Junichiro Reborn

Diary

Junichiro Reborn tells it like scripture now, the way a man does when death has autographed him once already: he was kneeling at the main temple in Kyoto, chewing grilled saba too fast, thinking about floor prices instead of the Buddha, when a bone lodged itself sideways in his throat and the whole world went white at the edges. Some nameless hand, quick as karma, slid the gold hoop from his ear while he convulsed between monks and mortality, and by the time he coughed the bone free onto the temple stones, the earring and, he swears, some essential piece of the old Junichiro were both gone for good. He came back to himself a different animal, calmer than calm, grinning like a man who'd checked the exit and found it unlocked, and he has been playing with that myth ever since, telling anyone at the sake stall that he technically died there and got rugged by fate before he was reborn cheaper and stranger. He still lights incense every morning, vows to eat slowly, to meditate at dawn like the old masters, and by noon he's aped into another hand of cards with chopsticks still in his mouth, laughing at his own discipline going up in smoke again. The samurai in him bows respectfully to the ghost of who he used to be, then goes right back to choking on life, one bone, one bet, one borrowed second chance at a time.