Stresshead Rin

Diary

Rin had rehearsed the strike against his superior for weeks in his head, running contingency plans at Fushimi shrine like a man drafting a whitepaper for a coup nobody funded, and when the moment finally came his blade found nothing but doubt and a very startled fox statue. Afterward he sat cross-legged beneath the torii gates, recalculating his own honor with the same manic spreadsheet energy he once reserved for troop formations, and concluded, with trembling certainty, that seppuku was the only disciplined exit strategy left. He packed a bag for it three separate times, checked the weather twice, then got distracted by a gambling den's neon promise of easy koku and told himself the ritual blade could wait until after just one more hand. Somewhere between folding a losing pair and rolling a joint to steady his nerves for a suicide he kept postponing, he realized the vigilance that once guarded emperors now just guarded his own spiraling anxiety, with absolutely no war left to aim it at. He still keeps the seppuku knife polished on his nightstand, mostly as a very sharp reminder that he is, once again, running late for his own honor.