Cheery Haru

Diary

Up on the dojo roof, moonlight silvering the tiles like a floor chart that finally pumped, Cheery Haru sat cross-legged beside Edmundo and grinned the grin he kept bolted on for occasions exactly like this one. Edmundo talked, and talked, and kept talking, some slow unspooling confession about rugged bags and worse decisions, and Haru nodded along with the enthusiasm of a man cheering a fire he started himself. Inside, where the old katas used to live, something quietly curled up and died a little, because discipline was supposed to mean sitting still without needing to fill every silence with a joke, and here he was failing that test in real time with a smile stapled on so tight his jaw ached worse than his knees. He told himself this was fine, this was practice, this was basically meditation if you squinted, took a slow pull of weed to steady hands that did not want steadying, and laughed at nothing so Edmundo wouldn't see how far the floor had actually dropped. By the time the incense burned out he had never felt more hollow in his life, and he capped the night the only way he knew how, by promising himself tomorrow he'd wake up at dawn and be a real samurai again, a promise he had already, cheerfully, begun to break.”