11: Does This Look Clean To You?!
Spring cleaning. Not that the barracks needs any more of it. We clean up everyday, so it's unlikely to be greatly dirty. But for some reason, Captain Brainard wants to do some spring cleaning. So that's what we did. Right after lunch, we all headed back to the barracks. All belongings were placed on each cadet's cot. All the closets and shelves were empty.
So we wiped and swept and mopped and brushed and scrubbed—we cleaned. We've gone through all the shelves, through every corner, all the windows, underneath all the cots, behind every door, inside every closet. And now it's clean. All of it. Spic and span.
And so, after more or less four hours of cleaning, Captain Brainard let us go. We picked up our rifles and we marched out of the barracks, tired but eager for today's target practice.
But we—me and Roy—were lucky enough to be the last men to leave.
And you know what they say about the last men… no, not "save the best for last". It's "the last man will suffer." Well, technically, the last men will suffer, since we had to be at least, in pairs all the time.
Captain Brainard had a bit of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was a neat freak. "Hughes, Mustang," he called us, just as we were about to leave. "Does the floor look clean to you?"
"Yes, sir." I replied. We've swept it and mopped it a while ago, so yes, I'd have to say it did.
"What about you, Mustang?"
Roy side-glanced at me. I was telling him—through my eyes—to say yes, it was clean. I think he didn't read the signal; light must've hit my glasses or something. "N-No, sir." No, Roy!
"Crawl or log roll?" He asked.
Before Roy could say anything else, I answered. "Crawl, sir!" I knew it. He's going to make us clean it.
"All right then, crawl your way out to the door," he said, as he walked ahead of us.
So we found ourselves on our bellies, rifles on our backs, and we were crawling out the barracks. "You should've said it was clean!" I whispered.
"Yeah, but it obviously wasn't!" Roy replied, whispering as well. "Everyone's been stepping on it for who knows how long! No matter how much you sweep and scrub and mop it, it will still be dirty."
Point taken.
A/N: Haha, one of the most memorable experiences when I was training. Me and my friend were the last and I gave the same answer as Roy did, haha! (But my friend didn't say it was clean or anything. She was just... silent, because I was higher—in rank and in height, lol—than her.) Then we had to crawl away from the barracks. XD
Ah, good times. *is shot*
Btw, Captain Brainard is, obviously, an OC. Brainard is just some random name I saw from the spine of one of my books, haha.