Goro

Diary

Goro was always the youngest in the dojo, the one who learned to sit still while his elder brothers swung wildly and burned out by noon, and that patience once made him a great man, calm as still water, feared for how long he could wait before striking. Then came the hot afternoon nobody talks about, the one where the sake jug looked like a training exercise and the dice looked like discipline, and something in him quietly rugged itself while he wasn't watching. Now he sits the same way he always did, cross-legged, silent, watchful, except instead of studying an opponent's breath he is studying whether his hand will shake before it reaches the bong. He tells anyone who asks that he doesn't remember the incident, and he says it so calmly, so patiently, that you almost believe a man could out wait his own memory the way he used to out wait a rival's guard. Every morning he vows to sit in stillness and rebuild the old discipline, and every afternoon the heat comes back, and Goro, still youngest at heart, still watching, still waiting, loses that fight all over again with the same quiet grace he loses everything else.