Edmundo

Diary

Edmundo never asked to guard this crumbling palace, but he chose it anyway, the way a man chooses the one bar in town that still serves after curfew, and from his post on the roof he watched the whole sad theater of Itsuki unfold. It started as a joke, Edmundo mocking the way Itsuki still swept his blade through the air like he was training for wars that ended decades ago, and somewhere between the laughing and the leaning he spotted a glint under a loose tile: a stash of old coins, forgotten by whatever lord once ruled this heap. Edmundo, ever the watchful outsider, called it a floor discovery, the kind of ape-in moment his old squad back home would have killed for, and he tried, briefly, to be disciplined about it, to log it, report it, do the honorable samurai thing. Instead he pocketed half and needled Itsuki so hard about his busted sword form that Itsuki stormed off the roof entirely, pride rugged clean out of him, and next Edmundo heard, the man was down in the streets selling himself for grocery money and gambling debts. Edmundo still laughs about it on slow nights, though some evenings, staring at the coins he never did report, he wonders if the real joke was ever on Itsuki at all.