The key slid into the lock and turned with a snap. Dr. Tofu pulled the
door open and was greeted with a whiff of musty air. I hadn't intended
to stay away for so long, he thought, surveying the interior of his
clinic. The dust was bad enough, coating cabinets and chairs and the
table where his patients lay to be manipulated, but there were also
cobwebs in the corners, and Tofu thought he smelled mildew as well. The
place would need a thorough scrubbing.
He left the door open to let air in and went off to fetch cleaning
supplies. When he returned, there was a girl standing in the center of
the room, turning her head curiously. She gave a guilty start as he
entered, and spun around wide-eyed.
"I'm not a delinquent!" she squealed. "The door was open!"
"I know," said Tofu mildly. "I opened it." He set his bags on the
table and considered his guest. She was tiny, and thin, just barely
into puberty. Twelve, he guessed, if not younger. A pretty child, but
Tofu thought she looked frail, as if she'd emerged from a long illness.
"I'm Dr. Tofu," he said, by way of introduction. "I'm a chiropracter."
"I'm Hinako Ninomiya. I'm a schoolteacher."
"Aren't you a little young?"
"I'm twenty-four."
"That's interesting," said Tofu, deciding not to challenge the girl.
Very imaginative children, he knew, sometimes told transparent lies, not
out of any intent to deceive, but as part of a private game of pretend.
Instead, he reached into one bag and pulled out a large plastic tub of
hard candies.
The girl's eyes lit up. "Yummy!"
Tofu had spotted them at the store and had picked them up on a whim.
He usually kept candies around for young children and had thought the
tub would give the place an air of normalcy.
"Would you like some?"
Tofu fished out a piece which the girl swallowed greedily. Sighing, he
pulled out a large handful and dropped it into her waiting palms.
Hinako's eyes widened as she tried to work out how to unwrap and eat a
piece without spilling everything all over the floor.
"Is that too much?" asked Tofu, amused.
Hinako shook her head vigorously. She hopped onto the table and
dropped the candies in her lap, then began crunching her way through
them like a starveling.
Dr. Tofu began to sponge off the walls and furniture as Hinako watched
surreptitiously. He was handsome, she thought as she munched, and
polite and kind and not so very much older, certainly less than thirty,
and that really wasn't important at all.
Angry shouting from outside interrupted her thoughts, and Hinako rushed
outside to deal with it, scattering her remaining candies. It was Ranma
Saotome and the Hibiki boy again, fighting over Akane, she guessed,
although they were perfectly capable of fighting over lunch.
"Happo-5-yen-satsu!" she cried, raising a coin and eyeing the two
through the hole. Ranma leaped away, but Ryoga, slower and less alert,
simply gaped as the fighting aura began to drain from him, focussed
through the coin and into his body. The familiar sensation of new
energy filled her, causing her body to grow and mature, opening up her
mind with new reserves of concentration and self-control, and allaying
the constant low-grade ki-craving for which sweets were a sadly
inadequate remedy. Ryoga collapsed onto his face. She turned towards
Ranma, but he was watching from a rooftop half a block down. Throwing
him a baleful look, Hinako turned on the ball of her foot and marched
back into the clinic.
Dr. Tofu looked up as she entered. One of her students had quipped
that Hinako had an adult body in the same sense that bookstores had
adult magazines. It wasn't just that she was beautiful, or tall, or
curvaceous -- when her body was overfilled with ki, as it was now, she
compelled attention on an instinctive, biological level. Poor Dr. Tofu
never had a chance.
"Hello, there, ma'am," he said , suavely knocking himself on the head
with his broom. He laughed nervously. "How strange that we should meet
here, under these circumstances."
"Not really," Hinako said, nettled, then screamed as Tofu stuck the
broom between his legs and tripped himself. Leaping forward, she caught
him by the arm and pulled him into an embrace to help him regain his
balance. The broom clattered to the floor.
Tofu trembled quietly in Hinako's arms, unable to move or think. After
a few moments, she slowly released him and stepped back. "What's
wrong?" she asked softly.
"Why, nothing's wrong," said Tofu brightly. "I was just doing a little
cleaning." He turned away, managing to dump all of his cleaning
supplies on the floor. He stooped to pick them up and tried to put them
back on the counter, but while he grasped that they kept falling and
hitting him, he could not quite comprehend that he was missing the
counter by a good foot and a half. Confused, dismayed, and worried, and
somehow grasping that her presence was contributing to the problem,
Hinako retreated to a chair on the far side of the clinic.
Unfortunately, as she seated herself, she crossed her legs, and that at
the exact moment that Tofu, still crouched, happened to glance her way,
treating him to a sight Happousai would have sold an eyeball for. A
blood vessel burst inside Tofu's nose, and his reasoning shut down
completely.
He came out of his state quite some time later. At first, he thought
he was alone, but he then noticed young Hinako watching him solemnly.
"What happened to you?" she asked.
Dr Tofu gave an embarassed shrug, realized he was cradling a bottle of
Shine! You Floor, and busied himself putting it away. The floor was a
soapy mess, and Tofu was glad he hadn't spilled anything dangerous.
Bottles, broom, and mop lay scattered about, and worse yet, his skeleton
Betty had been broken.
"Well?" prodded Hinako.
Tofu sighed. "It must have looked frightening," he said, "but it's
really a rather interesting psychological phenomenon." He paused. "I
was shy and awkward as a boy, especially around girls, and when I am
around a woman that I, ah, particularly like, I enter a sort of fugue
state, reverting temporarily to that awkward, clumsy youth." He paused
again, ruefully. "So when that woman came in, she was, well, ..."
"Hot," supplied Hinako.
"Well, yes, and ..."
"Incredibly sexy."
"Yes, but ..."
"And you wanted her."
Tofu frowned. "Hinako --"
"And that made you freaky."
"You needn't be smug."
Hinako hung her head. "I'm sorry. I'm sure it's really awful. I
didn't mean to make fun. Can I have some more candy?"
"I suppose." Tofu turned one of the chairs upright and sat down
heavily. "I left my practice because I wanted to cure myself," he said,
speaking more to himself than Hinako, who was busy prizing more candies
from the tub. "But it seems I've only gotten worse. At least my
problem with Kasumi took time to develop. But that woman -- like fire
and lightning and three shots of whiskey, all at once."
"So you like me, said Hinako quietly, concealing a smile.
"What was that?"
"I, um, asked if you liked me."
"Yes, I like you."
"Lots?"
Tofu sighed. "Hinako, you're a lovely young lady, and were I a small
boy, I would doubtless be tongue-tied and blushing in your presence.
But I amd not a small boy, and I'm afraid my tastes run towards women
who are a little more mature. Now, do you have something you need to be
doing?
Hinako's eyes grew wide. "Yes! She squealed. "I have homework to
grade!" She scrambled for the door and burst through it. It swung
closed, then open again as she thrust her head back inside. "I like you
too, Dr. Tofu, she said, and was gone.
Tofu sat for a moment, then stood up to finish cleaning. Nerima may
not stay the same, he thought, but it never really changes.
Outside, Hinako headed for home. Fire and lightning, she thought, with
a little toss of her head, then walked on, back held a little
straighter.
-- David