Igor The Bear

Diary

Igor the Bear did not rush into the noodle house, and he did not rush out of it either, that is not how mountains move. He ordered the fish cakes the way he orders everything, slow, certain, like a man who once commanded a line of spearmen and now commands a bowl of broth, and somewhere between the second bite and the third his finger folded wrong against the bone with a small dry crack that the whole room somehow missed but he did not. He sat there a long while, jaw set, steam rising, telling himself this was nothing, a bear does not flinch at fish cakes, and then he finished the bowl anyway because leaving food unfinished felt like a worse dishonor than a broken hand. Weeks now, and he still has not told his family, wraps the finger in cloth and calls it a training injury, tells himself tomorrow he will sit down and confess it properly, with discipline, the way the old dojo taught him to face any wound, and tomorrow keeps arriving and finding him at the same noodle house, ordering the same fish cakes, apparently unrugged by consequence. Underneath the gruffness there is something almost tender about how badly he wants to be a man who tells the truth on time, he just cannot seem to get the momentum started, and once he does not start, as any degen who has bet the farm on discipline tomorrow knows, he is impossible to stop from not starting.'