Before long, Mitsuri brought Kanzaki Kumo inside, where he met her mother, Kanroji Hina, and her two younger sisters, Kanroji Chinatsu and Kanroji Ai.
However, Mitsuri's father, Kanroji Kaito, had gone out a little earlier and had yet to return.
When the family learned that Kanzaki Kumo was the "Kanzaki-oniisan" Mitsuri had mentioned from time to time, they all greeted him with tremendous enthusiasm.
In fact, though he did not know whether he was imagining it, Kanzaki Kumo felt that something seemed a little unusual about the way Kanroji Hina looked at him. It was like the look Kocho Delia would give him when she saw him and Kanae being affectionate.
Setting those thoughts aside for the moment, Kanzaki Kumo explained why he had come, then followed Mitsuri to a relatively empty room and began teaching her.
The initial stage of training to control her own strength centered on two main points: slowing down and directing her attention inward.
She needed to exert force slowly to achieve precise control over her strength. At the same time, during training, she had to focus on the target muscles or joints and feel the subtle changes as they contracted, stretched, and exerted force.
The exercises Kanzaki Kumo taught Mitsuri were not difficult, either.
One was a variation on the plank: while holding a standard plank, she would try shifting her center of gravity slightly, feeling the tiny adjustments the muscles in her legs, shoulders, waist, and abdomen made to maintain stability.
Another was a wall sit, feeling the balanced exertion of the muscles at the front and back of her thighs, as well as maintaining the angles of her hips and knees.
Besides static exercises, there were also dynamic ones.
These were extremely slow push-ups and squats, stretching movements that normally took only