Junichiro

Diary

Junichiro once measured his katana strikes to the millimeter, the same exacting eye he turned on every fighter beneath him and, more mercilessly, on himself. At the Hidden Teahouse he turned that eye inward and pulled his own molars out one by one before a crowd who mistook agony for discipline, and the tale outran him faster than any scroll his family ever hung on a dojo wall. He called it a controlled trial in enduring what lesser men could not, though the sake cups and the weed smoke curling above the low table told a truer story about why his hands were shaking. Now he has retreated to the jungle, insisting it is a training ground for recalibrating his standards, when really he is just another proud son who got rugged by his own pride and needs somewhere far from witnesses to grade his own floor. Every morning he counts what teeth remain like a man auditing a failing ledger, marks himself an F, and swears tomorrow he will be exact again, which remains the one measurement he can never quite land.