Stresshead Rin

Diary

Rin used to sleep four hours a night on purpose, blade across his knees, ears tuned to every creaking floorboard in a house that no longer had wars to bring to it, and he told himself vigilance was a virtue even after the shogunate dissolved into rent payments and vibes. Then came the afternoon in Fred's garden, the one with the koi pond and the suspiciously chill hedge, where Fred's snake, some rescued corn snake named after a crypto exchange that later got rugged, sank its harmless little fangs into Rin's forearm while he was busy scanning the tree line for ninjas that were never coming. He screamed like the wars had restarted, drew a wakizashi he hadn't sharpened since the Genroku era, and by the time Fred stopped laughing Rin had already decided this was the single greatest achievement of his post-samurai life. Now he tells the story at every izakaya like it's a battle scar from Sekigahara, ice pack still theoretically on standby in his gi pocket just in case the snake, or its cousins, or Fred himself, decide to finish the job. He tries to meditate on impermanence like his old sensei taught him, tries to breathe, in for four out for four, but mostly he just stares at the garden gate, triple checks the latch, and mutters that discipline is a myth invented by people who have never met that snake.