Food for Thought
Autumn. The cold wind sizzled through the village, as a young man opened the door of his house and inbreathed deeply.
A whole morning sitting on a desk, reporting the whereabouts of his team... currently in sick leave.
His rival somewhere in the Lightning Country, in mission or so he was told.
Dead morning, all in all. But the afternoon was all his.
Thoughtfully, the young jounin ran a palm across the nearest tree.
"Damp... we're going to have rain tonight. Better go train now, getting sick is not something I'd call youthful..."
Halting his outstanding sprint, he reached his favourite training place.
Frowning, he saw a familiar bunch of books, tidily piled, over a stone he used for warm-ups.
"Does he even sleep?"
There was the little boy he had seen training in his training ground for quite a while. Only he wasn't training today. He was lying on the floor, his face buried amongst his arms, all his clothes dirty, his fists raw and bloody.
The young jounin crouched and checked his vital signs.
"Unconscious, probably he's been training himself too much. This can give me the chance I was waiting for. His parents or his siblings will come to collect him, and I'll be able to congratulate them for his hard work."
In his mind's eye, he imagined – because he was never conscious when it happened – one of his older sibs carriyng his training-exhausted body back to the clanhouse. He could picture clearly the surprise and emotion in his mother's eyes, if any passer-by had picked their little failure and told them to be proud of his effort.
Now, it was going to be his turn.
He picked up some dry grass and laid the boy comfortably there, covering him under his jacket.
"They will be here anytime. They know he's outside... or maybe they have noticed it's going to rain and he ran away. It's not the first time I see him here."
Pushup followed pushup and nobody came. The jounin's frown deepened. He couldn't believe this boy's parents neglected him so much. And what about the siblings? Couldn't they see the little guy was going to end up soaked?
The training progressed to its end. The older nin straightened and looked down, pained to the core.
"No one is here. So this can only mean..."
As the feeble, cloud-covered sunlight setted in the horizon, Maito Gai had to admit he'd been wrong this time. He wasn't easily wrong. But this time, he had applied his own experience to this boy. And it clearly wasn't his case.
He closed his eyes, a nail-like pressure in his heart.
This boy was alone, on his own. Just like him...
He bent down to pick the boy, wondering what to do, when something rectangular fell from the small neck to the ground. Reaching down for it, he found a key attached with a very rusty chain and a wood-carved address.
KazeHitofuki, Rokku Taku. Windgust, House Six.
As soon as he picked the boy and the books under one arm, gathering his abnormal speed, he decided to race the rain. Not just as a challenge, but as a way to prevent the little warrior from getting wet.
Skidding to a halt, the jounin looked at the shabby, worn, depressing little house. He knew KazeHitofuki, it was a quarter for the war orphans, one of the most modest and brought-down of Konoha's hinterland areas. The area where he lived, KajiKyûbi, had been rebuilt completely after the Nine Tails attacked, but before... when he still had Lee with him... it wasn't very different from Hitofuki. As he unlocked the door, a bolt of lightning roared in the sky, and he remembered suddenly all his pain and grief.
"Not now, not today. This kid needs me."
He was prepared to see a messed-up living room and a more messed kitchen, but he blinked in awe when he looked at a clean, orderly kitchen, that looked like it had never been used.
"Is it that he's got someone who cooks for him?"
The answer was on the kitchen table. A small cooking book with a pile of child-written notes on every side. Marks on the wall showed he kept record of his height, and a scale said the same of his weight.
The boy jounin was moved. Now that was dedication.
He moved upstairs, as the rain started to hit the windows, into a bedroom that was as tidy as the first floor had been. He placed the boy inside his bed and bandaged carefully his knuckles. Slowly, he walked down the stairs, looked at the fridge, inspected the cupboards and its contents.
The boy was indeed a healthy eater, as the milk boxes, vegetables and lack of candy bars showed.
"Just probably, he's not eating as much as he's spending!"
In a couple of minutes, he prepared rice balls, korokke and okonomiyaki, stirring one pan while moving the other in a quite comical way.
Pulling out plates, he left the stuff to cool. He pored over the boy's books. Mastering your Body and Taijutsu for Beginners. Two notebooks and a neatly written homework guide. Taking off a page, he wrote instructions for a couple of minutes, sliding them into the taijutsu book.
When he was satisfied with his writing, he locked the door, went to the second flooor and slid the keychain into the kid's fingers. As he combed his fringe carefully with his fingers, his hand looked so big in contrast. Like a big brother looking after a little one.
The sharp pain returned to harbor in his chest.
