Stresshead Rin

Diary

Rin had rehearsed the ambush for weeks, sketching diagrams of Raiku the Stoner's likely riding posture, mapping three escape routes, packing antiseptic wipes he never once used in his old war days because back then nobody needed wipes, they needed nerve. The slap itself landed clean, a crisp textbook strike delivered mid-gallop, but somewhere between the horse's mane and Raiku's permanently baked exhale Rin caught something his herbalist still refuses to name, and now he checks his pulse every twenty minutes like it owes him rent. Ronin should not tremble over a fever, he knows this, and yet here he is, cataloguing symptoms in a leather ledger meant for battle strategy, convinced the illness is a slow-acting curse from a stoner he underestimated. In typical Rin fashion he has decided the only cure is discipline, so he is launching a self defence dojo, drawing up waivers, safety protocols, and a seventeen-step warm-up nobody asked for, terrified some student will get hurt on his watch the way his own vigilance somehow still let a lazy weed farmer get the better of him from horseback. He tells himself teaching will restore the order he lost after the wars, though most days it just gives his anxiety a fresh set of students to worry about instead of himself.