"This is stupid."
"Stop complaining, Ranma. You didn't have to volunteer. I didn't even ask you to."
"Well...I didn't expect to be raking sand."
"We're not 'raking sand', we're working on the garden."
"We're arranging sand around rocks."
"We're almost done..." Akane was getting annoyed by the argument.
"Why? Why are we doing this? Why does raked sand look any better than normal sand?"
"You're saying you don't think it looks beautiful?"
"No."
"Stupid!"
"Well, if you think they're so great, what do you like about it?"
"It's...it's beautiful!"
"Why? It's just a bunch of sand and rocks!" Akane muttered a disgusted "baka" and went back to work.
**
Ranma and Akane sat at the edge of a bridge. The bridge, taller than it was wide, overlooked an expansive garden. Akane looked at the greenness of the garden, absorbing the peace and harmony. Ranma looked down at his legs, swinging them back and forth to make odd patterns swish around his kimono.
"What are you doing, Ranma?"
Ranma stopped.
"Nothing."
"If you're so bored, why did you come, anyway?"
"I told you, I got nothing better to do. What am I supposed to do, talk to Nabiki?"
"What's wrong with Nabiki?"
"I don't know. Why don't you ever talk to her?" Akane paused.
"I do talk to her. Just she's a bit abrasive, and she always seems to find new ways for me to owe her money..."
"Same reason for me."
"Well, there's Kasumi..."
"Oh my! So how was school today, Ran-ma?" answered Ranma in as bland a voice as possible.
Akane giggled.
"So she can be a bit mindless..."
"So I'd rather talk to you."
"I'm glad I'm better than nobody." said Akane, raising her voice slightly.
"I didn't mean it like that..." said Ranma.
"What did you mean?" Ranma ignored her question.
"And my friends...they're not really my friends. They talk to me at school, but if I wasn't for my training at martial arts, and that I'm...engaged to you, they wouldn't even come near me."
"Don't be hard on yourself."
"I'm not...I'm being truthful."
"Ukyou then?" Ranma looked at Akane, surprised that she would bring Ukyou up.
"If she didn't think I might marry her, she'd still be trying to kill me." Ranma looked down at the water, depressed.
"So...you're saying...I'm your best friend?"
Ranma didn't move.
"I guess" he finally said, reluctantly.
Akane didn't know how to respond. She didn't. She joined Ranma in staring at the pond and the surrounding foliage. It was a few minutes before either spoke again.
"So what do you think that means, anyway?"
"What means?"
"'Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.'"
"Where's that from?"
"I overheard the priest saying it."
"Who knows. I don't understand half the things they say here."
"Yeah, me neither..." admitted Akane. "So, want to get back to work?"
"Ok, sure."
"I thought we might make tea for visitors. You want to boil the water?"
Ranma gave Akane a that's-not-funny look.
"I was just kidding, Ranma!"
"Well, it's not funny!"
"Excuse me..." said Akane, a trace of sarcasm in her voice. The two of them went to the priest to get their next assignment.
**
"Great. So now we're cleaning the koi pond."
"Yeah."
"It doesn't even look dirty."
"You have to keep them really clean. The fish live there, after all."
"That's stupid."
"Well, that's what we have to do."
"Why? It's stupid!" Akane looked frustrated.
"Did you come here to complain, Ranma?"
"No. I came here to improve the lives of fish." Akane rolled her eyes.
"Well, at least you're good for something."
"Ooh, so the tomboy rears her ugly head!"
"Shut up, Ranma! We can't fight in a temple! You're such a jerk!" Akane gave Ranma a look which Ranma knew, from long experience, preceded a fight. He had never backed down from that look before. Which was why it surprised even Ranma when he responded with a cool
"Sorry, Akane."
"S...sorry?"
"Yeah, sorry. What's the big deal? Ain't like I never said sorry before."
"Nothing...nothing at all." Akane thought back. Had he ever said he was sorry before? Sincerely? Not that she could recall.
"Careful with the koi, ladies." Ranma and Akane turned around, startled. A small man of perhaps seventy years was addressing them.
"How is your work progressing?" asked the old man, curiously.
"Fine, thank you." answered Akane.
"You two work volunteer here?"
"Yes."
"It's good to see young people take an interest in the temple."
"Well, it's something I've meant to do for the past five years now. I keep on putting it off and putting it off, and I figured if I didn't volunteer soon, I'd be putting it off forever."
