六月一日(日)

The summer rains are starting to come in. Seeing this rain, my ship sisters and I have been quite happy.

If only Teitoku was here to enjoy the rainy season with us...it would be the happiest time of my life. But...but that isn't the case, unfortunately.

I will not lie to myself here; my biggest desire was to spend the rainy season with Teitoku. Perhaps this is only my personal fantasies speaking for me, but I really wanted to sit with Teitoku in his office on the couch, looking out the window behind his desk to watch the rain fall. It would have been better in Okinawa, too, for it would been raining much more down there than here in Tokyo.

But since we are in the midst of our training, the rain did not do much to halt the progress of our training. Some of us, like me and my ship sisters, are perfectly okay working in the rain - Suzukaze even said that she prefers it, as opposed to running our morning runs in the growing summer heat. Others are less enthusiastic about the rain, while others absolutely detest it. I suppose it is really up to personal preference.

Shigure-onee-san talked with me about the possibility of a connection between our names and our affinity for the rain while we were practicing firearm training in the morning. She asked me if I agreed with her in thinking that perhaps our affinity for the rain was because of our names, that our developers from Seal Team Six took into account the meaning of our names and made it a part of our personalities. I replied by saying that she was probably right, because it would be rather odd if our names referred to something having to do with rainy weather but we ourselves ended up not liking the rain. But when I asked Shigure-onee-san why she thought about something like that, she said that she couldn't help but think that maybe our affinity for the rain wasn't "natural". In other words, she said that maybe our names placed an artificial attribute about us that, should we have been born as normal humans, we might have not had developed on our own. She said that if she thought of it in this way, she didn't really feel so comfortable about having a part of her personality being "fake" or "fabricated". She could manage with having her body genetically modified to be stronger than that of normal human bodies and, to a certain extent, having powers that gave her a persona-altering edge in a battle, because such powers were meant to help her gain an advantage in a fight. But Shigure-onee-san admitted to me that although she didn't blame our developers from Seal Team Six for designing us in this way, she didn't want to feel like a part of herself as a person was determined for her.

I understand where she is coming from with this. Sometimes, before I was deployed to Okinawa and was stationed in Tokyo for a while with everyone else, I spent many a night pondering what being a "normal" human must feel like. Being born from a factory or a test tube instead of from the womb of a mother, being "constructed" in a laboratory instead of being nurtured and cared for in the body of a mother - if I think of my own life in this way, certainly I feel an eerie sense of artificiality that clashes with my desire to feel and behave like a normal human being as much as I can. And my problem is that I still do, a little bit, even now. I think that everyone in the Platoon can agree with this, that everyone has a bit of a weird feeling in the back of her head that tells her that she is not a real human being. And it's not as though that is not true - we are, scientifically speaking, not true human beings, not in any conventional sense.

But I told Shigure-onee-san that even if we consciously felt like parts of us, whether physical or psychological, were indeed predetermined, that didn't mean we should hate it. It is not as though we can change facts about us that cannot be changed, like our origins or the powers that we wield. So those things weren't as important as what we ourselves decided to do with the powers that have been given to us. I read in one of Teitoku's journal entries about this "American mentality", that one's actions are more important than one's facts, because facts by themselves mean nothing, while actions can produce facts. I told Shigure-onee-san that maybe this was our problem, that we tend to dwell on what is concrete and cannot be changed and pine for them to be changed, when the answer to coming to terms with them is as simple as making sure that our facts help us take the actions we want to take.

In addition, I mentioned to Shigure-onee-san how I felt more and more like a normal human teenage girl once I got to know Teitoku more and more. He chose to take care of us like a father takes care of his children - well, as I say that, it sounds a bit weird to me because, well, I've...I'm in love with him and all. But never mind that, I admitted to Shigure-onee-san that being with Teitoku helped me forget that I was a ship girl. He made me feel like a normal girl, and that's why I love him - one of the reasons, anyway.

Shigure-onee-san agreed with me, saying that she couldn't have put it any better. She praised me and told me that she was truly grateful for having such a sweet sister like me whom she could come to and talk with about more complicated things like this.

When she said those things to me, I couldn't hide my happiness. I remember the first days when Yuudachi-onee-san and Shigure-onee-san arrived at our base in Okinawa, I was afraid to talk to them because of the kind of powers they had. Rumor had it that before our transfer to Okinawa, even before Teitoku arrived there before us, the naval officer who had been in charge of Shigure-onee-san and Yuudachi-onee-san got sent to the hospital because he'd tried doing something to those two, and that wasn't how I had imagined my ship sisters to be. In my head, I pictured them as gentle, outgoing girls with whom I could make friends and spend lots of time with enjoying each other's company and doing all sorts of things with them that normal teenage girls that we'd resemble would do, but after what I'd heard of them, I was hesitant. But eventually I managed to overcome that barrier, and we really did open up to each other like I'd hoped. And since then, we'd come a long way in such a short amount of time.

