Stained Hands (Yuujin/Yugiri)

One. Two. Three. Four.
Two. Two. Three. Four.

One hand after the next. Pain is just motivation. Conquer all senses. Continue fighting until only one remains. Repeatedly, his mind went through the motion. Repeatedly, he belittled his body with training. After 100 pushups, he did 100 laps. After 100 laps, he did 100 curl ups. After 100 curl ups, 100 sit ups. Repeat. Complete. Repeat. Conquer. It's the only way. That's the only way. He won't succeed any other way. He's never felt fired up about anything before, and he doesn't know why today of days is one that has him so energetic, but here he is, working himself to death.

Yuujin's simply tired. All his training hasn't felt anything special. He still feels the same. However, after Yugiri had shown him that thing with energy, he's felt capable of more. He never was one to push himself after Sensei finished their lessons, but he's been done with those for over three hours, and here he is, still training. It's a bit amazing, huh? Maybe he just needed something to occupy his thoughts and body. He doesn't know, and he's not going to push himself to know. All he needs to do is keep moving until he can't.

"Hey, take a break. If you wear yourself out like that you're going to regret it when teach drops more training on you."

She called out while taking emphasised steps towards the training boy, her legs kicking all the way out until they were perpendicular and then down they went while she seemed to amuse herself by stepping around in the peculiar way. There was a pattern to the madness but she doubted that most people would realise what her stepping pattern entailed or was even drawing.

"If you collapse and I have to use kaido on you I'm not going to be very impressed, big guy."

Yugiri teased despite her attention being solely on her own training. She could get better at hoho, there were always ways that she could improve and develop new techniques. Those techniques held in such high esteem would be trivialised by whatever she created with her hard work and dedication.

"Shut up," He responded, entirely unimpressed.

She's the reason he's out here after all. If she had left him alone, he wouldn't feel the need to express himself like this. All this energy and nowhere for it to go. How do people exist like this? He's barely even anything worth looking at, and he's being eaten alive by the need to move. What's even next?

Oh! His body snapped, his attention on a huge rock nearby. Stance taken, he brought his leg up, kicking it. The thud left his leg vibrating, but he simply kicked the rock again and again 100 kicks, if he could. If he couldn't, 100 punches, and if he couldn't do that, 100 more kicks.

"Just keep up with your leg exercises before I end up better than you."

Goodness gracious. What was he doing now? Yugiri's concentration broke as she looked from her stepping exercises to see him kicking a rock and she sighed at the display. The enthusiasm was respectable but what kind of idiot just starts punching and kicking a rock while hoping that it breaks?

"Okay, stop stop."

For someone like her or Shaoling who knew a decent amount of hakuda, it was quite simple but Yuujin was trying to will the rock to break. The cadence was far too perfect for someone who was trying to learn something knew which leads her to believe he's just kicking the rock like a dunce.

So in the blink of an eye, Yuujin got the small woman standing next to him with a critical look on her features. She'd shown him how to harness his reiryoku but Yugiri supposed that she hadn't really shown him how to apply it very well.

"So are you just kicking that rock and hoping it will break after enough times because if you want to break it you're going to want to think a bit more about your reiryoku and exerting it as you kick the rock for it to break."

"Exertion isn't the main point."

But he did stop and give her his attention. Honestly, kicking the rock was more about perfecting his movements than anything else. Down the line, he'd like to practice using his energy to break the rock, but he's not at that point yet. Maybe a live dummy would prove a better tool for this, but he doesn't have one of those around, and he doesn't want to challenge anyone as of yet. That'd get him nowhere but more dirt in his mouth. If not the rock, he'd just kick the air. What was the saying? Do not fear the man with 1000 moves or something?

"I'll bite though. Maybe I should be training it more. It won't do anything good to only get my body in shape. Two birds, one stone."

"You ought to try and do that thing I showed you with your reiryoku, it'll help you work on your hakuda too."

She mused but her eyes ventured away from the scene of his labour. Yugiri's mind was also on the matter that as far as reiryoku he really didn't have that much going going for Yuujin but it would come as he exerted himself a bit harder.

