Junichiro Reborn

Diary

They say Junichiro died once, quietly, somewhere between a lost duel and a long sleep, and the man who walked back out into the world wore his old face like a borrowed mask. At sunrise, blade still humming from a fight fought more for old habit than glory, he found a handful of coins glinting in the dirt like the universe's idea of a joke, and he laughed the low laugh of a man who has already lost everything once and found it strangely funny to be handed pocket change instead of peace. He tells people he is reborn, that death rearranged his priorities, that discipline is just another cycle he is choosing to ape into again, one candle stick of a day at a time. Every morning he vows to meditate before he trades, to sheath his sword before he opens the charts, and every morning he ends up staring at both with the same unsettling calm, wondering if this incarnation is any better than the last. Still, he smiles, because a man who has already been reborn once knows better than to fear being rugged twice.