003 New Morning
Man, the Akimichis make the best stew in the entire world. What do they put in there?? They were nice enough to give me that pack of spices too - really woke me up, but the funk took a while to go away. I’m going to train for a bit and wake Neji up - it’s practically noon already, the sun is so high in the sky!
…I’m also definitely going to work on my poetry.
In the dim light of a barely risen sun, Lee grinned, dropped his journal into his pack, and stubbornly shook off the last dregs of bad humor that clung to him. Yosh! If I can’t run four hundred laps in fifteen minutes without waking anybody up, I will do two thousand pushups with extra weights! START!
In a flicker, Rock Lee disappeared from the middle of camp. He didn’t even leave any footprints.
The sky brightened gradually from deep violet, but already the clouds looked like they were burning. Such colors - without a sound, Lee leapt from branch to branch, zipping through the forest like he was nothing more than a spring breeze; he landed next to sleeping birds and bounded away in the same instant without ruffling a single feather - everything was a rush, a blur - Lee sucked his breath in through his teeth, exulted in the wind whistling through his hair and making his eyes tear. With the sky on fire above, his friends safe and dreaming to his side, and rich green and brown hurtling away underneath him whenever he jumped, Lee could only rejoice in his Springtime of Youth; it took all of his effort to restrain himself from whooping in glee - he’d wake everyone up, then - what was his problem, getting depressed? Life was wonderful, and those Akatsuki bastards were going to pay for their crimes, he knew it. Just a matter of time.
If it was possible, he went even faster, ignoring the agonized screams of his muscles - it felt like he was flying, even with his weights on - for fun, he shot out of the canopy, did a pirouette in midair, and landed on a tree limb without missing a beat, laughing quietly to himself.
He loved training in the morning, when no one else was awake - though he sometimes bemoaned his friends’ inability to wake before sunrise, he enjoyed the benefits it gave him more than he let on; this was his time to enjoy life before reality crashed back down on his shoulders. And it gave him a hell of a lot of energy to run on for the rest of the day.
Before the sun had fully risen, Lee had already finished his challenge with time to spare - but he did the pushups anyway.