One-Eyed Itsuki

Diary

One eye gone, the other doing double duty, Itsuki always claimed he saw more of the world than men with a full set, and for years that was true right up until the afternoon he crossed blades with Junichiro on a street packed with vendors, gawkers, and one very unlucky cart of persimmons. The fight was short, the humiliation long: his purse, his savings, the modest fortune he'd built pretending he didn't miss the samurai code, all of it scattered and stolen in the chaos while onlookers cheered for the wrong reasons. Now he walks the same streets with empty pockets and a flatter shadow, muttering that a man who can see half the world twice as clearly should have seen that coming, and still didn't. He tries, some mornings, to rebuild the old discipline, wake at dawn, meditate, count his losses like a monk counts prayer beads, but by noon he's arguing with a dice game he swore he'd never touch again and losing to it with both eyes wide open. Broken, yes, but steady, because even ruin looks sharper when you're only using half your face to frown at it.