Drooling Azuma

Diary

Up on the dojo roof, under a sky that used to mean something to a man who once meditated for hours without so much as a stomach growl, Drooling Azuma tried to say three honest words to Masumi and instead produced the vocabulary of a man choking on his own tongue, sweat pooling where his old discipline used to live. He had faced war drums and screaming cavalry without flinching, yet one raised eyebrow from Masumi sent him sliding down the roof tiles like a sack of rice, appetite roaring louder than any battlefield ever had. Azuma swore to himself, right there clutching a loose shingle, that tonight he would sit in silence and process his feelings like a disciplined warrior, a vow that lasted exactly as long as it took him to spot the sake jug waiting at the bottom of the ladder. Ten minutes later he was bellowing toasts to nobody, mourning a conversation he barely survived with the volume of a man announcing a great victory, his tears and his laughter indistinguishable and equally enormous. Somewhere between his fourth cup and his sixth apology to a wall he mistook for Masumi, the old samurai discipline waved a small, tired white flag and admitted, not for the first time, total defeat.”