Teary Goro

Diary

They say enlightenment finds a man in the mountains, in silence, in fasting, but Teary Goro found it slumped over a sake-stained table in a gambling house, laughing so hard at Legless Tom's ninth bad joke that he started crying and never quite figured out which one he was doing. Somewhere between the fourth round and the dealer's fifth warning, the universe cracked open for him, not with light but with the specific ache of watching an old friend lose his rent money with a grin, and Goro understood, suddenly and completely, that grief and joy had been the same coin all along, just flipped too fast to see. He wept into his cup, toasted the fallen samurai who never made it this far, and carried Tom home on his back because someone always has to carry someone. He knows he could do better, could meditate at dawn instead of drinking till it, could set down the cup and pick up the sword he swore he'd sharpen every night since the wars ended. But discipline keeps rugging him the same way the house always does, so instead he just holds tighter to the ones still standing, tears and all, and calls that enough for tonight.