Akuma

Diary

They called him Akuma back in the war, a name earned by silence and steel, and he wore it long after the swords were pawned for sake cups and worse habits. The bet itself was nothing, some drunk dare thrown across a mahjong table, but Akuma never once backed down from a fight even when the fight was against his own good sense. So he stripped to the waist and lowered himself into the koi pond beneath the Emperor's Palace, where the snakes had been let loose for reasons no one quite remembers, and he sat there grinning like the demon he was named for while fat water snakes coiled around his ankles. He did not scream, he did not flinch, he only laughed the low laugh that used to make enemy ranks break formation, and when he climbed out soaked and bitten twice he declared himself a changed man, wiser now, done with foolish wagers. Everyone at the Dojo knows that lasted exactly until the next round of dice, because discipline was the one battle Akuma never learned to win, and some part of him, the part still amused by his own legend, prefers it that way.