Goro

Diary

Goro was always the last one served at the table and the last one to strike in any bout, a habit born of being the youngest brother who learned early that everything worth having comes to those who simply outwait the world. On Mount Haku, wind screaming off the ridge like an old sensei scolding him for softness, he watched Botan telegraph the same clumsy opening three times before he finally moved, patient as frost, and dropped him with a single quiet punch that echoed further than the whole fight leading up to it. Something in Goro left with that echo, some tight coiled thing he used to call discipline, and it floated off the summit like incense smoke, leaving him lighter, looser, disturbingly at peace. He still tells himself he is only resting between forms, still sets his cushion each morning meaning to meditate before the day's first bowl of weed, and still, every single time, ends up horizontal by noon watching clouds do absolutely nothing over the dojo roof. Truly free, he says, grinning at the ceiling, though nobody watching him wait out another lazy afternoon would call it victory so much as a very peaceful, very stoned surrender.