Goro

Diary

Goro was always the one who waited, youngest of his line, taught patience the way other men are taught the sword, and so he sat in the corner of the izakaya nursing a warm sake while bandits started trouble he had no interest in starting first. He watched them long enough to learn their footwork, long enough to see every opening, and only when the last fool swung wild did he finally move, quiet and economical, the way his old sensei would have approved of before the wars ended and approval stopped mattering. He won, of course, he always wins if you let him wait long enough, but somewhere between the third bandit's dirty blade and the spilled shochu on the floorboards he picked up something that has been living in his blood ever since, some izakaya-born curse with no name and no cure. Now he has a list of issues longer than his own patience, degen habits stacked on old discipline like rust on a good blade, and he tells himself he will quit the weed and the gambling dens and get his diet right the same calm way he tells himself the fever will break by morning. It never does, not fully, but Goro just waits it out anyway, because waiting is the only technique he never forgot how to use.