Kasumi slipped silently into her bedroom, not wanting to wake the other residents of the house, all of whom had gone to bed hours ago. She had stayed downstairs, getting a jump on tomorrow's breakfast, while everyone else had slowly trudged up to bed, and had found herself taking in the silence of a house that was finally asleep.
She sighed, shrugging off her top and slipped out of her jeans. The day had been long but she still had another few hours ahead of her. Kasumi waited a moment, still hesitant to fully relax, then reached under her pillow. She pulled out the well worn tome, and fingered the binding. It was an old book, but Tofu had been kind enough to loan it to her. He, and no one else, knew what this book meant to her. "Human Anatomy" by Dr. Yajiro Hou. The exams were coming up soon, she would need to study long and hard to pass.
She would also need to come up with a reasonable alibi for going to the college. Her excuses were becoming more and more unbelievable, but no one in the house seemed to notice. They were all focused on their own problems and had little time for her in their lives. Sometimes she felt she was only noticed when dinner was late or something needed to be cleaned. She was conviently in the shadows, and for the most part she didn't really mind.
Kasumi thought about the first time she ever realized that she wanted to become a doctor. Her mother had just been taken to the hospital for what would be the last time. It was her father that had gathered her and her sisters together and told them of their mother's fatal disease. Kasumi and her sisters were devastated, though Akane was too young to really know what was happening to their mother. Kasumi knew that she would have to become the rock that kept the family together. So she took it upon herself to learn everything she could about the disease that was slowly draining the life from Oroku Tendo. Knowing would help her remain strong, help her understand why she would no longer have a mother, so she could comfort her distraught father and sisters.
Dr. Tofu had been a student then and his mentor was the doctor in charge of healing her mother. It was him whom she went to during this tumultuous time in her life. It was Tofu to whom she let down her guard and confessed her fears and frustrations. It was on his shoulders she cried and it was he who talked to her about medicine, sharing with him a sense of wonder of the human body through a period of great sadness.
For several years now, Kasumi had been learning from Tofu the art of medicine. He had become her tutor, and her greatest friend. She loved him deeply and for the last year or so, he was someone she was desperately in love with. He had done more for her since her mother died than anyone else; he was the only one who seemed to recognize Kasumi as she truly was.
Kasumi sighed, realizing she hadn't done any studying for the last hour. She would need to focus more tomorrow night and not let her thoughts get away with her again.
No one in the house knew, but Kasumi was going to go away one day to college. She didn't know when but she felt it was going to happen soon, when she knew that everyone would survive without her. When she was sure that Akane would no longer need her as the surrogate mother that she had been for almost a decade now, when Nabiki stopped sneaking in at night to talk to her, and when Soun could adjust to the idea of his children growing up and leaving him. One day, when the time was right, Kasumi would leave.
Kasumi closed her book and placed it back in it's hiding spot under her pillow, finally feeling content for the first time in a very long time. The days would continue to pass and her relationship with those around her would remain strong, and she had no longer had any fears about what lay ahead of her.
End
Author's Notes: I haven't written much in a long time but this piece I'm proud of. It came out of a conversation with a friend and fellow writer here on FFN about how many characters in Ranma 1/2 don't get enough credit that they deserve. Fandom often keeps characters who do not have much personal history as shallow beings. We believe that characters such as Kuno, and Kasumi and Soun, etc, have a much deeper history and personality than they are allowed to show. It just clicked and I wrote this little piece in about 45 minutes. I enjoyed writing it and I hope you have enjoyed reading it. Oh, before I forget, my friend said that Mrs. Tendo is call Kimiko in the fannon. I chose Oroku. My Oroku was a real life woman who was married to a retainer of a ruler of a Japanese province. Even though she bore herhusband a male child, her mother in law treated her cruelly and she was driven to suicide. Before dying, she wrote a death poem, which was a common thing to do and is as follows :
And had my days been longer
still the darkness
would not leave this world --
along death's path, among the hills
I shall behold the moon.
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