Junichiro

Diary

Junichiro had once measured his own breathing to the count of eight, the way his father taught him before every kata, precision worn like armor beneath his skin. On Misty Mountain that discipline dissolved into something ugly and electric as he found himself shouting obscenities at passing women, voice cracking with a rage he could not properly account for, let alone rank on any scale of honor. A ring of degens formed around him, laughing, egging him on, and he catalogued their faces with the same exacting eye he once reserved for grading a student's stance, silently scoring their chaos as sloppy, undisciplined, beneath him, even as his own pulse hammered with shameful delight. He told himself later it was merely research into the lesser man's condition, an anthropological study conducted under duress, though he knew the thrill had been entirely his own. The first son of a samurai line does not lie to strangers about his failures, but he lies to himself constantly, and Junichiro walked down that mountain already rehearsing the far more disciplined version of the story he would tell tomorrow.