With a sigh, the jounin covered the child with his futon. His own face screwed in concentration, hands in the seal position, he prepared to vanish from the house to the outside.
POOF!
Gai looked down and his face deformed in shock.
He had moved himself onto the roof...
"I SCREWED THE MOVE AGAIN!"
--
Rock Lee's eyes opened several hours later. It was 4:30 AM and his stomach roared with hunger. As he rolled his futon off him with his feet, he noticed the bandaged hands and the fact he was at home.
"How did I arrive home? I do not remember bandaging my hands either!"
Puzzled and confused, he walked down to the first floor to pick his homework and prepare something to eat. As he pulled open the fridge, his eyes widened. All that food!
" And I do not remember cooking! I must have done it while I was sleeping! OUTSTANDING!"
Helping himself to the treats, he lit a lamp to start his written homework, and as he turned the taijutsu book open, he found the neatly written notes:
" A shinobi has to eat correctly before he can train."
A table of daily calories followed, with precise detail of vegetables and fruits, as well as traditional dishes.
Opening his round eyes wide, he continued reading the notes:
"Training the mind comes while training the body. Once this happens, the mind will train even when the body's asleep.
When a shinobi puts all of himself in the training, his true strength comes through.
Shinobi are not allowed to think badly of themselves, as long as they out-train everybody around them, their constance is their self-esteem.
A shinobi must not mind training on his own. The sun, the moon and the stars are eyes that look upon him, telling him they're proud of his effort..."
The boy's eyes filled with tears. The notes echoed in his heart as heaven-sent rules. Wiping his eyes, he read the notes through. When he was done, he pinned them to his fridge with a magnet. His heart was light and happy as he wrote his homework in full detail.
At that very same time, a young jounin puffed into the hospital... unfortunatedly, over the front desk.
- GAI-SENPAI!!
- Uh... ah! It was on purpose!
- NANIIII!!
- Welll, you know me! I'm training myself to appear on desks, just in case I need it!
- GET OFF THE DESK THIS MOMENT!!
"Damn it, I can't get the gist of it! Curse you, appearing jutsu!"
--
Four years later.
- Ah! Sensei! I was not expecting you...
- Don't fret, I just strolled by here after my training! Here, I brought you this... be careful, it's still warm!
- You should not have bother– ow! It burns!
- Lee, just take this as another kind of training! Give that nikujaga back, and get your hands in water... that's it! I'll heat them in the flicker of an eye!
As Maito Gai crossed the door of his student and pupil's house, the evening after the Konoha-laps-on-hands incident, he looked around the house he knew so well by then. Rock Lee stood looking at him in silence, torn between anxiety and eagerness. He, now, knew that all the times he'd thought he'd come home on his own, it had been the man in front of him to carry his exhausted body back to the safety of his house.
The jounin brought in a treat: home-made fried prawns and nikujaga from his house. It was plain obvious he wasn't 'strolling by'... he had come on purpose. Lee kept an expectant silence, following Gai's movements with all the intensity of his big round eyes. When they were warm enough to eat, he held his breath as Gai poured the meal in the plates. Then, he clapped, and his sensei grinned in that self-confident way that had brought Lee to admire him, almost five years earlier.
Between mouthfuls, the jounin explained his visit to his still awestruck student.
- All right, then! I came to your house because we need to make a training plan to make a splendid shinobi out of you!
Lee nodded, taking out his familiar notebook, not noticing he held chopsticks instead of a pencil...
- To start with, do you know what is a training plan, Lee? Have you ever followed one before?
- Yes I do! Please give a look at my fridge, Gai sensei!
Gai gave a pleasant nod and turned to oblige. His narrow eyes widened. He saw his notes pinned to the fridge, and beside them, in Lee's handwriting, his progresses.
"Got 2 inches taller"
"Can punch faster"
"Made 200 more pushups"
- That is the plan I have followed until now. I found it in my academy books. Do you mean I have to cancel it and follow another one instead?
Gai's ears heard, but his eyes were fixed over those two lines...
When a shinobi puts all of himself in the training, his true strength comes through.
A shinobi must not mind training on his own. The sun, the moon and the stars are eyes that look upon him, telling him they're proud of his effort...
The Genin watched his sensei's mouth distend into a calm smile.
- No, Lee, it's okay to follow that one. It suits you...
- R-really? I do not know who wrote it, but it seemed worth following...
Grinning, he placed his hand on top of Lee's and his voice lowered to a whisper.
- I think that myself. It's okay., Whoever wrote it... it seems that he wrote it especially for you.