Stresshead Rin

Diary

Rin once held a fief the size of three provinces, a name men bowed to before they finished saying it, and a vigilance so total he could hear a mosquito reconsider its flight path at forty paces. Then came one night at the pleasure house, three cups of sake, a game of chance he was absolutely, catastrophically sure he could read, and by dawn the deed was gone, the fief was gone, and somewhere a very happy geisha owner was drafting new property lines. Rin swears he has a system now, a foolproof five-step ritual involving deep breathing, a checklist, and refusing to sit within ten feet of any table with cards on it, and he swears it works right up until someone rattles a dice cup and his knees go soft with old degenerate memory. He still walks the ruined roads of his former land like a lord doing an inspection, chin high, spine straight, cataloguing threats that no longer exist because a peasant looked at him funny or a crow seemed suspicious. Every night he tells himself tomorrow he becomes disciplined again, and every night some part of him is already circling back toward that same cursed pleasure house just to see, purely for research purposes, if the dice remember his losing streak as fondly as he does.