Stone Cold | Tanjirou Kamado (old version)

5. A family's love

What she had longed for more than anything else back then was to be strong.

Ayaka's rigid hands grabbed on desperately to the enormous boulder that left her like a small rag doll in comparison. She pushed against it again, soaked in sweat and trembling, as she attempted to make the boulder move. It was unnecessary to say it didn't move from its place.

She huffed in small puffs and tried again, this time leaning her legs on the floor in an attempt to propel the boulder forward, but she only got for her knees to shake more under her own weight, slipping on the soft earth of Himejima-shishou's mountain and making her fall.

Even if she had been trying to make it move for the last week, even just a little, her efforts were in vain.

She took a moment to breath in deeply, forgetting about the mix of feelings that overpowered her body and she couldn't distinguish, just like Himejima-shishou had taught her, and tried to stand up. She could still feel how her body jolted as she got her callused hands on the boulder and slowly raised. Bit by bit, first straightening her knees, then her waist to finally lift her whole body and go back to her useless attempts.

Her sight sometimes became blurry, vanishing at moments in complete darkness to get back moments later.

She didn't know at what moment she'd lost her hair ribbon, but now her black hair framed her face, sticking to her skin as sticky and wet locks. In normal circumstances it would have made her shiver (more than she was already, if that was possible), however she couldn't.

Not when she had to keep going, not when she still hadn't been able to move the boulder, not even one bit.

Her lungs had started to hurt, more than usual when they used to at training. Of course, she had been using the Total Concentration Breathing for too long, nearly a few hours, when the more time she had been able to was a whole hour, but there were other things to worry about.

She was so concentrated in her training, that not even Himejima-shishou's voice stopped her from her task.

"It's late," he said, as if the fact that the Sun had already set hadn't been over Ayaka's head for more than a million times.

Ayaka tensed her jaw, flexing every muscle on her body to try, just one more time.

Seeing how his disciple ignored him successfully, Himejima simply decided to keep talking.

"If you don't do "Repeating Actions" it will be impossible for you to move that boulder even one bit, Ayaka," he scolded, but his voice was of someone peaceful, nor authoritative or too soft, just the voice of someone that didn't care at all. Just Himejima-shishou's voice.

"You already know that," a heavy exhale came out of Ayaka in the middle of the sentence, without stopping to push (all her body this time) against the boulder, "that I'm not capable of using "Repeating Actions.""

The moment Ayaka stopped talking, she collapsed out of exhaustion with a pained groan. She fell to the floor a second time, without finding within her the strength to stay on her knees, and even then, shivers still rann up and down her body.

She finally dared to look at her master, who kneeled with her at hearing her fall to the ground.

Even kneeling, the boulder was no rival to Himejima-shishou's size, and that made Ayaka wish she could be taller.

She was still only thirteen, but she had never been the most patient individual.

Ayaka wasn't small. She was sturdy to a certain point, not as much as her mother, but enough so that it was difficult for people to make her fall to the ground. But she had inherited her father's complexity, so she was tall enough to reach her master's belly button.