Stresshead Rin

Diary

Rin had packed for seventeen contingencies before the Darkness Festival, spare cords, a second sheath, a mental script for every insult a drunk ronin might throw, but nowhere in his binder of disasters was 'katana snaps clean in half mid-argument with three degenerates arguing about floor prices.' One second he was defending the honor of proper blade maintenance, the next his grandfather's steel was two sad pieces in the lantern light, and the crowd's laughter felt louder than any battlefield he'd trained his whole life to survive. Now he stands at the festival's edge with a hand-lettered sign that says WILL GUARD YOUR TENT FOR YEN, offering the only weapon he has left, his own paranoid vigilance, to anyone who'll pay for a man who checks the perimeter every four minutes whether asked to or not. He tells himself this is temporary, a disciplined tactical retreat, while quietly rehearsing the seventeen ways selling himself on the street could still go wrong before sundown. Somewhere his old sensei is either weeping or laughing, and Rin, checking his exits for the ninth time, honestly can't decide which would be worse.'