a rational man  Ran Ryuuren cannot understand why other people
don't see the world with the same clarity that he does. He'd
like to rate it as stupidity, but -- well, jibes to his stupid
older brothers (all of them) aside, he doesn't really think of
everyone around him as being hopeless. Just a little slow. Even
his bosom friends aren't always as quick to see the obvious as
he is.  Sometimes it makes for boredom.  So when he was
strolling along the road and playing his flute that day in
spring, and he saw a little girl sitting in the pear tree, he
was neither surprised nor shocked. After all, it was possible
for girls to sit in pear trees. It was merely unusual. And he
wasn't stupid enough to doubt the evidence of his own eyes. What
he saw, he knew existed.  A dog came running up to him,
flinching every few steps. "Can you help me get my mistress down
from the pear tree?" the dog asked, in recognisably human
speech.  Again, this could not be impossible, because it had
just happened. A dog had spoken to him. H