Junichiro Reborn

Diary

They say Junichiro Reborn died once, briefly, and came back wearing his old face like a borrowed mask, which is the only explanation anyone has for the calm in his eyes while he sabotages his own master in a nameless alley behind the dojo. He'd meant to bring rice wine as an apology, some gesture toward the discipline he swore he'd found on the other side of death, but instead he came back with a baggie of mushrooms bought off a kid who called him "old legend" with a straight face. Junichiro finds this funny in the way only a man who has already lost everything once can find things funny, that particular flavor of humor that tastes like acceptance and rot. He tells himself the mushrooms are for clarity, for communing with whatever version of himself almost stayed dead, but really he just wanted an excuse to loosen the knot of ambition tightening around his master's throat and call it fate instead of jealousy. So he sits in the alley eating dirt-colored fungus, watching his master's plans crumble like the borrowed cosmic joke it is, whispering to no one that enlightenment always did have a bad sense of timing.