Sunday, February 9th, 2014.
Got up again early to help Mamiya and Irako prepare not only breakfast but also lunch for those two. It's quickly become like an unofficial partnership among us. An unpaid internship, as I'd harken it to back in America. Because if I don't help out, the honest truth of the matter's that Mamiya and Irako are gonna be stuck in the kitchen for basically more than half the day because of cooking just for two people. Houshou can't always be there to help, since she's got Shinsengumi to tend to, so I'm the only one who can help.
But man, this really throws a wrench into my old schedule. See, my old schedule followed a barebones schedule that was something like this: wake up, maybe take a morning jog or something, eat breakfast, go to my office, take care of paperwork and reports and shit, email people, eat lunch, go back to the office and handle afternoon papers or emails, give out mission sorties and instructions, eat dinner, chill, go to sleep, repeat. Among the day to day stuff and extraneous matters.
So now that I'm spending so much time in the kitchens just helping Mamiya and Irako, I've decided just to cook my own small breakfast before I start helping Mamiya and Irako and stay with them all the way up to lunch, eat lunch, and then go to my office, since Mamiya and Irako can handle making dinner by themselves...so they say. This means that all the correspondence and paperwork that I had the leisure to complete in the morning has to be pushed all the way to the afternoon, after lunch, and whatever replies to the emails I send to HQ would from now on be delayed a day, since I can't send an email in the afternoon and rely on HQ to reply to it immediately.
This sucks.
But I guess if sacrificing my own convenience and putting in extra work means that my fleet can retain our much needed reinforcements, then I think it's ultimately a small price to pay.
But seriously, why the hell do Yamato and Akagi eat so goddamn much? Not even Souryuu eats that much, and neither do our other battleships. It's really weird.
That being said, this afternoon I had another one my sleep attacks. I remember sitting down at my desk at around 1330 hours and the next time I looked up at the clock, it said 1750 hours. I haven't had one of these sleep attacks in a long while...so it might mean that all these hours of helping Mamiya, Irako, and Houshou both in the kitchens and the izakaya, are taking their toll on me. And if this keeps up, I get the feeling that I'll be having sleep attacks like crazy over the course of the next few weeks until I can force my body to get adjusted to it.
Fubuki was the one who woke me up from my sleep attack today. She said that I looked like I was half dead, sitting at my desk in a creepy position, just nodding my head up and down like a bobblehead. So I had to explain to her what my sleep attack was about and nothing was wrong with me if that happened, just something that happens to me every once in a while. Fubuki asked me if I was sure that it wasn't like a medical condition or anything, and I had to tell her over and over until she stopped asking that nothing was medically wrong with me.
She had come to my office to give me a quick word of thanks for everything that I'd done for her and the rest of the fleet. The construction of the bathhouses that hastened the recover process, helping treat the wounded in the medbay, procuring for us additional reinforcements (especially somehow bringing back Ooi and Imuya), and giving her and everyone else little recovery cakes to celebrate their rehabilitation. She said I was the best Admiral that she could have ever imagined getting assigned to as part of the Moebius Four Platoon.
I didn't take those words to heart because of the simple fact that if she only knew what kind of naval officer I normally am to my men back in America...
Later on in the evening, I saw her hanging out with Yamato a lot, surprisingly enough. They seem to have achieved good terms with each other, I suppose.
After dinner, I headed back to my office to send another email to HQ that I had forgotten to include in my emails in the afternoon, asking them to send more supplies since Akagi and Yamato were mowing through them so fast. That's when Kitakami paid me a visit.
The beginning of it was really awkward. She just entered my office without greeting me or whatever and sat on the couch. I expected her to say something first, but because she wasn't saying anything, I asked her why she was here at such an hour, that Ooi was probably a better person to hang out with than me. After all, what does an American know about making friends?
Kitakami said that she wanted to apologize for all the shit that she's given me so far. She said that she didn't know that I had it planned all along, that Ooi's and Imuya's revivals were arranged, and the I couldn't tell her of it because it was supposed to be secret. I quickly corrected Kitakami, saying that she was getting confused, that none of what had happened was my work at all and that other people were responsible for reviving Ooi. Therefore, she didn't need to feel obligated to me for anything.
In fact, I told Kitakami that honestly, I didn't want Kitakami to apologize to me. I didn't need it from her. Her apology sickened me. As I saw it, Kitakami's apology is a classic example of those kinds of people who get pissy and frustrated during hard times, but as soon as things turn for the better, they're all of a sudden happy people who toss around apologies for whatever they've done like they're leaflets. To me, that's not a fully wholehearted apology, because those kinds of people will sour right back as soon as the good times turn into bad times again. There's no consistency to their attitudes, no integrity, no steadfastness. That's why I couldn't take Kitakami's apology seriously and refused to accept it.
