[Hōzuki Keneō]

Waking up bright and early, the young Hozuki shinobi look out across his bed and into his bedroom. Hanging over a chair were the clothes he was going to be wearing today, prepared a day ahead of time so he wouldn't need to wake up any earlier than he needed to. Proper planning, that was all that it was, to act ahead of time and save oneself the trouble of having to do something during a time when 'time' itself was more scarce. Taking a deep breath, Ken rose out of bed and started getting dressed for what was to come. Brushing his teeth, making sure his hair wasn't too rough and messy and made his way down the stairs.

Taking the food he had prepared the previous night from the pantry, he sat himself down by the dining table where he worked down a few simplistic sandwiches. There was no need to rush as he had planned everything out quite well already, and he was more than ahead of schedule. Dressed in his usual dark attire complete with an antracite grey scarf and fingerless gloves to prove a bit of additional warmth from the early morning cold, a short walk to the post office began after he closed and locked his front door behind him. Just like how he had been working in the academy to clean up the place after hours a week ago, he had offered to help out the post office on this fine Sunday.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

Just like had been the case with the academy task, which had honestly been a chore for a janitor rather than a shinobi, it at the very least provided him with a bit of money and another completed mission that would count up to whatever requirements might be tied to him being able to take part in the upcoming Chuunin exams. Because of his patrolling duties as a Hidden Mist Police officer, he already knew the path he needed to take to handle the route that he had been given as swiftly and as efficiently as possible. For when one was delivering the mail, efficiency and speed were very much appreciated as there were a lot of people who would go out of their way to complain.

Most people just wanted to read their letters and their news articles, so when they did not get their papers first thing in the morning, people had a tendency towards getting upset. They did not care about the weather people had to work in or the sheer amount of mail that had to be delivered within an orderly fashion. All they cared about was their own convenience and how someone running late might risk that, thus becoming an inconvenience on their part. But that was what civilian life was like, complaining about silly things while other people fought their actual battles for them, all so they could keep complaining about the silly little things.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

For such was the entitlement a civilian earned when living in a country that was safe, secure and thriving in more ways than one. In a way, Ken himself felt plenty entitled as well. With him being able to become both a shinobi and a police officer was quite something to be proud of, and the fact that he was able to hold two jobs at the same time was not even all that common. Usually, there would be one job for every one person. Though whether it had been entirely by some sort of entitlement or a result of his hard work and dedication, he had been able to do both. This allowed him to live by himself quite easily, which also wasn't exactly a given for someone his age, as usually a caregiver would need to live within the same premises.

But because of the fact that he had gotten no complaints from any of the surrounding neighbors and had proven that he was capable of taking care of himself and the property, he was allowed to keep doing what he did as he did it. But in order to truly be able to live alone, it meant that he had to do his own groceries, pay for his own food, prepare and cook his own food and bring in the money required to do any of the aforementioned. And while being a police officer paid fairly well, being a Genin brought in a good sum of money and him catching his own fish from time to time helped keep the costs of groceries down, every little bit of extra money he could get his hands on was more than welcome.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

But if the village would not suddenly stumble into some sort of recession or inflation or however people would call it when their economy collapsed, Ken was confident that he would be able to keep making a decent enough living for himself. After all, he did have two jobs and was more than set on advancing his career by winning in the Chuunin exams that were coming up. Thanks to Homare, he had learned that these would be taking place in Amegakure, a place he knew of only through the academy curriculum. As the name would suggest, it was a village 'hidden' in rain, though perhaps it being hidden in it was a bit of misdirection. The village wasn't so much hidden in it as much as it was more or less constantly raining there.

He had also learned that a good deal of the shinobi hailing from that place possessed techniques that allowed them to call upon rain through water based ninjutsu techniques, techniques he himself was very much interested in seeing himself. As far as techniques went, whether they were ninjutsu or weaponry based or even illusory, Ken was always interested in figuring out how things worked. Because if he could figure out how something worked, that meant that he would be able to teach himself how to make it work for himself, thus adding a new technique to his repertoire. And there could never be too many techniques up one's sleeve when the alternative to adaptability was death.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

Due to an abundance of prior planning, proper reading of the mission documentation and being quite well acquainted with the streets of the hidden mist due to his job as a policeman and shinobi, getting to the post office took him little to no time at all. And he didn't even need to cross any rooftops to save time. He could just walk over there without a care in the world, knowing that time was very much on his side. Arriving exactly as the post office was opening its door, the clerk working the desk was actually scared when he opened the blinds and saw the white haired boy waiting in front of the door. Looking like he had seen a ghost, Ken let himself in to spare the man the effort of having to quickly collect himself.

Picking up a shoulder bag filled with post, it seemed that most of it had been put in in a certain order, which was something Ken well and truly appreciated as it made his work that much more efficient. Browsing through the bag for a bit to check whether or not it actually started where he was supposed to start and the post office hadn't tried to bamboozle him with extra work on account of him being some upstart Genin, Ken swung the bag over his shoulder once he was content with the contents. Bidding the man a good day as he slipped back out the front door, the boy would make his way straight towards the street he was supposed to be delivering the mail to while making sure to stay on schedule.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

Upon approaching the first house, it seemed that it, like the vast majority of the other homes in the area was still dark, meaning the inhabitants were more than likely still vast asleep. And since they only had what seemed like two letters and a news paper to their name and address, he didn't figure he would be waking any of them up by dropping it through the mail slot in the front door. With a quick and precise push, he dropped all three of them through the door and went back on his way towards the neighbors. Taking a look up at the sky, it did not seem like it would be raining any time soon, if at all, which made this job a whole lot more pleasant than he had expected it to be.

