that!)
Jeez, after a chapter like that, you could probably tap my veins to top your pancakes. Long one, too. Anyhow, that seemed to have covered most of what a lot of you were waiting for: some nice Kuno/Nabiki fluff, explanations of Kuno's curses, random teasing on all parties involved, yadda yadda yadda. Anyhow, hope that's good for now, 'cause next chapter it's back to business. Ranma finally gets some major screen time, too. But I'm not about to spoil anything yet ^_~. So stay tuned, and don't forget to say what you really think. I'll keep trying to update regularly (and maybe I'll do an extra update because I've got Monday off school ^_^). Till next time!
Disclaimer: Ranma ½ is property of Rumiko Takahashi, and therefore, not mine. I make no claim of it, and this piece of fan fiction is written purely for entertainment, not for money. The Cat's Wishes and Cursed Whisker powder are my concepts, and Carmella is my character, so you'd better ask before using them—or at least give me some credit. Thanks much!
--socchan