Stresshead Rin

Diary

Rin once stood sentry through three sieges without blinking, blade drawn, mind quiet as a temple bell between strikes, and now that same vigilance has nowhere honorable left to go, so it hunts for enemies in the folds of his own skin. It found one, apparently, the very night he sat cross-legged in the whorehouse trying to discuss impermanence with The Degen Scholar, who was three cups of sake deep and speaking mostly in riddles about rug pulls and reincarnation. Somewhere between the Scholar's second koan and third innuendo, an itch bloomed across Rin's forearm, red and smug, and he has since diagnosed himself with eleven separate plagues using nothing but candlelight and dread. He tried, as any disciplined man would, to meditate the rash into submission, breathing in for four counts, out for four counts, convinced this was the calm his old sensei preached, but by minute two he was googling symptoms on a scrying bowl and by minute three he was rearranging his futon for the fifth time that hour. Seven sleepless nights later he sits wrapped in blankets like armor, eyes wide as a man expecting ambush, still whispering that any moment now, any moment, he will finally rest.”