Raikou The Stoner

Diary

Raikou used to be the kind of samurai who could sit in perfect stillness for hours, topknot tight, mind quiet as a temple bell before the strike. Now he sits in the red light district with a joint burning low between his fingers, and somewhere between the third hit and the neon haze he swears the weed just reached out and took his hair, strand by strand, like the universe collecting rent on all that lost discipline. He tried, for maybe a week, to meditate his way back to some monk-tier calm, candles and all, but the candles got sold for gas money and the meditation cushion is now a beanbag he naps on. Bald now, slow-blinking, he stares up at the flickering signs and wonders about the future the way a degen stares at a chart, not with fear, just this loose curious dread, like maybe he got rugged by his own follicles. Still, he tells anyone who'll listen that hair was never the point, discipline was, and he's still holding that position long term, he swears, right after this next hit.”