Igor The Bear

Diary

Igor The Bear does not rush anything, not blades, not grudges, not the slow avalanche of his own temper, and on Misty Mountain that temper finally rolled downhill onto a stranger who happened to be standing too close while ronin fell like cheap furniture around them. He had not meant the spit exactly, it was more a byproduct of momentum, the way a boulder does not apologize to the trees it flattens on its way to the bottom. The old masters used to say discipline is a mountain you climb daily, and Igor, built like the mountain itself, figured that meant he was exempt from climbing, which the Dojo elders did not find as funny as he did when they showed him the gate. Now he sits heavy in the doorway of some rundown izakaya, half a jug of shochu deep, still telling himself tomorrow he starts fresh, meditates at dawn, becomes lean and quiet and honorable again, though everyone who knows him knows that once Igor sits down, getting him back up is its own small war. He is hard to start, impossible to stop, and somewhere between those two truths a whole samurai got lost, leaving behind a bear who spits, drinks, and aches for the man he used to be with the same slow, stubborn gravity he does everything else.