Akuma

Diary

They called him Akuma back when the war still had a shape, back when a demon's calm on the field meant men lived to see morning, and he wears that name now the way a blade wears rust, proud and faintly embarrassed. These days the only battlefield is his own futon, petals scattered across the sheets where he trims cherry blossoms at 3am like some deranged ikebana priest, convinced it is raising his charisma stat one snip at a time. He knows how it looks, a man once feared by generals now curating floral arrangements in bed instead of meditating at dawn like the old masters taught, and the joke is not lost on him, it just doesn't stop him. He tried discipline once this week, told himself no petals till the dishes were done, and lost that fight in under an hour because the blossoms looked lonely in their vase and his hands got twitchy. Akuma still moves through the world like doom given a face, dark eyes promising violence, except now that promise mostly gets cashed in on aesthetic upgrades and living, one unbothered petal-strewn day at a time.