Cheery Haru

Diary

Under the sakura petals drifting like pink confetti at a party nobody invited him to, Haru had opened his mouth before his brain finished loading, and out tumbled a joke about the daimyo's wife that landed with all the grace of a drunk samurai falling off a horse. The silence that followed was the kind that ends careers, or at least ends invitations, and Haru filled it the only way he knows how: with a grin so wide it could deflect a katana, laughing like the whole disaster was the punchline he'd been building to all along. Now he swears he's chasing a quieter life, meditating at dawn, sipping tea instead of sake, counting his breaths instead of his losses, and he manages exactly four minutes of stillness before he's cracking jokes to the koi fish and lighting up something that is decidedly not incense. Underneath the sunshine there's an old discipline gnawing at him, the ghost of a soldier who once stood silent for hours, and Haru keeps promising that ghost he'll listen someday, right after one more laugh, one more bad joke, one more beautiful, ridiculous mess. He tells himself the quiet life is just around the corner, conveniently the same corner he keeps rounding on a horse he never learned to steer.