Masumi Steel

Diary

Masumi Steel used to be a blade for hire, all discipline and quiet menace, until the wars dried up and left him holding nothing but a cracked wakizashi and a taste for sake he never quite kicked. The night it happened he was three cups deep behind the shoji doors, doing his cursed impression of some rival lord to make the other degens laugh, strutting and posturing like a man who still had a reputation to protect. The bit went sideways when he lunged for a dramatic flourish, caught his own robe, and turned a comedy routine into a horror show that cost him a nipple and most of his remaining dignity in one wet crunch. He still tells it like a floor sweep gone right, grinning through the gauze, insisting the wound is basically alpha now, a rare mint no one else in the dojo can claim. Every morning he vows to meditate, to breathe, to become disciplined again, and every morning he ends up half dressed, one nipple short, bluffing his way through another day like the whole thing was the plan all along.