Ink Stained

40: too little too late*

少なすぎる、遅すぎる

It was a month after the first day of school, and everything had well and truly returned to peace.

At least, as normal as it got, considering that she lived in a house predominantly filled with Tengu, and her closest friend was the mortal vessel of a Kamigami Pai had actually met in person – and also happened to be engaged to the Heir of the Tengu.

Normal was relative.

She began her 'training' the weekend after she asked for it. Daichi, as her handler, was the one who trained her. It was surprisingly simple. All she did was repeat the same set of exercises, over and over again, for one hour in the morning before breakfast, and one hour before dinner in the evening.

She thought that she'd get straight into what she'd imagined – kickboxing, punching, learning to use some sort of weapon, anything thing that looked like how the Daitengu trained. But that was not the case. When she asked why she was only doing the repetitive exercises, Daichi told her that they would eventually get to the harder part.

First, though, she needed to build on her strength, and muscle. She was too 'flimsy', as he put it, just a mere slip of a girl the way she was now. If they didn't hone her body she'd never get anywhere with the more advanced training.

"You have the body of a ballerina, and not to be rude, but not a very strong one at that," Daichi had said as he pressed her head down lower. She was doing a Roman Chair, to strengthen the quadriceps muscles. Only, instead of leaning against a wall, she was relying only on her sense of balance. The calves and the back of her knees burned with the effort of remaining in position as Daichi pushed on her to go lower by pressing his hand down on her head. "You need to put on some body mass so that you don't burn through your energy reserves when you get to the harder stuff."

"You mean gain weight?" she clarified, voice trembling. She never liked to talk about how hard it was for her to gain weight, because she so often overheard other girls talk about how hard it was for them to lose it – when they really didn't even need to – and the extreme lengths they went to in furthering that goal. It made her feel like she complained over nothing, really, or like she was trying to show off that she didn't have those problems – even if that wasn't the case.

He smiled. "Kind of."

Sometimes Kaede came to watch, and give her helpful advice in pointing out what she was doing wrong. Kaede was the only one who stayed at the house more often than the others because it was difficult for him to leave, due to his Ability. When he got bored, he trained – and Kaede got bored easily. He was the one to tell her if she was in the wrong position, if her foot was angled in the wrong way, if she was putting too much pressure on one leg than the other when it should be even.

He was also usually the one to call the end of the session when he heard, with his Ability, that her heart was working too hard to pump blood to her body, and that she was too tired to continue, yet stubbornly refusing to call it a day. Kaede had a habit of rapping her on the head with the back of his hand whenever she didn't say when she was tired.

Pai, in turn, perfected the prowess of ducking and swerving to avoid it without tripping over her feet. It was proving to be effective not only with Kaede, but Haru, too, when he tried to mess her hair up, which happened distressingly often.

During the week, she focused on school, and helping out around the house. Sometimes it was with Yukiji in the kitchen, other times it was with Mizutani with the kids, playing and chasing after them when they got too rowdy. Her days were too busy to have a proper conversation with Shin again, but when she met him in the hallways of the house, she would smile at him, and he smiled back.