Young Yuji

📖 Young Yuji's Story

Young Yuji is still becoming, and always will be, because the wars ended before he got to finish. He came up in the last of the fighting, all promise and no scars yet, certain his great chapter was just over the next hill. The hill turned out to be the end of the whole book. So the boy who was supposed to grow into a legend got stranded as an eternal apprentice, and he has been overcompensating ever since: too much drink, too little sleep, chasing his mistress across the tatami mats and a reputation across the dojo, both of which keep politely declining. Young Yuji is not sad about it. He does not have the experience yet to be sad about it. He is just young, loudly and permanently, running toward a war that packed up and left before he arrived. He swears that tomorrow he trains like a true master, and tomorrow he is hungover, still young, still swearing it, which is at least its own kind of consistency.