"True, true. It's something I always meant to do and I never did. Not working at the temple is one the greatest regrets of my life."
"It's never to late to volunteer" offered Akane.
"Yes," smiled the old man, "But I am too old for such things. I just came to see the fish at the pond. But I see you are cleaning..."
"Sorry about that."
"No need to be sorry. But please, take care in cleaning the pond.
Those fish mean a great deal to me."
"Fish mean a great deal to you?" asked Ranma. Akane elbowed him.
"Wha'd you do that for?!"
"You're being a jerk!"
The man laughed. "No need for that. I suppose it may seem...odd, for an old man to care so much for fish."
"Yup." replied Ranma. Akane gave him a dirty look.
"These fish...sometimes they seem to be all I have left to remember my childhood by."
"You had pet fish as a child?" asked Akane.
"Oh, no. But I was raised in this area...it was much smaller, much less developed then...and I went to this temple as a boy. As I recall..." the old man, clearly amused, looked in the barrel Ranma and Akane had temporarily placed the koi, and pointed at a large, dark orange fish. "This fish was my favorite as a child." "This fish? You mean the same one? It's been alive all this time?" asked Ranma. The old man laughed.
"You'd be amazed at how quickly the years have passed. But yes, it was the same fish, although it has gotten fatter, and its scales have lost much of their luster."
"That's incredible." The old man didn't notice Akane and continued.
"It's been alive as long as I have, and I would not be surprised if it was to outlast me." The old man took a seat nearby.
"I had no idea...I mean, I thought they were just fish..." said Akane.
"Just fish they are...but that does not mean they cannot survive. And," he pointed at the cleaning tools Ranma and Akane had assembled, "if you take care in cleaning the pond, there's little reason other fish would not excel. Koi can live for up to a hundred years, you know. Perhaps..." the old man looked at them, his eyes twinkling merrily. "Perhaps there are fish here who will outlive the two of you."
"Perhaps" said Akane. Akane went back to work, and Ranma joined her. Eventually, the old man, looking contented, got up and walked to another part of the temple.
"That's incredible. Who would've guessed that the fish could live so long when you just take care of them?"
"They're only fish. Who cares?" replied Ranma, nonchalantly.
"I can't believe you would say that!"
"What? I mean, it's great that the fish live so long, but in the end they're just fish! The work we're doing now...it has to be done every day! It's stupid!"
"Why? Why is it so 'stupid?!'"
"Why not just get a new fish? Or not have fish at all?!"
"That's not the point!"
"Then what is the point?" Akane paused for a second.
"What do you know?" she yelled. "You're such a jerk!"
"And you're uncute, so we're even!"
"Shut up, you idiot!"
"Oh, that's a great..." Ranma was interrupted by a harsh yell.
"A temple is not the place for a fight!" Ranma and Akane turned, startled. A priest stood behind the two of them.
"I will complete the cleaning of the koi pond," said the priest, gruffly, "meanwhile, I demand that you rake the sand garden. Your work is substandard! Take pride in what you do!"
**
"'Take pride in what you do', he says. Looks perfectly good to me."
"You got the lines all wrong, Ranma. Look. Compare the half I did to the half you did. And our lines don't even match up!"
"Looks okay to me."
"Are you blind? Look...see how the lines on my side surround the rocks and boulders, and as you get farther away the lines get smoother and smoother?" Akane paused. "When I rake, I try to imagine that the sand is a puddle of water, and the boulders are drops, leaking into the water. My raking is capturing the ripples that are created."
"It's just raking the sand, Akane." v
"It's more than that, Ranma. Don't you see any difference between our sides?"
"No."
"Your side is raked in straight lines. Be creative!"
"I can't...it's just sand!" Akane, frustrated, picked up her broom and smoothed over the entire garden.
"What are you doing?!" asked Ranma in disbelief. "We'll have to start over!"
"The garden works as a whole, Ranma. It was a bad idea to divide the work in two in the first place. You can't just pick up in the middle."
"Now you tell me."
"I'll do the work," said Akane, ignorning Ranma's comments, "but I want you to watch me. To see how it's done." Akane picked up a rake and went to a rock in the far corner. She circled it with the rake, producing a series of lines around the boulder.
"Do you see what I'm doing?"
