Saturday, March 22nd, 2014.

We wrapped up the rest of the surgeries today. Thanks to the power of the bathhouse, everyone's back in shape. The girls who were critically injured and just got done with their surgeries are going to spend the night in the docks to make sure they're fully healed by the time morning comes.

My hands, my back, my shoulders - everything aches like a bitch. But this's a good pain. I think I've mentioned this just a few entries before, didn't I? It's like hitting your thumb with a hammer when you've jammed your toe on something. Or, in the famous words of Captain Price, one way to put out a fire is to set off a bigger fire near it, and it'll suck up all the other fire's oxygen and snuff it out.

Case in point, you forget about one pain by feeling another. A truly masochistic way to resolve pain - but sometimes, it's the only way you've got.

Akashi, amazingly enough, performed her own surgery, with me and Ooyodo assisting her. The operation took more than four hours, but she got it done on her own. She directly turned off the nerves that deliver sensations like pain from her missing right arm so that she could work on it without having to feel pain along the way. As a field medic who's had to treat himself by pulling frag grenade shrapnel from my arms and legs once, I can't imagine having to operate on myself. I know that in the past, there've been some doctors who've even removed kidney stones from their own bodies some few hundred years ago, but I'm nowhere near as crazy as they are. Or courageous, if you want to look at it that way.

It's the weekend. No sorties today or tomorrow. Doesn't matter anyway, given the condition of the fleet right now.

After the surgeries were wrapped up, it became dinnertime, and right after dinner, I came to my office, got the paperwork done (including the total damage assessment report to send to HQ) and checked my email.

HQ's satellite image photos today still showed Sector B to be swarming with Abyssal activity. At this point, I think it's a better idea to keep the fleet at home and train them up. It's far too dangerous to send them back into Sector B waters. Any idiot would know this if they looked at the photos.

But that wasn't the only email they sent me. There was another email from HQ, this time from Hirotaka Masakawa, that guy who's in charge of the BCT office at HQ. Basically, he said in the email that the Ministry of Defense didn't like all the setbacks that my fleet was incurring. He said that although he wasn't supposed to tell me this, the guys over at the Ministry of Defense were basically saying some pretty nasty things about me. Things like how I was supposed to be an American Admiral, that Americans ought to know how to fight a war in the most efficient manner because we had the most technologically advanced military in the world. Things like how all America knew how to do was go out and wage wars in places we had no business waging wars in, so the fact that I wasn't able to resolve this Abyssal terrorist threat was honestly a real shame to my country, and that it was a pure pity that America couldn't afford to send anyone more competent.

I thanked Masakawa for letting me know about those kind opinions of the Ministry men and told him to relay my most sincere thoughts to them, that they could all go burn in hell.

I would be a bit saltier about racist comments, but I've spent enough time here in Okinawa that it's gone over my head by now. And besides, we white people spent enough time subjugating enough colored people for long enough, it's fine if white people get dissed a few times, no one cares.

Then, an email from Seal Team Six:

"Hello, Commander, this is Lauren from Seal Team Six, if you remember us from last week.

The team is working overtime to repair the ship girls we brought back to base here. They will be operational and delivered on Monday at 1000 hours Japan Time as per usual.

Regretfully, as you may already be aware, the destroyer Kiyoshimo's memory core cannot be salvaged - it absorbed too much radiation and was destroyed almost instantly at the time of her death. As you may have already heard from HQ, replacing another ship girl entirely who has died in this manner or has sunk is a matter of great complication with the Japanese Ministry of Defense and the Bureau of Counter-Terrorism. We are currently in communications with both offices to see if rebuilding the destroyer Kiyoshimo can eventually be allowed, but our hopes are quite bleak. I will state, however, that we are working to see if we can find a workaround solution to this problem, but our plans regarding this is very nebulous, as we do not know where to begin.

If it is any consolation to you, we have learned a tremendous amount from the data stored in Kiyoshimo's special augmentation, and because of it, we expect to complete the first working production copy of the augmentation as it was designed to be built. We will deliver them to you with your repaired ship girls on Monday.

