| [Feb. 27th, 2016|03:17 am] |
Genma cleared a stack of blankets off the top of a wooden trunk, then lowered himself carefully down next to it. He propped the lid open and reached inside for an armload of books, folders, loose papers, and scrolls. A second armload followed. Genma reached back for a third.
"Uh," Ryouma said. "All of that?"
Genma laughed. "No. Don't worry. I just need to get to the stuff from when I started my training. Most of this is from later classes." He sorted through a sheaf of papers, then ran his fingers through the tumbled scrolls. "Here's Basic Anatomy—you probably know most of this stuff already, so just focus on learning the terminology. And I think Chakra Basics has a purple cover…" He pushed a folder aside, and pulled out a second scroll triumphantly. "Here it is!"
Ryouma set the pastry box aside and hunkered down beside him. "This is medic chakra basics, I'm guessing, not the regular kind, 'cause I've got that one pretty much down."
"Yeah," Genma nodded. "It assumes you know the fundamentals already. This has diagrams of the coil nexus points and maps of the major and minor coils. That's where you'll want to start."
A single looped tie held the purple scroll closed. Ryouma teased it open and let the scroll roll out across the polished wooden floor. Tight columns of text alternated with delicate watercolor diagrams: a forearm here, a spread-eagled human figure there. Thin blue lines wove a dense web over every drawing.
Ryouma peered down, fascinated. "Okay, I knew the nexus points, and I had that kinda vague idea about coils that everyone does, but — is this what Hyuuga see? No wonder Hitomi-sensei just laughed when we complained about her looking at our underwear."
Genma's nose crinkled in amusement. "I honestly couldn't tell you what Hyuuga see, but I imagine it's something like this. There's a reason so many of them go into medicine. And I'm pretty sure this scroll was written by Hyuuga Masayuki or something like that."
Ryouma rolled back to the beginning. There was the author's name, in tiny dense characters. He could recognize Hyuuga, 日向; he'd seen those simple, blocky kanji often enough, while Hitomi-sensei was filling out mission reports. The second set, 昌之, were another matter. "Hell if I know how to read that," he said frankly, and shoved the scroll over toward Genma.
"You don't need to read it," Genma said, without even looking. "Just study the diagrams. Copy them out, maybe, to get a feel for them. There's a whole section to the back…"
He took the scroll and unrolled it halfway, rolling up the other end in a neat, practiced tube as he went. "Here," he said finally, flattening the open section over Ryouma's knees. "The same systems from different angles, and overlaid with the bones, nerves, and blood vessels, so you can see how the coils go in three dimensions."
Ryouma was beginning to get a bit dizzy looking at it. The colored drawings didn't swim in his vision the way the stark columns of black text did, though. He could focus on this drawing of a hand, with its red muscles and white ligaments and blue tenketsu, without the pinch of an oncoming headache. It was just—
Overwhelming. Frightening. Awe-inspiring. Knowledge, laid out in his lap, given freely just for the asking.
He looked up. "Thank you. I dunno how I'd ever pay you back for this, but I'll try." |
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