Goro

Diary

Goro was always the last to speak in the dojo, the youngest brother who learned patience by watching six others burn out before he even lifted his blade, so when the mist rolled over the ridge that morning he simply waited, calm as a floor price nobody's checking. The ninjas came anyway, shrieking like they'd been rugged on a presale, and Goro shouted back only once, a single disciplined bark his old sensei would've been proud of, before some cursed spore or poison mist or bad vibes left a blotchy rash creeping up his forearm like a chart nobody wants to look at. He sat with it for three days, quiet, watchful, refusing to scratch, refusing to panic, the same stillness that once made him the family's most dangerous swordsman now making him the family's most patient itch-sufferer. Somewhere between the calamine and the cold ramen he decided his calling: teaching self defence to whoever still believes discipline can be relearned after the wars, after the weed, after the fourteenth failed diamond-hands promise to himself. He hasn't started the classes yet, keeps saying next week, next moon, next mist, but he waits it out the same way he waits out everything, sure that patience alone will eventually rug the rash and the vice both.