Junichiro

Diary

Junichiro once measured a bow to the quarter-degree and a blade's edge by the way lamplight refused to slide off it, so when he finally slipped, he slipped the way a master mason drops a single stone and hears the whole wall groan. It was The English Pilot, of all the wretched company Edo's floating world had to offer, who poured the third bottle at some indecent hour when even the crickets had the decency to shut up, and Junichiro, first son of a line that measured everything, matched him cup for cup like it was a duel he could win with dignity. There was no dignity. There was a table overturned, a haiku he apparently composed about sake and shame that he now refuses to recall, and a walk home at dawn so unsteady that the neighborhood dogs, notoriously poor judges of character, still barked at him weeks later. He tells himself it was one lapse, an aberration in an otherwise flawless ledger, the way a man tells himself one arrow missing the target doesn't undo a lifetime of archery, but he counts that missed shot every single night before sleep takes him. Now he holds himself to the same merciless ruler he holds everyone else to, grading his own discipline and finding it, again and again, an embarrassing fraction short of perfect, and hating that The English Pilot sleeps just fine.'