Akuma

Diary

They named him Akuma back when the snow turned red and he stopped counting the civilians, and he wears that name now the way other men wear a wedding ring, a little proud, a little ashamed, mostly just tired. He tells anyone who asks that he became a good man after that day, which is true in the sense that a rugged floor is technically still a floor, just lower and full of regret. These days his discipline is a meditation app he opened once, a katana he uses to open bags of gas-station edibles, and a vow of silence he breaks every time someone mentions the snow, at which point he goes very quiet in a way that is somehow louder than screaming. He has chosen to forget the incident the same way a degen chooses to forget an ape that went to zero, by aping into three more distractions and calling it healing. Ask him if he sleeps well and he'll grin that Akuma grin, dark and amused, and say the snow doesn't bother him anymore, he just bothers everyone else instead.'