Shitless Botan

Diary

Shitless Botan once trained under masters who could hold a stance for three days without flinching, and now he can't hold his bowels for three minutes near a shrine, which he considers a fair trade since fear left his body sometime around his second bad mushroom trip. Mid-squat behind the torii gate, robes bunched at his ankles, a rat scurried across his sandal and he drove his tantō clean through it without so much as a grunt, calm as a monk sipping tea, calm as a man who has already priced in every humiliation life can throw at him. The old priests would've called it sacrilege; Botan called it multitasking, the last discipline he's got left since he aped his savings into a coin called $DUMPLING and rugged his own knees doing lunges he saw on a scroll. He wiped the blade, wiped himself, and sat there in the dirt wondering what could've been if he'd just held it, if he'd been the kind of warrior who commands his own body instead of negotiating with it. But regret, like fear, doesn't really land on him anymore, so he just shrugged, bowed to the shrine out of habit, and went looking for the nearest jug of sake to toast the rat that never saw death coming, same as him.'