Akuma

Diary

They called him Akuma back when the war still had a face worth cutting, and he never bothered correcting anyone because the name fit better than his own ever did. At Fushimi shrine, beneath ten thousand vermillion gates that promised a thousand different fortunes, he sat down with The English Pilot and a bottle that had no business being that cheap, and somewhere around gate four thousand something cracked open in his skull that the priests would probably call enlightenment and he calls a very expensive hangover with good PR. He remembers laughing at a fox statue like it owed him yen, remembers The English Pilot slurring something about floors and ceilings that made too much sense at 3am and none by sunrise. Now Akuma tells anyone who asks that he's found peace, that he lives one day at a time, which is technically true since he can rarely plan further than the next drink or the next brawl. The demon still wears his old name like a blade he never sheathed, mostly because trying to be a better man for longer than twenty four hours keeps ending the same way that night at the shrine did, on his back, grinning at gods he's not sure forgave him.”