Goro

Diary

Goro was the youngest of six blades once, the one who learned early that if you wait long enough everyone else tips their hand first, and that patience became the only inheritance nobody could pawn from him. So it was strange, even to him, that he found himself out in the cold one moon-cracked night, ante'd up past reason, having aped his entire fief into a hand he had no business holding just to see what the dealer was hiding. Death sat across the table too, patient as Goro himself, and for a few long breaths it looked like the house would take them both, floor and roof and rice fields gone in a single bad beat. He folded at the very last second, the way he always does, letting the moment rot ripe before he moved, and walked away rugged of land but somehow still breathing, which he counts as the better trade. Now he says he wants a quieter life, some porch, some tea, no more staring down fate over cold sake, but he still finds himself lingering at every table just a little too long, watching, waiting, telling himself this is the last time he lets the silence talk him into staying.'