Saturday, January 18th, 2014.

Partly because I've still got a nasty cough, partly because it's the frickin' weekend, and mainly because of that last big combat mission yesterday, I gathered everyone together in my office (except for Samidare, for obvious reasons) and called today off for everyone, which all the ship girls appreciated. I know from first-hand experience what it feels like the day after you just barely made it out alive from a brutal mission. Simply put, you just don't feel like doing anything productive. You just don't.

After getting done with the morning paperwork and reports and shit, which thankfully there weren't a lot of, I went over to the kitchen and went fuckin' ham. I ended up using up all the cake ingredients that I bought earlier in the week and baked four cakes just like the one I made for Murakumo. Mamiya and Irako were quite surprised at me baking at such an odd time, but I explained to them what I was doing and they understood and helped out. So when lunchtime rolled around, instead of having our usual lunch, there was cake for everyone. Fun times.

I've learned today that if there's cake, it's pretty hard for girls not to have fun in some way. For guys, it's a bit different, 'cause guys generally don't give a shit about something so trivial as cake. At least, that's what I experienced in America. But the little things get attention here, even if it's as little as cake. Then again, cake is a big effin' deal to some people in some places, and again, who am I to judge.

While everyone was enjoying the cake, I took a slice of one of them and sneaked out of the mess hall over to the infirmary, where Samidare was. I guess everyone else just kinda forgot about her, since everyone was too busy being happy over cake and stuff.

Samidare was awake when I visited her. Apparently ship girls heal really quickly. I gave her some cake and explained to her what was going on, the context behind the cake and everything. I asked her if everything was okay, if she was feeling anything particularly out of the ordinary. She said there really wasn't anything, other than the fact that she was super grateful that I made cake for everyone to enjoy and brought her some as well.

Because she's too weak to really feed herself, I had to feed her cake, which evidently came off as really embarrassing for Samidare. Personally, I don't mind if someone else feeds me, 'cause I've broken both my arms before at the same time and had all kinds of people feed me for about two or three weeks until my bones could heal well enough to the point where I could lift a fork and a spoon to my own mouth, but obviously those're my own experiences and I don't really expect other people to share that kind of experience. It's like, if you're in a situation where it's understandable that something needs to be done, for example, getting spoon-fed when you're seriously injured or sick, then the embarrassment kinda fades away after a while, and you just get over it. I told Samidare that, and she said that while she understood what I was trying to say, the part where she would get over the embarrassment factor would be the hardest part. Maybe that's just a girl thing, but I won't even try to go any further on gender opinions because I have no qualifications at all on making opinions of the other sex.

She did make me lock the door to her room in the infirmary first before I fed her and made me promise not to ever tell anyone that I fed her cake, otherwise she'd hate me forever and/or die out of sheer embarrassment, whichever came first. I told her not to die because of the cake, because I was worried enough from getting the report that she'd been heavily damaged and almost outright killed. Samidare apologized real quick and became pretty quiet after that as I fed her the cake slice.

I don't think this was made very clear in my last journal entry, but when I was first told yesterday that Samidare was heavily damaged and I found out exactly to what extent she'd be injured, my heart sank faster than I've ever felt it sink in a really, really long time. Earlier this morning, I kinda sat down and thought about why I felt that way, but I didn't have to spend too much time to figure out why. Back in America, or at least before I came here to Okinawa, I was used to sending men to their deaths. Like I've probably mentioned before, it's just a part of the job, knowing that as an officer, one of your responsibilities is to give orders to your men, and oftentimes, those orders aren't the easiest orders to give, especially when it involves sending them to an AO that you know's got a pretty high chance of causing something to go very, very wrong for your men. Sometimes, a few guys might get wounded or even killed - sometimes none of them get hurt and everyone comes back safely, and sometimes none of them come back, not in one piece, anyway.

So I'm used to that. But this isn't America, like I keep reminding myself in this fucking journal. This isn't America, and I'm not commanding or giving orders to normal soldiers whom I've specifically trained to to realize that their very next mission could very well be their last, in different ways, too. I'm part of the Moebius Armament Program, commanding specialized humanoid weapons called ship girls, or "naval personnel" if we wanna be fucking political. The hardest part for me about all this for me to digest is the fact that if I didn't know who they really were and I ran into them randomly on the streets or something, I wouldn't be able to tell that these girls were specifically constructed - not trained, not born, but made - to be soldiers and to fight.

Something about that chills me more than sending any infinite amount of my own men to their deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan or something.

So that's why I'm okay with treating these girls better than I would my regular soldiers back in America. I would be horrified at myself if I gave any wounded soldier this kind of special treatment if I were still on tour in the Middle East, but this is much different. And I suppose the fact that all the girls at base with me right now are all very good-looking, anywhere from cute to sexy to beautiful, goes longer of a way than I might give it credit for.

That's why I've grown to care just a little bit more for these girls. Maybe I've got some biases in my head, but a girl like Samidare going out to sea with a couple cannons on her back and arms fighting these weird alien-like abyssal enemies and nearly getting her body torn in half by a couple cannon shots doesn't seem right at all. If these were boys or men I was sending out, admittedly, I wouldn't feel as bad. But that's not the case here, is it now.

Funny thing is, unlike the other girls, who complemented me on how good the cake was, Samidare instead asked me if I could take a weekend or something and teach her how to bake a cake like I did. When I asked her why, she said that just like what I did for Murakumo, she wanted to make a cake for me to repay me for the cake that I gave her earlier today. I told her to focus on getting better soon, then we can think about cooking lessons.

I left Samidare to rest after I helped her finish her cake. I know what it feels like to be wounded really badly; even simple things like eating and talking can become absolute chores when you're in that kind of a state, and seeing that ship girls have human bodies, I'm guessing it's the same for them when they get badly wounded. I plan on visiting her again tomorrow, she seemed to be really glad that I came to pay her a visit, so if it makes her happy, I'll keep doing it. I had knew of a fellow officer in the Navy once who got shot a couple times when his destroyer got caught out at sea by some pirates, and his wife, who was a medic corps sergeant in another regiment, visited him practically every day, and they said he got better a full two weeks faster than expected. Dunno if that's scientifically proven, but here's to hoping that it works for Samidare too.

Only awkward part that came out of giving Samidare some cake was that when I was going back to my office, Murakumo caught me heading back from the medbay. Naturally, she asked me why I wasn't in the mess hall, where the other girls were still at and wondering where I'd gone off to, so I had to explain to her what I was doing, the whole giving Samidare some cake and all. Murakumo gave me this funny look that was asking me "Oh, are you sure?" So I asked her if she understood what I was telling her the night before, and she said she might've, and she left me alone after that.

Because I called off training, drilling, and the mission today, nothing else important really happened. Oh, hi, Batsubyou, you really like sleeping on my bed, don'tcha.