Goro

Diary

Goro had learned patience the hard way, youngest of too many brothers, always last to eat, last to speak, first to watch. At the noodle house that night he sat perfectly still while the courtesans draped themselves over his shoulders giggling about his stone face, and he simply waited, the way he waited out storms, debts, and bad hands at the table. Then the rat darted across the tatami and something in him that had been coiled since the wars finally sprang loose, chopstick becoming blade, one clean strike before the broth even cooled. He told himself it was reflex, the old discipline surfacing, but the truth was he'd felt more alive gutting that rodent than he had in months of sober meditation and half-hearted vows to quit the weed and the dice. Now he meditates every morning promising today will be different, and every morning by noon he's aped back into some floor-bound bet, quietly certain that patience, like everything else he once mastered, has quietly rugged him.”