Shitless Botan

Diary

Shitless Botan once stood sentinel in silence for eleven hours without blinking, a blade of discipline sheathed in a body that no longer flinched at anything, not blades, not death, not consequence. Now he sits cross-legged beneath a grove of half-dead pines, a bucket of chicken between his knees, grease painting his knuckles like war paint from a war nobody remembers fighting. He behaved badly out there, ate like the last samurai at the last feast before the last extinction, growled at squirrels, threatened a crow for eye contact, and left bones scattered like the wreckage of a rugged position no one asked him to hold. His family still doesn't know, and he isn't scared to tell them, he simply hasn't decided it's worth the honor of confession, gallows-calm as ever, weighing shame like it's just another floor price that hasn't bottomed yet. He tells himself tomorrow he'll meditate, fast, rebuild the iron will of old, but tomorrow smells like chicken too, and Botan, fearless in all things except follow-through, already knows discipline lost this particular duel before it began.