Junichiro Reborn

Diary

They say Junichiro Reborn died once, briefly, and came back with better cardio and worse judgment, which explains the crowded street, the raised blade, and the superior he'd sworn loyalty to only three lifetimes ago. Somewhere between the first strike and the second his sandals simply vanished, kicked off into the churn of merchants and oxcarts like tribute to a god he no longer prays to, and he did not stop to look for them. He remembers the cobblestones cold under bare feet, the crowd parting like liquidity draining off a chart, and thinks now that it was the most alive he's felt since whatever it was that killed him the first time. He tells the younger fighters discipline is a floor you build slowly, plank by plank, then he laughs that unsettling half-laugh and admits he ripped his own floor out for the thrill of free-falling barefoot through a market at noon. Every dojo session he vows to find those sandals, symbolically, spiritually, whatever, and every session he ends up barefoot again, grinning like a man who's already died and knows the encore is better than the original show.