Junichiro

Diary

Junichiro had once measured his stride to the width of a tatami mat, his breath to the count of eight, his whole life to a standard no lesser man could touch, and it was this very man who stood in the marble lobby of Dojo Towers and, mid-sentence with Bob about quarterly floor prices, betrayed himself completely. He had eaten the leftover mushroom edibles at 9 a.m. out of sheer degenerate impatience, telling himself a true first son does not waste product, and by the time Bob was two words into a pitch about liquidity pools, Junichiro's body rendered its own verdict without consulting him. He stood rigid as a shrine post, jaw set, eyes forward, silently grading the disaster on a scale he alone understood, ashamed less of the smell than of the miscalculation, the sloppy arithmetic of a man who once could not be caught off guard by anything short of a blade. Bob kept talking, mercifully or obliviously, while Junichiro performed the small tragic ritual of pretending composure, promising the ancestors and himself, again, that this was the last time discipline would lose to weed logic. He knows better now, he tells himself, the way he has told himself eleven times before, each vow a little more polished and a little less true.