Goro

Diary

Goro was always the last to speak at the dojo table, the youngest brother who learned early that silence outlasts every argument, and that patience is the sharpest blade a man can carry down from Misty Mountain. So when the sake ran dry and the trail mocked him with no stream in sight, he waited, watched the clouds, waited some more, and finally decided his own reserves would have to do, a decision made with the same calm he once used to out-sit rivals twice his size. The disease came slow and sure, the way all consequences do for a man who never rushes anything, and he sat with the fever the same way he sat with everything else, cross-legged, unbothered, counting breaths instead of regrets. He tells people now that he emerged wiser, and maybe he did, though the wisdom mostly amounts to knowing exactly which mountain streams to avoid and which of his own decisions to never repeat. Still he swears, between slow sips of whatever he is definitely not drinking straight from the source anymore, that discipline just needs a little more patience to fully kick in, any day now, any decade now.