"Plus if you exercise your spiritual power in tandem with your physical exercises I'm sure you'll find yourself growing in more different areas at once."

"...I guess that'll help build endurance, grow my body all at once instead of one at a time. Sounds taxing though..."

Exactly what he needs, however. He was caught up in just preparing his physical body, thinking it'd help him push out more energy. He's not sure how any of this works exactly. He only knows he has this energy flowing through him now with no idea of how to actually exert it besides reducing his body to a puddle of strained muscle. His face twisted a bit with his next thought, and he seemed nervous suddenly, as if having to do something he didn't want.

"...Erm, so... Mind telling me how to, you know, actually exert my energy outside of my body..."

He's used to training alone. He's able to think about whatever while going through the motions, but with someone else around, he has to sort of be cognizant of them being there and all that. Just extra stuff to have to worry about, but he'll not get too far without some sort of guide to at least get him started. Yugiri is good enough for that.

"Exert it outside? You're already kind of doing it, it's actually more often than not that when people are resting they'll just naturally release reiatsu. Think of it like breathing, you don't think about it but you do it subconsciously. You gotta actively try to hold your breath."

That's not to say though that she was saying Yuujin's resting reiatsu was his maximum ability. He just had to visualise it like a muscle which needed to be flexed if he wanted to exert some pressure. The same way he had to visualise his spiritual power through his body.

She took a seat on the ground, a finger drawing a stickman in the dirt and a small circle around him.

"This is you and this is your little bubble of reiatsu that you are passively releasing. Now you wanna run instead of walk right, so you want this bubble to be bigger..."

Another larger circle drawn around the small circle. While she was definitely giving him tips, Yugiri doubted that his reiatsu would be that strong when he tried to exert it. She could probably squish him if she used the full extent of her reiatsu but it'd probably be a while before his reiatsu was doing anything fancy. He'd have to keep up the hard work and training.

"So close your eyes, focus on the space around you and try to imagine yourself flexing your muscles and trying to crush that space instead of just letting it flow out of you passively."

"...Math..."

What an odd way of looking at it, but Yuujin found himself relating this sort of idea to the way numbers work. However, he then frowned and folded his arms, fingers resting under his chin as he shifted more. Inquisitive eyes spied the diagram on the ground, imagining the idea in a more 3d plain. Math's not entirely incorrect as a way to see it. Small numbers are numerous in nature, but you can't take 50 apples and squish them into one giant apple unless you have some special ability. Conservation of mass and matter is a thing after all. This is sort of like a multiplication equation, but it's manipulating the rule of mass by making the size of the object smaller, despite it still proving a greater power. Actually, it's like a weird physics problem, maybe even a library of sorts.

"I wonder if there exists anything that'd defy the basic laws of the universe out there..." He found himself mumbling before sighing. He's thinking too far ahead, so he turned away from Yugiri and took a new stance. Closing his eyes, he imagined the energy around him, and it proved easy to actually feel the constant release of his Reiryoku, but he could also feel how restrained it moved, how little space it took up, how spacious it is. He can tell how long it'll take to mold this sort of thing into something impressive.

"...Thanks, Yugiri... I can handle it from here."

"Heh, you're welcome."

She sheepishly looked away while rubbing at her cheek, it was a bit weird that Shaoling had refrained from teaching him the basics like this. Suppose she could understand that she was conditioning him and everything, it helped but reiryoku itself but maybe a little bit of a push would do him good rather than running laps. Not everyone got what she got out of running around.

"Anyway, good luck. When you get a bit more tougher I'll let you see my reiatsu in full swing. Okay? Then I'll teach you the super secret move called Shunko so you can show it to teach and she'll fall in love with you."

Yugiri gloated just a little bit there, it was always nice to have a bit of recognition for your hard work and time but it was also good to hone his focus while he was trying to develop. If he got all flustered over the idea of Shaoling falling in love with him after seeing how tough he could be then he was never going to do well with that reiryoku training.