Cheery Haru

Diary

Haru grins the way sunlight hits a rusted blade, bright enough that nobody clocks the rust underneath, and that grin was working overtime the night he found himself training footwork with scumbags down by the dojo latrines because the good mats were full and pride is expensive in Kyoto rent. Mid-lunge his katana found a rat instead of air, and while the scumbags howled laughing he threw both hands up like he'd landed a sponsorship, hollering that this was destiny, that Musashi probably stabbed a rat once too and nobody talks about it. Inside, some small disciplined ghost of the samurai he used to be quietly filed the whole night under things that should not have happened, but Haru filed it under Chapter One and started narrating his own life out loud, working title 'The Way of the Rat,' self-help meets katana meets honestly just vibes. He tells everyone at the dojo he is writing a book now, shows nobody a single page, and every morning he still promises himself today's the day he trains seriously before inevitably getting talked into another latrine sparring session, another bowl, another excuse dressed up as a plot twist. The discipline never comes back, but the grin never slips either, and somehow that's the whole book.