Luckily for Laura the rest of the week passed rather uneventful, and without splitting headaches from excessive alcohol consumption hiding all her non human features was a non issue. Now that the last class on friday had come to its conclusion, Laura could return to her room, to get ready for Kendo practice.
Checking the small bag with the hakama she had bought in Kamimura, the Kitsune threw in a bottle of water to drink and the gi Daiki had given her at the beginning of her first training, before heading to the gym.
Putting on her new pair of traditional pants was a lot easier thanks to the slot in the back, where the base of her tails fit through. And once the strips of cloth keeping the hakama in place were tied correctly, it was quite hard to notice.
Practice this week began with the more experienced Students practicing their Kata forms, while Laura got instruced in the basics of them, how to greet your partner before it, what the 'teacher' and the 'student' do in more general terms and how you respectfully end the kata.
Half an hour later she had most of that things down decently as the group moved on to warm up exercises both without and then with the shinai. While the Kitsune did have some issues with keeping up the pace, at least they were spread out enough that she did not have to worry about hitting others with her tails, allowing her to let them flick from side to side freely with little concern.
Once those were done with the others put on their armor and were paired of for practice, with Prof. Yakamura and Laura left with each other. While everyone else was allowed to practice freely for the next few minutes, the Kitsune got instructed in one of the most fundamental exercises in Kendo, the kirikaeshi. According to the sensei, this would help her practice many things important to Kendo all at once, but for now he told her to focus on the correct timing between her strikes and her footwork. The exercise consisted of a long series of attacks, first you would perform a simple strike to the partner's head, followed by closing the distance between you two. Then followed a series of strikes to the left and right side of the partners head, first 4 while moving forward, then another 5 while moving backwards, which proved just a tad difficult as the Kitsune had to make sure all nine of her tails were out of the way of both her feet and the people training next to her.
While Laura did not actually get it right completely the first few tries, Prof. Yakamura deemed her capable enough to practice it with the other student, as he called for everyone except her to switch partners. It progressed like this for most of the practice, with each new partner offering a bit of advice to Laura, until she was paired of with Daiki.
As the pair next to them got a bit carried away with their practice, one of them hit a hidden tail, hopefully not noticing it, but the sudden pain distracted the Kitsune enough that she stepped onto another tail, thus pulling herself down on her behind as she tried to move further back.
Landing on the rest of her tails did nothing good for the young spirit, even as Daiki came to help her up.
"Everything alright?"
"I got nine things that aren't." Laura promptly replied as she took the offered hand and stood up. "I hope you don't mind if I take a short break."
"No I don't" The young man replied as he took a step back again. "Just take a seat somewhere out of the way if you need to."
"It's not that bad, and even if I were to sit down, can't really do anything about it with everyone else around." The female spirit explained while flicking her tails around behind her, hoping it would do something to reduce the dull ache.
In the end Laura's short break lasted until the next time partners were switched. After she completed the exercise called out by their instructor, her new sparring partner stepped closer again.
"I apologize for hitting you just a moment ago, I hope everything is alright?" He inquired, the remorseful look barely visible through the iron bars of his Men.
"More or less, probably going to wake up with a bruise after falling on my back" The Kitsune replied, giving a small wave with her hand to dismiss the kendoka's concerns. "But that's on me slipping on my hakama."
"That's good then. By the way you are quite good for someone new to Kendo." He complimented her, "Although your Fumikomi could use a bit of work on its timing."
"Ok, I'll try to do better." she said before they went at it.
Soon enough practice was over, and after getting changed and grabbing a shower once everyone else had left, Laura sat down underneath one of the campus' cherry trees. Leaning back against the trunk she enjoyed the warm spring afternoon, trying to leave all the worries about hostile spirits behind and think herself back to many a similar day spent relaxing at the banks of the Isar back home in Munich.
Half an hour later Daiki and Gabe joined her, the former putting down a six pack of beer and handing a can to his companions. As they enjoyed their drinks, they began idle small talk about classes, how their respective sport clubs were doing and anything else that caught their fancy. Drinking the evening away, they only broke their little impromptu gathering as darkness fell over the valley, and they agreed to do this again after Gabe's practice match on sunday.