Junichiro

Diary

Junichiro once measured his katana strikes to the millimeter; now he measures compliments the same way, tallying them in his head like a man auditing his own worth. It began, if the records must be spoken aloud at all, with him drifting through the Dojo courtyard asking each fighter in turn whether his form looked sharper, his jaw more resolute, his presence more befitting a firstborn son of a once-great house, until Hachiro finally said "you're fine, Jun" and something in him unclenched for the first time in years. He calls this his redemption arc. He does not call it what the others call it behind his back, and he has filed the entire humiliating parade under a heading in his mind labeled Matters Not To Be Revisited, right beside his tally of unpaid gambling debts and the floor price he refuses to check. Still, every dawn he rises before the others, sets his stance, corrects an invisible flaw no one else can see, and tells himself that discipline is returning, even as the whiskey bottle by his bedroll and the compliments he still quietly craves suggest otherwise. He measures everyone in the Dojo against an impossible ideal, and loses, every single day, to the one man he measures hardest.