ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 𝟷| ᴘᴀʀᴛ 𝟷
It was not a peaceful sleep Shunbin was graced with the night before this one. Very occasionally, he would have a nightmare, reliving the day his father took his life, except this time he was their with him, powerless to stop it. No matter how much Shunbin pleaded, and begged, and demanded, his father simply looked past him, through him, didn't hear him... it was lucky, then, that his mother woke him up before the final act occurred.
She stood over him, gently shaking him awake as a few errant droplets of sweat crawled down his face. He blinked a few times, his tired, stinging eyes focusing in on her face. For once since her return it was a genuinely happy expression. He went to touch her face to make sure he wasn't dreaming, but that was the arm she was holding on too. She wobbled a bit on her bum leg, expression faltering. Shunbin leapt up to a sitting position and grabbed her arm, steadying her, and the happiness kind of returned, though it was more relief now.
"Ooch, sorry about that Shunbin. Didn't mean to startle you awake. You must be anxious about your big day today!"
Nothing he could say that would actual respond to that statement would leave his mother Akane happy, so he deflected.
"You shouldn't be up and walking so early mother... it's," Shunbin took a quick peek out of his window.
"barely even sunrise."Great, now he knew why he was so tired. He wouldn't have much time to jog himself awake either, considering how early Kameyo-san wanted them to hit Training Ground #11. He threw off his sheets and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. No time for a good breakfast either.
"I wanted to make sure you were ready to make the Surudo proud today. Good thing I checked! You might have missed it!"
If only. Shunbin finally got to his feet and did some easy stretches to ease him into the day. He shooed his mother out of his room with a simple
'well I'll be there the sooner I get my shinobi gear on so get off of your feet mom' and got to work preparing. A shinobi was able to ready themselves to kill from sleep in under a minute, a teacher of his said once. Naturally, Shunbin took about two. Who wanted to practice boring crap like that anyways? He was fast enough, and he wanted to get his blood flowing a little bit with a jog anyways. Once he was finished with all that, he walked downstairs and gave his mother a hug. She wished him luck, and with that he began his little jog to Training Ground #11.
The morning air was cool and crisp, which made the whole thing quite pleasant, even if he wasn't very excited for what happened once he reached his destination. He passed a few shops, saw a few people milling about their day, shops setting thing out and all that. But it was over far too soon; Within a few minutes he had reached his destination. If he still lived in the compound, he'd have had a longer trip here... but that came with it's own issues.
Somehow, he was quite early. The only people here were Kameyo-sensei and Nagaichi-san. He gave them both a curt wave, and began doing some sword kata with his Oodachi. He kept his distance from the two fairly intense women, not really wanting to talk to them. He'd have to soon, of course, but until the rest of the team arrived, he'd allow himself the pleasure of working out in his own little world.