Off Day Oudouchi

[Drak]

Normally, there wouldn’t have been any training today. It was supposed to be their rest day, but the previous day, the sergeant had told Jirou that he was to show up.

“What for, sir?” Jirou asked. He was getting better with his sirs and ma’ams when talking to officers.

“Training,” the sergeant replied with a grin. “Special training to push you to the next level.”

Jirou scrunched up his face. The sergeant had said before that he was pushing Jirou extra hard to catch him up with all of the recruits who had been in his year. Still, it was hard not to feel picked on.

“Since it is on an off day, I should say that this training is completely voluntary,” the sergeant began. “But I insist that you show up at least once. Same time as usual tomorrow. Dismissed.”

Jirou headed home. His sister was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for dinner. His mother and brother were at the table talking and drinking.

“I’m home,” Jirou announced to his family, taking his shoes off at the door. His mother quickly fell silent.

Jirou hadn’t talked much with his mother since he had enlisted. This was new behavior for her. When she was mad at him, she had no problem with letting him know: scolding, shouting, and even chasing him around with a sandal in one hand. No, this was different. She just seemed… sad whenever he was around.

“Can I help with anything?” Jirou asked his sister, walking into the kitchen.

“Hmmm,” Mei thought for a second. “Can you chop up some onions? I’m making curry.”

“Sure thing.” Jirou fetched a knife and started to chop up the small pile of onions Mei had gathered. He had never been especially skilled with knifework, especially when compared to Mei and his father. When he had volunteered to chop onions, he had hoped that some of his sword skills might have rubbed off on his chopping skills. It turned out that was not the case. Mei sighed when Jirou presented her a plate of rather unevenly cut onions.

“All this training and you still can’t cut straight?”

Jirou pouted at his sister. “Well, I’ve got a special training tomorrow. Maybe that’s what we’ll be drilling: cutting vegetables.”

Mei let out a small giggle as she took the onions from Jirou and put them in the pan.

Dinner was quiet and awkward. Mei told a few fun stories from her shift at the restaurant earlier that day, and they all laughed, but it felt like an empty laugh without any real levity behind it. Jirou tried to avoid talking about his progress training. When he had finished wolfing down two plates of curry, Jirou decided to call it a night and snuck upstairs. After a quick shower, he made sure his alarm would wake him the next day, then crawled into bed and drifted off to sleep.

When his alarm went off in the morning, Jirou jumped out of bed. After a long day of training yesterday, the prospect of facing another long day of training on what was supposed to be his day off sounded less than appealing. After a good night’s sleep though, he was excited for it. He wondered what sort of mystery training awaited him. He thought back to his academy training, and how he had learned the basics of Katon there. Maybe this would be something like that: teaching him jutsus like some sort of ninja-samurai hybrid. Or maybe a Toryu master was in town to help him master his favored school of swordplay.

He let his imagination run wild as he dressed himself for a day of training: black tank top, matching black cargo pants, his trademark fatigue jacket, and his wooden dog tags. Downstairs, he found a small pot of congee with ham and scallions, and a note from Mei next to it.

“Good luck with your special training tomorrow big brother!”

Jirou smiled at the note, and quickly scarfed down the porridge. Gathering up his sword and boots, Jirou headed off to the training grounds.

He was the only one there when he arrived, so he sat and waited.

WC: 696