Rob
Pew Pew Pew
Academy Days I
1005 Words
1005 Words
Takes place:
a long time ago
a long time ago
“Amaterasu,” the voice of her father resounded through the young heiress’s study. It was early in the morning, just before the break of dawn even, but for the blue-eyed girl her day felt as if it had already started in full. Not in the least because it was a special day. After all, today was the day she would be attending the Shinōreijutsuin as a first year student.
From the sound of her father’s voice, though, Yoshishige Izanagi, he still wasn’t too happy about it. He didn’t want his daughter to pursue a military career. He’d already been hard pressed just to allow his daughter to continue her practice with the blade, but to think she would now be going off to become one of those. It didn’t really make him happy at all, even if the Yoshishige family had a long history of being exemplary shinigami.
Just once, just one generation, he wanted to have more politicians than warriors. Had that really been too much to ask for? Well, the answer was obviously yes, but still.
“Amaterasu,” her father called out from behind her again, though the young heiress was hesitant to respond the call.
She’d been so engrossed in her studies, making sure that she knew exactly what to expect from the academy and what kind of curriculums it would be offering her, that she was only aware of her father’s voice being there. Yes, she acknowledged the presence of his voice, but nothing more. She wasn’t ignoring him, though... just hesitant to face him.
“Yes, father?” she responded in a monotonous tone of voice, her eyes still more or less fixated on the book in front of her and the table it was on.
“You know today is the day, right?” His voice was curt and more than a little cold, but it didn’t really faze Amaterasu in the least. After all, she knew exactly what her father’s feelings about her decisions were. They had always been the same, regardless of the decision. He didn’t want her to think for herself, he wanted her to pursue a path he had chosen for her, but she wouldn’t have it.
She had decided to pursue her own path, her own career... to forge her own life, her own destiny.
“Of course, father.” Her responses, while not as curt as her father’s, did not leave anything to the imagination either. “As you may have noticed, I am currently revising and previewing the work that needs to be done while at the academy.”
“Did you wake up so early just for this?”
“Please, father,” Amaterasu responded with a faint, lighthearted chuckle. “I’ve been up for about three hours now, and while I may be a diligent student, I’m not so diligent as to spend more than an hour at a time on my studies.
“I did my morning routine first, honing my skills, sharpening my blade, working out, and then I took some time off to read and I only just now started revising about half an hour ago.”
“Of course,” Izanagi responded with a sigh and in a somewhat annoyed tone, clearly not appreciating his daughter’s manner of speaking. “How silly of me to presume.”
“Quite.”
“What was that?” he asked with his voice raised.
“Nothing, father.”
It annoyed him how much his daughter had changed over the course of a few decades. Her thoughts, ideals and morals were still more or less the same. She still held the same virtues as before, but unlike before - where she still accepted her father’s words - she had begun to become rather rebellious. Or, well, maybe it wasn’t really her turning rebellious so much as becoming more like her father, like him.
He didn’t like it one bit, having to look at his daughter with her long, brown hair falling gracefully to below her shoulders and her steel-blue eyes full of conviction. It was like he was looking at a mirror image of himself, and doing that reminded him of why people were always wary of him.
“What about you, father?” Amaterasu asked with a tone that betrayed some slimmer of interest. “Though you normally wake up not too long after me, you’re always of someplace else for work. Did anything happen?”
Of course he couldn’t just come out and say that he’d cancelled all his meetings for the morning just so he could watch his oldest daughter prepare herself for her first day at the academy. He’d never live it down. After all, he was opposed to her going, and still was. That didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate the next step in his daughter’s life, though. What it did mean, though, was that he didn’t know how to respond to his daughter’s question.
“No,” he finally responded. “Nothing particularly interesting happened.”
“I see,” Amaterasu said, shrugging. “Then, if you don’t mind... I’d like to finish my revision.”
Awkward though the conversation may have gone, it was still a bit of a sour thing for Izanagi to take in hearing her daughter talk to him like that. He’d gotten somewhat used to it, but it still hurt him. She’d chosen to go her own way, and he wasn’t there to support her choice. He’d wanted for her to stay with him and become a protégé of his political views, but instead she’d chosen the opposite.
Turning herself around for the first time since her father had entered her study, Amaterasu looked Izanagi straight in the eyes. “Is there something wrong, father?” she asked, her head slightly cocked to the left as if she were expecting him to flip out on her or something.
“I...” he began, but somehow found himself swallowing his words almost immediately thereafter, “no... no, there’s nothing wrong. I hope u have a nice first day at school, Amaterasu.”
For a moment it looked as if the young heiress was about to get up from her seat, but then turned around again and went back to her studies.
“Thank you, father.”