Stresshead Rin

Diary

Rin had drilled seventeen contingencies for the duel atop Mount Koriyoka, a scroll of worst-case scenarios tucked into his sleeve like a man expecting the sky itself to betray him, and yet none of them accounted for actually winning. When his fist connected with Botan's jaw and the big man folded like a poorly-stitched tent, Rin's first thought wasn't triumph but pure dread, some new catastrophe surely lurking behind this one, waiting to ambush him. He spent the walk down the mountain rehearsing apologies to a rival who was, technically, unconscious and in no position to accept them, then decided the only rational response to unexpected victory was to drown the resulting anxiety in sake before it could metastasize into something worse. Now he sits at the tavern with three different exit routes mapped in his head should the roof collapse or bandits storm in, nursing a cup he's refilled eleven times while insisting, between anxious glances at the door, that this is merely a temporary lapse before he returns to discipline tomorrow. Tomorrow, of course, never quite seems to arrive, and Rin toasts to it anyway, vigilant as ever against dangers that no longer exist, blind to the one quietly refilling his cup.