Goro

Diary

Goro was always the last one to speak, a habit forged as the youngest in a house full of louder swords, and up on the wooden platform of Kiyomizu-Dera he let Yuji ramble for nearly an hour before saying a single word back. The wind carried temple bells and the faint skunk-sweet drift of Yuji's rolled weed, and Goro simply watched, the way he watched everything, certain that patience would outlast whatever chaos his friend was building toward. It did, eventually, though not the way the old masters meant when they spoke of stillness leading to clarity; his will got tested less by grand philosophy and more by Yuji's endless conspiracy theories about rugged floors and coin charts hidden in the temple's rafters. When the sun finally dipped behind the hills and Yuji collapsed into a laughing heap, Goro felt something loosen in his chest, a quiet, unglamorous kind of freedom that no sensei ever prepared him for. He told himself it was enlightenment, though really it was just relief, and he decided, as he always does, to wait and see if the feeling lasts.