Drooling Azuma

Diary

Drooling Azuma once carried a blade with the calm of a man who trusted the universe, but these days he trusts nothing except the smell of grilled eel and the promise of a fat bag on the come up, and that trust got him rugged mid bite at the Dojo table across from Goro, who somehow ate through the whole robbery without lifting his eyes off his bowl. One second Azuma's coin purse was fat with his last degen win, the next it was gone like a rug pull at 3am, and Azuma roared loud enough to rattle the paper walls, mouth still full, rice flying like confetti at his own funeral for financial discipline. In the humiliated silence after, something cracked open in him, some ancient samurai muscle memory, and he swore right there, greasy fingers raised to the heavens, that he would become a monk, find peace, stop aping into every shiny promise that walked past the Dojo gate. He lasted four days of meditation before he was back at the table shoveling dumplings with one hand and clutching a fresh empty coin purse with the other, insisting between mouthfuls that true enlightenment was just really, really wanting something you can't hold onto. Goro, unbothered as ever, simply passed him more rice and let the false monk choke down his losses one greedy bite at a time.