Edmundo

Diary

Edmundo did not choose the men's pleasure house for its architecture, though he noted, even mid trip, that the paper screens were poorly maintained by any standard a former guard could respect. He had eaten the mushrooms on a dare, the kind of dare a man accepts when he has spent a decade watching other people's discipline crumble and figures his own might as well join the pile, and within the hour the walls were breathing and the koi in the painted scrolls were swimming toward him with terrible patience. The degens found him first, a loose ring of laughing, half dressed fighters closing in like a jury that had already decided he was funny rather than dangerous, and Edmundo, who had guarded gates in countries that did not appreciate irony, understood that this was its own kind of siege. He did not draw a blade. He simply stood his ground, swaying like a reed that refuses to fall, muttering dry observations about their posture and their debts until the laughter turned to something warmer, something like kinship, and by dawn the Dojo had decided that any man who could hold a perimeter while convinced the floor was lava had earned his place among them. He still tells himself he will never touch mushrooms again, and he still keeps a small bag of them in his boot, because an outsider's loyalty, like his discipline, is a promise he intends to keep right up until the moment it becomes inconvenient.