Junichiro Reborn

Diary

They say Junichiro Reborn died once on the slopes of Mount Koriyoka, and in a manner of speaking, he did, his kimono betraying him at the exact moment history was watching, glory turning to something far more pungent in the mountain wind. He tells it now with the serene detachment of a man narrating someone else's tragedy, a faint smile playing at the corner of his mouth, as if the shame belonged to a previous incarnation he no longer has to answer for. The old Junichiro would have committed seppuku over the humiliation; this one just aped into a folding table at the base of the mountain, cracked a lukewarm can, and decided the failure was actually the origin story he'd been missing. He speaks often of founding his own dojo, one built on discipline reborn from disaster, though the only lessons he's taught so far involve stretching before a bong rip and never trusting a mountain switchback after gas station sushi. Ask him if he's serious about the dojo and he'll go unnervingly quiet, eyes calm as still water, before saying softly that a man who has already lost everything has nothing left to lose in trying again, which is either the wisest thing you've ever heard or the beginning of an even funnier disaster.