Junichiro Reborn

Diary

They say Junichiro Reborn died once, in some forgotten skirmish near Sekigahara's cousin battles, and came back wearing his own skin like a rented gi, so nobody blinked twice when he stripped down to bare flesh in the freezing dark, hunting for gambling money he swore he'd folded into his sleeve. He stood there shivering, calm as a monk mid-koan, patting bare thighs where pockets used to be, murmuring that the universe was simply testing his detachment from material things, which was rich, considering the material things included his pants. A passing dog walker found him negotiating with the cold like it owed him a loan, and Junichiro thanked her serenely, already narrating the scene aloud as chapter one of the memoir he insists will restore his discipline and his dignity in one elegant paperback. He has, of course, written no pages, only titles, the latest being 'Naked Before the Void: A Reformed Man's Guide to Losing Everything With Grace,' and he speaks of it with the unshaken confidence of a man who has already died once and knows deadlines are just another kind of death he can shrug off. The old samurai in him aches for the ritual of the brush and ink, the discipline of the blade, but the degen in him keeps trading the pen for the pipe and the page for another spin of the wheel, and somewhere in that gap between who he was and who he pretends to be, the book waits, patient as reincarnation itself.