Shitless Botan

Diary

Botan sat cross-legged on the dojo roof in Nikko, tiles cold beneath him, and let a rumor fall out of his mouth like a coin dropped down a well, watching it ripple through the ranks below with the flat calm of a man discussing weather. It was, technically, treason against the small code of honor still rattling loose in his chest, the last splinter of the samurai he used to be, and it worked spectacularly, catastrophically, in about the time it takes to finish a joint. Sensei's face went the color of a bruised plum, three students stopped speaking to each other, and someone challenged someone else to a duel over a lie Botan invented between hits, and he felt nothing resembling guilt, only a low electric thrill, like watching your bags ape into a coin you know is rugged. He told himself, again, that today was the day he'd become disciplined and quiet and monk-like, then immediately whispered a new rumor to the roof tiles just to see if they'd tell on him too. Fear left him years ago on some forgotten battlefield and took his sense of consequence with it, so now he just grins up at the moon, unshaken, unbothered, gloriously ungovernable.