We also understand that sortieing the fleet to Sector B, with the current situation that the sector is in at the moment, will be a difficult task. Therefore, we have contacted reserve Navy units stationed at Pearl Harbor to provide heavy air support when your fleet sorties next Monday. They will provide fire missions for the next week only until your fleet is back to its previous shape.

We would also like you to be aware of the current situation that is brewing in the Japanese government. According to our informants, Takeda's supporters within both the Japanese Diet and the Ministry of Defense are plotting to use both Takeda's execution and your 'poor' combat record leading the Moebius Four Platoon to convince the Japanese government to send an official but clandestine complaint to the United States government to request that they be allowed the freedom to remove you from your post and replace you with a handpicked Japanese naval officer of their own choosing. The reason why they are keeping quiet about Takeda's death now is because there is too much evidence stacked against them, that it is too apparent that Takeda's actions were rash and purely politically driven. However, once you make another big mistake, they will seize that opportunity to begin pointing fingers at you again and demand for your resignation. Perhaps they will claim to the Japanese government that Takeda was in the right about trying to get rid of you himself, that he somehow knew that having an American admiral lead a Japanese fleet would never work out.

Please keep in mind that this is simply our own theory-crafting. Perhaps you have thought about this situation yourself. We do not know what will happen, but we will contact you immediately when we receive updates to this situation.

And whatever you do, please do not inform your fleet about this situation. If the above mentioned scenario becomes reality and Takeda's supporters somehow discover that you have informed them of their intentions, they will use this against you by saying that you were trying to convince the fleet to support you so that it will be harder for Takeda's supporters to remove you from your post.

I would also like to add that after arriving back at our own base after picking up the wounded and killed ship girls, we had a discussion about the augmentation. I think you would be happy to know that I and a few of my squadmates agree with you that it indeed was our responsibility for misinforming you about the true nature of the destroyer Kiyoshimo's augmentation. Regretfully, Big, Sanford, and Deimos beg to differ, but perhaps you already know this."

I guess even as military brass, I'm not exempt from political bullshit.

After sifting through emails, I just sat in my chair, lying against it and staring off into my office, doing absolutely nothing. A dead state, as I call it. A state in which I just do nothing, think nothing, say nothing. Nothing goes through my eyes, my head. I'm as vegetable as vegetables get. You ever go to sleep in your room, when everything's totally quiet, so quiet that your ears start hearing this eerie buzz that sounds like it's getting louder and louder to the point where it's going to drive you nuts? That's all I heard. Just a big, silent buzz.

So when Samidare entered my office and called out my name, (Admiral, not my actual first name), I didn't hear Samidare's voice. I heard Kiyoshimo's.

It's happened before. Whenever a close buddy of mine gets killed in combat, sometimes I take some time to reflect on the times that we've shared together before his death. And oftentimes, when someone interrupts me, the voice that I hear is the guy who just died. The phantom voice, I like to call it. The doctor whom I consulted in the army speculated that it may be an advanced but more subtle form of PTSD, which is understandable. Not full-blown PTSD, but the kind that crawls underneath your skin like that one popular Linkin Park song, waiting to haunt you at the perfect moment. It doesn't scare me or disturb me, but it's certainly a bit unsettling.

In any case, Samidare asked me if I was alright. I had the lights turned off in my office and was working in the dark, so I had to assure Samidare that I was okay, that I was just in a downer mood since what happened with the last night op. I asked her what she wanted, and she shyly asked if it was still okay for her to come listen to music with me.

I'd completely forgotten about my earlier pledge to listen to music with Samidare. So I immediately confessed that I'd forgotten and that I was really sorry about that. Samidare didn't mind, so I hastily put a playlist of some mellow songs together and put the playlist through the stereo set.

As we sat down on the couch together, listening to the music, Samidare asked me if I was feeling okay. I was about to tell her that yeah, everything was fine, but I stopped myself.