He had heard some academy students complain during his time among them as a lot of them took on jobs delivering mail so they would be able to build up a bit of a buffer for once they graduated and needed to purchase their own ninja tools. They often complained about having to deliver the mail even if there was a storm raging outside, which was clearly an overexaggeration of the facts, though he understood the intent behind it. He imagined delivering mail when said mail was getting drenched along with the one delivering it couldn't be all that beneficial to either, and might result in some complaints from the recipients. After all, a wet news paper was probably rather difficult to read properly without ripping the pages.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

But he had made an abundant amount of preparations, including checking the weather forecasts to make sure whether or not he would need to bring along any kind of waterproofed equipment like a plastic cover to keep the contents of the bag from getting wet once he took it out and tried to put it into the proper post boxes. Even though something like delivering the mail was something that would normally be beneath the average shinobi, Ken believed in doing things the right way. Just like he would do with a mission or a training session, he would prepare himself accordingly a day or so before the actual undertaking itself.

Whether it was proper planning before cleaning up the academy building's classrooms, preparing which equipment he would need to bring with him on a mission, preparing his food ahead of going to bed so he could get right into it in the early morning and save himself the time of having to do it in a rush, even figuring out whether or not it was going to rain and walking the path he was going to take when delivering the mail a day ahead of time. All of these things were of importance to someone who valued doing things the right way, as well as doing everything as effectively as possible without wasting any effort and energy along the way.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

Pushing the next news paper through the slot in the door, he listened as it fell on the floor in the hallway before he walked back onto the streets, satisfied with another successful delivery. Up until now, he had been going by at a pretty stellar rate, though he wasn't going to be using any kind of clones this time around. When it came down to cleaning, he felt like doing so would save him a lot of time and effort, which it clearly did, an outcome of which there would be no debate. But since this was just him delivering the mail before heading back to deliver the empty bag and going back home to collect his training gear, he did not want to utilize any chakra before that point.

Since it was still so early in the morning, wasting the chakra he might need to use later on would be nothing short of a waste. Besides, due to his planning, there was no point in further hastening the process by utilizing a bunch of clones that would just need to keep coming back to him to collect more papers. It seemed like it would be more work than it was worth, even though he honestly had the chakra to make up for it as he had been born with quite a large amount of it. So instead of calling in more versions of himself for support, he just continued his stroll while pushing letters and news papers into the appropriate slots. While he was doing so, he was also doing something that might have seemed odd to some.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

While dropping off the mail, he looked into which houses already had the lights on at this hour, which houses were slowly waking up and turning on the lights, as well as which buildings just remained dark altogether. It was the sort of information that was useless to most, but as a police officer, it was the kind of thing that he liked to have in the back of his mind. Should it come to pass that there was something going on in this particular area of the village, such as had previously been the case when he had to look into some drug related issues in another section, he would know which places were lit up bright and early like a christmas tree while the rest of the world yet slept.

Though it might have been him marking certain homes for later in a rather unfair manner, having this kind of knowledge ahead of time would allow him to see whether it checked out with any intel they were given by the police force. From that point on, he would be able to either act on what he already had seen or not. He wasn't the type to go barging into things without properly checking once or twice to be sure, though he was also not the kind of person who wouldn't act when much of the evidence pointed in a specific direction. It was in that sense that his position as a shinobi and as a police officer had a tendency of clashing, as the two were pretty far apart in methodology.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

Once the last news paper made it into the final house of this street, he made sure to check whether or not he had maybe missed any loose post cards or other paperwork in the bag. Only once he was entirely certain that this was not the case did he close up the bag and begin making his way back to the post office. He didn't run, he didn't traverse any rooftops or scale any walls, he just walked back as if time was well and truly on his side. To onlookers, of which there honestly were none due to the time of day, it would have seemed like a person who did not have a single care in the world. Though they would be vastly mistaken, as there was more than enough on his mind to fill several books.

So as he made his way back to the post office, he noticed that a lot of the other delivery boys and girls had only just started arriving or leaving with a full bag, which at the very least told him that a good deal of them were not truly all that into the job. And he understood why, he truly did. The sheer amount of complaints they got during the day couldn't have been easy to deal with, nor was having to do this job every single day regardless of what kind of weather they were to be facing. On the other hand, and this might have been a bit mean of him to say, they did seem to be slacking off a good deal in regards to the time in which they arrived to start doing their work.

[Hōzuki Keneō]

If they were to all come in around the same time, which seemed to be more or less the last possible moment before they were to be 'late' on the job, it made sense that the ones who weren't as fast as some of the others would in turn be late when it came to delivering their assigned mail. Sighing a bit as he watched some of them push and press past one another in order to get to their bags and out the door, he saw a bunch of children that had grown accustomed to this kind of schedule, the lack of punishment and the knowledge that they would end up getting paid once the job was done. Frowning a bit as the last one of them dashed out the door, Ken placed his empty bag back into the slot he had taken it out of before looking at the clerk.

He too seemed to not be all that into his job, though he too would end up getting paid just fine regardless of whether or not he would be slacking off on his duties. Had Ken been in charge, he would have let some of these kids go in order to set an example for the others, as they clearly needed to be reminded of what it was like when one was branded a failure. Luckily for them, that was not the case, and they would all be able to keep on going on the way they had, including all of the harsh words aimed at them for not being there on time or for delivering the wrong mail in a hurry. That was the kind of mentality one could expect when their leader or manager was slacking off. But as he had thought before, this wasn't his problem, so he wasn't about to get involved.


[EXIT]