Teary Goro

Diary

At the old shrine in Kamakura, incense curling like ghosts of vows he used to keep, Goro made the mistake of listening to Edmundo, who talked in that syrupy degen cadence about a floor price on virtue and how honor was just another bag you could ape back into if you timed it right. Goro laughed, because that is what he does when the grief gets too loud, laughed with tears already tracking down through the dust on his cheeks, and by the time the joss sticks burned out he realized he had traded his good name for a story he would tell wrong at every bar from here to Kyoto. Now he carries that shame the way he carries everyone else's dead, tender and unglamorous, tucked under one arm like a fallen brother too heavy to leave behind. He swears, weed rolled and unlit between his fingers, that he will earn it back through discipline, meditation at dawn, no drink till the reputation's restored, and swears it again the next morning after failing spectacularly at all three. Somewhere between the incense and the ash, Teary Goro keeps limping toward honor, crying and grinning the whole uneven way there.”