"Yeah, yeah." said Ranma, barely interested.
Akane repeated the procedure with other boulders in the garden, until she finally reached the large, central boulder. She surrounded the boulder with not one, but a repeated series of eclipses. Ranma took note.
"So what are you doing now?"
"I told you about how the rocks are like drops in a puddle?"
"Yeah."
"Well, the big rock is like the main drop. It absorbs and consumes the ripples of the smaller drops."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, look here." Akane's circles in the sand were approaching the circles of a smaller rock.
"So what are you going to do now?"
"This is the fun part" replied Akane, smiling. With great care and concentration, she turned and contorted the rake, creating grooves in the sand that seemed to be influenced equally by the large rock and the small rock.
"See what I mean?" Ranma didn't answer, but kept on looking at the grooves of the sand. Trying to imagine what Akane had said...that these were ripples in a pond. And he wasn't sure what she had done, or how she had done it, but he could see the ripples emanating between the large and the small rock.
"What do you think?" asked Akane.
"That's great." said Ranma, genuinely impressed. Akane looked at Ranma and smiled.
"Thanks, Ranma." Akane went back to work. Ranma looked at Akane working. So beautiful...in the red and white kimono she wore for the temple, her lengthening hair tied back with a white ribbon. She looked so peaceful, so contented, concentrating on the countoures of the sand. Without thinking, he blurted out a question.
"Why do we always have to fight, Akane?" Ranma looked shocked. He hadn't thought of saying that. He wasn't even consciously aware of having said it. Akane looked at him, seemingly unperturbed, and looked back down at her work.
"Well, because you're always a jerk, and you flirt with practically every girl you see..."
"And you're always a tomboy! And you're as violent as a gorilla!"
"Oh yeah?" "Oh yeah!"
Both Ranma and Akane were silent were silent for a few minutes. Akane continued working at her raking, but it was obvious her pace had lessened. After a few minutes she raised her rake.
"I don't know." she said, turning her head towards Ranma.
"Don't know what?"
"I don't know why we always fight."
"I thought it was because I was a jerk or somethin'." Akane paused.
"Well, maybe not." Ranma thought for a second.
"Maybe we've just gotten in the habit." answered Ranma.
"There's more to it than that...actually, I have been thinking about it lately." Akane blushed. "There's other reasons."
"Like what?" asked Ranma, curiously. Akane paused.
"Neither of us wanted to get engaged, right?" she asked.
"Well...yeah."
"And we're both mad at our dads for always bugging us, trying to get us to go on dates and stuff, right?"
"Yeah," Ranma said, a little reluctance in his voice.
"Maybe...well, maybe that's it. I mean, if we got along, our parents would celebrate."
"Ain't that the truth."
"And we'd be confirming their success in betrothing us. We'd be not only letting them make our most important decision in life for us, we'd be going happily along with them."
"I guess."
"We'd be rewarding them for being jerks."
"Yeah..." answered Ranma, slowly. Akane looked up at Ranma. After a few seconds, Ranma spoke.
"Well, let's not...I mean, we shouldn't do things just to please...or displease them, anymore." said Ranma, uncomfortably. Akane smiled and went back to work.
Ranma looked some more at her work. Considering Akane was an admitted klutz at anything artistic, her work was incredible. It wasn't that it was raked with flair, although Ranma didn't see how such a thing would be possible. Instead, the garden seemed so...serene. Like every wave and contour was in its natural position, and any change could only be detrimental. Akane had raked sand gardens a few times before, he knew, but that couldn't fully explain the ease and inevitability of her work. Ranma thought about the subject, and didn't talk again until Akane was almost done with her raking.
"I think I see the beauty in the sand garden."
"Great, Ranma."
"It's not the sand."
"Ranma!" there was a touch of anger in her voice.
"No, don't get me wrong, Akane. It's beautiful, it's just not the sand. Or the rocks, either."
"What do you mean?"
"It's you." Ranma blushed and quickly clarified himself. "It's the person working in the garden, day after day. Thousands of hours of work, just to arrange the sand. In the end, the beauty isn't in the garden, the beauty is the work put into the garden."
"I don't see what you mean..."
"It's easier to see when you're watching. Come here, I'll finish raking the
garden for you." Ranma took the rake from Akane and followed the lines, capturing
the eddies and the ripples inherent in a sand garden that had been designed
centuries before.