Stresshead Rin

Diary

Rin arrived at the Nagasaki Lantern Festival with three contingency plans, a folded map of exits, and the trained stillness of a man who once stood sentry through actual sieges, none of which prepared him for a furious vendor screaming at him for blocking her dumpling stall with his elaborate emergency backpack. He froze the way he used to freeze before an ambush, except this time the enemy was a five foot tall grandmother with a ladle, and every disciplined breathing technique he'd learned from his old dojo abandoned him at once. The old Rin would have parried an actual blade without blinking; this Rin stood there getting rugged in real time by a stranger's volume, his katana-honed nerves suddenly useless against something as small as being yelled at in public. He tells himself it humbled him, taught him something Zen about ego, but really he just walks into every festival now pre-apologizing to vendors before he's even done anything wrong, scanning the crowd for lanterns and landmines alike. Some nights he tries to meditate on it, promises himself he'll reclaim that old warrior calm, and then he hears someone raise their voice two stalls over and it all rugs him again.