January 13th, 2014.
Start of a new week. Or, at the time I'm writing this, the end of the start of a new week.
As soon as I arrived at my office for the morning paperwork, I saw Error playing around with Batsubyou the cat. I had left the bag of catnip that came in yesterday with the rest of the supplies in front of her room, so it's good that she used it. Angry secretary girl avoided.
But now I have the problem of Error always looking away from me whenever I need to talk to her. It seems just because I bought her a bag of catnip, she seems to have taken a liking to me, or that's how I'll take it. I don't know how I should react to her reactions, and while I'm into anime and stuff, I'm no Keima Katsuragi who sits at home playing every single goddamn dating sim ever created. I just hope this stays like some sort of puppy love kinda thing, but I have no idea what's going to happen while I'm here.
I'm used to making my own coffee or tea and making my own breakfast in the morning, and so far, usually it's been like cereal, muffins, a sandwich, maybe a croissant sandwich if I'm feeling extra hungry. So imagine my surprise when I walk into the kitchen and find Mamiya and Irako already hard at work making breakfast and lunch for today. To make me feel even worse, they even gave me an American-style breakfast with scrambled eggs, four strips of bacon cooked with maple syrup, sausage links, and tater tots in a matter of minutes. I almost didn't even want to eat it because I didn't feel like I deserved their magnificent cooking skills - this morning's breakfast was possibly the best breakfast I've had since I learned what my taste buds exactly were. I tried to insist on making my own breakfast, but they said that if I did, there would be no point in having them work at my base, so I gave in.
It's so much different here interacting with these girls than, say, if I were at a typical American military base. Usually I'm used to dealing with people who either let you do whatever the hell you want and don't give a damn or they're difficult to work with because what they want directly conflicts with what you want. Here, the problem's that people want me to get what I want, but the discrepancy lies in how I'll get what I want. Isn't that crazy? That's how polite my subordinates are - well, most of them, for the most part. I would've never imagined a base like this could exist, and it never ceases to blow my mind that I'm actually in charge of a base like this.
I guess if that's your problem, you have a lot of other things you need to be worried about first.
Okay, for the big news: at the end of this week, we're scheduled to receive even more naval personnel. I haven't been given names, but apparently we're to receive two light cruisers, a heavy cruiser, a light carrier, a standard carrier, a battleship, and a submarine. In order to prepare, I was instructed by HQ to send the destroyers out on their first mission towards Sector B.
Sector B is the classified name we've given the area of Abyssal-infested waters. I can't disclose the exact location in case other unauthorized entities want to try to gain access to it for whatever reason, but that's what we're calling it.
Their objective is to patrol the perimeter of the outermost areas of Sector B and engage any squads of enemy vessels that show any sign of aggression towards them. I told the destroyers that this was strictly a reconnaissance mission, that their first priority was to gain information and above all keep themselves from getting into dangerous situations that would lead to any one of them sinking.
They left at 1400 hours this afternoon and returned at 21:00 hours successfully. I transmitted what information they scrounged up over to HQ and reported a successful mission.
Mamiya and Irako again whipped up another fantastic dinner for everyone when the destroyers returned in celebration of their first victory out at sea. They all seemed really proud of themselves. I am, too, but...something felt weird, sitting there in the mess hall with everyone. It's really eerie to think that my soldiers are these girls who look like they're middle schoolers or high school freshmen, and they're cheering because they've blown shit up. I know this is a constant thing I'm mentioning, but I just can't get used to it. It's nice to see them happy and celebrate their victories, but still, the fact that they're cheering because they've won a naval battle...
You know what, I just gotta shut up and deal with it. Yeah, normally it's grown-ass men who I see normally cheering when they shoot a helicopter out of the air with an AA-Stinger launcher, but what's so different about my ship girls coming back from a victory? Even I said it myself when I explained to them on the night before I changed my drilling: I drilled them the same way that I drilled my regular soldiers because I was indiscriminate in my belief that I could produce the best soldiers in the world. So why is my brain stuck on viewing them as normal girls, not soldiers?
Is it because deep inside, I hold some sort of affection for them already, and it's just that I don't realize it myself yet? Or is it because it's just a gender thing, that I prefer to see men fighting, not women? I haven't been able to figure it out, but I feel like this's gonna be one of those things that I probably won't ever get to find out.
Got an email saying that someone's going to fly in tomorrow to take a look at the piano. Fuck yeah.
Houshou came to speak with me today when the destroyers were out on their mission. She asked for permission to build an izakaya (unfortunately I don't know the kanji for this), which is like a sort of bar or small restaurant. I asked her why, because I was curious to know what her intentions where, and she said that she had heard of and visited several of these restaurants while she was in the mainland and wanted to open one herself in the base for the rest of the ship girls. She said that it would be a good idea because the base would soon become occupied with many more ship girls, and that her little izakaya would provide a place for social engagement and relaxation, and just a place to grab a bite to eat and something to drink when the mess halls were closed. It reminded me of the times when I was in Hargrave and when I was just fresh outta Hargrave too, when I first joined the Navy, when my friends and I would always come back late from drills and other shit and find to our dismay that the cafeterias would be closed by the time we got there and there really wasn't anything we could do or anywhere else we could go. So I gave her permission and spent a good couple hours with her, Mamiya, and Irako planning out how we'd get around to actually building the bar.
In return for allowing her to build her own izakaya on site, Houshou promised that she would provide me with free sake whenever I felt the urge to drink while her shop was open, which I declined because I don't like drinking. I told Houshou, who initially was dismayed at my declination, that I had very bad experiences with alcohol before, including one time when one of my petty officers in the navy practically force-fed me a half bottle of Jack Daniel's and made me end up spending the next day hunched over the goddamn toilet on one of our nights off. I demoted the guy who did that, but only by a rank that he got back anyway within a month. But instead I told her that I would frequent her shop for the food. I'm much more interested in Japanese food than alcohol, but that's just me.
The stereo that I installed in my office hasn't been in use yet because I forgot to bring an extension cord that'll hook up my stereo to my laptop that I have in my office so that I can just play music directly from my laptop to the stereo and have music playing that way. It should be coming in soon...hopefully, I still don't really have an idea of how fast personal stuff gets shipped to Okinawa.
I'm kind of looking forward to the end of this week, actually. I wanna see how the other ship girls are like, I really do. I just hope they're just as nice as Samidare and as helpful as Akashi and Ooyodo, and I hope I don't screw up my image for them too. Certainly I hope what happened with my initial destroyers doesn't repeat itself when I meet the others.
Batsubyou just came into my room - it seems I forgot to close the door, somehow I left it ajar. Error didn't come immediately at first, so Batsubyou made himself comfortable on top of my bed on the bedcovers, meowing at me as if telling me to go join him. I guess I will. Oh, wait, I can hear Error coming in now...
Yeah, Error whisked Batsubyou away. She mumbled something that sounded kinda like an apology, but I can't be too sure. Oh well, I wanted to pet Batsubyou once, but I can do that tomorrow.