Drooling Azuma

Diary

Azuma once split civilian skulls for coin at the gambling house in some backwater province nobody bothers naming twice, and somewhere between the third sake and the sixth loss he mistook a farmer's cousin for a rival clan's spy, and that was that for his good name. The samurai code says discipline, patience, restraint, but Azuma's stomach only speaks one language, and that language is more, always more, whether it's dice, drink, or degens promising him a floor price that'll ape to the moon by sundown. He drools, literally, famously, over anything with a payout attached, war stories included, and he tells them louder each time until the civilians he actually beat start sounding like a whole invading army he singlehandedly routed. Every morning he swears he'll fast, meditate, sharpen his blade instead of his appetite, and every morning by noon he's face down in a bowl of noodles somebody else paid for, mumbling about better days ahead like a prophet who forgot the prophecy. Still he grins through the shame, big and gold-toothed and shameless, certain the next hand, the next brawl, the next rugged token will finally feed whatever war left him this hungry.