Angry Ikari

Diary

The lanterns of Nagasaki burned orange that night, thousands of paper suns drifting on the harbor breeze, and Ikari's vein burned brighter than any of them. His superior said something, some small correction about formation or posture, and the words landed on Ikari like a slap he'd been waiting his whole life to answer. "Anger is a wind that blows out the lamp of the mind," his old sensei used to say, and Ikari remembers this only after his fists have already done the forgetting. He struck his own commander in front of a thousand floating lights, and watched his rank, his honor, his reflection in the water all sink at once. Now he sits at the edge of the harbor most nights, jaw tight, fists loose only because there's nothing left to hit, promising the ghosts of the festival that tomorrow he'll breathe before he swings, and every tomorrow the vein in his neck calls him a liar.He can do better. He knows this the way a man knows a debt he keeps refusing to pay, and still the anger comes first, always first, like it bought the front row seat to his own life and refuses the refund.