That, and I did absolutely nothing to bring Ooi back. Like I kept saying, I was in no way involved in getting her alive again. I don't know how she got repaired to make her come back to life, I don't know the people who did it (at least not personally), and I don't know why Kitakami felt like she needed to apologize to me.
Kitakami, as expected of my rebuke, was less than pleased by my reaction. She became all pissy again, but not as much as when Ooi was dead, and she asked me why I was acting this way when she was just trying to honestly make a concerted effort to apologize for her own shitty attitude that she recognizes herself wasn't the greatest. I told her that while I understood her intention to apologize, judging by her behavior during the days when Ooi was gone, I couldn't find a reason why I could accept Kitakami's apology as sincere. It's good that she knows when she's made a mistake, but just saying sorry wouldn't be enough.
Then she asked me what she needed to do in order to "apologize properly" (she said this in a really sarcastic way, which is odd to hear in Japanese since the Japanese language doesn't incorporate sarcasm nearly as well as English does). I was tempted to answer with a really sarcastic answer of my own right back, but I refrained from doing so. I just said simply that if in the case that Ooi fell in battle once more, if Kitakami could show more maturity about the situation instead of cowering underneath the bedsheets for three or four or five days straight, then I would consider her apology accepted, since by that point she'll have changed her attitude. That would be the best way, I said frankly, but because I expected Kitakami to do everything she can to prevent Ooi from ever sinking or dying again, I didn't expect that to happen, so it's just a lose-lose for Kitakami either way.
Kitakami complained to me bitterly that there was no reason for me to stay angry about the matter. Ooi was back, Kitakami herself feels better now that she' back, what's there to be mad about anymore? Objectively, I said, Kitakami's right. There really is nothing for me to be really legitimately mad about. Those bitter conversations we had? Those don't really matter anymore, do they? I mean, they're just words, right? Everything's fine and dandy if Ooi's back and alive, yeah, who gives a shit anymore, am I right or am I right? Can't we all just go back to being friends again like we were before this whole capture mission thing?
See where I'm going with this?
I told Kitakami very simply that we'd burned that bridge the day Kitakami was engulfed in her depression - rather, engulfed herself in her depression. And even if Kitakami wanted to rebuild that bridge, I wouldn't let it complete. I said it straight up to her, that because of our recent interactions, I didn't think Kitakami was the kind of girl to be able to handle war conditions like this. If that's how she's going to react when she sees a sister-at-arms fall in combat, she wasn't fit to be a soldier, much less a ship girl. Literally everyone else handled the situation better than she did - Inazuma, who was very good friends with Imuya, didn't hole herself up in her room when Imuya died the first time.
And to finish by dropping the mic, I told her that "Americans don't know what friendship is", so she'd better stop trying to apologize to someone like me. After all, that just seems like a waste of effort, right? Better to save your breath than to try giving apologies to the same people you've insulted.
I could tell Kitakami felt absolutely dissed by my words. She had that kind of look that people have when they get seriously roasted, or as the internet slang goes, "apply H20 to burn" or "PJSalt".
And I will confess, seeing Kitakami have that look on her face made me smile on the inside.
After I dropped the mic, I went back to typing out that email to HQ to finish it up and send it so I could focus on other stuff for the day, ignoring Kitakami. But before I was able to log out of my email to shut off my laptop, Kitakami spoke up again.
She wanted to be included in the Kai Program.
She said that if that's the way I wanted to be, then she'll return it in kind. She said that she'd prove me wrong, that I was full of shit and talking out of my ass just because she'd called me a stupid American. She demanded that I put her in the Kai Program so that she could be as strong as Ooi now was and not have to suffer the chance of Ooi protecting her even more and taking more damage that way in combat, just as what had happened in their last mission.
Well, objectively speaking, upgrading ship girls is nice too, so I was like sure, whatever. I opened up my email again and sent another short email to Seal Team 6, informing them that another ship girl of mine was demanding to be put into the Kai Program and asked if she was able to do so.
Kitakami became even more upset by the way I reacted to her demand. She accused me of not giving a crap about her demand, that I wasn't taking her seriously.
I told her that ever since she'd called me and my people "friendless Americans", I ceased to stop taking her seriously. Why should I take anyone who resorts to insulting other people based on arbitrary thresholds such as race seriously? Sure, I'm pretty salty about it still. But I told her that so long as her immaturity eclipsed my saltiness, I wouldn't really care about her. She could do what she wanted. If she wanted to be part of this Kai Program, then whatever, I'll just toss her in, no big deal. If she gets rejected or the upgrade fails, then whatever, that's that.
The year is fucking 2014, not 1941. The age of racist propaganda and racist ideals is over and far before our time. I thought that the ship girls themselves would've grown up a little too, but clearly, not all of them have.
Not much more to write. You know how if you stand out at a pier or near the ocean, you can taste the salt in the air from the ocean breeze?
It's the same with this entry. You can taste the salt just from reading it, can't you?