Thursday, February 6th, 2014.
Kitakami showed up for breakfast this morning. I don't really expect her to show herself again, much less leave her room, after today, but at least it shows that she's not completely clinging onto Ooi's memory. Houshou, who was really surprised to see Kitakami show up for breakfast, as were many of the other girls who saw her, asked me what had happened, so I explained what happened last night. Houshou was visibly disappointed in my actions and scolded me, telling me that helping Kitakami recover from Ooi's death was not by forcing her to get over it. I told her that while I didn't exactly feel comfortable making such an ultimatum to her myself, at the rate she's going, Akashi's going to repair everyone before Kitakami learns to deal with Ooi's death. Okay, yeah, sure, losing a sibling is tragic, when is it not. But then again, war is tragic; life in general is just one giant tragic mess, if you think about it. How many times have I said this in this journal already? Crying over the death of someone you care about isn't ever going to make them come back.
Otherwise, all those men whom I've sent to their deaths would be alive again.
Even still, Houshou insisted that there could've been a better way. If I continued with the kind of behavior I've been showing towards Kitakami so far, if she does even manage to get over her depression, she'll likely end up sullen and bitter at everything and everyone. Was that the kind of ship girl I wanted in my fleet? She pointed out that even if they were ship girls and soldiers, they all still had human emotions and feelings, and that while I may have trained my men back in America in a certain way, just like the incident with my starter destroyers during our first week here, that kind of attitude wouldn't work here. I was working with and commanding girls, not boys. I told her that I wasn't about to use the excuse of gender differences to cut Kitakami some slack, because I don't see why women can't be psychologically as strong as men. I know that this doesn't automatically mean that my ship girls already are, as proven to me during that first week when I attempted to drill them all Navy-like, but that being said, this is the fucking military - you have to expect at least a certain threshold of conduct, otherwise this isn't a base that I'm running, it's just gonna be another old dockyard. After all, there shouldn't be any reason why a guy like me should be innately better than Kitakami at dealing with the death of a comrade. Admittedly, I personally haven't had the misfortune to lose anyone particularly close to me like on the level of Kitakami and Ooi, but that doesn't mean Kitakami can't get over it eventually. The problem that I have with it's that she shows no sign of recovering - or even wanting to recover.
Whatever. I can sense that the whole issue with Kitakami seems to now be going against me, and I kinda don't even want to write about it or mention it in the journal anymore. I think it's just best that I leave this area of contention alone, recognize that this's out of my expertise and out of my league and let it play out on its own, lest it really does turn out that it's because of my own social ineptitude that's caused this to be such a giant fucking mess. (Or has the potential to be.) Better to abandon ship before the other girls get involved and start taking sides like a goddamn pickup basketball game, and now that's something this base can d without, especially after this last mission that started it all in the first place. Whether or not I'm doing the right thing, in the end, I did what I felt was necessary, which may not have been the best choice, but we'll find out about that soon enough, I suppose. And if things don't turn out to be okay in the end, then, well, I mean...all I can say at this point is that we're all fucked. After all, you can't really expect someone like me to know how to make a girl feel better. I don't mind people relying on me to make a mission become a success. I don't mind people relying on me to come up with a plan that'll get everyone out of a hot zone alive. But this? You're better off playing some random cheesy dating sim and getting better advice from that.
For fuck's sake, I never even had a girlfriend or even bothered going around dating, so what the fuck do I know.
Oh, and might I add, in the end, I'm still a fucking American gaijin. Let's not forget about that now; just thought I'd throw that in here.
Y'know, in case you didn't realize that wasn't important.
That all aside, after breakfast, just as I'd done for Inazuma, I baked another cake for Souryuu, and because I started making it after breakfast instead of before, everyone saw me making something and came over to watch. I had to explain to everyone that it was a cake for Souryuu to celebrate her eye surgery, and since I had already made a cake for Inazuma's recovery, it was only fair for me to make one for Souryuu too. This caused an instant uproar among the other girls, especially those who were heavily damaged. Akebono started screaming bloody abuse at me, demanding why I hadn't made a cake for her as well when she got discharged from the medbay, and kicked me right in the back when I was carrying the cake batter over to the oven, and I ended up spending another half-hour cleaning up the spilled batter, getting it out of every single nook 'n cranny. Luckily the other girls helped out, so that saved a lot of time, but Akebono escaped from the mess hall before Takao could get a hold of her to punish her. Takao demanded that I put some discipline on that destroyer, since she'd been up to no good ever since she'd come to Okinawa, running around with absolutely no regard to authority or her older comrades.
