Alone Together...

Guilt

Sakura's POV

~April~

Training outside for the last part of March and the beginning of April was tranquil. Soon after my birthday, the Cherry Blossom trees blossomed. The beautiful petals on the flowers bloomed recently to their fullest.

Madoka took a break from etiquette lessons to teach me what she knew on the Cherry Blossoms. Learning about my namesake was interesting, and I had no idea there was so many different varieties of them. Haruki had a few different types here in his home, but Madoka said that some bloomed in different times and different areas.

As for the training with Kioshi, he had moved into the stage where I practiced my katas against him. Of course I didn't ever win, but he was very helpful and never took me lightly. Haruki's lessons were similar as I would practice with him what I had learned throughout the whole time.

It was around the second week when we went to our second festival. It was for the Cherry Blossoms. I had received another yukata from Haruki. He chose a pastel pink one with bright pink Sakura's blooming all over the fabric. The obi tied in a bow behind me was white with lace at the hem. My hair that had grown slightly past my shoulders, was put up into a bun with Sakura accessories dangling down. All in all, I was covered in pink almost everywhere. We had a wonderful time at the festival as we enjoyed each other's company along with all the other relatives who had come.

~May~

On the first week of May, Inner and I had finally achieved a whole hour of seeing someone's memories. We accomplished it by practicing with a younger cousin of ours. He had come to visit after the flower viewing festival and after we had played, he took a nap. I was only going to see if it worked when someone was asleep. Turns out, that as long as Inner and I are awake, we can still see them. We skimmed through his memories of three years in a whole hour. We didn't see specific things just small things, like him playing and interacting with his parents. We figured we could also last an hour in speaking with someone telepathically, but we didn't want to try both of them at the same time. It would probably cause us to faint again.

We also learned that using that ability caused us to get exhausted rather quickly, so we kept practicing. Since it affected us in a deeper level than physical training, we had to take things slow and steady when it came to that ability.

Our physical training was getting better, though we were still lacking in the endurance department. Training with chakra was still the same as always, except I could now release a small amount of chakra out of five Tenketsu but I still had 356 to go.

As for Haruki's training, he was now allowing me to mix the weapons into the katas that he was going to show me. So now I had more katas to learn, which were piling up. The forms for the water dance had been completed and now I would start the wind forms. So my body wouldn't forget the other forms and so I could get the grace that Chouko danced with, I practiced the whole dance for Fire and Water before going into the wind dance every lesson.

~June~

I was told on the first week that this month was to be my last here in the Land of Water. I spent this whole month mostly with Haruki. We would practice early and sometimes when he was busy in the morning, we would practice till late at night.

In order to keep in touch with each other he gave me a messenger bird. The bird which was apparently his favorite, was a majestic looking bird. He was a big bird that was probably a foot and a half. His pretty feathers that glistened in the sun were a mahogany color with a few black spots. And just like Haruki he looked mean and unpredictable, but when he was held by Haruki he turned into a complete domestic pet. I was trained how to take care of him and quickly he and I became good friends.