[Day 10, Early Morning] Regret: The Breakfast of Champions

[Yukikaze no Kasumi]

Kasumi lay swinging in her hammock, glad now that she'd pointedly spurned the bedding provided by the Crane.

Fuck all of this.

No tests for her. Just watching other people duel.

She had nothing to do.

Her hatred of Tsuma and those who ran it was slowly poisoning her, and she had nothing to do.

She knew she should show up to watch Hirame duel, and depending on who advanced, maybe Rin, or Shinko, or Michi, or Masaru.

But she couldn't bring herself to give a shit.

She just wanted to leave, and never come back unless she was part of a fleet sent to torch the place.

It wasn't that her time in Tsuma had been all bad.

It was that the good had all been shorter in duration than the bad.

She'd called her time with Jiro "stolen moments," and that about summed it up. She'd grabbed moments here and there when things weren't terrible... but none of them had stuck for her. She'd kept nothing beyond some friendly associations with people she might have to kill depending on the contracts Lord Yoritomo accepted.

Nothing but an origami octopus from someone I can't have, a severed bonsai tree I took out of pity, and an ugly little doll I took as a joke. Oh, and a chance to see that the Emperor can spout comforting crap with the best of them.

Shoulda stayed on the Yukikaze, finished out my apprenticeship, done things right.

Mantis take what we want, so here I am in a fucking Crane city being told to take what they give me, and being fed the same shit about how "exceptional" we all are when I outright failed at half the tasks set before me. I didn't succeed but get outperformed by others, I failed fully half of the fucking time.

Coming here so the Crane could humiliate me was a mistake.

And she really wished she'd smashed Haru in the fucking face. Make him ugly enough for his face to match his soul.

Of course, it was doubtful his brother would have still thought fondly of her... but might that not have been better?

Coulda spared him some pain.

To say she was not exactly appreciative of the opportunity coming to Tsuma represented- nor of the fine weather- was a grotesque understatement.