Upon opening the door the scene which could only be put into the same category as a bog unfolded in front of her. The shop had been closed for more than a decade and had recently been inherited by a middle aged woman who had decided that the family business had to be revived. But in order for that to happen the shop had to be dusted off, repaired and brought back to a state where it did not look like a marshland. A decades worth of dust, muck, sand, animal waste, dead insects and other nastiness needed to be cleaned away before any attempt at even repairs could be undertaken. In the doorway stood Setsuko, her eyes set with the annoyance of having to be the one that would have to clean this up. “You can’t serious” she muttered to herself as one of her brows arched and her hands was placed on her hips. Looking at the door itself she gave it a light kick with her boot, dislocating the door, causing to fall and knock up a whirl of dust that filled the air in front of her. “They don’t need one shinobi do this… they need an army!” she said as she grabbed her facemask and put it on before talking into the room while looking around. Her immediate thought was ‘This is gonna take time’ as she saw the amount of dust and webs and everything else that had to be cleaned.
The first thing to do was to remove all the dust from the counters, shelves and high places and get it all to the floor so that it could be easily swooped into the buckets she had been provided. Although being an average height, Setsuko found herself too short for certain areas and had to undergo the arduous climb on old dusty shelves to do the job properly. Having dusted, washed and cleaned the surfaces of the store, she found herself standing ankle deep in dust and debris. “Wouldn’t have been an easier task to simply burn this entire shack down and rebuild it?” she pondered as she exited the shop in search for the shovel she had brought along.
With shovel in hand and her trusty mask which had once been a pristine celestial white but were now a dusty grey and sandy brown she shovelled the dust and waste from the floor into her bucket, which when full was carried outside and emptied into a larger bin. It was tedious work from what most villages would call sunrise to well past midday she had laboured in and out of the shack, emptying bucket after bucket with black tar like water which as she progressed were traded for buckets with sand, dust, muck and other debris a decade can cause on a unattended house.
Finally, after having toiled and worked her hands raw she could enter the shack for the first time without her mask and without feeling the retched stench of death filling the air. The surfaces were so clean that actually shone from the light coming in through the windows which were just as crystal clean. The floor, despite a few cracks and etches was cleaner that the floors in the kage tower. With a satisfactorily nod she lifted the door back into place, locked it and turned her head and mind back to the academy and her future.
[Word Count: 569]
[MFT]
The first thing to do was to remove all the dust from the counters, shelves and high places and get it all to the floor so that it could be easily swooped into the buckets she had been provided. Although being an average height, Setsuko found herself too short for certain areas and had to undergo the arduous climb on old dusty shelves to do the job properly. Having dusted, washed and cleaned the surfaces of the store, she found herself standing ankle deep in dust and debris. “Wouldn’t have been an easier task to simply burn this entire shack down and rebuild it?” she pondered as she exited the shop in search for the shovel she had brought along.
With shovel in hand and her trusty mask which had once been a pristine celestial white but were now a dusty grey and sandy brown she shovelled the dust and waste from the floor into her bucket, which when full was carried outside and emptied into a larger bin. It was tedious work from what most villages would call sunrise to well past midday she had laboured in and out of the shack, emptying bucket after bucket with black tar like water which as she progressed were traded for buckets with sand, dust, muck and other debris a decade can cause on a unattended house.
Finally, after having toiled and worked her hands raw she could enter the shack for the first time without her mask and without feeling the retched stench of death filling the air. The surfaces were so clean that actually shone from the light coming in through the windows which were just as crystal clean. The floor, despite a few cracks and etches was cleaner that the floors in the kage tower. With a satisfactorily nod she lifted the door back into place, locked it and turned her head and mind back to the academy and her future.
[Word Count: 569]
[MFT]