夢 - 2021 rewrite

みやこ

miyako

one year ago

"Chou-san, back again, I see?" Takeshi smiled warmly at the approaching girl, welcoming her by the entrance.

And she, nodding her head, replied, "Yes, Takeshi-san."

A year into her special training with Danzo, she'd met Takeshi, a light-hearted man who tended to the temple she trained at with Danzo.

It was another failed training session, with Danzo's persistence and her own stubbornness, he'd left her there on the training mat, expecting her to wallow in her failures, when he'd trained her to be solely the opposite (blank, when it came to emotions, and always, always avoiding failure). And, arriving to sweep the floors was Takeshi, with a young smile and an old laugh, and he'd found her in the scroll room she'd wandered into.

Takeshi introduced and taught her in the four rooms of the temple--the garden, where she learned the basics of medicines and antidotes; the scroll room, where he taught her the basics of sealing; the meditation room, where she established a place of peace and discipline; and, lastly, the music room, where she heightened her musical expertise.

Unbeknownst to Danzo, this temple and this man were the reasons for her noticeable progress in her training. And, because of said progress, he allowed her training hours (outside of her sessions with his administration) to be set in that very temple, as per her request. And, also unbeknownst to Danzo, Takeshi took up the task to unravel and dispel everything Danzo had ever taught her.

Danzo had stolen a face and a name and a life from each child, forcing in their naive, tiny hands a mask and a number and debt and a kunai. He was the old man down on his porch, waiting for children to trample his lawn, to give him a reason to scream and scold and berate another nameless child with a nameless face. And Takeshi, blue robes and weathered smiles and wise chuckles, had taken none for his own, and only instilled within her a drive, a purpose, and the rebirth of the small shred of hope, once present in her first month in ROOT. Only now, she wasn't plotting for her moment of silent escape; only her moment of a loud roar, a ransack of his tyranny, a bare face under the sun.

And today proceeded like any other. Because of her so-called special training sessions with Danzo, her participation in taking on missions and mentoring the handful of newcomers ceased to one mission a week, while she spent a strong portion of it in the temple, with or without Danzo.

"You're spacing out, again," Takeshi stated, sporting his constant smile. "Are you alright?"

"I apologize, Takeshi-san," she bowed her head, pausing in her seat before the piano. "I'll start again."