It's come to the point where now, I truly love Shigure-onee-san as my sister, not just my ship sister. We are comrades, sisters-at-arms, friends, but above all, siblings. I'm eternally grateful that in the midst of the loss of Teitoku, I still have Shigure-onee-san to be there to show me lots of love and kindness to heal my aching heart.

Oh, I should mention that Shigure-onee-san's firearm of choice is still the Beowulf rifle given to her by Teitoku and our developers. She has stated to our trainers at the firing range that she will use no other weapon.

Unfortunately, I didn't expect this to have unintended consequences in the form of our other ship sister, Suzukaze. Suzukaze had seen me with Shigure-onee-san and saw how close we were, talking and laughing together, so later at dinner tonight she pulled me aside to another table different than the one we usually sit at and asked me since when I got so chummy with Shigure-onee-san. Suzukaze asked me if I'd forgotten how dangerous she and Yuudachi-onee-san had gotten - it seems that the incident from five months ago is still fresh on her mind, how Shigure-onee-san and Yuudachi-onee-san sent that poor officer to the hospital. I tried to convince Suzukaze otherwise, that our time together at Okinawa changed the both of them for the better and that they were no longer prone to fits of violence as they were alleged to do from before. I cited Shigure's different appearance as my proof, explaining to Suzukaze that Seal Team Six, our developers, put her and Yuudachi-onee-san through a special kind of remodeling surgery that fixed their problems and made them super strong. I urged Suzukaze to come with me to have a chat with Shigure-onee-san one time, because even though we share the same dorm room, Suzukaze refuses to have anything to do with her. Shigure-onee-san herself is painfully aware of this and seems to respect Suzukaze's avoidance of her - perhaps she is well aware of the social damage her act of violence against her former officer has done.

But Suzukaze refused. Instead, she urged me to dissociate myself with Shigure-onee-san, but I, too, refused that as well. I asked Suzukaze if she was simply jealous of the fact that I was getting along so well with Shigure-onee-san and not as much with her. Please keep in mind that Suzukaze and I were very inseparable before my transfer to Okinawa, for we did everything together, almost as though we were twin sisters. Several officers, in fact, mistook us for twins, for our physical features and our heights are very similar. So I thought that maybe Suzukaze just wanted us to go back to the days when it was just the two of us.

Suzukaze did admit that part of it was that she felt like she was being left out and wanted me to pay more attention to her, because she doesn't have anyone else she can call a friend. She doesn't usually talk to anyone else, and because of her aggressive and sometimes brash personality that gives off the air of arrogance, she tends to alienate our fellow ship girls here at Atsugi Naval Air Station. Most notably, she and Asashimo-chan always get into verbal arguments whenever they get the chance because their similar personalities always clash. But she said that she was just trying to look out for me. She couldn't trust Shigure-onee-san, and she didn't want me to get hurt when Shigure-onee-san happens to go berserk like the last time she did.

But even still, I told Suzukaze that I would not abandon Shigure-onee-san just for the sake of restoring our own sistership that we once had. In fact, I suggested, why couldn't I have both of them as my friends and sisters, and even better, why couldn't we all be friends and sisters with each other like we were meant to be? I begged Suzukaze to give Shigure-onee-san a chance, to join us in our daily activities and see for herself how much Shigure-onee-san has changed.

Suzukaze refused me yet again. "No, you're the one who's changed, Samidare," Suzukaze said. She brought up the previous night, citing how she comforted me when I was feeling down. She said that Shigure-onee-san would never be able to make me feel better the way Suzukaze could.

I tried to tell her that she was wrong. But...if I did, Suzukaze would think that I'm trying to say that Shigure-onee-san is somehow a better sister than Suzukaze herself is, and she might be hurt by that. So I said nothing. The only thing I think I can do now is to go talk to Shigure-onee-san herself and explain the situation with her and ask her if she wouldn't try to speak to Suzukaze herself, for Suzukaze, being the youngest among us, would be obligated to listen to Shigure-onee-san if Shigure-onee-san imposed her position as the oldest sister of the Shiratsuyu-Class onto her. But even that is risky, and it might alienate Suzukaze from us forever.

I just want the three of us to be family, along with the rest of the girls here at Atsugi.

I love you, Teitoku.

五月雨