Drooling Azuma

Diary

Drooling Azuma once trained his katana arm to split hairs at forty paces, but these days it just splits the last dumpling with strangers who never agreed to the duel. The noodle house on the corner still bears the scorch marks from the night he declared himself shogun of the broth, flipping tables, hurling chopsticks like shuriken, demanding tribute in the form of extra pork belly. Nobody crowned him that night, they just called the owner and hid the good sake, but Azuma remembers it as his finest hour, a coronation of gluttony and chaos he has been chasing ever since. He tells himself tomorrow he will meditate, eat slow, breathe between bites like a true warrior should, and then he apes into a second bowl before the first one cools, laughing too loud, sauce on his chin, utterly ungovernable. The war ended years ago and left him no enemies worth fighting, so now he wages holy war on all-you-can-eat specials, gloriously undefeated, gloriously undignified, forever the shogun nobody wanted but everybody remembers.”