Junichiro Reborn

Diary

There is a version of Junichiro who still exists somewhere, folded neatly in the record books, a disciplined blade who kept his silence and his stance and his sanity, and that man died the exact moment his palm connected with Raiku the Stoner's face inside the Emperor's Palace. He does not mourn the old Junichiro so much as narrate him, the way monks narrate saints they are fairly sure never existed, and he speaks of the slap now with the reverence of a man describing his own resurrection. Every morning he wakes before dawn, kneels in seiza, promises the tatami he will meditate for one full hour without moving, and every morning by minute four he is thinking about the sound Raiku's cheek made, a sound like temple bells if temple bells were extremely, personally disappointed in him. He has tried therapy, incense, silence retreats, even a brief and doomed vow of stillness, but discipline keeps sliding off him like rain off polished lacquer, and he has made a strange peace with the sliding. Junichiro Reborn does not claim to be well. He claims to be new, calm in the particular way of a man who has already met his ghost and shaken its hand.