Cheery Haru

Diary

Haru grinned the way he always did, like the world owed him nothing and he was fine collecting on that debt with a smile, the night he flattened Botan among the swaying cedars and somehow ended up broker than a rugged JPEG by sunrise. He'd aped his last coin into a bet on his own fists, sure the discipline drilled into him back when he still wore a real blade would carry him through, and it did, right up until some grifter in the crowd lifted his winnings while he was busy taking a victory bow. Most men would sulk; Haru just laughed louder, told anyone who'd listen that wealth is a floor price and floors are made to be broken, then lit a joint with hands that used to hold a katana steady at dawn meditation and now shook only from laughing too hard. Underneath the grin, though, something iron still paces, the old samurai ghost muttering about restraint and ledgers and the virtue of walking away, and Haru answers it the only way he knows how, by buying the next round he can't afford and calling it enlightenment. He regrets nothing, he says, and maybe that's the truest lie a happy man ever perfected.”