Eh, seeing what happened so far between me and Kitakami...I think I'll pass for now. God forbid Houshou yell at me for being too harsh on Akebono, am I right...
So because of Akebono's interruption, I ended up bringing Souryuu her cake a full hour after she'd already awoken, and Akashi had to keep her distracted in the medbay so that she wouldn't have to discharge her until I finally arrived with Houshou, Shouhou, and a couple other girls who've made good friends with Souryuu so far. She, too, was quite overjoyed at the little cake that I made for her, complete with the candle on top. The cake itself was a lot smaller than I had originally planned, since I just had to yolo it in order to save time, but it turned out okay in the end, and like yesterday, everyone had another slice of blueberry cake with more whipped cream.
By the way, Souryuu's new right eye is a burning blue. Not a normal blue, not a sea-blue, not a sky-blue, but a flame-blue. She had pretty blue eyes before, but now she's got two eyes of different hues of blue, and it looks hella cool. I'll admit, I'm a huge sucker for heterochromic people, or people with eyes that're different colors of each other. Even if it's different shades of the same color, I still consider that heterochromia, even if it technically isn't, as long as it's plainly obvious that there's a tone difference.
And as it turns out, I barely started my morning paperwork a half-hour before lunch, so I just informed Houshou and Mamiya and Irako that I would have to skip out on lunch for today. As I've gotten to learn, Houshou really doesn't like it when I skip meals, and I've yet to find out exactly why (other than the whole eating during designated mealtimes thing, unless that's the only reason), so I apologized to Houshou in advance so that I can cover my ass for later. Though, Houshou seemed to figure that out, so she brought me my lunch straight to my office anyway, for which I was grateful.
Suzuya barged into my office sometime after lunch and complained to me why I didn't make a cake for her. After all, she'd been injured too, but she didn't get a recovery cake, as it's apparently come to be known throughout the base. I told her that for her, the cake was a lie, but obviously she didn't get the reference, so I just said that she'd only been lightly damaged; she didn't suffer anything worse than a deep cut from a piece of flying shrapnel that ripped up her left arm a bit. Why would she want a cake for that? But Suzuya, obviously, wasn't satisfied with that answer and constantly bugged me for an hour straight, begging me to make a cake for her. I didn't even find that hour to be all that annoying, partly since I didn't expect her to bug me for an hour straight, so I just played along and semi-ignored her while I finished up my paperwork. Finally, she asked me what she needed to do to get me to make her a cake. I told her that I made cakes for those who didn't ask for them, and immediately Suzuya left my office. Guess I should've told her that in the first place.
Got a surprisingly very late email from HQ with a shipping invoice attached confirming the delivery of supplies that's due to come in tomorrow morning. The email subject was titled "URGENT", so I'm not too sure what's going on. It's not like I ordered any supplies, and it's not like we're running short of anything in particular. I wonder what's going on...it doesn't seem to be a terrorist plot, since the HQ email is valid and I haven't received any calls of the electronic database of HQ getting hacked or anything. We'll find out tomorrow morning, I suppose...the shipping invoice only labeled standard navy supplies like fuel, ammo, steel, bauxite, foodstuffs, and other boring stuff, so I'm not expecting anything huge. It's probably just consolation supplies from HQ. Fucking bastards.
I headed into Shinsengumi for some ramen and Ramune earlier tonight after dinner, at around 2200 hours. Lately, Hakata ramen and Ramune's become my night snack more and more regularly - I really should make a cake for Houshou too to thank her for her daily commitment to her izakaya that she runs for the enjoyment of everyone else at base, not just my own. To my surprise, Kirishima had borrowed Fubuki's laptop and set it up on the counter of the bar, and all the girls were in there singing karaoke and having a good time. I don't know where Kirishima got a microphone, so don't ask me. But they were all having fun, so I'm not about to stop them. They invited me to join them too, and when I turned them down, saying that my singing was terrible, they just pressed on and on and on until I finally gave in. I think Houshou was intentionally delaying making my ramen to force me to join them, because once I was done, my ramen was sitting on the counter where I had initially sat down. As expected, everyone laughed at my singing, so I guess my masculinity's been bruised somewhat, but whatever, I never professed to be good at singing anyway.
Whatever I can do to help raise everyone's spirits after that terrible capture mission, I guess.