I didn't want to lie to Samidare. I liked her too much to insult her by lying to her face. I think she knew, too, that I was about to give her the generic answer of "yes, everything's okay", and that I changed my mind.

I admitted to her that I wasn't okay. I said that there were a lot of things that I was going through - helping repair the ship girls with surgeries, suffering the loss of two of my destroyers, one of them permanent, especially because I had taken a liking to both Yuudachi and Kiyoshimo, and thinking about how Kiyoshimo's death was just a fucked up tragedy through and through. On top of all that, I told Samidare that there were a few things going on with Seal Team Six and HQ, things I couldn't talk about with Samidare, but just complicated matters that were on my mind too.

I gave Samidare a really depressed grin and told her,

"This is going to sound really bad, but I kind of wish that you girls were actual ships. That way, whenever I lost any of you, I wouldn't have to feel so personally responsible. I thought sending my men in the American Navy to their deaths was hard. Now I'm not so sure - but I think that sending you girls off on sortie is harder."

Samidare was really moved by what I told her. She said that she'd never even taken into consideration all the duties that I had to do, that there was a whole 'nother side to my job than just dealing with her and the rest of the fleet. She apologized to me for being so inconsiderate, which I assured her was okay. But Samidare said that although her existence as a ship girl may bring me worry and grief if something were to happen to her, Samidare told me that she didn't regret being able to meet me and know me. She said that she was honored to serve someone like me as her Admiral.

And then, what Samidare did next blew my mind.

She said,

"...if you'd like...if it'll make you feel better, you can...use me..."

In case you're a dense idiot, the way she said the word "use" was extremely suggestive.

Instantly alarm bells went off in my head. There is no fucking way I will touch these girls, especially not a girl like Samidare, in any way that's inappropriate. Nope, no way, it's not happening. And God knows how much shit I'll be in when the fuckin' assholes in the Ministry of Defense get their hands on an incident like this. My life might as well en at that point.

I told Samidare firmly never to ask me something like that ever again. While as a healthy, straight young man, I appreciated her offer, as a naval officer who prides himself in having at least some sense of decency, I wouldn't dare touch anyone like that, even if they offered. And besides, she should look for someone more suited to her outside the military. She wouldn't get anything good out of getting into a relationship with an American like me.

But Samidare said that she was worried about what would happen to her and the rest of the fleet after the war against the Abyssals was over. The fact that they knew suspiciously absolutely nothing about what their fates would behold after their service made Samidare secretly fear for her own future. She said that she was getting the sense that maybe, the ship girls' time would end with the end of the war. And if that was going to be the case, Samidare wanted to at least know what it was like being in a relationship with someone she liked. She confessed that she wanted to someday live a completely normal life of a teenage girl, just like in those slice of life animes she's been watching with Fubuki and the rest of the gang back in their dorms on Fubuki's laptop.

And she asked me,

"Why can't I like you, Admiral? I know that you don't hate me. Is it really not okay for us...to be more than just friends?"

Talk about a difficult question to answer.

I told her that for now, given our situation, both of us would suffer if we hooked up. I also reminded Samidare that our relationship would heavily distract the rest of the fleet as well - Takao would be on my ass again about being so incredibly lax on my fleet discipline by taking in Samidare as a girlfriend, and Suzuya would really kick my ass. Akebono, too, with her daily showers of "Shitty Admiral". It just wouldn't work out. At least, not for now.

I could tell Samidare was really bummed by this. So to make it up to her, I let her sit on my lap and hugged her as we sat on the couch, listening to Phoebe Ryan - Mine (Illenium Remix).

When it was time to go to sleep, Samidare asked me if I liked her back. Not as an Admiral looking at his ship girl, but as a guy looking at a girl.

I told her that I wanted to say that yes, I did like her, but for her sake, I didn't want to say that just yet. She gave me one last hug before heading off to the destroyer's dorm.

But while I do say that I like Samidare, I say that in the sense that she's a good girl, not in the sense that she's a potential girlfriend or soulmate. That makes me really angry at myself as a guy, because I know that Samidare is the kind of girl many other men would kill to marry.