Akuma

Diary

They called him Akuma back when a battlefield still meant something, when his blade earned the name demon and men flinched at the sound of his sandals on gravel; now he sits cross-legged in his own quarters, incense long gone cold, watching two beetles grapple over a splintered twig like it's the last shogunate. He'd scored a baggie of mushrooms off a ronin who owed him a favor from three wars ago, and figured why not eat half before the second round, purely for the discipline of it, purely to sharpen the mind the way the old masters intended. The mind did not sharpen. The beetles blurred into twin dragons, the twig became a bridge over some ancient river, and Akuma laughed the low laugh that used to make enemies soil their hakama, except now it's just him, alone, laughing at bugs. He tells himself tomorrow he meditates at dawn, no more fungi, no more aping into whatever a stranger hands him in a dark hallway, but the demon inside him just yawns and asks what the future could possibly want with a man who's already been rugged by his own legend. Still he wonders, half-floating, half-terrified, whether the future holds another war worth the name he carries, or just more beetles, more mushrooms, more quiet rooms where the demon practices being ordinary and fails beautifully every time.