Cheery Haru

Diary

The afternoon sun hammered the dojo yard like a foreclosure notice on a rugged floor, and Haru grinned through it anyway, because grinning was the only technique he'd never lost. Sparring Azuma was supposed to be light work, a warmup, a vibe check, but Haru overcommitted on a strike the way he overcommitted on every low-cap ape, and his elbow folded backward with a crunch that echoed off the temple beams. He laughed. Actually laughed, cradling the joint at a wrong angle while Azuma turned pale and the old sensei's ghost somewhere sighed at how far the bushido had drifted into blunt smoke and bad decisions. Haru swears the discipline is coming back any day now, right after this cast heals, right after one more sesh, right after he stops finding the pain kind of funny, and he says all this with the same sunny certainty of a man who has never once been right about a floor price or a bone.The cheer never cracks, not even when the medic winces at the X-ray, because underneath the grin is the same iron that once held a blade steady, now just holding a rolling paper steady instead, and Haru counts the broken elbow as tuition paid to the university of no regrets.