Daigo has chosen a clearing in the forest with a circle of bare earth to practice on. There is only the sound of his training, some rustling of leaves as the gentle breeze disturbs the trees, and the high pitched chirping of birds. It is almost noon.

Daigo finished splitting a long shoot of bamboo that was roughly two meters long, cutting it lengthwise and carving the halves out to be primitive troughs. These two troughs were likewise lashed to a tripod and angled towards the ground at such an acute angle they almost looked totally level. The two bamboo troughs were pointed towards each other with the back ends facing outwards. Daigo placed thick rags at the end of each bamboo piece, packing it in tight and tying a thin length of twine to hold it in place. He then began to fill the troughs with water from his canteen, enough to totally saturate the rags so they produced a steady dripping. His rudimentary setup was now complete.

Daigo situated himself between the inward angles of the spouts. Due to the spouts being roughly half a meter above his shoulder height, Daigo wasn’t able to really see the ends of his contraption nor the rags. All he could see were the drops passing by on his left and right. Rolling his neck and shoulders to loosen up, he listened for the pattern of drops smacking the dirt below. Once Daigo believed he had the pattern down and the timing between the sounds of the drops smacking the dirt and when another drop was on its way past his chest height, he inhaled and took his combat stance. Turning his body so that his left hand was in front and his right leg was in the back, right arm brought up at a ninety-degree angle and his left hand was palm open and outwards. Finally, Daigo closed his eyes and relaxed.


Pt … Pt … Pt … Pt…. Pt went the water droplets as they hit the darkening dirt.

The few seconds of silence and total stillness were broken as Daigo’s right hand launched forwards. The hand was no longer a fist, instead it expanded and flatted out to be jab with his fingertips; attempting to hit the drop out of the air. Daigo missed. Exhaling, Daigo then reset himself.

Pt … Pt … Pt … Pt…. Pt went the water droplets as they hit the darkening dirt once more.

Again, Daigo launched his right fist forward, opening the fist into a flat jab with his fingertips. This time was different, this time Daigo hit the droplet right on his fingertip. He could tell just by the shock of coolness against his skin that he had done well. And so Daigo would continue to do this drill several dozen times with each of his hands in the span of about an hour. If one were to observe and keep track, he was averaging about 30% on accuracy. Mind you this was with his eyes closed and relying on his ability to keep tempo with the sounds of the pattering droplets.

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After an hour of striking drills the rags had finally deposited the majority of their water content, becoming unsaturated and drying out. Daigo's arms burned from the repetitive actions of the last hour. However, he was still not done with training for today. He wondered silently within his mind if he should attempt to do anymore upper-body exercises. He knew that he likely should, though the burning in his shoulders proved to be convincing enough to postpone that idea.

Daigo stood there silently, pondering what he should do with his setup. It had taken a decent amount of time to lash together the bamboo contraption and it would be a shame to let it go to waste. Perhaps he would just leave it there for someone else, though he doubted anyone would know what it was immediately. Stretching his arms across his body he finally decided on what to do; he would go for a jog.

Looking around to plot his course, he then began to run a circuit. This circuit was a circular path that had a twenty meter diameter. Daigo planned to do twenty laps around this circle, which he knew would burn him out pretty quickly, but he needed to improve his stamina. Daigo started off fast, not really pacing himself like he should, and soon he was burning out. "Damn it." he huffed out, not impressed by his poor show of endurance. He hadn't even done three laps of his goal of twenty before he was sweating and huffing. "Slow down...pace yourself...." He coached under his breath. Taking in a deep inhale, he then exhaled slowly, and began jogging instead of running.

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Daigo's breathing became more labored as he completed lap after lap.

I need to keep going one more...just one more.

Of course, he kept trying to push one more lap out of himself, so it was never really the last lap. Halfway around his twentieth lap Daigo collapsed forward into the dirt with a grunt. His face hurt, but his chest hurt more, his lungs burned as well as his legs. The ground felt terrible, but it was also preferable to standing. Maybe he would just rest here for a minute. Or a few hours.

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