Akuma

Diary

They called him Akuma in the war because the name fit like a blade fits a scabbard, and he never bothered correcting anyone since, why argue with a good brand. He came back from the wars looking for the kind of stillness monks write scrolls about, found instead a futon in his mum's spare room and a bong that never seemed to empty. Enlightenment, when it finally arrived, did not come on a mountaintop or beneath a bodhi tree, it came mid-scrap with Junichiro in the living room, knocking over his mum's good vase and somehow, between a wild haymaker and the smell of green drifting from the kitchen, seeing the whole rotten shape of his own existence with terrifying clarity. He apologized to no one, cleaned up none of the glass, and simply nodded like a man who'd been rugged by his own potential for a decade straight. Akuma knows discipline is out there somewhere, floor price of the soul he keeps meaning to buy back, but for now he just grins that demon's grin and tells himself, with total sincerity and zero evidence, that he can do better tomorrow.