Akuma

Diary

They called him Akuma back when the war still meant something, and he wore the name like a blade he never sheathed, half warning and half punchline he told at his own expense. In the steam-fogged noodle house on the corner where he'd been trading secrets for sake and bad advice, a snake slid across the floor mid-confession, and Akuma killed it without breaking his sentence, chopsticks in one hand, death in the other. He watched it die with the same flat amusement he watched most things die, including the disciplined swordsman he used to be, and decided the omen meant he was finally, truly free. He tried, briefly, to turn that freedom into something noble, a new code, a morning routine, maybe even meditation before the first drink, but by noon he was aped into a coin named after the snake he'd just killed and calling it destiny. Demons don't reform, he told the broth, they just find funnier ways to be feared, and the noodle house never did get that stain out of the floor.”