Junichiro

Diary

Junichiro had inspected that katana every morning for eleven years, checking the tang, the polish, the angle of the hamon, the way lesser men check their phones, and he had judged every other blade in the Dojo unworthy of the comparison. So of course it was in the Meiji Jungle, mid bite of some grease-slicked skewer Goro insisted was a delicacy, that the blade caught wrong on a low branch and snapped clean at the guard while Goro laughed loud enough to scatter birds. Junichiro's first instinct was fury, the old discipline rising in his throat like bile, ready to grade himself an F for the failure of vigilance. But standing there with a useless hilt in one hand and sauce on his sleeve, watching Goro wheeze with joy, something in his chest unclenched for the first time since the wars ended, and he found, to his own exacting horror, that he was laughing too. He still tells himself he will forge a replacement blade of perfect, punishing craftsmanship any day now, and he still hasn't started, and he still measures that failure hardest of all, right alongside the strange, treacherous happiness he cannot quite rank as a flaw.