A/N: This is a ZoSan Secret Valentine's gift for Tumblr user sunny-donna! Sorry for the wait, dear, and I hope you like it!

.:o.O.o:.

Petal 1

.:o.O.o:.

„Six...! Seven...! Eight...!"

Sweat started to cumulate on Zoro's brow. He had forgotten his bandana at home that day, but it didn't really matter. He would leave it to run down along his face; he would let it be another test of will.

The local kendo club's temporary training hall had thin walls and no heating. Alas, it was only the trophy room of the city gym, emptied and at their disposal while the renovations on their own club building were done, hopefully while the winter was still dry. Their sensei had been encouraging. It wouldn't be a problem, he had said, as long as they would have a proper warming-up.

And by that, he had meant a rigorous stretching session, first and foremost. Followed by a hundred and fifty suburi swings, counted by every club member ten at a time.

"One...! Two...!" The chanting restarted in the front row.

The green haired apprentice stood second to last on the tatami, which had been cramped into the room it had not been made for. Towards the end, when the numbers rose roughly from strained throats was when he liked to show his endurance the most. Adding the fact that his favourite part were the pulse-bursting, shoulder-numbing and nerve-knotting rounds of weighted sword exercises that concluded each training, small wonder some of his team mates thought him for crazy. And Zoro let them. He would gladly take the title of a fool if it came with the rank of the very best.

The row of three in front of theirs was almost done. Between swings, Zoro glanced over at his fellow club member who would count before him, anticipating his turn. As he attempted to focus in on the rhythmic strikes of the stout young man's practice sword, however, something peculiar caught his eyes just beyond the peak of the slicing shinai, behind the hall's large windows.

The sight in the yard could have just as well have been very happy kid, from the way he kept jumping up and down. Except the blond guy through the glass was tall even for an adult, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips and a stubble of a goatee on his chin that just screamed Sissy of the Year. Also, on closer inspection, his skipping made him look more like a colossal moron than a child. He took the smoke from his mouth, to be able to talk enthusiastically into the receiver he had clamped against his ear. He must have won the lottery, the swordsman thought. And with that, the green-hair was just about to turn away when the blond's sudden motions startled his attention right back; arms raised, he started twirling around like a ballerina that had just gotten the leading role of a spin-top – with free coupons to a strip lounge as bonus, judging by that lecherous face he was making. Imagining what words could have left that crookedly grinning mouth of his was puke-inducing, to say the least. And when that pervert lifted the phone to his face, mimicking sloppy smooching, Zoro's stomach was next in line to pirouette.

"Nine...! Ten!"

Until he noticed him watching. From his lovesick duckface, the guy switched to the most venomous scowl in mere milliseconds, and the swordsman twitched, wondering whether he was hallucinating from that beer for breakfast...

"Roronoa!" His sensei's frown was a tad more intimidating, though. "Twenty for you! Less sleeping, more counting!"

Zoro immediately fixed his position, swinging with gusto and making utmost effort to get his blood to flow to his arms aside from his face. The twenty suburi were done in no time at all. And he wouldn't have minded another fifty – just to bash the head of the giggling blond creep's picture in front of his eyes in some more.