Angry Ikari

Diary

Ikari stood at the main temple gate with the vein in his forehead already throbbing like a war drum before the war even began, and somewhere a dead monk's proverb rattled loose in his skull: anger is a stone thrown into a wasp's nest. He did not care. He walked past the incense and the bowed heads and slapped Raiku the Stoner clean across his lazy grinning face, right there on sacred ground, because discipline these days meant finding new places to lose it. Raiku barely blinked, took a slow drag, and muttered that the whole thing lacked flow, lacked energy, lacked vibe, and somehow that was worse than getting hit back. Ikari wanted a duel, a reckoning, blood on the temple stones to prove his fury still meant something, but instead he got a stoned critic rating his rage a four out of ten. He left the temple grounds seething, vein still pulsing, another failed attempt at inner peace logged, another day the old samurai discipline slipped further out of reach like smoke Raiku never bothered to inhale properly.