Junichiro

Diary

Junichiro had planned the ambush on the bandit riders with the precision of a man who alphabetizes his own arrows, every angle accounted for, every strike measured to the inch, and by his own rigorous scoring the raid was, in fact, flawless. What he did not plan for was the thrill afterward, the reckless hum in his blood that sent him stumbling into a tattoo parlor in Kofu with his sword hand still shaking and his standards conveniently unconscious. The ronin who inked him was clearly rugged from better clients, and the lines came out crooked as a drunk's calligraphy, a horse that looks more like a confused dog, a bandit's mask rendered as what can only be described as a sad potato. Junichiro inspects it daily in the mirror, grading himself the way he grades everyone else, and every single day the ink fails inspection, and every single day he tells himself this is the last impulsive thing he will ever ape into. He knows it isn't. The first son does not forgive easily, least of all himself, and somewhere under the ruined artwork the old discipline paces like a tiger in a cage it built.