The Red Maelstrom

[43] Beneath the Rain

Breathe in...

And out...

The gentle ripples in the river guided the deep rise and fall of Kohana's chest. She cleared her mind of all but the fading moonlight and the living body of water that flowed, unencumbered, before her. Her heart was beating at a steady rhythm, never faltering, but never quickening more than what was necessary to Kohana in that precise moment.

And for the hundredth time, she struck the notch on the tree with her bokken.

The battered wood of the tree trunk let out a dull thunk! as the wooden sword descended upon it. Kohana opened her eyes, and breathed a sigh of relief. She had struck home for the thirtieth time in a row with her eyes closed. Finally, her body was beginning to understand the motions of striking with a sword even without the aid of her vision, and she struck right and true.

Grass rustled somewhere nearby, disturbed by someone's presence. Kohana's and Haimaru-sensei's heads swiveled to the intruder, but with little to no alarm. Kohana didn't have Haimaru-sensei's nose, but her current meditative state allowed her to gauge the familiarity of the chakra signature in her vicinity.

"My shift's just about done," announced Sakura. It was dark amongst the trees, with the dark blue of the sky having morphed into shades that were a tad warmer to herald the waking of the sun, but Kohana could see her bright pink hair nonetheless. "Shouldn't you be getting enough rest?" Sakura smiled at Haimaru-sensei, who rested his head on the backs of his paws and blinked slowly, but she didn't dare overstep her boundaries.

Kohana rested the bokken against the same tree she'd been hacking endlessly at and shook her weary, blistering hands carefully. She had tried her best to perfect her chakra flow whilst practicing her strikes, but alas, she couldn't quite protect herself nor the sword as well as she hoped she could. Sakura undoubtedly would have had less problems with that had she attempted Kohana's training.

She rolled her shoulders back, mindful of the leaden weight in her arms and her shoulders from maintaining the same perfect stance for hours. Osamu had suggested she work on acquainting herself with a bokken to ease into using a real sword, and so Kohana scrounged up her earnings from previous missions to buy a few wooden swords of her own. When he sent her a regimen she could follow, he included a set of rather tastefully drawn illustrations of what to do with a bokken, while the rest, namely stances and methods of striking, were Kohana's to figure out all on her own. It took a while, but after a grueling, frustrating (Kohana had been tempted to rip some of her precious hair out) process of trial and error, Kohana found a way to minimize effort whilst maximizing accuracy with a balance of strength in her strokes. The process was as complicated as it sounded; Kohana was accustomed to throwing weapons or using knives and unleashing barrages of punches and kicks. If Bunko hadn't prepared her for kenjutsu when she was much younger, it likely would have taken her days to figure it out and find the most efficient way to strike.

"Just felt like throwin' a little practice in, y'know? Couldn't hurt, could it?" As if in protest, her palms and fingers throbbed traitorously, but Kohana grit her teeth and glanced away. Sakura made a sound she only ever made when Naruto said something he'd thought was exceedingly clever.

"Mhm. You know none of us in Team 7 are very good liars, right? Only Kakashi-sensei's good at that, I noticed."

Well...

Sakura wasn't wrong, and Kohana's silence was telling enough. When she spared a cautious glance back at Sakura, her teammate was grinning, probably gloating inside about being right—as per usual.

"You're lucky I packed some extra ointments and bandages. I figured one of us was going to do something fundamentally foolish. It looks like you're eager to be the first of us."