Chapter 17- Training I

All the other mornings should learn from this one how to be so beautiful. The Sunrays shining brightly and the birds chirping could have been the best way to start someone's day but who knew it was going to start with the alarm, "Barring" A sound echoed in Kiyoshi's head before he slowly gets up to check out the sound, "Aah." he exclaims while still rubbing his eyes and still being half asleep.

He looks at the watch and notices that it was the alarm which by the way was still blaring. He snoozed the alarm and picked it up to get a closer look at what the time was and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees that he still has thirty minutes to meet Yuki. With that, he goes to the bathroom to get ready and prepare for his day. On the other hand, Saski's still sleeping and the alarm is trying its best to wake him up but it is that ever-present nuisance of modern mornings. No matter what you do, no matter how terribly angry you are, you won't escape it. It doesn't matter how many times you've smashed the snooze button, how much you plead into the pillow. Your alarm is coming for you and Saski does all of the above options to escape from his alarm but he couldn't. Saski wakes up thanks to the alarm, He then forcefully goes to the bathroom to get ready. Kiyoshi is out and now preparing to meet Yuki outside, The alarm once again started to go off indicating that now only ten minutes are left before its five in the morning.

"Knock-Knock" Saski could hear a knock at his door and rushed to open the door and is surprised to see Kiyoshi standing outside, "Oh Hey my dear donkey, You up." Saski says and Kiyoshi replies "Yes, Actually I wanted to ask you about the uniform thing, dumbass." as soon as he finishes Saski holds his head and says "Oh! I totally forgot about that wait lemme tell you now." Kiyoshi agrees and goes inside his room.

Saski then starts to explain that additional elements to the uniform are allowed here and the students are even allowed to change their uniform shape but it has to be in their whole outfit. Kiyoshi doesn't seem to understand what Saski means and to this, he says that once he sees the other students he'll understand what he means. Kiyoshi nodded and looked excited to start a new day, Soon he looks at his watch which showed that only one minute is left for the time to hit five in the morning. "Saski I guess I'll have to go now. I am supposed to meet Yuki right now." He says and Saski says that he knows and they both say their "Good Time" and leave. Kiyoshi sees Yuki waiting for him as soon as he steps out of Saski's room. "Good morning, Yuki." Kiyoshi says greeting to Yuki and he also greets Kiyoshi before asking him if he had any problem staying here, "No, not at all."

Kiyoshi replies and Yuki says "Very well, then let's go for the morning warm-up." and Kiyoshi agrees, With that, they both started to make their way to the forest. Shortly after they both reached there Yuki tells him what they are supposed to do as they have three hours before the classes begin. "Well be running two rounds around the forest and then after that, I'll ask you to do one more thing for me." Kiyoshi can just agree and as they both started running he notices that the track is really long and for sure will be tiring. "If you stop in-between the round I'll add one more to the whole count." Yuki says leaving Kiyoshi in shock "What?!" He says expressing his shock making Yuki laugh. During their first round, Yuki notices many things, and as they go on they tell Kiyoshi about his mistakes such as breathing with his mouth during running which will drain his energy much faster and also make his lungs dry. Kiyoshi in his second round tries to improve all the mistakes that Yuki had pointed out, leaving Yuki impressed with to how fast he can improve and learn from his mistakes. Soon they both are done with their running and Yuki makes Kiyoshi stop in front of a path that leads inside the forest.

"Now, Kiyoshi let's see how fast can you make this work." Yuki says and Kiyoshi replies in confusion asking what he means, "I want you to find this particular flower inside the forest." with that Yuki shows Kiyoshi the flower. "This is the flower." Kiyoshi looks closely at the flower and asks for its name and Yuki tells him that it's called, "Purple mountain saxifrage."

Kiyoshi accepts this small method of practicing not knowing that this is no ordinary flower. Before sending him to get the flower Yuki asks Kiyoshi to hold the flower for a few seconds and as soon as he holds the flower all the petals and leaves are present shrunk and kind of closed to his surprise. Yuki then takes the flower from Kiyoshi before telling him that there is multiple purple mountain saxifrage all over the mountain and he had forty minutes to get his this flower. Kiyoshi agrees and right away gets to work he entered the forest, Looking around when suddenly something happened as he's still looking, his foot gets caught in a rope that pulls him. Dragging him for almost five minutes Kiyoshi tries his best to free himself but fails because of the speed at which he's being pulled. "Aghhhhh!" Finally, it stops leaving him in a daze. "What the hell just happened." He questions himself before getting up and then returning to the work. Later as he's on the search he stumbled upon a tree which has the flower kept on one of the branches, " Ahha! Found it" he says with joy before climbing up to retrieve it.

As soon as his hand gets close to the flower it vanishes in front of him, "What?! the heck-" He says before he loses his balance because of this state of shock and he falls with a loud thud. "Ouch!!" He squeals in pain before his eyes stumble upon the same flower now under a tree. He quickly gets up and runs towards it before he could touch the flower it again happens, "How is it disappearing again and again?!" He says looking around looking for the flower. He finds it, again and again, and runs towards the flower, The flower again changes its position, and Kiyoshi without wasting any second jumps there also and this goes on for good twenty minutes before he gives up and deduces a plan that he'll be throwing a rock at the flower which will supposedly hold it under it. He picks up a rock and throws it towards the flower completely missing it and instead hitting the tree. "Ah" he says before trying for the Second. Third? fourth time? and on his fifth time, he finally gets it in the right direction but as he expected it didn't happen like that. The flower again glitched and vanishes before the rock could even get near the flower.

Completely giving up and also seeing that his time has now officially ended he returns back to Yuki while making his way to Yuki he accidentally steppes on something which results in him getting attacked with stones. "Agh! Help! What?! Is happening?!" He questions as he's running to save his life as soon as he thought he's safe, Kiyoshi accidentally trips when his left foot gets caught in the branch of a tree making him fall. Kiyoshi looks really annoyed at this point and silently gets up before again making his way toward Yuki getting out of this forest. As soon as he gets out Yuki looks surprised and chuckles at seeing the state in which Kiyoshi had returned. "What happened?" he asked and Kiyoshi replies " The flower, I couldn't even get near it before it was vanishing and magically appearing somewhere else. I also accidentally fell down and was attacked by rocks." Yuki now laughing tells him that it was really unfortunate.

Kiyoshi asks Yuki about the flower and why it kept on disappearing, "You noticed that when I asked you to hold the flower it kinda shrinks its petals and leaves." Yuki says and Kiyoshi replies that he remembers, "Well, that flower isn't any normal one. It closed because you have no Dark energy inside you, The flower burns when someone who doesn't have Dark energy flowing through his body touches it and the flower vanishes to protect itself." Yuki says leaving Kiyoshi in deep thinking and a whole mountain of questions. "You may have noticed that it also reached the same way with the rock which was touched by you." Yuki continues and ends by asking Kiyoshi a question, "Yes it did happen and it had me wondering why." Yuki smiles and Tells him that they'll be coming here every morning to test his progress.

Kiyoshi agrees and asks Yuki what they'll be doing next and he replies that "For now our time is up and you'll need to return to your room to get charged for the classes."