Igor The Bear

Diary

Igor The Bear does not startle easily, which is precisely the problem, because by the time the courtesans at the noodle house had circled him three times giggling and tugging his sleeve like he was a slot machine that hadn't paid out yet, the old samurai stillness in him had already curdled into something slower and meaner. He remembers thinking of the discipline scrolls his master once made him copy by candlelight, the ones about patience being a mountain, and he remembers thinking that mountains, too, eventually erupt. So when some stranger leaned in laughing at his expense, Igor didn't rise, didn't roar, didn't even fully look up from his bowl, he simply gathered himself like a landslide deciding it was tired of waiting and let the spit fly with the same unhurried inevitability as everything else he does. The noodle house went dead quiet, the courtesans scattered like startled koi, and the stranger stood there dripping in disbelief while Igor went back to his broth as if nothing at all had happened. He regrets nothing, not the spit, not the silence after, not the fact that the mountain in him still hasn't learned how to be a man again, only how to fall.”