Angry Ikari

Diary

Ikari did not cry at the market stall, no, the vein just relocated to his forehead and stayed there like a landlord who never leaves. He had aped an entire tray of wasabi on a dare nobody actually made, chasing some phantom discipline test he invented on the spot, and his finger snapped clean under the weight of his own stubbornness gripping the tiny wooden spoon too hard. "Anger is a wind that blows out the lamp of the mind," he had once read on a scroll, and then he threw the scroll because it made him angrier that it was right. Splint on, knuckles throbbing, he swore this humiliation was the final sign, the cosmic tap on the shoulder telling him to found his own dojo, one built on iron discipline, zero wasabi dares, and absolutely no gambling on how much a man can eat before his bones file a complaint. Three days later he was back at the same stall, seething, spoon in his good hand, insisting this time he'd control the rage instead of the rage controlling the wasabi, and everyone at the market quietly placed side bets on which finger goes next.”