Goro

Diary

Goro was the youngest of the old dojo, and youngest sons learn early that the world moves on its own clock, so he simply waited, watching the others burn out their tempers while he sat still as river stone. It was at the great temple grounds that his patience finally met its match: a bad gas station burrito, three bong rips too many the night before, and a ceremony that refused to end no matter how hard he prayed for the monks to hurry it along. Halfway through the incense bow his stomach staged its own coup, his kimono betrayed him completely, and in the scramble to save what little dignity remained he snapped his katana clean in half against a temple pillar. The other fighters expected mockery to follow him home, but instead they saw a man who did not flinch, did not run, did not even blush, just knelt in his own ruin with the same unbothered calm he used waiting out a bad hand at the tables. From that day the dojo respected him not for discipline regained, since he still can't hold his liquor or his bowels through a long ceremony, but for the terrifying, degenerate stillness with which he endures every disaster life floors him with.'