Fat Bob

Diary

They called him Fat Bob before he ever earned it, a schoolyard insult that calcified into destiny, and he spent thirty years proving the name right one dumpling and one broken jaw at a time. On sparring day he wandered out to the yard meaning only to loosen up against a few ronin stragglers, the kind of loose, half-baked warmup he tells himself counts as discipline, and somewhere between the third bowl and the fifth clash of bamboo he put a man down for real, permanent, the un-tap-outable kind of down. He swears it was an accident the way a degen swears the next ape is the last one, shrugging with a grin too wide for the moment, because underneath the soft belly and the giggling is still the same terrifyingly efficient blade that made the name Fat Bob a joke nobody repeats twice. That night he told himself he'd meditate on it, sit with the weight of it like a proper samurai should, and instead rolled another one and told the story to anyone who'd listen, laughing loudest at his own horror. He has never felt better, he says, and the worst part is you can tell he means it.