Drooling Azuma

Diary

Before the trees, before Oleg, Azuma was the kind of cheerful bastard who laughed through drills and shared his rice with anyone who asked, a man whose appetite for life matched his appetite for absolutely everything else. Then came that clearing, that endless staring match with Oleg, some silent duel of wills that ended with nobody remembering who blinked first but everybody remembering the way Azuma's face changed after, like a floor that got rugged overnight and never recovered its price. Now he eats like he is trying to fill a hole that Oleg dug into him with nothing but eye contact, six meals stacked into one sitting, drool practically a second weapon, chasing a war that ended and left his hunger with nowhere honorable to go. He swears every morning he will fast, meditate, return to the disciplined ronin he used to be, and by noon he is aping into a fourth bowl of ramen like it is a blue-chip degen play. Cheerful Azuma died quiet in those trees, and what walked out was loud, greedy, gloriously undignified, and still somehow, underneath all that gluttonous chaos, aching to be that calm smiling swordsman again.