Teary Goro

Diary

Goro found the mushrooms behind the noodle stand in an alley that still smelled like old rain and older regrets, palming the little baggie the way he once palmed the hilt of a sword he no longer trusts himself to hold. He laughed once, sharp and wet, thinking of the brothers he carried off three different battlefields and couldn't carry off the last one, and the laugh cracked open into something quieter before it finished. Sitting against the wall with his knees to his chest, he chewed slow, half hoping the mushrooms would show him a version of that day where he moves faster, where his hands don't shake, where forgiveness is a place he can actually walk to instead of a floor that keeps getting rugged out from under him. He tells himself this is discipline, rationing grief in small doses so it doesn't flood him all at once, but he knows discipline left with his old topknot and this is just a man trying to feel something on a schedule. Still, when the colors come soft and the alley breathes with him, he holds the memory of every fallen friend gently, like always, because if he won't forgive himself, at least someone should be tender about it.