Akuma

Diary

They called him Akuma in the war because the name fit like a blade fits a sheath, and he never once asked them to take it back. Now the demon sleeps on a futon that smells like spilled shochu and regret, and one night the wild boar of his nightmares finally climbed out of memory and into his actual bedroom, tusks and all, so he did what any self-respecting devil does and drove his tanto clean through it. The monkey, some unlucky degen spirit animal that had wandered in chasing the smell of old take-out, caught the follow-through and never saw it coming, which Akuma considers less a tragedy and more a two-for-one deal the universe owed him. He lay there afterward in the wreckage, blood and weed smoke curling toward the ceiling, and laughed the low laugh that used to make enemy ranks break formation, because discipline was supposed to mean sitting in stillness, not stabbing wildlife in his sleep, and he is failing that lesson beautifully every single night. Still, he calls it freedom, the demon's version of enlightenment, and honestly the boar probably had it rugged worse than his floor ever did.