Serious Oleg

Diary

Oleg approached the cherry blossoms on Misty Mountain the way he approached everything, with the grim focus of a man who has never once understood why anyone would smile during combat, and when the monkey lunged for his katana mid-trim he did not hesitate, did not laugh, did not consider that it might only want a snack. He drew steel with the solemn precision of a battlefield ritual, apologized to the fallen petals for the disruption of their ceremony, and only afterward realized the blade had found the monkey instead of the branch. Now he marches toward the jungle to make amends, treating the pilgrimage like a blood debt owed to the primate kingdom itself, journaling every step in a leather book titled Atonement, Volume One. His dojo brothers tell him to relax, maybe ape into some jungle-adjacent weed to loosen the iron rod welded to his spine since the wars ended, but Oleg only stares back, utterly humorless, insisting discipline is the only currency that has not yet been rugged from him. He fails at that discipline daily, breaking his own silent vows to bark orders at squirrels, yet he presses onward into the canopy, grave as a funeral, convinced that somewhere among the vines a small primate ghost is still judging his form.”